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Risk and failure
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[Chris Kenny] “It’s kind of silly to make long-term projections about FCP X’s success or failure on the basis of what are pretty clearly short-term issues arising from the fact that Apple is still working through the issues associated with releasing serious software through the App Store.”
Almost no one is actually making this argument.
The argument that I see most — and the one that makes sense to me — is about trust and reputation. It’s not just about FCPX as a product, it’s not just about FCPX’s bold new features, and it’s not just about the missing functionality.
Apple’s recent actions around the Pro Apps and in the professional space, going several years back and culminating in last week’s release of FCPX and EOL of FCP7, have caused reasonable people to reasonably question Apple’s role in the professional market.
It’s difficult to divine Apple’s strategy toward the pro market by watching their actions over the past few years. They are creating a tremendous amount of uncertainty.
The question is not as simple as “Does FCPX do what you need?” or “Will FCPX do what you need in a year’s time?” as you might have us ask.
The larger question is this: “Can you rely on Apple to supply the products you need for your business — or is there another vendor that understands your needs better and offers a compelling platform?” FCPX is not an upgrade — it’s a migration. If you’re migrating, you may as well consider all the options on equal footing. Some have seen enough from Apple, and are moving on.
If enough people migrate away now, it may not matter to the pros if FCPX has tape I/O in a year, because another vendor will have picked up many new users who many not be willing to switch back.
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] “If enough people migrate away now, it may not matter to the pros if FCPX has tape I/O in a year, because another vendor will have picked up many new users who many not be willing to switch back.”
Absolutely right – great post. In a year’s time the migration will be complete and it will take something truly extraordinary from Apple to lure them back – and something even more extraordinary to make them forget the events of the last ten days.
Adobe have got a really strong offering which they have shown a massive commitment to taking forward at a very considerable pace and AVID are finally coming to realize that they need also to speak to professionals in the lower echelons of the market. They really won’t have to work too hard at this point to make a compelling vcase for their products and there are already signs in just a few days that their messages are getting through.
Apple may well have left it too late to turn the game around.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Walter Soyka] “Apple’s recent actions around the Pro Apps and in the professional space, going several years back and culminating in last week’s release of FCPX and EOL of FCP7, have caused reasonable people to reasonably question Apple’s role in the professional market.
“There. Somebody stop and photograph that sentence. That’s it for me.
And there is valid reason for the suspicion: the guy who engineered FCP for six years at apple and was there for the ramp up to FCPX, has just said the following:
from his piece on his blog: https://sachin.posterous.com/why-apple-built-final-cut-pro-x“Apple doesn’t care about the pro space ”
“The pro market is too small for Apple to care about it.”
I mean, how much more clear do we need it?Apple Do Not Care About The Market We Comprise.
That Is Problematic If We’re Expecting To Get Software Off Them To Meet Our Needs.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
Look, I’m sure you’re going to rent a crap load of indie packages to all the new folks who’ll be buying FCPX. More power to you, really. I am honestly happy that you have positioned yourself in such a way to benefit from all this. But I hope you understand how callous your cheerleading is sounding to those “few” people that this affects. Does FCP7 still work, sure. We’ll keep using it for a few days and keep a copy around for a long while to come. I’m not nearly as savagely affected by this as several folks I’ve spoken with directly, and read comments from this week. I hope it all works out and FCPX turns into something great. I really do. But I’m not going to go around telling everyone that those who are devastated by this are just whiners, cause FCP7 still works and they should just wait until things get better. The impact is real and immediate for too many good people.
What I’m trying to tell you is that your (and Apple’s) smug indifference to the people that made FCP7 a success is not doing anyone any favors. Basically, they slammed the doors to the bulkheads of the passenger ship before telling anyone the ship was going to sink. It was ethically wrong and frankly unnecessary. You are waving your pom-poms over the corpses of your ancestors. It’s not very becoming. That’s all.
Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv -
[Walter Soyka] “Apple’s recent actions around the Pro Apps and in the professional space, going several years back and culminating in last week’s release of FCPX and EOL of FCP7, have caused reasonable people to reasonably question Apple’s role in the professional market.”
Some people have bought into an elaborate narrative of Apple abandoning the pro market, but the actual evidence that supposedly supports this narrative is fairly weak. For instance, this narrative really got its start, as far as I can see, when the FCS3 upgrade wasn’t as ambitious as some had wanted to see. People like me were pointing out that was probably because Apple was working on a major rewrite. That turned out to be correct, but somehow none of the folks skeptical about Apple’s commitment to the pro market changed their opinions… they just transferred their skepticism to the new product, and are now having a field day with the fact that the initial release is missing some features.
