According to Adobe:
Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium software has taken the industry by storm with breakthrough new features and performance that help video professionals deliver content to virtually any screen. Demand for Adobe’s video content creation tools has exploded, growing 22 percent year-over-year with 45 percent growth on the Mac, fueled by the large number of Apple Final Cut Pro customers switching to Adobe Premiere Pro.
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Source: Adobe Systems Incorporated
MacDailyNews Take: Apple has brilliantly and efficiently transferred a certain type of customer to Adobe.
Real rational “pros” are still using Final Cut Pro 7 while exploring Final Cut Pro X, providing feedback to Apple, and anticipating additional enhancements. The knee-jerkers are Adobe’s problem now.
Of course, Apple’s Final Cut Pro sales are unknown, so there’s no way of knowing if demand for Apple’s software package also “exploded” or not, but, if we had to guess, the price decrease from $999 for Final Cut Pro 7 to $299 for Final Cut Pro X, has likely also led to an increase in unit sales. Perhaps greater than the increase Adobe’s experienced. Perhaps much greater.
Adobe’s attempt to concoct an exodus narrative fails in the absence of not only Apple’s sales data, but Adobe’s unit sale data as well (for example, Adobe could have sold 100 units last year vs. 145 units this year and truthfully claim a 45% increase in YOY sales).
If the expected FCPX update, which should be sooner than later does not change things, the way to go for most PROs is Adobe or AVID.
If Adobe play good his cards and PP 6 is more similar to what FCP 7 users wanted in the expected and never fulfilled FCP 8, they could get huge amounts of users migrating to Adobe from Apple… and I may be one of them… let’s expect Apple changes some of this and recover again their judgment on this…
The best thing about switching to Adobe is that all those projects that now won’t open in FCPX open perfectly in Premiere!
I could call this one ofthe biggest mistakes Apple has made since the Jobs return but somehow this seems orchestrated.
I’m an FCP Editor for now, but when Premiere starts to do EVEN MORE useful cool things than Final Cut 7. I’m. Outta. Heeee-aar.
No, you should switch now. Since Adobe Premiere will never catch up with Final Cut (even 7), we should be rid of the clueless idiots such as yourself now.
Don’t let the door hit your non-video editing ass on the way out.
No, actual Pros use Final Cut. Whining Douchebags in the employ of Adobe have been running all over the internet claiming that FCPX is “dumbed down” trying to drive the clueless wannabes into buying adobe crap.
Anyone who knows anything about video editing, recognizes that Final Cut Pro X is a vastly superior product.
The MDN take is perfectly correct. Apple doesn’t need ALL video editors to use FCPX, just enough to make a profitable business.
All the folks that would have been problem customers anyway are now stuck over at Adobe! 🙂
abandoning and antagonising the pro market .. beyond stupid.
That isn’t the pro market. That is the adobe shill market. Since adobe shills are not going to buy FCP anyway, there’s no downside.
The people whining about FCPX are not “pros”, they are people who don’t even grasp the basics of video editing.
This is just more adobe deception and FUD, which I guess is the only way adobe can make money since they can’t be bothered to make quality products.
Direct validation of Newton’s first law of motion: actions have direct reactive, causal consequences. I hope while the captain’s away on vacation, the crew members working in the boiler room of the good ship Apple won’t be making any more boneheaded decisions.
Make something the public wants or get the hell out of Dodge.
Adobe’s launch of InDesign is a great case study on how to launch a completely new flagship product in the creative market.
In that case Quark was the legacy product, but the idea was they put it out there with some large functional gaps (which was fine because we were all just exploring the thing — getting comfortable with the future, while we kept using Quark for real projects). Then when v2.0 came out we were all ready for it, and comfortable with a new way of doing things.
Apple should have treated FCP7 as their QuarkXpress, and FCPX as their Indesign v1.0. The pro-sumer market would have grabbed it right away, and professionals would have been excited and ready for version 2.
Apple should have been both Quark and Adobe? Wouldn’t the better analogy have been PageMaker vs. InDesign as those were at least from the same company?
But that’s not the way it went down. There were no pros using PageMaker by then.
