[Tim Wilson]

[Shawn Miller] “I think people were reacting to releasing a 3D text tool when today’s design trend tends to be flat.

Yet, I look around on TV and see loads of 3D text and elements, so… I don’t know either.”

That makes sense. Like you (apparently), I tend to notice anything 3D in film and video, so a 3D text tool in an NLE didn’t seem like that big of a deal. “

The importance of the C4D rendering engine to me ISN’T for 3D text, but for making motion graphics in 3D, whether in 3D space, or using extruded elements…

…including “flat” extruded elements: flat colors, and extrusion mild enough that the impression doesn’t scream “CGI”.

Here’s a nifty video to illustrate. You can see it in the poster frame, and also the first part of the video. This is straight-up motion graphics, NOT 3D text per se, and certainly not 3D in the sense that any 3D artist would care about.

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

This is NOT a catch-up feature. This is unique, and way, way in front of what most people are up to.

[Tim Wilson]

As the article mentions, the Dell XPS 15 supports up to 32GB RAM. The tradeoff is lower battery life.

That’s what options are about. Make YOUR choice, based on YOUR priorities. I typically only REALLY need a couple of hours on battery, since I’m rarely far from a plug….but this is also reflective of Apple’s tendency over time, to reduce choices.

That’s fine as a business model, but it’s important to understand that, typically, almost nothing HAS to be one way or the other. Once again, other people are getting this figured out just fine, and customers are choosing options as they see fit.

[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “It’s a few days after the launch of arguably the MOST significant re-design of FCP X since it was released – and the sticky threads tacked to the top of the FCP X debate forum are about … Adobe and Microsoft.

nuff said?”

All of which I discussed in my first reply. I’m trying not to go through the thread and reply to each point individually, but I do hope you’ll check it out. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Kimery] “I wouldn’t call you a whore… but you can be surprisingly bullish on Apple at times. ;)”

And of course bear-ish. LOL I’ve had plenty of negative stuff to say, and will be adding some to a few of the threads underway here soon. ?

Also re: Adobe advertising, after playfully lamenting that we haven’t had any Adobe advertising for months, I just got a note that they’d like to start a campaign today. LOL This has nothing to do with my article, I assure you — if anybody there has seen it, I’d be shocked — and everything to do with a very energetic few months of announcements and releases climaxing at MAX, which many folks here have both noted from afar and from their attendance in person as we speak.

More about the rest anon….

[Tim Wilson]

This deserves a proper reply, and I’ll give it one later today.

Super speedy:

— It’s all about timing. Apple was the lead story LAST WEEK, not THIS week. FCPX was the lead story in our newsletter last week, Adobe/Microsoft was this week, and it will somebody else next week.

You can see it for yourself at newsletters.creativecow.net, and it was also all over our social media, and yes, as was pointed out upthread, on the front page at creativecow.net, with MULTIPLE stories.

Here’s a screencap of PART of what went out in the newsletter LAST WEEK, when it was NEW(s).

— So why was some of this not stickied? Uhm, because we tend not to sticky active threads? They’re already at the top of the page.

— THAT SAID, I DID sticky Charlie’s awesome blog entry, Final Cut Pro 10.3 – A First Look. Many thanks to him for agreeing to let us syndicate his blog with us back in the day.

btw, his Final Cut Pro Babbling blog at fcpxpert should totally be part of your regular rounds.

Apologies yoo for not noticing that WordPress’s RSS feed was broken, and missing some more recent entries, Charlie! I’ll go back and add the missing entries by hand.

AND FOR THE REST OF YOU — what are you doing that I can syndicate? Do you have a blog? A podcast? Lemme know! I’ll post it!

— BUT WAIT? WHY IS IT NOT AT THE TOP OF THE FORUM? Operator error. I hit the “Sticky” button for the thread that I made to announce that we’d posted Charlie’s blog entry, assumed it stuck, and didn’t notice that it didn’t. My bad. I did it wrong.

