I want to believe the best, but I also get worried about the lake of Mac Pro updates. Does Steve think that all we need is an iMac, as editors that is
Posted by Synaptic Light on 05/18 at 11:27 PM
For years Adobe users must have asked, like I did, “Why does Adobe have to be continually behind Apple’s curve?!”
At least Adobe gave us the small but regular signs of hope in their updates. Having that faith was important to me when I thought about whether I was wasting my time on an NLE that may not survive.
I’ve sometimes considered adopting FCP to use in addition to Adobe. Nowadays I would need to see the same regular, even if small, updates before I’d be willing to invest valuable time humping a new learning curve, not to mention the investment in FCP, updates, plugins, hardware.
The motives of longtime FCP users for keeping faith is understood; they’ve invested a lot of their valuable time learning it. If Apple thinks it can entice me, a potential new adopter, into adopting it without giving me the small, encouraging signs that Adobe did, it is mistaken.
For any good businessman which Jobs certainly is, it would seem to make sense to discontinue FCP. Today, Apple’s market capitalization is 229+ billion bucks. That’s 46 billion more that GE! It’s only about 20 billion less than Microsoft!
Apple didn’t get to that position by selling FCP. I assume they at least broke even on FCP’s R&D and even made a profit. But whatever profit must surely be infinitesimally small compared to the iGadget market. Didn’t I hear about Apple recently laying off lots of FCP developers? I assume that many a Wall Street analyst and investor would probably cheer Apple for dumping FCP as a distraction.
I am reminded of certain other fanatical religions: the way to keep the believers faithful is apparently to deny them signs…
Won’t work for me. Let’s see a sign.
Posted by wsmith on 05/19 at 08:04 AM
Yeah, I read that posting too, and I don’t believe it.
I wrote the review for the latest Final Cut Studio for MacWorld last year - always a lenghty process to write for them - and when someone asked me what the big new features were the other day, I remembered new ProRes, limited Blu-ray support and…drew a blank. Yeah, they added the Share feature which is pretty cool, but everything else was kinda “feh.”
I also wrote the review for iMovie when it got its drastic update a couple of years ago.
One of the things that stuck with me from my talks with Apple folks was the realization they had that video editing is just NOT a consumer application. It is too hard, takes too long, and no matter how much work you put into it, is just NOT going to be a “killer app” that drives platform sales.
So that’s why I call bogus on this latest report.
I far more likely scenario:
Apple Doesn’t Love Us Anymore.
there was a chart published a few weeks ago showing where Apple’s money came from - iPhone was by far the single largest source. And ALL Apple software was something like a single digit percentage of Apple income. That includes OS sales/upgrades, iLife, Pro Apps, all of it. So FCP makes up what, maybe 1% of Apple’s income? MAYBE 2% at MOST?
“But FCP is just the dongle for a Mac sale!” you say.
OK, OK, true enough - that was certainly Apple’s strategy in the past.
But look at Mac sales - iPhone is about 5 1/2 billion in sales, whereas ALL Mac sales about maybe 4 1/2 billion (I’m just eyeballing the chart).
Where should Apple spend their effort? Developing extremely complicated software to sell some more seats of loss leader priced software, that they hope will drive sales of their higher end but still relatively low margin, never-gonna-be-as-profitable-as-iHardware pro systems? You know - the ones that are just marked up bits of Intel and their operating system.
OR
they can put that same money, that same engineering effort, into iPhone/iPad development. Not only is it a simpler development environment with less complicated requirements that don’t require as much industry specific knowledge, I’d bet the programmers are cheaper, and the ROI even better.
Where do YOU think Apple would get the best bang for their buck - a couple hundred grand in developer effort to do things like make FCP’s media management work better, a true 4:4:4 processing engine, better GPU support, full 64 bit support application support?
Or making the iPad even easier to work with, enabling more awesome touch based APIs, or getting another hour’s worth of battery life via optimizations? Or whatever it is they are working on next. Or maybe making the developer environment better, smoother, easier, better documented.
How many hundreds of thousands of dollars of increased sales would come from the effort into FCS, vs more likely millions of dollars ROI on iPad development?
iPad/iPhone ain’t there yet - but something along those lines is clearly the future of consumer computing device usage. Not only that, but Apple owns ALL of it, and can make MUCH better margins.
I’m not happy that Apple is going this way from a video guy perspective, but I certainly can’t blame them for doing so - they are in business to make money - and the money ain’t in media creation these days! We’ve all seen what is going on with production and post budgets, and the future does NOT look bright in that regard.
But as an Apple shareholder, I don’t blame them at all.
Look at what iPhone/iPad has done for Apple’s stock value, vs what Final Cut has done.
NO contest.
Apple doesn’t love (video content folks) anymore. Sure, they like us, and they’ll keep talking to us, and I’m sure there are many hardworking, dedicated folks on the Pro Apps team - I’ve met and talked to a bunch of them, and they want what we want.
But will they be able to get the financial and mindshare backing internally to make it happen?
