Re: macbook air and fcpx- the new portable edit suite

[Walter Soyka] "is FCPX sacrificing ease of use for ease of learning?"

Maybe for now, perhaps. They are asking a lot of FCPX users that have edited another way in the past. Releasing the flood gates of a totally new language on Day 1 would have been even more distressing then releasing X.0.0 in the state it was in.

[Walter Soyka] "You've outlined some very cool ideas that could be possible with FCPX, but are they really likely?"

I have no idea what Apple is thinking. The only evidence I have is what is available in the application. Roles is just the beginning, in my opinion.

I guess I tend to look at things with a tad more optimism than some, a boy can dream can't he? Apple engineers seem to be pretty smart people. The way I look at it, there has to be really good reason for doing what they are trying to do in changing the way we think about editing, and I don't think it's to simply dumb down the interface, or make more money from the consumer sphere. These are design choices they are making for fit in to the "ecosystem" that Craig mentioned, we just don't have the whole picture. I think they are trying to do what they do best and build a complex system that is quite powerful and might be easy to use for most people, but when getting to more advanced feature will take a bit more thought. I am super curious to see what's going to come out of the camera SDK.

[Walter Soyka] "Aperture has added features, but the core function and interface of the application is largely unchanged since its initial release. Same with Motion, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. "

I do not think the core interface of FCPX will change a ton, but adding the Roles feature changed the timeline interface quite a bit. It starts to show the power of the database. No one who could speak about it publicly saw Roles coming, so what else is coming that we can't see? More features like Roles brings more power to the application. i do think, just by looking at the structure of how everything is organized on the Finder level, at some point true and dedicated sharing is going to be a big component of FCPX. Perhaps that's not really easy to see right now.

[Walter Soyka] "I think Apple already has a very good idea of what they want FCPX to be, and if history is any guide, the feel and structure of the app is already pretty much in place."

I would agree with that, I am sure Apple has a plan. They have also changed a few things from the user feedback in the first dot release so all of the complaints are not falling on deaf ears. If people are waiting around for tracks to come back, I don't think that's going to happen. I do think at some point, no one will miss them as the trackless system will be more complex, more powerful, and maybe easier to use. Time will tell.

Jeremy