TOPIC:

At this point, does Apple align any releases around 3rd party trade shows? My impression is that unless its a new iPhone at WWDC or something, they pretty much ignore industry events for the purposes of announcements or software updates and release stuff when they're good and ready....

Apple stopped doing trade shows and industry events a long time ago. There is no official "NAB release" any longer. There is usually a release just before, or just after NAB, but that is only because NAB falls within the general 3 month release target Apple has. There is no release for NAB or any other show done purposefully.

While Apple hasn't had a booth at NAB since 2007, they continued to participate in the FCPUG Supermeets. In 2008 and then in 2011 to introduce FCPX.

Since 2011 both NAB conferences have been accompanied by updates to X. 10.0.4 in 2012 and 10.0.8 in 2013 respectively; both released the week immediately preceding NAB.

The rest of X's release dates are far too erratic to think that this is pure coincidence.

As well, Apple continues to hold briefings every year for select press.

I'm willing to wager heavily we'll see another release at NAB this year.

PaulG wrote:

At this point, does Apple align any releases around 3rd party trade shows? My impression is that unless its a new iPhone at WWDC or something, they pretty much ignore industry events for the purposes of announcements or software updates and release stuff when they're good and ready....

Apple is kind of an attention whore and likes to be the only thing that people pay attention to. Trade shows have too much other stuff, Apple events are all about Apple.

Julian wrote:

Apple is kind of an attention whore and likes to be the only thing that people pay attention to. Trade shows have too much other stuff, Apple events are all about Apple.

Apple absolutely likes it's own spotlight- I don't think anyone would debate that. But the other angle is that Apple doesn't want to be beholden to anyone else's schedule. It's involvement with MacWorld meant that it always had to have a product to showcase in January, whether they were really ready to or not. I can see how that would be annoying.

That said, I think most Apple fans have felt the gap in Apple's product release schedule during the first half of the year. For the last couple of years things have been pretty barren until WWDC in June; with most of their products being released in the Fall. This seems lopsided to me, and I'd definitely be in favour of going back to having products launched a bit more evenly throughout the year.

As a guy who just ran a tiny booth at a trade show for a client, I completely understand why Apple bailed on them. It is a huge amount of money, a great investment in time and pressure.

Also, most of the stuff that us folks care about is really just announcements of an upcoming release. Blackmagic anyone... Of course Apple didn't the same thing with the FCPX announcement 3 years ago.

However, if Apple was a client at our agency I would strongly recommend that they have a presence at NAB, because if they don't they risk being marginalized by folks in the industry as a whole. If there is no Apple presence at all, the message folks get is that Adobe and Avid are the only games in town. I don't mean a booth, but sponsor a talk or event or two. And then use the opportunity of the NAB to release new "in action" stories, perhaps give a tease of one or two future features, etc.

Again, if they were my client, I would better utilize the Apple stores to promote Final Cut with some mini events, like what Sam did with FCPX works evens. Bring vendors, and industry folk together to further promote the Final Cut community.

my 2 cents.

Yes, it is much cheaper for Apple to have private demos, plus they get 1-on-1 time with exactly who they need to. When Apple stopped having booths, one their engineers told me one reason was it ended up being a very expensive tech support booth for current users. The justification of those booths is to generate new sales and gain new clients. Apple is doing that quite well without trade show booths. And Apple does in fact work, although invisibly, with many, many vendors at NAB who are running their software in their own booths. You could pass an army of App,e engineers at NAB and never know it. I've known a couple, I've been to the dinners in the past, they are there on serious business, but in complete stealth mode.

I don't think Apple is worried about FCPX becoming an overnight sensation. I see them developing carefully, methodically, and intelligently towards were the industry standards will be in a few years.

Consider this; No one manufactures film movie cameras anymore. Celluloid film is not manufactured in quantities as it once was. All of that will become, well, IS becoming a tiny niche specialty market, not industry standard. RED, Arri, etc, are the more common camera to work with on feature films. Independent features are pounding away at Hollywood productions (the number of which are at an all time low). And tape based workflows, although still in existence, are turning digital very rapidly. Why would they work hard to support vanishing technologies? That is not Apple's stated mission. As Jobs said, it's not about where the puck is, but where the puck will be. No one HAS to go to NAB to learn about new products, it's just fun to do it there.

Apple has no need what so ever to have a booth anywhere. That money can be better spent in much more efficient ways that produce actual new sales and customers. If you've been to NAB as much as some of us have, you know the vast majority of folks wandering the showroom floors are not spending the most amount of dollars, and are lower end companies & individuals. Several vendor friends and close associates have told me that they have to weed through thousands of window shoppers to find the folks who are seriously going to spend money on their products.

