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Tim Cook says Apple “will do more in the pro area”
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[Shawn Miller] “Are you saying that the keyframe buttons NEVER change state?”
The keyframe button itself goes grey (!) and the nav buttons behave in an idiosyncratic fashion that is too wayward to even begin to explain.
[Shawn Miller] “Also what is the minimum and maximum values for the scale transforms… the sliders are about 25% to the left, but the displayed value is 100.0%.”
Yup. Mind-bogglingly poor design.
[Shawn Miller] “Are the values on the right scrubbable text, they don’t look interactive”
Good point – they don’t look scrubbable but they are. I hadn’t spotted that.
[Shawn Miller] “and the rotation (knob?), I haven’t seen that before”
It’s an Apple thing and has been for a long while but it’s a terrible, terrible control concept.
[Shawn Miller] ” I also think it’s strange to have a separate slider for uniform scale, a checkbox to link and unlink scale seems more elegant”
Agreed.
[Shawn Miller] “Lastly, is 0,0 really the default anchor point for objects in FCPX.”
Yes, but this is the Apple convention and on balance I think I prefer it to the Adobe co-ordinates system.
You score very highly indeed (why am I not surprised?!), but you’ve still missed a few things.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Simon Ubsdell] “[Shawn Miller] “Are you saying that the keyframe buttons NEVER change state?”
The keyframe button itself goes grey (!) and the nav buttons behave in an idiosyncratic fashion that is too wayward to even begin to explain.”
ACK!!
[Simon Ubsdell] “[Shawn Miller] “Lastly, is 0,0 really the default anchor point for objects in FCPX.”
Yes, but this is the Apple convention and on balance I think I prefer it to the Adobe co-ordinates system.”
I admit, I prefer the Adobe coordinate system mostly because of laziness – I like knowing (at a glance) what half the pixel dimensions of an object is. One of my nitpicks about Premiere Pro is that you can’t do mathematical operations in input boxes the way you can in AE, so if I have to put three 1920 graphics side by side, I can’t just type in the transform boxes 960*3, 960*5… I actually have to “work” and type “2880”, “4800”… see, pure laziness. ☺
[Simon Ubsdell] “You score very highly indeed (why am I not surprised?!), but you’ve still missed a few things.”
I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of your thoughts on this! I bet the rest of us are looking at some glaring issues and not even realizing it. ☺
Shawn
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For everyone else, I’d love some specifics. Features, products, hardware, software, customer communication, third-party partnerships, adoption of industry standards — name it. The sky’s the limit.
Coooool.
Right, to start off, I’d like to see some Apple manufactured displays that are available for use with MacBook Pro or Mac Pro that get up to and beyond 5K in HDR. The quality of Apple displays in the past has been incredible and having thunderbolt 3 pass through would be great.
It would also be really nice to see a new iPhone released that can playback VR footage, and an apple headset for this, or, a custom apple VR device. Some of my colleagues that previously were Apple loyal have moved away to use google or Samsung because of their VR support.
A new Mac Pro which has incredible performance, both with ultra high resolution HDR footage, but also for use with some of the most intensive processes around, like filmed VR content. Whilst on this note, having the ability to use thunderbolt 3 to add extra GPUs to offload some of the necessary compute power for these tasks. It would also be really cool to be able to specify RAM way beyond 64GB.
Software wise, if apple released a piece of software that did what Photoshop does, but works better with FCPX that would be awesome (it is still baffling that psd files cause issues in Premiere Pro), along with the fantastic updates to FCPX that have been forthcoming in the last couple of years.
Largely fanciful and unfinished but that’s pretty much how most of my thoughts are with a 4 month old at home.
Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk -
[Shawn Miller] “Also what is the minimum and maximum values for the scale transforms… the sliders are about 25% to the left, but the displayed value is 100.0%.”
[Simon Ubsdell] “Yup. Mind-bogglingly poor design.”
That’s a tough one. Opacity and scale need different ranges. It makes sense to allow scale to range from negative to very positive, but it makes no sense to allow negative opacity or opacity above 100%. I actually like that sliders indicate sensible ranges. But in addition to what Shawn said…
I’d call out the difference in precision on percentages.
I’d call out the knob being bizarrely right-aligned to the sliders, the knob have a 3 o’clock origin for unity, and the fact that a knob cannot show more than single revolution while revolution can continue beyond 360 degrees.
I think literally everything in the position/anchor layout is wrong. The X control is closer to Y label than it is to X label. The X and Y parameter labels themselves are colored like parameters instead of the Position/Anchor labels. The numeric X control floats out where the visual elements for the other controls are, while the Y control is aligned with the rest of the numeric controls (giving it undue primacy).
There’s also a potential range inconsistency on the pixel sliders in the crop control, as cropping is dependent on the size of the image.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Ah, now you see, that is what I was hoping for.
For Walter to come swinging by and not only see everything that I see, but plenty else besides, and to articulate it with such sublime clarity.
I can but salute you, sir.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Tim Wilson] “So here’s my question to you all: what do you WANT Apple to do? What would it look like if Apple was doing more in the pro area? “
There’s one area where I’d like Apple to do less.
Specifically, chill out with the macOS feature set/release schedule. It’d be nice for developers to actually spend their efforts improving their software, not just trying to keep running on Apple’s ever-changing operating system.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
You are too kind.
We should play this game with Premiere sometime, too…
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “We should play this game with Premiere sometime, too…”
Yes, indeed.
None of this stuff is perfect and it’s certainly not only Apple that gets it wrong.
But at least Adobe don’t throw everything at a dramatic UI overhaul and mess up quite as badly as this.
…
I know there are going to be a lot of people reading this who are thinking it’s all completely irrelevant, but I’m not sure they’re right.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Simon Ubsdell] “Ah, now you see, that is what I was hoping for.
For Walter to come swinging by and not only see everything that I see, but plenty else besides, and to articulate it with such sublime clarity.
I can but salute you, sir.”
Ha ha – me too. I was actually hoping Walter would say something yesterday. These were the forehead slappers for me:
[Walter Soyka] ”
– I’d call out the difference in precision on percentages.
– I’d call out the knob being bizarrely right-aligned to the sliders, the knob have a 3 o’clock origin for unity, and the fact that a knob cannot show more than single revolution while revolution can continue beyond 360 degrees.
-I think literally everything in the position/anchor layout is wrong. The X control is closer to Y label than it is to X label. The X and Y parameter labels themselves are colored like parameters instead of the Position/Anchor labels. The numeric X control floats out where the visual elements for the other controls are, while the Y control is aligned with the rest of the numeric controls (giving it undue primacy).”Thanks for bringing this up Simon, you and Walter made this a really fun thread. ☺
Shawn
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[Shawn Miller] “Thanks for bringing this up Simon, you and Walter made this a really fun thread.”
Thanks to you, too. It has indeed been fun. And interesting.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki
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