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Apple Businesses

Adobe Drops Mac Support For Premiere 616

Posted by simoniker from the edged-out-by-fruit dept.
Theaetetus writes "In a story on MacCentral, it's revealed that Adobe Systems is dropping support for the Mac in the new version of video editing app Premiere: 'If Apple's already doing an application, it makes the market for a third-party developer that much smaller,' said David Trescot, senior director of Adobe's digital video products group. In response to the news, Apple issued a statement welcoming Premiere customers to make the switch to the Mac and Final Cut Pro."
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Adobe Drops Mac Support For Premiere

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  • Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:49PM (#6384039) Journal
    Well, it would have made more sense to have kept selling the product to Mac users until it was no longer profitable. As far as I knew, Premiere is still the most popular film editing app amongst Mac users, which would stand to reason that it is still making a lot of money. So why decide to drop the product entirely, instead of just entering into some healthy competition?

    I guess when you are used to being the only bully on the block, and have thus come to enjoy forcing people to pay your extremely high prices (since there isn't anywhere else to go), then you would react in such a non-sensical way to sudden competition. First post?

    • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Funny)

      by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:54PM (#6384089) Homepage Journal
      I guess when you are used to being the only bully on the block, and have thus come to enjoy forcing people to pay your extremely high prices (since there isn't anywhere else to go), then you would react in such a non-sensical way to sudden competition.

      I can't tell...are you talking about Apple or Adobe?

    • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kaszeta ( 322161 ) <rich@kaszeta.org> on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:54PM (#6384094) Homepage
      Well, it would have made more sense to have kept selling the product to Mac users until it was no longer profitable. As far as I knew, Premiere is still the most popular film editing app amongst Mac users,

      I'm not too sure about this... Final Cut Pro has a pretty large userbase in the Mac world. I guess when you are used to being the only bully on the block, and have thus come to enjoy forcing people to pay your extremely high prices (since there isn't anywhere else to go)

      This comment doesn't really apply, since 1. Adobe hasn't had a monopoly or near-monopoly on the Mac platform for quite some time (Final Cut in it's various flavors has been around a while), and 2. Final Cut Pro is actually more expensive than Adobe Premier.

      • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Christopher Bibbs ( 14 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @03:44PM (#6385048) Homepage Journal
        Add in Avid Xpress as the higher than FCP option without buying a whole video editing system and Avid's soon to be released "low-end" product.

        I'm new to video editing and noone I talk to mentions Premiere. It's all Final Cut Pro this, and Avid Xpress that, and wait till you can afford a real Avid system.
        • I come from the world of PC video editing. I intended to do everything on my mac now, because the workflow is better, but the PC world boasts greater speed and until FCP 3, greater software. I mean not just the speed of the software, but the staggering options at every level from beginner to superpro. Some of the advanced intermediate apps, like Vegas Video or Ulead, have about as many options as Premiere. And Premiere has a lot of features that extend from Adobe's still image editors. Basically, it allows you to use your different frame tracks like layers in a photoshop document, and apply these changes over time...a very complex but incredibly awesome feature that I used all the time.

          I'm just getting into FCP, and have noticed that things are done quite differently. You can't just switch in a day like you can with the OS. However, what I have noticed is the excessive quality of the output of FCP. Premiere had all sorts of bugs, the root of which seems to be a heavy reliance on source data integrity. Some of my captures never worked right in Premiere and I ended up having to reencode things, which took a long time. And FCP's audio track syncronization is perfect...Premiere's again relies heavily on the output format, I think, because a lot of time different formats would have completely different sync. I do a lot of music video work and this was just ridiculous...I went to a video competion with a fresh "print" of a precisely synced video track and discovered that adobe had somehow offset the whole thing by 200 ms, or about 6 frames. The only difference between that print and the test AVIs I run was the frame resolution -- the print was in lower res to ensure it ran at full speed. It made the whole project look amaturish, when I spent a lot of time making sure it would look great, and needless to say I didn't win.

    • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by alchemist68 ( 550641 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:54PM (#6384095)
      This is Adobe's way of punishing Apple for trouncing on their business. It also shows that Adobe will try to reclaim that lost Macintosh business on the Windows side of computing, by forcing those Mac users to purchase a Wintel PC to continue using Premiere. This stratedy has a two edged attack: 1. Adobe still keeps its business and 2. Adobe attempts to hinder Apple's hardware sales by forcing Mac users to the Dark Side into being assimilated as BORG DRONES.

      • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by rootofevil ( 188401 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:58PM (#6384125) Homepage Journal
        wouldnt it also force users to purchase an additional copy of premier (pc version) in order to keep using it?

        then people would have to decide between changing platforms or changing programs. and to someone who is well acquainted with premier on a mac, neither choice looks very rosy i think.

        • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:4, Informative)

          by horsie ( 91009 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @04:05PM (#6385273)
          wouldnt it also force users to purchase an additional copy of premier (pc version) in order to keep using it?

          Actually, Adobe has a great cross-platform upgrade deal. When I switched from Wintels to the Mac, Adobe gave me a great deal for Photoshop. Since I already had the latest PC version of Photoshop (7.01) they charged me for SHIPPING only to get the Mac version with the caveat that I had to destroy my PC version of the software. Not bad at all! All in all, I paid $14.99 for 2nd day shipping.

      • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:05PM (#6384194)
        Adobe is probably doing something very stupid. While products released should be profitable, even if they are break even, if you have an assortment or portfolio of other popular packages for that platform, you end up hurting yourself.

        imo, Adobe has 3 signature products--Photoshop, Acrobat, and Premiere. They just dropped one for Mac.

