Some interesting news this morning.
FIRST
Apple has quietly notified developers that it is preparing to offer volume purchases for business customers via the App Store.
MacNN has more about this.
The significance of this is that volume purchases of Final Cut Pro will no longer be tied to individual iTunes accounts. This might also presage the arrival of volume pricing and distribution for educational customers.
SECOND
I’ve had emails or phone calls from three different resellers telling me that Apple has notified resellers that it is offering them a one-time, two-day opportunity to buy as many copies of Final Cut Studio (3) as they want.
While this is not the same as putting FCS (3) on the open market, it does mean that the product will be available from selected retailers for a while longer. If you need licenses, contact your favorite, non-Apple store reseller.
THIRD
A large number of Final Cut Pro editors are thinking about switching platforms. Last week, my podcast – the Digital Production Buzz – had a series of discussions on switching to Avid. (Details here.)
This week, we have the product manager for Premiere Pro on the show, along with a recent Final Cut Pro post house that switched to Premiere. (Details here.) If you are thinking about switching, listen to this show first.
Larry
22 Responses to Three items of note
← Older Comments-
Pat (VET) says:
July 19, 2011 at 1:39 pm
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Richard Coulombe says:
July 25, 2011 at 1:31 pm
← Older CommentsIf I were an FCP (legacy) owner I’d be having to decide to sit tight and see what Apple or 3rd party providers pull out of the bag in the next 12 months. If apple do it that would be great but lots of 3rd party add ons to make it work will be expensive and clunky (syncing updates and resolving issues!)
Or I’d be taking advantage of the offers being made now to get on board another ship that I know is sailing in the right direction.
But open source ligthworks I’m not sure about.
Open source can be great it can also be dire and I wouldn’t want my job and earning potential tied to something so variable.
Who do you chase with a bug or a problem with Open Source? Who’s responsible for problems? What if developers and contributers move on?
On june 2, as and independent filmmaker, a proud owner of Final Cut Studio 1 and a long time proponent of Apple’s software and hardware, with several ongoing projects, I ordered an upgrade to Final Cut Studio 3, along with a set of printed documentation, as a precautionary measure to the upcoming release of Final Cut Pro X potential issues and all the uncertainty around the new application’s feature set, backward compatibility and .0 version software stability.
At that time, I could have ordered it online from the Apple Store.
I prefer encouraging local business here in Quebec city, Canada. So I ordered it from my local Apple retailer, the oldest in Quebec.
I waited for the retailer’s phone call to go pick my goods. And I waited, and waited… Until, on july 8, I called the retailer to be informed that Apple had simply cancelled my order on june 21. The retailer did not relay the news to me for two full weeks. Do I need to say that made me very angry?
The retail store’s buyer first told me over the phone to upgrade to FCP X from Apple’s App store. I explained that the feature set of FCP X didn’t meet my projects’ requirements and that I couldn’t import my existing FCP projects in FCP X even if I wanted to.
She then wryly offered me a full FCS 3 seat she had in stock… for 999.95 $. This made me outright furious. After some arguing, She offered to send an email to Apple to request a Final Cut Studio 3 upgrade and to put me in CC. But I never got a copy of such an email from the retailer or from Apple.
The next day, I met with the authorized Apple retail store manager. He explained to me that he had little or no influence whatsoever over Apple cancelling customers’ orders, that this was quite frequent on the part of Apple and that they couldn’t do anything about it.
I offered to buy the full license of FCS 3 they had in stock for the price of the upgrade and the documentation Apple had cancelled. He told me that the meager profit (6% according tho him) he made from the 5,000 $ in equipment I had bought from them over the last 3 years wouldn’t make up for his loss he if he did so. That he’d be better to return the FCS 3 box set to Apple to get a refund.
I left the manager, disgusted at how him, his employees and Apple altogether had treated me as a customer.
The same evening, I found a secondhand upgrade license for FCS 3 for the same price of 300 $ I would have paid to Apple. So my problem was then solved, thanks to some Web searching a little luck.
But this was not the end of the story…
On july 19, the buyer from the retailer store sent me an email to the effect that Apple finally had some copies of the FCS3 upgrade available and was willing to sell me one.
My written response to the buyer was that she should have followed on closely with Apple in june, starting around june 9, about week after my order, thus ensuring I wouldn’t have had gone through all that trouble with them and with Apple. I also wrote I was no longer interested in buying the upgrade from Apple and that I was no longer interested in doing any business with the retailer ever.
I will now have a very hard time recommending any Apple product to anybody. My thrust in Apple has been destroyed.
Some people on the Web have been explaining over and over how clever Apple has been regarding the FCP X launch, letting go of a few thousand picky professional and replacing them with millions of new users, and also how existing FCS users had no choice to move on.
As for myself, I will move on. My next editing suite will assuredly be one provided by Apple’s competition, since it seems Apple had figured by june 21 that it could do without me as a customer, and above all has proven not to be forthright and thrustworthy.
I am wondering if Apple, even at this time, has any idea of the extent of the damage it inflicted upon itself and its business, and upon post-production houses and professionals, by displaying such a lousy attitude towards such a large group of power users of one of the best products it had ever put to market. Time will tell, and my take is that it will not be to Apple’s good in the long run.