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Risk and failure
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[Chris Kenny] “Apple has almost certainly not chosen to exclude those users from their long-term (or even relatively short-term) plans for FCP X. They simply didn’t wait on those features for the initial release. People are up in arms because they don’t like the signal that supposedly sends, but I suspect Apple shares my opinion that a year from now, nobody will much care about what signals Apple was believed to be sending with the initial release, if the product meets their needs at that time.”
To wit: John Gruber back when the iPad was brand new and being widely panned for its missing features and supposedly directionless marketing.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] “To wit: John Gruber back when the iPad was brand new and being widely panned for its missing features and supposedly directionless marketing.”
Wow, that’s a great find. It’s freakishly applicable to Final Cut Pro X.
Apple has released many new products over the last decade. Only a handful have been the start of a new platform. The rest were iterations. The designers and engineers at Apple aren’t magicians; they’re artisans. They achieve spectacular results one year at a time. Rather than expanding the scope of a new product, hoping to impress, they pare it back, leaving a solid foundation upon which to build. In 2001, you couldn’t look at Mac OS X or the original iPod and foresee what they’d become in 2010. But you can look at Snow Leopard and the iPod nanos of today and see what they once were. Apple got the fundamentals right.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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The iPhone and iPad are poor analogies for FCPX. They were brand new products, but FCP has a decade’s legacy and a large existing user base. FCPX is not just a new product, it’s a reboot of the FCP franchise.
An iPhone analogy for FCPX would be a hypothetical iPhone X, with cool technologies and a brand new interface, but which couldn’t import your existing contacts (legacy projects), didn’t sync with your computer (bidirectional interchange), required all apps to be re-written in order to run (FXPlug 2), and didn’t work with your Bluetooth headset (external monitoring).
The iPhone X would almost certainly be very cool and sell very well. The feature changes wouldn’t make a whit of difference to new iPhone X users, or to existing iPhone users who didn’t care about those features. A lot of people who had bought every iteration of the previous iPhone, though, would be upset that their favorite feature didn’t exist anymore.
Chris, there are actually several really important things that you and I agree on:
- FCP was totally outdated, and couldn’t reasonably be updated. A rewrite was appropriate.
- FCPX is built on very forward-looking technologies and is the future of the FCP franchise.
- Future releases of FCPX will add back at least some of the “missing” functionality. FCPX will evolve over time. FCPX 10.0 is not set in stone.
- FCPX will be a commercial success.
- FCPX is usable by a large subset of professional users today.
The only thing that I’m really asking you to try to understand here is why so many people are upset. Many people are looking at the same facts as you and arriving at a different, but reasonable, conclusion, which is supported by the evidence as they see it.
I understand your position as the FCPX guy, but a little empathy for those for whom FCPX is a puzzling and currently incomplete offering would go a long way for your credibility in the community.
Have a happy Fourth of July.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “The iPhone and iPad are poor analogies for FCPX. They were brand new products, but FCP has a decade’s legacy and a large existing user base. FCPX is not just a new product, it’s a reboot of the FCP franchise.
An iPhone analogy for FCPX would be a hypothetical iPhone X, with cool technologies and a brand new interface, but which couldn’t import your existing contacts (legacy projects), didn’t sync with your computer (bidirectional interchange), required all apps to be re-written in order to run (FXPlug 2), and didn’t work with your Bluetooth headset (external monitoring).”
I get this. And I get why it bothers people. What I don’t get is why people (not necessarily you) are predicting the product will fail because of it.
Look at it like this: if FCP X were a new product that had just been shipped by an established, credible software vendor that was only now entering the NLE market, would people be predicting failure for it? Would they be insisting it was a ‘consumer’ app? Or would people look at what it was, look at what features its vendor was promising the release over the coming months and saying “Hmm, this is pretty interesting, and if these guys play their cards right they’ll be a major player in a year or two”?
I think you’d be seeing something much closer to the latter. What’s happening with FCP X is that people have negative feelings about the fact that Apple ditched backwards compatibility, and went into this whole thing with a certain amount of paranoia about Apple’s commitment to the high-end market. As a consequence they’re not really seeing the product for what it is and what it’s likely to become. Instead, they’re looking for reasons to validate their negative feelings toward it.
