Well they’ve done it, FCP X is proudly featured on the Mac Appstore and everybody’s hailing it as the future of editing technology. Well um no! Actually some people are rather upset about it. Apparently Apple have had the audacity to mess with ‘the people’s’ editing software! There was Mr Jobs sitting there thinking Final Cut Pro was owned by Apple when all the time it was owned by 600 ‘professional editors’ who have written to Apple and demanded they go back and develop the old version of Final Cut or release the code to another party to continue development on it.
News flash – Apple can, and frequently do do precisely what they want! Yes the new version is totally different, yes it doesn’t have multi-camera and batch capture. Yes it doesn’t import old Final Cut Pro projects. And guess what, you don’t have to use it! You’ve still got Final Cut Pro 7! If you’re really not happy with spending $299, apparently Apple will even give you a refund!
Now I’m not an Apple fan boy … honestly! But the way people are throwing their toys around you would think Apple had re written the Bible or something. Clearly FCP X is new and by most accounts not particularly useful if you use functionality like multi-cameras. But what it does do is utilise your 64 bit architecture properly and guess what, other functionality can be added, but on proper future-proof foundations.
I haven’t downloaded the new version yet. Mainly because I can’t justify the expense (small though it is). But when I do, I will consider it another tool in my armoury to use – in the short term -along side Final Cut 7. Yes there are many things Final Cut Pro 7 does that FCP X doesn’t but there are a lot of things FCP X does that FCP 7 doesn’t and my guess is the things missing from FCP X will be added pretty tout suite.
So my advice is stop whining and wait. Give it 6 to 9 months and my guess is most editors will be using it and forgotten why they had a problem with it. Give progress a chance after all if we never embrace anything new we’d still be editing with scotch tape!
Rant over!