Updating Final Cut Pro X: More Mac App Store Woes

Apple has released Final Cut Pro X 10.0.1, a small point release with some important new — or maybe I should say "returned" — features. Most important among these is XML import/export which should allow users of FCPX to open their legacy FCP projects.

But here's the grind: I'm not sure how you're supposed to get the update.

My first attempt was via Software Update, but SU tells me I'm all up to date.

Next I tried the Mac App Store, where I met with what is becoming an all-too-frequently frustrating experience. Under the Purchased tab I see Final Cut Pro, and I'm given an option to Install.

 

But hitting Install gives me an error message telling me to use Software Update, which I already know doesn't work.

 

After some option-click finagling I get App Store to allow me to attempt to install the update from the Final Cut Pro X product page, which currently lists the version as 10.0.1, the new version. But when I attempt to do so I get this message:

 

 

This is maybe the worst error message I've seen yet in the Mac App Store, because it shouldn't even be possible. If I didn't buy FCP from the Mac App Store, then where, pray tell did I buy it from? Are you accusing me of stealing it? Really? Because you should know better, shouldn't you?

Isn't this just the sort of licensing crap the App Store was supposed to do away with? Doesn't the Mac App Store know exactly what I've bought and where? Seems to me like, once I've made the purchase, I should be able to reinstall FCP any time I want, and any version, even if I already have it. I don't get why the App Store forbids re-installs.

Ultimately I was able to get the update. I did so by deleting the Final Cut Pro application from my Applications folder, then reinstalling it from the Mac App Store. Which, I say again, is just the sort of ridiculous user experience the App Store was supposed to prevent.

So far the Mac App Store user experience has been pretty terrible, particularly when installing Apple apps. This is in large part because, contrary to what they allow every other developer to do, Apple uses the App Store for large, complex application installs. Ironically, the most complex install yet, Mac OS X Lion, was their biggest success. But Xcode and now Final Cut Pro have been terrible. Just terrible.

Moreover, the App Store UI really needs and overhaul. It's ugly, unbearably slow, cluttered and lacks features common to most browsers around today — features that would really aid the buying process, where their lack certainly hinders it. Features like tabs and bookmarks, for starters, would be really useful for comparison shopping. A shopping cart would be good for buying multiple items. Instead we're stuck with this crap.

The Mac App Store is the single least Apple-like Apple product I've ever used. It's kludgy and feels cheap. It's just terrible. And it's now been out for some time and is presumably mature as it's now baked into the OS, so there's no excuse for this. Unfortunately, for some products, it's unavoidable, which is a real shame.

More and more I'm bothered by Apple's tendency to force their vision on their customers. It was fine when they did so with wonderful products. but when the products suck, it becomes time to start looking for alternatives.

UPDATE:

I almost forgot! There are additional updates which bring additional inconsistencies to this update process. Compressor has also gotten an update, and this one can be had in the normal way, by simply hitting the Update button in the Updates section of the App Store (I presume the Motion update works similarly, but I don't own it, so can't say for sure).

But there are also CODEC updates, and these must be gotten via a webpage:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1396

So there are actually four different updates to the FCP suite, and three different ways to obtain the various components. None of which are Software Update, so none of which make the updates apparent to anyone who isn't reading the trades. If you didn't read Apple news sites, I'm not sure how you'd even find out about these updates.

The Software Update mechanism is a very good way to deliver updates — and vastly superior to the Mac App Store — but it's been completely abandoned for the Final Cut Suite updates.

Google Embracing Design

Google has recently been rolling out redesigns of their flagship products, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and, of course, Search. I have to say, I'm both pleased to see it and impressed with the results.

 

I've argued several times now that, as great as Google's products are, they could be made even better if Google were to begin to concentrate even just a tiny fraction of its mighty will on the issue of design. And the new Google pages are distinctly better — nicer to look at and easier to use — than ever.

