Re: Will Apple abandon pro-users all together?

Where to begin.

Aindreas...

I hear your concern and your pain. But there's nothing either of us can do about it.
Believe it or not, I'm trying to cope with precisely the same change and pain. I've just decided that instead of fighting it and railing against it, I will embrace it and try to find the things about the change that are empowering rather than just yell about it.

Change is disruptive. Period. And we all have to deal with this disruption.

Your argument sounds to me like someone in the Court of some 14th century king arguing that the peasants thatdon't have the economic clout to afford a personal craftsmen to build them a custom Clavenet - don't deserve to learn how to play the piano.

That was precisely how the old world worked. The power of (anything) was reserved for the people who could AFFORD that thing.

Today it's a different world. People with little money can afford astonishing personal technology.

No where is that more true than in the visual arts.

To build on your example in typesetting - it was once only those who could afford a lead type foundry - then it was people who could afford a Linotronic L-100 - then it was people who could afford a $6000 laserwriter (I was one of those myself!) - then after a while, anyone with a 500 laptop and a $150 Epson inkjet could practice "do it yourself" typesetting at a level unimaginable to that guy who used to sweat at the type slug foundry for his whole life.

I got schooled because I was able to afford that Laserwriter I. You probably did the same. There was a week BEFORE I knew what a kerning pair was - and a week AFTER I learned that. And like it or not, there's a kid out there with a DSLR and MacBook who is getting schooled in exactly the same way as I write this. The unescapable difference is that the pool of those learning was small back in my day (and surely in yours as well) since a $6000 laserwriter/computer combo was pretty rare back when I was getting started.

A laptop, a library of fonts available via download on-line, and an Epson ink-jet printer is in damn near every home today.

And next to them you'll find a camcorder. A TV set. And a laptop computer that shipped with free editing software.

If you can't see the change represented by that - you might explore whether you possibly have some "Industry-insider" blinders on.

Everyone here knows that the real challenge is assembling the skills and wisdom to USE the tools properly. And that means buckling down and paying ones dues and learning the language and techniques - learning what works and what doesn't, to make a buck (just like ALL of us did.)

But the huge change is the human expectation of ***access***

And Apple isn't the cause of that. They're just the company that understood it in a particularly useful fashion before anyone else.

My 2 cents.

"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