“According to Apple itself, NAB rumours that it wants to unload Final Cut Pro and other post products are wide of the mark,” Dick Hobbs reports for TVBEurope.
“‘I can categorically state, on the record, that is not the case,’ said Richard Townhill, Apple’s director of marketing for professional video applications, going on to reveal that recently Apple hit the milestone of one million paid licences for Final Cut Pro. According to research specialist SCRI, in 2007 Apple took 49% of the US professional editing marketing with Avid trailing on just 22%,” Hobs reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike in Helsinki” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: In addition, a reader calling themselves “Steve Jobs” posted reader feedback to MacDailyNews from an internal Apple Inc. company IP address located in Cupertino, California regarding our previous article (May 2nd, source: Robert X. Cringely) on the rumor that Apple had shopped its pro apps portfolio around at NAB, “This rumor is false. Competitors have been trying to spread it around for a few months now. Apple’s Pro business is thriving and it is not for sale. Period. Steve” – Comment posted in Reader Feedback (stamped May 02, 08 – 05:13 pm). We’re not saying it was from Mr. Jobs, but it did come from an Apple Inc. IP address.
I can’t believe so many people fell for this one. I heard it months ago and even though some heavy weight industry nobs told me I argued at the time it would be ridiculous for Apple to ditch the ProApps.
The same industry heavy weight came back to me and said Apple had denied the rumours and they think they know who has been starting these stories. Someone is worried about Apple’s ProApps a. Who that is you can speculate away as I wasn’t told.
Some love to spread useless fears! ;(
When I saw the original “Steve Jobs” post, I thought it could be genuine – the wording was in his succinct style. The IP address confirms it to me; it would take Steve less time to post it himself than to delegate it to a minion.
While I don’t doubt that he occasionally checks up on this site, I suspect on this occasion it was because the story was conveyed to him, and he wanted to quickly squash a silly rumour Apple saw as potentially damaging.
Whatever the reason, and assuming it was genuine, it was good to see the boss here briefly. Keep that name unregistered MDN.
I was an Adobe power user for years, at one point maintaining seven licenses. Now I am down to using two 2003 version Adobe apps and I’ve come to hate the company. The way they treat their customers is awful.
@Quad Core
Are you serious?
In the off chance that your reading comprehension skill are subpar, I’ll cut’n paste from the above blurb;
” in 2007 Apple took 49% of the US professional editing marketing with Avid trailing on just 22%”
Sooooo, follow me- I’ll type really, really slow for you.
“Only 1,000,000 licenses” translates into FORTY NINE PERCENT of the market.
Got it? Apple OWNS this segment, and heir LARGEST competitor has less than HALF than what Apple does.
“Only 1,000,000 licenses”?
Sheesh!
So, if your pro apps are not for sale, that means I can just have them, right?
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Steve you rock!!!
Been with ya since 1985.
Steve……
Dont foget about the missing Mac…
“Build it and they will come.”
In a time when you can build a entry level gaming PC for $500 and a bad ass one for $1000 we need macs with better graphics, and hard drive support.
I would love to have an SLi Mac, with RAID 0….. and there is no way in hell I can afford a Mac Pro.. Both my cars combined are not worth as much as the one I would want.
Apple: “Our pro apps are not for sale . . .”
“But we are willing to rent out Phil Schiller for birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs and bachelorette parties.”
@Moo, as my daughter would say, “Your point?” In the realm of marketable consumables 1,000,000 is not a very big number. Companies that sell paper, food products, home-repair products, cars, etc., would’nt waste their time if all they could sell was one million of anything – Even if it was almost 50% of the market share, and especially if they had other products that were selling at rates in the hundreds of millions.
On the other hand, in a market where the total market share seems to be a scant 2,000,000+, then I guess that’s where relativity helps us weigh the, uh, relativeness of staying with a low volume product, with some hopefully balanced perspective. So perhaps the later point is where you’re coming from, and if so, bear in mind that Apple, even being a relatively low volume OS maker and seller, still sells tens of millions of copies of their OS and accompanying hardware, and even at that, I have little doubt that the financial planners at Apple still raise the question from time to time about whether or not it makes sense to stay in the game with such a relatively small market share. Thank the gods they continue to choose to race, but by comparison, this is not a fundamental question that I imagine MS asks itself, (even though I’m hopeful that it will become a question MS will have to ask itself before my natural life is over). Okay, enough of that…
So, as a day-to-day, real-world user of Apple’s Pro Apps, let me stop and just very briefly do a little surmising/reviewing:
– While I do believe that FCP/Studio is an excellent product over all, there has been an interesting lack of development in some areas: Just one for instance, FCP is not a true 64-bit, 10.5-ready app. (Motion is a true 64bit app., I think.)
– The ongoing development of the UI has not been a happening thing since about version 4.0. Having sliders and number entry fields to do color correction, audio phase, keying, and etc., is unnecessarily arcane by todays standards. There are third party developers with excellent plugins that work across several proapps from various developers, and also work in FCP, but alas, the arcane UI of FCP renders these 3rd party products almost useless, (Waves plugins, my current pet peeve, are developed to be used with a more highly developed GUI which FCP just doesn’t have, making Waves technically useable but actually not).
