Apple is said to be revamping their Final Cut Pro product to appeal to a more mainstream audience rather than high end professionals. After layoffs in 2007, Apple has reportedly reorganized the Final Cut Pro team under the lead of Randy Ubillos, the developer who completely redesigned iMovie in 2008. The new iMovie was drastic departure from the original iMovie codebase.
According to a report from AppleInsider, the goal of the new Final Cut Pro is to make it "more appealing and useful to the needs of prosumers".
Currently, Final Cut Pro is targeted at advanced professionals with a scaled down, less expensive Final Cut Express version sold to users who don't need all of its high end features. Because Apple now primarily sells the Express version, the company wants to rethink Final Cut Studio and scale its overall development to better fit the majority of its customers.
Steve Jobs was recently questioned about the fate of Final Cut Pro. MacSoda sent an email to Jobs asking about layoffs and the future of the application. Jobs replied:
We certainly do [care about Pro apps]. Folks who left were in support, not engineering. Next release will be awesome.
Top Rated Comments
they've spent all this time developing FCP into a pro-level app, and taken a sizable chunk of the market from Avid... and now they want to make imovie again? what an odd decision.
seems like making something "prosumer" is a great way to lose your "professional" users. just out of professional pride, i would think. no one is cutting hollywood movies on vegas, ya know?
seems like it would be smarter to make imovie more robust, rather than down-market FCP.