[Tim Wilson]

While you’re at it, please feel free to follow the links from the Mevo ads here in the COW ???? and be sure to check out their examples page, https://getmevo.com/shot-by-mevo. They’re of varying quality and applicability to what you might be up to, but I’m especially intrigued by this notion of not only simulating a multicam shoot with a single camera, but having it automatically “switched” on the fly using whatever science Livestream has cooked into it.

(And if you dig into it, there’s considerable science — things like motion detection so that it will people moving in the frame, facial recognition so that it switches to the speaker, etc.)

This is one is intentionally at the low-res end of the spectrum — band practice for a public access TV station –but it’s quite an effective demonstration of live-streamed, unattended simulated multicam from a single camera. They used an outboard audio mixer fed into their iPhone (?!?) and it sounds pretty decent.

This is also of course not NewTek or LiveU tech that costs 10 or 20 times as much, so yeah, lower res, but you know what? I’m impressed.

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That said, I too am looking to speak to folks who’ve actually used it myself. Watch this space. ????

[Tim Wilson]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “He’s not lying. I myself learnt of the Emu’s, the standing stones and the solar power cell trees himself and his good partner Nora enjoy day by day.”

Indeed, among our conversations is the key role that Joyce’s own Nora (Barnacle, immortalized as Molly Bloom) played in his otherwise inexplicable stylistic leap to Ulysses (which we might characterize as outright theft if Joyce hadn’t built something so magnificent from his pilferings) from the mere mortality of The Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man which I adore nonetheless in calling them prosaic. They are, after all, prose.

This is the perfect time to note that Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom‘>Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom by Brenda Maddox came out during my career as a bookstore manager for Barnes & Noble, and is vastly better than the Amazon reviews would lead you to believe.

See? Literary criticism. I’m happier talking about that, or frankly, my love of retail, than most of what we talk about, which I also obviously enjoy. But it’s a tiny, tiny slice of my actual LIFE. This is after all my fifth or sixth career. I’m interested in lots of stuff, and my range of interests is expanding. I know yours is too.

One of the limitations of this forum, which I’d like to address at length in another couple of threads, is the necessarily narrow window it offers into our lives. No matter how discursive our discourse here, we’re still more or less buzzing in circles around this bizzzzzness.

This means that I’ve never mentioned Aindreas’s Twitter identity (chock-a-block with all the phlegm and fortune a man could want) as @swimtwobirds, a delightful cyber-pun on the 1939 classic Irish novel At Swim Two Birds (get it? AT Swim Two Birds! Genius!) by Brian O’Nolan, under the pseudonym Flann O’Brien. It would take Don DeLillo nearly 50 years to catch up to this level of stylistic meta-flair in White Noise, and David Foster Wallace another 20 years after that, if that, and the two of them combined are less than half as funny as O’Nolan.

So what you probably don’t know if you’re only going by our occassional public clashes — including over FCPX; I’ll be reminding you all later in this thread that I was alone in predicting that FCPX would reach 10 million users by the end of its first year (OOOPS) — is that I’ve always considered Aindreas my conscience in my role as forum moderator. He and I will always differ on the appropriate amount of editorial guidance I should be offering — I think I’ve consistently erred in moderating too little; he demurs in rainbows — but I’ve been grateful for his demands for transparency, and his frequent insistence that I do better.

Well, for the past year and a half, personal crises (86.4%), demands from other parts of my job (9.2%), and various other nonsense (4.4%) have meant that I’ve done next to nothing here, but it’s not for any lack of interest. I missed catching the wave on quite a few threads along the way. I currently have 205 tabs open in Chrome (which isn’t even the only browser I have open), and surely a half dozen or more of those are unfinished posts on some of these months-old threads. I may finish some of them yet.

I of course tried to fire up again not long ago and fizzled. I hope this time that I’ll be able push the choke back in before I sputter out so soon this time. (Since we got to lawnmowers on this thread, I thought it was about damn time to bring in outboard motors.)

In the meantime, as much as we’re all safer when Aindreas isn’t posting under the influence, I agree with Simon that we’re all poorer when he’s not posting at all.

[Tim Wilson]

[Simon Ubsdell] “(Sorry, Tim, I know you disagree.)”

