Technically, a fascinating thing happened during the shoot, which is that Apple announced in February, just before we began shooting, that there was a new version of the software coming out in June, and it was going to be revolutionary. And we, meaning the editorial team, before shooting, went down to the Apple headquarters and, along with another 200 people, had a demonstration of some of the aspects of this software. And it was clear to me that it was different. It was not clear to me then just how different it was going to be. Because what emerged in June was what is now known as Final Cut 10, or Final Cut X. So they jumped from Final Cut 7 to this Final Cut 10.
Final Cut 8 and 9 disappeared. They were somewhere never... they were virtual creations that never came to light. Although, I heard later that there was a Final Cut 8 that they were working on. And then Steve Jobs, the head of Apple, came in after they had been working on that version for maybe a year, and said, stop the presses, down your tools, we're not continuing in this direction, we're going to go off in another direction. And what emerged was a piece of software that is very good at what it does, but it is definitely... Especially in its early incarnation, it was not tuned to the needs of people who work professionally in film.
It architecturally seemed to be fundamentally based on iMovie, which is the consumer level movie, but that had been professionalised to a certain degree. And the hope was, I think, and that's been partly realised, is that the... Apple would offer this software up, and third-party developers would be encouraged to come and supply the missing pieces that would lift it up to a full professional model, but that Apple themselves would not have anything to do with those things. I... You have to read between the lines a lot with products that come out of Apple because they're fairly closed mouthed about it. There's a... But it seemed that they were not... they were no longer interested in pursuing professional hardware, not only Final Cut, but certain other pieces of professional software that they were making, they backed away from. Because it is the case that professional software has, with a few exceptions, has an increasingly limited base of people who buy it; it's just the people who are doing that professional work, and they're very demanding. As the technology matures, they say, 'But it must have this and this and this.' And if you're feeding that group of people, you have to respond to those requests, and that takes a lot of time, and there are competing agendas. And I think, eventually, Apple must have said, 'Is it worth it to keep doing this?' Because Avid certainly had a very large share of the professional market. And Adobe Premiere was emerging more, and they were after the professional market.
