Tim Wilson
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Craig Seeman] “Analytics I’d look at aren’t the number of posts. “
You’re right, I was being too glib. Apologies.
Like every site, we have metrics derived from both site logs and independent tracking from several sources. As one example, what Google knows about visitors to the COW…which is a lot…we know. But other sources include things as direct as server logs.
So, in sweeping terms, here’s what we know, with complete certainty.
Traffic is way up. Number of unique visitors is way up. FCPX Techniques traffic, up. Final Cut Pro Old School, up.
Adobe Premiere, up. Avid, up. 🙂
DaVinci Resolve, Sony Vegas, up and up. DSLR Video, up.
Oh yeah, views here, up.
I can go on, but every part of the site is consistently up. A number of new areas, including the Career Center and the Services Directory are WAY up.
Some people have been turned off by this particular forum. That’s why we’ve labeled this one as the Debate forum, and set up another TWO MONTHS ago for people who want to get to work, and it’s working.
It’s worth noting that people are still learning about this FCPX stuff. You guys are literally the avant garde, which means that there are bunches of folks still behind. This hasn’t even begun to peak.
Watch for another spike this time next month after IBC, and whenever a new update rolls out that helps people further triangulate their course relative to Apple’s.
To answer another question, repeat visits, also up.
OThe number of people who hit one page via a search engine and leave after one page (called bounce rate) has dropped by more than half. More people are coming, and they’re staying longer. As a result, the percentage of visits by “regular” visitors has almost doubled. (Simple math, right?)
As far as tracking any individual visitor, well, we can, but sifting through millions of records would take some time. But it really is millions of records. If you were an advertiser, I’d get a lot more specific. 🙂
Overall, we’re on track this year to have well over 20 million unique visitors. In general, it’s working.
What’s not working is still the overall hostility levels, and we’re working to bring THAT part of the forum back in line with what people should expect from the COW. But people as a group leaving? The opposite is happening. Regulars leaving? No, we’re creating more regulars.
I regret any individuals leaving, and hope that they’ll simply steer clear of this one forum, and move on to the over 200 forums that are moving as smoothly as they always have, including the one for FCPX Techniques.
Sorry to drone on about this. It’s more than you were probably asking, but I didn’t want to leave any questions. This is veering pretty far off topic, but if anyone has any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.
None of this changes what I said in another post: the hostility of some posters is simply unacceptable to us. We appreciate your patience while we try to herd the cows back onto the trail, because we do take this seriously.
Happy trails,
Tim -
Recalling what my parents told my sister and me, and what many of you have said to your own children: “I don’t care who started it. CUT IT OUT!”
(For the record, my sister started it, but I still had to cut it out.)
This forum is intended for full contact yet civil discussions about Apple, FCP, the industry and everything related EXCEPT the honor or intentions of ANYONE HERE, for any reason. Cut it out.
Which is to say, we completely agree with you. There have been personal insults and attacks aplenty. But here’s the new rule: nobody gets to have the last word in this “but he said this about me” slapfest besides Bessie.
If any of you see anything that veers out of line, we rely on you to write any one of us using the Contact Us link at the top of the page. We’d love to keep up with every post, but with thousands a day across the COW, it’s just not possible. We’ll do our best to respond in a timely and appropriate manner…but keep it off the forum.
No disrespect intended to anyone here, including you guys starting this thread, Bill and Steve. Again, we agree that personal attacks have gotten way out of hand. Even one is too many, and a violation of our Terms of Service.
So I’m asking everyone, please, avoid posting about other people posting, and focus on the admittedly very complicated and emotional topics at hand.
Channeling every dad everywhere, certainly mine and likely some of you yourselves: I’m warning you, DON’T MAKE ME STOP THIS CAR.
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I recall what my parents told my sister and me: “I don’t care who started it. CUT IT OUT!” Please. A moratorium on posts ABOUT posters. Please stick to the topic.
Apologies for repeating a few parts of this on other threads, but its important enough to warrant that. Let me add some clarity directly from HP. This is a spinning off of the Personal Systems Group. This is largely the stuff acquired from Compaq, as well as some products that came out of the Palm acquisition.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with Workstation Business Unit, which continues to expand. They have been in the process of doubling down with workstations, in this market and other workstation-targeted markets (research, medicine, architecture, animation, etc.), long before Apple created its own mess.
Yeah, yeah, HP advertises with Creative COW. That doesn’t make any of this any less true.
This is most certainly something to ponder for those considering jumping to Windows, and ESPECIALLY for those NOT pondering it. Maybe you should, at least on HP. Imagine that – a company that drops its gadgets and consumer product lines to focus on pros!
We can revisit this topic again when any other company decides to go this route.
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Chiming in late, but HP is spinning off the Personal Systems Group, which is basically the stuff they acquired from Compaq, and doubling down on the Workstations Business Unit.
