It turns out that Apple isn’t the only company who knows how to run a switcher campaign.
In the continuing aftermath of “Final-Gate,” Adobe is offering a 50% off deal for people looking to switch to their Premiere Pro CS 5.5 software or the entire Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium package (with After Effects, Photoshop, Audition and other programs), hoping to land some of those Final Cut 7 users who are upset with the newly released version of Final Cut Pro X. Adobe keeps stating that their video editing products can work with Final Cut Pro files, and are showcasing Premiere users who have already switched from Final Cut. It’ll be interesting to see if Adobe reports an increase in Premiere Pro or Production Premium in six months time.
For those interested in getting that 50% deal, go to Adobe’s Website and enter the Promo Code “SWITCH” when you order your products.
Recently, and to much early acclaim, Apple released the newest edition of their professional video editing market standard Final Cut Pro editing suite, Final Cut Pro X. A long needed update to the Final Cut product line, it was eagerly anticipated by video editors for what it might provide for the next generation of projects.
What editors got was, apparently, a steroid-ramped version of iMovie. Don’t get me wrong, iMovie is a nice little video program, and well worth the money you don’t have to spend to get it (when you get a Mac). To state that video geeks were upset is putting it mildly, with so many people complaining about the new product, and doing something really out of character for rabid Mac fans, rating the product one star on the Apple App Store. (a large number of ratings for this product are currently one star). And no less a video blogging master, and Apple fan, than Robert Scoble has come out stating that heads need to roll for leaving out basics from Final Cut Pro X, such as removing the ability for multi-camera projects. (and the discussion on his blog has been lively, to say the least)
(As I’ve pointed out in the past, there are programs on the PC end that do what iMovie does – some take a little more work to get there, but you have a better editing experience (aka – they are a couple of steps above grandmaware). Primarily Sony’s Vegas Studio suite, and maybe Avid. But Vegas is only available on the Windows platform)
So where does Adobe fit into this?
Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS 5.5 is fairly comparable to Final Cut Pro, and has the added benefit of working on Mac and PC systems. As part of Adobe’s Production Premium Creative Suite, it comes bundled with After Effects, Adobe’s visual effects graphics program, Photoshop, a newly-revamped Adobe Audition audio editing software and many other programs.
Could Adobe fill in the gap now left open by Apple, who’s response to the Final Cut Pro X outcry has been, in typical Apple fashion, to state that
How dare you question the glowing Apple? You’ll take your Final Cut Pro X and like it, or you can stick with Final Cut Pro 7 for your old projects. For your questioning, you must purchase two Macbook Pros, an iPad and an Apple TV (for the hell of it). Now go forth and sin no more…
If Adobe’s smart, they’ll leap at the chance to point out how Premiere Pro will allow you to continue multi-camera projects and other details that Apple left out of Final Cut Pro X. Apple has left some wondering if they are willing to slow their support for the professional market, which they have done in the past, and if another company will step up to the plate and take advantage of this opening.
Well it has been quite the week for corporations in my little part of the online sphere. Earlier this week my good friend Will has his car towed by an Albuquerque towing company of meth addicts because he accidentally parked on the wrong side of a McDonalds and “McDonalds Parking Enforcement” officers had his car towed away. Parking enforcement officers… yeah really.
(BTW, this is the same lot I’ve parked in many times to eat at a different restaurant – come tow me, bitches.)
But more importantly, this has been one of the weeks where Apple has crossed over the line of corporate paranoia and let their cyberpunkish “Corporate Overlord” mentality show through. And from a PR standpoint Apple’s not looking too great.
Jesus Buddha Christ, Apple. Really? Let’s break this down:
A tech blog gets a hold of your super secret next generation iPhone that was lost at a bar,
And then returns it to you after reviewing it
(Which happened after you denied the prototype’s existence),
Then you send your super secret “Apple Force” to the journalist’s house demanding to look around
(Which he says “hell no” to. Makes sense.)
And then you have the reporter’s house busted into by the cops and multiple computers, et al “taken for examination.”
Let’s see, did I miss anything? Nope, didn’t think so. I’m just surprised that Apple didn’t hire a private group of mercenaries to bust this poor guy’s door down.
