Apple has just made their biggest mistake ever. It's called Final Cut Pro X (FCPX).
There are about 4 million professional video editors out there, and fully 50% of them edit their videos using Apple's Final Cut software (eg. 2 million users). It has been used to edit feature films, tv show, commercials, and more. Obviously it's a very important piece of software.
The software hadn't been updated for years -- until 2011. Earlier in the year Apple quickly demoed the product at one of their conferences. It looked good, but everyone had to wait to try it out at launch time. Well, launch time came last week and the internet is alive with hatred for the new product.
The software itself was completely redesigned. Imagine if Excel got a total overhaul and NOTHING was where it was before. Also imagine if many of the features you rely on in Excel were removed for the redesign, and then features were added that make it impossible for any spreadsheet creator to use the software. That is what Apple has done with FCPX. They have made it literally IMPOSSIBLE for professional video editors to use. It is essentially a pumped-up version of iMovie, which comes included on every Mac.
The software is also only available for download -- not physical box to buy at a store. So, what's the problem you say? Did I mention that the download is 1.3 Gigabytes in size? There are many parts of the world with lots of video editors and very little internet access (Africa, Southern and Southeast Asia). Many of these areas still use dial-up for their internet access, and have to pay by the Megabyte over a low bandwidth cap. In these places it costs more for the bandwidth to download the product than for the purchase of the product.
If you want see invective and sudden hatred for a company, go on Apple's App Store and look up Final Cut Pro X. It's been rated well over a thousand times by now, and most users have given it one star out of five (and remember, to rate something in the App Store you have to have bought it, so these are really unhappy campers). Also see the spewing of hatred that was sent to the NY Times tech editor David Pogue after he positively reviewed FCPX. He said that in his 20 years of doing that job he has never seen anything like this.
The pro editor community is up in arms because it looks like Apple didn't bother to ask any of them what they need in a new version of FCP. They just built a dumbed-down version of the software, removed important features, added features that slow the program to a crawl, and then called it "awesome" and "revolutionary" at their developer conference.
It's hard to believe such a large company could be this stupid.