        Furthermore, in some ways, this sends a negative signal regarding the potential of dropping other Mac products, no matter the PR spin on this. People will look elsewhere possibly sooner. Some will migrate to a wholly different platform (your 2nd point), x86 and MS OSs. However, Mac users tend to be a little more brand centric, so they will likely look to some other product sooner. If the company has shown one product may/will fail, what about the others? (If people perceive a bank to be unstable, even if it isn't, the bank may become unstable from such a fear.) Adobe Photoshop and similar products are stil quite popular and profitable for Adobe on OS X. Abandoning one of them sends a bad signal.

        I wouldn't be surprised if downloads for the GIMP increased over the next few months for OS X users. The only problem with GIMP besides it being sometimes tempermental is, afaik, that it does not support commercial color syncing technology (like Pantone, stuff for digital commercial printing, since that tech tends to be heavily patented--please correct me if I'm wrong, since I'd like an alternative). That tech is something photoshop has, and is something most professionals find critical in their work.

        • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by slantyyz ( 196624 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @04:16PM (#6385373)
          I doubt that the dropping of Premiere for the Mac market is going to hurt Adobe. I think it's been widely perceived among Mac users that Adobe has lost that war to FCP. What's wrong with Adobe acknowledging it themselves? It seems like a solid business decision to me.

          And if I were Adobe, I'd consider dropping the Acrobat reader for the Mac too, considering the new one from Apple that's coming out in Panther. Seeing how they're not making money from the reader anyways, no point in throwing money into that either.

          Maybe you shouldn't look at this as a knock against Adobe, but a compliment on Apple's software developers.

          (No, I'm not an Apple shill -- I'm a Windoze user)

        • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @06:00PM (#6386414)
          I don't know that I'd call Premiere a flagship product considering how long it has been since it was upgraded. Further, why did you leave Illustrator off that list? Not to mention InDesign. While I'm not sure this is a good move by Adobe, it seems they still have strong committment for the other products. Considering the Premiere was a full rewrite, they probably started it about two or three years ago when hardware wise Apple was falling behind and it wasn't clearly how the OSX transition would go. So it is understandable.

          However InDesign, Acrobat, and Photoshop all have very nice Mac ports. (OK, I hate the XP icons used in the OSX Acrobat - but that's minor) Given the new G5 I'm not worried.

          As for the Gimp, it really has a horrible UI. For Mac users who don't want Photoshop I think that GraphicsConverter is a much better program. But saying that people will switch to Gimp because Premiere wasn't ported seems a tad. . .odd.

      • Too late. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by overunderunderdone ( 521462 )
        Perhaps this is their reasoning but I think they have waited too long. If Adobe had pursued this strategy right away when FinalCut was introduced it would have worked as you suggest but now it will be a near run thing. Apple is a niche player and has it's eye on dominating the video editting/production niche. FinalCut Pro is one of the "killer" (or "tractor") apps in their strategy. Once the Mac platform has a critical mass of users and a critical mass of applications many of which are Mac only even competi

      • Final Cut is much better (Score:5, Informative)

        by Aqua OS X ( 458522 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @03:52PM (#6385123)
        Ehh, FinalCut is a better product. It has a much better UI, handles 24p h4 video perfectly, and does quite few things that Premiere needs 3rd party hardware to accomplish. Moreover, FinalCut on a PowerBook is typically a much more robust portable solution the Premiere on a PC laptop.

        FinalCut's video/audio solutions have surpassed that of Premiere's during the past two major releases. Over the past 12 months FinalCut has become -the- pro video editing solution for MacOSX.

        Honestly, it makes no sense to keep selling Premiere on OS X. Adobe would be loosing money. Now that FinalCut's feature set is mature, Mac user are migrating away from Premiere. Furthermore, a lot of Digital Video folks are migrating to OS X simply to use Final Cut or Final Cut Express.

    • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:54PM (#6384096)
      Well since you made no reference to any actual knowledge, I will do the same.

      Well, it would have made more sense to have kept selling the product to Mac users until it was no longer profitable.

      Maybe it isn't anymore, and they aredoing exactly what you are saying.

      As far as I knew

      I bet Adobe is in a alittle better position on this one, why don you just let them field it...

      have thus come to enjoy forcing people to pay your extremely high prices

      You and even others may see them as extremely high prices, but they may be justified. Do you know what it took to make this product, I doubt it. SO unless you are going to back up your spewing with some actual data, as Mr T would say.... "don't give me no jibber-jabber".

    • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:58PM (#6384122) Homepage Journal
      In that situation, however, where is the growth potential for Adobe? Rather than spend time and energy in a fight over the smaller Apple-based market, they're placing their resources in the much larger Windows arena, where there are greater prospects for growth. Frankly, I'm surprised we don't see this more often from software providers - in these "profitability first" times, it becomes harder and harder for software companies to develop across multiple platforms...
      • Isn't Microsoft pushing video editing on it's OS too? Gawd, given the choice of trusting Apple or Microsoft, it's a no-brainer to NOT trust Microsoft.

        With Apple finally putting alot of effort in making a good OS( I'm talking OS, not GUI ) and having to get pushy to make sure apps are available to support it. It stands to reason that some longtime Apple developers won't like getting pressure from Apple. For some reason, they have no idea what to expect from Microsoft. It's like the history books keep gettin

      • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Informative)

        by eclectic4 ( 665330 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @03:35PM (#6384963)
        You don't understand. The majority (I have read anywhere from 58% to 70%, movie industry editing news) of the computers that use professional video editing software are Macs. So, the Windows market is actually SMALLER than the Mac market for these softwares.

        Now, throw in the fact that FCP became the de facto choice by pros a couple of years ago (overtaking AVID, which was more expensive, and cumbersome), and you have the reason Adobe is doing this. Apple simply beat them, and Adobe is bowing out. Nothing more.

      • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by afantee ( 562443 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @04:48PM (#6385781)
        >> Rather than spend time and energy in a fight over the smaller Apple-based market, they're placing their resources in the much larger Windows arena, where there are greater prospects for growth.

