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One Year Later, redux: Apple, FCPX and The Perfect Roll-out
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Because the circle is the perfect shape.
Illuminated now?
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Marian Carey has sold millions upon millions of records. Are you suggesting her records couldn’t have been better? Are you suggesting her records should be considered as better than every record that sold less? Are you saying because more people have bought a Mariah Carey record it is therefore BETTER than a Tom Waits record, musically that is?
The geek circles may be right. And if something more was made of it, how do you know it would have sold less?
Is populism you benchmark?
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[Herb Sevush] “Adobe and Avid among many others have managed to upgrade their basic software without destroying the workflow of their users. Apple chose not to, basically because Steve Jobs found it hard to edit his family’s home movies. Now there’s a great reason for change.”
Upgrade yes. Transform no. Different approaches.
And I’ve never read a single thing about Steve Jobs ever editing a home movie.
Randy Ubillos noted that he was frustrated that iMovie was overly complex for a simple home vacation video edit – so he based part of the big re-write that became iMovie 08 on that premis.
But I don’t recall SJ ever mentioning video editing in any quote I ever read.
SJ pretty much created Apple’s unique 20th century business success by making it easier for people to get better results from their digital tools.
So actually, smart simplification has proved to be an extremely excellent reason for change – and one that vast numbers of people have rewarded with continued patronage.
What’s proving problematic is designing software for a small elite cadre of users who’s economic impact pales in relation to the development resources required to serve their niche requirements. For good or ill, fulfilling the software needs of the top 10% of working editors may not be a sustainable model for software development.
If I’m wrong, then Smoke and Premier should have a chance to inherit a nice chunk of 2 million Legacy users over the next couple of years. But evidence of that is extremely scant.
A drop from 54% o 52% as discussed in Phil Hodgetts recent quoted post here just isn’t going to budge a needle enough to notice.
This is totally anecdotal but it came from a different but similarly well-connected friend at NAB. He asked me to guess how many seats of AVID they sold when they were offering their recent cross-grade deal to individual new retail customers.
His answer honestly shocked me. It was in the SINGLE digits. Like less than 10.
That’s pretty scary if it’s true.
And unless Premier is doing many many orders of magnitude better than that (and I honestly hope they are) how long can they support the constant and on-going development required of any software company faced with the pace of hardware revision we see today?
We’ll know the truth as the years unfold I guess.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Herb Sevush] “When they re-do this very important consumer Ap, we’ll see if they also make it incompatible with the previous version and require users to reload everything and throw out all their song lists.
“Sounds a bit like the iCloud rollout to me.
; )
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bill Davis] “I’ve never read a single thing about Steve Jobs ever editing a home movie.
…he was frustrated that iMovie was overly complex for a simple home vacation video edit…
But I don’t recall SJ ever mentioning video editing in any quote I ever read.”
Hi
Mention it? Maybe not.
But the likelihood is that it was at least in passing a part of his life:
https://www.tofslie.com/hey/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/jobsoffice-960×639.jpgThats a DSR-170 DVCam camera (or the DV equivalent) alongside the ali case for a DCR-VX9000 earlier DV camera, another handycam on the shelf,and a tripod, all in his study at home.
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[Bill Davis] “So actually, smart simplification has proved to be an extremely excellent reason for change – and one that vast numbers of people have rewarded with continued patronage.”
Absolutely, in the mass consumer market.
[Bill Davis] “What’s proving problematic is designing software for a small elite cadre of users who’s economic impact pales in relation to the development resources required to serve their niche requirements. For good or ill, fulfilling the software needs of the top 10% of working editors may not be a sustainable model for software development.”
This may be true, but I believe that professional video editing is inherently complex, and that most Legacy users will prefer thoroughness to simplicity. Not that FCPX won’t find a large market, but I don’t know that it will pick up as many new users as it will loose old ones. I don’t see Avid and PPro and Edius users leaving their Aps for FCPX so all of their gains will have to come from new users.
[Bill Davis] “A drop from 54% o 52% as discussed in Phil Hodgetts recent quoted post here just isn’t going to budge a needle enough to notice.”
I posted this as a counter to Tim Wilson’s argument that the FCPX rollout was so successful. Success does not equal loss of market share, unless accompanied by a rise in unit profits, no matter how small the loss. A release of the imaginary FCP8 would have either gained or held market share, not lost it. As many have pointed out the major Legacy migration is just beginning.