NAB has been turning into more of a festival of hard/software than a place to seriously sell to new customers. The "booth bunnies" over the last 4 years shows that. More and more scantily clad and more like prostitutes than a legitimate spokes model. I know one group of vendors complained to NAB organizers about this year before last (which hit an all time low for "booth whores", seriously). Why on earth would Apple want to be in the middle of all that?

The main reason I'll be there this year, and only for 2 days, is to make scheduled 1-on-1 meetings with specific vendors about FCPX related and specialty rig products I am involved with. The rest, I can get all the new product information just as fast online during the show, and without fighting the crowd. And I don't even need to be there for these meetings, I wasn't planning on going at all this year. But my fiancé has never seen Vegas, so we'll have a day to just "do Vegas".

But if you have never gone, GO! It is an exciting thing to experience at least once. Apple has no need for it, though. They're doing just fine.

NAB can definitely be a worthwhile experience. Last year was my first trip- and I'm honestly very disappointed I won't be able to go again this year. Between the training at PPW, checking out new gear in person on the floor, being able to have a face to face with vendors about their products, and finally the networking... all make it a worthwhile experience.

I'd been toying with a more visual way to lay out X updates- decided to take 20 minutes and just do it.

I'm being optimistic about their not only bing an update during NAB, but it being a feature release. Shown are release dates, interval periods, and interval periods between major feature releases.

Click for Larger version,

This is pure tea-leaf reading, but Ripple Trainiing recently tweeted that they'd just recorded a marathon 26 lessons in 2 days for an unannounced training series. Hmmmm...

Disproportionate wrote:

This is pure tea-leaf reading, but Ripple Trainiing recently tweeted that they'd just recorded a marathon 26 lessons in 2 days for an unannounced training series. Hmmmm...

I doubt that the next release of X is a big enough change to justify an entirely new training series. I hope it's mostly bug fixes with maybe a couple new features thrown in.

I wish that there was a Save and Revert. I know you can make snapshots, but it is just plain easier to deal with a revert, and use the duplicate command for versioning. Overall, pretty happy with X and almost feel comfortable enough to start working on assignment stuff in it and switching over from 7.

And to really go out on a limb, some software has (usually in the window menu) the option to go to "Classic" mode, In this case it would be going back to the track based FCP 7 kind of thing, keeping naming of things for us die-hards i.e. Bins, Sequences, etc.

Obviously this would be a complete re-do and I'm guessing this will never happen.

BTW- does anybody know if Matrox is still in business? There has not been an driver update to make the MXO work with Mavericks and 10.1.1. I has been quite sometime.

plysat wrote:

I doubt that the next release of X is a big enough change to justify an entirely new training series. I hope it's mostly bug fixes with maybe a couple new features thrown in.

I agree 26 is a lot of sessions. But that could include stuff for FCPX and Motion, as well as Macbreak Studio segments which are not the same as the purchased stuff.

Not long to NAB now.

Jonathan wrote:

BTW- does anybody know if Matrox is still in business? There has not been an driver update to make the MXO work with Mavericks and 10.1.1. I has been quite sometime.

I dropped Matrox when I switched to X. Their boxes didn't support dual drivers for 7 and X, and still don't I believe. Plus buying Blackmagic means it works with Resolve.

Not only does Matrox not support BOTH 7 and X, you have to uninstall and re-install the corresponding driver for 7 or X, or create a new user account. PITA.

I'll look into Blackmagic, as it seems that my Matrox is now a door stop.

Would anyone have any recommendations for which BM product for something that does similar things that my MXO Mini did?

Hold your horses on Matrox. They have been slow on getting the 10.1 driver, but they have had a semi-public beta for a while (just email and ask for it ) and they released their final driver last week.

www.matrox.com/video/en/support/downloads/

The advantage over Aja or Blackmagic (which are both excellent) at the moment is calibration for hdmi monitors as well as able to handle multiple frame rates without switching settings.

T.

Thanks T.

Looks like they released the update a few days ago.

I have the BMD Ultra Studio Mini Monitor, and it has been nothing but major headaches, going back and forth with BMD tech support, and now all I get is SD output. Hate it. May look into a T-Tap.

I went with the BMD Intensity Extreem to replace my Matrox MX02 when I moved my primary work to FCPX with 10.0.4.

No issues for me. I just wish I could switch resolutions and frame rates from within FCPX.

BTW. I should clarify on the not having to switch frame rates with the Matrox.

I am able to set the MX02 Mini to 29.97i, 1080 and then any widescreen format will display very well. 23.98, 29.97, even 60p. SD or HD. Not need to actually change settings in FCPX.

When I tried to do the same with the Blackmagic Mini Monitor, I would get very odd frame skipping, etc.

I'm not saying the Matrox is perfect by any stretch, but it is working well for me right now.