Wow Apple, you have really opened yourself up to ridicule at the least, and a potential lawsuit on the more serious end. (and if the EFF and other technology or media non-profits don’t sign on to object to this kind of treatment of a journalist, then y’all just need to pass your 501c3 cards forward because y’all are dismissed.)
But in true Apple form, Steve Jobs has penned a letter about… Apple’s problem with Adobe’s Flash?? It’s like Steve-O really thinks that by ignoring the problem, or dictating the terms of engagement, he can control all of the coverage he gets. And right on cue, noted tech journalist (and Steve Jobs apologist) Walt Mossberg will pen a column decrying Flash (and asking why the hell Team “Apple Force” didn’t tase the entire Gizmodo staff over and over).
So this is a PR and tech blog. What advice would I give Apple if they asked?
Well, this being Apple, they never would because in their minds “The Jobs” can’t do anything wrong. That said, I’d tell them to cut this crap out.
Drop any charges,
Get the police to turn over all equipment taken from Jason Chen’s house,
Replace any broken or damaged equipment on Apple’s dime,
Pray that Apple doesn’t get sued,
And one more thing, stop acting like jerks.
I guess Steve-O really hasn’t learned anything about tact (or new media) from the Think Secret lawsuit. Jon Stewart is right, chill the hell out Apple.
(And before Apple Evangelists start typing a response about how I’m some Apple hater, this post, much like this video in years past, was completely created on a Mac.)
Just to reinforce my love of technology, and that i’m not averse to Apple, Inc. I bumped into this story while on Twitter. A high school kid had emailed Steve Jobs (and just how in the heck did he get THAT email address, I’ve gotta ask) and asked if he could get the college educational discount for the latest copy of Final Cut Studio. MInd you, not a free copy, just for the $600 or so discount (still willing to pay $700 for it).
Well, this email got forwarded to Richard Townhill, the director of Pro Video Product Marketing for Apple, who emailed the kid back and asked for his address to send him a free copy of the software. How cool is that! Apple, Inc gave this kid an early Christmas, and created another evangelist to boot. Not too bad!
Turns out not everyone is gaga over the iPhone, people in Poland are saying “hell no!” to wanting to pay for the “privilege” of shelling out a lot of cash in monthly phone bills, in addition to giving richly for some of Steve-O Jobs’ love. So instead, Orange (the Apple approved phone operator of choice – Orange… Apple… insert joke here if you can) has decided to pay actors to stand in line outside of stores to try and create fake buzz in the iPhone.
Why do I get the feeling that if Microsoft or RIM did this, the iCabal would be up in arms – arms I say!! – about it. Hell, they threw a tantrum about the Mojave Experiment campaign when it started…
… Sorry. Can’t complete that statement, it’s copyrighted.
Looks like Apple has it’s sights set on Netflix for the online movie rental domain. (Major Hat Tip to Ars Technica’s outstanding liveblog from the Macworld Keynote) Steve Jobs just announced (5 minutes ago) that iTunes users will be able to rent movies from almost all of (if not all of) the major studios. You can rent them for $3-4 and have 30 days to start watching them (and 24 hours to finish watching them)
The interesting thing about this is the ability to transfer these movies to your iPod, or iPhone or what have you. You can’t do that with the DVDs you rent from Netflix. I don’t know if you can with the Netflix online rentals, because I haven’t tried that out yet. That does send a shot over Netflix’s bow, because people (especially 20 and 30-somethings) like their mobile devices and having the ability to watch a rental on the go is a very strong appeal. Netflix already changed their online rental policy to anticipate something from Apple, but I wonder what else they are going to do after this announcement.
A few months back I wrote a couple of pieces about the problem my old Dell laptop was having. Well, it wasn’t as much of a story as it was me bitching about the problems I was having with it.
And to my surprise and delight, one of Dell’s consumer advocates left a comment and asked me to email him. I did this and he has helped me out several times with my old laptop and with problems with my current laptop as well.
Following up on all of my posts about iLife for the PC (which I know you can’t possibly be tired of yet ), I was looking at the Dell site a couple of weeks ago and I found this! Adobe Elements Studio, offered only from Dell and only for a few of its products, the new XPS One desktop (Dell’s answer to the iMac single form factor computer) and the XPS 420 desktop.