        The problem for Adobe is that Mac is actually a major platform for video editing and they are retreating to a smaller market because they don't know how to compete with Apple and Avid.

    • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:59PM (#6384133)
      Well, it would have made more sense to have kept selling the product to Mac users until it was no longer profitable. As far as I knew, Premiere is still the most popular film editing app amongst Mac users, which would stand to reason that it is still making a lot of money. So why decide to drop the product entirely, instead of just entering into some healthy competition?

      As I understand it (see this [com.com] article) the new version of Premiere is a major new code base. From that article:

      "David Trescot, senior director of Adobe's digital video products group, said the new edition of Premiere is a complete rewrite of the application and it didn't make financial sense to support the Mac anymore."

      If this is true, then porting to Mac OS X would be a significant cost for Adobe. I assume they will keep selling the old version for Mac users.

      This isn't quite as unreasonable as you make out. Why should Adobe expend a lot of costly engineering, QA, marketing and support costs on a small market with a significant competitior with a locked-in advantage in it. Much better to play in the much bigger world of Windows boxes.

      ... First post?

      Uh, who cares?

      • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Agave ( 2539 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @04:36PM (#6385619) Homepage
        "David Trescot, senior director of Adobe's digital video products group, said the new edition of Premiere is a complete rewrite of the application and it didn't make financial sense to support the Mac anymore." If this is true, then porting to Mac OS X would be a significant cost for Adobe. I assume they will keep selling the old version for Mac users.

        The problem I have with this argument is that a total rewrite is the PERFECT time to make a platform cross-platform. Design it in from the start; keeping processor-specific and interface-specific code separate from the beginging and you make moving to different platforms less costly.

        sounds to me like they just hired about of Windows developers on the cheap that don't know _how_ to make a cross-platform app.

    • FCP took about 1/2 of the business from Adobe (Mac market). More than 90% of the market for Adobe's video stuff now runs on Windows. What is the point of wasting money on something that many Mac faithful won't use, simply because Apple offers something of their own? Lets just hope that Adobe doesn't decide to drop some other high profile Mac products (PS for one), of that the next version of FCP goes up in price 50%.

      • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by daviddennis ( 10926 ) <david@amazing.com> on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:41PM (#6384472) Homepage
        It's not about the Apple faithful using an Apple product just because it is an Apple product.

        It's about Final Cut being a much, much, much, much better product than Premiere.

        If I had to guess, I'd say maybe FCP took 1/2 of the business from Premiere, and FC Express took the other half. There's no reason I can think of to use Premiere on the Mac anymore. It was always the weakling of Adobe's product line, which is exactly why they have an entirely new codebase.

        I don't think it's much of a loss. Avid is sufficient competition to keep Apple on its toes. And Premiere continues to be competition for Apple since people could always switch to the PC if Premiere became overwhelmingly better.

        I doubt that Premiere on the Mac is profitable in its current state, and so I don't blame Adobe for getting rid of it. But I don't think they will do the same for Photoshop because it remains profitable on the platform.

        D

        • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:51PM (#6384561) Journal
          The decision reflects Apple's success in the digital video market with Final Cut Pro. "Around 80-90 per cent of our Premiere customers are on Windows," Kilisky said. "There was around a 70 per cent Windows, 30 per cent Mac split before Final Cut Pro."


          "Final Cut Pro cut the business in half," he added. "It's unfortunate for those left behind - we'll be happy to upgrade them to the Windows version," he said.

          Found here [macworld.co.uk].

          As to profitability, as Apple's market share keeps slipping (now down around 3%) there are going to be less and less closed source, commercial grade, productivity programs / suites. I presume we will see Apple using, and offering, much more open source software.

          • Re:Adobe afraid of competition? (Score:5, Informative)

            by daviddennis ( 10926 ) <david@amazing.com> on Monday July 07, 2003 @08:29PM (#6387477) Homepage
            If you didn't notice, they don't even mention Final Cut Express, which is bound to devastate whatever market share they have.

            Final Cut Pro has decimated Premiere, which is quite a feat considering that it's a $999 program and Premiere was $695.

            Final Cut Express would have dealt the killer blow at $299. Now Premiere doesn't even have price to recommend it.

            I think Apple's market share has been low because Apple owners are waiting for the breakthrough in speed that just happened with the G5. I know I have a PowerMac G4/450 dual processor system I'm still using, and I plan to buy a G5 later this fall to replace it. There are a lot of people like me around, based on discussions I've seen on various message boards. With the G5, we've been given the "red meat" we need to get a new system.

            I expect Apple's market share to improve a point or two when the new machines are available - and most of them are going to be that US$2,999 dual processor model.

            Finally, Apple users are happy to spend money on software. I don't see mainstream commercial support vanishing for the platform any time soon. We're just too inclined to spend money for this to happen.

            Consider Premiere's sales numbers before Final Cut. By Adobe's own admission, Mac users had 30% of sales. Those sales vanished because people love Final Cut. But a 30% market share for software purchases, coming from a platform that only has 3% of sales, is pretty impressive, no?

            They're still getting results like that for Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects, and that's why the Mac version of those products will continue.

            Premiere is simply not a very good product compared to the competition. I think Adobe should have risen to the challenge, but it's possible that Final Cut is just too well loved for them to have a chance. I well remember the standing ovation for Final Cut's founders at a users group meeting I attended. FCP users are a rabidly loyal bunch, and we are VERY well treated by Apple.

            I don't see that changing any time soon.

            D
    • Some of the articles on this move say that Final Cut Pro owns 80% of the market on the mac. I'm not sure whether it would stand to reason that it's still making a lot of money.

      As many of your previous respondents have pointed out: since they were doing a major redesign, this move makes perfect sense.

