You, my tech savvy readers, probably already know about Apple’s release of Final Cut Pro X, a totally ”rebooted” Final Cut Pro. This has been a very controversial move from Apple since it lacks a lot of the features that professional video editors need (and that the previous version, Final Cut Pro 7, had). A lot of bytes has been used to comment on the issue. One really good take on it is Jeffery Harrel’s blog post ”What went wrong with Final Cut Pro X”, and I won’t rewrite what he already written. If you’re unfamiliar with the FCPX controversy but interested in knowing more, read his post. You can also read numerous posts on Daring Fireball or listen to The Talk Show, Episode #49 to get John Gruber’s take on it. (Or just Google, a lot of people has raised their voices.)

Now I’m not a Final Cut user, so it really doesn’t affect me that much, but I feel a need to express my opinion. Some have argued that this is the latest in Apple’s ever-ongoing attempt to ”dumb-down” the technical world. Final Cut Pro X should, according to those expressing these kind of opinions, now be targeted at prosumers and normal users and be more of a pro version of iMovie and Apple is moving away from the pro market. (Clarification: This opinion is not expressed by those who I link to.)

I don’t think that this is the case. I don’t doubt that it lacks a few very important features and that Apple’s handling of this has been very, very poor. However I think that is what it is, poor handling, not evidence that they are abandoning the pro market. Marco Arment really said it best in Episode #31 of Build and Analyze; Casual consumers don’t spend $300 on software very often.

That is a very important point. Pros are the ones that really pay for expensive software. Sure, the Mac App Store has made it a lot easier to impulse buy software, but nobody will impulse buy something that expensive. So even if the new price is a bargain compared to what FCP 7 used to cost it’s still to much money for the everyday Mac user who just want to edit some video he/she shot with his/her iPhone, especially since iMovie is basically free.

So isn’t it possible that Apple made a mistake? That they thought that prosumers and consumers would rush to this new product in such great numbers that losing the pros wouldn’t matter? Sure it’s possible, but I think it’s more likely that the huge mistake was to discontinue Final Cut Pro 7 on the same day that FCPX came out. If they had just let the two product coexist for a year or two (like with XCode 3 and XCode 4) I guess everyone would have happily migrated to FCPX as it got more and more great features.

I also think that the best solution for Apple is to admit being wrong in killing FCP 7 and put it back on sale for something like a year. If this is likely or not, I don’t know. Abruptly cutting ties with the past and head straight down the highway of tomorrow is a very typical Apple move. It will be very interesting to see if something similar will happen with Logic Pro in a not-so-distant future.