Apple laid off 40 people off their Final Cut division.

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David S. said:
Would you drop desktops that are bringing in somewhere north of $5 billion a year in revenue?
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Would you summarily ignore the growing BluRay market that Hollywood is investing BILLIONS in because of a pissing contest with Sony?

Apple doesn't always make decisions that are logic based. Rather ironic for a computer company...
 
David S. said:
Could you explain how the lack of a full blu ray option in the pro apps will in any way significantly affects the Hollywood blu ray market?

I'm lost your point.

Hollywood makes movies and uses its own encoding partners to author blu ray for commercial distribution.
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Yea, you lost my point. It's simply that BluRay is fast becoming a recognized distribution medium, and Apple doggedly refuses to play. Just seems silly to me. But what do I know. I'm just a PC and Windows 7 was my idea.
 
PerroneFord said:
Yea, you lost my point. It's simply that BluRay is fast becoming a recognized distribution medium, and Apple doggedly refuses to play. Just seems silly to me. But what do I know. I'm just a PC and Windows 7 was my idea.
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Hmmmmmm.................... Is it just me or do the people in the "Win 7 was my idea" billboards have dead eyes?

Have you taken a Voight-Kampff Empathy test lately? :shocked: .................
 
David S. said:
Enough said about what?

Apple makes a bunch of products that aren't "mobile," including Aperture, LogicStudio, iLife, iWork, Logic Express, Final Cut Express, Server applications, Xsan and others. It makes desktop MacPros, iMacs, and miniMacs, together with its laptop line.

Apple sold 1,234,000 desktop computers in their last quarter and 2,128,000 portables. The desktops brought in $1,692,000,000 in revenue vs. portable revenue of $2,758,000,000.

Would you drop desktops that are bringing in somewhere north of $5 billion a year in revenue?
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"Enough said about what?" ...really?

Let's say a car company with a loyal customer base started selling motorcycles, and is successful with that new type of product. Then the big cheese at that company one day proclaims "we are a motorcycle company". Shouldn't the existing loyal customers (or new potential customer) worry about this change of focus? What if their car division hasn't seen any significant improvement (or removed some features (MBP)) in the last few iterations (Mac Pro, FCS), or worse, a few defects have appeared in the latest models (iMac, Mac Pro, Snow Leopard, Aperture 3) ? How about them killing a successful and much beloved model (Shake)? Oh and how about if they laid off some people from their car division too? Any of this sound familiar? And it really doesn't matter what the financial numbers for their car division show currently. Saying "we are a motorcycle company" at this point has tremendous implications for people who care about their cars.

Now if you have no problems with this, then more power to you dude.
 
In November Adobe let go 680 workers 9% of their work force and yet photoshop is not dead but we are now to believe that the loss of 40 people at apple means the death of all pro apps.

Let us push for the improvements to Final Cut which we want to have true 64 bit ect..... but let us not be like a child jealous of the new born sisters (iphone and ipad) rather we should delight in having a new outlet for our programing. The ipad could become a large market for video product, and I bet that apple will want to be sure that the content producers use apple software and hardware to make that content.
 
I think it's important to realize two things.

The Pro Apps/Computers section of Apple might not be their biggest cash cow, but it's important to present an upgrade path to people who might eventually need more than iLife and MacBooks. I seriously doubt Apple would want to stop offering such things, because they make the whole platform much more enticing. Just having the option to go to a more pro software and computer system is important to their image.

Secondly, other than maybe a 64 bit upgrade in the FCS package, is there really that much to be done to the software that requires such a large team? Yes, there are features we'd like added and bugs we'd like fixed, but Final Cut is pretty well featured. I don't think losing 40 people means their shutting it down, they're probably just trimming the unnecessary.

Honestly, I didn't think going from FCS 2 to FCS 3 was a huge upgrade. There weren't that many "must have" new features... and if they aren't adding that many drastic "must have" new features to later versions, they probably just don't need as large a workforce as they have.

Say it takes 100 people (Just hypothetically, I have no idea about software development) to make a software package like FCS from the ground up and shipped out to customers. Does it really take the same 100 people to take that foundation and keep moving it forward? Probably not.

Final Cut isn't going anywhere.
 
David S. said:
Again, I'm asking how Apple's partial implementation of blu ray has anything to do with Hollywood's release of blu ray titles?

I don't understand one is related to the other?kages available other than Apple.
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I'm not SAYING they are related... never mind.
 
Since we are all taking a swag here.

I would bet there is a completely different development team, completely rewriting Apples' pro apps, and the team maintaining the legacy systems is being paired down. A very common practice in large projects. Just ask any Delphi programmer who was eventually replaced by a C# programmer. Life goes on.
 
ethan cooper said:
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.
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Avid is still king in Hollywood.

If FCp (Or Adobe or Vegas or Pinnalce or Cine ...) went away, would it really be the end of the word ?
 
I'm considering moving to Avid, from Vegas, but what frustrates me about Avid MC is it's limited to 1080p. If you want to go beyond that, you have to spend big bucks. It also doesn't support secondary color correction. Something I take for granted in Vegas. Then again, Avid has more plug-ins than Vegas and supports QuadroFX cards.
 
J.R. Hudson said:
Avid is still king in Hollywood.

If FCp (Or Adobe or Vegas or Pinnalce or Cine ...) went away, would it really be the end of the word ?
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No, it wouldn't, but don't you believe that competition is good for the industry over all?

Good read here though 18 months old: http://www.videosymphony.com/blog/?p=124

Would it be preferable, for example, if all the various acquisition codecs also went away save one only?

I think competition breeds innovation, and that gives us choices.

I also believe disc based delivery will eventually go away, including blu ray, and SD DVD.
 
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Nice link to Video Symphony article David. FWIW, I love FCP and yet I still agree with everything said about AVID in the Video Symphony paper. AVID still owns Hollywood except for a few small pockets like trailers.

Dan
 
David S. said:
No, it wouldn't, but don't you believe that competition is good for the industry over all?
Good read here though 18 months old: http://www.videosymphony.com/blog/?p=124
I think competition breeds innovation, and that gives us choices.
DVD.
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Very true David,
the AVID V FCP debate has been going on since FCP first appeared, my first AVID re seller went on to sell FCP systems, If AVID in those early days had not had an ellitist attitude towards their product users they may still be king of the platforms today.
Hollywood is not the "only place" that films are produced, I'd like to know how many FCP set-ups there are worldwide?, and how many AVID's ?.

Maybe the Brave Apple 40 can get work at AVID and integrate the best things from FCP and AVID software into the "ultimate" edit platform ? they may call it the FACID or the AVCIP, plenty room for thought.

No doubt things will and must change, and we must change with it, "That's Life" :violin:

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
zeke said:
Since we are all taking a swag here.

I would bet there is a completely different development team, completely rewriting Apples' pro apps, and the team maintaining the legacy systems is being paired down. A very common practice in large projects. Just ask any Delphi programmer who was eventually replaced by a C# programmer. Life goes on.
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another very likely possibility. so we have three different explanations:

1. end of life for FCS
2. old team being dropped in favor of new team that codes in the preferred languages
3. team being reduced after the major rewrite is finished

At least one of the programmers being let go was a bug finder, so that would weakly argue against #2. You need good bug finders for any development effort.
 
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