FCPX going subscription

First off, I've seen no mention ever of Apple not being able to license components of Final Cut (classic) for 64-bit. The official explanation... and one that makes a lot of sense... is the Final Cut classic codebase was old and rickety (it started pre-1998 at Macromedia) and the move to 64-bit was going to take longer and provide them less flexibility than scrapping it and starting over. They also wanted to reimagine a lot of the UX of editing. I've found no evidence it was based on any kind of licensing issue with the move to 64-bit.

Second, Aperture lost to Lightroom. It had lost that battle a year or two before Apple canned it. It was also stupid slow and buggy. It was a failed product and Apple finally pulled the plug rather than spend any time or money fighting a battle they'd lost years before. Completely different situation.
 
jbregar said:
First off, I've seen no mention ever of Apple not being able to license components of Final Cut (classic) for 64-bit. The official explanation... and one that makes a lot of sense... is the Final Cut classic codebase was old and rickety (it started pre-1998 at Macromedia) and the move to 64-bit was going to take longer and provide them less flexibility than scrapping it and starting over. They also wanted to reimagine a lot of the UX of editing. I've found no evidence it was based on any kind of licensing issue with the move to 64-bit..
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You are correct that the FCP classic was old and rickety and 32 bit however I did have chapter and verse on the software licensing problem. Though as it is about a decade ago it is going to take some finding. It was, from memory, that the supplier of some of the code had been bought by a company that was connected to a competitor and there were all sorts of political/legal problems going forward which prompted the ground up re-write. Though I don't think they needed much of a push to go for a ground-up re-write.

As you pointed out Apple bought Macromedia who did the original FCP and licenced some of the software. In the same way other people bought the company who did the licensed software. I must dig out who it was. This sort of thing happens all the time. It happened with the VW Campervan.... VW didn't do the conversions themselves some one else did. So when you bought a Brand new VW Campervan from a VW distributor it came via Westphalia who convered the brand new vehical from the VW production line. Then a few years back a VW competitor bought the company that owned the company that did the VW camper conversions... Which killed that stone dead and I believe VW now does them in house.
 
Feel free to post some kind of verification... but it's seriously the first I've heard of it and even trying to Google it has come up with nothing. I was pretty heavily dialed in to Final Cut preceding and following the X conversion.

The only licensing issue I'm aware of was when KeyGrip was first being developed before it was sold to Apple, there were some licensing issues between TrueVision, Macromedia and Microsoft because Microsoft had licensed some tech to TrueVision who then licensed it to Macromedia... but the license between TrueVision and Microsoft said it couldn't be used with QuickTime (and KeyGrip was intended to run on top of QuickTime). So, Macromedia couldn't release KeyGrip until they figured out how to do it without causing TrueVision issues with Microsoft... so they sat on it for a while, eventually renaming it Final Cut and then selling it to Apple in 1998.
 
jbregar said:
Feel free to post some kind of verification... but it's seriously the first I've heard of it and even trying to Google it has come up with nothing. I was pretty heavily dialed in to Final Cut preceding and following the X conversion.
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I remember reading it but will have to hunt back a decade (on a different email system to the one I am now on) to see if I can find the discussion. The official version was pushed and I am trying to remember where/how I cam across the other comments. the problem is history is written by the winners so finding it in the wild might be difficult especially a decade on.
 
morgan_moore said:
Noone mentions/has thought of pay per click.

Im happy to pay when Im earning but a sub is a killer on the down times.

With pay per click Id have everything on my machine and use the appropriate tool.

With decent history/project management passing fees to client would be simple.

;;
App FCPx
Project: MyBrandChristmasVideo2021
Clicks 7821
Price per click, $.01
Cost of project $7.82
;;

You could even multiply this to create an edit fee.
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Meh that sounds needlessly complicated. I buy a month of after effects or premiere or illustrator when i need to for a gig. Im not required to purchase a year at a time. Sometimes i can expense the subscription to the client. If i was using them constantly (as i do fcpx) then the yearly subscription would well more than pay for itself. Honestly, the adobe subscription model isnt a terrible deal. Its just that there are better options available in terms of price and stability
 
jbregar said:
Second, Aperture lost to Lightroom. It had lost that battle a year or two before Apple canned it. It was also stupid slow and buggy.
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Slow and buggy? Maybe version 1 on PowerPC (it was certainly slow on my PowerBook G4!).

Later versions were rock solid and blazingly fast, which is why I loved launching that app. The UI felt so solid, almost like a physical interface, and you could flick through newly imported photos ridiculously quickly with the GPU acceleration.

