[spectre] Apple prefers spectacle over substance

[jaromil at dyne.org]

re all,

FYI here below an interesting analysis of what Apple is doing with the
new version of Final Cut Pro now rebranded Final Cut X and
substantially changed to be an application for web publication.

Many of those "video professionals" enthusiastically using Apple in
the last 10 and more years, along with studios, are enraged by the
fact Apple is leaving their priorities asides, abandoning the FC-Pro
codebase which was mostly geared for high-end video production.

Needless to say, there has always been a group of less enthusiastic
video experts warning that this was going to happen...

However, if you are a Apple user now you can have a scroll through
this huge thread http://ur1.ca/4mz71 - it seems there is even (yet
another) petition http://www.petitiononline.com/finalcut/petition.html

good luck!

just consider GNU/Linux is there with alternatives that are getting
better and better, while even Avid is moving towards open sourcing
some components...

Software of the Spectacle

   Final Cut Pro X means Apple has abandoned professional artists

   by Flick Harrison

   http://blog.flickharrison.com/2011/07/software-of-the-spectacle

   Guy Debord said that the main function of our society is now the
   production of spectacle. The spectacle alienates us from life and
   each other. Facebook, for instance, transforms our relationships into
   images of those relationships, mediated by Facebook’s own hidden
   desires.

   Fifteen years of engagement with the Final-Cut-Pro-using professional
   class is, at best, a good self-funding, street-cred foundation for the
   new consumer version of FCP, called FCP-X.  It could be compared to the
   free itunes app of yesteryear which slowly led us to the Itunes
   Store and thence to the app store, iphone and ipad.

   Since Photoshop or thereabouts, the line between artist / consumer /
   producer has blurred for many reasons.  Web 2.0 was a major result /
   acceleration of that, when the content between ads suddenly became
   user-generated instead of professionally-produced.  Popping out a
   lower-cost, easier-to-use version of FCP should goose the whole
   production stream in that direction, not only helping fill the
   million-channel universe with consumer-produced stuff but driving the
   wages of pros down.

   Final Cut X fits perfectly into this paradigm – it’s part of
   Apple’s mission to stop selling software / hardware and start selling
   experiences. You produce video with Final Cut X / Imovie / whatever
   because it’s a way to keep you on the mac, where you’ll get app-store
   suggestions etc. and listen to Itunes where you’ll buy things.

   Then you’ll post your movie on Youtube so that other people will spend
   more time on their computer watching it, where they’ll get ads pushed
   at them.

   Professional content producers are a bit of a problem in this
   system because they expect to get paid for producing content, and
   because they have a set of specific needs.  Apple is smart to abandon
   them because the rest of the public will buy whatever software Apple
   puts in front of them if it is “slick” and “fun,” and they’ll learn to
   accept its paradigms rather than vice-versa.

   Senior artists in any discipline are a problem, partly because they
   want to get paid, but also because they are interested in ideas and
   formal play rather than spectacle.  They try to make work that reduces
   their own and their audiences’ alienation rather than increasing it,
   even work that exposes the spectacle itself.

   There is anger and dismay from professional editors who now feel
   they need to abandon Final Cut and the whole Apple suite of pro
   products.  The most sophisticated, team-based and integrated-workflow
   tools of FCP have been dropped, as if those skills and experiences are
   irrelevant to the art form in which they earn their crackers.

   What’s left is only spectacle.


-- 
jaromil,  dyne.org developer,  http://jaromil.dyne.org
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