7 ms·

Why Apple built Final Cut Pro X

105 points by mynameisraj 15y ago

zppx 15y ago
Can someone write about what's going on? Is it the same type of stuff that happened to the XServe line?
- erikpukinskis 15y ago
  There are various issues. One of them is that FCPX doesn't suport tape decks as well. That feels more like what Apple did with USB and floppy drives: jettison tech on the way out while it was still useful in some contexts. Jobs has said many times he is only interested in technology in the ascendency, and tapes are definitely not that. It also doesn't support a few pro workflows I don't understand (multiple camera editing, etc)... seemingly because the new interface is a radical departure. It uses a single, treelike track instead of multiple tracks, and doesn't easily map to these workflows. This to me feels like an "Innovator's Dilemma" situation: the new interface does many things overwhelmingly better, but has important regressions. The regressions will be fixed or outweighed in time. For now (perhaps not for long) other software, including the previous version of Final Cut, compares favorably.
  - protomyth 15y ago
    Multi camera editing is coming, and the tape deck stuff looks like it will be handled by a company that will do it better than Apple (although a plugin costing > 2x the program is kinda weird). The sound export stuff is a great biz opportunity for a plugin writer. They needed to rebuild for 64-bit. This is what you get when you start over. I expect that patches and new plugins will turn it around by next year. Lost in all this is the incredible Motion 5 at $50. Learning that and selling some templates (with decent Parameter Rigs) for Final Cut Pro X users would seem to be a nice way to make some extra cash.
- dagw 15y ago
  The latest version of Final Cut dropped a bunch of features that are vital to pros and focused more on features that are useful advanced amateurs. Basically if you used Final Cut to edit home movies and amateur film productions then the new version is vastly improved. If on the other hand you used Final Cut to earn a living editing feature length movies and television productions, then the new version is a bit of a complete disaster. I guess Apple figured that there wasn't enough money in the pro market, and decided to double down on the enthusiast and advanced amateur market.
  - jmelloy 15y ago
    Also, they've been working on FCPX for two years, and needed to ship. Even if it wasn't quite ready for pro usage.
    - sciurus 15y ago
      Why ship a product that doesn't meet the needs of your customers?
      - whatusername 15y ago
        Isn't that the general philosophy of HN? Fail fast and iterate until you hit customer fit.
    - sciurus 15y ago
      Why ship a product that doesn't meet the needs of your customers?
  - slimfiv 15y ago
    ... and focused more on features that are useful advanced amateurs I actually don't think this is quite right. I'll quote Gary Adcock's Macworld review: "Most of the features introduced in FCP X are welcome and badly needed. Some are long overdue. Still, others are positively jarring and require a change in mindset to appreciate." There is no doubt that Apple made it unusable for high-end pros (for the time being, at least) but I feel they also added many things that high-end pros would have really appreciated, had they been able to use it seriously. So it's not quite as simple as "amatueurs only" (even if you're talking about advanced amateurs.)
hmottestad 15y ago
It makes sense. With all the great competitors why would Apple throw money after aging software. With Adobe you can work in any of Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere. With FCP it's just that little bit harder. So if you can't match the features of your competitors, make one that will outperform everyone. Essentially: Speed, simplicity, beauty, and most importantly the illusion that the software is doing your work for you.
kenjackson 15y ago
If this is Apple's thinking, I think they're in serious trouble. It sounds to me they're taking how they build the iPhone and iPad and applying it to FCP, and it doesn't work. There are two types of people: People who pay for video editing software and those that don't. I actually paid for Adobe Elements a few years back. It was painful, but I needed it for a specific reason. But I seriously doubt I will ever pay again (unless it's $2.99 or something). Most people will be fine with iMovie or Windows Live Movie Maker. It does 99% of what you need and braindead simple. My wife (and her friends) regularly record GBs of video each week. The problem is that nothing in FCPX fixes their core issues -- most revolve around video management, and not actual editing. There are amateur video editors out there, but I don't think its a growing market. It's not small, but I think Apple is making a poor bet if they think the millions of ppl creating video with their phones and cameras is going to buy this product.
- ugh 15y ago