What?!? Not at all! My lamentations went unheard. Professor O’Gallchoir and I have stayed in touch over the years on topics as wide-ranging as poetry, Connemara, VR, and Cashel Blue cheese, among many others. If I could find a way to work those into this forum, I would, and if I’ve ever given the least impression that I don’t miss Aindreas every day he’s not here, I’m amiss.

This is a lovely thread that I’m enjoying immensely, by the way, and hope to contribute to it more meaningfully….soon. ????????????

[Tim Wilson]

[Neil Sadwelkar] “On the Support page Fusion 9.0.2 Studio and Fusion 9.0.2 are still there, so, they don’t seem to have discontinued it. “

If the three products are all tied up in one executable, the assumption is that you should be able to launch into the one you were in last by default. Then if they gave you a choice of splash screens, you’d be able to — in essence — launch Resolve, Fusion, OR Fairlight, and ONLY the one of your choice. You could ignore the components you don’t use, and functionally launch only “your” application.

Right?

[Tim Wilson]

[Oliver Peters] “One factor, is that Bell cuts on PCs, unlike a lot of other feature editors, who tend to prefer Macs. He also extensively uses other tools outside of Media Composer, like Fusion. “

I spoke with Alan at some length about this in an article on editing the third and fourth The Hunger Games pictures at the same time, A Tale of Two Mockingjays: The Hunger Games Epic Finale(s). It’s a terrific piece, if I say so myself, not because of me, but because of Alan. As Tony notes above, Alan is a very friendly, articulate, generous guy, who’s also one of the sharpest dudes you’ll come across.

He’s also every bit as accomplished in that part of VFX we call “invisible effects” as editing, and in fact tends to think of that kind of VFX and editing to be so closely related as to be indistinguishable at times.

One of the keys to delivering on these kinds of deadlines wasn’t just the occasional week of 24-hour editing. It was efficiency, and for Alan, that has always meant having the option to use compositing to solve problems that cutting alone can’t.

“I’m a big believer in enhancing performances with compositing when necessary,” he says. “I usually try to cut my way around whatever my issues are, but once I have the scene working the way I want it to, I can go back and at the very least fix things that don’t match.

“Sometimes not having to cut is the solution. When you want to drop a line, or when you want somebody to react to something and it’s not happening – maybe one of the actors has finished the line, but the other actor hasn’t finished landing in position, or you want to drop a line without introducing a cut – you can make the cut more efficient if you can composite.”

Also efficient: not having to wrangle a lot of round-tripping. The Avid Connection plug-in for Fusion (originally developed at eyeon; since acquired by Blackmagic Design) creates a drag and drop, resolution-independent, node-based compositing environment inside Avid.

Although the free version of Blackmagic Design Fusion 8 is now available as a public beta, the $995 Fusion Studio is the one with the Avid plug-in. At this is written, the latest version, Fusion Studio 7, is still Windows-only.

“I insisted that everybody use Windows systems because I like Fusion for compositing. You’ve got this great plug-in, and I wanted to not have to jump around, to do my compositing right there in the cutting room. If I want to drop a line without cutting away, I can do a face morph, or I can pick a section of their face from somewhere else in the take and morph it onto itself, so that I lose the line without cutting away and losing an emotional moment.

“These are things that over the years that I’ve taught myself to do. I’m also pretty good at estimating how long it’s going to take me to do something, so for the most part I composite as I work. I can do it much more powerfully with access to Fusion’s node-based compositing inside Avid.”

If I can once again recommend the article as a whole, Alan does a fantastic job framing the emotional context of editing too — maybe the best discussion of it that I’ve ever read. We too often speak of the technology that artists can use without discussing the heart that enables it. Here’s the link again.

This was 3 years ago, of course, and Fusion Studio is now available on Mac. I’m not sure if this makes any difference to Alan himself or to his feelings that the rest of the team also needs to be on PCs if indeed he still is. Also of course: Fusion has dropped in price to $295….although your guess is as good as mine what the price will be after Monday. LOL

Anyone going to NAB can feel free to ask Allan about all this. He’ll be in the Blackmagic booth talking about his use of Fusion as part of his editorial process. Even if this isn’t necessarily your cup of tea, I guarantee that meeting him will be one of the highlights of your NAB experience — not just for this year, but of ALL your NAB experiences.