  • Cop-out? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mwelty ( 656881 ) * on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:49PM (#6384042) Homepage
    Post #1! This has become a very popular thing for developers to do nowadays...lost your will to innovate? Blame it on the other guy. What I don't understand is how this happens when it seems clear to me that people have learned to compete with Microsoft, arguably the most anti-competitive entity in the business, so why is it that they cannot compete with Apple, a company with significantly fewer software titles and an overwhelming demand for the portage of many common applications from the Win32 side of things? Just my two cents.

    • Re:Cop-out? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why can no one compete with Apple? Simple. Because, in general, Apple makes software that just works and is a joy to use, unlike Microsoft.

    • Re:Cop-out? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:00PM (#6384150) Homepage
      This is very true. I have a copy of Premiere 5.0 and it does EVERYTHING that premiere 6.0 and 6.5 and the upcoming 7.0 will do. I added DV support with my pinnacle dv500 card, and pinnacle gave me free titling tools that makes premiere's in 6.5 look like a complete joke. My really old aftereffects does the job well... Hell I can do the "gee wiz" and trendy effects everyone else is doing on my old crud and do it much faster than them.

      Adobe has gave me no reason to drop big $$$ to get a minor upgrade.

      Avid DV express and final cut are both superior products and cost less (avid DV express LE is FREE) while doing more.

      Adobe's ONLY hold right now is photoshop.. and photoshop 4 is still very VERY useable....

      • Photoshop 4? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by metalhed77 ( 250273 )
        Photoshop 4 may be usable, but I find 7's brushes to be EXTREMELY useful for texturing. Additionaly the layout changes between 5.5 and 6.0 made a huge usability improvement. Let's also not forget the immensly useful Image Ready, which makes slicing up layouts for the web very easy, although ultimately they still must be edited by hand, it gets rid of much of the grunt work. Adobe has done a great job of innovating Photoshop, currently there are no real competitors.

      • Re:Cop-out? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by switcha ( 551514 )
        Adobe's ONLY hold right now is photoshop

        I know it's a pretty narrow market, but Illustrator still whoops ass all over Freehand. And as a long-time Quark user, every update of InDesign get's me contemplating how much easier life would be if I bit the bullet and switched.

        Adobe's problem isn't that Apple strongarmed them out of the video market. Adobe's problem is that the Apple product just kicked theirs all over the school yard. Good riddance to an inferior product.

        • In-Design (Score:3, Interesting)

          by EddydaSquige ( 552178 )
          I love InDesign. It's not antiquated like Quark, it fits into my work flow (it's very much like Illustrator in how the tools work/ are layed out), and most importantly, I can print to any old printer without a RIP and still get a full res output on graphics. To be fair, I do very few multipage layouts (mostly ads, postcards and such) so I don't know how well it fares if you wanted to do a whole book or something.

          I haven't run into any problems getting the files to be accepted by any press houses. A lot

  • That is a lame excuse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:50PM (#6384047)
    It's similar to Microsoft's excuse for dropping IE for Mac. If you don't want to support Mac, then just don't support it. Don't blame it on competition when your product has been superior for years and recognized as such. If it's not selling well, reduce the price to sell more. If the Apple market is just too small, say so.

    • Re:That is a lame excuse (Score:4, Informative)

      by NoData ( 9132 ) <<moc.oohay> <ta> <_ataDoN_>> on Monday July 07, 2003 @05:24PM (#6386118)
      when your product has been superior for years and recognized as such

      In this case, it's not so. My dad runs a video production business. He runs Final Cut Pro, but before he went digital he did a lot of research between Mac/Windows, and the various editing platforms on each. Apparently working with Premiere is widely regarded as a painful, frustrating experience. It has its strong adherents who are used to idiosyncrasies, but new adopters are often annoyed, or don't know that there's a better way. His experience with FCP, btw, has been spectacular. He's awed by its power, its interface, and its reliability. It's probably a good thing Adobe is redesigning Premiere things from the bottom-up. Maybe it will be too FCP-like to distinguish it from Apple on the Mac, or they just know they can't compete on that platform. You can read the user boards on digitalvideoediting.com or www.2-pop.com to get the feel for Premiere out there.

  • Here is why Adobe didn't port Premiere to Macs (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:51PM (#6384062)
    This comment here explains the business situation fine:
    http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3976#119 249 [osnews.com]

    • Re:Here is why Adobe didn't port Premiere to Macs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:05PM (#6384195)

      Here is why Adobe didn't port Premiere to Macs
      This comment here explains the business situation fine:(link)

      Interesting, except for the fact that the author(and you) don't use correct terminology. Premiere started as a Macintosh app, and always has been- it's never been "ported" to the Macintosh. Rather, it was "ported" to the PC.

    • Re:Here is why Adobe didn't port Premiere to Macs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by b-baggins ( 610215 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:09PM (#6384224) Journal
      The comment on the article you linked suffers from a logical fallacy of false equivalence.

      Apple has a 3% market share (it's actually closer to 8% total installed base, but for the sake of argument...) of all computers in existence.

      Adobe does not sell Premier to all computers in existence. They sell to the video editing industry. In this industry, Apple has about a 70% market share.

      So, obviously, market share is NOT the reason Adobe is dropping Mac support. The truth is, they can't compete with Final Cut Pro, so they've dropped their support for that platform and are concentrating on the minority platform where they still maintain the monopoly. If FCP were ever ported to Windows, Premiere would pretty much cease to exist as a product.
    • Yep - in a nutshell that comment PERFECTLY describes the situation.

      The only thing I would add is that Adobe is under attack in Windows-Land also. With products like the awesome Vegas Video out there who can blame them for not wanting to fight a two front war?

      Perhaps they should think about porting to Linux. What serious competition would they have there? If you could tell video production houses that they could save some bucks on licensing, and sweeten it by selling the open source concept, I think Adobe

  • Will they drop Windows support next? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:52PM (#6384068)
    XP comes with Windows Movie Maker. How can Adobe compete with that!?

