... but apparently a lot more vocal than anyone thought.
Apples decision to go the prosumer-route makes perfect business sense, developing a tool for professionals in this market probably offers a dismal ROI, as compared to a tool that anyones mother buys for editing a wedding. They just had no inclination how attached and vocal the FCP users are, and the amount of backlash is staggering to them. The professional market (that needs OMF, XML EDL etc.) is probably a negligible speck in their turnover, but then again, they are people who are professionals in communicating, so this is turning into a PR disaster.
And the sad part it, most of this could have been avoided by two things: communication and not EOL:ing FCS3.
They should have come out saying that the product is not yet ready for professional use, and they are hoping to add the missing features in a certain timeframe. No, Apple hardly ever comes out and says this, but in this case I see no downside. The software seems brilliant for most users, and the Apple MO is to make big changes in the playing field, and giving people no choice except to embrace it or to fuck right off. But right now it is not a question of doing things differently, there are huge and gaping issues that render the software unusable for use in many environments.
And they should not have pulled FCS3 from the shelves. I mean, how stupid was that. Now bigger facilities are fucked if they need to add another seat, or someone loses his/her disks etc. They gain nothing but killing the product right away, but lose a lot of good will. They should have waited until _most_ of the professional features were there, giving people the option of staying with FCP instead of jumping ship to Avid or Premiere....
I guess that this debacle, along with eoling the xserve and adding os x server as standard to Lion is just to show that Apple is in no way interested in the business market. And that is perfectly ok, well within their rights. I am already migrating my clients from OS X Server based solutions to Linux and BSD (and AD, of all things). I just hope that others see the writing on the wall as well...