The point is that designers could still walk into a store and buy Quark, so no one was panicked by InDesign. In fact most people were very excited to see this clean, efficient new software on the market, even if it was totally unusable for professionals.
And when InDesign 2.0 came out we were all sick of Quark and ready to move on to InDesign.
Apple should have treated itself as the competition. Instead it acted like it had a permanent installed user base. Hopefully, lesson learned.
Oh, there were pro’s using PageMaker. Some had moved on to Quark, but professional service bureaus were still taking PageMaker files (by comparison, pro’s WEREN’T using, say, Microsoft Publisher).
Apple IS treating itself as the competition. Just like in the phone, computer hardware, and mp3 player space, they come out with a new thing and no longer sell the “last year’s model”.
The big difference is that no one calls themselves a PRO-iPod Nano user.
Um… in English, please? What captain, and what boneheaded decisions are you referring to?
IIRC, you’re the same person who was complaining about Lion’s autosave feature, so it seems like you’re predisposed to rail against anything Apple does which significantly changes the status quo. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
And Apple makes things that people want. By “the public” I think you actually mean “current users of the older version of their application”, which isn’t the same thing.
There are a few “deal-breakers” in FCPX.
But it will get there.
Statistically the sales curve of Adobe Première Pro disproves your contention that wrenching change is better than incremental change. People are migrating in flocks away from FCP X which explains the increase in sales for Adobe products, something that would not have happened had Apple handled the transition more dipllomatically by not deprecating FCP7 before FCPX had gained a foothold in the professional market.
Unlike you I apply my intelligence in discerning the less good parts of Apple rather than adopting the Apple line of everything is good like a mindless moron.
@Ballmer, I agree with what you’re saying. Apple handled this badly and clearly some are moving to Adobe. What’s not clear though is the net effect on Apple. By that, I mean, there have been no “high profile” defections to Adobe that I’m aware of. Most rational types are taking a “wait and see” attitude as FCP7 is still more than competitive with Premiere CS5.5. Further, Final Cut Pro X is still ranking very highly on the Mac app store. While we don’t know the true net impact on Apple, but there is equal evidence that suggests Apple is actually expanding it’s market. I don’t believe we have the final word on this saga just yet.
No, I agree with you. The net effect of all this is unknown because we don’t know how many new people adopted FCPX as opposed to how many migrated away from FCP7 to Adobe. I’m not necessarily saying FCPX is entirely bad because if the whole purpose is to garner new users then reducing complexity could be the way forward.
But it was the way Apple handled the transition process that created a lot of angst in particular deprecating FCP7 and in so doing leaving many professional users in the lurch as they had no way to increase the number of seats even if they wanted to and Apple told them effectively that they were out of luck.
In fact I agree with the commentator ‘disposable identity’ in that he made many good points in his post by drawing parallels between the introduction of InDesign version 1.0 and Quark so that by version 2.0 users had a chance to play with it and familiarize themselves with the changes. I’m not arguing against change, only against the way how change should be handled.
No flocks of people are migrating away from FCPX.
This is just typical lies from the makers of flash and the funders of the “FCPX is bad for pros” propaganda on the internet.
No actual video Pros are leaving FCPX. Anyone who knows anything about editing video recognizes that it is superior.
All the people complaining online are idiots who either are working for adobe, were apple haters already, or don’t know anything about editing video.
If wannabes are going over to adobe because they fell for these dirty tricks, who cares?
That is NOT the first law of Newton’s laws of motion. Then again, I don’t exactly expect you to check facts before opining, so no surprises there.
All right smart ass, third law then. It’s not as if you’re bulging with brains either Mr. Anemic Thinker.
Still, they should have released Final Cut Pro X it as a second product line, and told the pro market “this is the future, in a year or two you won’t be able to buy the old stuff anymore”.
For better or worse Apple never got the enterprise market, and video editing is the “enterprise market” of the creative industry. Lots of large, well-funded shops are still using Avid on PowerMac G4s. They don’t buy something just because it’s newer and better. When you have that much infrastructure, you have to plan your upgrades and training carefully.
“Lots of large, well-funded shops are still using Avid on PowerMac G4s.”
