Re: Dear FCPX team,

[Oliver Peters] "An important issue here is that Apple destroyed the FCP ecosystem in the way FCP X was launched. Developers are now hoping that there is a large enough base in FCP X to warrant development. Yet much of this development won't pay off at the prices they have been able to get. Plus, will non-pro users buy any third party apps and plug-ins at all?"

Great post! Apple's rough treatment of third-part developers has not gotten nearly enough air time here.

Apple has chosen to move downmarket, and it's going to be very hard for developers of niche products to keep their margins high enough. By way of example, this forum was filled with complaints over the high cost of the erstwhile Automatic Duck OMF exporter a couple months ago.

Apple also seemed to play favorites for launch. Noise Industries had a launch day release, but others like Red Giant and CoreMelt didn't get advance notice. Look at Baselight -- they were toiling away on their very impressive FCP7 plugin, only to have FCPX sweep the rug out from underneath them.

The fact that APIs weren't available before launch, let alone months after, suggests to me that third-party support was not a development priority -- despite the fact that Apple is relying on third parties to overcome some of FCPX's limitations.

If Apple was going to break plugin compatibility in FCPX anyway, it sure would have been nice if they had adopted OpenFX...

Walter Soyka
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