  In the end it doesn’t really matter, though. Final Cut’s success or failure is inconsequential to Apple’s success or failure. That might not have been true in 1999 (when Final Cut Pro was first released) but it certainly is today. Apple’s video software people may be in serious trouble, the rest of Apple is not.
- rdouble 15y ago
  there are amateur video editors out there, but I don't think its a growing market. It's not small, but I think Apple is making a poor bet if they think the millions of ppl creating video with their phones and cameras is going to buy this product. This is quite possibly the most wrong comment I've ever read on hacker news. every kid on earth with a skateboard or snowboard or BMX bike will be buying this software as soon as they can afford it.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    Funny you say that because my neighbor has a half-pipe (apparently, that's how it's spelled) in his backyard and I've never heard his son talk about editing video with FCP. And he actually does have a fair bit of video, as he uses a helmet cam. But again, for him its usually management (I actually recommended something I saw called Project Odessa to him -- not sure if he's using it though). He does super simple titling, and on occassion a soundtrack. But he doesn't need something like FCPX. And if he did use it, he wouldn't buy it. Give him a copy, and I'm sure he'd use it (if he had a Mac), but free does everything he needs. This isn't to say that some won't buy it (clearly the singular of anecdote isn't data), but I think its like non-free and non-pro music mixing software. Sure there is a market for it, but its just not huge.
glhaynes 15y ago
My guess is that they don't really want to be in the pro apps business. Their pro apps were built or acquired for platform-strategic reasons during a time that the company's future was a fraction as stable as it is now and they don't really fit with the focus of the company. But it'd be tough on a number of levels to outright cancel such a successful product as Final Cut Pro. And it's beneficial for them to have a stable of very capable media app developers that help drive design of and exercise system frameworks like AVFoundation and GCD and provide code/expertise that trickles down into media apps that are more aligned with the company's focus and main customers. And I think they do think there's more profit to be made from a much larger audience of prosumer/pro-but-non-top-10-blockbuster-movie-editors. Bet they're right, too.
- slimfiv 15y ago
  I'd say it's not that they don't want to be in the pro apps business per se, so much as they don't want to be a software contractor for big studios, which is what most pro app companies inevitably become. Apple wanted to make big changes, but mostly, big studios / production houses don't want big changes. Avid probably couldn't make a radically different Media Composer even if they wanted. The risk of alienating current customers is too great, and the resources required to maintain multiple products targeted to the same market are too many.
  - jinushaun 15y ago
    Wow. Makes so much sense I simply have to comment on it to "bump it up" so others can see it. Reminds me of what Apple did to the smartphone market. While everyone was busy chasing the enterprise market, Apple built a smartphone for the consumer market. Enterprise customers are consumers too and they brought their "consumer" phone to work. Yada yada... Apple disrupts the enterprise smartphone market.
- inkaudio 15y ago
  You don't get the "prosumer/pro-but-non-top-10-blockbuster-movie-editors" without being in the pro apps business. Moreover their pro apps fit the focus of the company, a high end creative company. It's hard to market pro apps to aspiring professionals and prosumers if pros are not using it. Part of Apple's marketing campaign for their pro apps is to show how pros are using their software.
aarontait 15y ago
This version of Final Cut Pro X is the Mac OS X Cheetah of Final Cut. It's going to be an early-adopter platform for the first year or so until Apple adds the necessary features that are required to bring back the 80% of pros that are up in arms right now. This is a marketing fuck-up plain and simple. When Apple transited from OS 9 to OS X they communicated their plans very clearly. This time around they kept a despotic silence about their direction and reasoning.
radley 15y ago
My problem with the change in FCP is that it's following an unpleasant downgrade pattern on their platform. QT 7 was far more useful than QTX. 10.6 & earlier Mail is far more robust than 10.7 will be. And it goes on. Apple's really pushing a premium consumer biz model, leaving professionals in the uncomfortable position of not having a professional platform.
- podperson 15y ago
  I think that the response of pros to FCPX is understandable but also wrong. If FCPX were the first word processor, they're complaining that it doesn't come with liquid paper and two color ribbons. The way in/out points and compound clips work in FCPX is simply ridiculously awesome -- it's kind of what After Effects tries to do with compound clips implemented in a realtime modeless manner. Was Apple insensitive (e.g. by halting FC Studio sales the moment it released FCPX)? You bet. Did it bungle the PR? No question. Is FCPX a non-pro tool? Pro tools are tools pros use. I have no doubt some pros will use FCPX and some FCPX users will turn pro. Will a lot of FCP7 users cling to the old ways or switch to Premiere or Avid or whatever? Probably.