Mail and Calendar are most improved, but then perhaps they were the most in need of help. Both are now lighter and more spacious; colors have been muted, borders softened and emphasis placed in all the right spots. Both are easier to look at, and easier to read or just skim. Visually parsing the new interfaces for particular nuggets of information in the sea of crap that is my calendar and email is just plain easier.

 

The new interfaces look really nice too, at least to my eye, and that makes me want to look at them more, makes checking mail more of a pleasure, less of a chore.

By the way, if you want to see the new Gmail interface, you'll need to apply one of the themes built special for the purpose. Just hit the Gear icon in the upper right, go to Settings and then Themes and select either "Preview" or "Preview (Dense)".

I'm not a designer. I don't know precisely how design works nor how to do it. But I am and admirer of good design, and I can certainly appreciate when it makes the tools we use work better.

It's great to see Google embrace design in the manner.

Fuel for the Fire

People keep writing about Final Cut Pro X, and the constant refrain seems to be the same one I wondered in my last article: Is Apple done with the pros?

Sachin Agarwal, who worked on the original Final Cut Pro, and then founded Posterous, flat out says yes:

"The pro market is too small for Apple to care about it. Instead of trying to get hundreds or even thousands of video professionals to buy new Macs, they can nail the pro-sumer market and sell to hundreds of thousands of hobbyists like me."

Gruber tends to agree, but seems to think that eventually Final Cut Pro X will meet the needs of professionals:

"I think Apple plans for Final Cut Pro X to grow from where it is today to eventually meet the needs of high-end pros. What this release shows is not that Apple doesn’t care about the pro market at all, but rather that they don’t care enough to prevent Apple from releasing a version that pros can’t yet use."

Ken Segall says Apple isn't abandoning Pros, they're just redefining the meaning of the term Pro:

"Because Apple isn’t actually abandoning the Pros. They’re simply redefining what the word Pro means. FCPX is only the most recent indicator."

Of course, what he really means is that Apple is redefining what the term Pro means in their marketing materials. Pros themselves haven't changed, can't be redefined by Apple and continue to have certain needs that Apple is less and less willing to meet. By redefining Pro for themselves, Apple is effectively abandoning actual creative professionals.

Which neatly explains why non-professional editors like Agarwal like Final Cut Pro X, but Pros still don't. Or more accurately, it neatly explains why Apple had the balls to keep Pro in the name:

"In the world of Apple, a Pro product used to mean 'designed for high-end professionals with needs far beyond those of mortal men.' Now it simply means 'the high-performance model.'"

So don't let the name deceive you. Final Cut Pro X is not built for professionals.

UPDATE:

Matthew Levie, professional film and video editor, is doing a whole series of posts for TUAW breaking down what it's like to actually use FCPX. It's quite good and a very illuminating look into both the good and bad aspect of the software from a pro's point of view. And I like that it spans multiple days and attempts to use the software, because I think that is what learning software is really like. It's also mercifully brief and to the point.

Final Cut Pro X

Final Cut Pro X Is Here I have used Final Cut Pro since grad school, which is to say about 1999. A bit over a decade. The first version I had that was usable was version 1.2. At that time it was my very favorite piece of software, partly because I liked what I did on it — editing video — but also because it just worked great. Better than any of its competition. Maybe better than any piece of software at that time.

Gradually, that became less and less true. Over that decade I'd continued to use Final Cut extensively, and even taught a beginner's course in it for several years. But as the industry changed in monumental ways, particularly with the move to HD production, and Final Cut lagged behind trends and technological advances and stuck with the same tired paradigms, I grew increasingly frustrated with the application. Eventually I stopped using Final Cut and stopped making videos. I often wonder if part of the reason for quitting was that the tools had become such a burden to me.

