I don’t know anyone who like Launchpad, the iOS like App Launcher built into Lion, especially anyone with as many apps as I have, but if I were to use I would want something like this, which allows you to turn apps off from display (since deleting an app from Launchpad deletes the app from the computer completely).
Launchpad-Control is pay what you want and you can download it from ChaosSpace.
PilotMoon has released Scroll Reverser for OS X Lion. This cool little app not only lets you easily change the scrolling direction of Lion (which was reversed to be more iOS like, but it lets you set different preferences for mice vs trackpads, as a track pad actually makes sense to be reversed, but a mouse scroll wheel does not. Very cool, and it is free!
OnLineVideo.Net has an article on Final Cut Pro 10.0.1 it is not so positive. I agree with it wholeheartedly.
I like what they have to say about the new feature roles:
To a degree, roles are a solution to a problem Apple created by making Final Cut Pro X trackless. For example, in Final Cut Pro 7, or Premiere Pro for that matter, you could accomplish the same thing by placing narration on one track and music on another, and enabling/disabling the track as necessary for preview or rendering.
In addition to preview, when rendering out to a QuickTime file, you can also use roles to create separate files for further editing in another program. This is shown in Figure 4. For most high-end users, however, OMF or EDL export in Final Cut Pro 7 provides the same capability, while those editing in sister programs like Soundtrack Pro or Color would simply use the direct export feature shown in Figure 2. Apple declined to include industry-standard mediums of exchange in their product, or direct access to Soundtrack Pro, and roles is a substitute. In my view, you don’t get brownie points for fixing a problem caused by your own questionable design decisions.
And in conclusion:
For me, all the glorious new features seem like solutions to problems that I don’t have, added complexity with no payoff. With Final Cut Pro 7 or Premiere Pro, there are projects, clips, and a timeline. You import your clips, organize them into folders, and drag them down into the timeline. Then you trim a bit, add some effects, maybe a transition or two, export, and you’re done.
With Final Cut Pro 10, you have Events and Projects. You have a Magnetic Timeline, Clip Connections, a Primary Storyline, Auditions, Roles, Smart Collections: all are completely new concepts that I’ve never encountered in the dozen or so editors that I’ve cut projects on in the past, and, in some cases, they’re solutions to problems caused by questionable design decisions like the trackless interface.
The result is a cluttered interface that you really can’t control and asset management with even less control. You have effects and other functions seemingly designed to prioritize being different rather than superior. Honestly, was every established editing convention, from marking clips in and out in a source window to three-wheel color correction, so tragically flawed that it wasn’t worthy of being implemented in Final Cut Pro X, if only because it was functional and familiar to all pro target users?
More importantly, within the context of my typical projects, whether a two-hour ballet or music concert, or a ten minute streaming clip or screencam, will these new concepts help me do my job faster or better? I honestly don’t think so, particularly because Final Cut Pro 7 and now Adobe Creative Suite already suit my needs so well.
Exactly, the new features do not speed up my editing, and I actually find them slowly and less efficient. And now that is seems that FCP X has lost OMF export when Automatic Duck went away, so roles is even more useless, as I need OMF much more than just exporting tracks (though I do need tracks as well)
I don’t want a new form of editing, I want new features on top of the way I already edit, and if I like them will use them, but I don’t like the new way of editing of FCP X, and I don’t think I ever will
Wow, I can’t believe how many people have been affected by Steve Jobs death. It is all over the web. He really did affect so many people’s lives. I know it is no consolation to his family and friends, but we all appreciated him so much and I hope this shows them!
It is a sad day, it seems that Steve Jobs has passed away today at the age of 56. He was an amazing man, and really changed the world with the computers and other devices that he created. He must have been very sick to have left Apple, and he obviously was.
I got my first Apple computer when I was 7, and have been a loyal Mac user ever since (though the whole Final Cut Pro thing has shaken my loyalty a bit).
Steve Jobs created computers and electronics that have inspired me and become a part of my life.
I am saddened for his family and friends, and for the world.
Rest in Peace Steve!