  - foobarbazoo 15y ago
    "The way in/out points and compound clips work in FCPX is simply ridiculously awesome" You mean, the way it forgets the in/out points you set on a clip? Yeah, I LOVE that. So much more fun to re-trim each and every clip every time you click on it. Huge timesaver. /sarc
    - podperson 15y ago
      Obviously I do not mean that, but your point is well-taken.
- cageface 15y ago
  Creative professionals have been a cornerstone of Apple's business for many years now but the signs all point to Apple's abandonment of this market. It's understandable from a business standpoint; their consumer business is far more profitable, but a lot of tears are going to be shed over this. They've let Logic fall far behind the competition since they acquired it too.
virtica 15y ago
I have to ask. When a newbie goes to the Appstore looking for video editing software and they see the bad rating, who is actually going to buy the software. Plain and simple, I think that Apple just blew this one.
leandrod 15y ago
Seem to be ðe same idea behind Gnome.
asnyder 15y ago
Interesting, looks just like Cyberlink's PowerDirector.
floppydisk 15y ago
The article doesn't say much beyond the speculation already running rampant in the blogosphere. "Apple doesn't care about the pros", "They are a hardware company so they just want to sell boxes" and so forth. What I think the article did miss is the recent FAQ announcement by Apple detailing where they intend to take the software from here. I'm not a video editor, nor do I play one on TV, so I can't speak to how that addresses the wants of the pro audience, but they are at least making an attempt to explain how they will be incorporating pro needs into future patches. How that turns out, is a completely different question.
- mtw 15y ago
  you miss the overall trend: Apple phased out the XSAN hardware, XServe, they terminated Shake, one of the most advanced fx creator in the industry. That's consistent over the years. What's obvious is that Apple cares about creatives (design consultants, video freelancers etc.) but do not care about corporate video producers.
ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago
I used to work in the post-production industry here in Chicago, specifically as an editor. I can't think of any well known commercial post-houses that abandoned Avid for Final Cut Pro completely. I know plenty of shops that USE FCP along with Avid, but the risk was always too great to fully abandon a platform that was proven to work (most of the time). I can't speak for feature film editors, but virtually all of the commercial film editors I know still, to this day, use Avid for most of their projects. Editors are a finicky bunch, and I can certainly see Apple realizing that to truly compete in that market, it's all or nothing. The problem with FCP was always the uncertainty of it, hence the reason Avid is still in use at most shops, despite the fact that editors love to bash it. As time marches on, I can see where FCP might, yet again, be at the forefront of innovation. The problem is, busy editors don't REALLY want innovation. They want proven systems that work. I think Apple made the right choice.
gcb 15y ago
That post is very obnoxious. it mentions why apple won't do several things, and make it seems cool while not doing it, but fail to tell one thing it bothers to actually do. At the end of the read all i know is it doesn't have features, it doesn't support any format... but it does it well so because of that I should buy apple. I don't buy it.
happywolf 15y ago
The author left Apple in 2008 while the FCP X project just started, I don't think he is the best person to know 'Why Apple built FCP X'.
scelerat 15y ago
It seems to me that the ascendancy of the Mac in the last ten years has a lot to do with them being in the "pro space" -- specifically software and web development pro space -- and being one of the best. The geeks, that is, the mavens and influencers, folks whom others when to for advice about what computer to buy, were buying Macs because it really was such a nice environment. It still is. Their strategy for ipod too reflects this as well: target the well-heeled, early adopters, people who like to chatter about their toys. Make the brand desirable through organic PR -- that is, build a truly desirable product even if it's not quite at a mass-consumer price point, and let the pent up desire sell the lower end, targeting various price points with well-vetted technology and UI. I don't use Final Cut Pro, but it sounds like they're taking a different tack than usual. I don't understand it. This article didn't help.
bonch 15y ago
Makes me wonder about the future of Logic Pro. Most of the Logic team has been occupied working on Garageband for iOS.
hootmon 15y ago
5 words: we dont give a crap

