Apple Said to Aim FCS at Prosumers
AppleInsider is running a story that indicates Apple is re-targeting Final Cut Studio at home users and prosumers. The company has posted two job openings: for a Senior Visual Interface Designer and a Senior Human Interface Designer, both for Pro Apps. Key quote: “Apple’s Professional Applications Design Group is seeking a passionate senior human Interface designer who also understands the intricacies of non-linear video editing.” The remainder of the posting might imply that they are planning a wholesale reexamination of the FCP UI.
Not much hard evidence, but tantalizing, to say the least.
Apple scaling Final Cut Studio apps to fit prosumers
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Splice Now 
May 19, 2010 at 6:28 am
Philip Hodgetts has an interesting, and contrary point of view on this. It’s worth a look.
http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2010/05/18/why-apple-insider-couldnt-be-more-wrong/
May 19, 2010 at 6:43 am
Nobody really knows what it means. Not enough information. But it seems clear that they are planning some kind of makeover. It will undoubtedly be interesting, no matter what it turns out to be.
May 19, 2010 at 11:56 am
Did you see the response Steve gave a reader of appeinsider in one of his so-famous emails?
“Don’t believe everything you read. Next version will be kickass.”
In my opinion, to be honest, I think it’s great news for the FCP community to get the visionary Randy Ubillos back on board. Come on this guy invented FCP in the first place, and I think the new iMovie is a stroke of genious. I hope someone really advance the way we can edit. FCP was a great advance over Avid which was a great advance over Steenbacks. Now it’s time to move on, make it more organic, less about files and splices.
Cheers,
Ed.
May 19, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Randy is a super-smart guy and one of the certified pioneers of the non-linear revolution. Having him back is very positive, no question.
The obvious question is, what direction are they going in? Somebody has a vision for this (probably Steve), and presumably they’re looking to hire people to execute that vision. Once upon a time my hope was that they would do something that’s been called “common timeline” — in effect rolling all the tools in the suite more tightly together so they’d operate on the same sequence.
Or, given that FCP’s UI is getting pretty long in the tooth, maybe they’re working on a makeover, where you’d re-engineer the UI to make it more interactive and live — more like iTunes, where you can do anything and video continues to play, with more HUD displays, more transparency, etc. Or maybe it represents an emphasis on touch-based controls, like the iPad and iPhone.
I wouldn’t rule out a focus on broadening the market. Steve wants to find the big fat center and that inevitably means democratizing the tools. And, of course, he likes to make big transformations.
Bottom line, what does “kickass” mean?
May 20, 2010 at 7:34 am
all these rumors and speculating are pointless. Apple is making money on FCP, major networks are investing in it, major directors and editors in hollywood are cutting with it and users in all markets are making money with it. It is not going away or getting “less” professional. Posting stuff like this on your blog only fuels the fire and we know you prefer Avid anyway so it is kind of childish. An editor EDITS and should know the tools that are out there. I don’t recall KEM users gleefully getting excited about rumors of Steenbecks demise.
May 22, 2010 at 3:37 am
I heard it, here in london, that BBC is buying 2000 copies of the new Premiere… So there you go.
May 20, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Actually, I find the speculation pretty interesting. I don’t know what it means, but Apple plays its cards so close to the vest that it inevitably ends up creating a focus on what they might be up to. If all the speculation makes us think about what we’d like to see change in our editing applications, that would be a good thing, in my book.
And yes, I prefer Media Composer for the work I do. But I’ve always been a supporter of FCP, and of Premiere, for that matter. Competition is good for editors. Anybody who has a vision for the technology, and who drives it forward, is doing all of us a favor, regardless of brand.