This is a conversation I’m having with more and more editors today.
Since its first release, back in 1999, Apple had two divergent goals with Final Cut Pro. First, it appealed to Apple’s core market of creators. Final Cut offered new ways to tell stories working with then-new digital media. It brought video story-telling to people who could never tell them before.
However, the second – and I think larger – goal was that video required the absolute maximum of computer power. CPUs, GPUs, RAM, storage – ESPECIALLY storage – were taxed to the ultimate. In those early days, computer performance was everything. FCP became the bellwether for computer performance.
Two major events, both in 2020, changed Apple’s focus on Final Cut. First was Steve Bayes retirement from Apple. Steve was the senior product manager for Apple’s media software. He once told me that, as a former editor, his job was to keep the wheels from falling off Final Cut development.
The other major event that year was the advent of Apple silicon. Announced in June, the first Mac with an M-series chip was released in November, 2020. The power of Apple silicon truly did change everything.
While Apple has continued to improve their M-series chips, with new systems doing more and doing it faster, ANY M-series chip can edit 4K video, or 12K if your storage is fast enough. Twenty streams of 4K video? Piece of cake. For the first time since digital video began, computer speed was no longer an issue.
Today, we edit 8K media without a second thought and expect our projects to play in real-time without rendering.
There was no longer a material difference for video editing between an M2 vs M4 chip. Faster? Yes, but those early M-series chips edited video just fine. The driving need to upgrade hardware with each new release disappeared and, with it, Final Cut was no longer needed to drive hardware sales.
Video was handled.
Because of that, Apple seems to have lost interest in improving Final Cut. Yes, Apple continues to support it – which is GREAT! – and Apple does add new features. But those features are half-baked – like captions with no transcripts – or late – like taking eleven years to add timeline scrolling – or nonexistent – as can be seen when comparing recent new features from Adobe or Blackmagic Design to Final Cut.
Apple hardware is amazing. Final Cut Pro, though, seems to have lost its way. While still the fastest NLE on the market, it is no longer state-of-the-art, nor the most feature-rich. Apple may feel that FCP is old news, but there are still hundreds of thousands of editors who depend upon it every day to earn a living.
They deserve better from Apple.
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