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Larry Jordan begins knocking loudly on Apple’s door.
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I think Larry Jordan speaks a lot of sense. In his latest blog he writes:
“I would also suggest that many of us would benefit by taking a deep breath and giving Apple a chance to live up to their promises for the program.
Final Cut Studio (3) still works.
It took Avid, Adobe, and Apple many years to evolve their programs to their current feature set. I’m willing to give Apple a few months to get their act together and fix what’s broken with FCP X.
I’m going to stay with Final Cut Pro for a while. Work at learning the new version. Give feedback to Apple on what they need to do to improve things. And share what I learn with you.
Final Cut Pro X has a lot of exciting potential – but, for many of us, that potential is not yet realized.”
That is exactly where I’m at with FCPX. I wont judge the software based on the shambolic product launch, but the clock is ticking and judgement day is fast approaching…
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Although I’ve monitored the Cow for a long time I just joined with the launch of X because I thought (and still do) that it would be the best place to engage in the process of transition.
First: I was enthusiastic about the new model as I had learned about it from the SM and Larry Jordan and said so in the few posts I wrote when it first broke.
I probably fall right into the middle of this debate and demographic. I own a small but fairly high profile creative company. We don’t have the needs of a lot of the dedicated colorists or edit houses as we do it all from our own studios. But that still means doing audio post in our audio room, working daily with the art dept with PSDs for animation and motion graphics etc. and a lot of our work is broadcast TV spots so properly calibrated broadcast monitors are a must.
At the same time we moved to all digital acquisition so we’re a prime target of the new X philosophy and I have to admit I really like the idea of not round tripping to Color as we do our own grading.
So like i said, we’re pretty much right in the middle of all of this and as the president and creative director I deal with it all.
Here’s my take after two weeks of immersion in it.
I’m just finishing about two months of non stop PS design work on our new website, sometimes 18 hours a day and haven’t seen the edit suite for all that time.
I started putting the broadcast and film reels together for the site and preparing the summers spot production. FCP7 felt like an old friend. Not a moment was lost. I was juggling footage from Olympic films from a few years ago shot in one medium, spots from another medium…you get the picture.I simply could not have done my job as a small firm using X.
And if I could have, I really didn’t want to take the little time I have finishing the site and scrambling to produce a dozen new broadcast projects to learn an entire new paradigm.FCP7 works really well.
What happened to the old axiom – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?
That’s a really good axiom.A 64 bit version of FCP 8 integrating Color and real audio sweetening/mixing would have been brilliant…even game changing for Apple. Honestly, it’s what I was very hopeful of seeing.
This new paradigm is what we’ve always called a “camel” in the ad business – that is the answer to the question: “what do you call a race horse designed by committee”
Apparently it wasn’t enough for this committee to change how we all love to edit, but to audio mixing as well (I’m still seeing real potential in the internal grading approach).
Obviously I’m not touching on all the left outs that left out the entire professional post industry – I’m going to give Apple some credit that their probably scrambling like they never imagined to fix those.
But frankly, as a creative guy first who became a tech guy over the last 20 years largely following Apples lead and using hundreds of their products, I simply have to ask (and as a serious investor have a right to) – what were you people thinking?
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And a quick reply to myself.
As someone in the communications biz: the folks paid to communicate at Apple showed and are showing a lack of skill that would get them fired from my little shop.
And not just for arrogance and ignorance regarding their customer base and reputation but for screwing up what is probably a nice little program going forward.
An intelligent and reparative move would be to announce that, as of monday, FCP 7 was alive and well and to announce the formation of a team that was hard at work on FCP 8, with an admission of missing the mark on this. A little humility is as good for a corporation as it is for an individual.
They would show that they are both human and appreciative of their base.
I’m not a programmer and have no idea of hat it would take from that perspective, but I do know they could more than afford to do something “big” regarding this situation and a big visionary company should show that it knows how to fix a vision that they didn’t get right
Again the problem is not with X, but with abandoning a system that is so entwined and appreciated worldwide that it made no sense to kick it into the gutter.
If down the line their vision for FCP X is seen as the evolution of an industry and art then we’ll all move there as it becomes obvious, just like so many of us moved form Avids and Media 100s a decade ago.
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I guess that’s one way of looking at it.
I think some guys just don’t know when their being dumped or fired.
I give you the “Silent Breakup”
Apple: “We got a great new package”
Video Pros: “Great, hope it’s 64bit upgrades”
Apple: “And then some”
Video Pros: “Well let’s have it”
Apple: “Here you go…Look at what you get”(pointing to box)
Video Pros: OK… (looking at box in hand) where’s the support for over $100,000 worth of gear.
