I recently made the transition from Final Cut 7 to Final Cut X so like everyone else I must add my two cents...
...actually does my two cents even matter? In the end our beloved Mr. Jobs will do whatever he wants and it looks to me like he's more interested in his newer customers than he is the older ones. But I actually think it's more than that. Just look at all the attention that Final Cut X has received in the past month. Negative yes, but i think that negative was the plan. As many of you have probably already read FCPX has a list of missing features that has many professional editors justifiably upset. But what about people that never used earlier versions of FCP? Well, there's no adjustment to be made. The design has been revamped to look a lot like imovie which has many amateur editors less intimidated with a program with "Pro" in its name. The cheaper price helps too.
I do miss some of the features not present in the current version of FCPX but I have no doubts that many of them WILL return. Consider this example.
When the iPhone was originally released it was a pretty solid device with many good features. The main problem though, was that it was AT&T exclusive. What was, in my opinion, a effort to expand the App store sales, Apple then announced a iPhone for people that didn't want AT&T, or a phone. Enter the iPod Touch. Now the first gen iPod Touch had many differences with the iPhone and I wont go into the obvious ones, like phone and speaker parts. Instead lets consider a few simple things like the calendar app. When I first heard about the iPod Touch my first idea was to use it as a PDA right out the box, but that wasn't possible. The "+" button to add memos and appointments was mysteriously absent from it. Instead you had to always sync it with Microsoft Office or the calendar program on a Mac.
This was one of the stupidest omissions I had ever seen! As far as computer code goes it was a matter of changing a "true" statement to "false"! At the time many others felt that this feature "crippled" the possibilities of this device, and it received a lot of attention, but did it stop the iPod Touch from being successful? No. And what happened next? Well, a paid upgrade toted the ability to add calendar entries as a "new" feature. In the end, the device got the attention it needed and Apple got the money they wanted.
Back to the present; FCPX is missing some features that probably wouldn't have added a single hour to the overall production schedule, but Apple needed a cheap way to get the word out that this is the program to bridge the gap between amateur and professional. Let's face it, Apple is going off their brand name to attract new customers. Every negative article compares FCPX to iMovie and that's exactly what Apple wants to impress on new customers.
"Hey, it's a new Final Cut Pro! And people say it's just like iMovie. I know how to use iMovie! It's cheap too! Who cares about all the other stuff people say is missing. I'll probably never use that stuff."
And that, my friends, is how Apple makes money. Class dismissed...
...Oh wait, what about the long time customers! No worries there. Just keep slapping patches and updates on every other month until they stop complaining.
Opinions welcome, see ya next blog!