[Walter Soyka] “Many people are looking at the same facts as you and arriving at a different, but reasonable, conclusion, which is supported by the evidence as they see it.”
Many people are claiming (or just implicitly accepting) that the evidence supports the conclusion that FCP X is not intended for the same market as FCP, but is instead intended for ‘consumers’, and that Apple has abandoned the ‘pro’ market. I do not believe this is a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence, or even especially coherent. I think the implied definitions of ‘pro’ and ‘consumer’ here make no sense, and this is causing a serious misunderstanding of who bought FCP, which leads to a misunderstanding of who FCP X is targeted at and of Apple’s motivations for making certain decisions around the initial release.
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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’m not a post house. I’m an indie making a living from the not for profit sector. I work on my own, and from everything I’ve read about X I won’t touch it with a barge pole at the moment.
In a couple of years, when all the apologists suggest X will be ready for me, i’ll be long gone over to premier. Why? Well at the moment I run a 32 bit editing software programme that is already a year behind the competition because i was waiting for this ‘awesome’ upgrade. I’m sitting on my hands for another couple of years only to discover that all the creative advancements of X are predominantly prosumer nonsense and marketing spin when all I want is an editing package I can edit my with that makes the most of my Mac.
FCP8 could have been that if they gave me 64 bit and real background rendering (rather than what seems to be, from posts, the idle rendering in X) but instead they ‘reinvented’ the wheel, made a lot of fanbois gasp and apologists chastise and middle class hobbyists wonder if £180 is money well spent when iMovie is free but made people like myself… not a post house… think t0ssers, you just shat on my set up and have made me learn a new editing programme when I should be spending that time working on paid jobs.
And if i’m going to earn a new bit of editing software, is it going to be X with its flaws, bugs and limitations or Premier 5.5 with a company behind it that appears to care about the fact I edit for a living?
No brainer.
So, in summary:
* no, having FCP7 on our machines isn’t solace when we’ve been waiting 2 years for an upgrade from 32 bit.
* no, waiting another 2 years on the off chance that X will stop being a control freak and allow me to do what I want the way I want (which I always could) isn’t tolerable
* no, if i have to learn a new editing system it won’t be the limited X
* and my sympathy goes out even more to those with seats and external editors who have been shat on even more than me.
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[Julian Bowman] “I’m not a post house. I’m an indie making a living from the not for profit sector. I work on my own, and from everything I’ve read about X I won’t touch it with a barge pole at the moment.”
This sounds a lot like you haven’t actually used it.
[Julian Bowman] “In a couple of years, when all the apologists suggest X will be ready for me, i’ll be long gone over to premier.”
Specifically what features do you need that you believe will take “a couple of years” to show up in FCP X?
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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The launch of FCPX may already fit a business case, but from a differing perspective. I think this launch is an attempt by Apple to navigate a disruptive innovation in the face of an established professional user base that expects sustaining innovations with smooth transitions, not abrupt painful changes.
The rationale for releasing a technologically advanced product with lesser capabilities than what is needed by the core user base is well described by Prof. Clayton Christensen from the Harvard Business School in his treatise on “The Innovators Dilemma.” I’ve detailed this further in the following post: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1177352
I’m not saying that this was the right or wrong move, but I am saying that what strikes many (especially and understandably here) as sheer stupidity on Apple’s part may be a bold and calculating gamble (which still may fail!).
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Chris Kenny on Jul 4, 2011 at 2:46:36 pm
[Julian Bowman] “I’m not a post house. I’m an indie making a living from the not for profit sector. I work on my own, and from everything I’ve read about X I won’t touch it with a barge pole at the moment.”
[Chris Kenny] This sounds a lot like you haven’t actually used it.
Actually I would suggest that to most people that fact was implicitly implied in that statement. Perhaps some people would need that point spoon fed to them, but I like to err on people reading and comprehending things. If it appeases you though, then, no, I haven’t used it yet. Yes I have read lots. If you feel my opinion in invalid simply because I have read and not used then i’d suggest we stop a conversation now as i’m just going to roll my eyes at you and walk on by.
[Julian Bowman] “In a couple of years, when all the apologists suggest X will be ready for me, i’ll be long gone over to premier.”
[Chris Kenny] Specifically what features do you need that you believe will take “a couple of years” to show up in FCP X?
