In April, several hundred FCP editors sent an open letter & petition to Tim Cook asking Apple to recommit to Final Cut.
The petition website wrote: “They used the letter ask Apple to publicly stand by the use of Final Cut Pro – Apple’s video editing application for professionals – in TV and film industries worldwide.
“It wasn’t a criticism of the Apple team developing and marketing Final Cut Pro. They have worked very hard for over a decade on making Final Cut Pro better and better. This open letter is aimed at the executives who set the priorities of the Final Cut Pro development team and the Apple managers whose policies limit the public marketing of Final Cut Pro to a couple of website updates a year and some mentions in Apple keynotes about how much faster Apple hardware is getting.”
This morning, Apple responded by sending this reply to FCP.co. Here’s the full statement:
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:
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.
– – –
It is reassuring to have Apple respond positively. However, their statement highlights training and certification. We will need to wait and see whether this also reflects a renewed interest in feature development, or simply being nice to the Final Cut user community.
NOTE: To create a more active and open discussion with Apple about what features are needed, add your comments to: What Key Features Does Final Cut Pro Still Need?
17 Responses to Apple Responds to Editors’ Petition to Refocus on Final Cut Pro
Larry,
Thanks for sharing this!
Your are 100% right though in what you said in your last paragraph.
“……….whether this also reflects a renewed interest in feature development, or simply being nice to the Final Cut user community.”
It will come down to what we see this year from the FCP developer team. It’s not even all new, super charged, high end features, its features that have been requested for years that have languished for mysterious reasons. Developer actions will speak the loudest THIS YEAR!
Having said that a commitment to AI and “voice” is still missing. Adobe has killed it in the speech to text area.
The lowest end mini studio can do “10 trillion computations per second” No excuse not to change it up!!!
Clayton:
I totally agree – the proof is in the pudding. And that does not mean certifications.
Collaboration, audio mixing, scrolling timeline, speech-to-text … the feature list is long, and long overdue.
Larry
Having approached Apple and my story told through Larry Jordan, to get BluRay fixed, nothing ever came from it. For us using BluRay, and there are many, I don’t hold much belief that the writers are going to get much what they wanted, or even faster. Apple is on its own island and timetable, making bushels of money……and…..well….need I say more……?
Dick:
It was because of you and your on-going hassles getting Apple to fix DVD and Blu-ray burning, that I added it to my list.
Larry
Larry, the answer to Apple taking it’s FCP community seriously will come down to a board range of investment in that community. I was a Technical Evanagelist for Microsoft third party vendors for a few years, 2000-2006. A role originally that was created in Apple by Guy K. MSFT has always had a deep interest in promoting industries like this. Does Apple still have TE’s paid to work with and get on board new hardware & software? Does Apple have labs for companies like those listed on COW where their engineers have access to the FCP team engineers? Does Apple provide an engineering roadmap to help the Ind. Soft. Vendors (ISVs) & others know priorities 12 – 24 months out? Is Apple providing Application Programming Interfaces needed for new product development by 3rd Parties?
While it’s nice to hold an “industry panel” every 6 months to a year, there is not much in the way of deliverables, guaranteed or otherwise, from such a panel. Who attends the panels? Top level people or actual developers in the trenches? We held panels for both. They are different audiences.
I’m not privy to the way Apple works internally, so these are only questions, not directives. If I was inside Apple, these are the things that a program would have as a framework, with people’s compensation targeted to goals in these areas.
I offer these ideas because I was a FCP user before the fiasco that killed FCP for some future promises of FCPX. It was one of the most frustrating failures of a corporate development team I’ve ever witnessed. I left FCP for Adobe for over 10 years. I recently have been using FCPX for small projects. I am a supporter and user of Apple products, along with Windows (I am quite OS agnostic). I offer these ideas as a way to get real improvement from Apple, a company I greatly admire. By the way, I also am a long time fan and member of your user base.
Al:
I think you said it in a nutshell. The petition was asking Apple for a commitment. Certifications, training, even industry panels don’t equal commitment. What I’ve seen here in these comments is a broad range of ways that Apple can improve Final Cut Pro. Some are easy, others are hard – a few may be impossible.
But, unless we as users make noise, Apple will pay attention to other priorities. No company can do everything – not even one as big as Apple. But, my hope is to get them to pay more attention than they are now.
Larry
Apple is focused on consumers and in my experience, has a long history of pulling the rug out from under professional creatives. From killing Aperture to nerfing Final Cut to constantly switching hardware ports on new machines, I found I simply can’t build a reliable production platform on Apple unless I only need it to last a year or two.
To me Premiere Pro’s interface is significantly inferior to Final Cut, but I use Premiere because Adobe releases at least two significant updates a year, and I’ve been able to depend on them for eight straight years now. They are more reliable for creative professionals.
