Re: Will Apple abandon pro-users all together?

Since everybody here seems to be so much in favor of the so called democratization of editing and postproduction in general, let me be the devil's advocate and say that I am not.
If you are a business owner, what's there to like? It may not be a "nice" point of view in such a forum but it is one that makes economic sense. Is it futile? Sure, nobody's gonna changes that evolution (no "revolution" in my mind, rather a devaluation).

10 years ago, you had to pay a premium for an Avid. Spruce DVD Maestro cost in the 80.000 dollar range if I remember correctly. But you could also charge good prices for work so you could pay back the bank AND make a decent living.
If you're spending 100.000 and more for your studio gear, chances are very likely you are both determined, trained and experienced in what you were doing - not just with regards to the actual work itself but the process of running a business in general. And it was all f***ing template free.
By the time you are able to buy such gear, you were ready to use it, run a business with it AND create stuff that is worthwhile creating.
Downloading a 300 dollar app from the app store is a whole different story.
While I do editing now and then (we mainly do various post work but not so much editing as most people here do on a daily basis), I would never call myself an editor. And editor is trained, first as an assistant, then slowly moves up the chain. It takes years. And it shows. Same for camera people, DPs or directors.

Coppola, I think, said at the beginning of the the the whole digital video revolution how great this trend will be because somewhere a kid may pick up one of those inexpensive dv cameras and make a film. And it'll be like a cinematic, young Mozart.

While that may be true, for every Mozart there are 1000 hacks and that's the reality I am seeing all the time. Do we have better films compared to previous decades when it was a job exclusively done by seasoned professionals. I don't think so. I strongly argue that the opposite is true.
Is there better graphic design out there compared to previous decades. No, again, I think the opposite is true.

The work we do mostly involves regular feature film stuff for various rights holders and licencees. If any one of you have been to Cannes or the American Film Market, now and 15 years ago, the difference is like night and day. There is a vast amount of sub-standard, low budget material out there, essentially shot by a bunch of guys without proper background, with prosumer cameras, edited with FCP 7 and thrown onto the market. And it's full with issues and problems that were unthinkable 10 years ago. There is so much of it, the market is over saturated. Prices go down, good product gets overlooked and sits on the shelves cause the pipes are blocked.
Unfortunately, the market doesn't regulate itself really - ie. sub-par stuff isn't rejected. The cheap stuff cost little and doesn't rely on returns at any box office, they are sold in packages by the dozen because markets have grown but people can still only watch so much and the day only has 24 hours. Most of it is genre material, spectacular artwork and trailer to attract attention goes along with it and it then is's thrown in a license packages together with 30 other titles for dvd, blu-ray or pay-tv world wide. It's sold like porn, by the cover and by the pound.
Compressor costs 50 dollars - and it does DVD and Blu-ray encoding, it even does (sort of) format conversion, right?. Cinemacraft costs 60.000 and it ONLY does DVD and Blu-ray. An Alchemist is well beyond 100.000k. Is the quality the same? No, it isn't, of course. But for the average person Compressor's results looks decent enough (sometimes!!!!). It is hard to explain to a customer (who often is clueless and even more often doesn't care as long as it fits the specs and is CHEAP) why you charge more (and have to charge more) then somebody who spent 50 dollars on such an app. If you are lucky you can make a good niche for yourself with some primetime companies that do care about such things and are prepared to spent the money. If not you are having a hard time or you're going with the cheap stuff, too.

I think the quality of product out there goes down. There are exceptions but in general I feel it's true. And because CHEAP rules, that trend makes it hard for those professionals and companies who do care, invest and pay for top quality software and gear to remain profitable. And then people wonder: "Why don't look my encodes, my downscales, my put-whatever-you-like-here look like the Hollywood stuff I can buy out there?
Apple's motivation in all that is, of course, not democratization of anything but the sales of hardware. I just don't think it is doing any of us - as company owners, freelancer or simply an audience - any favour in the long run, five to ten years from now.