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apple is making you pay for demo software and they are going after the enterprise market?
 
And Jobs should then apologize for poor leadership.

Apple presented FCPX as a replacement for FCP7, and clearly it isn't according to the people who use the software day in and day out. Apple have discontinued FCP7, which is another irritation for the Pros ( companies can buy no more 'seats' ).

Not necessarily. Can you really expect one man, who may or may not be very close to his death bed, to have his hands in everything? A good leader delegates. I am 99% sure there was a point man on this thing who was supposed to be overseeing it. Probably met with Steve and said something like, "Working great." "Getting great feedback." "Going to be magical."

Microsoft could really use a marketing genius right now.
 
Just out of curiosity, not debating the quality of FCPX, but what would possess one of the two biggest media agencies in the UK to move to a 1.0 program immediately upon it's release?

I don't care who the software comes from, that's just not a good decision and disappointment is almost guaranteed.

I own an audio production company, one of the smallest in the US, and we would never in a million years jump onto a 1.0 release. When Pro Tools updates, we wait. When OS X updates, we wait. New features are exciting, but jeopardizing productivity on untested software is not a risk we're willing to take.

I can't believe so many professionals actually did this.

It has less to do with jumping on the release right away, and more with a general feel for where the platform is going. And they didn't say they installed FCPX on all their machines. To me it sounded more like they got a seat of it, tested it, and found out that it won't suit their needs.

Many organizations (especially those with multiple editors) have workflows that just won't work with FCPX. I agree that I think people should wait to see how Apple responds to the lack of essential features, but it's also not unwise to begin looking at other platforms that currently have those features.
 
It does seem that Apple has screwed the pooch on this rollout, and that's unfortunate.
Seems to me that FCPX is a LOT more useful to the much larger number of corporate and small-time filmmakers who aren't trying to make $100 million blockbusters. From everything I've seen this release is a MUCH stronger tool for the 95% market.
As others have noted, they should have released this as iMovie Pro and put FP onto the maintenance track if the intent was get out of the highest end.

But this disproves the meme of Apple as 'all marketing'.
 
I did. Several times over.

Back in the early 2000's I started with some Pinnacle "hold your hand" package like Video Studio or something, on my PC. It was a complete "edit video on your PC" kit including the Firewire PCI card to plug into your computer. It cost maybe $125 in total.

I think within about a month I had already outgrown it and wanted to buy something a little more powerful. I ended up buying Ulead Media Studio Pro, for something in the range of $300.

Fast forward a few years later -- I had a nice new PowerBook, I liked iMovie, but felt there were things I wanted to do that it couldn't, so I bought Final Cut Express and loved it.

I'm not a "video editor" by trade (although perhaps by hobby), for the most part an average guy looking to make a nice video or two.

And that was years before YouTube and Facebook and the ubiquity of digital cameras and cell phones made it fashionable for everyone and his kid to shoot, edit and share their own videos. I'd argue that there are even more people now willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for a reasonably powerful, but not quite pro-level, video editing package.

Just because there are more people MAKING videos and uploading them doesn't mean there are more people willing to pay $300 ($400 if you include some semi-neccessary add ons) for making youtube videos.

I mean look at how aggressively priced Lion is so that it will be attractive for people to upgrade. I get that you in particular got into editing in 2000. I think because of it you could be grossly overestimating the market for people buying ANY piece of software for $300 or more.
 
Guys!! Come on! It's not the end of the World!!!
I use Final Cut Pro 7 every day, it's my job and Apple didn't wrote a letter telling us that we got to change our version of Final Cut immediately! Do you even know how many people in the World still using Windows XP?! Jeez!! I know too that Apple products are highly desirable but let's wait for the updates.
I'm not trying to invert this Apple big fail. Apple needs to fix this quickly!
Agree. I don't know the big deal either. I'm not going to bother with a refund. I've already spent the money and been enjoying playing around with FCPX. When Apple sends the updates, I'll just end up spending the money again later.
 
