Canon5Dtips Photography is more than words.
As it is in fashion these days, when you have an issue with an Apple product, you just have to send an email to Steve and wait for a one liner reply. That is what Dustyn Gobler did. You can read its content here. Basically, he is asking Apple to give us more visibility on the pro apps road map. Steve reply?
“A great release of Final Cut is coming early next year.”
This make me sad. I would have liked everything but the great keyword. Great is basically what Steve says whenever he is talking about anything Apple related, I am sure Apple carpet and toilette paper holder are great too!
Why is this important?
Actually, this is not important, it is critical for HDSLR shooters. FCS is losing ground to CS5 on every single front. Premiere Pro can edit in real time H.264 without transcoding (with a compatible NVIDIA card) and send it back and forth to After Effects for grading / compositing without any problems. On the other hand, you can be pretty sure a roundtrip from FCP to Color is going to mess up your timeline.
What I am trying to say is that CS5 Production suite is now a very attractive alternative to FCS. Even more so if you are shooting with a 5DMrkII. While priced a little bit higher, you get a lot of value and each app is an improvement over its previous version (DVD Studio & Sound Track, I am looking at you!).
So what?
I had a quick chat last night with one of my friend who is a huge fan of Final Cut Pro. Almost to the point of getting a FCP tattoo on his forehead. Yet he told me that he is giving up on Apple if they dont announce something by the end of February and will be moving to CS5/6.
This is huge. If someone like him is willing to make the switch, it means hundreds have already done it and even more are thinking about jumping ship.
In light of this, it does not surprise me at all that Steve sent such a reply, trying to slow the exodus. Final Cut Studio 4 is going to come out at about the same time as CS6 (supposedly) which means Apple can’t just make a great release, it has to be a kick ass release if they want to stay in the game!
What about you?
Personally, I am on the fence. I have already moved from Color/Motion to After Effects and since I need to learn Illustrator, I may just buy the Production Suite and get everything else at the same time (Content Aware Fill FTW!). But what about you? Have you already jumped ship? Are you planning to? In how long?
