Like many of you, I’ve been losing sleep this last week trying to figure out what’s going to happen to my business after the debacle of the Final Cut Pro X launch.
I read in a blog last night that Steve Jobs has gotten involved in this mess and that “really great things will be happening really soon.”
So my first question is: “Why does Steve Jobs need to get directly involved in what is essentially a straight-forward upgrade to one of their well-established products?”
And this led me to a bigger thought: “Who’s Accountable?”
As I woke up this morning, I had a day-dream of Phil Schiller, VP of Worldwide Marketing, appearing on my podcast, the Digital Production Buzz, to answer questions from listeners.
(In reality, this will never happen. Apple stopped giving on-the-record interviews, with the exception of Mr. Jobs, many years ago.)
So, imagining that Mr. Schiller were on the program, here are the questions I would ask:
1. What was the benefit to Apple of immediately canceling Final Cut Studio (3) with the release of a brand-new and untested product; when there was no technical reason (according to Apple) to do so?
2. Why did Apple feel it was necessary to alienate one of their most passionate fan bases with this release; were professional users that expendable?
3. What responsibility does Apple have when canceling a product to companies that built businesses around those products in terms of notification and support?
4. Conversely, what does Apple require of its vendors, when a supplier to Apple decides to modify a manufacturing method?
5. What is the benefit to Apple for assuming a strict rule of silence whenever something goes wrong? (A short period for research is understandable, but not when it stretches for weeks. The number one rule of PR is communication – but, apparently, not for Apple.)
6. Conversely, what would Apple’s reaction be if one of its vendors, say FoxConn, refused to talk to Apple when something went wrong, such as an explosion?
7. Why is Apple unwilling to provide a general roadmap to those products it considers “professional”?
8. Conversely, what would Apple’s reaction be if Intel refused to tell it about new chips it was developing?
9. Trust is a very tricky thing. It takes time to create and can be destroyed in an instant. Does Apple perceive the extent to which it has breached this trust and what will Apple do to recover from it?
Not one of these questions deals with the features of a product. They deal with the moral character of a company.
As consumers, we are held accountable through license agreements, laws, and regulation.
But who holds corporations accountable?
The sad part is that no one holds corporations accountable. We will never learn these answers. And the damage that’s been done will be irreparable.
Larry
66 Responses to Who's Accountable?
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DiegoB says:
July 9, 2011 at 2:39 pm
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Peter says:
July 9, 2011 at 3:46 pm
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Shawn says:
July 9, 2011 at 5:44 pm
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Techwizard says:
July 9, 2011 at 7:12 pm
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Bill Dawson says:
July 9, 2011 at 9:47 pm
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John Papola says:
July 9, 2011 at 9:49 pm
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Mark Dobson says:
July 10, 2011 at 3:30 am
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Larry says:
July 10, 2011 at 9:57 am
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Kent Kumpula says:
July 11, 2011 at 12:27 am
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Eyad says:
July 11, 2011 at 3:17 am
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Larry says:
July 11, 2011 at 10:42 am
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Danielle says:
July 11, 2011 at 10:46 am
← Older Comments Newer Comments →Some companies make software to sell hardware, and others make software to sell value.
Is this saying that MacPros are next to be EOL?
Maybe Steve Jobs attended a board meeting at Disney? With 2700 FCP seats and an all tape workflow I’m pretty sure they have some interesting opinions about FCP X… 😉
@John X. Joyce
I think your comments are spot on… I just want to follow on with a few thoughts.
“It is Excel that explains the corporate dominance of Microsoft”
True, but Excel is just part of the story. It was MS’ realization that these apps (Excel, Word, Access) should work together as a suite of tools that share data, that made it popular in the business world.
I think this is where Adobe has been getting it right since CS2. They’ve worked steadily on stability, performance and integration and it shows… they even manage to (consistently) add useful new features to already popular applications (content aware fill in PhotoShop for instance). Truthfully, I thought this was where Apple was going… I thought FCS4 was going to be all 64bit applications (FCP, Color, STP, DVDSP) with a unified UI and a tightly integrated work flow. At least, that’s what would have made sense to me…
Shawn Miller
Bravo Larry, #9 slams it home for me. Trust is gone.
Next is Logic X. Revolutionary new music production. We have done away with tracks cause you dont need to think and work like that anymore. We know better. Just try it our way. You will learn to like it. BTW OMF, WAV, MP3 output coming soon from 3rd parties for $499 for you Pros.
I’m moving on.
>If you own a facility, it’s another story. You don’t need to go to Avid or >Premiere overnight. FCP7 still works. Get an Avid, a Premiere and FCPX >and do tests in order to get ready for the future
Except, it’s a different case at the university level. Yes, our FCP7 works fine but we are now teaching a dead product. That forces a change! We can not go to FCPX because it’s not ready yet. We bought Avid for the film and television production students and will use Premiere for the multimedia students. Although they can use either, if they wish.
Last time we had two programs (Avid version 3.0 and FCP) we taught both programs and let the students decide what they wanted to use. In reality, we were studying them to see what they were using and why.
FCP won.
So now we start again with Avid and Premiere. Let’s see…where is my notebook?
Bill
“The sad part is that no one holds corporations accountable. We will never learn these answers. And the damage that’s been done will be irreparable.”
Larry, I’m a new customer of yours for your excellent training products and have been following all of these Final Cut developments with great interest as we’re starting up our production company and planning a SAN-based post environment based on.. well… FCP7 for now we think… maybe.