[Tim Wilson]

[Brett Sherman] “I own Mac computers and iPhones, but I much prefer the Amazon ecosystem.”

I’ve mentioned my father’s heritage at Apple before — starting there in 1979 as Apple’s first Director of Operations, where he set up large-scale manufacturing, the first sales channels, created the Apple Store, and much more, including being the one on stage to introduce Steve at the internal Mac rollout in 1984, and sitting next to Steve in the executive session in 1985 where John Sculley unveiled the new org chart that had Steve nowhere on it. You’re not going to find many people on earth who bleed more Apple red than him…

He first dove into Google Home because of the integration with search, YouTube, and home control, but has since gone all-in on Amazon. Refilling the larder with voice commands to Amazon Fresh, streaming music, home control, general search queries, much improved sound quality, apps integration, etc etc.

I think he’d buy an Apple offering at least as an experiment if there was any thought that it would actually be vaguely compelling. After you’ve played around even a little with Google and Amazon’s AI, though, it’s clear how very, very short of the mark Siri falls….which is why Apple just hired away Google’s former head of AI. He did a lot with AI behind voice-driven search, and if you’ve ever done head-to-head searches even with an iPhone and an Android phone side by side, it’s astonishing (and for Apple, embarrassing) how much better Google’s works.

And of course, with AI at the heart of what Apple wants to do with the car-driver-world interfaces and interactions, this might be Apple’s most important hire since Tim Cook, if not Sir Jony. (I think we can safely call Apple’s hiring of Steve in 1997 their single best hire. That has my father coming in at #5. Sounds reasonable. ????)

What I was kind of getting at, though, is that Amazon has done a good job of using voice to drive not just their own stuff, but apps like Spotify, and even connects to local libraries of downloaded media that might include iTunes purchases. Why, it’s almost like they understand that, as compelling as their own ecosystem is, it becomes still more compelling when people can add to it almost anything they want. ????

So, as much as competitive-ish pricing, and voice-driven AI that works roughly as well as Google and Amazon’s, I’d want to see some notion that Apple understands ecosystem extensibility here as well as they do in the App Store (where Netflix and Spotify happily suck the life out of the dessicating husk of the iTMS)….but I don’t know how realistic that is to expect.

Apple’s gonna be fine without any of this of course. They don’t need to win in any of these races as long as they keep sticking the landing with devices and computers. And I really am excited to see what they might do as the UI for driving. Cars are the most expensive device that most of use, and as much as I like my car (and I like it a lot), I’ve never seen any car that’s especially impressed me with its understanding of how I want to operate it. Apple DOES get this for devices, even moreso than for computers imo, so I’m ready to see what they’ve got.

And once Apple cracks this nut, I’m excited to see what their competitors do to kick it up another couple of notches. ????

[Tim Wilson]

[Scott Thomas] “It took Spotify around 7 years to amass that many subs. Will Apple continue that trend?”

I’ve seen that chart before, and it’s completely misleading. It took Spotify 7 years, because that’s how many years they’d been doing it when the chart was made. ???? The first few years were pushing uphill against the idea that renting music was a good idea at all, while Apple and Amazon were pushing as hard as they could to discredit that notion, and kept jamming on paid download ownership. Steve Jobs was banging on this point at pretty much every public presentation for the last years of his life. Renting music: bad. Owning music: good. Spotify had their fight cut out for them, and they did it.

Spotify was also fighting the labels who wanted to keep them out of the US. So they were locked out of not just the world’s #1 music market, but pretty much all of the top 5 markets in the beginning. Heck, it started as a Sweden-only enterprise, because that’s all they could secure the rights for. They did it one country at a time, over a period of years, self-funding the whole way.

Apple on the other hand did what they so often do, show up late when the concept has been proven, and the demand is high. They’re the richest company in the history of humankind, poured billions into a fast start on a global scale, and kind of achieved it, but honestly, really kind of didn’t.

