[Mike Stroven]

[Paul Dickin] “Apple has an expert on video – what he doesn’t know is not worth knowing…”

That’s a *BOLD* statement! I guess this “expert” wasn’t there when they decided that the 24fps rate for NTSC video was 23.98 instead of the actual pull-down NTSC video rate is 23.976… Then, they botched all the gamma transformations back and forth from still-image RGB colorspaces and “assumed” everything to have a gamma of 1.0 regardless of its source. In fact, if this mysterious “expert” isn’t named Charles Poynton, Keith Jack, or Don Craig, then it’s certain Apple’s expert could still stand to learn a bit more…

[Mike Stroven]

Keep in mind that Ubilos was part of the “purchase” from Macromedia. Macromedia (and I’ve never understood why) didn’t see Final Cut as a product that fit their overall product strategy.

I would venture that if Randy and his team couldn’t sell their product to the Macromedia management, they just weren’t very good at conveying the vision of using it. That’s a shortcoming they never got over even at Apple.

In true Apple form, a bunch of clueless product marketing people try and dumb things down to the point that any 2nd grader can use them. They don’t understand the professional market, and they never have. They don’t understand the enterprise market either, surprise… They are like Volkswagon without the R&D of Porche and Audi.

They buy technology from the professional world, and then dumb it down to make it palatable for the masses. It’s one thing to lower the cost, but a different thing altogether to lower the capabilities.. They have the money… Why do they not invest in the high end technology, and they apply that research in the low end?

[Mike Stroven]

I like you John. You write the music. I’ll write the lyrics.
Rest assured, my ability to recognize innovation is fully intact.

[Mike Stroven]

Gary,
You believe what you want, but I was there. I know what Aurora did to innovate in the Mac video market.

Where Aurora fell short was in giving away too much, in not parking a dedicated guy in front of Apple Marketing 24/7. It’s the political crap that we all despised which led people to startup and to join Aurora.

I’m done here. Call it what you want, I don’t see the “innovation” that you speak of.

[Mike Stroven]

Hmmm… What do you make of this:

Link to PDF (You’ll notice that Aurora wasn’t mentioned in that PDF either, even though Aurora was doing full uncompressed before the Cinewave was announced.)
For the record, AJA partnered with Blackmagic Design to ship their first OS X drivers. (That was a mistake they won’t make again..) Not a terrible task for BMD, considering they didn’t have almost 10,000 users already on older hardware in OS 9 to support, and features like Cold Mountain to support. Aurora and Cinewave had RT effects in hardware. The API for writing software to support RT in QuickTime sucked, and even though Pinnacle had deep pockets and local access to Apple, Aurora delivered their RT driver for OS X before the Cinewave driver arrived.

I am sorry that you felt Aurora support was not adequate, since I was the one who started and headed the support department, but I believe that your experience was not the norm and we received very positive response to all of our support surveys.

I am not saying that AJA doesn’t build great hardware. I’m saying that it’s not rocket science to slap some video chips on a board. The difficulty is (and always has been) getting the info necessary to build a solid software driver for the hardware. My bottom line is that AJA wouldn’t be where they are today if not for the special treatment they received (and continue to get) from Apple. I am glad that they are doing well, and (as I’ve said before), the IoHD is a great piece of hardware!

Best,
-Mike Stroven

[Mike Stroven]

AJA and Aurora started their businesses at about the same time. AJA started as a converter maker with a couple of generic OEM cards with no software support. They weren’t at the right place with the right product at the right time. They had their designs and their roadmap handed to them by Apple Computer.

Aurora started as the only exclusively Macintosh manufacturer of capture and edit hardware. As I stated in my previous post, Apple designed the Io. It still appears in their documentation as the “Apple ProIo” AJA had a card, but had never written a QuickTime-compatible driver for it. They were the last to the party, and (as I stated before) had Apple to do their marketing for them. So, no, I don’t subscribe to the theory that AJA got where they are by doing a great job building great products. They got where they are today because Apple put them there. Kind of a “blind leading the blind” arangement, considering Apple’s distinct lack of experience in high-end post workflows.

[Mike Stroven]

The list of 3rd party hardware developers that Apple has screwed is long. When they pick a partner to “get in bed with”, they end up kicking them to the curb within a year or two.

Start with Matrox and FCP 1.0 in OS9. Matrox was chosen to help Apple achieve RT processing. Once Apple had a good handle on the process, they sucked in into FCP 2.0, obsoleting the “RTMac” product overnight.

Pinnacle was next with their “Cinewave”. Apple implemented countless Pinnacle-specific functions and enabler tags into FCP, and didn’t document them. When other manufacturers had trouble with implementation, they received cryptic references to tags with no descriptions.

Then there was the “Apple Pro Io”… Since Apple developed the Io and its driver (the driver is part of FCP), you’d think that all of the competing 3rd party hardware suppliers would have variants. Instead, Apple picked AJA to partner with, and gave them exclusive rights to the uncompressed-over-firewire protocol, as well as millions of dollars of free advertising. When other 3rd party manufacturers attempted to reverse-engineer the protocol they were met with threats from Apple. Anyone here remember the one day that ProMax was showing their Io-type product. It was pulled from their site the next day. I wonder why? Couldn’t be because they are one of the largest independent Apple dealers, and Apple has some influence on whether they keep that status….

When the movie, “Cold Mountain” was released, the various video and storage companies involved went to Apple for help with a joint marketing campaign, but instead were met with another slap in the face. Apple was running a two-page ad with Cold Mountain featured on the screen of a system including an AJA Io, and an Apple RAID. Apple representatives told these companies to “just drop it.”

Even though starting strong that year, Aurora Video Systems had their lowest sales year in their 7 year history. The decision was made to never again have a majority of their business tied to the whim of Apple Computer. Sadly, being the only exclusively-Macintosh provider in the market, hurt Aurora the worst. Their loyalty to Apple products and Apple customers left them destitute from trying to compete with Apple directly. When the layoffs were over, and the owner’s investment completely dried up, they left to pursue other interests, and to try to again build up a cash base for retirement.

Today, with yet another example of Apple favoring one hardware maker over the others, you have the IoHD. Great box. However, if Apple truly wanted a broad range of competitive suppliers (the lip-service they always had for Aurora), they wouldn’t do these “exclusive” partnerships. It’s unfair, it’s anti-competitive, and it sucks. I’m sooo glad I’m no longer in that business. The sad thing is that Aurora led that market in features and technology for years, and Apple was always clueless about it. They still don’t have a clue what a film workflow looks like. Last time I checked, FCP still couldn’t handle a QT timecode input correctly.. The ability to output a video stream with an alpha channel was a request that Aurora made to Apple engineers. Funny how a year later AJA was shipping such a feature…

Everyone loves being an Apple user, but being an Apple developer is a totally different gig. Even AJA hedged their bets by developing Windoze drivers for their stuff, and by supporting open-source stuff like the RaveHD.

Apple is just small enough that these practices go unnoticed, but these are the types of behavior that Microsoft has been slapped down for on numerous occassions… That’s what I meant.

[Mike Stroven]

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I think the product is totally cool. I just think that Apple should stop acting like Microsoft.