Before I go any further I need to define what I mean by Pros in the headline (and from here on) – I am referring, mainly, to editors who work predominantly in broadcast television and feature films. Obviously there are many more people earning money editing video, but it’s these editors who are the most demanding, and for whom the uncertainty of FCP X is such a problem.

Has Apple abandoned this market? I think to all intents and purposes they have. They will continue to claim that their product is a professional product and a continuation of the Final Cut Pro legacy, but in reality it really appears they are absolutely willing to lose that market if they need to.

And why wouldn’t they? Apple’s estimate of FCP install numbers was “two million” a while ago – it wasn’t clear how that was measured, but many speculated that it was all sales since 1.0 or some similar aggregate number. Regardless, it was clear that within the larger world of FCP users it was a minority that were utilising it in the demanding broadcast television and film market. The vast majority are probably doing all their work within the one suite – capturing a tape or importing a file, editing, basic audio mix in FCP or Soundtrack Pro, export a file for DVD or web upload. And then another large segment are likely to be “aspirational” editors – people who don’t get paid to make videos, but have installed FCP because they would like to one day and it’s the accessible “pro” tool.

So as small as the “professional” (see second paragraph) market is within that user-base, it so destined to be much smaller in an application that costs a mere $300 from the App Store and has so many simple time-saving features to make it as easy as possible to get something in and edited. Catering to the “professional” market would add complexity to the application, and reduce it’s appeal to people outside that market.

Apple doesn’t seem to do niche any more. They have been systematically killing any and all non-mainstream products they offered, and the re-imagining of Final Cut Pro seems clearly in line with that. If a product doesn’t have a sales potential of millions of units it doesn’t seem to fit into the Apple business plan.

Is FCP X a bad product? No, not really – and had it been called anything other than FCP X there would have been widespread acceptance of this. However FCP X is not a new version of the Final Cut Pro that had won respect in the film and television industry – it simply doesn’t have what it takes to work in that environment.

Businesses in the film and TV industry, that have to deliver a product to a strict standard within a strict deadline, can’t pin their hopes on a future upgrades or the next version while relying on an increasingly ageing product that has been EOL’ed. They need certainty and at the moment the only certainty that exists with FCP is that the current version has no future hopes and the current version isn’t suitable for their work. They have no choice but to look elsewhere.

It simply makes no financial sense for Apple – selling a $300 product that appeals, as is, to millions of people – to pursue a small market with very specific and complicated demands.

In the end Final Cut Pro X will be a success, it is a powerful and innovative application. But it will no longer be a big part of the film and TV post-production industry.

Let’s imagine a car racing league that uses production-style cars (basically ‘touring cars’ in many places). In this field there were a couple of established players, they made very good cars, but they were incredibly expensive as they really only made them for this very small number of potential clients.

Then a new upstart car maker comes along – they’ve designed a car that looks like one of these racing cars – we’ll call this car Fast Car Pro – it can drive the circuits well, but It’s not quite ready to win races, but it’s giving the big guys a run for their money. Also, this new car is available to the mass market and costs a just a tiny fraction of the cost of the established cars.

In time this Fast Car Pro starts to attract more professional teams and even wins a few races. Even more importantly there are now a large number of third parties making accessories and modifications for the car that make it more powerful and more suitable for the serious drivers. While at the same time the car is still fine for driving the kids to soccer or taking on a vacation.

After a decade in production the FCP is still going strong. Many racing drivers have adopted it and are doing great, but it’s a bit overdue for a new model and the manufacturer, Apple Automotive, has promised something great. At this point the car is still seen as a racing car that many people also like to drive on the highway.

After a lot of secret development Apple Automotive reveals their new Fast Car Pro X – which some people have suggested will be a Minivan Pro. It certainly is revolutionary, it has a joystick instead of steering wheel and all the seats (there’s now 7 of them, a lot like Apple’s minivan) automatically move around inside the car to where they are needed. It has auto-driving features and a host of other time-savers. For a ‘Soccer Mom’ this car certainly is revolutionary and will probably make life easier.

But for the racing drivers there are some problems. It can’t go above highway speeds for a start. None of their old aftermarket accessories can be used on the new car, and it can’t use the high-octane fuels they rely on for extra performance. Also the tyres can’t be changed to suit conditions, and it’s not possible to turn off the auto-driving features. It is still technically able to drive around the circuit, but it can’t do it with all the established racing cars.

Of course the original Fast Car Pro they’d become so used to still works fine, but it wasn’t going to be updated anymore. Also, surprisingly, Apple Automotive had decided that the same day they launched the new car they would entirely discontinue the old one. They stopped selling the original Fast Car Pro and even told dealers to send back all their inventory. If a team crashed one of their cars, or wanted to add a new car, there wasn’t any option to buy more – they would have to go to the second-hand market.

For the racing drivers this seems like the end of the world, they had built reputations and teams around the Fast Car Pro and now the new version simply couldn’t perform the way they needed it to. Apple’s decision seems insane to the drivers because Apple had effectively held half of the market for these racing cars. However the potential market for the racing cars was pretty small.

From Apple Automotive’s perspective and, perhaps more importantly, the perspective of their shareholders the new direction was a great decision. Now instead of a potential market of racing drivers and a reasonably small number of car enthusiasts they were looking at a potential market of just about everyone who needs to drive anywhere. Even if the professional racing drivers were entirely alienated they stand to gain a lot more than they lose with a new, more accessible, performance car.

Now, there is some hope that Apple Automotive might reinstate some of the missing features for the racing drivers, but there’s no suggestion of when that might be or what features might come back.

The main issue is that for editors in the Film and TV world FCP is basically one of two options. For Apple however the Film and TV post market represents only a small fraction of the current FCP market, and a absolutely tiny fraction of the potential market for a new application.

For the editors FCP is a big thing, for Apple the TV/Film world is a small fry.

Edited: By request of FCP editor Doug Dillaman, my representation of the FCP X potential market.