Steve Jobs and FCP

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ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Just saw this. Wow, three sentences from Steve! Looking forward to the next "awesome" release.

JK

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

I think part of our "FCP Insecurity" comes from the perception that Apple has been a trendsetter rather than follower. In many respects Apple is actually a company reactive to the market. Of course their reaction is usually a rethinking of "everyone else's solution." Hence the perception as trendsetter. The "awesome" release will probably encompass much of what we're seeing in the competition but workflow enhancements and features implemented in ways the other companies have missed.

I remember the days when people talked about the lack of FCP color correction compared to Avid Symphony and later Media Composer. At some point Apple will make their next big leap forward.

I have to confess, I really don't get where Apple's head is with respect to first-party "pro" applications. Every time I think I've got it sorted, something else comes along to shatter all my assumptions.

For example, before this most recent missive from El Jobso Grande, I felt confident in saying that Apple's Mac business revolves with the focus of a slightly autistic four-year-old around selling Macs. Selling Macs good, selling more Macs more good, not selling Macs bad, spending money doing things that aren't directly related to selling more Macs utterly unacceptable.

If a press release had come out today saying that Apple was immediately discontinuing Color, Motion, DVD Studio Pro and Soundtrack and turfing Final Cut Pro and Compressor off to some other company ? Autodesk, probably, given their obsession with buying things ? I would have been completely unsurprised.

Final Cut Pro and its little baby sidecar applications were firmly in the category of "stuff what sells more Macs" once upon a time in the early 2000s when Avid never even bothered to ship Media Composer Adrenaline 2 for the Mac at all, instead waiting more than 18 months to ship a cross-platform version 2.5. That was a time when it seriously looked like Avid for the Mac might vanish into history, and with it the small but influential foothold the Mac had in commercial post.

But frickin' Davinci is running on the Mac now. Well, not now now, but very shortly. Avid's got a fire under its butt ? inspired by God knows what, but I'm happy they're motivated. Major releases are coming fast and furious, and in parallel on both Mac and Windows. Some major post-production applications are on the Mac now ? and conspicuously not on Windows, if anybody out there still suspected that Microsoft was relevant in our industry any more. In all likelihood, more are coming soon.

Apple doesn't need Final Cut Pro any more. Sure, it's a fine little editor if you can live with its quirks, and it has some workflow advantages over Media Composer that can be beneficial under certain circumstances. And God knows it's cheap. But Apple doesn't need it, any more than Apple needs Filemaker Pro.

And now Jobsarino turns around and declares that he and Final Cut Pro have been sitting in a tree, and that there's been k-i-s-s-i-n-g going on, and I just don't understand what's in Apple's metaphorical head any more.

Dear Apple: Please find some small company that loves commercial post, that gets it, that has based its entire business on it. And sell Final Cut Pro to them. If they want to give you a little money for the other Studio applications, fine, whatever. But make them give you an iron-clad promise that Final Cut Pro will stay Mac-only for at least ten years, cash their check and get on with your lives.

Then, like the very next morning, launch a massive new developer outreach program. Stalk every single project manager at every single company that ships a post-production application that runs on Linux. Take the Foundry guys to dinner and pick up the bill. Rent an apartment across the street from Autodesk's headquarters. Co-sign a boat loan for the higher-ups at Avid. Put full-time employees on site at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain and Weta and ILM. Send them hundreds of top-of-the-line Mac Pro loaner systems for free. Quadruple the number of software engineers working on Quicktime and on OpenCL. Get OpenCL drivers written for the Telsa boards immediately. Ship a rackmount Mac Pro with five PCI Express slots that are spaced far enough apart to take a Quadro board, a Fibre Channel card, a Red Rocket, a Tesla and a Kona 3 all at the same time. Sell it for $6,000 if you really want to; people will buy it. That's what an HP Z800 costs, and those are selling like hotcakes in commercial post. Hell, invent an entirely new class of Mac just for this. Call it the Mac Ultra or whatever. I don't care, just ship it.

And while you're at it, consider a scaled-down rackmount configuration with less oomph, fewer slots and less room for internal storage. Make it two rack units tall and sell it for $2,000 ? but only in quantities of ten or more. Sell them in volume to the people who needs dozens, or even hundreds of workstations to run things like Nuke and Maya.

You guys have the balls to take control of the iPhone OS platform. Do the same thing with the Mac platform. Macs are already a quantum leap beyond PCs running Windows for commercial post. They should be a quantum leap beyond Linux, too. The foundation is there: OpenCL, Grand Central Dispatch, Xsan, all the boring stuff like Open Directory. Get off your ass and put that foundation in front of the right people and make them look.

