[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “Explain to me how iCloud is a play to sell hardware.”

You buy hardware to run software. The cloud is “software.”

I’m using that as an analogy, because iCloud isn’t a product you buy. It’s feature that you get when you buy an iDevice or a MacBook Air, kinda like Face Time or Expose — only insanely sexier and more powerful. “It’s iCloud, and it comes free with every Apple iWhatever.” They’ll find a way to fit Lion in there too, but hey – more software to sell hardware.

“The cloud” will move MacBook Airs and new iDevices in the same way that iTunes moved iPods, the App store sells iPhones, and FCP used to move Mac Pros.

Software sells hardware. The cloud is “software.”

Now, you can say that any device can have access to the cloud through free apps like Dropbox, which actually works better than iDisk in almost every way — true, but irrelevant. That’s like saying any phone can make calls, so why buy an iPhone.

Actually, why buy an iPhone if you want to actually make calls? Hahahaha!

Kidding aside, you buy an iPhone to run SOFTWARE. You buy an iPhone to run apps. Apps aren’t confusing! They’re AWESOME!

To review: Apple will not be talking about the cloud as technology. They will sell it as Apple-branded integration of everything you own and do, and people will trample your granny to buy as many Apple devices that “run the cloud” as they can carry.

“Android? What the f does Google know about the cloud? Cheeky astards, always trying to steal Apple’s ideas!”

People here keep saying the cloud is nonsense. I prefer to think of it as a way for Apple to manufacture money out of thin air.

Watch and learn. The cloud is a feature that’s included FREE with Air/iPhone/iPod/iPad/iMac, i infinitum. The cloud will sell more Apple-branded hardware than any software they have ever released.

[Tim Wilson]

Most Zen bumper sticker I ever saw:

I feel so much better since I gave up hope.

[Tim Wilson]

Apologies for me going postal, Walter and Jeremy. I’ve used Apple mice since Lisa, and I think they are truly hideous for anything but looking at. This has been a pet peeve of mine for 20 years.

And no, I have no life, and yes, I hate it when kids run across my lawn.

I was at MacWorld New York i 2000 when Steve did an Oprah to introduce the PRO mouse. (Which forever tainted my impression of Apple’s use of the word PRO, but that’s another story.) Behold! The zero button mouse was attached to the bottom of the chair. Admittedly, I only heard from a few dozen people sitting right around me, but the consensus was that guys were going to put them on their desks for show, and never use them. Obviously, plenty of people DID use them, and Mighty Mouse et al, I’m just saying.

Gotta give Microsoft this: they make amazing mice. Some of that is because an awful lot of their customers tend to sit in front of computers for long hours, so MSFT spends millions to develop mice that are comfortable, efficient, and supportive of joint and nerve health. Apple spends that money, and more, on design.

FWIW, that MacWorld event — the last in NY? — also introduced the Mac Cube. Absolutely the most beautiful little thing. Gorgeous. One of them sits in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Its several problems include that it transmitted vibration to your desk so strongly that you could feel it on the keys of the shiny new USB extended keyboard at the show when you put in a DVD. The case also had fine yet visible cracks that you could also feel if you touched the case — and how could you not? It BEGGED to be touched.

And while it never felt hot to the touch (at least not that I remember), you could definitely “smell” heat inside it. If you’ve smelled hot electronics, you know what I mean. Not outrageous by any means, but I can’t remember another Apple product that smelled hot. Maybe the inside of the 8100?

Which is to say, it’s likely that the world class designers who created the Cube probably didn’t spend that much time using it, or they’d have noticed these issues in just a few days, tops.

This is certainly veering off topic, but I’m not sure quite how far off topic if you know what I mean.

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Harlan] ” How long did it take Apple to concede that there might actually be a use for a second button on a mouse?”

They NEVER conceded the use for a second-button mouse. Their response to years of criticism was to introduce the ZERO button mouse (the Apple Pro Mouse — seriously? PRO?), which was intended to change the way mice work. This gotten taken to the next level with the Mighty Mouse – instead of a second button, you got to squeeze the thing.

In general, Apple’s mice have been some of the worst tech that anybody ever introduced ANYWHERE, perhaps only exceeded by the Ford Pinto, and that one only wins because it caught on fire — actually, not unlike the power cord for the Powerbook, and surface of the 17″ AV monitor, which shot a long, visible arc so powerful it left me dizzy.

(My brother-in-law was the product manager for that, and they killed it pretty fast. He also killed the Apple scanner. In fact, he became known inside the company for joining teams in order to kill their products. The list of Apple’s failures is actually pretty long.)

So what has been the problem with Apple’s mice? They appear to have been made by people who don’t actually use computers for a living. They try too hard to solve problems that don’t exist. They refuse to conform to industry standards that actually work pretty well….

…oh yeah, and then completely discard anything resembling a standard for a new interface (the Magic Mushroom…I mean, Magic Trackpad) that’s not all that helpful for professional media production, and only arguably a step forward because of the basic functionality it leaves out — unless you’re willing to climb a meaningful learning curve (Apple actually includes HELP videos to teach you how to use it, all in the name of progress.

