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Apple responds to the open letter to Tim Cook about Final Cut Pro

Scott Simmons
Apple responds to the open letter to Tim Cook about Final Cut Pro 2

A couple of weeks ago I was the first to publish An open letter to Tim Cook about Final Cut Pro, signed by editors and post-production pros around the world. This was a letter and petition put together by a group of passionate Final Cut Pro users in hopes that they might persuade the Apple executive decision makers to put a bit more marketing and development muscle behind Final Cut Pro.

In the month that the letter and petition has been live it’s gained some 500 signatures, over 200 likes and countless other thoughts and discussions. If nothing else, a letter like this is always a good way to generate discussion and I would not be shocked if it got a few of the FCP-phobic editors out there to give it a look.

I didn’t expect Apple to issue any kind of response but they have.

Apple Response to “Final Cut Pro in TV and Film” Open Letter

To the authors of the recent open letter regarding Final Cut Pro in the TV and film industry: the creative community has always been so important to us at Apple, and we’re grateful for your feedback.

There have been many compelling projects created to date with Final Cut Pro — from Hollywood movies and high-profile commercials, to major television shows and impressive work by the biggest names in online content creation.

While we believe we have plans in place to help address your important feature requests, we also recognize the need to build on those efforts and work alongside you to help support your film and TV projects and keep you posted on important updates. This includes taking the following steps:

  • Launching new training products and Apple-authorized certifications for pro video starting this month with our partner Future Media Concepts.
  • Establishing a panel of industry experts for regular consultations, starting this summer.
  • Expanding the content and frequency of Final Cut Pro workshops for major film and television productions.We would love to work with you to help support your film and TV projects, and we will continue to explore opportunities that allow us to better connect and foster important dialogue with our devoted community of users going forward.

I applaud Apple for this response as it’s normally not in the nature of Apple as a company to issue such statements and replies. It’s not unheard of but it’s not the norm. I’m surprised they issued the statement but I like what I see especially this bullet point:

  • Establishing a panel of industry experts for regular consultations, starting this summer.

First, that’s speaking about something happening in the future so there are future plans afoot. Second, it’s listening to what I hope are editors working in the trenches, day in and day out. Those hands in the dirt editors are often the group that tends to get ignored when working on future plans and updates. It’s these folks that hit the workflow pain-points most often. It’s these folks that know an NLE and how it behaves in real world situations even better than the engineers. In a world where NLE makers are often courting the YouTubers and the TikTokers of the world listening to those core customers is important.

And hot on the heels of Apple’s response to the open letter we also get a small Final Cut Pro update.

This is a maintenance release that thankfully should fix a bug that caused issues when adding transitions by drag and drop.  Check your Mac App Store!

 

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