flxldn.

FCPX backlash

I downloaded FCPX as soon as I could — and loved it. Outside the fact that it is new and shiny (and I love everything new and shiny), the new functionality was very easy to use on my first clips — albeit with an unfamiliar interface.

But then again, I love the new XCode at home. I won’t feel offended by Visual Studio at work. I am happy to switch back to a text editor for rails or Haskell and use make or cabal for builds.

The contrast of my reaction and the loud backlash perhaps comes out of the fact that I come from the engineering side — I am very fond of concepts that stay invariant across all the different tools I use. That is not to say I don’t care how it looks or how the interface works, but the most important things are one abstraction level removed. And the concepts haven’t changed. Everything else has, and in my view to the better.

But perhaps editors are not working that way — perhaps they are doing their craft more like a sculptor than an engineer. Changing the shape of the chisel and hammer keeps the concept invariant and might not create the perception of a problem for the engineer, even if it slows him down in the immediate term. But it might change everything for the sculptor. This would also explain why the editor working with us on one project spent the very first half hour on our machine changing all the default keyboard shortcuts to what she was used in Avid. Cursing.

I think that Apple has come at this from the engineering side. The main concepts stayed invariant, and how some of them are dealt with has even been improved. Everything should be better now, right? Right? But the shape of the tool is different and unfamiliar and the armies of sculptors are not amused. How could they have been? 

Could Apple have handled this better? For many — yes. For me? I’m just fine.