More granular charts note that the gap between Spotify and Apple has been increasing over time, not decreasing. That’s both the number of subscribers, and the rate of acquiring new ones. Part of the reason for that is the many millions of Mac users who’d already invested in Spotify, where playlists rule. In fact, there are individual Spotify playlists that have more subscribers than the entirety of Apple Music! There’s really just not much of a race there right now on a feature level, or on user attachment. This has always been where Apple shone most brightly, but they whiffed this time.

Apple knew that they blew it, which is why they spent billions on Beats, a company created with just one strategy: prove themselves to Apple as quickly as possible and get bought out. It worked!

But it was still too late to truly close the distance beyond the core “if ain’t Apple, I ain’t buyin’ it” crowd. Millions of Apple customers around the world had already said, “This is stupid. Apple has said they’re not gonna do this, that buying music is the way to go, but I think they’re wrong. I got tired of waiting for Apple to do the right thing with streaming video, so I stopped using iTunes and went to Netflix. Time for me to do the same with Spotify and music. Spotify works great on Mac, works great with all my Apple devices, so I’m in.”

Apple hasn’t made a compelling offer to switch any meaningful number of those folks back. They tried to jumpstart this with music, it didn’t succeed all that well, so they’re trying to do it more organically with video, by spending Netflix-level dollars, to create a fraction of the content that Netflix is, taking much longer to to do it. Barriers are low to adding new services. If Apple does something worthwhile, some Netflix folks will add Apple to the mix, too, the same way that they also do Hulu and HBO or whatever….but Apple’s not going to CONVERT hardly ANY of those folks. Netflix is going to keep widening that lead. Same with Spotify.

That’s why the one thing that might change the game for Apple even a little is Home Pod.

Amazon is of course an also-ran in this race in some ways, but Prime is much more than a subscription music service, or a movie service, or a delivery service. It’s a platform that compresses the distance between impulse, expression of desire, and fulfillment to the shortest possible interval. Maybe it’s seconds, maybe it’s a couple of days, but THAT’s Amazon’s game. Impulse fulfillment in just a few words. Dim the lights. Ship me some olives. Play my Rainy Day playlist. Tell me the weather forecast.

Google’s got the search part of that nailed, but not the impulse fulfillment.

Which is how Echo has been the driver to Amazon doubling Prime year on year. It’s inconceivable to me that most people will see this in action and say, “Nah, I’ll wait for Apple to do it”, because Apple’s is still going to be limited. It won’t include nearly as much video for years, it won’t include ANY meaningful shopping, and has a long way to go just to catch up to the basics. (Siri is not the same, sorry.)

The most Apple can hope for is that Home Pod serves as a compelling-enough front end for Spotify and Prime to capture the hardware money from those folks, at which point Apple can try converting them back to Apple software…although lotsa luck with that. Apple hasn’t made much of a dent AT ALL in Spotify’s loyalty among Mac customers, any more than they will with Netflix folks when they make that move.

But it’s a shot that they don’t have just yet. They will, though, and I bet they’ll have it before Spotify does. It won’t be enough to change their standing with Spotify, though, not ultimately.

In the context of my previous post, this area of inquiry is only interesting to me because of Home Pod as a place that Apple needs to put a ton of extremely sophisticated chips, loaded with Apple-specific programming, and they need it yesterday. Intel will take too long, and the solution will be incomplete, so this is one of the things that Apple is going to do with the chips that will keep that that first graph that Greg posted growing in the same direction — yes, Macs growing, but the rest of Apple growing much faster. Places that the puck has not yet been.

I can honestly say that I spend as much time researching this angle of consumer behavior as I do almost anything in my life. You won’t meet many people more versed in this than I am…although I’m happy to point you to sources for all this, to folks who know even more than I do….

…but to me, it still pales next to what Apple is going to do with using AR and AI as the front end for transforming the human-machine-world interface with cars, and how abandoning Intel is at the absolute heart of that. As I mentioned in my previous post, when Patently Apple calls this the “patent of the decade”, I think they’re wildly underselling it. I think it’s the Patent of the Century.

