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Video Software Chief Randy Ubillos Retiring After 20 Years at Apple

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Apple's former Chief Architect of Video Applications Randy Ubillos announced on Twitter today that he is retiring after working for 20 years at the Cupertino-based company on professional video and photo software. Ubillos is best known as the creator of the first three versions of Adobe Premiere and KeyGrip, which was sold to Apple and released as Final Cut Pro.

After an amazing 20 years working on Apple products, today is my last day. I look forward to retirement and the adventures ahead. :) - Randy Ubillos (@ubillos) April 23, 2015
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While not a household name like some other Apple employees, Ubillos is well known among those who have used Final Cut Pro or other professional video software. In June 2010, he made a brief appearance on stage during WWDC to demo the latest version of iMovie for iPhone 4 and returned on stage in October 2010 during Apple's "Back to the Mac" event for another demo.

Article Link: Video Software Chief Randy Ubillos Retiring After 20 Years at Apple
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/04/23/randy-ubillos-to-retire-from-apple/
I could see Apple doing away or slowly phasing out all their Pro Apps. Have to watch how much effort gets put into final cut in the coming months.
 
Randy and his teams have done some really incredible things for video editors around the world. FCP @ $999 was an amazing break through in pricing back when Avid cost 50K+ for an installation. I remember running FCP 3 on a Power Book and thinking....this sort of power on a laptop isn't available anywhere else. iMovie mainstreamed video editing unlike any other product.

The space is full now of cheap video editors but at the time, FCP and iMovie were huge selling points for Macintosh.

I imagine his vested stock options over the last 20 years will leave him with a very good retirement.

AAPL was trading @ $1.50 in 1995 when you factor in splits. It's @ $129 today. I'd say he did pretty well. :)
 
Aldaris said:
I could see Apple doing away or slowly phasing out all their Pro Apps. Have to watch how much effort gets put into final cut in the coming months.
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This is a great fear of mine. I didn't care much that we lost Apperture, because I'm not that big into photo editing, but I would care if we were to lose Final Cut, and therefore the phasing out of pro photo editing software scared me still. Hell, even my school actually relies on FCP for their media production classes.
 
farewelwilliams said:
and he left us with FCPX?
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Which is a fantastic, fast and versatile NLE. When it launched it was lacking features but now it's on par and even superior to the competition in some ways. If you're into your editing you should give it another look if you haven't in a while. It's a different way of editing and has done away from using film analogies, in this digital video world.

I mean each to there own and there's not really a wrong NLE.
 
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Apple bleeding some veteran talent recently. Hopefully the apprentices have been well trained.
 
casperes1996 said:
This is a great fear of mine. I didn't care much that we lost Apperture, because I'm not that big into photo editing, but I would care if we were to lose Final Cut, and therefore the phasing out of pro photo editing software scared me still. Hell, even my school actually relies on FCP for their media production classes.
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Apple has been in the game for way too long to just eliminate their Pro Apps. They understand that these Pro Apps are gateways to people buying Macs, iPads (with apps like Logic Remote) etc. and would be dumb to get rid of them. At least not under current leadership.

What's happening with Aperture is the same thing that happened to FCP. They're evolving, not eliminating.
 
casperes1996 said:
This is a great fear of mine. I didn't care much that we lost Apperture, because I'm not that big into photo editing, but I would care if we were to lose Final Cut, and therefore the phasing out of pro photo editing software scared me still. Hell, even my school actually relies on FCP for their media production classes.
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Absolutely- back in the day Steve Jobs talked about the product matrix being mad up of consumer and pro-oriented products (i.e. iMac and iBook, Power Mac and Power Book, iMovie and Final Cut, iPhoto and Aperture). The Final Cut Studio line has been streamlined and put at a competitive prosumer price but left out features and we have lost other titles like Shake over the years.

With the departure of aperture (which I use primarily for storage and light correction purposes, and use pixel mayor for heavy edits and compositions). I really am looking into third parties for my software needs. Although a lot can be found on creative cloud I am not a fan of the subscription model-Quark for indesign, pixelmator for photoshop, final cut for premiere (still works and received a minor update last week). But still worrisome to me in the long run-especially when they loose their lead without a replacement announced.

What scares me is the recent history of crippling software updates, that still don't have many of the features that were lost in translation. Final Cut Pro X is an example, and has received many of those features back, iWork was in a similar boat and still hasn't gotten back some features from iWork '09, like in pages where you could link text boxes.
 
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GOOD RIDDANCE! This guy destroyed the Apple Pro applications market. He ruined FCP, and overall did nothing to help professional video editors.

Maybe now we can re-claim the pro portion of our apps and hardware for actual pros.
 
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Yes Randy, it was a good run. Pleasure meeting you a while ago. Sell one of the houses and enjoy some travel.

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CIA said:
GOOD RIDDANCE! This guy destroyed the Apple Pro applications market. He ruined FCP, and overall did nothing to help professional video editors.

Maybe now we can re-claim the pro portion of our apps and hardware for actual pros.
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If you want a professional package, quit being cheap.
 
CIA said:
GOOD RIDDANCE! This guy destroyed the Apple Pro applications market. He ruined FCP, and overall did nothing to help professional video editors.

Maybe now we can re-claim the pro portion of our apps and hardware for actual pros.
Click to expand...

I have no inside knowledge but I'd bet a coupe of beers that without this guy FCP would have been canned at v7.
 
CIA said:
GOOD RIDDANCE! This guy destroyed the Apple Pro applications market. He ruined FCP, and overall did nothing to help professional video editors.

Maybe now we can re-claim the pro portion of our apps and hardware for actual pros.
Click to expand...

Nothing to help pro video editors? He was one of the original creators of Premiere and then left to create KeyGrip (which was purchased by Apple and became FCP). When people in post talk about the 'three A's' it's Adobe, Apple and Avid and this guy has finger prints all over the NLEs from two of those companies.

With regards to X, Randy was originally working on a video logging app as a companion piece to FCP (kinda like what Prelude is to PPro) and when Jobs saw it he fell in love and said that's what he wants the next FCP to look like, and X was born.
 
So this was the guy behind Adobe Premiere, the original Final Cut Pro, iMovie and the remakes of both of those?

Wow, thanks for all the work and best of luck in the future...I'd have felt alot better about the future of Apple movie apps going forward if he was still there...serious bummer.

As to Pro applications at Apple, is it just movie related stuff now that's left?
 
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Goaliegeek said:
So can we trash FCP X now and get FCP 7 with 64bit support and multicore support?
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Sweet mother no...... please no. I've been using FCP-X editing RED Dragon 6k raw .r3d files straight out of camera on a freaking iMac's without having to render. Truly amazing.

The ability to auto sync audio on import? PluralEyes is required to do that in Premiere and that plugin itself costs as much as FCP-X.

The ability to create a group with a single clip, and then use that 20 times in an edit and changing color on ALL 20 of those clips with a single click is amazing. Also, seamless integration with Davinci Resolve is priceless.

It had a bumpy launch but has bloomed into an amazing and critical piece of software that runs insanely smooth.
 
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