Who's Accountable?

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Larry

Like many of you, I’ve been losing sleep this last week trying to figure out what’s going to happen to my business after the debacle of the Final Cut Pro X launch.

I read in a blog last night that Steve Jobs has gotten involved in this mess and that “really great things will be happening really soon.”

So my first question is: “Why does Steve Jobs need to get directly involved in what is essentially a straight-forward upgrade to one of their well-established products?”

And this led me to a bigger thought: “Who’s Accountable?”

As I woke up this morning, I had a day-dream of Phil Schiller, VP of Worldwide Marketing, appearing on my podcast, the Digital Production Buzz, to answer questions from listeners.

(In reality, this will never happen. Apple stopped giving on-the-record interviews, with the exception of Mr. Jobs, many years ago.)

So, imagining that Mr. Schiller were on the program, here are the questions I would ask:

1. What was the benefit to Apple of immediately canceling Final Cut Studio (3) with the release of a brand-new and untested product; when there was no technical reason (according to Apple) to do so?

2. Why did Apple feel it was necessary to alienate one of their most passionate fan bases with this release; were professional users that expendable?

3. What responsibility does Apple have when canceling a product to companies that built businesses around those products in terms of notification and support?

4. Conversely, what does Apple require of its vendors, when a supplier to Apple decides to modify a manufacturing method?

5. What is the benefit to Apple for assuming a strict rule of silence whenever something goes wrong? (A short period for research is understandable, but not when it stretches for weeks. The number one rule of PR is communication – but, apparently, not for Apple.)

6. Conversely, what would Apple’s reaction be if one of its vendors, say FoxConn, refused to talk to Apple when something went wrong, such as an explosion?

7. Why is Apple unwilling to provide a general roadmap to those products it considers “professional”?

8. Conversely, what would Apple’s reaction be if Intel refused to tell it about new chips it was developing?

9. Trust is a very tricky thing. It takes time to create and can be destroyed in an instant. Does Apple perceive the extent to which it has breached this trust and what will Apple do to recover from it?

Not one of these questions deals with the features of a product. They deal with the moral character of a company.

As consumers, we are held accountable through license agreements, laws, and regulation.

But who holds corporations accountable?

The sad part is that no one holds corporations accountable. We will never learn these answers. And the damage that’s been done will be irreparable.

Larry

66 Responses to Who's Accountable?

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ron says:

July 8, 2011 at 5:41 pm

Floris you are naive. At this point, 20 plus years into the NLE game, there is NO excuse for a product coming out from any company that lacks the basics needed for a professional editing environment where clients and multiple delivery requirements are involved. FCPX is just too bare bones to be useful to most professional editors who have companies and earn their lively hood through editing and post production. THAT is the main beef pros are having with this release. Change is always good and most of us embrace it as that is how you grow. But change for the sake of change alone, where you throw out important stuff is not positive change. What if the next version of Word came out without the ability to print or save as a pdf? That would be a stupid move on Microsofts part. What Apple has done is just as stupid and insulting to those of us who have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars building our business around this not dead tool
Nivardo Cavalcante says:

July 8, 2011 at 6:58 pm

Thanks Larry,

If there diginidade company that their questions should be read and answered, or the man who commands. The only power we have Apple to show our anger and our grief is NOT BUY ANY MORE OF THEIR PRODUCTS. I will do. Yes, I can have hundreds of alternatives for them.

God bless you.
Creech says:

July 8, 2011 at 7:04 pm

Larry,
I want you to know how much i respect you and your opinions; thanks for being so level-headed about FCPX.

I wanted you know that (being a filmmaker and digital film teacher at the college level for a few years now) i’m really appreciating your willingness to blog your thoughts on FCPX and keep us up to date on what is happening and how you see it.

I’ve loved Apple and FCP for a while now, and was extremely excited about the new features announced at NAB, only to bit fairly disillusioned with the torrent of news about the actual release. I have yet to try FCPX, and am worried that Apple has misjudged the “pro” film industry and market.

In my view, the film market for prosumers is identical to the market for pro photographers- a whole range of new “professionals” arise up from their amateur status because they spend a little cash on a Nikon D9 or a Cannon 7D or 5D MarkII, and they buy PHOTOSHOP and LIGHTROOM, the software they know that professionals use. The same is true of many of the “videographers” i know, who want to use the same tools that they know the professionals use. They buy it less because of the feature set they see, and moreso for the feature set it must have because the Coen Brothers or Walter Murch used it. Photoshop sells because it’s a professional standard that most people can afford, and Final Cut Pro has sold to many people for identical reasons. If you lose the real Professional Market, you don’t gain a middle market, you lose it all. The middle market will go to the pro applications used by professionals that the amateur can save up for. Being unchained from Avid Hardware brings Media Composer into the fray as well, and Adobe will not forget this lesson as it is the reason it rules Graphic and Web Design. After Effects is also an illustration of this principle, and sells copies.

I might finally buy FCPX and give it a whirl, and bet on Apple coming through.

thanks again,
Greg says:

July 8, 2011 at 7:06 pm

It’s funny, I’m enraged like everyone. But if I’m honest with myself, the biggest thing that puts me off of FCPX (besides Apple’s atrocious handling of it all) is, let’s face it, the interface changes. And I suspect it is in fact the MAJOR issue for other FCP pros, even though we don’t want to admit it.

