Chris Harlan
Forum Replies Created
-
Craig, you really weirdly focused. If I were buying stock, this is the conversation we should be having. Also, I wasn’t pushing Avid, though you seem to think so. I don’t know how we got here, but lets go point by point and put this to rest.
[Craig Seeman] “Can Avid meet your needs if they fold?”
Yes. Im my ecosystem, which is Hollywood and environs, Avid is so entrenched–and is, by far, the most use NLE–that if the company folded tomorrow, it would still be a useful system for the next five years. It is built into the infrastructure of Hollywood, far more deeply than FCP7, its closest rival. But why assume that Avid id going to fold? Could it? Certainly. These are tough times for many companies. But they are hardly out. And, there chief competitor has shot their chief competition in the head. So who knows. But, yeah, I’m fine with Avid (and FCP7) for the next five years. And, even if I’m not there are a number of other edit systems out there that do what I need better than FCP X currently does.
[Craig Seeman] “Adobe and Apple though are both healthy. They both have ecosystem approaches although Adobe is software based and Apple is tied into hardware.”
Great. No one uses FCP X or Premiere in the world I work in, so however healthy they happen to be in their ecosystems, they are dead in mine. But, I’m grateful to have Premiere there, since it offers a viable alternative to FCP7 and Media Composer. If Avid ever does upend, Premiere will be there to give us what we need. And, because Adobe isn’t tied to an island platform, I know I’ll be able to find a workstation I can use, long after OS X has become iOS XI. I know that you think that FCP X may someday be up to snuff–and it might–but a multitude of signs aren’t pointing in that direction.
[Craig Seeman] “What is offered to meet your needs is very much dependent on the company business models.
Discreet(Autodesk) Edit met needs. Many like it. They left the market.”Yeah, and it was a bad move. But WHAT is your point? Companies do things for all kinds of motives. I get that understanding what their motives are is important for investment. I mean, duh. Even this forum seems to be chiefly about coming to terms with what Apple’s intentions are. So, it is not like we are not aware of that.
[Craig Seeman] “The business model is inescapable and inextricably tied to meeting needs. Any separation is an artifice of language in my opinion.”
Right. Which is why a lot of people sincerely doubt that professional high-end NLE is any kind of certain future with Apple, with either their NLE or their hardware.
[Craig Seeman] “Companies offer what meets THEIR needs as well and if it doesn’t meet their needs they won’t offer something that meets yours.”
Certainly. But what is important for ME at the end of the day, is if FCP X meets my needs.
-
It is never too soon for a good cup of tea.
-
[Craig Seeman] “I don’t claim that that’s the only way. It’s just the Apple is doing it I believe.
Avid hasn’t presented the alternative. There are certainly other companies that survive in niche markets selling high priced items. Avid isn’t one of them.”Dude you are taking this in circles, and I’m not even sure what you are arguing anymore. Here’s where I cam into the conversation:
“[Craig Seeman] “i think one of the problems, as I see it, in the language used in the forum, is whether “Pros” are “important” but I think the better question is whether “Pros” (broadcast and feature film) represent a profitable margin and what Apple might do, in anything, to make it profitable (increase margins).”
From Apple’s POV, that should certainly be the position; but why should it be so from my POV? I wasn’t under the impression that this forum existed primarily to feed the needs of Apple.”
I stand by that. I care about what I need, not what Apple needs.
-
[Herb Sevush] “I will add that your constant references to the “high priests” of editing does make you sound rather envious and petty. Personally, I like to think of us as the “whiners.”
“Yeah. I get a giggle. As a class, we’re basically down here in the boiler room, stoking the furnace and keeping the pipes from exploding. All of this “high priest” and “country club set” is pretty fantastic. Beggar Kings, I guess.
-
[Bill Davis] “Perhaps it never works that way on your side of the pond… but if I had a dollar for every production pro I’ve ever talked to who lost a position to someone “better connected” by birth or marriage to a working pro in the industry, I’d be able to… well, to buy a lot more nice toys.”
I’ve certainly seen my share of that, Bill, but usually not in editorial, where people generally have to be skilled and responsible. Also, the long solitary hours don’t really act as an incentive. I’m not sure I’d call it a dream job, unless it is the kind of thing you are driven to.
-
All true what you are saying here, yet I cannot help but feel that the son of the King of France–pre-revolution–might get to keep his chair just a tad longer, skills or no.
-
[Oliver Peters] “[Frank Gothmann] “We are talking about a piece of software, nothing magical here, compiled by nordic, blonde virgins in the first full-moon night after an eclipse to turn it into anything other than a plain and simple software tool to get work done.”
LOL. Wasn’t your software handed to you from the heavens on stone tablets like everyone else’s?
– Oliver
“Mine actually rose–in the hands of a maiden–from the center of glassy alpine lake. As she burst from the water, the ripple she caused was so pristine that I fully believe it to be the very model for the very first ripple effect.
-
[Craig Seeman] “What I or any of us want can’t viable exist outside of the business market in which companies, whether Apple, Avid, Adobe exist and make business decisions in.
“Of course, but comparing Apple and Avid is like comparing Watermelons and Cranberries. The economic dynamics that effect them are very different.
[Craig Seeman] “None of us get what we want unless it’s profitable to some other entity. I think the two are inseparable. There has to be an economically sustainable balance.
“That doesn’t mean that the only route to profitability is through commoditization of product. It might be for a large company, but it doesn’t mean that small, niche companies can’t continue to exist and make money. Commoditization as it happened in computer industry is a relatively rare phenomenon–based on the fact that it was a new product that no one had–and much of that territory has been burned through.
[Craig Seeman] “If selling to “Pros” (broadcast/feature film) isn’t profitable then something will change. Importance to the developers is guided by their profit margins. Our product choices are guided by their response to those margins and the surrounding market conditions.”
Thirty years ago, broadcast was a niche market, and the prices reflected that. Commoditization of computers, commoditization of Internet access, and proliferation of cheep video cameras has created markets well beyond that niche. Those markets will clearly follow the grassfire of mobilization. That doesn’t mean that the niche businesses aren’t still there, and can’t be supplied by the smaller businesses that serve them. Yes, prices will go up.
[Craig Seeman] “I’m just trying to define importance as a business, rather than emotional term.”
I get that you are trying to do that, but you seem to have it solidly in your mind that their is only one her of business and that riding commoditization grassfire is the only rational approach a business could take. Of course, if you get it to pay off like Apple did with the iPhone, it is unbelievably rewarding. But there are other ways.
-
[Craig Seeman] “i think one of the problems, as I see it, in the language used in the forum, is whether “Pros” are “important” but I think the better question is whether “Pros” (broadcast and feature film) represent a profitable margin and what Apple might do, in anything, to make it profitable (increase margins).”
From Apple’s POV, that should certainly be the position; but why should it be so from my POV? I wasn’t under the impression that this forum existed primarily to feed the needs of Apple.
-
[Walter Soyka] “I’d argue that by handicapping the Mac Pro, especially in conjunction with the other ripples they’ve made in the professional space, Apple is inviting studios to consider PCs.”
Which is a very polite way of saying “Don’t let the door hit you in the aspect ratio on the way out.”