Is ANY of this sounding familiar?

[Tim Wilson]

[Craig Seeman] “How will the new hardware (MacPro or replacement) and other software elements fit together.”

A much succincter way to set up my conclusion: their efforts so far with regards to tying the iPad apps to laptop/desktop apps are abysmal. I’m not looking for miracles: just for the experience to be as good as Apple has led me to believe it should be.

Goodness knows there are already compelling apps for iPads in production – everything from slates to stereoscopic tools to front-end controllers for SANs and switchers. I can see a number of places for FCPX on an iPad in those ecosystems.

Again, not to piss on Apple for the sake of it, and without reference to the value of FCPX or iPads, but I can also imagine the relationship between iPad apps and computer apps being a bit wobbly if the present pattern holds. This would be a fun one to be wrong on, though.

[Tim Wilson]

[Aindreas Gallagher] ” Is this an unseen new FCP on an unseen new ipad? how do they function? How am I working with the timeline? Am I exposing full OSX to manage events? is the ipad in landscape? Am I viewing the entire interface? how is project management functioning?”

I’ve spent a lot of time with the iPad versions of iWorks, and I have two general conclusions:

1) Wow! These things are amazing! You can do so much with them!

2) Wow! These things are awful! You can’t do sh^t with them!

Please indulge me. This might look off-topic, but it’s not.

• You can use your iPhone as a remote control for Keynote on a laptop or desktop – awesome! You can actually see the slides on your iPhone. But you can’t use iPhone to control a presentation on an iPad. Not a deal-breaker, but dang!
• You can BUILD a presentation in portrait mode. You can click through it. Looks AWESOME on an iPad. Perfect for a pitch related to a MAGAZINE, like the one I edit for Creative COW. Only one problem – you BUILD in portrait, but can’t actually PRESENT in portrait. Only in landscape.
• You can do a portrait preso on a laptop or desktop, but why not be able to do it on something that actually looks fantastic in portrait? For example, that’s how they mostly show iPad on TV…as they should. Which is why I should be able to actually make a presentation in portrait if I want to…like I can on a desktop…where it makes no sense. Grrrr…..
• —That was my plan, btw. I was pitching something magazine-ish to four people. I was going to give them each their own iPad, and was going to control it from my iPhone. How cool would that be?!?! Except it didn’t work at all. Would have on a laptop or desktop, but….
• I rebuilt the preso in landscape (harder than it sounds), and decided to just live with it. People were going to have to figure out how to tap the screen when I told them to.
• Here’s the kicker. You build the preso on your laptop or desktop, so you want to use iTunes to transfer it to your iPad. Right? Apple makes that nice and easy. Except that using iTunes to transfer strips out all the fonts and the stock backgrounds you built on your desktop! You have to connect to the internet and REDOWNLOAD them.

  Do not try to do this on hotel wi-fi on the Monday morning of NAB. Downloading two fonts and a very simple 2-color background JPG to four iPads — took a little over an hour.

• Remember when I said that you can only do a presentation in landscape mode? Well, if you want to project it on a screen, you can only put it in the iPad dock in PORTRAIT mode!!! I can feel the deal starting to break.
• Then there’s the well-documented bug in Pages, where you create a document on your main machine with, say, footnotes. A feature that doesn’t exist on your iPad version of Pages. Having learned your lesson with iTunes and Keynote, you decide to use iDisk. Sweet! Then when you open the document on your iPad, you see there’s a typo. Oops! No prob. The file is in the cloud. Two clicks, Save. The best part: the file will be corrected everywhere else you need it too!
• Except now when you open it back up on your desktop, ALL THE FOOTNOTES ARE GONE. By making one tiny change, and saving it on iDisk, EVERY feature not available in the iPad version is stripped from the original version created on the desktop. How’s THAT for version tracking.

  Look, I get that having 100% of the laptop toolset on an iPad would be a nightmare. Not good at all, even for something as simple as Pages. But I’d love to be able to change the word “to” to “too,” and not destroy an entire set of mission-critical attributes on the original. Deal: officially broken. I now do everything with PDFs. Inelegant, but it works every single time, which I simply can’t say for iWork when using it to actually work.

I surely have a detail or two wrong, and Apple surely fixed some of these bugs, right? RIGHT?

But this is why, when I hear about FCPX on an iPad, I think two things:

1) This is going to be amazing! Next-gen hardware and software for on-set and location workflows that were never possible before!

2) This is going to be a nightmare! Apple’s simplest software cannibalizes itself on iPad! This could decimate workflows in ways that were never possible before!

I still come down on the side of “It’s probably going to be insanely great someday,” but seriously, let’s start with today. Keynote and Pages are very simple apps that have been around a long time, and as awesome as it is when it works, working with documents across a laptop and iPad can be torture, and can undo days of work with a keystroke that can’t be done. “Save” should never be an act of destruction.

FCPX is both complex and new. Will the first app that Apple does RIGHT on iPad really be FCPX? Can Apple make FCPX on iPad more proficient and more stable than Keynote or Pages? With better version tracking than for a TEXT file? Really?

