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Final Cut Pro Trademark Update Suggests Apple Eyeing Future Subscription Model
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The comment was made about Mac versions, not Windows. Office 2011 has not run on macOS since Catalina at least. Second, Office 2010 will not open Office 2019 documents.
Oh right, I use iWork on a Mac for for those sort of things.
Why won’t office 2010 open office 2019 files?
Because "political news" is shorthand for "this thread is going to be a trainwreck".Aside that, I am wondering why software subscription article placed under political news
That version of word will not run on anything current, nor could you exchange documents with anyone, that was the point. I am pretty sure my SE 30 still boots, but I do not would not consider the copy of Word 6 on it particularly useful.
And yet it still works, that would be my only point! This software still does its job 30 years later. Had Word 3 been subscription-based, this would be impossible.
Imagine in 30 years! I open Word on my old HoloMac, and instead of my documents find a (very attractive, scented) screen explaining tiered pricing plans — all irrelevant, the activation servers long since recycled to aluminum cans for pickled beets. The tool artificially rendered useless. My data locked for editing, possibly dissipated with whichever “cloud” service had it hogtied and screaming in the back of its trunk. Goodbye Grandma’s recipes, I guess?
When I buy a screwdriver, I do not expect it or the birdhouse I assembled to suddenly disappear in the night if I take no action. Changes and updates to my screwdriver in the night are also unwelcome. I don’t desire to fund the development of all future screwdrivers.
Now every password manager, calculator, and fart app expects a long-term financial commitment from me before I even have a chance to use it. This is needy, aggressive, and disrespectful towards the user. I hate to see it from Apple.
Well I switched from Adobe to Affinity when they went subscription - never needed to go back.
I switched from Cinema 4D to Blender when they went subscription - still transitioning, but don't see myself going back.
If Final Cut Pro goes subscription then it's goodbye from me, I'll switch to DaVinci Resolve, I've used it before and it's an excellent piece of software and FREE for a lot of users.
I've saved myself THOUSANDS by avoiding the SaaS subscription software. I loathe the "rent everything own nothing" society we're turning into with software (EULA agreements about "owning" your software aside). I will never support the subscription model.
I switched from Cinema 4D to Blender when they went subscription - still transitioning, but don't see myself going back.
If Final Cut Pro goes subscription then it's goodbye from me, I'll switch to DaVinci Resolve, I've used it before and it's an excellent piece of software and FREE for a lot of users.
I've saved myself THOUSANDS by avoiding the SaaS subscription software. I loathe the "rent everything own nothing" society we're turning into with software (EULA agreements about "owning" your software aside). I will never support the subscription model.
its been $300 for the past 10 years............. its okay, if you get paid when you're in this app you can afford it.
For all you cheepo's who want to use this app thats been $300 for the past 10 years for the rest of your life you can use iMovie because if your complaining I doubt u need fcp
I got FCP when I did more with video editing. But never as a job always as a hobby. I switched over to Davinci Resolve which even in their free version I find provides more and better features (and more constant updates) then FCP. So my answer would be: No need to grab it.
I could see Apple making the core of FCP free and charging a premium subscription for access to certain features and formats along with content like templates, music and sound effects, tutorials etc. It would get a lot of people to at least try it.
A lot of companies like it for the lower cost of entry plus predictable cost structure to them. I think that’s where the bread and butter was for Adobe anyway and not sole proprietors and hobbyists.
Except Apple has only kept FCPX on par (on average) with competitors. A more realistic view is Adobe has led a lot of the way forward (minus optimized code for Macs). FCPX is not worth a subscription in it's current form and I would have to see some FANTASTICALLY MAJOR improvements all around.
I had the choice between FCP or Adobe. Adobe was subscription and that put me off. I have enough subscription-based products sucking my account dry.
Apple with FCP I just bought it and don't have to worry about money for it again. So I would prob migrate to another program I don't have to subscribe too.
Apple with FCP I just bought it and don't have to worry about money for it again. So I would prob migrate to another program I don't have to subscribe too.
And THAT is the version that will be subscription! I like it
I've actually been starting to make the transition to Linux anyway, for a multitude of reasons. If this change to FCP ends up happening, it'll just be another push for me. I still enjoy Mac OS and will continue to use for certain items, but for an everyday machine, there seem to be more and more reasons (for me) to make the switch. Either way, one things for sure; I'm not going back to Windows.
