Adobe and Avid Target Final Cut Pro Users With 'Switcher' Discounts

[thevofl]

I think a lot of people are missing the impact of these announcements. It isn't that a number of editors are going to switch, because some will. It isn't that Premiere and Avid have or don't have much needed features.

The bigger picture is the perception of Apple's strategy. Right now they are perceived as a pro-prosumer and indifferent to professionals. No matter what the reality is, the perception is not good. When it comes to a brand, perception is reality.

This is a PR nightmare for Apple. I knew it was bad when Conan O'Brien does a skit mocking your new product targeted for a technical industry (no matter how valid it is).

The sharks smell blood.

This is not helping either.

Apple is letting others shape the perception and hence the reality of Apple's own product. This is beginning to spill over into other products.

They need to address this in a meaningful way. Forget about the FAQ page or giving an interview here or there. Steve Jobs needs to have a press conference similar to the iPhone 4 Death Grip. It doesn't need to be as vast as inviting the broad newsmedia, but it needs to be as serious and impactful.

 

[gkpm]

The price is closer than you think.
If you need Automatic Duck (which is what the "pros" are saying):

But why would new users need Automatic Duck?

For new users wanting to move on from FCP Express and iMovie it's:

FCPX solution = $300 + optional Motion + Compressor = $400
Adobe: $1900 (you need to own FCP to get the crossgrade)

Yes you could now buy Adobe cheaper by buying FCP first (bit crazy though) so I'll give you you can buy Adobe for $1250, but it's still 3x the cost.

Tempting for prosumers who want to eventually master the whole editing process (color, sound etc.)

By the time prosumers master the FCPX process, Apple will have added more Pro level features to FCPX.

 

[Truffy]

The sharks smell blood.

Heh, I was thinking 'the vultures are circling', but your's is pithier!

 

[NAG]

But what is the point of waiting until it's ready for your use? Still gonna be buggy then. And it's a complete application switch anyway. There's no upgrade path. There's no importing of old projects (hell, Premiere can import your FCP XMLs). And there's no real user base of freelancers, places to work, etc. Buy Production bundle from Adobe and you've got a full studio like FCP studio. You're gonna need a DVD app, and you're gonna need Photoshop and Illustrator just to exist. Might as well have premiere and After Effects. The yearly upgrades will cost less than FCP X + Motion + Compressor.

The point of waiting is to make sure you end up with the right tool for the job instead of blindly running over to Adobe because you can't go download FCP X now and instantly integrate it into your workflow, forgetting that they screwed over their Mac customers even harder when they were moving their apps to OS X than Apple's botched transition with FCP X.

edit: Adobe may be a windows first company, but Apple is definitly a gadget first, os second, computers third, software 4th company.

Which is why they stopped updating OS X. Oh wait.

You have any evidence to support this claim about Apple? Plenty of evidence for the Adobe claim – UI changed to Windows centric, abandoned the Mac platform for the G5 era, Flash runs better on Windows and used to run much much better, etc...

Apple has continued to push forward with Mac technologies. Heck, your complaining about the new FCP X stuff is Apple pushing forward (for better or worse). Another example is Thunderbolt, you don't see that on an iOS device.

If you want to say something bad about Apple, say they're a think outside of the box company first, maintain the status quo second. That is exactly what is happening with FCP X. (Mind you, thinking outside the box doesn't automatically mean success, you can massively screw up doing that too.)

 

[Chairman Plow]

Perhaps we should wait for the reports about average customers buying and loving FCP X?

----

I doubt that the average customers are those that 'think differently'.

What about the average customer that aspires to do more? Most would probably be intimidated by "pro" software and the presumed (whether actual or not) learning curve that comes with it. It's quite possible that the idea was to inspire the average customer to 'think differently'.

Just a thought, because many 'pro' customers were 'average' customers first.

 

[Truffy]

After the CS5 installer **** up, I don't trust Adobe's QA.

Plus, plus, plus...their GUI both sucks and blows at the same time.

 

[silentnite]

What I have learned about consumers they always go for whats in at the time. Rather a product is good or bad what ever seems to be selling they want it. Specs or other wise not that important. If johnny has it bobs kids want it. That may be good short term but they can turn on you at the flick of a switch.

With that said it's always good to try and keep a balance.

 

[DarkKnightNine]

Apple has gone rogue...