Note Apple’s pullout not just of NAB, but all tradeshows. Note no press conference for the new laptops that came out at NAB. Note the relatiely weak update, given how long it has been since FCP 6, that FCP 7 was. Was FCP 7 broken? Not by a longshot (but then again, they didn’t fix a lot of things that had been dangling for a looooooong time - media management, 4:4:4 processing, etc etc etc).
But we’re not their favorite anymore - not by a longshot.
-mike
-mike
Posted by Mike Curtis on 05/19 at 04:54 PM
Just read Phil’s thing - yeah, I buy the “migrate the good stuff up AND down” argument.
I’d quibble with the Pro Apps strategy though - I think most of the editing getting done these days is viable on 1-2 year old hardware, with the exception of new GPU accelerated stuff. Which is great, but until really smooth, not a Must Have.
But even if they generate $150M as explained, is that the best use of resources? I HOPE Apple is doing some heavy re-write stuff and that is why we see so little forward progress.
But my comments about ROI and dev effort I think are still applicable, even in light of this.
And it might explain why it is taking so long for this upgrade path to take. This is Avid’s chance - editing is central to Avid, peripheral to Apple. Apple is distracted by the potential of iPhone/iPad/consumer future of income for them - great for them. Avid’s chance to really get on it, and based on Media Composer v5, they are Getting It, even if it is taking them a year or more longer than I’d like to see.
If they can get to GPU accelerated CC/FX and run on Kona cards in 6-18 months, I think they could regain the crown.
-mike
Posted by Mike Curtis on 05/19 at 05:08 PM
...if Avid can maintain competitive pricing while making those changes, that is.
-mike
Posted by Mike Curtis on 05/19 at 05:09 PM
....aaaaaaaand further evidence of how Apple keeps their heart warm:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/20/analyst-apple-selling-more-ipads-than-macs-at-the-moment/
Now, obviously the gross income and profit margins are different, but considering how iPads are a brand new product outselling (by unit count, not the more important gross income nor profits derived from metrics) traditional Macs, the handwriting isn’t too hard to read on this one.
-mike
Posted by Mike Curtis on 05/20 at 02:16 PM
But as Phil Hodgetts articles says’s, you’ve only got to get one oscar nominated movie edited on FCP and that’s shifts a vast load of macs into a well healed industry and by osmosis sell shed load more macs.
Also I don’t think Apple are stupid enough to rely solely on one income stream.
Phil Hodgetts article made a lot of sense to me and to be honest - we have no idea really what Apple are upto - and anyone who does is under an NDA
Posted by MichaelSanders on 05/20 at 02:31 PM
Apple makes its money on selling gadgets (appliances) and not on computers and their software. Their biggest revenue stream is the iStore with iTunes and all their iPhone and now iPad apps. If they had wanted FCP to be a larger part of the professional editing scene, they would have made it able to run on PCs as well as Macs. This would provide a large new group of people who might try FCP and even purchase it as their NLE of choice. Apple’s proprietory attitude has made FCP less popular regardless of the quality of the software. This strategy has paid off big time in their new cash cow. They sell you the device (iPhone, iPad, etc.) and then control and profit from selling the apps for these devices. While not too many people own a Mac, millions own Apple’s devices and are tied to the iStore and will continue to generate huge profits for Apple. FCP will never generate that kind of profit for Apple. Where would you put your money and research if you were Steve Jobs? Would you continue to develope a software that has reached it’s saturation level and was producing little new revenue, or would you put it into more gadgets and apps for those gadgets where the real profit potential lies? I don’t think Apple will kill FCP like they did Shake, but I also don’t think they’ll make major upgrades to the software. Adobe’s latest version of their suite (CS5) might take a bite out of some of FCP’s share of the professional market. I always felt that FCP was “born” from Premier and now it looks as if it has come full circle. My best friends own Macs and the FCP Suite and more than one of them is considering moving to either
Premier Pro or Avid. Both can run on a Mac and one froend os even considering leaving Apple alltogether and getting a PC for his next editing station. If I was using FCP as my primary editing system, I’d probably think seriously about making the switch too. Hey, you don’t have to give up your iPhone.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/22 at 06:29 AM
I think you nailed it, Mike…
Apple is in the process of becoming a device company, not a software company - FCP, and by association, the high-end machines that run FCP, aren’t their bread and butter…
Apple/FCP’s only major advantage left is open hardware - if Avid decides to break that open, it’s a whole new ballgame.
Posted by Christian Glawe on 05/23 at 12:57 AM
“Also I don’t think Apple are stupid enough to rely solely on one income stream.”
Me neither ... they’ve got iPhones, iPads, iMacs, Macbooks, Macbook Pros and iTunes music store, iTunes app store, the new iAd platform ... just to name a few.
Posted by Scott Simmons on 05/23 at 09:32 AM
DVDSP is pretty awful. It cant even cope with H26 imports, sometimes the compression is awful (definitely transcode using compressor first) and no blu ray - whats that all about then.
Posted by video production uk on 07/15 at 02:34 PM