[Bill Davis] “And unless Premier is doing many many orders of magnitude better than that”
They are, they’ve posted their increase in seats and it’s up over 20% last year, and that’s before PPro6.
[Bill Davis] “how long can they support the constant and on-going development required of any software company faced with the pace of hardware revision we see today?”
The same way every other software company manages. I don’t see many NLE’s going out of business these days, in fact more are joining the fray, especially with the opening Apple created.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “They are, they’ve posted their increase in seats and it’s up over 20% last year, and that’s before PPro6.”
…and much much more so on the Mac platform specifically.
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[Dennis Radeke] “…and much much more so on the Mac platform specifically.
“Hey Dennis! Thanks for your help at the show, and great to meet you finally.
For those less prone to understanding the meaning of such statistics unless they are pro Apple, would you please explain what the significance of the “more so on the Mac platform.” I think that may not be 100% clear to some here. 🙂
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[Herb Sevush] “And I am patiently explaining that the upgrade could have preserved what was valuable in the old without tossing the baby out. Adobe and Avid among many others have managed to upgrade their basic software without destroying the workflow of their users.
I assume that this is still true, but when I was there, this was a great concern. It was sometimes maddening to sit in customer facilities where they demanded that Media Composer change to keep up with Final Cut Pro, then walk through step by step them: What if we changed THIS? “No.” What about THIS? “NO.” Or this? “HELL NO!”
No disrespect intended to either Avid or the customers, because this really is a very difficult row to hoe.
Which is why, in the end, Steve didn’t want to talk to customers. I can cite interviews in both 1985 and 2008 (and did in the article I referenced above) where he explained why: customers will ALWAYS favor what they know. In the 2008 interview, he specifically said that customers can’t see around the corner, so why ask?
Pretty arrogant, even for Steve. Maybe we should start some Chuck Norris-style meme. Steve Jobs could see around corners, and the corner after THAT. He could see all the way around the world so clearly that he could kick your ass even while you were behind him, without even turning around.
Apple chose not to, basically because Steve Jobs found it hard to edit his family’s home movies. Now there’s a great reason for change.”
I’m not saying that any of this was GOOD, or done for any right reasons other than the ones I mentioned: he wanted it to look and act like Apple, and he wanted it to do something completely new. They could NOT do that and maintain old workflows — because at the end, neither Adobe nor Avid changed anything FUNDAMENTAL.
Why? Because they care about maintaining continuity. Apple, not so much. Their whole heritage, from the origin of Mac, was founded on dis-continuity. People love it when it works for them, and don’t when it doesn’t.
Also as I mentioned, I really really like what Adobe and Avid have done. 🙂
I should have said this a lot earlier, but I’m glad that it appears that nobody has taken my “zombie-Borg FCP” ANALOGIES as saying anything about FCP as YOU experience it. It’s obviously been doing awesome things for you awesome people for a very long time. I was speaking from an imaginary perspective that I also obviously think is pretty accurate, rhetorical/humorous exaggeration notwithstanding.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Chris Kenny] “Has everyone forgotten history so quickly? The original Final Cut Pro initially found its way into the market because it was one of the first NLE products to seriously embrace DV/FireWire — consumer video technologies that pros initially didn’t take seriously (one recalls extensive arguments over the definition of ‘broadcast quality’).”
Chris, I think this is absolutely critical to keep squarely in focus.
Not only that, it was the first NLE that could easily do full-resolution “broadcast quality” work on a laptop. (You can also thank Panasonic for their major contribution with DVCPRO HD for kicking it up a couple of notches.)
That’s the irony I find in the “no tower=no pro whatever.” FCP was designed to work great on whatever you had handy — MacBook Air, iMac, Fry Baby, Cuisinart, you name it.
Lighter and lighter-weight codecs are making it more and more possible. They didn’t show it in the booth, but Blackmagic’s secret suite demo showed their visually lossless 4K codec at about 35mb/s off a Thunderbolt thumb drive.
KIDDING, but you know it’s coming.
No tower=no sweat. Or not. 🙂 But in any case, FCP was the one that started the trend away from towers in the first place.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou
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