Moreover, exporting was way faster (~3 times faster?) than Lightroom at the time. I remember testing all this stuff back then. (Aperture had weaknesses too: noise reduction; no grain tool; poor distinction between capture, creative, and output sharpening; convoluted workflow for database management and backup, etc.)

Most importantly, the keywording, geotagging, and organising tools were peerless. Even today there is no good all-in-one replacement for Aperture. I’ve tried most of the candidates and bought several.

I still miss Aperture and the feeling of working in it. Lightroom never achieved that level of natural ease and UI polish, plus Adobe breaks something good every time they luck out and create it. That’s half the reason I hate subscriptions: change for the sake of change is expected and provided, so nothing good ever lasts. It’s impossible to achieve full proficiency when the sands are always shifting, and I can only concentrate on creative things when the tools are practically automatic.
 
I'm not sure what the relevance of Apple decision to replace the old FCP with X? I also think it wasn't one reason. The cost and complexity was too high, limiting it to a small pool of people . So they split it off, lowered the price and simplified the interface. This greatly increased sales. I have a suspicion they modified the code from iMovie because it was newer and closer to what they wanted FCPX to be.

As to subscription. One approach I don't believe anyone mentioned is we could be looking at it the wrong way. Apple might want use the subscription to bundle the hardware and software. So just like the high price of Final Cut Studio was a barrier, the high up front price of a Mac is a barrier. When you have a phone carrier plan, you don't pay for the entire price of a new phone and you can upgrade to a newer model. So you might signup for Apple subscription, then get a mac that has the software you want, you pay a subscription for that bundle. This wouldn't change the current user base who own their computer and software. They would continue as normal. It would seem to me that if they wanted to change everyone to a subscription model they would have to stop releasing updates for FCPX and release a FCPX-CC. This would mean you'd be free to continue using FCPX but you wouldn't receive any new updates.

The best way to increase revenue is increase ownership of the mac which will in turn increase software sales especially if they're tied to ownership of the mac in a subscription model. Could also be like credit cards where you earn Apple points that can be used towards any future Apple purchases. Regardless of the details often Apple transitions are done over a long period of time. Like on the hardware side they are gradually phasing out Intel but you still will be able to use Intel Macs for many years in the future. This is how they will handle FCP, stop updating it, release new software that will exist in parallel and eventual over the coarse of many years people will transition to the subscription model out of necessity of their own volition.
 
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It is all nickels and dimes.

Even if 2 million people - which the other member mentioned (which was FCPX's userbase in 2017) - went out tomorrow and purchased the software, that's only $600 million out of their $275 billion for 2020.

Obviously the more likely number would be maybe 100,000 new purchases for the year.

Although the subscription model will exist - which isn't about the money but about having a connection to you - I also think one day FCP X might be free with the purchase of new computers.
 
NorBro said:
It is all nickels and dimes.

Even if 2 million people - which the other member mentioned (which was FCPX's userbase in 2017) -
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It was me that mentioned it... is there a source for that figure? Some one will ask me when I mention it.


NorBro said:
went out tomorrow and purchased the software, that's only $600 million out of their $275 billion for 2020.

Obviously the more likely number would be maybe 100,000 new purchases for the year.

Although the subscription model will exist - which isn't about the money but about having a connection to you - I also think one day FCP X might be free with the purchase of new computers.
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That is 2 million one off buyers over a decade. Which makes the annual income for Apple some what trivial.

BMD make Resolve Studio free with a lot of their hardware. There is also a free (slightly) cut down version as well. This gives them between both version about 2 million users so I have read.
The BMD hardware Resolve comes Free with costs a little more that the average Mac so on that score FCPX free with a mac makes sense as suggested above. Unless you have FCPX as the paid upgrade to iMove for the "professionals"
 
stoneinapond said:
So my reading of your comment is you want Apple to freeze all innovation at some point in time. The exact moment would be decided by Apple, or a user poll (what a chorus of vituperative arguments that would create), so that change never has to happen?
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I've been using Macs for over a decade and I read it as: Apple can and will drop ANYTHING they make, hardware or software, at ANY point with ZERO warning to the general public.
 
We are discussing if Apple introduces a subscription model how it will effect FCPX. What we want is inconsequential to Apple. Apple can't take FCPX away since customers have paid for unlimited use, I also can't remember any paid product being changed to free, so they would need to develop a separate software that would be subscription based. Sure they could stop development of FCPX and offer a minor facelift and rebrand it as a different software like Adobe did to CS6 and make it subscription based.
 
As previously mentioned, Resolve was once ~$150,000.

And although not totally free for full-functionality, many will use the unpaid version as is.

BM includes it with their various products and that makes many people happy. Apple could eventually do the same...a fresh copy of FCP X on each computer you purchase from them sounds pretty good.
 