(Technically speaking, it’s not a proper thread, but an announcement of a blog entry, so I needed to have been making the changes at the SOURCE of the post. Oops.)

So, with thanks for pointing it out, and thanks to our IT director Abraham Chaffin, I fixed it. It’s now stickied.

— WHAT ABOUT THAT OTHER STUFF UP THERE? We sticky EVERY new article of general interest, and they typically go away at the end of the week that they’re posted. The two that are up there now are set to go away tomorrow.

If there’s a really strong objection to them there now, I can take ’em down sooner.

As others have pointed out, those articles do both reflect conversations going on in this forum. MOST of the articles we post come out of ideas from this forum.

— Since most of you don’t visit EVERY forum at the COW, you may not have noticed that this is the ONLY forum I post in. Not only do I enjoy this forum, I like X.

— And I have to tell you, it really steams me PERSONALLY to be accused of anti-Apple or FCPX prejudice when I have taken so much personal shit for being an Apple whore. The only outrage expressed at me in well over 20 years online has been for my CONTINUED enthusiasm for Apple’s initial rollout of X, as well as the decision to immediately axe Legacy development and official distribution.

(As well as my continued pointing out that YOU CAN STILL BUY IT TODAY, so dinging Apple for THAT is on YOU, not Apple.)

If you can find an earlier, more enthusiastic proponent of X in the COW’s archives, I’d love to hear about it. I was there. I sure don’t remember any, and I sure remember the grief I took for it.

— btw, here’s the article I wrote about WTF just a few months ago. Not the multi-part epic spectacular treatment they gave it at fcp.co, which I remain in awe of…but considering that this was just me, and my hands are generally pretty full, I think I SLAYED it. Apple FCPX and the Making Of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

And I promo’d the shit out of it. LOL All over the site, all over the web. I’m pathetic and I need validation (obviously), but I also really hustled on it, and felt it was a nice bit of writing, on top of everything else.

— So why no major coverage of the laptops? I TRIED. I actually started a thread INVITING people to say nice things about it. It failed. I don’t take this personally, although, in my never-ending search for validation, it’s hard, I admit it. LOL

Okay, the accusation that we’re under the thrall of our advertisers is one I take seriously, and will address at length a bit later today. I’m happy to stand accountable…and again, I encourage you to try to find another site/publication that is more willing to stand accountable and transparent. You won’t. They don’t exist.

For now, I’ll just say, if you can find an Adobe ad here, please let me know. LOL That will allow me to stop pestering them for advertising. LOL

Kidding aside, Adobe has obviously been a huge supporter over the years, and they’ll be back, but saying that there are Adobe ads all over the COW when there haven’t been any for months is — I say gently — an indication of how far off the beam I find the heart of that post to be.

It still merits a fuller response, which, again, I assure you I will get to in just a bit, later today.

More soon,

Tim Wilson
General Manager, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

So in the cool light of day, a full day later, have you had a chance to think about this some more?

Here are some small things that jumped out:

— There’s a headphone jack!!! A HEADPHONE JACK? What kind of backwards-looking bozo includes a headphone jack?!?!?

— Not only that, but this MBP doesn’t even support the new AirBuds?!?!?!

(Yes, I know that that’s not their name — but AirBuds is a much better name. And I know that a dongle surely WILL be invented….but there is not one now. The one that exists now appears to me to be exactly the opposite of what it needs to be.)

— Hey! Where the heck’r my AirBuds???

— There’s no “native” way to plug in an iPhone. I’m right, right? It looks like you have to buy a USB Type-C dongle or a Lightning-to-USB-C cable to connect your phone to this? Not that connecting an iPhone to a MBP is an everyday thing, but it’s a not inconsequential thing either.

Not huge, but it seems like there’d have been time to sort some of this out.

— No old-school USB? Srsly? So all those little thumb drives, nada? Although going forward, SanDisk has this crazy little fella that’s a reversible USB 3/USB-C drive….but at $28 for 32GB, we’re headed perilously close to “buck-a-gig” territory.

