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One Year Later, redux: Apple, FCPX and The Perfect Roll-out
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Adobe has a similar systems in place with the AdobeID system. I have been downloading the CS starting with CS4, I believe.”
Yeah. For people who are already in the Adobe ecosystem. This is the key distinction. Users are in the platform vendor’s ecosystem essentially by default. If third parties want them in their ecosystems as well, that’s an additional hurtle users have to get over before buying/installing their apps. Many new users entering the market won’t do that; they’ll pick the path of least resistance, the obvious solution. If you’re a Mac user who wants to get into video editing and FCP X is the top paid app in the Mac App Store (as it has been fairly consistently), guess what NLE you’re probably installing?
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “Yeah. For people who are already in the Adobe ecosystem. This is the key distinction. Users are in the platform vendor’s ecosystem essentially by default. If third parties want them in their ecosystems as well, that’s an additional hurtle users have to get over before buying/installing their apps. Many new users entering the market won’t do that; they’ll pick the path of least resistance, the obvious solution. If you’re a Mac user who wants to get into video editing and FCP X is the top paid app in the Mac App Store (as it has been fairly consistently), guess what NLE you’re probably installing?”
I hear you, but it’s not like Adobe doesn’t have a system in place.
Also, the Creative Cloud will allow “temporary” rentals for which someone can try out the software beyond the free trial and it’s cheaper than FCPX.
I also agree that in the current state, the appstore is impossible for Adobe.
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[Chris Kenny] “Many new users entering the market won’t do that; they’ll pick the path of least resistance, the obvious solution.”
Dedicated professional editors who’s livelihood is based on the tools they use are not going to be put off by having to enter their credit card info at a website.
And I don’t see typical Ap purchasers, used to buying games at $4.99 for their Iphone, purchasing $299 software for their as yet non professional video use.
I don’t see FCPX as a whim purchase. If they’re serious, the xtra 5 keystrokes to download Adobe won’t matter. If they’re not serious the $299 price will matter.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “Dedicated professional editors who’s livelihood is based on the tools they use are not going to be put off by having to enter their credit card info at a website.”
True. But winning new users now is probably the key to dominating the market in five years.
[Herb Sevush] “And I don’t see typical Ap purchasers, used to buying games at $4.99 for their Iphone, purchasing $299 software for their as yet non professional video use. “
I agree that FCP X probably isn’t going to be purchased by many casual hobbyists. But you’re trying to divide the world into “dedicated professional editors” and casual hobbyists. That’s not accurate. There are non-casual hobbyists, people interested in becoming professional editors, people who aren’t technically professional editors but have some ‘serious’ reason to want to be able to edit video, etc.
Take, say, a high school student who wants to try to break into shooting and editing by trying to book wedding jobs. This kid isn’t a ‘dedicated professional editor’, but it’s not too hard to see him buying FCP X. (And if he’s really interested in editing, who knows what kind of projects he’ll be booking five years later?)
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Herb Sevush] “Dedicated professional editors who’s livelihood is based on the tools they use are not going to be put off by having to enter their credit card info at a website.”
Agreed. If you can use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, After Effects, Premiere Pro, or any of the other apps in the suite, you can probably figure out how to buy it without a one-click app store.
Likewise, if you can get by with an App Store competitor to one of the above, you are likely not in Adobe’s target market anyway.
Chris, I do get your point that Apple is targeting a larger market than the traditional digital content creators that the other 3 A’s are targeting — but so what? Do you really think there’s no room for differentiation in the creative professional space?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Herb Sevush] “I am saying calling the rollout a “success” needs a redefinition of the word.”
Not for Apple it doesn’t. They accomplished what they set out to do…at least part of which was to make crystal clear that the past is the past, and that their priorities going forward might have little to do with what mattered to you for FCP’s first dozen years.
Mission accomplished?
What I’ve been talking about has absolutely no reference to FCP’s 2011 customers. For them/you, a different story of course. So what looks to Apple like a glass very nearly full may look very nearly empty to you….assuming that you agree that there’s a glass at all. And indeed, many here do not. 🙂
(With apologies to those for whom X is exciting, whether in its current state or its future potential. I get that. For those who don’t agree, I think in fairness that Apple has a pretty good track record of putting things together in new ways after blowing them up. Like Mac vis a vis everything that Apple had done before that.)
So I don’t think that you and I disagree at all, Herb. You’re looking at it from a customer’s point of view — which YOU SHOULD. As an exercise in “WTF?” on my part, the release of FCPX makes sense to me if I look at it from Apple’s point of view, without any reference to its effect on current customers.
Which is what I’m saying Apple did. I’m saying that Apple placed their priorities AS APPLE, TO APPLE, ahead of their priorities as the people who set you on this path in the first place.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou -
[Tim Wilson] “(With apologies to those for whom X is exciting, whether in its current state or its future potential. I get that. For those who don’t agree, I think in fairness that Apple has a pretty good track record of putting things together in new ways after blowing them up. Like Mac vis a vis everything that Apple had done before that.)”
Or OS X — a lot of dedicated Mac users freaked out about OS X, and spent the better part of a year insisting Apple had ruined the Mac.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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I think all of this can be summed up as ‘Apple aren’t stupid and are doing what they want’. Chris has reminded us that whenever someone does something others like it, hate or or are totally indifferent.
So like it or lump it FCPX is a drifting in a direction some like but many hate, not just because it dares to be a bit different but because it doesn’t do the same thing that other systems do or FCP7 did. Apple have their reasons and methodologies which we can argue about but hardly influence.
The endless circular nature of this keeps throwing up the same arguments without changing much. The rest will be a matter for hindsight and the usual revisionist viewpoints. Continue…
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[Michael Gissing] ” Apple have their reasons and methodologies which we can argue about but hardly influence.”
Never doubt the power to influence.
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[Michael Gissing] “So like it or lump it FCPX is a drifting in a direction some like but many hate, not just because it dares to be a bit different but because it doesn’t do the same thing that other systems do or FCP7 did. “
That doesn’t account for what it does well, or for what it does differently than other NLEs, in a “better” way. Better is in quotes becuase it truly is subjective.
You might not like X’s strengths personally, but that doesn’t make any less powerful.
With a few free/low cost add-ons, FCPX can almost do what fcp7 did. Almost.
Does some of it need work, yes, and lots of it.
Generic XML import is not there, but fcpXML seems to be working well enough to get out to other industry standard tools (and back).
Audio channel configuration is not up to speed, but stem export is a breeze, complete with video stems if you’d like.
I could go on, but I won’t. It’s super easy to say what isn’t working (or what doesnt work exactly like fcp7), but there’s also some that does, and does it well. I’m sure you can say that about any piece of media creation software.
Jeremy
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