You and I are making different points. You are correct, that it can still open the files it created and you hit the biggest issue I have with the most common approach to subscription software. However, whether it can do its job is a question of how narrowly you define its job. With the most narrow definition (the one you are using), it can still run on the hardware/OS on which it ran and create/open/save its files. It might not be able to print or connect to anything else.
Another valid definition of its job would be to create and share documents with other users of Microsoft Word, to run on current systems and hardware, to print on current printers. That is the definition that I was using, none of which Word 3 for the Macintosh can do.
The second part of your claim is also specific to only one form of subscription. There are subscriptions that just stop providing updates and leave the applications able to run on whatever the last hardware/OS combination it supported. Had that been what Microsoft offered, Word 3 would have been fine.
That is certainly one scenario. A much more likely scenario is that the drive from which your 30 year old Macintosh which has not been used in 23 years no longer spins up. You manage to find a data recovery place that can read those drives and you get an archive of the drive. It was an HFS filesystem (not even HFS+ and certainly not journaled), but no Macintosh has read HFS in years. After months of searching, you find an old open source Unix application that could read HFS file systems. It is has not been maintained in 20 years and so takes quite a bit of work to get running on a modern OS. You read the filesystem and find the recipe file. It has a file format you do not know and after finding a type creator database, you find it was a Mac recipe whose developer went out of business 23 years ago (they also had a Ponzi scheme business model - taking money from new customers to pay for development for existing customers) and you are completely stuck. Same end different paths.
That is the difference between digital data and physical items, and why your analogy is flawed. The paper copy you printed, or the video you uploaded to YouTube would still work just fine (assuming that YouTube continued transcoding things as it went along).
About 25 years ago, I was at a SMPTE meeting in LA watching a presentation by a guy from Philips about their DataCine high resolution film scanner. The rep argued that we from the studios should just scan every negative and use the files for long term archiving. George Joblove, one of the attendee, asked a question: Who in this room can DLT-3 tape? Almost every hand went up. How about a DLT-1? A smaller set of hands were raised. Who can read an Exabyte tape? Fewer people than before. How about a 6250 BPI reel? Even fewer people. He continued with older and older formats, finding fewer and fewer people who could read them.
Finally, he asked “Who could read a 1932 Academy format 35MM print?“ Almost every hand went up.
Digital data needs to be constantly refreshed, just as applications need to be updated.
I own a Final Cut Pro 7 license, but I have long since lost the disks and I am not sure I have a machine on which it still runs. I have spent much of the last two weeks trying to find a working copy to help a friend prepare a FCP 7 project for distribution.
Had that been stored as part of a cloud-based system, maybe it would still be available to update (as keeping the data refreshed should be part of the service they were providing).
As a user, I want my software vendors to be healthy. I want them to charge me enough on an ongoing basis that they can continue updating and improving their software, but not so much that I cannot afford to continue using it.
My personal preference is the subscription model that lets me keep the last version for which I paid without further updates, but I recognize that it has problems just like every other model (from one time purchase to ongoing subscription) has.
Like everything, context matters. If Apple charged a $20 a year maintenance fee for existing users, and half of the 2 million or so licensees paid it, that would generate $20 million a year that could be spent to improve and market the product. Having that dedicated pool of money might make it much easier for the product manager to justify increased development resources.
On the other hand, a $25 a month fee would not be interesting to me and ensure I stopped using the product.
There have been features added and file format changes that make them incompatible. It is sometimes possible to save in an older format, but that usually comes with problems.
Be careful MacRumors may limit your commenting ability because they think comments like this don’t bring anything to the conversation.
Also, if Apple does this. It would take basically every customer that currently uses the software to tell Apple no, to change their mind. Hopefully it’s not true.
LOL at least I’m not suggesting renting has anything to do with socialism. Time and time again.
You're right! How about Word 1.0? Is the Retina iMac 5K current? I don't personally own a printer, but if you'd like I can send you the file (via the internet) to print yourself, which sort of makes the above invalid!
