When Apple announced a new version of their editing software Final Cut Pro, many people (me included), were very excited. Those of us that were still using version 7 were envious of Adobe’s Premiere getting new features all the time. But here we were stuck with a version that was multiple years old and definitely showing its age. So when the new version was finally released, we jumped on it as fast as possible. I remember downloading it the day it was released on the Mac App Store which was a new experience in and of itself. We used to have to spend hours loading CD’s, now it was a single download and install.
But unfortunately for most of us, what we were greeted with was not what we expected. Bugs, missing basic features, constant crashing, it was awful to say the least. And people were vocal about their disappointment, to the point where Apple commented on it. They said they heard us and that fixes and new features would be released over time. But for me it was too little to late and I didn’t use FCP-X again for an entire year. I went back to FCP-7 and toyed with Premiere a little bit, but I didn’t even want to look at FCP-X.
But true to their word, Apple worked on it. Some small changes, and many big changes were made. When I finally went and tried it again, it was a totally different beast. It was fast, unbelievable fast, faster than anything I’ve ever used, and I’ve just just about all of them. They fixed all the annoying things with the file system and streamline everything. And what do I think about it now? Well, I haven’t touched FCP-7 since, I have switched to X and I’m never looking back.