  • No big loss (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:53PM (#6384077)
    Final Cut Pro is far superior. I know a guy heavy into video production/editing and he switched to FCP and never looked back. Premiere is/was a crash happy POS.

  • Adobe and Mac (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OmniVector ( 569062 ) <see my homepage> on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:53PM (#6384079) Homepage
    I had the pleasure of sitting in on a "Q and A" session with an adobe rep, while I was at RIT. The rep (perhaps not the position of the entire company) basically didn't like the mac platform. He complained about how it was more to support, and changed more frequently than the windows counterpart. This of course costs them more in development and support. Granted this was not long after the OS 9 -> OS X transition, so of course adobe is going to bitch that the platform changes too much because they just dumped the whole API adobe products were based off of. Carbon helped fill this gap but it's by no stretch a the cure-all.

    I wonder if this is the general feel of Adobe developers however.

    • Re:Adobe and Mac (Score:3, Interesting)

      by macsox ( 236590 )
      as a former adobe employee, i can say that, if it isn't the feeling of all developers, it is certainly the attitude of senior management. on more than one occasion i heard high-level exceutives privately express frustration of the mac user base.

      the last senior executive that was a mac champion at adobe was john warnock. since then, it's been all acrobat, all the time. there are quite a few mac fans within the rank and file, but they are definitely frogs in a warming skillet.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Simple economics (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:56PM (#6384113)
    Its not an issue of market share but market share in the field of potential buyers. In graphics arts/design the Mac probably still has 35%+ even though the aggregate Mac market is less than 5%.

    What are the stats for video editing? Clearly not as favorable.

    Another benefit of open source - no need to obey market economics when developing products.

    • Re:Simple economics (Score:4, Informative)

      by b-baggins ( 610215 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:12PM (#6384247) Journal
      Double that and you're closer. In professional video editing (Premeir's target market), Mac has at least 70% market share.

  • What about cost? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jmkaza ( 173878 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:58PM (#6384129)
    Adobe Premier: $546
    Apple Final Cut Pro: $999

    I'd think Adobe would still hold a large share of the market based on price alone.

    • Re:What about cost? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by psyconaut ( 228947 )
      isn't the SRP of Premiere $699?

      Also, Final Cut Pro 4 is probably more of a pro monster than the current version of Premiere, so the price difference is warranted, IMHO.

      And maybe you should compare Final Cut Express ($295) with Premiere...

      -psy

    • Re:What about cost? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:53PM (#6384575) Homepage
      Bad comparison. This is sort of like saying:

      "BBEdit $180
      Pico free"

      Price is not the sole determiner of what product shall be used, particularly professionally where the extra $450 is considered a very small price to pay for the interface and features in FCP.

  • Is n't this normally reserved for MS? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by msgmonkey ( 599753 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @01:58PM (#6384132)
    It's normally Microsoft that is derided (sp?) for bundling apps with their OS.

    However I guess with Apple being the manufacture of machine you could argue that the rules are slightly different. I suppose they are trying to sell the Mac as an "Experience", ie buy a Mac no need to buy extra software everything works out of the box.

    • Re:Is n't this normally reserved for MS? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by runenfool ( 503 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:05PM (#6384192)
      Adobe isn't talking about competing with iMovie, which is bundled for free - but rather referring to competing with Final Cut Pro (and Express) which are 999 and 249 respectively.

      I'm sure Apple has known about this for some time. FCP Express was certainly a shot across the bow of Adobe (because of its power for the price).

      It looks like Adobe felt it couldn't compete with FCP for whatever reason, so it decided to throw in with Intel/Microsoft and support their hardware and media technologies, respectively.

      I think this has been expected in the Mac world for some time - the writing has been on the wall.

  • Yawn (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:00PM (#6384143)

    Who cares? Adobe, like Microsoft, is slowly being made a moot point on the Macintosh platform. Adobe- like Microsoft, has always had the "you should be grateful to be doing business with us" kind of attitude. As the story poster says- Apple says "sure, come on over Adobe users!"

    I worked at a company that did plugin development for Premier and After Effects- and not a day went by without Adobe getting pissed off about something. They'd accuse the their 3rd-party plugin development community of giving out prereleases. They'd "change their mind" about giving the company developer licenses. They were constantly getting upset about the slightest things developers or marketing people said at tradeshows. Each little temper-tantrum from Adobe would take hours of people's time to "fix"(fix being "kiss adobe ass until they're happy".)

    The funny thing is that when you act like that, everyone else puts up with it, but slowly works to make you irrelevant. This former employer is doing great business with Apple- their plugin is included with every copy of Final Cut Pro, and while I was still there, I never heard a bad word about relations with Apple.

    • Re:Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)

      by afidel ( 530433 )
      Guess it must be a deeply entrenched culture of PHB'ness at Adobe then because I've heard these same type of comments from large scale users and developers since the days of Photoshop 3. Adobe really has some great coders and great products but the whole corporate culture just sucks majorly. Ultimitly if you piss off your developers AND your customers you are in for a rude awakening.

  • Funny.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rampant mac ( 561036 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:06PM (#6384202)
    Funny how Adobe complains that the competition has cut into THEIR business. Isn't that the whole point of competition? Instead of making a better product, they whine and run away.

    Welcome to life, Adobe. Innovate or die.

    I'm certainly not saying that FCP is the be all, end all for video production (it isn't), but at least give it a chance, Adobe. Final Cut Express is lookin mighty fine right now...

  • See also: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:07PM (#6384210)
    Microsoft drops Mac IE development as Safari reaches 1.0 [slashdot.org]

    Of course, anyone who wants to develop Office-like business software or any kind of web browser for Windows faces the same uphill battle. When the OS manufacturer makes non-OS software, they enjoy unparalleled integration with the rest of the system and anyone else comes in four to six months behind the development curve.

