1. This is one of the best moves Adobe have made in a long time and obviously a direct result of Apple's switch to Intel. Although in the near future Apple might regret it as the Adobe production suite cuts into the Final Cut Studio's market share on their home turf.

FCS users wouldn't have considered trying APS before simply now because of their blinkered Mac allegiance. But now that its native on the beloved Mac it wont take long for FCS users to jump ship in significant numbers I'd wager. Cross application integration is where the future is at and to Adobe's credit (and I rarely give them credit) they've taken app integration into a realm no other developer is even close to.

Once Mac users, scared from their Première 5 and 6 experiences (terrible as they certainly were), conjure the will to sit in front of APS and Premiere Pro for an hour or two I reckon they'll start to see the glaring holes in Final Cut Studio and be enticed into a new setup.

The biggest plus for APS is strength right across the board - all the apps are mature and well developed; After FX, Premiere, Photoshop, Encore - there's no weak link. Where as on the FCS side there's some real weaknesses - FCP is solid, as is DVD SP but Soundtrack leaves a LOT to be desired and Motion has some nice twinkles but is ultimately very under developed and got a long way to go to be a patch on After Effects.

So definitely interesting days ahead. I think many production studios will see this as the great unifier in their systems in a similar way to that which Avid established a long time ago - One software suite to cover all ends of the production that is cross-platform and integrated. I think this will not only dint Apple's market share with FCS but also drag some market share away from the likes of Vegas and certainly away from Avid on the PC side.

The twist however that, to my mind de-sweetens the deal somewhat, is the swapping of Audition for Soundbooth. Audition is a complete and full featured DAW and a superb piece of software. Soundbooth is a simple two track audio editing and mastering tool. One doesn't replace the other. Adobe are probably banking on the multi-track audio tools being significant enough in Premiere (a leaf they're taking out of the Vegas book) and so all that's needed is a dedicated audio editor (ala Soundbooth). BUT unless Adobe are doing a big overhaul of Premiere Pro's audio tools for the next version then they are off base because Premiere's audio tools (whilst leaps ahead of Final Cut Pro's piss weak audio options) are still not really up to scratch and still very clumsy (PP is for example not as strong or as flexibly functional for audio as Vegas) Certainly audio in PP isnt able to carry the mantle from Audition. (not yet at least) Of course this could all be part of the plan to entice users to cough up the extra cash for Audition...

To my mind this takes a significant link out of the APS line-up making it somewhat incomplete (or at least not as complete as it was). Without Audition there is no real DAW in APS. Which means whilst editing, compositing, effects, DVD authoring and imaging are covered in spades with PP, AE, EDVD and Pshop there is no true multi-track music and audio system. If Apple can bring FCP up to scratch, develop Motion into the tool it shows promise of becoming and give Soundtrack the massive rethink it needs they may be able to hold onto their user-base. But make no mistake its going to be tough for them in the coming years. this is the biggest (and probably first major) challenge Final Cut has had... interesting times. Hopefully at the end of it, we all end up with better, cheaper, more integrated tools...

Posted at 3:22AM on Jan 4th 2007 by Mike Jones

2. This announcement certainly was a big surprise. It must not be too terribly difficult to port an existing Windows app to the MacIntel platform. I think it will definitely bite into the Final Cut Studio market share but FCP has made gigantic in roads in the last few years and it will be hard for many shops to give up on their investment or to invest new $$. Of course and thing that will make Apple keep their FCS development in tip-top form then this is it. While all these integrated suites are nice it probably won't have any real effect on Avid and the high end FCP use as at the high end, graphics, audio sweeting and dvd authoring are done by dedicated professonials who only do those jobs. They use their own tools and do a better job than those of us who try to be the "jack of all trades - master of none."

Posted at 11:57AM on Jan 4th 2007 by editblog