Still, it’s adorable. I might just buy one to wear as a locket. Or a cameo. Definitely a cameo.

— Am I the only photographer who’s already feeling exasperated by the missing SD card slot?

Not that there’s anything WRONG with any of this. Every one of these objections will have blown away into the mists of time, probably before the first spring thaw.

But TC’s intro of all the great innovations in Apple’s portables that later became industry standards — integrated wifi, aluminum unibody, etc — underscored to me that, you know what? The Magic Emoji Bar is probably not going to join that list.

I saw somebody compare it to the orange pointer nub in Lenovo Thinkpad laptops. I know people who love ’em. Maybe four or six people who love ’em. LOL And nobody really swooped in to do something similar.

I think this is where The Magic Emoji Bar winds up. Somewhere near the Magic Mouse, which some people loved, and were all so, so wrong. ?

I’m also thinking that the “nah, nobody wants touchscreens on their computer” objection sounds EXACTLY like how Steve Jobs ranted for YEARS that NOBODY wants a tablet computer. He openly mocked people who carried more than one device as clueless hipsters who only knew how to waste money — until he had more than one device to sell to these very same people.

This is while he was also mocking the idea that anybody would ever want a phone with a screen bigger than 3 inches.

So I’m watching their lips move, and I’m listening to the words — and I ain’t buyin’ it.

Related to that, my biggest issue with Apple TV is that it’s still less compelling than an iPhone or iPad running Chromecast. Apple CAN do app-based TV. They DO app-based TV just fine. Just not on Apple TV yet.

I have no idea why we have no poop emoji here, and I assure you that I will look into it — but yes, I know I’m mostly just stirring the {{{{poop emoji}}}} here….but I’ really struck by the contrast between this and the FCPX news.

The X news is straight legit, and I’m seeing lots of happy folks talking about it. The laptop is clearly not trashcan-Mac levels of triumph or tragedy, and I’d rather watch Apple TV than watch an Apple Watch….but Apple appears to be a lot more excited by the laptop and ATV news than any of you seem to be. Am I seeing all of your reactions (or the lack thereof) through my meh-colored glasses?

Enlighten me! En-happy me! Remind me that it’s Friday!

Oh wait – I’ll remind YOU!

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

THIS SONG IS TWENTY FOUR AND ONE HALF YEARS OLD

[Tim Wilson]

[Bret Williams] “But I guess touchscreen technology just isn’t there yet.”

Not for Apple, but it is for everyone else. HP’s is good, and both Dell and Microsoft have it working AMAZINGLY well.

We tell this tale around here a lot, don’t we? ? Well, here comes this year’s variation.

My year old Dell XPS 15 has a bigger, higher res display (4K) that covers a wider color space, is smaller (thanks to a nearly bezel-less design), is lighter, has more IO (including Tbolt 3), and yes, a crazy-smooth touch screen that has all the precision and responsiveness that you’d expect from any device that you regularly have your hands on.

And I got it for about the same price for a similar MBP…assuming that there actually WAS one… including a 2-year “if anything goes wrong, we’ll come get it and bring you a new one” warranty that includes spills and drops…which, uhm, is also not exactly similar to Apple’s warranty.

And the comfiest keyboard I use, a lovely rubberized handrest, top-notch aluminum body, etc etc etc.

I say this from experience with this as my daily driver for over a year, which I was motivated to do from envy over my wife’s XPS 15 from 2 years earlier — so for her, THREE years of compelling touchscreenery on her daily driver.

This is of course a laptop. I haven’t had a chance to take the Microsoft Surface Studio for a spin yet, but there’s a thread underway here with folks making similar observations for an iMacky variant, including Oliver Peters’ review of the TWO YEAR OLD HP Z1 “pro” iMac touchscreeen thing.

So this ain’t science fiction. It’s old news, and yet another round of Apple not even appearing to try to keep up on the basics.