Note that iPads are my all-time favorite Apple products. iPods were always overpriced and underfeatured. No use for them whatsoever. Macs? Been using ’em since my father ran Apple’s first manufacturing facility. He actually started in 1979. I’ve used nearly every model computer Apple made since then, but hey, I like Windows too. Whatever. iPhone? The worst piece of tech I ever owned, at least on AT&T. My bowels still loosen just thinking about the agony I went through with that thing.

iPad? I love every single thing about it. I can’t think of a single thing I don’t absolutely love, and I mean LOVE about it. iPad! Woo-hoo! I actually have a tattoo of an iPad ON my actual woo-hoo! I love everything about it!!!

Oh yeah, except one thing. I hate how Apple software runs on my iPad.

I’m just saying.

[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “Paragraphs are good when they’re good.”

That particular paragraphless post came from the COW’s .mobi interface, a detail only visible in the site’s admin tools.

We’ve gone to considerable lengths to make a seamless experience in both directions, with one side effect being an increase in posts that are, let’s say, casually written and punctuated.

It likes we may need to test this a little more. Maybe it’s one of those things I know you’ve seen before on other sites — what LOOKS like two returns on the phone is being read as one return on the website.

Or maybe it’s just that somebody is a, let’s say, casual typist….if you can still call it typing if it’s on a phone with just a PICTURE of a keyboard.

[Tim Wilson]

[Craig Seeman] ” I think many people in post can’t fathom what’s about to happen. “

More often, I think people are distressed because they CAN fathom what’s coming. As I noted above, they have been thinking about their future for years, and find that FCPX isn’t enough to get them there. They’re not ONLY looking for steps back by turning to Premiere, Media Composer and Vegas. They’re finding steps forward.

So I don’t think it’s fair to equate “FCPX doesn’t meet my needs” with fear.

I know that’s too reductive of your view, Craig, but I think that summarizes the views of some other folks pretty well.

[Tim Wilson]

[Marvin Holdman] “Yes, it’s definitely deathwatch time for our old friend FCS. “

Don’t forget that Creative COW has been around for a long time. We opened our doors before the first iPod shipped, and had been open for a full two years before the iTunes Music Store opened in 2003. At first, nothing but excitement.

2005: an awesome release, notably multicam, and the introduction of Soundtrack Pro.

2007: more good stuff. The introduction of the Final Cut Studio, which introduced Color, and ProRes for FCP.

But clouds were gathering. Just 3 months earlier, along with the introductions of iPhones and Apple TV in January 2007, Apple dropped “Computer” from their name. Hmmm….becoming a consumer company?

Then in 2008, Apple droppped out of NAB.

To say that this caused a furor here is an understatement. Google “Apple booth at NAB 2008,” and Creative COW returns the TOP THREE results. Here, I’ll save you the time.

People had already started bringing cookies and coffee urns to get ready for a deathwatch, but, they said, let’s see what happens in 2009.

Oops. The weak release that year can be summarized as “Apple is more interested in selling devices than computers, and no longer interested in our market, and the lack of growth in FCP reflects their lack of focus.”

Sound familiar?

Admittedly, it’s hard for any releases to look as big as multicam+Soundtrack Pro in 2005 and ProRes+Color in 2007, and I’m obviously oversimplifying thousands of posts, but seriously, this was the talk of the COW in 2009. Too much time, too little progress, etc.

People were saying THEN that they’d had just about enough. They’d been holding off on upgrades to see if the next release was finally something to get excited about…

…and well, we can agree that there’s been plenty of excitement here in 2011.

For some people, jumping ship was anything but hasty. Tying their future to something besides FCP had been becoming more palatable, if not inevitable, for YEARS.

So, the COW pre-dating iPods brings some perspectives. One is that no matter how much people complain, Apple always wins by doing things Apple’s way. Ain’t nobody gonna really leave FCP.

Another perspective is that, wow, this time it’s different. People are actually leaving!

And a third: Apple has proven that they can piss off present customers to win future customers.

Deathwatch? Maybe not. Or maybe so, but, according to many at the COW, “the first signs of death” were years ago. And the long-term outcome for Apple will be success yet again, even if they’ve failed for you as an individual.

Caveat-orama: I speak only for myself, not the COW, etc. etc.

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Harlan] “…The saying I’m familiar with is “the pot calling the kettle black.” This came from a time when both pot and kettle hung over an open fire, which of course blackened both of them….”

I think the assumption is that the cat is black too, hence the CAT calling the kettle black. I like that it’s just a bit of a sidestep than the (I think) more common POT version, without being any less resonant, at least for me. As I think about it, more elegant, too. Certainly a little more elegant than “the black cat calling the kettle black,”

And significantly more elegant than “My dog Lenny is black, and it would indicate an egregious lack of self-awareness were he to refer to a kettle as ‘black’ in a way that connoted disparagement solely because the kettle includes ‘blackness’ as one of its attributes.”

Cat calling the kettle black it is, then.

Lenny is currently licking his bollocks in vigorous agreement.