    It's sad that third parties stop developing Mac software because Apple's doing it better, but it's no more fatal -- to businesses or to consumers -- than it has been on Windows. When Microsoft took over the Windows office software market, developers either died or moved onto a different software niche. Same happens on Mac OS. Such is business.

  • Posting summary (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:08PM (#6384215) Homepage
    No need to read the comments in this story. Here's the summary:
    • 60 misc. AC offtopic and troll posts.
    • 9 "Dear Apple, I'm a homosexual" posts.
    • 4 "first post" posts.
    • 162 posts from people rationalizing what Apple is doing as "well, it's their platform" or "doesn't matter, I like the Apple product better" or "Adobe sux anyhow".
    • 8 AC posts saying that Apple is no better than Microsoft, promptly modded down to -1, Flamebait.
    • 1 post claiming this is a dupe from last month, promptly bitchslapped.
    • 1 post from mao_che_minh regurgitating the obvious and getting +5, Interesting
    • 3 AC posts puzzling about this weird Apple fetish that afflicts Slashdot, promptly modded down to -1, Troll.
    • 2 posts repeating that OS X is based on BSD and asking for the code.
    • 10 posts accusing Mac zealots of turning a blind eye when their beloved company does things like these because "ooohhhh, shiny", promptly modded down to -1, Flamebait.
    • 12 posts explaining in detail how this is not an anti-competitive move by Apple, promptly modded up to +6, Insightful. Replies to these that are pro-Apple left alone. Dissenting replies modded down as Overrated so M2 won't touch them.
    • One summary post, promptly modded down.

  • premiere used to be standard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by f00zbll ( 526151 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:11PM (#6384242)
    video editing for 3D and animation classes. But now Final Cut Pro is the default standard for film schools and most animation courses. The thing is, Adode has seriously lagged the last couple of releases with Premiere. Adobe had a lead for a long time and simply let the advantage go. Nothing remains constant and innovation requires a sense of pressure and urgency. It looks like Adobe didn't have a sense of urgency until it was too late.

  • What I don't get (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:15PM (#6384278) Homepage
    What I don't get is why it is that when this came up, and when the whole IE thing came up, people seem to occationally somehow think it's harder to compete against Apple than against a different third-party.

    Why?

    I don't see what Apple's advantage is. All of their apps have gone through public, well-documented (okay, and in some cases not-so-well-documented, but they're working on that) APIs; there's nothing hidden. There have even been a couple cases where widgets and classes used in iApps have been later migrated into the main Cocoa API (like the itunes search system or "that switcher thing") because apple thought they might be useful to developers. The only real advantage Apple's had is that they've taken advantage of new APIs immediately, whereas other companies don't like saying "you have to upgrade to Panther to use this app". I went to the WWDC, and it really seems like Apple hasn't done anything anyone could have done; in fact, they actually had one session where they used Safari as a case study, showing how they used performance testing tools in making Safari so other people could do the same.

    Don't say it's because Apple can use the money from their OS/computer business to unfairly finance other things; Apple is clearly understaffed and Adobe probably has more loose change than Apple. And I seriously doubt it's becuase of the expertise and access to engineers that comes from being in the same building as the Quicktime engineers. If Adobe's support contract didn't give it roughly the same degree of access, they would be able to bitch and moan about that specific problem and there would be a big community backlash.. there's worry already about apple's new presence in the applications area and a perception that apple is giving its own engineers preferential treatment could hurt them kind of badly.

    • Re:What I don't get (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TrancePhreak ( 576593 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:22PM (#6384325)
      According to the article, Apple is dropping the API that Premiere was writtent in. In other words, Apple told them to get lost first.

      • Re:What I don't get (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:51PM (#6384563) Homepage
        Umm.. maybe i'm just out of it, but where does it say that? I don't see any mention of that in the article.

        If you're referring to Classic/MacOS9, Apple has been phasing that out steadily for something like three or five years now, and has been VERY clear for longer than that that Classic is going away. This was done for very good technical reasons, and had absolutely *nothing* to do with Adobe. EVERYONE in the entire mac industry has had to move off the OS9 APIs and into the Carbon/Cocoa APIs. Including Adobe, with every other product besides Premiere. Moreover, Apple provided a very clear upgrade path and lots of tools and documentation to port things from Classic to the Carbon API.

        I'm not sure if I understand what you are saying.
    • if they were going up against something free (iTunes, iPhoto) from Apple, then i can see it hard to justify a consumer level app..... maybe. There will always be things that Apple's iApps can not and will not do in the name of simplicity. You can't tell me anyone is giving up a legit copy of Photoshop for iPhoto. Kind of off topic, but my point is that FCP and FCE are not free by any means. FCE is a lot cheaper than Premiere, but FCP is still the most money. FCE is targetted at people wanting a step up fro

  • AVID is better competition then? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sevenofnine ( 617237 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:20PM (#6384318)
    So instead of fighting for glory with Apple, they will now put all their eggs in one basket in the competition against AVID? Makes no business sense to me...
  • Ok, ok, hear me out!
    PS kicks every other Pixelprogramm up and down the street. I get that.
    But what with the rest? We've got Cinelerra [heroinewarrior.com] for free (beer, speech and all), we've got Pinnacle who recently bought Fast, a kick ass high end Video Tool company and are now shedding their technology in bundles in every Walmart alongside realtime NLE cards for a dime-a-dozen.
    And we got Apple who's new Final Cut Pro apears to be kicking the living crap out of Premiere. So I heard from my former Video NLE Teacher the other day who'd wee-wee in his pants whilst raving about the superdooper Premiere just 3 years ago when he tought us.

    From what it looks like to me with every software company in the vector/pixel, video and 3D business struggling for life and the cheap ones getting cheaper or even being bought by hardware vendors and Gimp [gimp.org] pushing the GPL-freeness envelope on the Pixelside and Sodipodi [sourceforge.net] giving Freehand, Illustrator and CorelDraw the GPL creeps, it seems these companys like Macromedia *and* Adobe aswell would be better of finding new fields of business *fast*.

