Final Cut Pro - page 2

There have been concerns about the fate of the Mac Pro ever since Apple killed off the Xserve a year and a half ago. Although Apple didn’t say the Mac Pro was on the chopping block, the company did let it go without an update for quite some time. Although the Mac Pro didn’t get featured in today’s WWDC keynote like the MacBook lineup, which includes the new MacBook Pro, it did receive a long-needed update.

The biggest reaction to the Mac Pro’s update today is a sense of relief by many creative professionals and Mac-focused IT departments. The update proves that Apple isn’t signing the death warrant for its most powerful and most expandable Mac. That makes the updated specs a symbol of Apple’s commitment to high-end and high-performance systems in addition to being a major product update.

TSA is the latest U.S. federal agency to make a significant investment in Apple technologies in what may be a move away from RIM’s BlackBerry and Windows PCs. The agency is set to start a pilot program that will run over the next three years and will involve heavy investment in Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Apple TVs.

According to federal documents (PDF link), the security agency plans to spend $3 million on Apple products and has an amazingly wide range of uses for them in mind. The plans go well beyond the scope of Apple investments made by other U.S. government agencies like the EPA and FAA, which focus primarily on iPhones and/or iPads.

Wow! 2011 has been one of the most interesting years in recent memory for Apple Inc. Of course the death of Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, stands out as one of the most important events of the year for Apple, but there have been a load of other stories too that have made 2011 a very memorable year for the fruit company. From one controversy to the next, to record-breaking earnings, and new products, Apple has plowed through 2011 with a steady determination to be the best technology company on the planet. Only one device underwent a redesign (the iPad), while other form factors stayed the same. Instead of focusing on making pivotal leaps forward with hardware, Apple’s main focus of 2011 was to fortify their strong foundation in the software game.

Here’s Cult of Mac’s look back on the Apple in the year 2011.

Disgruntled video editors who were unsatisfied with their Final Cut Pro X purchase earlier this year seem to have turned to Adobe’s products instead. The company’s video tools for Mac have seen a 45% growth year-over-year, undoubtedly thanks to the fiasco that surrounded Apple’s latest Final Cut following its release.

Yesterday, Apple held a private briefing for enterprise contracts in London about Final Cut Pro X, and if you’re a Final Cut Pro X customer hoping that Apple will be patching in missing functionality like XML import and project support for Final Cut Pro 6 and 7, well, sorry chief: you’re just out of luck.

In a bid to tempt unhappy customers away from Apple’s Final Cut Pro X, Adobe has slashed by the price of its Premiere Pro professional video editing software by 50%… but will its ploy be a success?

Even as Apple starts issuing refunds to developers angry that Final Cut Pro X leaves out some of the features upon which they depend most, new evidence suggests that those must-have features are already in Final Cut Pro X’s source code, just waiting to be turned on.

Wow. Apple’s latest version of their professional video editing software Final Cut Pro X has proven to be such a PR mess for them that according to reports they are now backing down from their strict “all sales are final” policy for the App Store and issuing refunds.

Macworld magazine has given Apple’s controversial update of Final Cut Pro X a cautious thumbs up.

The new version of Final Cut Pro rocked the video editing world with its ruthless embrace of the new at the expense of the old. Lots of veteran FCP editors are outraged by the update, which has a whole new code base and workflow. The new software can’t even open old FCP projects!

But Macworld says that’s the price to pay for progress. The new software has been rewritten for a tapeless, metadata-based video workflow, and though incomplete, it’s a huge imporvement:

With Final Cut Pro X, Apple is once again out to completely re-invent the video industry. This is a truly groundbreaking release for a 1.0 software version, and I hope that the professional features that many video editors currently use will be made available soon.

Macworld: Review: Final Cut Pro X

For a few minutes today, Twitter account BWilks2001 played host to a number of images purporting to come from Apple’s forthcoming Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5 release, giving designers an intriguing glimpse into what could be the future of Apple’s professional video production suite. Then, just like that, the Twitter account was gone, brought down by Apple’s lawyers.

But don’t worry. We’ve got all the leaked screenshots, after the jump.

“Stay tuned and buckled up.” According to sources speaking to Techcrunch, Apple has far from abandoned their premier Final Cut Pro software after more than a year without updates. It’s coming, and is supposedly slated to be the “biggest overhaul to Final Cut Pro since the original version was created over 10 years ago.” Yowza.

Although details are scant on what will be new, one of Techcrunch’s sources say that Final Cut Pro has been built back up from its marrow, with the changes encompassing everything from low-level architecture to a complete redesign of the user interface (a resdesign which will hopefully go over better than Apple’s redesign of iMovie’s interface a few years back).

The changes are reportedly “dramatic and ambitious,” and will answer all concerns that Apple’s abandoned the pros in their grab for consumers. If Techcrunch is right, Final Cut Pro will be hitting in Spring 2011, possibly to coincide with the National Association of Broadcasters conference on April 9th through 14th.