Sachin Agarwal on Why Apple Built Final Cut Pro X

Sachin Agarwal:

I worked on Final Cut Pro from 2002 to 2008. It was an amazing experience. The Final Cut Pro X project was just getting started when I left Apple. It was an ambitious and controversial move, but it made sense for Apple. Here’s why:

Apple doesn’t care about the pro space.

The goal for every Apple software product is to sell more hardware. Even the Mac operating system is just trying to get people to buy more Mac computers. The pro market is too small for Apple to care about it. Instead of trying to get hundreds or even thousands of video professionals to buy new Macs, they can nail the pro-sumer market and sell to hundreds of thousands of hobbyists like me.

Hard to argue with that, in broad strokes. But if Apple doesn’t care, period, about the pro space, why keep “Pro” in the app’s name? Why preview it at NAB in February, to an audience of the very pro-y-est editing pros?

I think Apple plans for Final Cut Pro X to grow from where it is today to eventually meet the needs of high-end pros. What this release shows is not that Apple doesn’t care about the pro market at all, but rather that they don’t care enough to prevent Apple from releasing a version that pros can’t yet use.

★ Friday, 1 July 2011