Apple Pulls out of NAB 2008

[fluidedge]

this is the problem with geek forums like this - no one is prepared to admit they're wrong on any point no matter how small. You persist in calling Apple a hardware company even though the CEO/Chairman of that company has on numerous occasions contradicted you!?

As for FCP revolusionising the industry - why do you have to argue that one? I'm prepared to listen to a guy that runs a post house who thinks thats so.

As for the bitch fight that is happening on this thread between 'those two' above - another example of neither side giving an inch to the other. Whats the point of having a discussion on these things if no one is prepared to learn from people who might be more knowledgeable than them - i find it very interesting to hear the views of post production directors, SuperMeet organisers - all you can do is say they are wrong when they have not only way more experience then the rest of us, but a geniune insight into the state of the industry.

Can we all try to give a little ground to each other and maybe learn off each other, especially those who know what they are talking about?

 

[wyldelee]

this is the problem with geek forums like this - no one is prepared to admit they're wrong on any point no matter how small. You persist in calling Apple a hardware company even though the CEO/Chairman of that company has on numerous occasions contradicted you!?

As for FCP revolusionising the industry - why do you have to argue that one? I'm prepared to listen to a guy that runs a post house who thinks thats so.

As for the bitch fight that is happening on this thread between 'those two' above - another example of neither side giving an inch to the other. Whats the point of having a discussion on these things if no one is prepared to learn from people who might be more knowledgeable than them - i find it very interesting to hear the views of post production directors, SuperMeet organisers - all you can do is say they are wrong when they have not only way more experience then the rest of us, but a geniune insight into the state of the industry.

Can we all try to give a little ground to each other and maybe learn off each other, especially those who know what they are talking about?

I am more than willing to give ground. But telling me that because a CEO says so... makes it so, is really a bit naive. Making staments like they gutted or killed Avid is simply childish since they didn't gut or kill anyone. I was not the one using such cool aid drinking,flammable, and inciteful language.

I don't have a dog in this fight. I could care less about which version of a computer OS is out, or even which platform, or name brand it is.
I care about the technology moving ahead in a stable and predictable manner so business plans can be brought to fruition and the industry has the tools it needs.

I like Apple products. I truly believe they were the only company who would have made a good editorial product, FCP, so inexpensively that it became available to the masses---who else would have had that same level of motivation (selling more computers).......but none of this makes FCP the tool favored by industry professionals.

Also, you are making assumptions about experience. I have been in the the industry for 2 1/2 decades, gone to 24 NAB's and work with owners/managers of hundreds of post houses, as well as every major broadcaster in the United States. I would guess that we are one of the largest owners of systems (hundreds) of both FCP and Avid in the country. I really didn't think I needed to run my resume in order to offer an opinion.

In reality, the cpu (or platform) is really the tire on the car..... and not the point at all. The industry buys tools because they are useful and cost effective. They buy into a manufacturer roadmap or vision because it works with their future plans, it is useful, cost effective, and predictable. The industry's move from point products or islands to a more collaborative model is a good one.

As I said before, the reason both Avid and Apple pulled out had everything to do with the NAB organization trying to extort insane amounts of money from them ---not enough bang for the amount of bucks they were demanding. It would have been a poor business decision for either company. Just because you have money does not mean you should piss it away. In the end NAB hurt themselves more than Apple, Avid
or the customers.

I will continue to stand by what I said earlier "Apple is a hardware company, that is primarily consumer oriented. It sells software at very inexpensive prices in order to sell more Apple hardware". If they were a software company they would be platform agnostic. That doesn't mean I don't like them .

 

[Scottgfx]

Making staments like they gutted or killed Avid is simply childish since they didn't gut or kill anyone. I was not the one using such cool aid drinking,flammable, and inciteful language.

Avid made a good product in the Media Composer. It's the first NLE I used after years of editing in a linear-tape environment. I chose it over what were then top products like Media100 and Immix. Even in 1996, there was great amount of talk about the "arrogance" of Avid's management, and how they weren't listening to their customers. Soon after that, according to my sources, Avid was prepared to completely drop the Mac platform. Apple hadn't bought NeXT yet and was still working on their new next generation operating system. Avid told them that they wouldn't develop for it. I never heard the technical reasons. This may have been the start of Apple's effort to get into NLE.