I haven't made a video in a couple of years now, but when Final Cut Pro X was announced I was really excited to hear it. Excited in the way you are when you see an old friend from college and they've just gotten a makeover. Excited in that, "God, Final Cut, it's been ages! You look great!" kind of way. It's not that I have any genuine interest in rekindling the friendship, I've moved on with my life. But it's heartening to see an old friend with a new spring in his step.

Unfortunately, the makeover seems to have included a lobotomy.

Sources of Information

An insane amount has already been written about this release, and I don't want to rehash much. So I'll start by just listing what I've read so far, because it informs where I'm coming from. I also think these are really good sources for folks who want to learn more.

Macworld First Look

Macworld Opinion

Ken Stone First Look

Phillip Hodgetts Unanswered Questions

John Gruber's Take

David Pogue's Takes 1 Through 3

Take 1

Take 2

Take 3

Jeffrey Harrell's Takes

This one's really good, but you know what, just read the whole fucking blog, it's all FCPX stuff, and jeff Harrell is a terrifically entertaining writer.

Art Guglielmo's Take

Creative Cow's List of Missing Features

Ken Segall's Take

Richard Harrington's Response to David Pogue (Wow)

Trends

Right off the bat there is one very clear trend here: People who don't edit video professionally seem to like Final Cut Pro X; professional video editors, on the other hand, tend to find this release largely unusable.

Another pretty obvious trend is the sheer amount of passion people feel about Final Cut Pro. I'm not alone in having such strong feelings; Final Cut Pro is — or at least was — an application that inspired fierce loyalty and admiration from its users, many of whom have relied on it for their livelihoods for over ten years. So there's a crazy amount of writing being done about the new release.

The Good

Here's just a quick list of some of the stuff they got right with FCPX.

  • Performance is reportedly vastly improved with multi-core and GPU smarts.
  • FCPX is 64bit and can now address a full compliment of RAM.
  • Far less rendering is needed and most clips just play in realtime.
  • Background rendering allows you to keep working while you render. Huzzah!
  • Background import lets you edit while you ingest.
  • Revamped interface makes certain common operation quicker and easier.

The Bad

And here's some of the good stuff they omitted or just simply gutted.

  • No XML, OMF or EDL exports.
  • No way to open projects created in prior version.
  • No way to buy the previous version.
  • No way to organize media outside of keywords and Events.
  • No video reference monitor support.
  • No support for Photoshop layers.
  • No tracks.
  • Almost no tape support — only DV and HDV are supported.
  • No RED Camera support (which I thought was half the point of this release).
  • All available media (even that of competing clients, for instance) appears in the interface at all times.
  • No multi-camera editing.

So you can see there's a lot of good stuff there. Stuff that FCP users have wanted for a long, long time. Stuff to make you work faster, smarter, more efficiently. But it's all completely mitigated by the huge list of drawbacks, many of which are non-starters for Pro editors. In fact it seems like every feature Apple threw out of FCPX was something Pros — and perhaps only Pros — really needed. But the thing is, they really needed it.

Some Thoughts

After reading everything I can about how FCPX works, there are three major points that come to my mind. The first is about the software itself: It seems to me that what Final Cut used to be — what made it such a good tool — was that it was flexible. You could do things many different ways, and you could set it up in a way that suited you. One of the biggest problems with version X seems to be that it is inflexible, that you must bend to its will, to its way of thinking. That's a step backwards.

The second thought is about the development of the software: It almost seems as if Apple developed FCPX in a complete and utter vacuum. It's as if they never once consulted a single professional editor. The implications of this are truly frightening.

And this inevitably leads me to my third major thought, the thought I can no longer avoid, the one about the very core of Apple as a company: Is Apple abandoning the Pro market?

Communication

Apple may be a secretive company, but I believe they communicate in subtle ways the direction their products are headed by the focus they give those products. I continue to believe, for instance, that the design of the iPad communicates that it is a product more for the consuming of media than for the creation of media, and thus far the app ecosystem we've seen grow up around this platform has largely shown that to be the case. Sure, you can make stuff on an iPad, but that's not really its intended primary function. That's not its specialty, at least not in its current incarnation.

