Re: Will Apple abandon pro-users all together?

[Walter Soyka] "You're probably doing mostly video editorial; I'm doing mostly animation, motion graphics, and compositing at larger-than-HD resolutions. We have different goals, different workflows, and different needs."

Granted, Walter.

But one of the "keys" here is which is the question the broadest market needs answered?

Walter, I want you to have the solutions you need. I even want you to have an array of choices on how you solve your needs. But (and it's a HUGE "but") - I don't want you to have those solutions if giving those to you means that every single company that makes the solutions has to limit their thinking to how they are going to meet your needs. Because your needs are niche needs. And it's a shrinking niche.

I actually think that is how innovation gets stifled.

And looking back, you have to admit that the very company that used to be the "outlier" in editing - Apple, eventually re-invented and re-popularized the field to the point where the industry got a LOT healthier. (Remember the cost of an AVID system compared to a FCP rig back in 2006 or so?) that "popularization" led to development - and to the high end migrating to and using the same tools that the industrial and "resume movie" makers largely paid to develop.

So while FCP-X may do nothing for you right now. If it catches fire over the next few years, It is GOING to drive innovation across the industry in ways that I simple don't think it's competitors can do.

And in ways that those competitors CERTAINLY can't do if they have to keep their focus on a shrinking (albeit high end) market such as episodic TV and feature shops.

In this economic environment where the economists have been saying "grow or die" for a decade - I'd like to know how PPro or AVID stand to "grow" when they can't really offer something that the middle or the low end wants? Are there enough seats at the top of the heap to drive a profitable editing software development industry? I certainly hope so, but I'm concerned.

Their "base" isn't growing. It's shrinking. Everyone at the bottom can get free editing tools. In the middle, there's FCP-X at $350 a seat (with Motion) and there are a few players at the top end fighting for the seats in the commercial editing shops.

That's a pretty scary scenario for editing as an industry.

I just think it's time to be very careful out there.

Flux happens. And we're in the middle of a big one.

FWIW.

"Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions."-Justice O'Connor