Re: The Fog Thickens

[Daniel Frome] "It's funny. The "flocking back to Avid" definitely seems to be happening, but they aren't buying Avid's money-maker systems (ISIS, etc), just the edit software."

I'm sure places that are large enough to be in ISIS territory either already have one or already have a large enough data infrastructure in place that changes on this scale take a couple of years to implement.



[Chris Kenny] "IMO the framing in the discussion of FCP X has always been wrong. It was viewed as an instant failure because it wasn't a drop-in replacement for FCP 7. But it's not FCP 7's successor in any technical sense. It's a new product. FCP X is properly viewed as a promising challenger that needs some time to mature, and I think people would have recognized this had it been from a company other than Apple or had Apple's messaging been better."

Maybe that's why Apple killed FCP 7 right off the bat? They knew that few people, given the choice, would start using FCP X in any meaningful way if FCP 7 was still around.


[Chris Kenny] "As we saw with 'classic' FCP, the way to succeed in the long run is to get the 'kids' using your product today. Having user interface that new users bounce off of is fatal in the long run."

I think that's only part of it. I'd be very surprised if having FCP classic used on high end productions, and having very successful people evangelizing for it, didn't play a large role in creating a halo effect. At $295 + 4 years of free updates Avid's EDU license is pretty freaking compelling. Sure, the UI has a steeper learning curve but if you want to edit movies and the editors you want to be like use Avid...

A couple of NAB's ago Avid showed a prototype of what it thinks cloud-based editing could be and they arguably have the best editing software on the iPad right now so who knows where the future takes us. Maybe Avid knows that its 'local hardware' products (I/O cards, ISIS) aren't going to be enough anymore so they start offering cloud base solutions at both enterprise and boutique levels.


[Chris Kenny] "The modern Apple rarely kills is own in-house products (acquisitions are another story), and there is no particular indication that FCP X is being starved for developer resources."

While there is of course no direct evidence of the FCPX team not getting much love, Apple is known for keeping its teams lean and mean and moving them around to the products that need the most support as opposed to expanding during busy times. Apple delayed development of Leopard to put more resources towards the iPhone launch so I don't think they are beyond starving FCP X development for, well, just about anything iDevice or Cloud related. I think the very un-Apple-like hijacking of the SuperMeet last year and the launch itself is evidence that things weren't running smoothly when it came to FCPX (at least at that time).


-Andrew

2.9 GHz 8-core (4,1), FCP 7.0.3, 10.6.6
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (7.9.5)