How Apple could fix Final Cut Pro X, in 187 words

In 4 words: “Sorry. Will fix later.”

“help you work faster open up new…” I think you forgot a word there. Make it 188.

“help you work faster open up new…” I think you forgot a word there. Make it 188.

Haven’t they already said all that except for “and meanwhile we’re going to continue selling and supporting Final Cut Pro 7 until at least the end of 2012. Best wishes, Apple.”?

“We’ll fix it in post.” - 

Close but not quite.  Apple obviously thinks some crucial post production features are obsolete, and does not plan to develop them.  Actually that’s not quite true.  Apple views those features as unimportant to FCPX’s intended audience:  The hundreds of thousands of DSLR photographers out there that are going to want to start building video into their offered services.  

What Apple needs to do is just come out and say this.  ”We view that the Pro Video Market, much like the Enterprise market, is not something we should focus on as the company heads in a new direction”.   Right now they are jerking us around with their claims that they are still committed to Pro Video.  There is no way that that could be true with the product that they released and the way that they released it, in addition to the deprecated state they have left XSAN in with the discontinuation of XSERVES.  

This Video Editor see’s the writing on the wall, and unfortunately understands that he has to find a solution elsewhere.  

How about a freaking source monitor? Are they going to fix FCP-X by making it not FCP-X. FCPX looks like iMovie. No keyboard commands. Horrible media management. No multiuser support? No thank you. 

It has flaws that are critical in the basis of it’s design. Patches won’t fix it.

I will be happy a year from now when this is all over and we will all be able to laugh at how so may “professionals” panicked, whined and cried publicly. 

Unlike editing a video, software takes time… a looooong time. So stop panicing.. This is not an upgrade. Its a ground up development of a completely new platform that will be poised to take advantage of the future.

FCP7 still works and no one is stopping you using it… In fact up until a week ago, everyone was just going on their merry away.

They have released the first version of FCP X and its feature incomplete for 10% of the users.. They have committed to continue building the product out. While disappointing for you, its a sound strategy. Let them test it on muppets like me (consumer wannabe), I’ll iron out the bugs and in a year you’ll get all your features back (and some).

Gosh you somehow think Apple owes you a living.. 

Dear Apple,we are shocked, shocked, that you haven’t got copy and paste in your new iPhone. No removable battery, still? Surely all professionals know that a removable battery is vital as a feature for the professional market in smartphones… 
We believe you don’t have a plan, as it isn’t like you to incrementally add features over time, and improve the rough edges of an upgraded product. 
We just can’t wait. Seriously. We’ve actually forgotten how to use our current iPhone. We don’t want to use it. We’ve seen the new iPhone. Please apologise to us, for improving the product, with a completely new version, and the intention of adding more to it as and when you can. 
We simply don’t believe you until Jobs himself on bended knee says that this was a worse mistake than MobileMe. Product Managers Schmanagers – we don’t want to hear via Pogue. How can we trust you when you say you on record that you intend to restore certain specific features as a top priority?

An alternate perspective:  Up until a week ago, I was upset with a lot of the bugs, shortcomings etc. in FCP7 and had been waiting for years for a significant upgrade.  Then FCPX was released siginifying another year or two of waiting and a possible change of focus for Apple.  Also, didn’t Adobe already do a rewite of Premiere Pro to bring it to 64bit?  

Apple doesn’t have to say any of this. It is completely obvious already.

You can still download QuickTime 7 from Apple after more than 2 years of QuickTime X. You can still download the “old” iMovie.

Of course they will add new features to X. Of course there will be a different point at which adoption makes sense for each user.

Underneath all of this, the real complaint is editors don’t want editing to be made simpler and more approachable because they think it devalues their skills. (It does not, because we make more video faster than we make more editors.) But you can’t complain about Final Cut getting more democratized. That was always its main feature.

the issue really, isn’t FCPX’s shortcomings…it’s the fact that starting last Tuesday, you can no longer BUY FCP7. So you can’t really compare that to Quicktime 7. If Apple had left FCP7 up for sale, you’d probably hear about half the complaining you hear. What do pros needing to add workstations soon do about new FCP7 seats? Looks like their only options are to pirate it or switch to AVID or Premier Pro.

They could have simply left the ‘Pro’ out of the name of the product and avoided all of this.

Ya, no. Saying “we are sorry” when you really didn’t do anything wrong is the absolute worst thing a company can do. It gives so much legitimacy to complaints no matter how trivial or petty.

[Insert Deity] save us if everything Apple does gets turned into an iPhone toy. Lock down on iPhone was okay because after all it’s a phone and we can’t have it crashing mid-call etc etc. So now 10.7 and Mac Application store and FCS are getting the exclude via lock-down or as jobs calls it the “focus” treatment.

A ’difference’ is customarily between two things or states or ideas.

No one is complaining about the UI, or about throwing the edit space open to others – as you say, that’s what FCP did when I bought it in 2000. It can’t deliver the outputs I need, and I get paid for things I deliver, not the joy of my cutting experience. And I like to work with supported tools and know that my investment in workflow development is going to be relevant, and that whatever future tools I use will open my projects as they come in for reversioning, which is an important part of our business. 

You might be able to download QT7, but no one can sell you FCP Studio. QT Pro might have been moderately useful for some tasks, and QT X is a lame duck. Now imagine if QT7 wasn’t available, or better, imagine Rosetta had never been written and your new Intel Mac couldn’t run anything you’d just bought… so you had to keep the G4 running in the corner, even though its ports had died and the only way to get a document out was to print it and retype it. That’s where we are with this.

” I demand that FCP be able to crash!”

Basically, if you run a shop with a Final Cut workflow and want to add an extra workstation (for, say, an additional team member) you’re now out of luck. You can’t legally buy an additional copy. Those copies up on Amazon etc are going to be running out soon (Apple has withdrawn copies from sale from any official dealer). 

If you think that FCPX has somehow magically acquired crash-proofness, then you’re very much mistaken

Sure, they’ll run out eventually, but just exactly how often does that scenario (which I actually mentioned specifically in my own comment) actually happen? And amazon is not the only place you can still buy copies, just the most obvious.

Put another way, if you’re actually interested in solving this extremely rare problem, there are plenty of solutions (even, heaven forfend, installing it on another workstation without a license). But it seems like most people are more interested in throwing a temper tantrum, and well then there’s not much to be done.

I am curious why all these amateur editors come out and spew facts about a program they do not understand. Everyone wants to say that this is not an upgrade, sure that is what Apple said, but when you release a program by the same company with the same name I’d have to say by definition, that is an upgrade.

To say “its feature incomplete for 10% of the users” and “let them test it on muppets like you (consumer wannabe)” is utterly ridiculous. First of all it is feature incomplete in general because most of the basic functions needed to use this program to make a living with something other than a DSLR and web output are gone. And to say that we should allow the “consumer wannabe iron out the bugs” which they do not understand are missing is crazy. Thats like letting a 10 year old kid give advice to a NASCAR team about how to make a car go faster and stop blowing the engine.

My last point on this topic is that if Apple does not fix this for the pro’s they will quickly find that consumers are not willing to pay $300 for an editing application that they still don’t use all the features and can’t figure out because it is still complicated. It will be the end of FCP and Adobe will gladly take their business. I predict that FCPx will not be used in Hollywood and they will see their market share in that market go from 20% to 0% in 2 years and it will hurt their bottom line.

Watch what this editor thought about FCPX
http://www.vimeo.com/25713743

Not from Amazon.  From three janky Marketplace sellers.  Apple pulled it from all authorized dealers, so stop responding to everyone with a claim that they can still buy the old version.

avid is waiting !!!!!!!