Pogue bends over backwards to fight in support of Apple
pogue.blogs.nytimes.com
pogue.blogs.nytimes.com
On the one hand, you have a bunch of upset film editors complaining about the upgrade with their laundry list of complaints. Unlike every other journalist in the industry, who just report the list, Pogue actually studies each and every complaint and reports on whether it's actually valid or not--from a technically adept position--and concludes that he understands why people are upset but that a lot of their claims are debunkable.
I'd argue that he does something far different. He spins the claims. In some cases, as noted in the comments, he seems to react to the wrong issue or provides solutions that aren't adequate.
It's just odd that as a reporter my first inclination wouldn't be to diminish the outrage of professional editors, but rather to fully understand them.
He took tweets and composed a list. But it doesn't appear that he actually said, "OK, let me follow-up with people at Sony and NBC and understand these issues and write a post detailing the issues and getting a detailed response from Apple". It appears he took the tweets and worked on trying to debunk OR downplay the issues. To me this is advocacy. Which I might expect from John Gruber (although honestly, I can't find a post of his even with this much effort in advocacy) but not from a journalist.
"Having read through hundreds of comments from professionals, both civil and uncivil, I’m now convinced: Final Cut Pro X may indeed be ready for the future. But for professional video editors, it’s not yet ready for the present."
Your linked post seems much more down-to-earth and level-headed than the complaints I keep seeing everywhere. If all these professionals would hold off purchasing the new version (and I suppose they will with all the negative feedback from those who have already purchased), then Apple will feel the repercussions in lack of sales.
i think it's a combination of two things. First, obvious lack of pro features we need - even the basic ones. Second, Apple/FCP development/release cycles were known to be really slow and lacking in feature compared to competing products. This amplified the lackluster release that is FCPX IMO, since - I presume - lots of FCP guys felt let down by Apple, expectations were high, delivery was below low.
Do Not Upgrade(R). Stay on FCP 7.
On the other hand, people will stay on FCP7, of course. But, if you've read my post you'll remember that productions are budgeted and organized well in advance, and people are buying/will soon buy new pipelines for future products. Apple is not selling FCP7/Studio anymore, so people immediately start looking in other directions - even if they don't jump the ship right now.
I've got a few years video editing experience under my belt (less and less in these days unfortunately). I'm not amateur, nor would I be comfortable calling myself a professional, but from where I'm sat, FCPX looks like a huge step forward. I'm willing to be a guinea pig for a little while if it's for genuine, radical progress.
And the "Apple plans to have [that feature] in a future version" is a long standing practice... in a future version they will implement it, and then in a later version they will get it fixed so it is usable, etc.
From experience, I'd wait till FCP X.2 or something... when they actually get stuff complete and working.
This is the whole takeaway of the article. As an iOS dev who still has Xcode 3.X for some clients, I am thinking "wtf are these professionals DOING swapping to a newly refreshed apple software product. Use the old one until the new one is better!"