You do realize that Apple understands and knows those customers are beyond their reach. If you’re still using Avid on PowerMac G4’s, I’m guessing you’re not a part of the group that’s complaining about FCPX 🙂
My point is that the television industry has a huge investment in complex interconnected hardware/software systems and tends to upgrade at a different pace than typical desktop users, other creative users like photographers & designers, or just about any other market you could think of.
The studios I work in always want the fastest they can possibly afford for their editing. It’s the software they are more likely to live with for a while. The FCPX debacle caused Apple quite a bit of bad feeling, particularly the lack of backwards file compatibility. FCP users had been waiting for 64-bit for a very long time, and were told by their Apple reps that FCPX would answer their needs.
Now THAT is a part of the whole thing that could have gone over better. Agreed.
Could have gone over better? Are you implying that the only problem here was some kind of marketing PR stuffup?
FCP users CAN”T MIGRATE THEIR FILES INTO FCPX! That is a REAL problem RIGHT NOW, not a perceptual one. The answer “get over it .. get with the new” doesn’t cut it.
And my point is that their upgrade cycle for a new version of FCPX will likely not come around for them for at least 2-5 years, so they are completely not concerned about what’s going on here.
In fact, any PRO that considered loading new untested software on a production system without determining if it fit in their current workflows weren’t really a PRO to begin with. Those are the folks I think are complaining the loudest.
Methinks MDN doth protest too much. The FCP X handover has been a debacle for Apple. Time will tell of course…
Apple still did themselves no favors by not delivering an editing update on par and beyond with FCP 7, and that’s what everyone was EXPECTING. The whole debacle could have been avoided with a little more forethought and planning from Apple being more sensitive to the same “real” Pro’s depending on them. You do NOT leave these people hanging. Yeah we’re hanging in there but there’s also no word from Apple about the next update. I have no doubt FCPX will eventually rise to the occasion, but in the interim there should have been a better plan. You have to at least give the illusion you care.
In other news, 65% of Adobe Premeire buyers suffer from buyers remorse…
Mdn,
I thought Apple is not about sales! You talked about sales more than hale of the paragraph, can we just admit some people don’t like the final cut x?
FCPX is not as bad as Apple’s rollout of it. However Apple knows there will be no long term fallout from it. It will rock and all this huffn and puffn will be forgotten..just like the iPad jokes.
Yep.
Apple even said that some of the features “removed” from fcpx were not removed… But had to be rolled out later due to the switch to cocoa.
The knee jerkers went nuts.
Apple did however screw up on stopping the old FCP sales though.. They sell it again now, but they should have never killed it. At least not yet.
Why would people buy FCP when there’s no further development path?
Brilliantly handed over customers to a competitor?
Careful, MDN.. you’re over the line from cheerleader to crazy jumpin-around-screamin’ chick. 🙂
Yes, in the same way that, during the iPod days, for customers that wanted FM built into their MP3 players, Apple was more than happy to hand those over to the Creative’s of the world. Or, for people that want USB3, they’re more than happy to hand that sector of the market to WinTel makers. That’s how they’ve always done business.
“You do NOT leave these people hanging.”
Yes you do, especially if those people are the ones preventing you from skating where the puck is going to be.
Imagine if Apple released a new Mac that had NO legacy ports whatsoever. Imagine you had to buy all new peripherals, and also could not move files or email from your old Mac in any way.
That’s essentially what Final Cut Pro X is.
It’s a foundations for so many great things to come. But you can’t open your old projects. That’s a deal-breaker for many who make their living with it.
You mean like the iMac?………………
Not at all.
The original iMac had a modem and an ethernet port. It had a CD Rom drive. You could even get a floppy drive for it.
The iMac would have flopped hard and fast if there was no way to move and use your old files (for example if you couldn’t open your 20 years of word processing docs).
Final Cut Pro X is exactly that. You have to abandon your life’s work.
Notably Apple even re-introduced the ADB port for a time on the original Blue & White G3 — for pro users.
You’re an adobe shill. You’re certainly not a video editor. FCPX is perfectly fine for video editors to use, and your analogy is absolute nonsense.