There’s this kind of oddly inconsistent logic that I’ve seen several times now that goes “Even if they add the pro features I need, I won’t buy it; I won’t trust them because they don’t care about the pro market”.
But if they add these features back (and they’ve already explicitly said they will, with respect to some of the more important ones), that demonstrates they do care about the pro market.
Now, you can argue that you don’t feel comfortable relying a company willing to do anything as radical as Apple has done with FCP X… but even Apple does this sort of thing only rarely. I doubt they’re going to scrap and rewrite FCP X in the next decade, and predicting any company’s behavior a decade in the future is a fairly pointless exercise. I’m not saying this is very likely or trying to spread FUD here, but one can imagine scenarios in which Avid is out of business in a decade. No vendor is risk-free over those timescales.
[Walter Soyka] “If enough people migrate away now, it may not matter to the pros if FCPX has tape I/O in a year, because another vendor will have picked up many new users who many not be willing to switch back.”
It’s not like the next 12 months are a unique “open enrollment” period where users can switch NLEs. Users can switch NLEs at any time. And new users enter the market on a regular basis. If FCP X is fundamentally a solid product for pro editing in 6-12 months, I doubt it will have any trouble gaining pro users.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “Absolutely right – great post. In a year’s time the migration will be complete and it will take something truly extraordinary from Apple to lure them back – and something even more extraordinary to make them forget the events of the last ten days.”
Call me old fashioned, but I’ve never done an upgrade to machines that I’m using to make money for a business till the software or OS has been out for at least 6 months (though typically a year.). 2 months ago I finally took our machines up to snow leopard. Quite frankly I just don’t understand the sense of urgency to make a decisions right this minute to move to adobe or avid.
[Simon Ubsdell] “Adobe have got a really strong offering which they have shown a massive commitment to taking forward at a very considerable pace”
I really think adobe is going to end up with a lot more users…but it actually won’t even help them out that much. The way they started packaging their software if you needed AE and PS you might as well have bought the Production bundle. So a lot of FCP editors already have Premiere. So adobe will end up with more users, but really won’t be selling that much more software.
-mattyc
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[Marvin Holdman] “What I’m trying to tell you is that your (and Apple’s) smug indifference to the people that made FCP7 a success is not doing anyone any favors. Basically, they slammed the doors to the bulkheads of the passenger ship before telling anyone the ship was going to sink. It was ethically wrong and frankly unnecessary. You are waving your pom-poms over the corpses of your ancestors. It’s not very becoming. That’s all.”
I’m not arguing that this transition won’t be painful for some people. I’m not arguing that nobody should migrate to another NLE. And I’m not saying you’re wrong that Apple should have left FCS3 on sale during a transitional period.
All I’m doing is pointing out that people writing off FCP X in the pro market are doing so hilariously prematurely.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[David Roth Weiss] “As you already seem to have figured out, he refuses to acknowledge or respond to your salient points no matter how many times you spell them out. And, he is relentless in his use of circular reasoning and non sequiturs, which makes any discussion futile. “
I love that you’re trying to portray me as some kind of zealot for saying it’s too early to call an app that was release ten days ago a “failure”.
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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] “I won’t trust them because they don’t care about the pro market”
I think beneath all this there is a growing perception, which should perhaps have been apparent before, that there is not a “natural fit”, as we say in business circles, between Apple and the pro-editing (and compositing, and visual effects, and pro-audio, and motion graphics) communities.
That they can still make products that appeal to those groups is something of an anomaly.
This is not a company with a vested interest in satisfying these groups. There is an imbalance of need here and I think many people in the industry are starting to perceive that and to appreciate to what extent it puts their businesses at risk to stay vested in a supplier who has the potential (whether or not it is currently an intention) to walk away from them.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Chris Kenny] “Some people have bought into an elaborate narrative of Apple abandoning the pro market, but the actual evidence that supposedly supports this narrative is fairly weak.”
one more time: the guy who engineered FCP for six years at apple and was there for the ramp up to FCPX, has just said the following:
from his piece on his blog: https://sachin.posterous.com/why-apple-built-final-cut-pro-x“Apple doesn’t care about the pro space ”
“The pro market is too small for Apple to care about it.”
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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