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Comment by radley | Hacker News Reader

My problem with the change in FCP is that it's following an unpleasant downgrade pattern on their platform. QT 7 was far more useful than QTX. 10.6 & earlier Mail is far more robust than 10.7 will be. And it goes on.

Apple's really pushing a premium consumer biz model, leaving professionals in the uncomfortable position of not having a professional platform.

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I think that the response of pros to FCPX is understandable but also wrong. If FCPX were the first word processor, they're complaining that it doesn't come with liquid paper and two color ribbons.

The way in/out points and compound clips work in FCPX is simply ridiculously awesome -- it's kind of what After Effects tries to do with compound clips implemented in a realtime modeless manner.

Was Apple insensitive (e.g. by halting FC Studio sales the moment it released FCPX)? You bet. Did it bungle the PR? No question. Is FCPX a non-pro tool? Pro tools are tools pros use. I have no doubt some pros will use FCPX and some FCPX users will turn pro. Will a lot of FCP7 users cling to the old ways or switch to Premiere or Avid or whatever? Probably.

"The way in/out points and compound clips work in FCPX is simply ridiculously awesome"

You mean, the way it forgets the in/out points you set on a clip? Yeah, I LOVE that. So much more fun to re-trim each and every clip every time you click on it. Huge timesaver. /sarc

Obviously I do not mean that, but your point is well-taken.

Creative professionals have been a cornerstone of Apple's business for many years now but the signs all point to Apple's abandonment of this market. It's understandable from a business standpoint; their consumer business is far more profitable, but a lot of tears are going to be shed over this. They've let Logic fall far behind the competition since they acquired it too.

What’s your problem with QTX and Mail? The new Mail is awesomely awesome (the old is rubbish in comparison) and QTX is a player like QT7 was. Not much to do wrong.

And more importantly QT7 is still available in 10.6 and QTKit automatically invokes QT7 instead of QTX when necessary.

QT7 is available if you know about it and either download it or install it from disk.

QTX / QTKit don't provide a way to:

- save in formats other than H.264 for iPhone or computer

- select datarates other than 2x for iPhone or 1x computer

- export just the audio

- export a still / image from your video

- do simple in/out copy/paste editing

QT7 pro had far more possibilities than QT X. It's largely used by professionals.

How, precisely, do you know how "robust" 10.7 Mail will be?

You don't.

Looking further into the new Mail I was wrong. I had thought it was going to be dumbed down to be more like iOS Mail.

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