You've got like twenty billion dollars in the bank. You know what that means? You could lose ten billion dollars and you'd still have ten billion dollars in the bank! Start being as aggressive with the Mac Pro ecosystem as you have been with the iPhone ecosystem. God knows you can afford it.

In defense of Final Cut Pro, it seems us folks who use it and are watching the other 2 A's do their thing on a fast track while Apple does their thing on whatever track makes sense to them, we need to take a breath and stop being so impatient and understand that even in version 10 we will still be bitching and moaning about something in the software that is lacking or doesn't work. The fact is it works pretty damn well now or none of us would be using it.

Whatever Apple is doing with FCP takes the time it takes to do it. I doubt seriously that it is because the powers at the top are distracted by iPad and iPhone and are not throwing any resources to the FCS team. As far as I know the team are still there working hard, and the next version will be released when it is ready to be released. In the meantime what you have now works just fine.

Michael Horton
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>In the meantime what you have now works just fine.

With the very greatest respect Michael, I think the issue is not one of user impatience but more an apparent lack of foresight or even perhaps understanding of the ProApps marketplace in recent years on the part of Apple. Their steadfastly loyal user base have been providing them regularly with massive amounts of feedback with regards to their short, mid and long term needs and wants and Apple have been quite astonishingly slow to react to that feedback in any meaningful way, if not (on occasion) arrogantly dismissive of that feedback.

Yes, without doubt, FCP did not suddenly stop functioning as before nor has it become obsolete overnight, but any constant lack of determined attention to a product and its users by any developer is not without eventual consequences. Hopefully Steve Bayes' unfortunate and palpable discomfort at the Supermeet yesterday will provide that necessary wake up call.

By the way, great live stream of the Supermeet event. Very much enjoyed the whole show. Kudos to all the presenters ( and yes, even Steve :-) )

Jeff's analysis and suggestions are bang on in my view. (Apple) El Jobso had to say something given that Adobe CS5 is threatening Apple's perceived hegemony in post software/hardware solutions. And let's not forget Apple and Adobe are now at war with each other.

He issued 3 sentences to a blogger. That's it.

I'm as guilty as most people who have been using Apple products for decades who often engage in boosterism. Jeff's and Grafixjoe's comments of late made me realize how out of step Apple is their post production clientele. When you place it in the context of where Apple has been concentrating their efforts over the past few years in developing their "new" closed ecosystem of appliances and applets, the market that we are in is becoming less and less important to Apple. It's important to wake up to that fact.

Remember 1996 when Mac users were scrambling to get spooled up on Windows machines and apps because we thought our platform was about to fade into oblivion? The circumstances are very different but the potential net result to the users could be the same.

I am not issuing a doomsday scenario. Just saying open your eyes as Jeff is implying.

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In the meantime what you have now works just fine.

Right Mike...it works NOW...but new developments by the "other 2 A's" could push Apple into the "we don't need to upgrade these apps anymore - not profitable" zone and when development falls behind, we all do because we set up our systems around FCP. This is not "complaining"...this is looking forward, trying to keep up and making sure our bread & butter is still around for us to eat.

Just something to think about.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Apple, across their entire eco-system is, create our own software to sell hardware. There's not the remotest chance that Jobs is going to change that. As I've said above, despite people's beliefs to the contrary, Apple is primarily a reactive company. They look at the market and have an innovative response.

All one has to do is look at the Android OS and HTC phones that run it and you'd think Apple has given up on the iPhone using the same reasoning. You know they're going to have some amazing hardware this summer to go along with OS 4.

The same with FCS. The market is leaping ahead and Apple will leap back. Given they're probably doing a major rewrite from code as old as Macromedia days, this is taking time.

That Jobs has been answering a number of emails lately around several Apple products indicates he's quite aware of what he needs to do in the market.

One might even point to the days of the near withdrawal of Avid from Mac as the shot that resulted in Apple's current strategy across all their products . . . which is that they will make the software that sells the hardware.

There's very good reasons why Avid and Adobe Premiere came back to Mac and it, at least in party, was because of Final Cut. By no means does this mean FCS and/or it's components will lead in features compared to the competitors but it is the hook that brings the fish and Apple knows this.

Apple will simply not rely solely on third party apps to sell Mac hardware. No way, no how, and it's self evident across their entire product line. It's a constant in their business/market philosophy.