Honestly, I think this is a bad move by Apple (the refunding of money - the release of a non-ready FCP X is worse).

1. Come on, people either new what they were buying or should have waited and researched.

2. Apple admits that this is trash. They should stand by their product, and polish it (which I am sure they will).

3. $300 is the big scheme of things isn't that much money. I am poorer than anyone posting on this board. I understand $300 isn't chump change, but think about how you are spending your money: cable, data plan, etc.
 
It does seem that Apple has screwed the pooch on this rollout, and that's unfortunate.
Seems to me that FCPX is a LOT more useful to the much larger number of corporate and small-time filmmakers who aren't trying to make $100 million blockbusters. From everything I've seen this release is a MUCH stronger tool for the 95% market.
As others have noted, they should have released this as iMovie Pro and put FP onto the maintenance track if the intent was get out of the highest end.

But this disproves the meme of Apple as 'all marketing'.


it's the microsoft marketing from the 90's

SGI, Sun and others were obscenely expensive. MS pushed NT as a workstation OS. NT and Intel Pentium weren't as good but for the price more than good enough for most of the market. SGI and others went bankrupt while Intel and Microsoft moved up the enterprise food chain.

same here, they may be going after the market that thinks it's too much to pay Avid or whoever all the time. by the time the big expensive guys figure out what happened most of them will be bankrupt from trying to milk their customers
 
But maybe next time...

Because a complete re-write of a program that took the 10 prior years to build had a bad 1.0 release after its first week on the market? I think you're reading FAR too much into this... After a year or so Apple will have either added back features and won over much of their previous user base or FCPX will be abandoned by pros and adopted by pro-ams everywhere. FCPX is going to be a success, it's just a question of which market it wins over, even both if they quickly play their cards right.

Maybe they just shouldn't have released it until it was more feature complete. Problem Avoided.
 
Has Apple been issuing a lot more refunds in recent years than in the past?

The iPhone 4... Mobile Me... FCPX...

Doesn't sound like a good choice to me... but maybe Apple shouldn't have pushed FCPX out so quickly? It seems like they would have been better off offering it as a trial beta and leaving the option of buying FCPS3... and then in a year when it eclipses FCPS3 in functionality, they could make people pay for FCPX and discontinue FCPS3.
 
It does seem that Apple has screwed the pooch on this rollout, and that's unfortunate.
Seems to me that FCPX is a LOT more useful to the much larger number of corporate and small-time filmmakers who aren't trying to make $100 million blockbusters. From everything I've seen this release is a MUCH stronger tool for the 95% market.
As others have noted, they should have released this as iMovie Pro and put FP onto the maintenance track if the intent was get out of the highest end.

But this disproves the meme of Apple as 'all marketing'.
Yup. If you aren't going to tape or aren't using multiple cameras or not looking to import old projects, etc... Then FCPX is probably fine. But in that case they should have not released it as FCPX. It should have been released as Final Cut Express X (FCXX ???). Anyway, they could have still sold FCP 7 and still been working on adding the features back into FCXX that Pros need and eventually put out FCPX that would work for Pros in a year. I think they jumped the gun. There does look like some cool stuff is in there, but's it's crippled.
 
Good to see Apple issuing refunds, I think its clear that Apple really screwed up with this one :p.. Anyway from what I can understand most professionals are not happy with the new Final Cut, but a lot of the new users are happy with it as I hear its easier to use..
 
I'm glad that people are getting refunds, after all this release has been an absolute disaster (at least for what it's core market is supposed to be).

Apples Pro division needs a good slap around the chops, and maybe new management, they should really talk with their customers more, they still haven't given a statement about this mess.

Apple do sometimes give us software/hardware that we didn't even realise we needed, and a lot of the time it works, but sometimes they royally screw up like this and leave a lot of their customer base unhappy.