No matter how big music, computers, and devices seems to you for Apple’s chip story, I’m tellin’ ya, this AI/AR automobile stuff is much, much bigger. Please read those articles I linked previously, and prepare to be dumbfounded.

https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/03/patent-of-the-decade-apple-reveals-an-unbelievable-vr-experience-system-for-next-gen-autonomous-vehicles.html

https://www.etcentric.org/apple-submits-vr-patents-for-next-gen-autonomous-vehicles/

[Tim Wilson]

[Oliver Peters] “I find it hard to believe that MacBook and iPad won’t somehow merge.
“

I find it hard to believe that they WILL. ???? After all, “What’s a computer?” In all of Apple’s organizational schemes, it seems like these are the two product lines where they’ve worked the hardest to draw lines between them.

Some of this is differentiation to protect iPad, I suspect. I’d think that there are a lot of people who are happy enough with their big phones that iPads start to feel superfluous.

Apple also has bizarrely little imagination here, or perhaps Jonny Ive has bizarrely short arms. Listening to them moan about the intense physical discomfort caused by just the IDEA of a touchscreen on a laptop, and you can see how they will never, ever, ever merge these experiences.

[greg janza] “To get a sense of where Apple may be headed in the future just look at how their revenue source has changed over time. “

AMAZING chart, but the quintessence of skating to where the puck has been, I think. ???? As others have noted, that line doesn’t represent Apple’s overall computer revenue, but Mac’s percentage of revenue relative to the rest of the company. That’s a massive distinction.

In fact, looking at Mac sales by UNIT, the chart is almost inverted! This is as current as it gets, too, running from 2006 through the end of December 2017 (which is the end of Q1 ’18 in Apple’s calendar). Down a skosh from the 2016 peak, yes, but let’s see what we see when Apple updates their Q2 ’18 numbers in just a little bit. And trust me when I say that the iMac Pro promo push has barely gotten started.

Keep in mind too that the bars going up and down along the way are references to individual quarters — some quarters of the year are bigger for computer sales as part of the annual cycle. But pick any quarter of the year and follow it through the chart — the 2016 peak notwithstanding, Apple’s Mac business unit is doing fine, thanks.

(Source here.)

This is actually quite a feat. Apple has the best-growing computer business in the industry, but it creates the optical illusion of shrinking, only because the rest of Apple is growing so much faster.

So the question for where the puck is going next is, what ELSE will Apple be doing, other than what’s currently on the table? What’s the thing we DON’T see right now that’s going to drive the curve so massively higher that Apple’s VERY NICELY GROWING computer business will LOOK like it’s shrinking?

Well, they’ve already told us some of it — Home Pod. This is potentially massive, not just for the devices themselves, but for what they drive. For example, Amazon says that sales of Echo drove a doubling of Amazon Prime Music revenue last year.

Believe me, Apple has noticed Spotify absolutely kicking Apple Music’s ass. But who do you think is going to be quicker to market with a speaker/mic music DJ request line thingy, though, a la Echo? Apple. Count on it. Apple Music doubling annual growth would allow it to at least keep pace with Spotify, and if they hit the ball as far as Amazon did with Echo, will of course additionally create a nice source of hardware revenue.

Apple has of course been hinting at TV sets or something like them for over a decade now. Meh. I don’t see it. The making and selling of TV sets is a terrible business to be in right now. Not nearly enough margin, even for what Apple could get away with charging for their version of the thing.

There’s also honestly not nearly enough revenue coming from Apple’s own corner of TV content. They’ll do more than they are, but they’re still years away from catching up to the most laughable channel on your Roku channel.

Contrast this again with Apple Music, with upside galore, easily accelerated with Home Pod.

Now then.

I know I’m the only gol’ darn person in the entire history of this forum to believe that Apple can make a killing with cars. An accidental pun, but I’ll take it. I don’t care what Tesla is up to, and neither does Apple. Apple wants to go after Prius, and their most recent patent filings this very week are ASTOUNDING. If you haven’t dug into these yet, you have absolutely no idea how seriously Apple is taking this.

The fact is that cars have been a massive part of Intel’s business of late, and I’m convinced that Apple doubling down on moving away from Intel has EVERYTHING to do with moving into the heart of Intel’s actual current businesses….and what’s the one besides cars that have been driving (hahahahaha!) Intel? Artificial intelligence and VR/AR. And where do you need AI and VR/AR-styled technology, especially for heads-up display? In a car?

