Apple dumps Intel and shows Final Cut Pro on new Mac with Apple CPU !

[joema]

...as an editor, why would I want or care about editing video on an iPad, unless I travel a lot?...for those who edit in an office or home office, I see little to no advantage of editing on a tablet...

The simplest answer is a desktop is the best form factor for sustained editing. But I'm not sure anyone is suggesting long-duration editing on an iPad at a fixed location *instead* of a desktop machine. Rather they want more professional editing features on the tablet when mobile situations are unavoidable.

However even that reasoning assumes that relative to an iPad, laptops are heavy, thick, power-hungry machines. Imagine IF a MacBook existed which was the size, weight and battery efficiency of an iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard -- and which ran iPad apps natively. Something like this but a real MacBook which ran real apps including FCPX and Resolve: https://images.app.goo.gl/Y7VG7vSpn8bVFZoi6

Then people might be more open to using that in mobile situations rather than an iPad, but they'd still get iPads for certain things. It appears Apple may be delivering something like that within a few months.

For desktops, it appears Apple Silicon versions might not be available until next year, but that's not far away. The advantages of an Apple Silicon iMac seem less obvious (at first), but imagine a 30-inch iMac with a 32-core Apple CPU which was more silent than an iMac Pro, had better video acceleration than Quick Sync, cost less than the iMP and had better graphics performance. Something like that might be possible.

Longer term Apple will leverage special Apple Silicon features in their apps such as hardware-accelerated object identification. They'd like to provide a FCPX version that doesn't require manual keywording and tagging of media but the hardware-assisted AI logic does that for you. It's conceivable that eventually that logic could identify, tag and sync all multicams automatically. I tend to be somewhat pessimistic about that, but you can get faint glimmers of those features in current versions of iOS Photos.

[JAMedia]

For desktops, it appears Apple Silicon versions might not be available until next year, but that's not far away.

So where does that leave people who forked out $6K to $50K on the new Mac Pro last year?
Obsolete in 2 years. All the new program upgages and versions will be for the new MAC-OS 11

[Peter C.]

So where does that leave people who forked out $6K to $50K on the new Mac Pro last year?
Obsolete in 2 years. All the new program upgages and versions will be for the new MAC-OS 11

I'd imagine they would have two trees for their os/hardware. Arm for everything except a few pro products that need Intel until they can be transitioned to Arm.

Arm is tailored to 90% of Apples products that are small, portable, low heat and energy efficient. Not sure it's suitable for power users and whether software companies would need to rewrite their code. If Apple does go all arm, I'd expect a long transition.

The move to Arm is for Apple benefit of having one OS (iOS), having chip that designed to be small and energy efficient devices, and probably manufacturing cost savings. The best we can hope for is that power users won't be negatively effected.

[joema]

So where does that leave people who forked out $6K to $50K on the new Mac Pro last year?
Obsolete in 2 years. All the new program upgages and versions will be for the new MAC-OS 11

They are in the same situation as people who buy $5k MacBook Pros or $14k iMac Pros every day. They will be in the same situation as people who buy new x86 Macs now being designed. The newly-purchased x86 Macs will not be obsolete anytime soon and will be supported by Apple for many years. The purpose of the Universal 2 binary is to support both x86 and Apple Silicon Macs with a single application file. Largely the same application source code will be compiled for both x86 and Apple Silicon platforms. That is easier than how Premiere, Resolve and other cross-platform apps are compiled for both Windows and Mac. Those are different operating systems so some customization is needed, but for a Mac app being compiled for x86 vs Apple Silicon, it's the same OS with the same APIs and an identical user interface.

[ahalpert]

btw based on an educational guess, FCPX 10.5 or FCPXI(whichever they call it) will be coming out in Sept.

What's the story here? More than an incremental upgrade? Something I'll have to pay for?

[DLD]

Edit on laptops? One should be able to edit on iPhone 12 (to be announced in early September, supposedly on the 8th).

As to the industry as a whole.

