The post-production Internet has been all a-Twitter for the last 24 hours after Apple Insider posted some nutty story about Apple scaling Final Cut Pro to fit more of a consumer market. After the FCP fanboys went ballistic the great, silent behemoth that is Apple actually spoke today about this very topic, telling CNET that “Final Cut Pro is the first choice for professional video editors, and we’ve never been more excited about its future,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans told CNET. “The next version of Final Cut is going to be awesome, and our pro customers are going to love it.”
I think that the most surprising thing in this whole iFCP (or Final Cut Prosumer) development is the fact that Apple actually commented on a future product. That in itself is highly unusual. And apparently Steve Jobs himself emailed again on the subject. Couple that with recent Apple job postings looking to fill some Pro Apps job vacancies and you have an indication that FCP isn’t going anywhere. And if you need an even more reasoned response then Phillip Hodgetts has reasoned it out better than anyone.
Now, rant begin …
It’s about time we all stop speculating on what Apple is going to do, what Apple is thinking, what Apple is having for breakfast this morning and get on with our professional lives. Steve Jobs does not care about you and your video editing career. No matter what his little emails say and no matter what buzzwords he uses to describe a new FCP release, he does not care about you and your video editing career so stop quoting these emails like you know Steve personally. He runs a publicly traded company and will continue to develop FCP if, and only if, it makes sense for the bottom line of his company. The perception right now is that it does still make some kind of financial sense for Apple to develop FCP so at some point in the future we may get a new version that is both “awesome” and “kickass.” read more...