105 points by mynameisraj 15y ago

zppx 15y ago

Can someone write about what's going on? Is it the same type of stuff that happened to the XServe line?

erikpukinskis 15y ago
There are various issues. One of them is that FCPX doesn't suport tape decks as well. That feels more like what Apple did with USB and floppy drives: jettison tech on the way out while it was still useful in some contexts. Jobs has said many times he is only interested in technology in the ascendency, and tapes are definitely not that. It also doesn't support a few pro workflows I don't understand (multiple camera editing, etc)... seemingly because the new interface is a radical departure. It uses a single, treelike track instead of multiple tracks, and doesn't easily map to these workflows. This to me feels like an "Innovator's Dilemma" situation: the new interface does many things overwhelmingly better, but has important regressions. The regressions will be fixed or outweighed in time. For now (perhaps not for long) other software, including the previous version of Final Cut, compares favorably.
- protomyth 15y ago
  Multi camera editing is coming, and the tape deck stuff looks like it will be handled by a company that will do it better than Apple (although a plugin costing > 2x the program is kinda weird). The sound export stuff is a great biz opportunity for a plugin writer. They needed to rebuild for 64-bit. This is what you get when you start over. I expect that patches and new plugins will turn it around by next year. Lost in all this is the incredible Motion 5 at $50. Learning that and selling some templates (with decent Parameter Rigs) for Final Cut Pro X users would seem to be a nice way to make some extra cash.
dagw 15y ago
The latest version of Final Cut dropped a bunch of features that are vital to pros and focused more on features that are useful advanced amateurs. Basically if you used Final Cut to edit home movies and amateur film productions then the new version is vastly improved. If on the other hand you used Final Cut to earn a living editing feature length movies and television productions, then the new version is a bit of a complete disaster. I guess Apple figured that there wasn't enough money in the pro market, and decided to double down on the enthusiast and advanced amateur market.
- jmelloy 15y ago
  Also, they've been working on FCPX for two years, and needed to ship. Even if it wasn't quite ready for pro usage.
  - sciurus 15y ago
    Why ship a product that doesn't meet the needs of your customers?
    - whatusername 15y ago
      Isn't that the general philosophy of HN? Fail fast and iterate until you hit customer fit.
  - sciurus 15y ago
    Why ship a product that doesn't meet the needs of your customers?
- slimfiv 15y ago
  ... and focused more on features that are useful advanced amateurs I actually don't think this is quite right. I'll quote Gary Adcock's Macworld review: "Most of the features introduced in FCP X are welcome and badly needed. Some are long overdue. Still, others are positively jarring and require a change in mindset to appreciate." There is no doubt that Apple made it unusable for high-end pros (for the time being, at least) but I feel they also added many things that high-end pros would have really appreciated, had they been able to use it seriously. So it's not quite as simple as "amatueurs only" (even if you're talking about advanced amateurs.)

hmottestad 15y ago

It makes sense. With all the great competitors why would Apple throw money after aging software. With Adobe you can work in any of Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere. With FCP it's just that little bit harder. So if you can't match the features of your competitors, make one that will outperform everyone. Essentially: Speed, simplicity, beauty, and most importantly the illusion that the software is doing your work for you.

kenjackson 15y ago

If this is Apple's thinking, I think they're in serious trouble. It sounds to me they're taking how they build the iPhone and iPad and applying it to FCP, and it doesn't work. There are two types of people: People who pay for video editing software and those that don't. I actually paid for Adobe Elements a few years back. It was painful, but I needed it for a specific reason. But I seriously doubt I will ever pay again (unless it's $2.99 or something). Most people will be fine with iMovie or Windows Live Movie Maker. It does 99% of what you need and braindead simple. My wife (and her friends) regularly record GBs of video each week. The problem is that nothing in FCPX fixes their core issues -- most revolve around video management, and not actual editing. There are amateur video editors out there, but I don't think its a growing market. It's not small, but I think Apple is making a poor bet if they think the millions of ppl creating video with their phones and cameras is going to buy this product.