Even if you got Apple to update Final Cut a bit, the company DNA will drive them to lose focus a short time later. Hate to be Debbie Downer, but I don’t see a point in trying to force Apple down a path they consider niche.
Scott:
Video editing has always been niche – even for Adobe, when you compare Premiere Pro to Photoshop. Worse, video editing is niche AND technically very, very challenging. Filmmaking is technology in service to consumer taste. THAT is a recipe for constant change. It is a hard market to succeed in. But, we, as filmmakers and editors, need them to succeed for us to do our best work.
It is a challenge for all of us.
Larry
This is the kiss of death from apple. Their silence speaks louder than their commitment. They don’t care. How many of us remember the betrayal of their entire FCP community by their abandoning FCP 7? (Just to remind us all of the the single most relevant example of Apple jettisoning all us who care about editing)
How noble of those hundreds who signed the letter to Apple! How sad I am to predict their future frustration and neglect.
Gary:
Perhaps. But I am not really to give up. There are a lot of people that care about Final Cut – both inside and outside of Apple. I’ve spoken with many of them. They just need motivation to re-focus. Hopefully, they will.
And, as someone who was there when Final Cut Pro X was launched, even Apple told me afterward that they realized how badly they screwed up.
Larry
People inside Apple need motivation to re-focus? Doesn’t sound promising.
Back in the day I could edit with my eyes closed with FCP7. FCP x has always frustrated me but I’ve come to terms with my lack of ability to thoroughly learn what it all can really do. My edits are simple doc style and magazine format editing and I can edit fast and deliver my edited product. I’ve tried other NLE’s and still like what FCPx offers me as a creator.
Really, I only have a few things that I’d like to see as an operator. #1, please move the Drop shadow pull down right under the basic font window. No reason for it to be the last item in the column. See, I told you I’m very basic & simple working this great editing program. Good luck to us all! And thank GOD we have Larry to help us maneuver & learn our way around this all!
I, too, am not ready to leave FCP. I did beta testing for Macromedia on First Cut (the predecessor to FCP and have owned every version. I taught FCP with the Digital Media Academy at Stanford U. Truthfully, I am much faster in FCP X+ than in FCP 7. I love the magnetic timeline as well as media management. When they roll out the new Mac Pro, I hope they will add group workflow.
In spite of the inherent challenges FCPx presents in terms of collaborative-use environments — notably working with audio professionals who use ProTools — I agree with Sjon about how much faster and, arguably, more creatively one can edit with Final Cut, in no small part due to the magnetic timeline.
I share everyone’s frustrations at the glacial pace of development and hope that there is follow-through and long-term commitment by Apple toward a product that was rushed into the marketplace via a flawed process but has since become an editing platform that affords great speed and creativity.
With more of our Wish List items incorporated and further development, it may eventually fulfill its promise and begin to regain the market share it once commanded.
I was at the SuperMeet when FCPX was introduced in 2011. https://youtu.be/u9QV9hEsA1k
Standing Ovation … but the next day pro users were feeling abandoned with good cause. I understand professionals’ complaints about the software’s shortcomings, but don’t live with those problems at my workplace.
As a hobbyist, my livelihood does not rely on many of the program’s features [or missing capabilities]. After years of Windows/Premiere system crashes, I became competent in FCP . I was confidently producing and sharing my stories with families and friends.
FCPX changed everything. For more than a decade I’ve been able to focus more upon creativity and less upon technical competence. The program more than meets my needs.
My biggest complaint today is that Apple released OSX 12 Monterey knowing that it breaks the ability of M1 Macs to safely sleep external Thunderbolt drives that are connected through a dock.
One might think that, after the fourth major revision, this serious flaw in Monterey 12.4 would be addressed? So now I’m back to dealing with system/hardware issues and workarounds. Reminds me of where I was before buying my first Mac in 2005.
George:
I was at the same SuperMeet. Yeah, the reactions during and after were pretty intense.
I see the same problem, where my M1 MacBook Pro disconnects external audio devices – like a Scarlet 2i2 – which are attached via USB whenever it goes to sleep. I agree, it would be nice if this were fixed.
Larry
Adobe revenues are essentially from software so they have to concentrate all their energy on it. Apple on the other hand generates a lot more income from hardware sales (especially the iPhones) and from Apple Music and Apple TV. That’s maybe why they place FCPX on the back burner. Apple needs however to be reminded that on top of the many professional editors, there are thousands of amateurs like me who want something more advanced than iMovie. We are the silent majority who also want commitment and improvement such as BluRay support, etc. The reason we prefer Apple to Windows is, among other things, the perfect symbiosis between various softwares like FCPX-Logic-Photos-Music etc. If Apple breaks those chains we may as well buy something else.