Yep once again Apple in their arrogant attitude toward their customers has once again screwed up. They place no value on the opinions and concerns of their 'Pro' market. They are making the common mistake that almost every large corporation does once they've gotten too big. They start to lose touch with their customer base and take them for granted and they stop innovating and place profitability as their top priority. Shame on you Apple. You could and should be the best!

 

[Durendal]

"Switching" at this point is idiotic unless you really need something right away and don't have FCP7 or FCP7 doesn't do what you need. FCPX is young. It'll grow. Give it a few months. In the meantime, nothing is preventing people from using FCP7 for the time being and seeing how things shake out. I doubt it'll be more than six months before the bulk of complaints about FCPX are addressed.

Relax, people. Apple should've waited a bit to make FCPX more complete, but it'll get there. If you don't like it, get a refund or sit tight and keep using what was working before unless you have a pretty immediate need for something bigger.

 

[rgetter]

Funny yesterday I thought Adobe should make use of the situation; and here they are...

Guess they know how to run a business.
If they could just make the interface of their products work more alike to each other, well just wishful thinking I guess...

The next thing Adobe needs to do is to bring Premiere Pro Mac up to the level of its PC product. I have Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and, in terms of transitions and effects, the situation hasn't changed much since CS4. A Creative Cow forum post has some great screen-shots of side-by-side comparisons (here and here).

The sad thing is that, in terms of performance, flexibility and features, Premiere Pro is a great editing app that follows the "traditional" NLE paradigm, making the move from Final Cut less painful. But with the thin selection of digital effects on the Mac, it's like working in a million-dollar suite with a pro-sumer switcher/DVE (sorry, showing my age here).

 

[Durendal]

Yep once again Apple in their arrogant attitude toward their customers has once again screwed up. They place no value on the opinions and concerns of their 'Pro' market. They are making the common mistake that almost every large corporation does once they've gotten too big. They start to lose touch with their customer base and take them for granted and they stop innovating and place profitability as their top priority. Shame on you Apple. You could and should be the best!

Nice ignorant rant, toolbox. Have you read any of Apple's responses? They admit that yes, it is young, and yes, more features need to be added. They've stated that they're going to keep working on it and listed to users as to what features should be added. Multicam, Red support, etc are coming. FCPX is young and may have been released a bit too soon, but it'll mature.

They're actually refunding people via the App Store, something they have zero obligation to do.

Stop your ignorant kneejerking and actually read up on the issue.

 

[SPUY767]

I will be buying 2 copies of Production Premium today! My people prefer AE over Motion anyway...it's just more powerful and has better plug-ins available.

Pretty smart of Adobe to try to gain market share while people seem upset with an Apple product. I'm just taking advantage of 50% of something I was going to buy in the near future anyway.

PS - Apple, I want my corporate login for App Store!

Motion an AE server different purposes in my opinion. Sure, in the end, AE is more powerful, but you can put together effects in Motion way faster than the same things could be done in AE, in my experience. I've used motion in a pinch on a show site to do some pretty amazing stuff that I'd need hours to duplicate in AE.

 

[layte]

Lots of people here saying that pro users wont want to change from FCP. My father used to run a design and publishing house which he started up in the mid 1980's with Mac's running Aldus PageMaker. Aldus let software features stagnate which allowed Quark to come in and vacuum up customers (who never looked back). I can see something similar happening with current FCP pro users.

 

[scottsjack]

One of these days, maybe after the Mac Pro line is retired, Adobe might announce the end of Mac development for CS software. That would finally move Mac into the home computing/Internet/kitchen recipe relm.

That's why I do my work using PS CS5. I'm prepared to work on either the Mac or Windows platform. I prefer Mac but Apple my not prefer me! That's life.

 

[the vj]

Oh yeah, completely different. Adobe wanted you to buy all new hardware when they stopped supporting Premiere on Mac for around four years, completely reasonable.

Let me get this straight, using a legacy/poorly supported app until the new one is ready for your use = bad but buying all knew pro computers or at the very least licenses for Windows and running all the computers in boot camp (assuming you even had Intel Macs and they weren't PPC because this happened even before Intel Macs existed) = completely reasonable.

Huh?

Adobe is a Windows first, Mac maybe developer. Everything is fine when the weather is sunny.

Back in 1999 Premiere was doing things FCP 7 still can not. I remember well using Premiere in my beige 233Mhz G3 and adding different kind of videos onto the timeline and they were rendered in real time and the transitions were animated, something that FCP 7 never did and FCP X is bragging about... 12 years later.

