

Apple relents, begins selling "old" Final Cut Studio again - k33l0r
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/09/apple-relents-begins-selling-old-final-cut-studio-again.ars

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burrokeet
Apple has the resources to own a big piece of the pro media market too - Mac
Pros, Final Cut Pro, Color, Shake, Final Cut Server, Logic, XSan, OS X Server,
etc. - they keep systematically destroying these for some reason.

I think Apple's corporate culture and ego, however, doesn't lend itself at all
to this market - this market requires communication and feedback between
developers and end-users, and roadmaps of upgrades and bug fixes and features,
all things that Apple doesn't do for the most part.

All in all it is a shame in any event - I had a friend who runs a video
editing department with 20 editors, and they literally just completed a very
large Final Cut Server install a few weeks before FCPX (not Final Cut Server
compatible) and the very sudden EOL of Final Cut Server. Of course it will
work fine for a while, until hardware/OS render it obsolete/incompatible, but
what about bug fixes, support, etc?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Apple's margins and revenue are much better for consumer technologies (iOS)
than for their pro lines (which certainly explains at least some of their
reasoning behind all but outright abandoning the Pro market).

Source: <http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/26/apple-has-moved-on/>

~~~
burrokeet
I understand that, but they can still do Pro as well w/o hurting their bottom
line - plus IMHO there are LOTS of implicit and indirect benefits to Apple
overall by having the Pro community still being Apple evangelists.

On the other side of it, if they are not really going to do Pro, then just
don't do it all and stop mucking around and pretending - sell off the line to
someone who can handle it properly - what they did by EOLing Shake was
terrible terrible terrible

~~~
jinushaun
I don't know... Photoshop didn't sell Macs, but iPods and iPhones did. The
time and energy is takes for them to produce pro software versus the return on
investment is probably too low. It's such a small market, relative to general
consumers.

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pavlov
There are broadcast customers with installations of hundreds of FCP seats [1].
I suspect that Apple discovered that they may have contractual obligations to
these customers due to the way Final Cut Server was sold.

It's easier to bring back the product in the most limited distribution
possible, rather than risk a lawsuit.

[1] For example, Norway's national broadcaster NRK has 200+ FCP seats just for
their video library: <http://broadcastengineering.com/mag/nrk-keeps-
watchful-0709/>

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acak
I read earlier that Lion was Apples "Vista" moment.

The FCP situation is more reminiscent of what happened with Vista - where MS
had to extend the life of WXP until they offered something better.

Although, it'll be interesting to see how well Lion is doing in terms of
market share at Apples next event.

~~~
ugh
Whatever happens with FCPX is utterly insignificant compared to the rest of
Apple. To call this a Vista moment is laughable.

~~~
wanorris
The point was that what's happening with FCP closely tracks the problem
history of Vista, not that the problems are of the same scope. If you reread
the parent comment, you will not find him calling this "a Vista moment".

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huhtenberg
This might as well turn into a new New Coke [0].

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke>

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junklight
I'm not sure that this actualy means anything. Just a pragmatic move while
they get the pro features into FCPX.

I guess if there is any hidden message it might be that they are wanting to
keep the pro's onside - which might be good news for the direction of FCP and
Logic.

(also to note that there is nothing actually wrong with FCPX - I'm using it
everyday working on some marketing materials right now. I can see that Pros
are missing some features which is fair enough but it's an extremely usable
application and I'm finding it very friction free to work in)

~~~
pavlov
FCP X is more like "Aperture for video". It's a completely different app from
the old FCP, which offered an editing paradigm in tune with the conventions of
the TV/film post-production industry.

Editing video in FCP X feels a lot like manipulating photos in Aperture: it's
great for quick adjustments, but doesn't allow the kind of meticulous control
you'd get with Photoshop. Unfortunately Apple doesn't have that kind of
control-oriented video product anymore, so those looking to move up from FCP X
will have to go with either Avid or Adobe.

~~~
joeybaker
Aperture is a workflow management tool that allows you to do a ton of photo
editing too. A photojournalist, for instance, wouldn't need any more power.
FCP X, as you say, represents a similar approach.

But, the problem isn't that it isn't the video equivalent of photoshop —
that's After Effects or (maybe) Motion. The problem is that FCP X is missing
basic "Apeture" functionality like any kind of real audio editing, or the
ability to export to another program.