Now I don’t want to say that Dell got the idea from my previous post about how to bundle Adobe software to produce an iLife clone for PC. (But I’m cocky enough to do it anyway ) But it’s a good idea to have this kind of a bundle for PC users as well. Another bundle I’ve found that would work as a PC iLife replacement is Roxio’s Easy Media Creator 10. It’s another bundle, focused more on video, audio and basic image editing. One thing I’ve been finding is that these bundles don’t focus as much on basic Web site design, which I think is a mistake since many people are interested in putting their pictures and video on their own Web site, but don’t have the know how to design a site from scratch. Then they end up putting their stuff on MySpace.. ugh! I’ll keep looking for a package that includes web templates, or at least some decent web templates you can use (I’ve already found some at Open Source Web Design)
In an interesting turn of events, the post that has given me the most traffic in recent weeks hasn’t been any of my comments about Mayor Chavez (although I did get a spike in traffic from linking to Eye on Albuquerque) or my posts about the Albuquerque Tribune possibly shutting down.
Nope, my biggest traffic getter for the past month and a half has been my call for Apple to release iLife to the PC platform. As I discussed before, Apple can get a decently large piece of the pie from Adobe and Sony if they were to do this, because there are other geeks like me out in the big wide world who wouldn’t mind trying out iLife.
That said, it doesn’t sound like Apple will be doing this anytime soon. So for those people looking for a PC suite of programs that will work in much of the same way that iLife will, I offer the following groups of programs that play well together and give you some integration (although again,one of iLife’s strengths is its incredibly tight integration and smooth workflow between programs, Sony and Adobe can offer similar workflow, however):
GoLive CS2 (since they have Dreamweaver, they can do something else with this)
KompoZer (getting a there here?)
As you see, I also included a column for software that comes with your Windows machine, or that you can get via the Open Source community. These programs, I’ve found, tend to have a little steeper learning curve than some of the Adobe/Sony programs – much less the iLife suite. But it’s like most software programs, once you master them you can do amazing things with them.
I’ve also included a piece of Open Source software in the Web component of the table (at least for Sony and the Open Source columns). KompoZer is a cool software application, built on the Nvu platform – an open source competitor to Dreamweaver or (probably more appropriately) Microsoft Expression Web. iWeb’s strength is still all of the templates that came with it – from what I’ve seen it’s more a matter of different CSS’ for the same WYSIWYG framework templates. A good idea, because people can drag and drop files onto the pages or start typing in the predesignated areas before moving them around.
Adobe should do the same thing with GoLive, add a lot of templates to the software, lower the price or (better yet) bundle the software as part of this package, and make it more accessible to the same market segment that Apple could be gunning for, but hasn’t yet. (More on Dell’s Adobe Elements studio in the next post).
For those of you interested in a PC version of iLife, I hope these help provide you with some of the same enjoyment and utility that I have had working with them – until Apple takes my advice and moves iLife over.
I’ve been working on the laptop a lot recently, me and my peeps have been busy shooting video, taking pictures and working on music for podcasts. During all of this work (in addition to working at the cube mines) I’ve been thinking about all of the cool iApps that Apple has released in iLife. While I’m not switching to Apple computers anytime soon (if ever, I’m quite happy with the hardware I’ve got – my SXGA screen is very nice for video and photo editing), I am intrigued by apps like GarageBand and iMovie. (the other programs I can pass on, I’ve got Dreamweaver and I don’t need iPhoto. And isn’t iBook the former generation of the MacBook?)
Working on a PC platform, I’ve got Premier Elements (PC’s version of iMovie) and Sony’s Sound Forge 8 and Acid XPress 5 ACID Music Studio 7.0 (the closest thing to GarageBand) to make up for not having those apps. But there is a little bit of a learning curve to these applications that Apple people keep telling me isn’t there for Apple’s iLife apps. And working on a few podcasts for the near future (stay tuned) I’d like to have the interconnection between applications that Apple has and these apps don’t have yet. (especially for enhanced/video podcasts I’d like to work on).
One area that Apple has jumped on, and the Windows/PC crowd are far behind on, is designing their applications to take advantage of the burgeoning social media movement. However, how many people can really justify buying an Apple computer to just use a handful of applications that they would be willing to pay for?
But this would stop people from buying Apple computers!
), I was looking at the Dell site a couple of weeks ago and I found this! 
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