Re: The Fog Thickens

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

I don't recall your specific position on the FCP X release last year, but what I'm addressing with this argument is the notion that it was valid to draw significant conclusions about Apple's long-term interest in high-end customers from the feature set of the initial release. Shipping an initial release designed to serve your median customer as soon as possible (rather than waiting until you can also serve high-end niches) is just good business sense -- it doesn't really imply a lack of interest in serving outliers later.

[Herb Sevush] "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'm not sure this is right at all. I think our hypothetical 35% (really if we're exclusively talking about broadcast/post people it's probably much less than that) are more vocal, but I think the weight of that mass of users on the other side counts for more in the long run.

[Herb Sevush] "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."

Meh. The lines between "hobbyist" and "professional" are really, really vague these days. Are you a hobbyist if you use FCP X to cut comedic web sorts you shoot with your friends? How about if you make money from ads on your site? Does it matter how much money?

Or how about if you work for a post facility in some technical capacity, but cut personal projects in FCP X on the side?

Or take the indie film world. Say an individual with a day job that has nothing to do with filmmaking puts together a self-funded feature project, cuts it himself, gets into a festival, wins a prize and gets a distribution deal. Is this person still a hobbyist? If not, exactly when do they stop being a hobbyist? If so, are they still a hobbyist if they do the same thing a couple of more times?

The "hobbyist" vs. "pro" distinction has gotten really complicated. There are no rules anymore.

--
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

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