ugh 15y ago
In the end it doesn’t really matter, though. Final Cut’s success or failure is inconsequential to Apple’s success or failure. That might not have been true in 1999 (when Final Cut Pro was first released) but it certainly is today. Apple’s video software people may be in serious trouble, the rest of Apple is not.
rdouble 15y ago
there are amateur video editors out there, but I don't think its a growing market. It's not small, but I think Apple is making a poor bet if they think the millions of ppl creating video with their phones and cameras is going to buy this product. This is quite possibly the most wrong comment I've ever read on hacker news. every kid on earth with a skateboard or snowboard or BMX bike will be buying this software as soon as they can afford it.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  Funny you say that because my neighbor has a half-pipe (apparently, that's how it's spelled) in his backyard and I've never heard his son talk about editing video with FCP. And he actually does have a fair bit of video, as he uses a helmet cam. But again, for him its usually management (I actually recommended something I saw called Project Odessa to him -- not sure if he's using it though). He does super simple titling, and on occassion a soundtrack. But he doesn't need something like FCPX. And if he did use it, he wouldn't buy it. Give him a copy, and I'm sure he'd use it (if he had a Mac), but free does everything he needs. This isn't to say that some won't buy it (clearly the singular of anecdote isn't data), but I think its like non-free and non-pro music mixing software. Sure there is a market for it, but its just not huge.

glhaynes 15y ago

My guess is that they don't really want to be in the pro apps business. Their pro apps were built or acquired for platform-strategic reasons during a time that the company's future was a fraction as stable as it is now and they don't really fit with the focus of the company. But it'd be tough on a number of levels to outright cancel such a successful product as Final Cut Pro. And it's beneficial for them to have a stable of very capable media app developers that help drive design of and exercise system frameworks like AVFoundation and GCD and provide code/expertise that trickles down into media apps that are more aligned with the company's focus and main customers. And I think they do think there's more profit to be made from a much larger audience of prosumer/pro-but-non-top-10-blockbuster-movie-editors. Bet they're right, too.

slimfiv 15y ago
I'd say it's not that they don't want to be in the pro apps business per se, so much as they don't want to be a software contractor for big studios, which is what most pro app companies inevitably become. Apple wanted to make big changes, but mostly, big studios / production houses don't want big changes. Avid probably couldn't make a radically different Media Composer even if they wanted. The risk of alienating current customers is too great, and the resources required to maintain multiple products targeted to the same market are too many.
- jinushaun 15y ago
  Wow. Makes so much sense I simply have to comment on it to "bump it up" so others can see it. Reminds me of what Apple did to the smartphone market. While everyone was busy chasing the enterprise market, Apple built a smartphone for the consumer market. Enterprise customers are consumers too and they brought their "consumer" phone to work. Yada yada... Apple disrupts the enterprise smartphone market.
inkaudio 15y ago
You don't get the "prosumer/pro-but-non-top-10-blockbuster-movie-editors" without being in the pro apps business. Moreover their pro apps fit the focus of the company, a high end creative company. It's hard to market pro apps to aspiring professionals and prosumers if pros are not using it. Part of Apple's marketing campaign for their pro apps is to show how pros are using their software.

aarontait 15y ago

This version of Final Cut Pro X is the Mac OS X Cheetah of Final Cut. It's going to be an early-adopter platform for the first year or so until Apple adds the necessary features that are required to bring back the 80% of pros that are up in arms right now. This is a marketing fuck-up plain and simple. When Apple transited from OS 9 to OS X they communicated their plans very clearly. This time around they kept a despotic silence about their direction and reasoning.

radley 15y ago

My problem with the change in FCP is that it's following an unpleasant downgrade pattern on their platform. QT 7 was far more useful than QTX. 10.6 & earlier Mail is far more robust than 10.7 will be. And it goes on. Apple's really pushing a premium consumer biz model, leaving professionals in the uncomfortable position of not having a professional platform.

