Apple laid off 40 people off their Final Cut division.

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Here is the elephant in the room that no one talks about - the entire industry is basically dependent on two suppliers of editing equipment. By the time we get done investing in plugins and boards each of us is increasingly dependent on a single supplier. Oh to be a large pro house with options.

My point is this. We need to start thinking about open source standards. At the moment only AVID is as tied to the video industry as we are.

If Apple is adbandoning FCS, and there is no evidence that it is, then I bet the open source community would adopt it if Apple surrendered their code rights.
 
Here's why FCS is essential to Apple. They are battling Adobe over Flash which threatens Apple's Internet plans, and could make Adobe the controller of the mixed media web. Apple does not even include Flash support in the iPhone/iPad. Apple's baby is H.264, which is not an open standard. They will do almost anything to make H.264 an Internet standard. To to that they need pro content produced in H.264, and FCS is their pipeline for that.
 
"They are battling Adobe over Flash"
How true it is Adobe not Avid that apple is in battle with, they have already take down if not out Avid
 
philiplipetz said:
Here's why FCS is essential to Apple. They are battling Adobe over Flash which threatens Apple's Internet plans, and could make Adobe the controller of the mixed media web. Apple does not even include Flash support in the iPhone/iPad. Apple's baby is H.264, which is not an open standard. They will do almost anything to make H.264 an Internet standard. To to that they need pro content produced in H.264, and FCS is their pipeline for that.
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H.264 is independent of the method of delivery. Flash video (as of now) primarily relies on H.264 video: Youtube, Vimeo, and many others use H.264-encoded video... Delivered via Flash.

Apple simply supports HTML5 as a method of delivery. The argument could be made that Adobe's more recent push to better integrate its product line (which includes an EDITING SUITE), will let publishers instantly create flash-embedded video content. THIS is something Apple would not like to see.
 
My understanding is that these were 40 remote contract employees. I have that from several sources, who could be wrong because Apple is not saying anything.

No doubt the pro apps aren't a huge revenue stream for Apple, but that alone is determinative of EOL for the product line. I wonder what percentage of Adobe's revenue stream is occupied by Premiere.
 
David S. said:
My understanding is that these were 40 remote contract employees. I have that from several sources, who could be wrong because Apple is not saying anything.
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Nope. All the layoffs were salaried employees, most of whom were based in Cupertino. A severely pared-down editing program containing only basic prosumer features requires fewer engineers and testing staff.
 
Media Composer is about $2500 (but you're getting the NLE, powerful Color Correction tools, and numerous included additions), software alone. It works fine on the Mac OS and windows xp and vista, unsure about windows 7. That's all you really need for editing anything that has direct importing (P2, SxS, ect.). Mojo DX is about $7500, and has all kinds of Digital inputs and outputs. If you need to digitize anything from an analog source (or want extra external processing power), you'd need a Nitris DX, which is $10,000.
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Thanks Andrew, that's what I needed to know.
As for the entire debate I don't think Apple is gonna abandon their pro line. I am also happy they're making good profit from consumer products so they can justify keeping pro apps like FCS.
I also think FC3 is an incredible product overall for the price and most probably few are using it to its full potential.

A severely pared-down editing program containing only basic prosumer features requires fewer engineers and testing staff.
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Nice name Gemstone. Could you give an example of a feature that is severely pared-down?
 
Yak said:
they have already take down if not out Avid
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Not true. What they did was lite a fire under Avid's butt and make them change in huge ways. In many regards they helped save Avid from themselves by making them see the need for change.
 
David S. said:
I wonder what percentage of Adobe's revenue stream is occupied by Premiere.
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I'm pretty sure Premiere is rarely sold by itself; it's primarily sold as part of one of the Creative Suites, and as such, it's probably not easy at all to determine how much revenue could directly be attributable to Premiere.

However, Adobe is a 100% software company. No hardware, no ipods, no ipads, no computers, no anything like that. So it would be extraordinarily difficult to compare the importance of a product line that accounts for (at best) 1.6% of revenues of a primarily hardware/distribution company, to the importance of a product line that is much closer tied to the core operations of the business.

Point being, Apple isn't a software company. They're a consumer electronics and computer manufacturer, with a (comparatively) tiny side business of software. Whereas Adobe is entirely and solely a software company. Not saying either approach is "good" or "bad", only that it makes it difficult to gauge the relative importance. Although it seems logical that a software product line is more important to a software company, than a software product line is to a hardware company.

