As I said here before, is a 64 bit FCP 8 what was wanted?
IMO, if Apple came out w/a FCP version that was basically FCP 7 with 64-bit, background transcoding and rendering, better metadata, better tapeless support, etc., sales would've been great and Adobe and Avid never would've had their 'switcher sales'.
Someone at Apple has thought pretty long and hard about how editing is done and how production has changed now we are all file based. They have also looked at how the OS and hardware have evolved in the 12yrs since the original FCP code was written.
They then dared to suggest there might be a different way to working.
Someone at Apple also thought long and hard about how to launch FCP 10 and we all know how well that went.
Adobe and Avid are reacting to the changes in post production as well, and honestly, have been doing a much better job of it than Apple over the past few years. Apple was the last of the three to embrace tapeless workflows but, even now after going 'all in' on tapeless, FCP 10 still lacks Red support AFAIK (which is a pretty big feather to be missing). There are certainly things in FCP 10 that I like but to pretend like the competition is standing still and Apple is the smartest guy in the room is preposterous, IMO.
Apple changed their priorities with FCP 10 but they tried to pretend that they didn't and that led to the total fiasco that was FCP 10's sneak peak at NAB and launch a couple of months later.
Btw, does the new version of fcpx also do what final cut server did?
Or did Apple just abandoned their final cut server customers?
Final Cut Sever got dropped like a hot box of rocks after little development from Apple (just like Shake and Color). FCP 10's new metadata features are kinda like 'FC Server lite', though if they enable FCP 10 to work robustly across a shared storage environment it could become enough of a DAM (digital asset manager) to get the job done for the majority of Apple's audience. I'd always thought FC Server was an odd duck for Apple because it was overly complex and resource intensive for the vast majority of FCP users and Apple never seemed to do much to advance the usability of the app or to integrate it with the FC Suite.
It would be very ironic if the Avid and Adobe alternatives to FCP get updated to be more like FCPX in a few years. Surely everyone who is proclaiming that Apple are abandoning the pro video market will be eating their words when Avid-X and Premiere-X hit the market.
Ironic but highly unlikely. Adobe and Avid are embracing future workflows and tech (64-bit, tapeless media, etc.,) without scrapping current workflows in the process. Apple has already stated that things like Multicam and baseband video output are coming so FCP 10, at least for the foreseeable future, FCP 10 will be trying to add features that FCP 7, Avid and Adobe have rather than Adobe and Avid trying to add features that FCP 10 has.
Lethal