The numbers don’t work out…

[Jonathan Dortch]

[Chris Kenny] “Apple should have been able to support MMS in the first version of iOS, right? It’s a pretty simple feature. You can play this game all day.”

You’re comparing a professional software platform to a phone? This is the software I use to run my business. A healthy functioning platform is a critical necessity. Cell phones are totally optional. I’m sorry, but it is painfully clear that you do not run a business from FCP. I have no idea why you’re chipping in to these discussions with erroneous analogies blindly defending FCPX when you clearly have very little invested in the platform professionally. And doing so snidely without a modicum of professional empathy for those of us affected.

All of us who run a business based on this software are trying to communicate with one another and get our bearings, both on new software function (or lack thereof) and guessing at Apple’s market strategy. Because a guess is all any of us have at this point, yourself included. Few imagined Quark would ever be obsolete until major OSX missteps resulted in Adobe cannibalizing their entire market. History is riddled with such examples.

And wasn’t MMS disabled as an appeasement to the AT&T for their already nervous bandwidth concerns? That’s the rumor I heard anyway.

[Chris Kenny] “You’re saying Apple should have held the app off the market until more pro features were implemented just to signal loyalty to pros, essentially.”

I do expect loyalty from a professional platform because we use this software to run our businesses, and have invested in the platform for 10 years. And yes, releasing the software in its current state with no communication or road map has caused great disturbance in our market. The FAQ this morning is a start, though it smells of damage control.

[Chris Kenny] “Again, this is extremely reminiscent of early OS X criticism. OS X also got bashed for having a UI that was supposedly oversimplified.”

Yes OSX was bare in it’s first incarnation, but an OS will always become robust over time, it mandatory by function as the hub for interacting with the system and delegating processes.

There is no mandate for FCPX to return to the functionality of legacy FCP. It is at the discretion of the maker. Apple could be content with an entirely different type, and broader base, of user. Additionally, a point already well hammered, Apple also allowed OS9 support for years afterwards, and held our hand with Rosetta. FCS3 was pulled last Tuesday and our 600 former projects are obsolete in the new platform.

JONATHAN DORTCH
BLACK WOLF CREATIVE

[Chris Kenny]

[Jonathan Dortch] “You’re comparing a professional software platform to a phone?”

I’m looking at the realities of software development by comparing one software project an other software project.

[Jonathan Dortch] “And wasn’t MMS disabled as an appeasement to the AT&T for their already nervous bandwidth concerns? That’s the rumor I heard anyway.
“

MMS isn’t all that bandwidth-intensive. Less so than e-mail, really, because it sends much lower quality media than you can attach to e-mail.

Anyway, there were probably a dozen missing features in the first version of iOS that conventional wisdom said were absolutely necessary, and that almost any other company would have waited to implement before shipping. Apple is very aggressive about shipping initial releases as soon as they have a minimum viable feature set, and as a consequence I don’t think it’s safe to predict their long-term market goals from their initial releases.

I mean, we’ve seen this already with FCP X, with people reading the fact that FCP X was an ‘island’ (in terms of providing access to sequence data to third-parties) as an indication that it was an exclusively consumer app, when it’s now clear from Apple’s timeline for releasing such support (“the next few weeks”) that they have been working on this and always intended to offer it.

[Jonathan Dortch] “I do expect loyalty from a professional platform because we use this software to run our businesses, and have invested in the platform for 10 years.”

We’re not talking about material loyalty here, though, only loyalty signals.

[Jonathan Dortch] “And yes, releasing the software in its current state with no communication or road map has caused great disturbance in our market.”

I entirely agree that Apple has not communicated effectively here.

[Jonathan Dortch] “Yes OSX was bare in it’s first incarnation, but an OS will always become robust over time, it mandatory by function as the hub for interacting with the system and delegating processes.”

There’s actually a bunch of hysteria in some circles that OS X will lose many of its advanced functions and merge with iOS….

[Jonathan Dortch] “There is no mandate for FCPX to return to the functionality of legacy FCP. It is at the discretion of the maker. Apple could be content with an entirely different type, and broader base, of user.”

The truth is, in terms of code size, the critical unique features that only pros require are not that complicated. XML export is simple compared with, say, the new rendering engine. It makes little market sense for Apple not to add the features this market requires, given the scope of the work.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

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