This was very far along when that April meeting occurred. Many people speculated that this was going to be their answer to the Pro market, but they took the feedback, held that meeting and promised to release a new "modular" Mac Pro.

So, this isn't what they are releasing in response to that feedback or what they were discussing in that meeting.

> but they took the feedback, held that meeting and promised to release a new "modular" Mac Pro.

What would be really awesome (at least for video) would be offloaded rendering for Linux. Doesn't macOS offer something like that that's used for Xcode?

however with modular people are reading too much into it. Apple more likely meant modular for them, as in being able to adjust to changes in technology where the previous Mac Pro could not be changed.

I doubt we will go back to the old tower style similar to PC versions

> the previous Mac Pro could not be changed.

Apple could have changed it rather easily.

> Apple's handling of Final Cut Pro X years ago still scares everyone.

I still remember watching Conan O' Brian and they lampooned it mercilessly with a rather long bit about it. I never thought I would see a late night comedian roasting Apple for their video editing software. You knew it had to be bad if it reached that level.

Here's the clip: https://youtu.be/vZXsI84nRMg

Pro people don’t upgrade parts, it costs too much time and is too risky. Pro people just upgrade the whole machine. And they don’t care if it costs $500 extra if it saves them a few hours of grief.

Pro people keep expensive machines running for a long time before they buy a new one. If one part goes bad, they'll buy a replacement part before they buy a new machine. So the machine has to be easy to service.

If one part goes bad, you send the machine to the shop for repairs and either loan a temp replacement or shuffle your work to other machines.

No serious pro should have only one high price asset.

What shop have you been to? Even the multi-million dollar shops have zombie rooms where they throw old out of warranty computers up to the ceiling. They will cannibalize two machines to make add to the render farm. I have seen them add memory switch out hard drives.

When people went to 4K they bought new cameras and they upgraded their computers with more ram, bigger drives and new cards.

Within a year of release FCP X surpassed FCP 7 seats [1]. In 2017 FCP X hit 2 million seats [2]. Now maybe everyone in Hollywood jumped ship after FCP X, but it's pretty clear that FCP X massively expanded the market for Apple. And looking at Avid's stock price over the past 5 years [3] it doesn't seem like their focus on "professionals" has paid off (no idea what Adobe Premiere's numbers are). Since FCP X launched, Apple has steadily iterated on it (with the last major update releasing today [4]). It's clear FCP X was a good move, not just from a business perspective, but technically as well; it performs much better on Macs than Premiere or Media Composer (search YouTube for comparisons). Randy Ubillos confirmed that in an interview after he retired [5]:

>One of the things I like about working at Apple was that Apple didn’t have a problem with starting over again - if that was the right thing to do. You don’t want to talk about ‘sunk cost.’ The effort you’ve put in in the past has gone. From now on, what is the best way to go forward? It doesn’t matter if we spent six months working on some feature. That doesn’t matter. Is it the right feature? If so, great, continue forward with it. If you don’t do that with a product and somebody else who doesn’t have the history, the legacy you’re trying to hold on to will jump in and take things out from under you.

...

>The very last conversation I had with Steve Jobs was right after the launch of Final Cut Pro X. I was getting ready to get on a plane to go to London to record the second set of movie trailers - we’d hired the London Symphony Orchestra [to perform the music that was going to be bundled with the next version of iMovie] - and Steve caught me at home: “What the heck is going on with this Final Cut X thing?” I said “We knew this was coming, we knew that people were going to freak out when we changed everything out from under them. We could have done this better. We should have. Final Cut 7 should be back on the market. We should have an FAQ that lists what this is all about.” He said “Yeah, let’s get out and fund this thing, let’s make sure we get on top of this thing, move quickly with releases…” and he finished by asking: “Do you believe in this?” I said “Yes.” He said “then I do too.”

[1] http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2012/04/some-final-cut-pro-x-d...

[2] https://www.cultofmac.com/478369/final-cut-pro-x-hits-massiv...

[3] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AVID?p=AVID

[4] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/12/final-cut-pro-x-intro...

[5] http://alex4d.com/notes/item/back-to-1-0-randy-ubillos-inter...

Okay I'll add my anecdotal evidence, I work around the TV industry in the UK and nobody I've talked to uses final cut anymore. It's all either Avid or Premiere, with Resolve to do colour work on.

Sure they've sold more copies with FCP X but it's not to professionals as far as I can tell, it's hitting the niche that Final Cut Express was at in the past.

>Sure they've sold more copies with FCP X but it's not to professionals as far as I can tell

This isn't a problem for Apple.