NorBro said:
As previously mentioned, Resolve was once ~$150,000.

And although not totally free for full-functionality, many will use the unpaid version as is.

BM includes it with their various products and that makes many people happy. Apple could eventually do the same...a fresh copy of FCP X on each computer you purchase from them sounds pretty good.
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Apple and BM have different business models. Show me an example of Apple making paid software free.
 
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Samuel Dilworth said:
Slow and buggy? Maybe version 1 on PowerPC (it was certainly slow on my PowerBook G4!).

Later versions were rock solid and blazingly fast, which is why I loved launching that app. The UI felt so solid, almost like a physical interface, and you could flick through newly imported photos ridiculously quickly with the GPU acceleration.

Moreover, exporting was way faster (~3 times faster?) than Lightroom at the time. I remember testing all this stuff back then. (Aperture had weaknesses too: noise reduction; no grain tool; poor distinction between capture, creative, and output sharpening; convoluted workflow for database management and backup, etc.)

Most importantly, the keywording, geotagging, and organising tools were peerless. Even today there is no good all-in-one replacement for Aperture. I’ve tried most of the candidates and bought several.

I still miss Aperture and the feeling of working in it. Lightroom never achieved that level of natural ease and UI polish, plus Adobe breaks something good every time they luck out and create it. That’s half the reason I hate subscriptions: change for the sake of change is expected and provided, so nothing good ever lasts. It’s impossible to achieve full proficiency when the sands are always shifting, and I can only concentrate on creative things when the tools are practically automatic.
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The first couple of versions were very... non-performant. Even on decent hardware. I used them. Nothing could bring my G5 tower to its knees like Aperture. Same with my first Mac Pro.

Aperture was my DAM of choice at the time and I still have a couple of Aperture libraries I need to poke through and extract the photos from. By late version 2 into 3, the performance had gotten MUCH MUCH better... but the damage was done. It had a reputation for being slow and Lightroom had cemented itself into that market. From there, it was a slow decline to the point where Apple killed it because it was a lot of work for a very tiny return. I'd also guess that updating Aperture to use iCloud services was a big lift that they just didn't want to deal with.

I was sad when Apple killed Aperture, but I have to say I wasn't surprised. By the time they nixed it, it had gotten pretty long in the tooth and Lightroom was quite a ways out front. I'd switched by then (begrudgingly).
 
Peter C. said:
Apple and BM have different business models. Show me an example of Apple making paid software free.
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It's more about their vision for the future. And how they see where the industry (and world) was heading.

But it's actually pretty ironic...Resolve Studio was once $995 and they also have a free version, and Apple's first Studio was $1,299 and FCP X dropped to $299. Both happened around the same time in 2011.

So if you weren't purchasing a BM product that included the software, you'd pay ~$1000 and FCP users saved ~$1000 on the new version.
 
I sure hope this is just idle speculation.

I've never owned anything but a Mac since my first computer, going back to the mid 90's (I've used a Windows machine a couple of times). Needless to say, I've been a happy Mac user. As Apple has evolved into just another authoritarian creepy big tech company, their blabbing about a commitment to privacy (marketing) be damned... this could be the thing that pushes me over to Resolve and a Windows machine. I won't do subscription software. As it is, my investment and reliance on FCP is the primary reason for using a Mac. If Mac software subscriptions come to fruition, I'm moving on. I've been preparing for this likelihood by switching to multi platform and open source software titles such as Darktable, and starting to learn Resolve.

A few years ago I loaded Linux Mint onto a partition on my MBP, I love it. It won't be a video editing machine per se, but it could certainly work for everything else.
 
NorBro said:
It's more about their vision for the future. And how they see where the industry (and world) was heading.

But it's actually pretty ironic...Resolve Studio was once $995 and they also have a free version, and Apple's first Studio was $1,299 and FCP X dropped to $299. Both happened around the same time in 2011.
.
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That's not really accurate comparison because Final Cut Studio included: Final Cut Pro, Motion , Soundtrack Pro , Color, Compressor , DVD Studio Pro
Today's equivalent = FCPX is $300, Compressor $50, Motion $100, Logic $200, DVD Architect $100, Resolve $200 =$950
 
Peter C. said:
Apple and BM have different business models. Show me an example of Apple making paid software free.
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New versions of OS X (now called macOS; by the way, I just realised Final Cut Pro X is no longer called that. The “ten” has been dropped. It’s just Final Cut Pro again). OS X was once around €130, from memory, eventually dropping to €30 and finally free.

Pages/Numbers/Keynote.

iLife a long time ago.

Probably others.
 
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