Apple is a much bigger company overall, of course. But in strictly software, it looks like Adobe is substantially larger. Apple's 1Q 2010 software, service, and other business was $631 million; my prior SWAG was that software could account for maybe $500m; Adobe's 4Q 2009 revenues were $757 million. Those aren't directly comparable because we're talking about different quarters; Apple's results include the all-important December month, whereas with Adobe these results ended Nov. 27th. These are the latest reports from each company so they're what I had to go on, but they're not for the exact same calendar period.


As for revenue breakdown, the Creative Solutions group is far and away the biggest chunk of Adobe's revenue, comprising somewhere around 2/3. But I haven't found where they break it down by product, so you're talking about PhotoShop, After Effects, Premiere, Illustrator, everything all grouped together. But then again, that's how you buy it; you don't buy Apple's editing program outside of a suite, and you don't buy Adobe's programs individually (you can, of course, but you don't because the suite is such a better deal).
 
The Twitter poster is one of the most respected names in the editing website biz. There are more than one posts. In fact , there is also a thread where people are trying to get a new job for one of the fired programmers. Wish there were less substantial verifications since I just bought a thousand dollars in FCS plugins. My bad.
 
When I started this thread, I did stress that this was nothing more than a rumor. Sometimes rumors are true, but most of the time they are not.

I agree. So far, this is nothing but a mysterious Tweet. Fun to play armchair quarterback but in the end, this may all be nothing but a practical joke.

D
 
The Twitter poster is one of the most respected names in the editing website biz. There are more than one posts. In fact , there is also a thread where people are trying to get a new job for one of the fired programmers. Wish there were less substantial verifications since I just bought a thousand dollars in FCS plugins. My bad.
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There is 0 connection between 'fired employee's' news and 'end of FCS as we know it' conclusion.

Jumping to such conclusion upon hearing some firing news would be considered amateurish hysteria at best even if you exactly knew how FCS department structured, its inner workflow, how many people employed at what sections, short/long term technical/financial targets of this department.

Hope those laid off employees will get new employment soon...

NOTE; I didnt hear any doomsday stories about the end of the WINDOWS when Bill Gates' Co. laid-off thousands of its employees not long ago...
 
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Recent historical perspective: Logic Studio went 64 bit recently. Last week's Aperture upgrade is 64 bit. That's a lot of work for Apple to develop and clearly they intend those apps to be part of the evolving 64 bit MacOS environment. I think we have a lot to look forward to with FCP.
 
Steve Smull said:
Recent historical perspective: Logic Studio went 64 bit recently. Last week's Aperture upgrade is 64 bit. That's a lot of work for Apple to develop and clearly they intend those apps to be part of the evolving 64 bit MacOS environment. I think we have a lot to look forward to with FCP.
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I agree totally with this Steve.

There is revenue source and there are bragging rights . . . .
 
David S. said:
That's true, but it's fifteen words long.

What do you derive from that?

That Apple's EOLed FCS?

There's a little hysteria occurring here.

Your install won't suddenly stop working because of a Twitter post.

Hang there and let's draw conclusions when we have some evidence.
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He followed that up with a thread on his blog, so it is not just one post. On the blog post he talks of fired programmer who is likely the source of the "rumor" that seems to have some substance. No one is saying that Apple has EOLed FCS. Even if they were no longer doing development then they would not make an announcement that killed sales.

THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION: The known "facts" are also consistent with Apple having finished a huge push to create a Coca 64 bit version of a totally rewritten FCS that will be announced in the next few months. With the development push completed they cut back on staff since the next version will be a simpler upgrade and not the total rewrite needed to update the present carbon version of FCS (meaning the current version is running code not optimized for current hardware and operating system).

So instead of indicating a intent to EOL FCS this really could be a symptom of Apple's dedication to pushing out a total rewrite. Frankly, this is what I would do if I were still running a software company (hire staff to do the code base I need for it to work well with all future hardware and operating system combinations, and then let the staff go when the job is done). From my viewpoint this speculation is more consistent with the "facts."

And it is something that I would prefer. Perhaps the reason that FCS 3 was such a lean upgrade was that all of the effort was going into a total rewrite. Do not forget that the current version of FCS does not use the incredible computing power in the graphics card, even though current operating systems and hardware are designed to add this additional capacity that could potentially take 80% or more off certain render times.

And all of these totally opposing speculations (EOL or total rewrite) are completely unsupported by any evidence that one viewpoint is the truth.
 
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