Re: The Fog Thickens

[Chris Kenny] "The logical conclusion is that FCP X is a) actually being pretty widely used (far more widely than Vegas ever was)"

Damming with faint praise. Vegas is an example of a new paradigm that never made a dent in the market.

[Chris Kenny] " b) actually is a suitable solution for a lot of FCP 7 customers."

Actually we don't know what those numbers mean. We never did before. I never trusted things like Legacy had "2 million seats." Where did that number come from? How many were upgrades, how many were abaondoned? What I am confident in is market awareness. FCP Legacy had plenty. FCPX has a curiosity factor, but in my small circle it doesn't exist as a viable option. I know more people using Edius than using X. I am aware that I am not the center of the editing universe, but I put zero faith in any of the numbers quoted, till they define their terms and show how they arrived at them.

[Chris Kenny] "I think FCP X's detractors might have to start acknowledging the possibility that Apple might have known some things about how people were using FCP that weren't obvious to them."

I never doubted that Apple knew the market they were aiming at, I simply concluded that it wasn't me or mine.

[Chris Kenny] "I suspect the general impression conveyed by the numbers is correct) "10% of users export XML files, 5% export EDL files, 25% use multicam, 15% use broadcast monitoring -- and given the overlap, we can leave all of these things out of our first version and still address 65% of the FCP 7 user base"

If true, and it well might be, then it was an incredibly stupid business decision to release X and EOL Legacy at the same moment. They managed to piss off the most vocal and influential 35% of their user base. Not all users are equal. They would have been better off pissing off the other 65%, who would fall in line anyhow, rather than the influential few. I don't think they really liked the Conan segment, do you?

[Chris Kenny] "A car without headlights and breaks is useless to essentially everyone. FCP X turns out to have been useful to a large fraction of the FCP user base."

Not in it's first release. For Bill Davis, yes. But many other current X'ers couldn't use it at first. I stand by my statement that the initial release was useless for a large portion of the pro user base, even if they liked the paradigm. This has changed with subsequent releases.

One of the big differences between Legacy and X is that Legacy was solely for the pro market. That doesn't mean that X is not "pro" but it does mean that there are a lot of hobbyists that use it as well. That tends to skew arguments about relative strength in the pro market.

[Chris Kenny] "Apple has plugged the gaps pretty fast. "

Yes they have, much quicker than I believed they would.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin' attached to nothin'
"Deciding the spine is the process of editing" F. Bieberkopf