Re: Apple Insider says FCP 8 was DONE when they killed it? WOW.

That's just it. The decision to suddenly EOL FCP7 in the face of a big change was the PR disaster that didn't need to be. Any seasoned Apple observer would have expected Apple to handle such a big change with the kind of finesse we saw with OS 9 to OS X, with PPC to Intel, even with iMovie HD to iMovie '08. The outcry was "I can't do my work on X, it simply lacks the features I need". The missing features were the source of the rage. Apple knew it was leaving a hole in its product and did nothing to ramp their user base to their Next Big Thing. They had always shepherded their users in the past. It was a shock that they didn't do it this time.

Perhaps they ultimately regretted their handling of the iMovie shift and didn't want to repeat it. Maybe they foresaw leaving FCP7 out there as a tacit admission the FCPX wasnt worth trying. We don't know. Perhaps this time next year all this sturm und drang will seem silly in the face of an FCPX that has rapidly matured and is being embraced much more than today. Or maybe Apple burned too many bridges and will assume the sort of reputation that Premiere has been struggling mightily to shed the past five years. I'm rooting for the former, but I wouldn't bet more than a beer on it.

Best,
Andy