    Just my 2 Eurocents.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:37PM (#6384431)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • A new Mac users perspective. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cfscript ( 654864 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @02:42PM (#6384477)
    *baffled look*

    After years and years of Windows/Solaris usage, I finally went out and bought a mac. The OS was stable and unixlike to the point where I couldn't rationalize -not- buying one.

    Now, every 8th story on /. is about some angry competitor swearing off the mac. What exactly is causing this? Personally, I'd have to go with the incredible ease of use that Safari/FCP/etc 'suffer' from, but there has to be something else.

    Could enough people actually be buying macs now that companies are purposefully trying to pull out of the market to cease the flow of new mac purchasers?

    Christ knows I won't be buying another PC until my dev box dies. Yay Apple.

  • Adobe cutting costs? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chrysophrase ( 621331 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @03:21PM (#6384819) Homepage

    A similar article here [digitalvideoediting.com]. Bottomline, after reading the 2 articles: Adobe is very sensitive about direct competition from Apple. Adobe also fears that Apple might one day start giving away Pro applications for free, which is not entirely impossible because Apple is still mainly a hardware manufacturer. What, about 75% revenue from hardware sales?

    Another reason stated in the article on Digital Video Editing is:

    "But Premiere Pro is a new application in the sense that it has been completely reengineered, so the jump from Premiere 6.5 to Premiere Pro would have been far more of an investment ..."

    This announcement seems to follow a consistent trend at Adobe: none of the applications in the digital video editing segment get an OS X version Encore DVD [adobe.com], Audition [adobe.com], now Premiere gets the axe, when will After Effects get the boot?

  • Expect more vendors to pull out. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @03:30PM (#6384900)
    It won't just be Premiere. In this case Apple's "Final Cut" software was obviously the cause, but expect more software companies to flee Apple after the relase of 10.3 with its built-in XFree86 that makes running all that cool free software in Apple.com's "Downloads" section a breeze.

    Adobe has already made it quite clear that Windows is their new preferred platform, so I think that it's safe to assume that we will see more of this down the road. Adobe is, for the most part, a proprietary software company, and with Apple cozying up to the Open Source world, Adobe's profit margins in the Apple world will shrink as popular free tools like Gimp encroach on Adobe's market share. Microsoft yanked IE support for Apple, punishing Apple for providing a little competition. It will continue.

    Apple is doing what the Linux world has failed at- bringing Open-Source software to desktop users. In a few years Apple users might not need much proprietary software at all- making up for the higher cost of Mac hardware. Apple is taking a big risk by pissing off a lot of software companies, but the rewards should make up for it if Apple comes through it.

    • Get real. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Morgahastu ( 522162 ) <bshel ... fave bands name> on Monday July 07, 2003 @04:22PM (#6385439) Journal
      Gimp poses no threat to photoshop whatsoever.

      The only people who would be interested in using GIMP instead of Photoshop are home users who pirated photoshop in the first place. Adobe makes its money from corporations, not home users. And there are no open source programs that rival adobe now, or in the near future.
      • Have you ever really used the full potential of the Gimp, I cannot seem to find it. Creating application interface graphics, buttons, font glyphs, its resolution, scan in capacity, buffer control, layering, image dithering, drawing tools are all getting better. Not that it has no bugs, but what there are seem to be not that objectionable, and usually easy to work around. As long as you are not using the buggy limited Windows version, the limits of the Gimp are hard to find, and like photoshop require real s

  • Up next from Apple. (Score:3, Funny)

    by FooGoo ( 98336 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @04:31PM (#6385551)
    Apple says FU to to Adobe by releaseing iGimp as a free replacement for Photoshop pushing Adobe away from Mac platform entirely. In a related note Microsoft chairman Bill Gates sent a memo to Adobe management welcoming them to his playground.

  • Pissing away your old customers, Steve? (Score:3, Informative)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @04:50PM (#6385802) Journal
    As much as I admire OSX and the new Mac hardware, I have to be honest and say that I think Steve Jobs is burning bridges with a big group of Mac users. First he moves the Mac to a Unix codebase, which we love, but old-line Mac users have huge reservations about. Then he slowly goes about writing all the important apps for the Mac, pushing out longtime 3rd party vendors that Mac users have relied upon for years. This is a direct shot at Adobe, the software company most associated with Mac third party software. Jobs seems intent on making all software on the Mac "All Apple, All The Time". And I think this might be the new Apple's Achilles Heel; its really hard to expand your market if no one else is writing software for your platform. I know ole' Steve wants the revenue, but this is getting rediculous.

  • Premier is pitiful -- Adobe sees the handwriting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wfolta ( 603698 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @05:57PM (#6386396)
    Final Cut Pro is the Premier-killer application and it's been pillaging Premier for some time. It's gotten to the point that Apple has released FCP 4 but Adobe still doesn't have a reply to FCP 3. Remember, FCP has been taking the pro market by storm even at twice what Premier costs. With Final Cut Express undercutting Premier's price, Adobe has decided to take their ball and run home before Apple shuts them out entirely.

    I mean, even Avid is restructuring their marketing strategy and slashing prices because of the heat they're feeling from Final Cut Pro. What's a long-in-the-tooth, klunky program like Premier to do in the face of this competition?

    From what I understand, Premier is not really competitive on the PC side, either, with several programs having more features and better interface. The PC market is larger and more fragmented, though, so they it's more economical for them and less embarrassing. (I.e., on the Mac side, a single opponent came from nowhere, kicked sand in their face, took their girlfriend, and has been voted "Most eligible Editor on the beach".

    All of the video editors I know hate Premier, which is so primitive and klunky. I mean, this is the 2000's and it can still only have a single timeline per project file?