So let's look at Final Cut Pro X and see if we can't glean some similar conclusions from its interface. And to do that, let's look at the fundamental organizing principle around which FCPX is based: The Event.

The Meaning of The Event

The concept around which clip organization is meant to occur in FCPX is that of The Event. Each time you import footage it creates Events out of the import, placing each import into some kind of chronological order (just like in iPhoto, for instance). This is great, and really smart if you're shooting home videos; you tend to organize them chronologically in your mind anyway, so it's a logical way to order your videos in a project.

But if you come from professional video and film, you'll immediately see the flaw in the thinking here. The notion that a production is organized this way is completely and utterly wrong, and based entirely in the world of home movies, the world of the consumer. Feature films are shot in order of convenience — almost always out of sequence, not chronologically — so organizing by Events is anathema to the world of professional film and video.

If you view the things that Apple makes as a sort of body language of the company, it starts to look very much like Final Cut Pro X is telling us something very loudly and very clearly: This is not software for professionals.

Couple the release of FCPX with other recent recent Apple trends — the discontinuation of XSAN and Xserve, the price drop and likely lack of development of Mac OS X Server and the lackluster recent Mac Pro builds — and if you're any kind of Apple Professional, you'll start to get worried. Apple is beginning to look very much like a company that's moving away from what was once its base, creative professionals, and exclusively towards the consumer masses.

Conclusion

Final Cut Pro X seems like a step backwards for the venerable editing suite we've all come to love over the past decade, feature-wise to be sure, but also philosophically. Maybe it will quickly become more capable and flexible, maybe the real deal-breakers will get addressed, and maybe it will all turn out groovy in the end. Maybe Apple will ultimately listen to its professional customers, though they don't seem to have even consulted them in the first place. It's hard to tell sometimes with such a complete overhaul what the future holds.

But you may not want to hold your breath. Final Cut Pro X really seems to me like another, rather loud signal from Apple to the professional world that they're done providing us with the best software and hardware around, and that their only real focus going forward will be the average computer user, the consumer. iPhones and iPads for everyone!

Apple used to care deeply about the Pro market, because it was the Pros that gave them so much good press, so much visibility. It was the Pros that really supported Apple, particularly behind the scenes, via word of mouth. Apple made the cool Pro kit, and the Pros went around and told all their friends about Apple, showed it off. The Pros contributed a great deal towards Apple's mindshare. But now that Apple has managed to tap into the consumer psyche in a large and extremely profitable way, they seem to care less and less about their bread and butter for the last 20 years, creative professionals. Final Cut Pro X is the most definitive statement of that attitude I've seen to date. As someone who's based his career to a great degree on Apple hardware and software, it makes me sad.

Apple Announcements 2011

Just wanted to share some of my initial reactions to Apple's recent announcements at WWDC 2011.

iCloud

First off, iCloud. iCloud is really the engine behind the bulk of this year's significant announcements.

As I see it, iCloud provides centralized storage and services that are primarily aimed at managing all your various devices — your iPhone, your Mac, iPod, iPad, all of it. For the most part, iCloud is meant to sit in the background and do all this seamlessly and invisibly, which is terrific. I think it's a great start and Apple is approaching this with the right idea: Make everything as easy as possible.

The $25 portion of the iCloud service that will allow you to store all your music on Apple's servers for anytime access — dubbed iTunes Match — doesn't seem like something I'd ever really want or need. Other folks who are more into having all their music with them at all times might feel differently. But I predict this won't be a huge success for the company, because most folks just won't really find it compelling.

The free music synchronization that iCloud provides, on the other hand, should prove wildly successful, because it makes purchasing music from iTunes even easier and better. And since it's already available in the latest builds of iTunes, I offer myself as an example of its probable success and obvious usefulness.