MacTech is reporting, that Singular Software has announced that a free update to Presto and Plural Eyes will support Final Cut Pro X (so it is good that Apple released an XML for FCP X).
Check out his plug in at Foolcolor. For $89 it will move your FCP X project into After Effects. He is also working on one to export audio to FCP 7 so you can export an OMF and to export FCP 7 Sequences to FCP X and FCP 7 Projects to FCP X.
Pretty awesome that he is doing this, especially with Automatic Duck possibly out of the picture!
FCP.CO has a video by Micha Schmidt on using Roles, and getting out the audio to do a mix.
It is worth checking out, and makes it seem pretty useless as the exports using ROLES for audio tracks, only gives you complete mixdowns of each track that has been assigned Roles, but they are mixdowns, and not at all OMF tracks with individual audio tracks. So not all that useful. Sure you could make versions with audio on different tracks like this (if you have another program to make tapes).
My question do Roles export with Automatic Duck Pro Export 5.0 so that the clips show up in tracks? If that works, then it makes Pro Export more useful, but if not, Roles are pretty useless.
Macstories has an article on an interesting new preference Pane for OS X Lion RestoreMeNot, which is free and allows you to individually disable OS X Lion Restore Restore for Each Application of your choice.
Personally I think this should have been built into OS X as I have had some issues with Restore and certain apps (Rapidweaver will open two instances of my site, and crash if I try and save, and the Core OS X service keeps trying to open the last installer that was opened instead of the one I am trying to open) so this is a very useful little tool.
Check out this article on FCP X, and why it should have been a professional app when it was released, and not a partial app that will slowly have new features, which is commenting an article at Post Magazine. Which I totally agree with and have bee saying all along. Adobe did it just fine in bringing their apps to 64 bit, why did Apple have to not have feature parity or even compatibility with their old app?
And the fact that FCP X now has XML, but it is still not, and will never be compatible with FXP 7 is a joke. If Premiere Pro can do, Apple could do it, but they won’t.
I like this part:
At one point in the article Townhill notes that Apple is responding to feedback and changing the application quickly to meet the demands of the Post community. The strange thing to me is that Apple was given much of the same feedback during the beta testing and it was roundly ignored. Pages upon pages of information was fed to Apple with pretty much everything that has been said publicly since the application was released. In all cases, Apple ignored the suggestions moving ahead with the product as they developed it. NOW that there’s a tremendous outcry, NOW Apple is “responding to the Post Production community.” Maybe if they had responded to the people who were testing the product, they could have avoided this entire fiasco.
So it looks to me like Apple’s original plan was to just release FCP X as a prosumer product that really didn’t need the full fledged Post Production community blessing because there are millions of consumers out there and only a couple hundred thousand Post Pros. If it was truly aimed at the pros, then Apple would have listened to the pros during beta testing about all the things that were badly missing from the app.
But with all the subsequent negative press on the product, Apple is desperately trying to backtrack and figure out how to add the extremely basic functions that it left out by “skating where the puck is going.” (read the article to understand)
If Apple was truly dedicated to the professional editing community they would have taken the two to three years to deliver something that built upon their 11 year legacy. I just see what they’re doing now as creating a whole box of band-aids to make the product cobble along and sort of kind of do what the product has done for the past 4 years at least. Apple is admittedly leaning heavily on third party vendors to fill in what they call gaps, what I call chasms in the software.
So true so true. Apple made FCP X on purpose, they knew they were giving up on the pro community completely and all the businesses that make a living making plug-ins and hardware for final cut pro, but they figured they would make more money by making a consumer application and banking on the name of Final Cut Pro which has come to mean something in the industry. Now they realize they may have screwed up, but it is too late. These new features could have been add ons to a true 64 bit Final Cut Pro and it would have been awesome, but this weird prosumer app they have made with some pro features and the rest decidedly consumer will never be used by Pros, and shouldn’t even have Pro in the name.
iMovie is not called a pro app because it is not, and adding some pro features to it, when it forces you to work in it’s limited way does not make it pro, and never will. And nothing Apple does will ever make this app right for professionals, Apple has ceded this market, and Adobe and AVID are going to be really happy to fill the gap.