Fast forward many years and you have a dying Avid and a strong Apple. A polar opposite of the situation 10 years ago.

I hear things from friends in the post production industry. One surprising thing from last year was that the head of post production of a major network was saying that they were looking at anything *but* Avid. I know where I work, there is a very strong anti-Avid sentiment, and it doesn't come from me.

Now about the rumors of Apple shopping around the Pro Apps: There is a huge amount of competition and these rumors always seem to get started just before a big show. Two years ago at NAB, people in Autodesk's booth were telling people about Apple's "Final Cut Extreme", but also about an agreement between the two not to cross each other's turf. Does FCE exist? Who knows.

I see in the production switcher marketplace, a similar kind of story. For years now there have been rumors about Grass Valley stopping development in California and just selling the German developed "Philips" switchers. For the third straight year, I'm hearing the same thing. Grass Valley's Kalypso debuted in 1999. It's due for replacement as these things go in large multi-year cycles. Is the Grass Valley name going to be replaced with Thomson? Will the new "big-iron" switcher be a "Diamond Digital"?

My point is that the rumor-mill, while interesting, can be just the competition spreading mis-information. You are talking about sales people that have multi-million dollar contracts at stake. It has a different feel than the normal Apple product rumors. It could be Avid, Sony or Thomson making up things to make people uneasy about buying editing systems from Apple. (Customer's like a major news network that would buy hundreds of seats of FCS.) Perhaps there's a bit of truth to it or a self-fulfilling prophecy. Autodesk abandoned their low-end edit* product in 2001. They may want to buy FCP. We'll see in a few months.

 

[wyldelee]

Avid made a good product in the Media Composer. It's the first NLE I used after years of editing in a linear-tape environment. I chose it over what were then top products like Media100 and Immix. Even in 1996, there was great amount of talk about the "arrogance" of Avid's management, and how they weren't listening to their customers. Soon after that, according to my sources, Avid was prepared to completely drop the Mac platform. Apple hadn't bought NeXT yet and was still working on their new next generation operating system. Avid told them that they wouldn't develop for it. I never heard the technical reasons. This may have been the start of Apple's effort to get into NLE.

Believe me it wasn't a choice it was a necessity. The reason that Avid started the move to develop for the windows platform was Apple's decision to make teensy weensy little computers that had tiny power supplies and did not have enough slots for the Avid boardsets (this was despite repeated begging for them to continue putting out an industrial box) ??? Avid had to scramble to come up with an expansion chassis with a good power supply to put the boards in which then connected to the mac via a cable. Really unhappy situation but there was nothing else to be done.

Since then Avid has maintained platform agnosticism and tried to keep parity---meaning the app is the same on either platform, your choice.

I lived through a lot of good and bad with both these companies. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.Thank god the technology has come far enough for all these apps to be software rather than hardware reliant. The days of expensive hardware upgrades are gone and so is most of the resentment.

They both make good products and we own plenty of both. I do not know of a single major broadcaster that is using multi seat FCPro as their primary editorial platform although I have been involved in many small clusters being used for specific projects.

 

[Scottgfx]

...Avid had to scramble to come up with an expansion chassis with a good power supply to put the boards in which then connected to the mac via a cable. Really unhappy situation but there was nothing else to be done...

Ah, yes, the AMP Chassis. It worked pretty well for me except that I kept having to re-seat the SCSI card. (The machine wasn't in a properly cooled environment.) Accom later did something similar with the Affinity. That large "Media Processor" box is simply a PCI expansion chassis.

...Since then Avid has maintained platform agnosticism and tried to keep parity---meaning the app is the same on either platform, your choice...

At NAB `99, I saw Avid's booth with several Windows based Media Composers and ONE Mac based system. I saw many people standing around the Mac system and almost no one around the PCs. There was a strong hue and cry from the users not to drop Mac support, as I think it was floated as an idea.

Apple was at that NAB, but their booth looked more like an Apple Store showroom. ProApps weren't yet where they are today.

 

[atomoboy]

Maybe you can charge the same prices in Alabama but you definitely cannot charge the same price for an FCP suite as an avid suite in major markets. And the rates for the editors are much lower.
I do not consider redefining the pricepoints as the same thing as redefining the industry.

