[Michael Belanger]

AHHH you have been assimilated. Yes they started in a garage but if you know the WHOLE story you will recall that Steve Jobs actually poached the pull down menu idea from Xerox . Microsoft of course was originally hired to write code for Apple but then , too, ventured off with their own pulldown menu OS for PC world.
Look , is anyone not amazed at Apple? How could you not be amazed at the amount of cash in the bank and how they have such a powerful marketing reach. What people might not be aware of .. yourself it seems…. is that the product is really not that great…. the ipad cannot even browse flash sites. How pro is that…. Now will Apple grow its top line and bottom line.. obviously… Will it do so forever. Not a chance.
Believe it or not… there are some pretty smart people out there…even smarter than Apple …. Korea for example… maybe a little place called China…. But alas I am not a fortune teller else I would have bought Apple stock at 45 bucks. But I am pretty knowledgeable about technology and marketing and Apple as a brand is more cult driven than anything else. mp3 as far as quality of sound is concerned is a huge compromise yet people still buy it…. You have to take a big step back and assess the actual product being made not the huge marketing buzz around it. Case in point is the RED Camera. Talk about marketing hype over substance.
Assimilate away FCP droid

[Michael Belanger]

I , too, do alot of corporate stuff.. Big banks, telcos and the vast majority of them connect to networks where Windows 2000(believe it or not) or XP are the flavour du jour. The communications guys may use a macbook pro but the key guys log on with a windows device. Recently a CEO who did a ton of presentations had to have his web guys give him a dummy link that the iPad would be able to assemble as the real link was full of flash and as you know the “pad” is not flash friendly. Having said that.. I would not classify the pad as a pro device. Does that matter to Apple… not even one molecule. They cannot keep them in stock. Mass hysteria is what drives their sales and at some point that may wane.
IPad for a Fortune 500 that deals with people’s money.. How secure is that. U.S. is still the wild west in terms of their financial institutions. If it is not secure it is not professional but who am I to argue with a company that make 7 billion in one quarter.

Pion over and out

[Michael Belanger]

Worth more than Dell, Microsoft, HP combined… Reason is that they charge so much for their stuff.
Compare an ipod from APPLE to an mp3 player from anyone else and you see very clearly that they charge 50% higher prices. Go to Yahoo finance and see the video blurb about Apple … Margins are over 40%…up from 39%…. They are a cult and the stores are the recruitment area.. resistance is futile !!! Dude !!
https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/lamonica-running-words-describe-awesome-apple-203124516.html

[Michael Belanger]

iPad is a very nice toy but even after a year or so the iPad is still not approved by your own government whereas the RIM playbook… only out for but a month or so has today been approved by the US government use. iPad not even close but keep in mind Apple just released RECORD profits.
People will just buy just about anything if it is marketed as “cool” (or whatever word the sub 45 crowd use today) or “AWESOME”
The ipad has not gotten this certification so I am not sure where people are arguing that the pad has hit the pro market.
https://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20081513-94/playbook-certified-for-u.s-government/

[Michael Belanger]

Here here.. well put Marvin… Maybe the P means Final Cut Pion the person actually trying to edit on it.
But really.. when you look back at Apple and how they have bungled pro apps like Shake and Color you have to wonder if they really have what it takes to make a professional application. They are about jargon like the word “app” and about charging a ton of cash for relatively straightforward laptops and desktops. It is all made for apple by the real players like ASUS and Apple is basically just a hardware assembler .
If you look at their margins you must shake your head at how brilliant they are at packaging things up and charging alot of money for the average computer.
Hey Hot enough for you there Marvin… Yikes almost 40 celcius here
Hot enough to cook a raw apple on the sidewalk

[Michael Belanger]

I would argue heavily that Apple is truly a marketing juggernaut … the ipad cannot even deal with flash video or flash sites yet the general public think it is better than sliced bread. Hey that might be a new apple product next year…iBread… beside the iEggs and the iMilk … should sell like hotcakes.. hey iHop might have a new owner next year…
Forward thinkers you say some argue Apple ipod single handedly destroyed the music industry. mp3 is truly inferior quality to a cd and the amount of downloading that happened killed any legit music industry.
As for FCP X… dud o rama.. even if you think tape is dead (which it isn’t) you have to admit the least the new application can do is be backwards compatible… That is just arrogant or rookie sloppy… How can a company that makes that much cash get something so wrong…>???? Too busy counting their cash to care would be a good guess.

