I’d suspect it was much the same reason as why Apple decided to kill FCP and rebrand iMovie instead. Professional users are inordinately more expensive in tech support costs

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But FCP X is amazing. It's the one thing I really miss having a Mac for and it's so disappointing that nobody else has even attempted to replicate it. It's leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else. Calling it a "rebranded iMovie" shows either a complete lack of awareness of literally anything about it, or an incredible intellectual dishonesty that doesn't even seen to serve a practical purpose.

It's also…not subscription based. Or wasn't in 2018 when I last had a Mac.

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

They announced a subscription plan today, funnily enough.

But no, FCPX was a huge fuck you to the professional market. And yes, FCPX is built on the iMovie codebase rather than FCP7.

On release:

0 backward compatibility with FCP7 projects.
Support for tape ingest removed.
Multicam editing removed.
No external monitor for playback
Unable to export to Color and other post packages, breaking the whole professional workflow.
Could only be installed manually via the App Store.

And the worst part of all this was Apple abruptly withdrew FCP7 on launch day. So if you were a post house working on a big job and needed a few extra licences, fuck you. If you needed any of the lost features, fuck you. We’re talking companies that plan upgrades a year or so in advance to minimise disruption, and they suddenly faced having to make do with no more licences, or to suddenly switch to Avid with all the pain that causes.

FCPX was suitable for prosumers, who would ingest, edit, mix and grade in the one package. It was not compatible with the way the industry works, and by removing FCP7, Apple signalled that they were no longer interested in the pro market.