I’m just amazed that fucktards like you can make so much noise that ignorant people actually believe you.
people will never cease to amaze me. FCPX is incredible, so incredibly unbelievably awesome when you consider what you get for the $$. But I guess some people would rather pay more for something that will on bloat bloat bloat. Adobe SUX. That isn’t gonna change. What will change though, is FCPX, it will mature.
Do you actually make a living as a video editor?
It seems to me that everyone excited about FCPX isn’t a professional user.
It can’t be, FCPX is absolutely impossible to use at the moment in a professional environment.
It’s great for someone that has a lot of talent for video editing but doesn’t make a living from it. There is a big difference in working on a youtube project for yourself without a deadline and very demanding customers, than working as a professional that really has to live from his craft and deal with last minute color corrections audio mixes etc.
Did FCP 7 disappear the second FCPX appeared or something? Anyone who blindly jumped into X despite the well-documented changes to the program probably didn’t have that much invested.
I wish someone would explain to me how anyone using Final Cut for a decade would jump ship from 7 to X the day it came out, then jump to Premier in a huff because it wasn’t what they expected. People are making it sound like every pro had this experience.
I disagree completely. How, how could Apple endorse Adobe just the problematic customers? And with a product not ready for professionals either? If this is somehow a strategy why Apple first discontinued a FCP product and then returned it to market at the same price point?
Nope, this was an Apple mistake and this erode Apple perception on loyal processional customers. By the way, I have a Mac Pro, a Mac Book Pro and FCP installed on both. It just happens I haven’t upgraded to a recent version and I don’t need it either as I am an occasional user.
This is a case of people hating change and the older those people get the more they hate change.
Remember when we changed to OS X. The first and even second iteration of OS X was not as capable as OS 9. Most people bitched and complained until OS X 3.6.
History does repeat itself.
People do hate change, but switching to Adobe Premier also requires change. How is this a rational decision? It isn’t. If you’re a FCP pro and change is forced upon you, what’s the benefit of switching to a completely different piece of software? I don’t get it.
P.S. I’m not defending Apple’s totally inept way of handling the FCP redesign and their customers’ reaction to it.
Adobe Premiere (along with bundled Adobe Encore) supports creating Blu-ray discs. Adobe is giving the people what they want.
Apple — they offer you what is profitable for them.
Hit the nail on the head!! And you can tell exactly how profitable it IS for them by looking at their bottom line.
Unlike Adobe which is a charity, and makes products according to people’s desires…
If anyone actually makes stuff that people want and love to use, it is Apple. If anyone is the epitome of the opposite, it is Adobe.
I tend to agree with MDN here, at least partially. While there is no doubt that some FCP users got extremely irate and demonstratively migrated to Adobe (in some cases, I’m certain, against their better judgement, considering the massive amount of time and money required for migration and re-training), I’m sure that Apple’s FCPX numbers are nothing short of stellar. The software package that was being sold for $1,000 was out of reach for very many professional videographers. The new $300 price point makes is significantly more attractive for them. Rather than putting up with the limitations of FCE (Final Cut Express), these have likely jumped at the chance to get the full FCPX. In their case, the upgrade was well worth the investment, as the workflow is much more efficient for vast majority of tasks they do daily.
As for those existing FCP users, I can’t possibly imagine why would anyone, who already has a fully established complex workflow devised around FCP, plan and execute a migration to an entirely different platform so quickly. In my experience, professional users of ANY high-end software/hardware product NEVER upgrade to the new version that quickly. In many cases, they only go to the next version when their hardware upgrade cycle is up (and the budget is there for new hardware/software). I know many publishing operations that are on Adobe CS3; I also know several recording studios that are still on Pro Tools 7.4 (from 2007; current version is 9). I can’t possibly imagine that real professionals had migrated to a competing product within months of FCPX release.
All in all, Apple has likely lost some old customers, but it has most certainly acquired many more new ones.
I think the same way. Whenever I hear that a PRO is complaining, I always think,”What PRO has even LOOKED at FCPX at this time?” I’m thinking someone who calls themselves a PRO, bought it/installed it/had problems and didn’t even have a Time Machine backup to roll back to.
