[smacktoward]

> For the duration of the company's existence, one of their biggest customer segments has been the creative industry

I would have thought the Final Cut Pro X debacle (http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/professional-video...) would have served adequate notice to those folks that Apple doesn't consider them an important market segment anymore...

[Ryanmf]

Maybe. I hope not. All the filmmakers/editors I know still use a previous version of Final Cut, many of them really like some of the features of Final Cut X (syncing is apparently dead easy, nearly automagic), and remain hopeful that Apple will pull it together and address their needs in future updates.

I don't know if you have used/use Final Cut 6/7, but it is a phenomenally ugly, often poor performing, generally unintuitive piece of software. I can see where the motivation for a full reboot would stem from.

Now, a reboot that involves consolidating formerly modular panes into a single window when the target market typically works on two, three or more displays is just dumb. A reboot that was, as a practical matter, 0% backwards-compatible may have been necessary, but if it could have been avoided, it should have been. But buried under all the mistakes, I think there was some genuine good intent (yes, I know I'm grasping at straws).

I primarily work with music, and you don't need to be as involved as I am or attend as many shows as I do to know that for any artist/band that uses a laptop on stage, the MacBook Pro is the de facto standard. The same applies to Mac Pros in studios (although those boxes may be going the way of the Dodo as well).

None of this necessarily makes a difference to Apple; the new features in Mountain Lion which focus on Chinese web portals and social networks serve as a reminder that the emerging Chinese middle class is likely as important a segment to Apple as any, and the number of potential customers in that group already dwarfs the ranks of every DJ, producer, sound engineer, and electronic musician on earth.

Still, it would be a great disappointment to me and many others if Apple were to abandon such a loyal group of customers who helped them reach this point.

[jesseendahl]

FYI, the latest update to Final Cut Pro X was a major update, adding impressive multicam support which uses "audio waveforms from the different cameras to sync them together. The audio doesn't have to be the final production track and can be used for syncing purposes only,"[1] chroma keying, media relinking, import of photoshop layered graphics, support for XML 1.1, and beta broadcast support. This new update has an average review score of 4.5 stars Mac App Store.[2] While Final Cut Pro X started out weak, it looks like it's becoming very solid.

[1] http://www.tuaw.com/2012/01/31/apple-updates-final-cut-pro-x... [2] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/final-cut-pro/id424389933?mt=...

[batista]

It's the opposite. Taking the time AND money to rewrite the old Final Cut Pro codebase from scratch is an indication that Apple is pretty much dedicated to their Pro apps.

Unlike, say, Adobe, that merely piles incremental bloat upon incremental bloat, and calls it a "new version of the suite".

The complains are from people that:

1) see a black interface as some kind of iMovie-fication (iMovie is black, so they have dumded down FCP).

2) Think professional software means convoluted GUI (they made things simpler, so they have dumbed it down)

3) Expect a rewrite of a 10+ year old codebase to have feature parity with the old version from day one.

4) Expect a rewrite of a 10+ year old codebase, with the intention to support modern movie making practices, to also cater for obsolete practices that the old version covered (like tape editing).

[Ryanmf]

As I indicated above, I think the reboot of Final Cut was well intended.

Having said that, I've had far too many conversations with far too many professional filmmakers and editors (I'm talking "multiple all-nighters every week editing multicam RED; invitations to Cannes; contracts to produce music videos for multi-platinum selling artists and promos for Fortune 100 companies" professional) about the weaknesses of Final Cut X to have much regard for the opinion you've shared here.

Ultimately, if the intended users are dissatisfied, then Apple missed the mark, any rationalizations from armchair analysts notwithstanding.

By the way, you left a complaint off your list: Zero compatibility with project files from previous Final Cut versions. Hope you've got some free time to recapture everything you've ever shot.

[batista]

Ultimately, if the intended users are dissatisfied, then Apple missed the mark

Not really. System 9 Users also complained about OS X 10. How it wasn't like OS 9, how it missed some features, how it was unstable etc. But putting a nice foundation down is better than giving instant gratification to your users in the long run.

By the way, you left a complaint off your list: Zero compatibility with project files from previous Final Cut versions. Hope you've got some free time to recapture everything you've ever shot.

Or just use the old version for your old projects, and only move to the new one for new stuff?

What kind of Pro jumps to a new version of a core tool anyway as soon as it it released? Most actuals Pros keep their setups steady for many years. Which is why I think most of the noise is from low production tinkerers, that already use both FC and Premiere etc.