But, I have to take issue with your final note above. Apple is being held accountable by competition and reputation. Thousands of their customers are abandoning Final Cut for Premiere or Avid. Many are doing so with great fanfare online. This rollout has caused serious damage to the reputation of Apple as a pro-apps provider and rightly so. Even if FCPX improves quickly, the reputational shockwaves will clearly continue for years. It’s hard to feel good about the long-term viability of their offerings right now. It’s hard to trust them with the future of our business. So they’ll lose business to competitors as a result.
Thank goodness we have a healthy market for creative tools, in no small part thanks to Apple’s efforts over the past decade. So I think it’s inaccurate to say that Apple isn’t being held accountable. They will lose business. They are losing business.
Now, it very well may be the case that Apple doesn’t care. They may see a bigger business opportunity in a more prosumer/middle-market approach with an app that appeals to the growing video production demands out there below the high end market. If that’s true, it’s a gamble and we’ll see how it works out for them. But for us, we have choices. We have Premiere and Avid.
Think about it this way. Avid has only become responsive and innovative again because of competition from Final Cut. But they did. They woke back up. They cut their prices. They built a better Media Composer (so I’m told).
Have more faith in the market at large. But certainly don’t have faith in any one company to hold itself accountable. That’s what we need the market for in the first place.
Larry,
First of all I hold you with great respect and have also been a customer of yours for many years and have avidly read and learnt from your monthly postings which you generously provide to the FCP community.
I have also bought your recent $99 FCP X complete training package which together with other training packages I’ve invested in are the tools for me to embark on this journey of change which for me, and many other FCP users, is both profound and exciting but also as FCP has been at the core of my business for the last decade, an unsettling experience.
You’ve confused me with your latest communication.
Having heard you speak at the London Supermeet on the 23rd June the whole tone of your comments has changed.
From taking a balanced and reflective view with your eye very much on the long game you now sound a bit disillusioned and bitter. Well let’s rephrase that – very disillusioned and bitter.
Your take then was that this was a very early version, that things would get better, that Apple would want to listen and incorporate changes and that 3rd party suppliers together with Apple would start to close the gap between the fully functional FCP7 and the feature depleted first release of FCP X.
So you also stated very clearly that nobody had to use the new software, that it was still possible to use FCP7 and that there were alternatives out there.
So I found your philosophic tone very reassuring, a steady hand on the tiller, from a spokesman held with a lot of respect within the FCP community ( yes it is like a community ), learn, be patient, trust, things will get better.
So what has changed in the last two weeks, or are you just letting off steam as the full impact of the implications of the total loss of support for FCP7 has hit home.
I’m personally trying hard to remain positive about version ten. I’ve been really excitied and inspired by Phillip Hodgetts’ whole take on the vast potential of utilising metadata to change the way we work at a core level. To do things differently, with a changed mindset.
So I guess my real question is are you still committed to working with FCP X, of letting it bed down, or are you like many others considering a platform shift for your production business?
Are you still keeping an open mind?
This is quite an important question because, with regard for your status within the industry, where you lead many will follow.
Mark:
Good questions. I am generally positive on FCP X – provided Apple lives up to its promises on continued development and improvement. It is not yet the robust and full-featured tool that many editors need it to be, but has many significantly exciting new features.
I am very negative on the cancellation of Final Cut Studio (3) and Final Cut Server. I also think the launch was badly handled by Apple resulting in a lot of editors getting unnecessarily hurt. The disappointment principally stems from this – Apple did not need to behave in the manner it did.
For the long term, I’ll be supporting FCP X — whether I actively support other editing systems is something I am currently debating.
Larry
Make instruction videos for Davinci Resolve instead. Resolve users will grow rapidly, and there is a huge need for instruction videos for Resolve!
If you´d make instruction videos for Resolve, I bet you would sell a lot.
many comments mention “pro” vs “prosumer” and quite honestly I’m kind of wondering about that. Aren’t the lines blurring? I mean with thunderbolt, grand central, multiple cores that are comparatively super efficient, huge amounts of RAM and GPU etc…..
i mean I want a computer that will handle what I throw at it right? And Imacs seem to me to be rapidly approaching the point that they can replace a macpro for everything I do… at least on paper! (including long format docs, TV shows, advertisements, etc….)
all I really need is a 64-bit coded version of Final Cut Pro… the real one!
What’s your take on this Larry? Do you think that once/if 3rd party vendors starting giving more options via Thunderbolt Imacs can be considered “professional”?
I think any Mac can be used for professional work. The speed of any Mac is sufficient for many video formats. For me, it isn’t the hardware, its the operator, that makes a difference.
larry
Like many other FCP editors, I am feeling at loss at Apple’s decision to downgrade Final Cut. From what I’ve read so far, nobody who calls themselves professional can continue taking Final Cut seriously.
I, like many others, am moving on to different platforms. I’ve booked Avid MC classes and have ordered two Avid books. Hopefully, my new MC station wil be up an running by the end of this year.
What I am finding terribly appalling is Adobe being considered a pro option. I was unfortunate enough to have to use Premiere in the begining of my career and swore to myself I’d never go anywhere near that horrible, amateurish thing.
Despite Avid’s Media Composer being far from the high end market (just as Final Cut- but how can afford Smoke?), I will support a company that has been devoted to their clients. Apple has lost me completely. I am even getting rid of my iPhone…