No shit, fellas. I’m telling you. LOOK AT THIS. Chips out the wazoo. HUD out the wazoo. And, as Patently Apple calls it, The Patent of the Decade. I think they’re underselling it. If Apple pulls it off, it’s the patent of the century to date, by a mile.

Don’t just reject this out of hand. READ THE APPLICATION, or at least Patently Apple’s summary of it. THIS is what it means to go after Intel where Intel lives. It has everything to do with why Apple is poo-pooing VR and promoting AR: because the goal isn’t to get you out of your current reality into a different, not real reality. The goal is to provide overlays on the reality you’re in. While you’re driving.

This is of course old technology in some ways. Pilots have had this for many years. What’s new is doing it without a helmet, in a consumer environment, with a combination of information dense but quickly readable, in a manner that stays out of the way, that can be operated at almost a subconscious, reflex level…..not unlike iOS. That you control with your eyes, not your fingers. Using AR technology.

Running on an assload of chips. Trust THAT to Intel? No thanks. If you give most people a choice in chip provider for controlling my door locks and lighted drink holders, you think they’re gonna choose Apple or Intel? Hmmmm….. I wonder. NOT.

Note bene: this has NOTHING to do with whether Apple actually builds the cars. Who cars. Apple doesn’t need to get in the brakes and upholstery business to pull of AI/AR driving environments. (Although, wouldn’t it be nice? Anyone who flies Virgin knows EXACTLY how cool it would be if Apple DID get involved in building “transportation devices”, so to speak. Virgin is as close as we’ve gotten yet — it’s like flying inside a white iPod, in a good way.)

This is already where they’re headed with cars: get the manufacturers to open the hooks for an overlay, to let Apple control the car’s systems. If Apple was also licensing them the chips, well, this gets right interesting. Now you don’t have to compete with Toyota, Tesla, or anyone else. You let the market (eg, you maniacs) demand that your car vendor of choice license Apple’s stuff if they want your business.

After you dig into Patently Apple — here’s the link — take a listen to the normally pretty level heads at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, who posted some nice coverage just this morning.

Look, you may keep saying I’m wrong about Apple and cars. Apple has certainly made no bones about deciding that they didn’t want to build the actual cars, which I was very hopeful they WOULD do. But it’s clearer than ever that Apple’s view of its own future is developing the INTERFACE for the future of driving. The interface for the car on the road and such — wheels, brakes, steering, all that? Apple doesn’t need that pain. But when it comes to the experience of how drivers relate to cars, to the world, and relevant data to manage that relationship — who ELSE would you rather have do that? NOBODY.

Of course I say this as somebody who still can’t imagine ever giving Apple another dime. ???? I just don’t like their stuff. I don’t think a single thing they do is best of category. I just don’t. But I WANT them to keep winning, so that companies I like better will win MORE. ????

I need a rimshot emoji to truly sell that last paragraph, but don’t think for a minute that I’m kidding the tiniest bit about believing that THIS is where the puck is going, that THIS is why Apple is parting ways with Intel. As big as Intel is thinking about cars, AI, VR, and AR, I think Apple thinks Intel isn’t thinking nearly big enough. I KNOW Apple thinks that YOU aren’t thinking big enough if you think Apple’s chip moves are mostly about computers.

While also underscoring that Apple doesn’t want you to take your eye off the ball, that the computer business is thriving, and entirely relevant.

Say, I’ve got the perfect music for the ad campaign for the Apple car overlay dingus, whatever they’re gonna call it. Beep beep, mm beep beep, yeah!

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[Tim Wilson]

[Steve Connor] “Rubbish, it’s Adobe and BMD software that’s NOT supporting the new iMac Pro, they’re the ones causing the problem NOT Apple.

The iMac Pro is very clear intent that they are still interested in the “high end video professional””

It’s conceivable to me that both perspectives are true in a way. Apple cares about high end video professionals, as long as they’re running FCPX.

Anyone else, they’re happy to have as low-hanging fruit, but such people aren’t the mission.