Apple: No,no,no… This is new, and at a lower price you’ll love it
Video Pros: Hey!…(clicking on keyboard vehemently) I can’t open any of my old files
Apple: (Smile)
Video Pros: (Pulling Apple to the side, off screen) We need to talk…NOW!
(Slow Emotional Music up)
(Fade to Black) -
[Jim Giberti] “If down the line their vision for FCP X is seen as the evolution of an industry and art then we’ll all move there as it becomes obvious, just like so many of us moved form Avids and Media 100s a decade ago.”
I think your showing your age…Try 12 years ago 🙂 (J/K)
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You mean showing my youth 🙂
Yeah we started with FCP1 and as I said in an early post, literally used two $40k Media 100 systems as doorstops when we moved into our new facilities on the mountain.
Well before that, to my knowledge, we were one of the first to adopt the first Premiere (on a Quadra 840 AV I think) to do a national project. it was an adventure and I wanted to prove a point at the time.I’ve always had a pretty good compass with these things, from cameras to audio, design and film suites. That compass doesn’t tell me that this is a forward direction right now. Different yes, but not forward.
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Agreed. My respect for Larry–which was sizable to begin with–has grown much deeper through this whole event. He has much at risk, and has been in a very difficult situation. And yet, his behavior has been exemplary. Cool dude.
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apple aren’t in their health anymore. It sounds weird to say this, everything seems like fire of the gods, but jobs is drifting away, and apple simply *is* Jobs.
His absence break after john scully definitively proves it. Without him there is not a company known as Apple. Jobs looked at the touchscreen tests and simply said – ‘this can be a phone’.
That’s gone. that was the last jobs insight.
Tim Cook is a manager, phil schiller is phil schiller, and Jony Ives is running out of braun. apple is running out of steam. Once Steve Jobs disengages we’re going to see a very weird repeat of the middle management clawing its way to the top and realising that there’s nothing there – there is only the room where Steve Jobs used to be.There’s nothing to fix here, they’ve completely wrecked their editing application for stupid reasons applying models they thought were sound, about nuking and expanding the software market.
they were wrong. the market sector they have defined is a smoking mess – granted we have the likes of chris kenny answering every email ever written telling us all that we have fantastical clip database linked local relationships in three dimensions unconstrained by moronic linear tracks that go from left to right, because who ever needed that…
But still – FCPX is a godawful mess.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “Jobs looked at the touchscreen tests and simply said – ‘this can be a phone’.
That’s gone. that was the last jobs insight.
Tim Cook is a manager, phil schiller is phil schiller, and Jony Ives is running out of braun. apple is running out of steam. Once Steve Jobs disengages we’re going to see a very weird repeat of the middle management clawing its way to the top and realising that there’s nothing there – there is only the room where Steve Jobs used to be. “I understand your argument to be that this whole FCP debacle would never happen with Steve Jobs fully engaged. I say:
Either the conventional wisdom around here about Apple not caring about the pro market because they don’t need it in the face of massive iOS device sales is true, and that goes all the way to the top, or it isn’t. Apple started down the path to gutting FCP at least as far back as 2008, and if Jobs gets credit for all of the iPhone and iPad’s success during that same time, he is also behind FCP’s sea change.
Apple has had a rocky 12 months when it comes to PR (Antenna-gate, Location-gate, this whole mess). But what hasn’t happened is suffering sales. There is still a shipping delay on iPad 2 orders since they can’t keep them in stock. The 3G iPhone 4 is over a year old and is still the top selling smartphone in a 4G world. If Apple is showing signs of losing its rudder, it isn’t showing up where it counts yet.
Either this whole FCP apocalypse is a direct outcome of Apple no longer needing or caring about the pro market and everything is going according to plan, or this is a taste of what Apple will look like post-Jobs. It can’t be both. If this outcome is intentional and anticipated (and I say it is), it was ultimately Steve’s decision.
Best,
Andy -
well, there’s still a built in lag on roll out – we’ll know better in eighteen months. this thing is a total mess – the application, the execution, the PR, everything. This is just a shambles – antennagate really wasn’t and also the product was ridiculously strong.
FCPX is a mess – the question would be is it a one off, or does it indicate intellectual and structural rot inside apple. Ultimately I don’t believe there is an apple without Jobs, and he’s not really there anymore, not in the way that he was during the last decade where he drove the entire company by will.
The last ten years was camelot. Apple isn’t built to last – its a single man’s vision. That can’t outlast the man. I would wager heavily that Apple will have stumbled repeatedly and faded completely by the end of this decade.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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