Some of the people I know who work in film and TV do like the new features and workflow elements that FCPX has introduced, but the fact that in omitted so much, and you cannot work in collaboration with almost any commonly used workflow or pipeline in post production, means that the software for many is absolutely useless. Plus the fact that Apple were not forthcoming with telling customers that these features were not present. Likewise dropping FCS3 on the same day leaves a lot of larger post houses in a tricky situation where they can no longer get licences if their needs grow.

They should really have dropped a few features and released this as the new Final Cut Express, whilst keeping the old FCS3 available, meanwhile telling the people who need XML/OMF/Multicam and all the other missing features that these would be present in an upcoming Pro version.

Looking at this mess I'm almost glad that for professional use I have to use Pro Tools, even though for personal use I prefer Logic, I don't know if I could trust Apple not to screw that up in the future, even if the last update was pretty spiffing IMHO.

Apple do really need to come out and made a proper public statement about this, instead of hiding behind a journalist, or else the larger (of the 2 million) customers will start to think about jumping ship, it has been 4 years after all since the last noteworthy update to this piece of software.
 
Maybe they just shouldn't have released it until it was more feature complete. Problem Avoided.

This sort of hits the nail on the head.

if they said "We are bringing out FCPX as the replacement for FCP but its going to take a while to get all the feature there"

Kept support/sale for FCP until it was a *proper* replacement.

Then most would be much happier
 
Does anyone know how distance-selling regs (in the UK at least) works (if at all) with downloadable content?

You get a statutory 7 days cooling off period with all physical objects.
 
Refunds

There is no way to buy shoes on the internet. Software is like that, too. With advanced internet distribution methods like the App Store, there MUST be a policy equivalent to "they simply don't fit."
 
Guys!! Come on! It's not the end of the World!!!
I use Final Cut Pro 7 every day, it's my job and Apple didn't wrote a letter telling us that we got to change our version of Final Cut immediately! Do you even know how many people in the World still using Windows XP?! Jeez!! I know too that Apple products are highly desirable but let's wait for the updates.
I'm not trying to invert this Apple big fail. Apple needs to fix this quickly!

Isn't a big issue here professional studios that are concerned about Apple EOL Final Cut Studio and the lack of a real time-table on getting features they had, back?

Think about it from their point of view say you rely FCS for your workflow and you just hired 3 more people. Well you need to get them setup but oh wait you can't buy the old version so now what? You cannot use FCPX with older FC files so they are screwed. Awesome.

While I have no issue with Apple going in a new direction they shouldn't have EOL'd FCS 3/ FCP 7 for studios that cannot migrate until the newest version is a real pro app.
 
Will Lion too come with a load of missing features? Early adopters always end up getting burned one way or another. You basically pay to be beta testers.

That doesn't just apply to Apple btw.
 
I find it all very strange. What professional goes out and buys a totally new rewrite of software on the first day of release? Then expects a refund? Stupid.
exactly. all these so called "professionals" are acting like ubilos personally walked into their editing suites and uninstalled all their current copies of FCS. if FCS fulfilled your needs the day before the FCPX launch, it still did the day after.
 
Be nice if they offered a demo period like they did with Aperture to be honest...

I absolutely agree. It's the sensible thing to do, which would go a long way in the goodwill department as well.

Overall looking at Apple, the company, if they eased up just a bit on some of their hard line stances and denials, they would receive so much good will in return it would take nearly every concern I have away.

After all it's R&D, moving forward they cannot make every decision just right, and therefore if they were a bit more willing to step up, admit fault (not defeat, but mere fault which is fleeting) as they are on this product... Apple would be even more cash rich.

There are people that don't raise a fuss, or author a post in this forum, they just don't buy the product. These are people who's business would be very easy to earn if shown the respect, appreciation and clear cut communication they deserve.
 
Does anyone know how distance-selling regs (in the UK at least) works (if at all) with downloadable content?

You get a statutory 7 days cooling off period with all physical objects.

I don't think distance selling act holds with downloaded software but "Fit for purpose" does still hold so you could use that avenue.
 
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