Apple's getting what they wanted from the Final Cut Pro X preview

As Larry Jordan stresses in his great blog post, Apple's goal of last week's Final Cut Pro X preview at SuperMeet was to get a feel for how this new version will be received, and wasn't an official software release.  Their goal was to not only to get people's reactions on specific features, but to to test the waters and see if they're going to be alienating a large group of pro users with this new version.  With Adobe adding more useful features to the Production Premium suite, and Avid offering a MC5.5 discount to current Final Cut users, this has to be in the back of Apple's mind.  Even though Apple showed a graph (photo courtesy of Eric Reagan's post) depicting their dominance over Avid and Adobe, they must be slightly concerned that a poorly received FCP X will make that white line start to decline.

Related to that, those of you that are yelling about how Apple is now trying to market Final Cut to the consumer market (only $299, iMovie ripoff, etc.), rather than the pro market, can calm down a bit.  Why would Apple waste their time presenting to a room full of professional users if that won't be one of their target demographics?

Looks like they're getting exactly what they wanted: plenty of reactions from pro users, with piles of opinions coming in from every direction.  I'm guessing that some Apple interns and assistants are feverishly compiling blog posts, tweets, and other opinions splattered about the interwebs concerning the FCP X preview. 

As annoying as it all is, even all the crazy speculation that everyone's throwing out there is helpful input to Apple, since that's the wish list and hate list for most people.  If it's too late to change some of the features that everyone's complaining about or asking for, Apple could at least change the focus of their marketing by paying attention to the features that everyone's most excited about.  I guess we'll just have to wait until June to see how it all plays out.