Apple Scrapped Completed 64-Bit Final Cut Pro 8 to Build Final Cut Pro X?

Makes sense, they already dumped professional users to the curbside...

Well, I suppose Final Cut Pro X revolutionised how one recognises a total failure.

Well, all Mac OS X updates since 10.0 were more evolutionary than revolutionary. Evolutionary is good.

So lets trash something that FCP users wanted and give them something they don't want... Makes perfect :apple: sense...

Seriously you have people calling themselves professionals posting here and there claiming how bad FCP X is for them in a most unprofessional manner. In any other industry the mark of a professional is getting a tool to do what you want. It really doesn't matter what industry you are in, success depends upon making the tools of that industry work for you.

As to what FCP users wanted, giving them that would have caused stagnation in software development. That opens Apple up to more nimble competition from others. The reality is Apple would lose customers either way. In any event the so called professionals that claim FCP X isn't for professional use really do look stupid or foolish.

OK - I'm a professional editor. I've got a window open with Final Cut Pro 7 rendering right behind this one. I make all my money editing, directing and producing. I work freelance at a lot of edit houses/ ad agencies and there's a few things that people who are whining about FCPx aren't making clear to everyone else, let me try:

-We don't really NEED new features. The tools of an editor are mostly cutting clips together. That's why most edit systems look the same. Preview, edit, done. It's like any audio player, for example: you want a playlist, you want a play, stop skip button... but when things like "Ping" are added to iTunes, people wonder why. This is a "pro" app, and the "pros" wanted a FASTER more reliable, 64 bit version of FCP 7, not to be able to import iMovie projects.

-Not one pro I know is using FCPx. At most they have it installed on some other computer and they screw around with it sometimes. It has NEVER been considered as a seriously useful product for people working in a pro environment by anyone I know.

-When you talk about the mark of a professional being able to get a tool to do what you want, yes, we want that. But the problem is that we can't simply all jump onto FCPx and start using it at work. We have to be able to make money and knowing that EVEN IF WE MOVE TO FCPx WE CANNOT OPEN FCP 7 PROJECTS means we'll never give up what we know and what what works for something that's a pain in the ass to lean and doesn't do everything we want it to do. (XML Support in FCPx does not allow you to import XML files created in FCP 7, another "sucka!" move from someone at Apple)

People who whine and complain are all over the web. So are loads of crappy work. I'm sure FCPx makes some people happy, but the people who make the ads and TV shows they watch on TV aren't. That's the problem we're bitching about. I waited so long for an application that I've built most of my career around to be updated and instead, it was completely redesigned into something new. Could you imagine bringing your automatic transition car into a repair shop and instead of fixing it they give you a brand new car. Only, now it's got a right-side steering wheel and it's manual transmission. Oh, and your wife is pregnant and you have to get her safely to the hospital. And there's no body around to help you learn to drive stick. That's basically what happened - we didn't expect the change, and we don't have time to learn something we didn't want to learn in the first place.

Hope this helps you understand why I'm such a pissed off little bitch :)

these comments to the article make some good points:

Marcus R. Moore · Hamilton, Ontario
I think the important bit of info is WHEN was he's referring to. Philip Hodgetts has previously written on his blog about how FCP was undergoing a 64bit rewrite- under Carbon. But when Apple's 64bit Carbon initiative was killed in favour of migrating to Cocoa, THIS was when Randy Ubilos and his team decided that if they had to rewrite the entire application from scratch, they might as well take a hard look at FCP and start rebuilding from the ground up with something fairly new.

This is why the "iMovie Pro" comments are so silly. FCPX has been in development for so long, it's likely very muddy where the development of one was spun off into the other.

Marcus R. Moore · Hamilton, Ontario
Here's the link to Philip's original blog post. Basically FCP7 WAS being rewritten to 64bit carbon, then Apple decided to go 64bit cocoa, so the FCP development team was left trying to decide what to push out for the FCP7 release. This is a large part of why it was such a "lacklustre" release. So yes, some cocoa made it into FCP7 as they started playing around [I know the retiming interface is cocoa, for example].

http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2010/11/so-final-cut-pro-7-was-to-be-the-64-bit-release/