    As far as I can tell, Premier's user base is: 1) people who have been using it forever, 2) novices who recognize the brand name and have read over the years about Premier, or 3) those who got it free with a bundled purchase.

  • John Warnock could be such a crybaby. Literally. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by trudyscousin ( 258684 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @06:37PM (#6386733)
    Stories such as this remind me of the time John Warnock stood before the attendees of a Seybold conference years ago and actually cried because Apple was threatening Adobe's PostScript font tech with its own TrueType. (Well, okay, I can't find any articles that back up my recollection, but perhaps that's what the author of this one [creativepro.com] meant by "visible dismay.")

    In those days, Adobe had a stranglehold on the fonts market. Sure, there were players such as Bitstream and Agfa, but nothing compared to Adobe and the huge fees it was collecting per font. Then came Apple (along with Microsoft) who announced a competing technology that would be included with its operating systems, rather than as an add-on such as Adobe Type Manager, and if not make PostScript irrelevant, at least take a huge bite out of Adobe's margins. History tells us a truce was achieved, but at the time, my sympathy for Adobe was in the minus. Gouging your customers inevitably is bad business.

    Now we have this. I personally haven't used Premiere in ages, and I can't say I know how it has evolved in the meantime. But while I was using it, I always had the unnerving feeling I was using a pee cee port that was an afterthought. A stagnant afterthought. (Not quite as bad as MS Word 6.0, but you get the idea.) After using FCP (and FCP Express), the question I have is: Why would I ever want to go back to Premiere?

    Again, I'm thinking it's just desserts for Adobe. While I'm certain their reasons for redeveloping Premiere are exclusively retaliatory (just my opinion), Premiere is a fading star in as much the same way that Quark Xpress is. Ironic, in a way, that it's Adobe that's eating Quark's lunch.

  • Premiere sucked BEFORE Apple developed FCP (Score:3, Informative)

    by Butt ( 93557 ) on Monday July 07, 2003 @07:29PM (#6387109) Homepage
    I think it's important to remember that there was a lot of dissatisfaction with Adobe's attitude and Premiere's interface in particular before Apple bought FCP from Macromedia.

    It's that Quark-style "hey, we own this market, we don't need to fix anything if we don't want to" attitude that did them in. Apple have clearly decided that they don't want the main reason to have a mac (a/v media editing) in the hands of unfriendly third parties.

    It's much the same as Microsoft not leaving the main reason for having a PC (office apps) to 3rd parties.

  • Stick with Print (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TitanBL ( 637189 ) <brandon@NOSpAm.titan-internet.com> on Monday July 07, 2003 @11:50PM (#6388568)
    "We like the Mac, but Apple currently has three [video] editing applications shipping.... It just didn't make sense for us to keep developing for the Mac when the Mac is well served by Apple." here [digitalvideoediting.com]

    Translation:
    Adobe Premier is Mickey Mouse BS when compared to FCP - we just could not compete. It is a good thing FCP is not available for Windows - we still have those Users under our finger.

    Prediction:
    If Adobe does not kick it into high gear and start making some changes (start with the interface which looks like it was designed by a focus group comprised of accountants, librarians, and lawyers) they will end up losing a good amount of their After Effects customers to Discreet' Combestion. Combustion rapes AE - hands down.

    The upcoming AE 6.0 is heralded as:
    "After Effects 6.0 Professional adds motion tracking and stabilization, advanced keying and warping tools, more than 30 additional visual effects, a particle system, render automation and network rendering, 16-bit-per-channel color, 3D channel effects, and additional audio effects."

    Combustion had these 'new' features in late 2001 [creativemac.com] - only difference is that then it costs 4,995 and now you can get it for $995 - bye bye AE. Only advantage that AE has is all the plugins that are now being written to be combustion 2 compatible. Combustion 2.1 is available for OS X and Windows XP.

    Hey - but they will still have Photoshop, right?

    • Re:Stick with Print (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pressman ( 182919 )
      Well, Adobe also has Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. In terms of publishing, Adobe is still the king. AfterEffects is a good mid-level compositing/motion graphics app and won't disappear any time soon, but Premiere is just a dinosaur! An aging piece of garbage. I'm glad to see it go bye bye on the Mac!

  • Maybe just as well (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @12:37AM (#6388776) Homepage
    After struggling with Adobe Premiere's minimal and broken support of MPEG formats on the PC, I'm not all that unhappy to see it go away.

    Still, Adobe Premiere was revolutionary in its day. I did some good work with Premiere on a 20MHz Mac IIci in 1995. Sure, it was slow, and I had to take the files to an Avid shop for final output, but it did the job.

    But that was a long time ago.

  • Apple has 3 video software products... (Score:3, Informative)

    by NetworkImpossible ( 681614 ) on Tuesday July 08, 2003 @01:36AM (#6388976) Homepage
    Adobe has only a creaking old version of Premiere, which sits uncomfortably amid three Apple offerings:
    • iMovie, which ships on every Mac, and is an entry-level video programme that is still quite good -- and completely locks Adobe out of the low-end. This was once Premiere's territory. Even iMovie supports a thriving third-party plug-in community.
    • Final Cut Express, which is FCP shorn of some of the true pro features, that only true pros need. This sits just about exactly where Premiere is in the market, but costs less and the interface skills you develop can be taken "upstairs." There's also the snob appeal of using the "lite" version of stuff the big Hollyweird boys are using.
    • Final Cut Pro itself, which as other /.ers have mentioned, is eating Avid's lunch.
    Two of these have identical code bases, practically speaking, letting poor Premiere get beaten up from above and below at once. Apple also is extending FCP's reach (and Apple's money-making) with things such as add-on compositing software.

    The bottom line is, Adobe's marketroids looked at Premiere on OS X and said, "Why would I buy this product instead of...?" and the answer they came up with... was curtains for Premiere.

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