My assumption is that Adobe and BMD would be delighted to have the same access to the innards of Apple’s hardware (including chips) and operating software that Apple’s own developers do. They likely prevented from it, though, certainly practically, if not legally. I don’t know a single thing about Apple’s support for third-party development these days, and I could easily be a million miles off the mark regarding the current state of things, but I can assure you that this was entirely the case “back in the day.” Apple was quite specific about the kinds of optimization that they had not the least interest in helping us pursue.

This isn’t to denigrate the efforts of Apple’s third-party outreach and support efforts. Those people do care. But I think it’s important in a debate to make the value-neutral observation that limits exist to the kinds of help or access that they’re able to provide. All those render tests and other benchmarks in articles like Vincent’s are simply outlining the specific tenets that spring from the proposition that “Apple optimizes for their own stuff in ways they don’t allow anyone else to.”

Business as usual. At a certain point, we have to acknowledge that Apple’s coolness toward anybody else’s software running on their machines — again, hoping to make that sound value-neutral — isn’t a bug, but a feature. Apple would be failing at their most basic tasks if their own application software didn’t absolutely blow away the experience of using anyone else’s applications on their own platform.

But to extrapolate from that to “Apple doesn’t care about [implied ALL] high-end video professionals” is leaps too far. Heck, another example of the extent of Apple’s caring is asking you to pay only $249 for apparently a lifetime’s worth of access to the best possible experience on their platform.

If you want to pay more for a lesser experience, well, go right ahead. Or split the difference and go for a free version of Resolve.

There’s no problem here for Apple to solve. Nothing different to be done. They’re doing what they’ve been doing for generations. Caring deeply about your experience using their stuff.

Anyone else’s stuff? I’m not sure they care enough to copy-paste one of these: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Tim Wilson]

[greg janza] “He added this at the end: “At the end of the day: we’re going to have to become proficient w ALL NLEs – Final Cut Pro. X, Adobe Premiere, Davinci Resolve and … well no: Not Sony Vegas …sorry. Is that still around?””

Yes, except MAGIX bought it and calls it VEGAS Pro. Still very much around, with an active forum here at the COW. If you’re not using it, you probably don’t need to, but the people who love it are the most enthusiastic user body I’ve ever seen, outstripping even the most ardent FCPX-philes and “I’ll still be using Avid after I’m dead” Media Composers.

But I don’t buy for a minute that most people need more than one. The real takeaway of FCP going “poof” and vanishing is that, no matter how much folks loved it, and loved their lives using it, it was more likely than not NOT the best fit for their work. It was its own dead end, and to the extent that both Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve suggest a future for FCP that might have been, they both underscore to me all the reasons why FCP itself couldn’t have gotten there.

And I don’t say this with any lack of love. Remember, I adopted FCP when it was still at Macromedia running on Windows. LOL I loved it. But it was my 4th NLE by that point, and by the time I became Product Manager at Boris FX, I had to become at least passingly conversant with around 2 dozen NLEs and a half dozen more compositing environments. My overwhelming impression was, wow, there’s a lot of great stuff out there that does a lot of cool things! I think it’s kind of cool that circumstances led to so many other folks finding similar experiences.

That said, there are of course many thousands of folks still happily using FCP. More power to ’em. Noting again that before I left Boris FX to go to Avid, I was living and breathing FCP all day, every day. I understood why people felt it was all they’d ever need.

That’s why I think there was also a giddiness — preceded by anger, accompanied by nausea in the early days, but still, something of a euphoria — unleashed when people realized that they didn’t have to settle for what one developer offered them. If there’s something you want or need in one application or another, if a client wants you to use this rather than that, it’s not a crisis. It’s an opportunity. If you’re so inclined, it’s FUN to be using more than one.

So it’s not that anyone HAS to learn more than one. It’s that it’s fulfilling for ME to be the one to decide these things, and not fall into crisis if a client asks for a non-favorite. None of this is a big deal…whereas before 2011, it ALL seemed like a big deal.

But if using lots of tools doesn’t sound fun, or if you find enough of what you need in X, PPro, Resolve, MC, or whatever, heck, even Vegas, I don’t think it represents a failure of imagination to find that one developer has created a sweet spot big enough for you to find what you’re looking for for a while. Nobody HAS to do anything.

Which is a pretty sweet spot indeed.