Variety: Final Cut Pro update draws backlash

Variety by Karen Idelson

When Apple released the latest version of its popular Final Cut Pro editing app last week, execs probably hoped to set off buzz across the blogs and Twitter. And so they did -- though it's safe to say the buzz they got isn't what any company would ever want.

The release of Final Cut Pro X was met with the kind of vitriolic and satirical commentary across the Web -- and even on Conan O'Brien's TBS yakker -- that's usually only earned by major political or celebrity flubs. But instead of pundits it was post pros across the country and throughout the world who tweeted their disappointment that Apple had stripped Final Cut Pro X of many of the features they consider fundamental to doing their jobs on daily basis.

An online petition from "editors and affected filmmakers" asking Apple to restore previous versions of FCP and declare the new version a "prosumer" app had more than 3,700 signatures by midday Tuesday.

Others stoutly defend the app, saying the changes represented the future of editing and that the program finally makes use of recent innovations in hardware technology such as Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, which allow it to scale up and use all available cores to do background rendering. read more...