Multicam (shoot 6 camera live sessions too). Ability to put my rushes and render files somewhere different from my project files, and wherever I need/want. Open FCP7 projects. Capture from tape. Plugins. The ability to create little bits of my edit further along my timeline without it being sucked into the main edit as it is the way i like to do things. Multiple sequences in one project, rather than multiple projects just to have multiple sequences. Call me old fashioned (and please do) but a manual save option. The keyboard strokes to be the same as they are in 7.
Now a lot of this I can get from Premier, including I believe (and a tad ironically) 7s keyboard layout and the ability to open 7 projects. Some of the above may have workarounds but a workaround isn’t as good as the ability to do it… at least to me.
I’m sure if i thought long enough now i’d remember other things i’d read and would need, and there are things I have read which beggared belief (can’t put a dissolve at the start of a clip was one… of course there was a workaround, but why need a workaround for that?).
And if i did use it (and I would if i was given a beta copy for free to experiment with, but i’m not pissing away £170ish when I can put that towards my upgrade for CS5.5 Production suite) then I can imagine i will find more.
Now, I appreciate that Apple have said they’ll be adding or trying to add or considering adding some/all of these features at some undisclosed point in the future… but then they said X was going to be an upgrade and awesome, so i’m holding no stock in ifs, buts and maybes. I have read a fair few posts on this forum already to recognise your position on all this, and mostly it appears to be ‘I LIKE IT AND THIS OTHER STUFF WILL COME, SO THERE!!!) but you don’t know if any of it will come, just as i don’t know it won’t. What I do know is I want a 64 bit editing programme I can use now and X falls far short.
Thus I’m moving on to one I know does what I want and by a company I believe I can trust. Which i believe was the whole point of my post and still utterly valid.
Thanks for the troll though… fancy a cup of tea?
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[Julian Bowman] “Multicam (shoot 6 camera live sessions too). Ability to put my rushes and render files somewhere different from my project files, and wherever I need/want. Open FCP7 projects. Capture from tape. Plugins. The ability to create little bits of my edit further along my timeline without it being sucked into the main edit as it is the way i like to do things. Multiple sequences in one project, rather than multiple projects just to have multiple sequences. Call me old fashioned (and please do) but a manual save option. The keyboard strokes to be the same as they are in 7.”
Aside from multicam, which will probably be there in a year, you’re largely asking for things to work the way they used to. I assure, none of that will take two years to show up. Because it will never show up. If your primarily objection to FCP X is that it works very differently (which seems to be the case), then leave. Because while all of the stuff about Apple not caring about pros is essentially misdirection based on screwy market definitions, it is the case that Apple legitimately does not care about people who’s primary focus is on legacy approaches and legacy compatibility.
Personally, though, I find it rather absurd for you to demand that FCP X be modified to work like FCP 7 when you haven’t actually invested any effort to figure out whether the way FCP X works might have its own benefits.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[troll] Aside from multicam, which will probably be there in a year, you’re largely asking for things to work the way they used to. I assure, none of that will take two years to show up. Because it will never show up. If your primarily objection to FCP X is that it works very differently (which seems to be the case), then leave.
Wow, thanks for the permission and the idea…. oh, hang on, already had that one. Oh, and probably falls into the ifs, buts and maybes category. Sorry, guess you’re a spoonfeeder type.
[troll] Personally, though, I find it rather absurd for you to demand that FCP X be modified to work like FCP 7 when you haven’t actually invested any effort to figure out whether the way FCP X works might have its own benefits.
Sorry, thought this was being sold as the upgrade to FCP. Silly me, didn’t realise they’d changed the definition to upgrade. And again, returning to my original post (do actually read all the words or see a negative and decide you want to move in, ego and all?) why waste time and money learning FCPX (a new system to me) when I can learn PP5.5 (a new system to me) which does everything I want now?
Personally, though, I find it rather absurd for you to demand I waste my time learning X when you haven’t invested any effort to figure out the way I work and whether that may have its own benefits to me… which is, ultimately, and funnily enough, what I care about in this specific circumstance.
Guess you didn’t want a cup of tea then. Sorry, I appreciate it doesn’t taste the same when the water isn’t boiled on a magnetic hob.
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