Seriously, if FCPX had indeed come out with support for XML, EDL, tape capture and layback, etc., I still don’t think most of us pros would switch to FCPX. We would probably not learn the new program because we JUST DON’T WANT TO.

Seriously, we ALL know that FCPX export of XML will come soon. But in FCP land, there will NEVER again be a source monitor. There will never be audio tracks. There will never not be a magnetic timeline.

It’s just interesting, because I thought I hated FCPX for the obvious pro features that it’s lacking… but that’s letting myself off the hook too easily. I think it looks like iMovie on steroids. And that’s why I’m switching back to AVID. I totally respect Apple trying to reinvent the wheel, but it comes down to it, the wheel works for me.

I’m not proud of it, but it’s true…
Larry says:

July 8, 2011 at 8:56 pm

Creech:

I think your comments on prosumers buy what the pros use is very insightful.

Larry
Jason says:

July 8, 2011 at 9:04 pm

Larry,

Answers to some of your questions if I was Phil Schiller:

1. Well we always discontinue previous versions when a new release is made available for purchase to make no confusion to the customer. If we had multiple versions on the shelf or in the App Store (the best way to find and buy new Software for your Mac) it would leave the customer asking what version should I buy? Selling only the current version is the least confusing and best marketing strategy for Apple Computer. Besides, why would you want to buy old software that will not work in future releases of Mac OS X and beyond (OS XI, OS XII – if we evolve beyond the OSX platform). We would never release an application that was not thoroughly tested, but with all software releases issues are found and we fix them in software updates along the way.

2. Apple created Final Cut Pro X for the majority of the world’s creative professionals (1,990,000 registered pro users of FCP 7). The approximately 10,000 high-end Film and TV editors that use FCP 7 and make up the minority will find Final Cut Pro X will meet their needs with the help of 3rd-Party developers and solution providers as it has always been in past releases of FCP. Any import/export of archaic forms of media will be best addressed by these 3rd-Party developers. Creating solutions for the high-end Film/TV industry is what they do best.

3. Although Apple no longer offers Final Cut Server, we will continue to support this application and workflow until a better solution is made available. Final Cut Server will work and continue to work for its installed base.

Take care, and keep on cutting on what ever platform you use.
Erik says:

July 8, 2011 at 9:30 pm

Larry – This is the most articulate and concise explanation I have read of how Apple mishandled their PR. Very well done.
Leo Hans says:

July 8, 2011 at 9:46 pm

Larry,

Today I was showing to colleagues Final Cut Pro X (we work at high end TV Commercial Production Companies).

Before that the first comment I received from them was “I don’t like the interface, its too iMovie. There are almost no buttons”.

After showing them some “how to” in FCPX they changed their mind. They loved the metadata approach, the skimming, the color corrector, the audio plugins, the speed (processing speed, but editing speed too), etc.

Sure, it is not ready for some work yet, but let’s face it. It will.

The best thing that we can do as editors, is to learn as much as we can about FCPX techniques. If it doesn’t finally go pro. Bad luck. But if it will, we better be on the run sooner than later. Is like an investment where you don’t have too much to loose getting involved.

If you own a facility, it’s another story. You don’t need to go to Avid or Premiere overnight. FCP7 still works. Get an Avid, a Premiere and FCPX and do tests in order to get ready for the future, but don’t jump from the train too soon. That’s my thoughts about FCPX.
Lachlan says:

July 8, 2011 at 9:48 pm

@ Greg:

For me it’s not the new interface, but rather the glaring omissions in OMF support that are keeping me away – and I don’t really see an elegant way around this issue.

(- As well as EDL, broadcast monitoring, lack of layered PSD file support, support for reconnecting offline media etc. etc.)

I’m not keen on paying Automatic Duck for a kludge workaround that I suspect will throw audio files out to ProTools in a disorganised fashion and take twice as long to achieve what is currently a straightforward operation.

This push for third parties to take up the slack of what should really be baked into the product just defies common sense. What happens if FCP X only ever reaches the enthusiast market? What third party is going to waste time and money developing pro features for a product that no one uses in a pro capacity?

Apple have made their bed and it was with the consumer in mind, not people like us.

Larry, thanks again for your excellent and thoughtful posts.
Fred1 says:

July 8, 2011 at 9:59 pm

Larry, reading that Steve Jobs is getting involved means nothing now. And he wants to use third party developers to accomplish it???
For us, this is too little too late. We will keep using FC7 until we are up and running with Premier Pro. This is not Apple dropping the ball, this was a calculated move to try to gain market share by selling to a vast market of weekend users, and dropping the Pros. I think what they didn’t count on was how influential the small Pro crowd was. And that Adobe and the others are now about 1 year ahead of them in development. Have you seen a third party user book for FCPX yet? All the issues people have been having are being solved by other users in the blogosphere. Nothing from Apple yet.
And to make matters worse, the pros are helping the transition to other platforms… publicly… like this from Walter Biscard.
http://vimeo.com/25506555

Not to get lyrical here, but Leonard Cohen had some thoughts about this kind of arrogance in 1969. ….Who knew he was talking about Apple.

The Story of isaac

….”A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
your hatchets blunt and bloody…”

…”And if you call me brother now,
Forgive me if I inquire,
Just according to whose plan?”