Why Apple took away your livelihood
There’s been a lot of angst regarding the introduction of Final Cut Pro X, and the simultaneous disappearance of Final Cut Pro 7, with the replacement lacking functionality considered critical to a non-trivial number of professionals. This is certainly a valid concern.
The question of why Apple introduced FCPX in its current state should be obvious, and is better addressed elsewhere1. The question on my mind is: why did Apple take away FCP7 at the same time, instead of continuing to provide it for a while as in past transitions?
I can think of these reasons (which are somewhat intertwined):
- Apple wants to stop selling all boxed software, no exceptions. Even Lion is going to be App Store-only. They’re taking such a hard line on this that I wouldn’t be surprised if it came all the way from The Top. You know who I mean.
- Final Cut Pro 7 is, if I’m not mistaken, an ageing Carbon app. It might be non-trivial to do whatever porting is necessary to make it work on the App Store, including (but perhaps not limited to) license checks.
- Apple doesn’t want novices hearing about the great new Final Cut Pro and how easy it is to use, searching for it on the App Store, and finding two different versions, becoming confused as to which one they should buy.
I’m not going to pass judgement on whether these reasons are ‘good enough’ or whether Apple did the right thing - again, you can find plenty of that elsewhere. But given that this was their decision, it may be useful to understand why.
- Okay, okay, I can’t resist a footnote: ‘Real artists ship.’ ↩︎