...Over time: Consumers become more and more pro-sumers. Pro-sumers become much less dependent of specialized professionals tnx to easy-to-use software.
This is what Apple is trying to do:
Create software so that consumers can create pro-sumer-level stuff, and pro-sumers can create professional stuff. Knowledge of the technical side of things is getting less and less important.
I think Apple is betting that your profession is going away, and "prosumers" are moving up.
Professionals in many fields have been bitten this way - they think there is no way that automation or unskilled labor can ever replace them... then one day, technology sneaks up and they become obsolete.
Posts like these always crack me up. The frothy glee with which they are posted by their authors is the most amusing part. Whether it's the case or not it always feels to me that the authors of these Trump-Like, "YOU'RE OBSOLETE!" posts are bitter people who have been snubbed, hurt, or inappropriately touched in some way by these "professionals" they seem so eager to send on to their death marches.
At any rate, the heated discussion in this thread seems to center around the question, "What, then, is a professional?" Is it his shiny tools? Is it her 144 core quantum computer rig? Is it the smooth, clean, close shave on their hairy parts? Of course not, except perhaps for the clean, close shave thing. It's the skill, the talent, the ability to deliver. Everything else is secondary. In the end as someone once aptly put it, your clients can have three things, have it done quickly, have it done cheaply, and have it done with quality. They get to pick two. Software is simply a means to that end.
The puzzling thing I keep hearing many posters say is Apple will include those things some professionals are questioning about "soon" and I am sure they will. However, I do have to ask, they've been "building this from the ground up" for a while, did they lock the FCP X developers in some dank Cupertino basement and forbid them to study what was
already in previous FCP releases? Were they all struck with some rare case of mochachino induced amnesia where they suddenly couldn't recall some of the basic elements many video artists use daily to get their work done? Just seems to me Apple could have easily avoided some of the spittle presently being sprayed their way.
Very good post - I wholeheartedly agree! And this is one of the main reasons Apple is so awesome. Many professionals will hate it - both because it changes the way they work and because it threatens their livelihood - but it's a great thing for most.
I'm originally a graphic designer, and I remember when DTP was something "normal people" couldn't even consider doing themselves at home. Then comes cheaper computers and Quark/PageMaker, and all of the sudden a lot of what these professionals that formerly had a monopoly did could be done by others. Bad for some, great for most.
Of course, there will still be a market for the true professionals that are the best at their craft and have access to the stuff that is still out of range (pricewise) for regular people. It's just that this market shrinks - a lot. Already happened in video, when I could use my FCP on my old Powermac and do things that would previously have required a very large investment. Now maybe we'll see if this process goes even further.
While I enjoy your tale about a sinister group of "Creative Dark Overlords" who are apparently oppressing the "Super talented" teeming masses of the world by denying them their God-given right to "professional" level software at affordable discount warehouse prices, I find it a bit exaggerated. The truth, uncomfortable as it may be for our reset-button video game generation, is that not everyone is a talented artist. Just as not everyone can be a professional ball player, or an MI6 martini swilling babe-chasing super-spy, or be a Ferrari by standing in a garage.
As video evolves the same thing will happen that happened in print design. Some jobs will vanish, as typesetters did, others will evolve and combine, and a few new ones may appear. In other words, just as happened in print, this new democratization of technology will usher in a brave new world where "everyone will be a superhero" and where "Anyone Can Cook!"...and most of it will be terribly, terribly bad. Look around, we are inundated daily with a worldwide deluge of Microsoft Word inspired DTP created with "professional" software.
Again, tools are nothing. Sure, more people will try their hand at being editors/motion artists/colorists now because Apple is sending out a free copy of FCP in the mail to every suburb. Some will succeed with it, most won't. In the end, just as it still is in print design, when you want something done "professionally" you're still going to have to pay for talent.
Frankly I don't care about FCP X and its present 1.0 form, it does not matter. If I can use it and it makes things better for me, all the more wonderful. If I have to go back to hand drawing each frame with Crayolas then so be it. Apple will change FCP X to accommodate requests, they will grow it, or they won't. "True Professionals" will use it if it improves their business and workflow or they will move on to something else but those with talent and skill, those who are gifted at what they do are going nowhere. They will learn and use
whatever they must to keep doing what they love.