[Michael Belanger]

Oddly enough I was a proponent of FCP from FCP 1… because as an experienced editor it offered things AVID did not at a price AVID COULD not.. at least at that time. Strangely enough AVID was pretty smug at that time too.. much like Apple is today. But as you say.. give it a year and we’ll see if THEY come around
Honestly you summarily dismiss people as being buffoons without such an inkling of fact. What I am stating is fact. Apple ditched their broadcast clients literally overnight with not a word of warning. People built whole infrastructures around this software and Apple just turned their back on them hinting they had the latest greatest new rock in the quarry… Whatever dude if you want to make 5 copies of a project every time you want to make a revision knock yourself out. KInda reminds me of a very young young “editor” who in order to distinguish his clips from other peoples would use an odd symbol before each clip name. Trying to reinvent something that already existed.. called the English language.
Now when Apple comes up with something called the iCar that runs on bullsh$%t they will likely have an infinite supply of fuel… mostly from their software development team !

[Michael Belanger]

Please save me on the sanctimonious “change” concept. Most of us have gone from linear tape and switchers to the current software on multiple platforms and learned Nuendo to boot. I hardly think we are allergic to change. I guess you could say I am allergic to blindly following a path with no set course just because it has an Apple logo on it. I am allergic to double speak… releasing a product at a Broadcaster trade show and then summarily informing people that we are in a tapeless world and inputting or outputting is simply not in the cards for ANYONE.. All broadcasters use tape as do program producers .
Tape is still the cheapest and most robust bullet proof format out there. People use tape backup for their hard drives. I am allergic to a company that completely ditches its most noteworthy customers and does not keep them in the loop. New isn’t always better. BETTER is better. Do I want to go back to film editing on a flatbed… nope but I certainly don’t need a hammer without a handle that is for sure. Call me when you add the handle Apple.

[Michael Belanger]

So by extension any PRO trashing FCP X is making the same mistake as the Flame Snobs??
I think it is fair to say that the only snobs are Apple trashing all of their paying broadcast clients who committed to an FCP workflow then are told hey you guys are old school.. we are cutting edge.. too cutting edge even for you guys…New lexicon does not make better product. If Apple wants to try and come up with a new process that makes things faster and better then I am all for it but it certainly doesn’t seem that way so far. They do need a reality check for sure but I guess they can’t see past their stock pile of cash…c’est la vie

[Michael Belanger]

I think the biggest amateur is APPLE itself… They didn’t actually write the original code for FCP but bought it from Macromedia. They moderately improved the software with a ton of help from the third parties but what really got FCP going was the price point. Period.
No “pro”… meaning someone who does it for a living.. would buy a crooked hammer if he needed to hammer straight nails. So no video pro is going to buy FCP Zero to learn a whole new worse way of achieving an edited project. YOu mean we would buy simply because Apple says this is the better way. Sure.. tell me how it is better… If it can do less then it is not better … if it establishes a foundation for greater future development then sure the “pros” can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I simply don’t see that. Apple has simply given the finger to all those who bought their Xserves and all other X hardware and all of its followers by releasing something at a PROFESSIONAL TRADE SHOW that lacks professional features. Even SONY doesn’t do that. It is not good business to tell your PRO users at a trade show that they have released a new VERSION of FCP only to abandon any backwards compatibility and offer no support for previous version, no matter how antiquated it is. If they want the consumer market then demo it at CES not at NAB. From what I can see they even burned their own third party suppliers who made their software actually work.. How is it you have beautiful scopes on a new piece of software replacing the crappy old ones but then eliminate all other pro features. If their audience is prosumers then why even have scopes. Is there even a Youtube video done by an amateur who used scopes. FCP Z is so half baked that I cannot even imagine how that company actually makes a profit. They should stick to consumer gadgets that people line up for days to buy three of so they can resell on ebay to other bone heads who simply must have it.
Maybe if Apple wants this thing to sell they should drop the price to $99 and call it something that starts with a lower case i. Maybe iEdit or something cooler and slicker like iEvent .. Me I think iCrap is probably spot on. But what do I know. I am just a dusty old pro.