– We’ve got a person in our production house that’s gotten pretty handy at making custom plugins for FCP, but has run into limitations, some of which are based on the fact that FCP is not 64bit, and has other under-the-good short comings.
These are a few things, and important things, that it seems to me that a development team with a mandate to push full steam ahead would have already worked out, and would certainly be working out by now. Another way of expressing the same wonderment is to say that the major upgrades to Final Cut and its sibling products just show a surprising lack of refinement from my POV. Especially considering the popularity and pervasiveness of the product, and from where I sit there seems to be a surprising lack of stated direction for this particular product line. I realize that FCP Server is now available, but the core products don’t seem to have a fire lit under them from a development stand point.
So actually, I’m kind of wondering: What is/are the long term goals of Apple with its proapp lines? Are we in this for the long haul or is going to end up being historically like Apple’s consumer level application have been – kind of here today and gone tomorrow. Aside from their OS and hardware, Apple has always been kind of half committed to its software product lines, and I for one generally like their software products and the deafening silence just makes me wonder.
I make my living using Apple Pro Apps. I’ve used FCP since version 1. I recall years ago Steve Jobs saying that Apple’s future is video. Now, how you interpret that statement is up to you. . .
MDN, if the real Steve Jobs told you that this site loads slow compared to most others and that the main content loaded last instead of first, would you listen then and do something about it?
@iWill.
My response is that Macs [hardware and OS] were ready for video from day one (did you know that Mac 128s were video capable?), while Windows and Windows lovin hardware was still wet behind the ears. So Apple has always provided a platform upon which multimedia can be used and created, the question has always been, who’s going to develop the tools? Well, Apple finally stepped up to the plate with FCP, and a stellar beginning it was, but by now there are some foundational issues that are just a bit incongruous. Of course iLife and the ever growing array of consumer media products for Mac is a boon for the let’s-have-fun market, but like you, the bread on my table comes from using these professional products, and for me it’s been almost 20 years now. I know and experience the good the bad and the ugly from direct experience with both Apple and Windows products, and FCP is in real need of an under-the-hood remake. Besides the things I mentioned in my previous post, there are ongoing and numerous smaller issues that continue to not be resolved that, in total, add up to a subtle but real wondering of what kind of priority this product line is for Apple.
I’m one of the two XSan admins for the production house I work in and it was with raised eyebrow that I watched Apple drop its XRaid hardware just four or five weeks ago with no warning, and even though they almost simultaneously released a major upgrade of their XSan client software, it still makes me wonder what their longer term path is for that product. We all know that no small part of Apple’s success is that they make the entire “widget”, so the end product is more useable and more stable than it would be otherwise, but this latest development could be interpreted as Apple breaking its own rules.
Bear in mind this is not doomsday for Apple in general, its just a demonstration of the incongruity of their professional solutions compared to everything else they do. And again, they’ve now released FCP Server, but they just recently dropped out of the high-end RAID hardware market. When you put it all together I think it is a real mystery – or not so much a mystery – maybe they [Apple] just haven’t decided how far they want to go with it. Maybe it’s just the lack of real competition in this admittedly niche market – look what lack of competition did for MS – could it be that Apple is suffering with a microcosm of that issue with regard to their professional products?
Whatever “it” is, I wish they’d decide what their commitment level is, and if it’s not high, than adjust up to high, and get moving with real forwardly driven momentum for their professional applications.
So much for, “We don’t comment on rumors, or unannounced products.” I suppose that this means that the next time Apple does not comment, we can all just speculate that the rumors are true.
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@ Mr. Peabody:
You’re right that paper and food product companies wouldn’t deal with 1,000,000 units of anything.
In FCP’s case unit sales volume has little / no effect on the unit price or profit margin, which is why paper or food product companies are so concerned about units…
FCP/Studio has brought in around $1 Billion for Apple since it’s introduction. FCP’s profit margin is so high on each unit sold that a paper or food company would need to sell $6-8 Billion to achieve the same net profit.
It’s like comparing Apples to oranges.
@Macintosh,
Fair enough, but what about the real issue – development: As in a clear, well publicized roadmap for its [Apple’s] professional products. I clearly remember not too long after Aperture first came out, there was a long period of time (at least it felt long to those that were contemplating it for their professional use or had already converted), between updates, long enough that users were posting comments to this venue not to mention other places as well – and many were wondering if Apple was going to continue to support/develop the product at all.
Generally I don’t find Apple to be willy-nilly about much of anything that they do – Except – with their software products, and more notably, with their professional software products.
If you use Apple professional software products I’d really appreciate your comments along those lines.
Cheers
So Steve Jobs reads MDN. That’s kinda like George Bush watching Fox News.
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Cringely. Ignorable ignoramus hack:
“… regarding our previous article (May 2nd, source: Robert X. Cringely) on the rumor that Apple had shopped its pro apps portfolio around at NAB.”
I restate my hypothesis: Cringely is a KKK ( [William] Kristol Kult of Krazies) plant in the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting whose undercover assignment is to ruin the reputation of the corporation by making them look like blithering idiots, thereby destroying US public broadcasting forever. Why? Actual, factual “Fair and Balanced” news coverage rips the masks off the Neo-Con-Jobs. Mustn’t have that!