It’s not something to be concerned by. It’s something to celebrate – finally, a company dropping its consumer gadget lines in order to focus on pro users. What a concept!
It would have been far more ironic to include a MacBook Pro, when Pro is clearly not meaning what it used to at Apple.
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[Eduardo Serrano] “Dont forget to get davinci in your list. It seems that it is quickly becoming the new Apple color. “
I think you have that backwards. 🙂
The first da Vinci (the spelling then) was introduced in 1984, the first version of Resolve came 20 years after that, in 2004. Sort of in-between, da Vinci 2K in 1998.
Final Touch HD was released in 2005, handling only (as the name suggests) 2D only.
I’m oversimplying of course, but if you mean that DaVinci Resolve followed Color as a software-only system, then yes, true…but if you’re saying that Resolve is becoming the new Color and disappearing after several years of little development by its parent company, then no, I don’t believe so. 🙂
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[Gary Pollard] “And I’m not talking about justified complaints over limitations. I share many of those views. Just the ENDLESS snarkiness. It’s time to be over it, and once people ARE over it, this forum under its new name is dead.”
A friendly reminder – we do indeed have a forum for people who have gotten over it, right next door: the FCPX Techniques forum.
Anecdotal evidence that this forum or anything happening here is driving people away is easily disproved by counting posts. They don’t line up precisely with traffic of course, and the daily post count is down a little, but traffic here is still very high, and rising.
While not as many *posts* as here, the traffic in the FCPX Techniques forum is very nearly as high, and also rising rapidly. Hundreds of thousands of visitors to the COW have made their way over there.
In fact, if anyone wants to make any bets about which are the two most trafficked forums in the COW right now, and in which order, and whether our overall traffic is up or down over these last four months — well, it’s the definition of a sucker’s bet. I’d feel bad about taking your money. But I will if you insist.
In the meantime, the Debate forum is now properly named. If it sounds like noise to you, the traditional COW balance of sweet signal is easily enough at hand. In addition to civilized, solutions-focused conversation, you’ll find presets, generators, and much more.
And yes, we assume that this forum will go away, just as soon as people are tired of talking about this business, their future in it, and Apple’s plans for both.
I’m not taking bets on that date for everyone, but for many people, the date was two months ago tomorrow, when we opened the FCPX Techniques forum. Two months ago!! It’s more than ready when you are.
Yr pal,
Timmy
Creative COW -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Your Mac can run windows.”
But not nearly as well.
Disclosure: I’m writing this on a Mac. I also use Windows.
The limitation of Boot Camp is that you’re still on a Mac, which has never had the fastest video cards. There will always be less GPU acceleration, because Apple always chooses slower GPUs. Always.
You’re heard of the Mercury Playback Engine, right? It’s accelerated graphics acceleration from NVIDIA that Adobe uses. Go to NVIDIA’s site, look for the page called “Built for Adobe Professionals.” (Can you imagine such a page at Apple.com? Never going to happen.)
Beefiest Mac Quadro: 2 GB RAM/256 cores. Beefiest on Windows: 6 GB RAM/448 CUDA Cores.
Guess which goes faster? A LOT faster.
So yes, you can use Premiere on Mac. If you’re committed to Mac, why would you not? The performance of CS 5 on Mac blows FCP 7 away.
But with all respect to Adobe’s commitment to outperform Apple on the Mac (including going native loooong before FCP did), speaking for myself only, I believe that long-time Mac-only artists will be amazed at what they have been missing when they play with CS on Windows.
Not because Adobe loves Windows better. Because NVIDIA and Intel and a bunch of other architecture guys love Adobe, and everybody else that plays on their platform and wants to go faster.
And Apple doesn’t like anyone especially well, including YOU. It’s not that Apple has abandoned pros. It’s that they have always treated pros like everyone else, including third party vendors. “If our plans are working out for you, that’s great. But our plans are our plans, regardless.” Apple has never deviated from this course.
In comparing and contrasting Apple’s commitment to elegance at the cost of performance, I’m certainly not saying that the performance of Adobe CS comes at the price of inelegance. You’ll see exactly what you’re in for on Windows with the experience of CS5 on Mac. Just more slowly.
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You know, if they had kept the ending as crisp as the beginning, and instead of using words like “dingle arm,” and killing the joke at the end, they could completely have pulled this off. Twenty seconds shorter would have helped too. It’s funnier when you don’t oversell.
The actor is priceless, though. That’s what I’m talking about – he never let anything on until the script tipped his hand in the last two sentences.
Still, great find, DRW.
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I think my odor is more “data” than “metadata.”
The metadata would be things like how long I’ve smelled this way (a long time), and exactly what I smell like (if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you).
Also metadata, this in the comments field: “Whoever denies it, supplies it.”
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Washing my what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.