Final Cut Pro X under fire from professionals

Apple introduced Final Cut Pro X, the upgrade for its editing software. Many have welcomed it with open arms, calling it revolutionary and much-welcomed update, but there are also some very legitimate complaints. For the most part, these criticisms come from professional film editors, many of which won’t affect the average user.

The New York Times’ David Pogue outlined the main issues in detail, which you can find here if you want a thorough look at what extremely advanced Final Cut Pro buffs will likely be frustrated by. In short, however, the missing elements are the absence of multicamera editing, external video monitoring, and EDL and XML imports/exports. The backup application disk is also gone. Many users are incensed by the inability to move former Final Cut Pro projects over the new version for further editing as well.

Industry veterans’ opinions run the gamut and include everything from praise for the product as well as extremely harsh rejection (Walter Biscardi of Creative Cow’s comment “All in all the worst product launch I’ve ever seen from Apple or pretty much any software manufacturer” has been making the rounds). Perhaps most revealing are the user reviews, ranging everywhere from one to five stars, but ultimately pinning Final Cut Pro X at two and a half stars – certainly not the initial impression Apple was hoping for.

And just to add intrigue to insult, Apple is being accused of censoring some of its user reviews from the Mac App Store. 9to5Mac noticed shortly after the launch, as particularly unflattering comments continued to roll in, there were suddenly no reviews available for Final Cut Pro X. All other products in the Mac App Store didn’t experience any such glitch, making the absence of this particular user feedback enough to raise a few eyebrows. They’ve since returned, but it’s enough to make you wonder if Apple’s seriously feeling the heat. The company isn’t exactly used to ill-received product launches (see: Steve Jobs’ outrage over MobileMe’s failure).

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