Windows PCs Will Have to Switch Over to ARM CPUs Eventually to Match Apple’s Future Offerings, Says Former Mac Chief

“Specifically, what are Dell, HP, Asus, and others going to do if Apple offers materially better laptops and desktops and Microsoft continues to improve Windows on ARM Surface devices? In order to compete, PC manufacturers will have to follow suit, they’ll “go ARM” because, all defensive rhetoric aside, Apple and Microsoft will have made the x86 architecture feel like what it actually is: old.”

https://wccftech.com/windows-pcs-wil...mer-mac-chief/

[puredrifting]

What's the story here? More than an incremental upgrade? Something I'll have to pay for?

Apple has not charged for any updates to FCP X since it's introduction to my knowledge. They used to charge occasionally with FCP Studio, but only big feature updates, not the smaller bug fix updates.

[combatentropy]

why would I want or care about editing video on an iPad

Agreed. Sounds like a nightmare.

The brain has three parts.

brain.jpg

1. Cerebrum. The center of conscious thought: "What is 25 × 7? Where should we go for Christmas? Should I buy this camera or that one?"
   
2. Cerebellum. Motor coordination: shooting a basketball, touch-typing, manual focus, playing a guitar. "Muscle memory", things that improve with practice, you're training your cerebellum. You don't "think" about them anymore, with your cerebrum. You just will them and they happen (more or less reliably) with your cerebellum. As you type, are you thinking about what each finger is doing, or are you just willing the words onto the screen?
   
3. Brain stem. Involuntary functions, like your heartbeat.

People fantasize about mind-controlled machines. But I say we already have that, with our cerebellum. With my 10 fingers on the keyboard, I already feel wired into my computer, as if it was an extension of myself. I use keyboard shortcuts for almost everything. I hate when I have to grab my mouse or even a trackpad. Much slower.

The same goes with tactile controls on my car's dash and on a camera. In fact, I would say that good manual controls are superior, because with mind control, how would the machine distinguish between something I'm just thinking about, like "I wonder if I want the camera to pan over there", vs. something I have decided, "Camera, pan over there". Sounds flaky, if and when it even becomes possible. My fingers submit to mind control much more accurately.

But I digress. My original point was, I agree, give me a good keyboard, not a touchscreen (and not one of those flimsy keyboards that attach to tablets).

In order to compete, PC manufacturers will have to follow suit

Good point. Windows already runs on ARM. I'm not sure why it has taken them so long, besides inertia.

In general, programs don't need to be rewritten for ARM, just recompiled. Actually you don't even have to recompile them. They can be run in emulation, for a minor slowdown.

Technical background: What is compilation?

Computer programmers write programs in programming languages. There are many: C, Java, Python, plus about a dozen other popular ones [example].

Computer processors, though, don't understand any of these languages. Computer processors understand only one language, which we call "assembly" or "machine code" [example].

Thankfully, the translation of any easy-to-write* programming language (like C) to a tedious and verbose assembly language is largely automatic. For whatever reason, the early programmers named this translation "compilation", instead of "translation". So the little programs that do it are called "compilers" [example].

Now the dialect of assembly that Intel and AMD's chips understand, called "x86", is different from the dialect of assembly that ARM chips understand. So if you compile your program for x86, it won't work on an ARM chip. But you just have to recompile it for ARM**.

* When I say "easy-to-write", I mean for programmers. It is still a whole bunch of gobblydygook for the uninitiated. Even more impressively, programmers in the early days wrote straight assembly, because there were not yet friendlier languages invented. The sample I gave for assembly is from the source code for the Apollo 11 guidance computer (ca. 1969), which they hand-typed.

** Sometimes recompilation is straightforward, sometimes not. Programmers sometimes have mixed in hand-typed assembly, to fine-tune things. If they did this in one of their programs, then they will have to do it all over again for ARM.

[David Saraceno]

Apple has not charged for any updates to FCP X since it's introduction to my knowledge. They used to charge occasionally with FCP Studio, but only big feature updates, not the smaller bug fix updates.

Correct, Final Cut Pro X was was released on June 21, 2011. In the last nine years, it has been updated a few times each year with new functionality, bug fixes, and codec support. In 2018, the company announced a user base of approximately 2.5 million users.

Apple has not charged for any updates or new versions.

Motion and Compressor are two separate applications dealing with motion graphics and compressing and transcoding and are sold separately at a much lower cost. There has been no additional cost for either app for updates and new features.

[JAMedia]

In general, programs don't need to be rewritten for ARM, just recompiled.

It's not that simple by a long way