The Mac OS is a pretty compelling reason to buy computers from Apple, but it’s been a long, long time since I’ve been able to come up with a single other reason. Apple DOES care about innovative computers, I KNOW they do.

I’m just looking forward to seeing some actual evidence. ?

?

[Tim Wilson]

I don’t think that the word “dominate” makes any sense in the context of NLEs anymore. I don’t think it has for years, actually. Maybe never did.

First, there’s the question of dominate what. We’ve already been through this a million times here. My favorite example is Avid dominating film and high-end TV. Yes, they have for 15+ years. Yes, they still do. Yes, they will for a long time forward. AND? SO WHAT?

Second, “dominate” implies that selling large numbers of one thing will preclude any sales of another thing. That can certainly be the case — “I own one NLE, I will therefore not buy another” — but in practice, not really. It’s easy enough to buy one, or download a couple of free ones, that checking out the new one is almost the default. And even for day to day use, thousands of people here use more than one NLE on a regular basis. Even on a single project.

So, apart from a market definition so narrow that “dominance” of it is meaningless, more broadly, the ship for domination has sailed. It can’t happen in any world that we (or the theoretical future “we”) live in.

Third, the notion of a dominant NLE doesn’t say anything meaningful about the rest of the software ecosystem. After Effects is still After Effects. Resolve is still Resolve. They continue to extend their reach, as do some other folks who aspire to nibble along the edges (Affinity and the like).

But sticking with AE and Resolve because of the scale on which they MATTER, and which those products will MATTER to the NLE market as a whole, no matter what happens with any NLE, neither Apple nor any other company (including Adobe and Blackmagic) can dominate in a way that means anything worth talking about.

And no matter what’s happening on the desktop, anyone watching the industry and failing to see a resurgent Quantel, a booming Baselight, a stampeding Mistika, and yes, good old Autodesk ascending again, is simply not paying attention. Yes, cheap and free desktop software options are multiplying faster than bunnies, but the high end is BOOMING.

Fourth, it implies that the market is defined by Apple. Nope. Apple isn’t even the only OS provider in this very forum, although here, I’m certainly willing to concede its dominance. In the NLE market as a whole, though, not even close. Between the OS insights we have from folks browsing the COW, and watching product registrations at multi-platform companies like Avid and Boris, I’ve had a front row seat to demographics for over 20 years.

(I was actually at Boris when they started a licensing deal with Apple to be included with every unit of FCP. The details were NDA’d out the wazoo, but there was money changing hands, and I assure you, NO ambiguity about how many units were moving. WIth something like two dozen host applications across both Mac and Win, it was a lot of fun to watch.)

Sure, Mac is more popular in video/film/motion graphics/creative arts than many other sectors, but it’s simply not dominant. It’s just not.

And in fairness, Apple has never given the least indication that this is a goal. Good for them! Because if it were a goal, they’d have to be marked as one of recent business history’s colossal failures.

Given that Apple hasn’t made OS dominance a goal, then, it’s not a criticism to observe that they haven’t achieved it, or anything even resembling it.

So, since we’re talking about a market too broad to dominate, that’s disinclined to singular choices, and not in any way dominated by Apple as an OS provider, what the hell is that guy even talking about?

[Bob Zelin] “Because NOW – everyone can take a really good picture, and for many of us, it’s “good enough”. “

That’s the one place where he’s almost onto something. The battle for photo editing software isn’t being fought between Adobe, Affinity, and Apple (I’m counting on one of you to tell me if Apple is even in this game anymore), or even Google — it’s between Instagram and Snapchat.

I’m seeing a lot of high-end profoessional digital cameras (Canon, Nikon, et al) now using some combination of wifi, bluetooth, and NFC to allow photos to transfer to phones for Instagramming, tweeting, and other immediate social media uploads — and using these features myself, I have to tell you that the combination of “real” photography with Instagram is both compelling and a lot of fun.

I still ain’t giving up Photoshop, but that’s partly out of habit from using it every day since 1991. Back when it was Mac only. ?