Until recently I've used Amazon to purchase music. Their songs were generally cheaper and not burdened by DRM. But now that Apple has largely (completely?) done away with DRM, the services no longer compete on that level. Now it simply comes down to convenience. And since all my computing devices are Apple kit, I'll pretty much be using iTunes to buy my music when possible. Because now, with iCloud, I can do so from any device without penalty or hassle: anytime I purchase something from iTunes it will propagate to any other device that has my Apple ID on it. iCloud effectively provides backups of my purchased music as well, by allowing me to re-download any purchases I've made.

This is how it should have been all along. The fact that it wasn't this way in the past — that getting my music onto my various devices was such a hassle — was always frustrating to me, and it kept me from buying music from iTunes as much as I might have liked to. The fact that they've fixed this glaring issue means I'll likely buy a lot more music from iTunes now. In fact, I've already bought eight songs from my Mac. And getting them onto my iPhone was not just a piece of cake, but a complete delight.

Hallelujah.

Oh, and one last thing: I really dislike the new iCloud icon. A cloud etched on brushed metal buttons? Seriously? Blech! I hope this isn't a new trend because I think it's ugly.

Lion

I've written a bit about Lion already, and there wasn't a whole lot of new information at this year's keynote. There were a couple surprises, though.

For one, I was somewhat surprised to see that Apple has backpedaled on offering Lion Server as simply another "part of Mac OS X Lion." In the original sneak peek promotional materials Apple had written:

“Lion Server is now part of Mac OS X Lion. It’s easy to set up your Mac as a server and take advantage of the many services Lion Server has to offer.”

And indeed most people took this to mean that Lion Server would be free. This is longer the way it's presented; in fact Lion Server has its own page now. And if you read that page you'll notice that Lion Server will be 50 bucks.

Now don't get me wrong. At a tenth what it used to cost, Lion Server is still a bargain. I'm certainly not complaining about this. I was just a bit surprised is all. Though maybe I shouldn't have been, as reader LeRoy had pointed out this likelihood in the comments to my original article. What can I say, LeRoy? When you're right you're right.

That said, $50 for the easiest, most powerful server software available is a steal. I will probably buy a copy just to kick the tires on it. If I were still a Mac Sysadmin, I'd be so jazzed.

The next surprise was the price of Lion: 30 bucks. If you're keeping track, that's $100 cheaper than Mac OS X upgrades used to be, about a quarter what it used to cost. That's phenomenal.

And finally, I was quite surprised by the fact that Mac OS X Lion will be delivered though the Mac App Store. I've had my fair share of issues with the Mac App Store, so I'm skeptical that this will be a great delivery method for an OS update. But Apple's pretty good at making great OS update experiences, so they might manage it after all.

iOS 5

The notifications look great, as do many of the refinements in iOS 5. But then, that sort of stuff is to be expected in any iOS relase.

The real game-changer, in my mind — and it's deeply tied to iCloud — was PC Free. The iPad and its ilk are clearly the future for Apple, and likely for the computer industry as a whole. But, as I've said before, the iPad doesn't become a real computing device until it can stand on its own without the need for a Mac. Well, now it can.

The iPad is now a full computing citizen. If it serves your needs it can be your only computer. And I think that will be the case for huge numbers of people. PC Free really sets the stage for the iPad to be the revolutionary device its been hailed as. It's a very important step.

Conclusion

Overall I'm pretty impressed by this year's announcements. I really wish there had been a revised iPhone announcement, or at least a hint of when it might happen. I'm dying — really dying — to switch to Verizon as I can hardly get calls at work anymore. But I don't want to switch right before they announce the new phone. So I wait...

Still, it was a good year, with lots of cool advancements for the platform and lots of cool stuff to look forward to in the near future. I think (despite having just renewed my MoblieMe subscription — Doh!) iCloud is on the right track, enabling all kinds of great things, from better music purchasing to PC Free iPads. And, of course, I'm totally psyched about Lion.