Neither of these statements are accurate. Digital data can be carved into literal stone (jade, granite, marble, quartz, limestone, sandstone, onyx, etc.). Just because companies want to push their quick sloppy work on me, daily, doesn't mean the updates are welcome or necessary. "Applications need to be updated" sounds like "birds gotta fly", except Word 1.0 and its documents still open after 30 years without updates.
This is fair. There are subscriptions that do not lock-in user data as much. However, the developers still need to hamper, ruin, or impede their application in some major, annoying way. Otherwise nobody would subscribe! Once that subscription ends or the version is no longer supported, you're left with a sort of lifeless husk.
Like, great. Apple needs me to Kickstart Final Cut because they don't have enough funding. "Damn it, Jim, I'm an editor not an investor!" Maintenance fees, are you serious? Is this a bank? Oh dear… they did start providing credit cards…
My audio and video editing tools are not magazines. I do not want the September issue of Logic Pro or Final Cut. I want to purchase and own a tool that won't unpredictably change overnight or disappear or stop working because my internet went out.
^ What you say...
V What the maker hears you say...
"I would be all for monthly SaaS!"
^ what you say...
V what the maker hears you say:
"I think it's fine to spend...money each month"
^ What you said.
V What Apple will hear:
"I’d stick with Logic"
^ What you said
V what Apple hears:
"I LOVE subscription software"
I would be curious. If you can attach both the Word 1.0 document file, and the print output file, I will try to print it here and try to open it with a current version of Word. Please try to include several fonts, and ideally an image or two. If you cannot attach the files here, send me a private message and I will send you my email address.
Stating that digital data needs to be refreshed does not mean that the medium itself needs to be refreshed. You have described a long term storage medium. Do you have a device that does that supports that? How fast does it read and write? What is the density of its storage? In what format does this device write the data? What is the hardware interface? Do you have drivers for macOS that can read these files? Again, as I pointed out before, an HFS file image cannot be read directly by a current macOS system. The further back one goes, the less likely one is to have the ability to read old formats. That is what I clearly meant. Here is a story that shows yet another example of the problem. He was fortunate, in that he was still able to find a floppy drive that could read those floppies. I have some CP/M 8” floppy disks with Wordstar files on them. I have been unable to read them for years.
No. When you say that Word 1.0 runs on a 5K iMac, are you claiming that you can run the 68K system 6 application natively on a 5K iMac, or that someone has written an emulator that will run that code on the iMac? If it is the latter, it is just an example of a different way of saying that applications need to be updated. You can actually update the application itself, or you can write lots of compatibility software which does the same thing. Either way, without someone maintaining it, it is no longer useable. It is great that there is someone who has maintained copies of word, but I have many other applications for which I no longer have copies and have not been able to find versions anywhere else.
Just not true. It continues to work just like your copy of Microsoft Word 1.0 works on the last supported hardware with the last supported OS. As long as you have access to that hardware or you have someone who maintains emulators for it, you can run it. People subscribe because they want to be able exchange files with people running the current versions on the current hardware and the current OS, taking advantage of all the changes that have happened. Just to clarify, do you do all your work with Microsoft Word 1.0 or at some point did you decide you wanted color images or any features more recent version support?
It is a lifeless hulk in exactly the same way as your copy of Word is. There are quite a few companies that use this model.
Since you do not need for your software to ever be updated, you will have no problem. You can continue to run whatever version you have forever. However, for those of us that want more the applications to continue to improve, letting the applications directly fund their future development is the best way to ensure that happens. With no direct revenue stream, these products futures are left to someone deciding that there is a marketing reason to maintain them.
This should not be a problem for you. You seem to be happy with Microsoft Word 1.0. You can continue to run the current version of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for as long as you want. They are likely to get less and less useful as other formats become common, and people no longer support their extensions for the older version you have
Having a product that has updates does not mean that they have to be installed automatically. On all the large film projects on which I have worked and at all the studios, production/post-production and visual effects house where I have consulted, we lock down versions for the duration of the project. The biggest problem I have had supporting Adobe’s tools is their horrible auto-update process. It is very hard to prevent it, and their current model does not separate bug fixes and feature updates. Unfortunately, Final Cut Pro also bundles feature updates and bug fixes, so even without a subscription model supporting it for longer projects can be a bit of a hassle.