>He issued 3 sentences to a blogger. That's it.

That's typical Steve Jobs. He rarely speaks much outside of a keynote.


FCP didn't stop. FCP 7 was a decent upgrade for its price. The fact that they slashed the price, meant they probably knew that neither SL or FCP 7 are really great upgrades for the end user, but they needed to pipe out the new infrastructure as fast as they can so we can have a better platform for future upgrades.

I guess our main peeve is that FCP is starting to lag behind, both in terms of features and outstanding bugs. I just hope it doesn't go the way of Shake- up in smoke (and I don't mean it in the autodesk sense of the word)



www.strypesinpost.com

Hi All --

I am not worried at all about FCP getting scuttled --

Every person I know that has a Mac - is using FCP --

Apple has made several thousand $$ from me for FCP --

The pro apps is what makes most people buy a mac --

Anybody can surf the web on a pc just fine -

All the the new towers and lap tops are not made to be web surfers -

I do wish apple would update the interface in FCP and get away from
the Grey and Darker Grey to show what is selected -- OucH -- Jay--

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.this is looking forward, trying to keep up and making sure our bread & butter is still around for us to eat.

I'd guess whatever the FCS team is doing is looking forward. Why on earth would they not be? It's got to be tough for them to see all these new releases from their competitors and I understand the impatience of FCS users, but I also feel that whatever they are doing is going to be awesome. It's just a matter of time and yes, we do all have time.

I doubt any FCS user is going to switch because of what they see in these new releases. Add to their too kit yes, switch, no.

Michael Horton
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I am definitely going to add Media Composer 5 to my system now that I can monitor with the MXO2 Mini. Since I'm mostly an offline editor anyways, that's all I need. But if you need to capture and output to tape, their Mojo and Nitris is still overpriced.

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

Onlining doesn't necessarily mean "going to tape". I online (finish / polish) all my pieces and Aspera or Digi Deliver the ProRes HQ FINAL files to Filmcore LA for distribution to the networks. I haven't used my Kona Card an a long time (except for monitoring). I think I am going to sell my Kona LHe with the breakout box (KL-Box). I just do not use it anymore.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

All my long form broadcast shows still require HDCam outputs. Sounds like things are different for spots and short forms though.

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

Filmcore puts them to HDCAM for us for distribution. We don't own an HDCAM deck and cannot justify $1000 per day rental.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

It's true, there is more and more tapeless work going on these days. I was just talking to a friend last night who was wrestling with the problem of whether to upgrade his Avids to Nitris or stick with Mojo. One of his editors, hearing the NAB news, suggesting eschewing both and going with the MXO2 Mini solution for monitoring. They do commercials, and it's been a lot of Red-in, MPEG-2 for DG Fastchannel-out lately.

Trouble is, they still do plenty of tape-based work. Offline rushes come in on Digibeta or SR for a substantial fraction of their jobs. So while they don't need to do tape I/O that much, they still need it sometimes, which means they still need I/O hardware.

At least one might infer that "awesome" will not include Blu-ray.
[9to5mac.com]

The fundamental problem with Jobs thinking is that many clients may not have the bandwidth to play HD online. Some clients believe distributing a physical disc will more likely be viewed than sending a link to an online file.

Jobs has made other decisions that some of us may be unhappy with as well. No Express slot on 15" MacBookPros is another such. 17" is far too cumbersome as a "portable" computer on location. Those of us who'd use eSata, SxS, MXO2, firewire card, and other such devices that plug into the port, have been handicapped.

I just don't think any of that means Apple is not driven towards selling Macs to media professionals. I suspect the next FCS will be awesome and we will be driven to buy 12 core MacPros and 17" MacBookPros to take advantage of what it offers.

I just sent an a$$load of game capture footage to SPIKE TV for a Broadcast TV show they are cutting on an Avid and guess what they took? 1920x1080 / 29.97 / H.264 (full quality - no Data Rate Constriction) via Digi Delivery. Compact file size, full gorgeous resolution (to the eye, that is). WIN / WIN for everybody.

Believe it or not, I push this technology on all our clients. They all want tape, but when I tell them I can get it to them same day in original digital resolution, they are hot for it. Now, Showtime, SPIKE and Filmcore all take digital files from us. We will be pushing more and more clients to go Digital Delivery as 2010 goes on. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you don't "settle" for delivering on Tape...take the initiative and speak to your clients about efficiencies. They wil respect you for it and will be back for more )

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.