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pbhjpbhj
The update is hilarious:

' _Update: An Apple spokesperson told The Loop that the company has "a limited
quantity of Final Cut Studio still available through Apple telesales to
customers who need them for ongoing projects."_ '

Don't Apple know how they can make more copies ... if they don't someone else
will do it for them.

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daimyoyo
I wonder how many people will take advantage of this given that you can't get
it in stores or online.

~~~
dagw
Given that the old version is $700 more than the new version this 'offer' is
only aimed at those people who really really need the high end professional
functions stripped from the new version of FCP (and they'll probably be
cursing Apple and muttering something about switching to Avid as they place
the order).

~~~
DrJokepu
Of course, Avid Media Composer costs at least $3000 so they will probably just
stay with FCP.

~~~
chrischen
$2300
[http://shop.avid.com/store/product.do;jsessionid=EA4C89BEF63...](http://shop.avid.com/store/product.do;jsessionid=EA4C89BEF63AA07D87C4575C43D2775F.ASTPESD2?product=307190015842432)

~~~
DrJokepu
When I follow your link from the UK it lists the price as £1,869.95 which is
about $3000. Outrageous.

~~~
ceejayoz
Maybe that $3000 includes VAT?

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gnu6
"more than 8,000 people signed a petition that demanded the source code to
Final Cut Pro 7 be sold to a third party"

I wonder that anyone would make such a short sighted demand. Apple should
properly release the source code of Final Cut Pro 7 to the public under a Free
Software license. That would prevent this type of thing from happening again.

~~~
homosaur
I'm not sure that there's enough free software developers that even have the
expertise to work on something like FCP. If there are, then where's the GPL
video editor that competes? Pro tools like that are still commercial only
until someone proves otherwise in code.

~~~
gatlin
It would take a Herculean effort to start such a project, and it would be
virtually guaranteed that 1) few people would trust it since it's not a name-
brand and 2) it would be several years before it had feature parity. The
social and technical inertia combined make it not a good use of time.

~~~
CamperBob
_few people would trust it since it's not a name-brand_

Fat lot of good it did to trust a "name brand" in this case.

~~~
homosaur
As long as Apple keeps selling old FCP to those who need it before getting the
new Final Cut up to speed feature-wise, I don't see the problem. If you stick
with the same old, ugly codebase forever you end up with kludgeware like
Photoshop... or Windows. The mistake here was ever taking old FCP off the
market in the first place until they got the new one fixed. I mean they are
selling it for $300, so that's almost an admittance on Apple's part that the
feature set sucks.

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dlss
Apple relents? There's no way this would have happened on Steve Jobs's watch

~~~
benr
Ha! I'm guessing you're being sarcastic?

I just finished listening to John Siracusa on Hypercritical who was making the
point that it won't be long until people start saying "there's no way this
would have happened on Steve Jobs's watch".

It's easy to see the sarcasm when Steve's only been gone from Apple for a
week, but give it a year and people will start forgetting that Apple lead by
Steve would go back on decisions when they released they'd made the wrong
call.

Another example of this that John gave is when they prematurely removed
Firewire from the 13" Macbook. While Steve was CEO they realized that the
market wasn't ready for that so they put it back in. And everyone was happy.

In 6 months, if Apple concedes they were wrong on something, will the market
think Tim Cook is weak and Apple is doomed?

~~~
masklinn
> Another example of this that John gave is when they prematurely removed
> Firewire from the 13" Macbook. While Steve was CEO they realized that the
> market wasn't ready for that so they put it back in. And everyone was happy.

A much better example is iMovie, because _the exact same events unfolded as
with FCP_ :

* Apple has iMovie HD 6, a product with its roots in iMac DV but well understood and liked by its users.

* Apple releases iMovie '08, a complete rewrite of iMovie lacking many of HD6's features and completely panned by critics, HD6 is not available anymore

* Apple makes HD6 available as a free download to all iMovie '08 owners

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pmoehring
"Final Cut Studio can be purchased for $999 (or $899 for educational buyers).
That's the same price the suite was being sold for as of July 2009, but $700
more than its newer replacement, Final Cut Pro X."

Yes, the new one costs 299. Way to make a buck...

~~~
masklinn
Yeah, I mean it's not like that's the original price of FCP7 before it was
pulled or anything.

Wait, yes it is, FCPX is basically a different product and production house
(the kind of people who will buy a 5-figure piece of single-user software if
they need it) have asked for FCP7 to be available again for their production
due to features missing from FCPX and the inanity of switching mid-project.

FYI, Avid Media Composer (one of FCP7's competitor) is 3 times the price of
FCP7.