Not a way to run a PROfessional business.
Pros don’t use Time Machine. They work in server environments where backup is professionally managed.
Most of the criticism of the FCP X complainers are from people who are not professionals. Pros have very specific needs which must be included in X. No doubt those features will be added back but until then, it’s foolish for everyone to rail against the pros and tell them what they should and shouldn’t like or need. This is not a subjective argument. X will get there but the transition from 7 to X was mishandled which is why Apple is once again selling 7. Because they don’t want mass defection. And MDN, while generally spot on, is wrong here. They are not professional editors with the specific technical needs of the post-production/broadcasting industries.
You’re right that pros don’t jump immediately. What really happened is FCP X essentially validated pros decisions to switch. The migration really started about 2 years ago, when FCP 7 came out with a lackluster update.. Combine that with the ongoing rumors of Apple’s pro apps division, phoned-in Mac Pro update and great releases by competitors lead professionals to go elsewhere.
Publishing and audio is not the same as video. With new formats, cameras, and codecs coming out every year, Apple was simply behind the curve. FCP essentially was unchanged since 4 years ago when FCP 6 came out. You can’t string video pros along that long.
If FCP X had come out 2 years ago, along with the release of FCP 7, pros would have had at least more incentive to stay on and see what the future had while Apple built more features in. After FCP 7 came out (which many assumed would be 64-bit), most optimistic pros assumed that Apple needed more time to making FCP insanely great, devoting their attention to the app. Premiere went 64-bit a year after FCP 7, beating Apple at their own game. When CS5.5 came out earlier this year, Apple knew it was in trouble so it had to introduce something soon. Their answer was FCP X.
> The software package that was being sold for $1,000 was out of reach for very many professional videographers
$1000 is nothing when a camera is at least 3 times that. The difference in $700 wouldn’t be a dealbreaker to many pros imo, maybe only to very entry-level ones.
What he said. Guess that’s what I get for pecking out my comment before scrolling all the way down. I think this is like the 3rd time you’ve done that to me, Predrag. 😛
I have a funny story to tell: I switched from Premiere CS 5.5 to FCP X and we are glad every day. We produce mainly interviews and features with book authors in Full HD, from 5 to 120 minutes for TV, DVD, websites, etc. Some of them were broadcasted nationwide in German television.
Let me say very clear that FCP X is one great product. It has never been easier to get great results. FCP X also is very professional in any way, you only need to get a very good training. Start from zero and you will get quick results. Forget what you knew, give it a try!
For sure, Apple’s communication was terrible. But FCP X will be the Premiere-Killer like InDesign killed Quark. Promised! Remember that InDesign 1.0 made no impression in the beginning because it was different to use than Quark. It took a while (and some updates) that everybody could see how much better InDesign’s foundation is since it is written from scratch.
Same to FCP X. It is sleek, fast, well designed, and will mature. Premiere is totally bloated, like all previous versions of Final Cut, like Word, like Quark. All based on spaghetti code from the 80ies.
Give FCP X a try.
Bernd from Berlin
I disagree. Apple blew it with the release of FCPX.
Don’t get me wrong – the program itself is very good. The interface, the functionality and the price all make to a pretty inviting piece of software.
However, the problem lies in what it does not do. You can’t open older versions of FCP. That’s probably the biggest mark against it. However, there are many other features that are absent now which are vital to most professional video-editing shops.
If this was such a brilliant move, why did Apple put FCP 7 back on sale?
I’m a pretty big Apple advocate, but I am willing to call them out when they screw up. This was a big one.
Hopefully they get this fixed.
MDN is right. Adobe is in the same league with Google and HTC for business ethics. More like LACK of ethics.
MDN Takes are some of the funniest stuff on the web
LOL…45%? What does that mean? Rather than sell 2 copies they sold 3? Seriously! What in a few weeks everyone ran out and switched? LOL.
Post-production is DEAD! The number of independent houses has decreased 32% over the last 5 years. It’s a DEAD market and like the print market Adobe can have it!
Next!
delusional
FCP X – “What a beautiful catastrophe”
Zorba the Greek