It sounds like you found your tool of choice,but that doesn't mean it is the editorial marketshare leader in the Pro industry.If you need multi seat collaboration,FCP is a poor option, at least for now... Avid was selling those expensive drives when drives cost an awful lot of money (unreasonable comparison to todays prices).

I too,will stick with what I said"Apple is a hardware company that is primarily focused on consumer products. They sell software in order to sell more apple hardware".

Hear what I'm saying. On the pro side, we focus on creative output of the artist and will buy the tools best for the job. It's a complicated equation but central to it is economics. I never questioned Apple's position as a hardware company. Holy crap, why do you think FCP isn't dongled or tied to MAC addresses? My guess is they really don't care too much if a million bootleged copies are out there since everyone stealing the software has to pony up significant cash for the hardware to run it. Pretty smart thinking to me.

Media Composer is largely a non factor because of FCP much the same way that Henry died a miserable death because of Flame. Production and post are littered with great products who were killed by better and cheaper products. Here in town is a shop that bought a high end DVD authoring system about eight or so years back. They dropped about $25k on it. Six months later DVD studio pro came out. For a mere fraction of the investment, everyone in town was in the DVD business. In that instance we can safely say that DVD SP redefined DVD authoring and gutted the competitors. Yes, the high end authoring products survived and continue to exist as a niche industry but the DVD business was totally changed. Same with MC and FCP or service bureaus and type setting machines prior to the introduction of post script fonts and Quark. It's not an Apple fan thing it's just reality. With the introduction of FCP, two facilities opened up in my town alone centered around the software. No longer did calling yourself an edit house require a half million up investment. A few thousand bucks and talent put you in business. It rippled throughout the industry. One or two men shops became the norm. Geese man, look at the list of industry powerhouses that are now gone. We're talking top of the heap production and post houses that couldn't survive with the paradigm shift. Pick up a copy of Post Magazine and show me one new shop opening centered around AVID Media Composer or DS and I'll show you twenty that list FCP and After Effects. That is redefining an industry. You are spot on with the statement about AVIDs strength in multi-seat environments. You'll recall that I mentioned that earlier. AVID was price gouging on drives, but so was Discreet and Quantel and Grass Valley, etc. The drive price I mentioned was about 4 times the going rate at that time. Several years back, I dropped over 80k for about 10k in drives from Discreet for my previous Flame because Discreet had microcode embedded on plain jane Baracuda drives that "blessed" them to work with their software. Guess what, AVID and now Autodesk dropped their drive tax and let you use any storage. Why? Because FCP and other products were open and put pressure on the industry to stop extorting shops with insanely high markups on hardware. That again is redefining an industry.

The assertion that cutters using FCP make less than those using MC is balderdash. Yeah, a DS artist will demand more salary than a FCP editor but that's an apples and oranges comparison. Salary is a function of experience, client following and total billings not really the software an artist uses.

I think it's incredibly cool that FCP is priced such that home enthusiasts can grab a copy to play with but powerful enough to do a national spot or even a feature length film. Who among us would have expected that 15 or 20 years ago? I guess I find it odd that giving props to the home team on a forum like this would raise the ire of anyone. Maybe somebody just needs a hug.

 

[hanahawk]

Apple will be missed @ NAB

Regarding the comment Apple will not be missed, and the booth was not that big, did they go to the same show that I did? Crowds spilling out into the aisles, standing room only for the presentations? People literally sprinting as the doors opened to line up to register for the mini seminars? Did they not share the magical time as Walter Murch explained his decision process for editing? The Apple booth was huge! It was the reason I have been going to NAB. I must question whether I will spend the money this year. Avid was a ghost town in comparison. NAB moved the Apple booth so it would not clog the entryway. I am so disappointed they will not be there.

 

[Joseph Hutson]

Poor NAB guys. Without Apple and Avid I wonder who goes there.

Everyone who knows ANYTHING about the new Scarlet Cam coming out.

red.com

 

[billchase2]

I haven't read the 7 pages of this thread... but I do have to admit that I'm rather disappointed that Apple will not be there this year. This is the first year that I've been able to get the money around to fly out there for the show and I would have loved to see their booth.