Yesterday at a Final Cut Pro user group meet-up at NAB in Vegas Apple gave a demo of the coming version of Final Cut Pro. Even if your not into film & video for work or creative purposes I think it’s interesting to observe this announcement and look at some of the subtleties behind it.
If the bold title of the posts didn’t make it clear I think this is another example of just how strong Apple is as a company.
There has been a lot of talk in the last year that Apple is losing focus on the pro-market and is more interesting in the cash cow consumer markets they’ve been dominating with the iPad and the iPhone. There was speculation that this new Final Cut Pro version would be some dressed up version of iMovie.
None of this proved true.
Instead we get another of example of how strong Apple’s eco-system is. How their tight control of both the operating system and the hardware gives them a distinct advantage over their competitors.
Final Cut Pro X is the proof that Apple’s closed eco-system, which is often wrongly compared to some Orwellian future, really is the way to go. They have re-written the entire application to make sure it uses all of the features available in the operating system and in the machines. It’s 64-bit so it can use all the memory available. It’s designed to use all the available processor cores.
Compare that with an offering from say Adobe which has to program an application that is expected to run on a wide variety of flavors of Windows. There really is no comparison.
For the people using FCP X it’s going to be a vast improvement over the previous version. Rendering of large HD files in realtime, less waiting and more working.
To top all of this off you just have to look at Thunderbolt, the Apple/Intel developed high speed port recently added to Mac Book Pros. You will be able to copy over large file sizes into your machines in seconds. Apple has the technology now, while competing PC makers won’t have it for another year. That’s Apple’s pile of cash being put to use.
So just when there were those speculating of an exit from the pro market, they make two checkmate moves and move way in front of the competition.
Well done.