podperson 15y ago
I think that the response of pros to FCPX is understandable but also wrong. If FCPX were the first word processor, they're complaining that it doesn't come with liquid paper and two color ribbons. The way in/out points and compound clips work in FCPX is simply ridiculously awesome -- it's kind of what After Effects tries to do with compound clips implemented in a realtime modeless manner. Was Apple insensitive (e.g. by halting FC Studio sales the moment it released FCPX)? You bet. Did it bungle the PR? No question. Is FCPX a non-pro tool? Pro tools are tools pros use. I have no doubt some pros will use FCPX and some FCPX users will turn pro. Will a lot of FCP7 users cling to the old ways or switch to Premiere or Avid or whatever? Probably.
- foobarbazoo 15y ago
  "The way in/out points and compound clips work in FCPX is simply ridiculously awesome" You mean, the way it forgets the in/out points you set on a clip? Yeah, I LOVE that. So much more fun to re-trim each and every clip every time you click on it. Huge timesaver. /sarc
  - podperson 15y ago
    Obviously I do not mean that, but your point is well-taken.
cageface 15y ago
Creative professionals have been a cornerstone of Apple's business for many years now but the signs all point to Apple's abandonment of this market. It's understandable from a business standpoint; their consumer business is far more profitable, but a lot of tears are going to be shed over this. They've let Logic fall far behind the competition since they acquired it too.

virtica 15y ago

I have to ask. When a newbie goes to the Appstore looking for video editing software and they see the bad rating, who is actually going to buy the software. Plain and simple, I think that Apple just blew this one.

leandrod 15y ago

Seem to be ðe same idea behind Gnome.

asnyder 15y ago

Interesting, looks just like Cyberlink's PowerDirector.

floppydisk 15y ago

The article doesn't say much beyond the speculation already running rampant in the blogosphere. "Apple doesn't care about the pros", "They are a hardware company so they just want to sell boxes" and so forth. What I think the article did miss is the recent FAQ announcement by Apple detailing where they intend to take the software from here. I'm not a video editor, nor do I play one on TV, so I can't speak to how that addresses the wants of the pro audience, but they are at least making an attempt to explain how they will be incorporating pro needs into future patches. How that turns out, is a completely different question.

mtw 15y ago
you miss the overall trend: Apple phased out the XSAN hardware, XServe, they terminated Shake, one of the most advanced fx creator in the industry. That's consistent over the years. What's obvious is that Apple cares about creatives (design consultants, video freelancers etc.) but do not care about corporate video producers.

ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago

I used to work in the post-production industry here in Chicago, specifically as an editor. I can't think of any well known commercial post-houses that abandoned Avid for Final Cut Pro completely. I know plenty of shops that USE FCP along with Avid, but the risk was always too great to fully abandon a platform that was proven to work (most of the time). I can't speak for feature film editors, but virtually all of the commercial film editors I know still, to this day, use Avid for most of their projects. Editors are a finicky bunch, and I can certainly see Apple realizing that to truly compete in that market, it's all or nothing. The problem with FCP was always the uncertainty of it, hence the reason Avid is still in use at most shops, despite the fact that editors love to bash it. As time marches on, I can see where FCP might, yet again, be at the forefront of innovation. The problem is, busy editors don't REALLY want innovation. They want proven systems that work. I think Apple made the right choice.

gcb 15y ago

That post is very obnoxious. it mentions why apple won't do several things, and make it seems cool while not doing it, but fail to tell one thing it bothers to actually do. At the end of the read all i know is it doesn't have features, it doesn't support any format... but it does it well so because of that I should buy apple. I don't buy it.

happywolf 15y ago

The author left Apple in 2008 while the FCP X project just started, I don't think he is the best person to know 'Why Apple built FCP X'.

scelerat 15y ago

It seems to me that the ascendancy of the Mac in the last ten years has a lot to do with them being in the "pro space" -- specifically software and web development pro space -- and being one of the best. The geeks, that is, the mavens and influencers, folks whom others when to for advice about what computer to buy, were buying Macs because it really was such a nice environment. It still is. Their strategy for ipod too reflects this as well: target the well-heeled, early adopters, people who like to chatter about their toys. Make the brand desirable through organic PR -- that is, build a truly desirable product even if it's not quite at a mass-consumer price point, and let the pent up desire sell the lower end, targeting various price points with well-vetted technology and UI. I don't use Final Cut Pro, but it sounds like they're taking a different tack than usual. I don't understand it. This article didn't help.

bonch 15y ago

Makes me wonder about the future of Logic Pro. Most of the Logic team has been occupied working on Garageband for iOS.

hootmon 15y ago

5 words: we dont give a crap