Which brings me to my last point. Finally. ?

Nobody playing for keeps is playing on Mac alone. Nobody.

And nobody knows this better than Apple.

Their fortunes didn’t change with iPod in 2003. Their fortunes changed with the introduction of iTunes for Windows in 2004, almost to the day — because that’s when iPod became available to everyone. iPod for Mac users? Yawn. iPod for all? NOW you have my attention.

To put it another way, the lesson of iPod is that ALL of Apple’s most important software products are outside the Mac-only ecosystem, because that’s where most of Apple’s customers are.

That’s why there’s never been an iPhone commercial with a Mac in it. Why risk turning off the overwhelming majority of your current and potential customers with the idea that they need to buy a new computer to get the most out of their devices? If you already HAVE a Mac, true. But if you don’t, it’s just not true in any meaningful way whatsoever.

If it was, than Apple’s representation in desktop and device operating systems would be more similar, when they couldn’t be more different.

Not that Apple’s going to stop selling computers, or that they haven’t prioritized converting new OS customers based on compelling iExperiences. No way, and you bet, respectively.

But let’s add this observation to the string, which now goes a little like this:

Our market is beyond domination, the idea of dominance is irrelevant in practice, Apple hasn’t attempted to dominate with its OS, AND NONE of Apple’s most important software development has been Mac-only.

So c’mon. Not speaking about what any future Apple NLE does, or what previously-cherished metaphors it torches, or what amazing new things it enables — but enough already with the idea that Apple is going to do anything with any future NLE to change anything that’s true about Apple and NLEs in general now.

That is, it’s ridiculous to write off Apple as incapable of changing any game they’re playing, but it’s ridiculous to think that this is one of those games.

[Tim Wilson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I know I have asked it, I know others have. What constitutes fast?”

In general, I think this is why there haven’t been many updates of much of anything on either platform. The answer is, “They’re all pretty damn fast.” And to your point about AE and 4K, the real bottlenecks aren’t always, or often, in hardware.

That said, this does NOT apply once you get up to the realm of sizzlecore and dedicated 3D/CG machines. But in the realm that most of us live in most of the time, what are we looking for? New IO, really, and even that can be a PITA as often as not.

So I don’t think the issue is that Apple doesn’t care enough about the Mac Pro market, or that the market is too small to motivate Apple to prioritize it, or anything else. HP has a dedicated workstation unit that bigger than the entirety of Apple….but they’re not rushing out new stuff either. The chip guys aren’t turning the crank that often either.

I think we’re in a transition that’s characterized by nothing moving. LOL

There’s little we DO, actually DO, that REQUIRES the kind of increases we used to demand just to keep up with our work. But now, honestly, we can make do with older machines. We know this, because we are.

So there’s my semi-rhetorical question for you. Is any of this really a PROBLEM-problem for you folks in your day-to-day, or more of an itch that isn’t being scratched?

Not to trivialize itches that need scratching. New gear is fun, and I’m starting to itch for a new point-and-shoot for personal use just because I don’t need a new car, a new TV, a new phone, or a new computer. Got my new Kindle (Paperwhite ftw), a coupla new Roku sticks to go with my Chromecast, Amazon Echo is more than I need right now, so what else is there? LOL

[Tim Wilson]

[Roei Tzoref] “1. can’t I delete a post I made? even if no one responded to it yet..”

This is not currently supported. Please let us know if there’s anything you’d like deleted.

[Roei Tzoref] “2. when I want to edit my text, seems unintuitive that I have to hit reply (even to my own post) to get to see the edit button. “

Hmmm, I think that this is because in the old default view (single post), the edit button was always visible. In the new default view (threaded), that is not the case. Let us think about how we might address that.

Good catch!

[Roei Tzoref] “also once I click it, seems copy pasting is not supported here and also drag and drop.
“

Can you describe that a little more?

Thanks!

Tim Wilson
Creative COW