I remember switching to FCP because I had to. Consider that many software manufacturers where frustrated with Apple for several reasons, one of them the "Mhz myth" and all the softwares running very slow because it was one language on top the other and Apple was blaming "bad programming" on the developers side. I remember that well.

 

[Skoal]

I think being able to slash 50% off your original selling price really says something about just how much you (over)value your product.

Funny you wrote that on an APPLE forum considering everyone is well aware of the Apple tax! I'd say Adobe and others are looking to the future with this 50% sale and not just that they over value their stuff. If you hook the customer now you have them for the future. Loyalty in this market is high and they want to take advantage of that. Taking away from Apple!!

 

[chaosconan]

Can't you run FP7 and FPX side by side and slowly transition over as more add-ons become available for FPX?

 

[Skoal]

Yeah right. Adobe makes a deal and Apple product is dead. That's a very appropriate and logical conclusion.

Truth is it was Apple's to lose not Adobe's. So far Apple is doing this splendidly on their own!

 

[Bubba Satori]

Arguments and piffle aside, what precisely is "wrong" with Adobe software?

Apple doesn't make it, a priori, it's wrong.
Simple logic for the simple minded.

 

[Durendal]

Can't you run FP7 and FPX side by side and slowly transition over as more add-ons become available for FPX?

Certainly. Having one does not prevent the other from working.

 

[milo]

I doubt logic will even get updated. apple probably make more money selling garageband for ipad.

Logic was just updated a few weeks ago, there have been quite a few updates since 9.0. If they were going to abandon it, they would have stopped work a long time ago. And while it's probably not a huge seller, they probably make some decent money, a fair amount of it from people upgrading from GB. Not to mention that running Logic provides motivation for owning powerful mac hardware.

 

[ryanw]

Mr. Jobs THINKS the high-end editing market is not important to Apple because there are so few of them compared to those working small projects like weddings and events and you tube and corporate training video and the like. Steve is right about the numbers

Where he gets it wrong is that ..

(1) All these guys doing small projects want to move up the food chain and one day work on major motion pictures. So they want to use the same tools as the "big guys" so they can claim to have the required skills. They want to be able to say "I have been using the Industry Standard for many years" They know they will be laughed out of the interview it they claim to be an "iMovie Expert" and it looks like that same might happen to an "FCP X expert"

(2) Even those who are more realistic and even home users not working in the industry at all, when they decide what to buy that will ask "what do the pros use?" and they will buy that. Pretty much the same as when amateur photographer see all those white Canon SLR camera lenses on the sidelines of pro sports games and then decide to buy Canon themselves "becase that is what pros use." Dumb reasoning, but that's the way it works.

I think Apple has set them selves up to fail in the long run. They NEED to be seen as having Apple pro apps used by the top professionals. It's an image thing. What else does Apple have but "image". The only way to do that is to invite pros back into the software development process.

I said the exact same thing to a friend last week. A MAJORITY of those working on wedding videos and "prosumer" type projects all want to be eventually working in a major studio or network project. Saying they know the tools is a huge reason they do these small indie/cheap projects. They're going to suffer through whatever tools the major studios use so they can integrate. It's not always about "whats the best tool for the job", in this case it's about "what's the tools that gets the job done in the industry and I'll use that no matter how painful it is."

 

[singlestick]

And if you guys want a thoughtful discussion of FCP X I really suggest you listen to this week's The Talk Show. Yes, it is Gruber. No, he isn't completely sucking up to Apple so stop trolling.

Thanks for this reference. I will definitely take a look or listen. It was interesting to read the recent Daring Fireball column in which Gruber accurately detailed Apple's missteps with FCPX, but then tried to dance around the problems by suggesting that all would have been forgiven if Apple had just pitched the new release to high end consumers.

 

[ryanw]

Apple doesn't make it, a priori, it's wrong.
Simple logic for the simple minded.

I switched from Premiere on the PC to Final Cut Pro back in the day because Premiere crashed all the time and was super super slow. FCP supported a much better heightened ability to handle stuff on the same hardware. Also what drove me there was the built in FIREWIRE in the macs. Firewire was WAY better than USB for harddrives, and was necessary to transfer from my cameras into the computer.

 

[THX1139]

And once again!! People, you haven't been forced by Apple to switch from FCP7 to FCPX, right?!

Well, actually you kinda are. That is unless you want to get left in the dust as the now discontinued FCS continues to rust. And then what happens later when you need to install new seats to expand your business? This horse has been beaten to death, all you need to do is look around and read what's going on and what the issues are instead of posting trite comments.