Oh man, I absolutely
hate Apple. Not because of some obscure reason or because I'm a true windows fan (I'm actually not), and not because they hire child labor in china to put together their parts (Albeit unknowingly).
No, I hate it because of what they are doing to the entertainment industry, and the only way I can explain this is if I jump around a lot and tie up my loose ends later:
Everyone out there complains about how Windows has (HAD) a monopoly on computers, and yet few people gripe about what Apple is doing. Apple has nearly established itself as a vertical monopoly: Audio and Video and distribution.
EVERYONE
thinks that they need a mac in order to create videos or music. Most people rate Final Cut Pro as the
best. And they refuse to work with others who don't use it.
Really... let's listen to someone who actually knows: me!
Final Cut is NOT the best option. It's not cost effective, it's not the most resource efficient and it's not the most simple to use. Nor is it the most powerful. What final cut has that the others don't are hidden codecs.
Codecs: you know, those things that digital video is encrypted in. Those things that Hollywood established in order to protect their DVDs from being copied and edited... Really they just prevent john smith from pirating and make piracy into a professional's game (as it should be).
So here's the deal: Apple has a borderline monopoly because it owns the software to make the music and videos that are then used on the apple I-series (pod, pad, phone, mac, etc.) You can't go from one phase to another.
Now, they are LEGALLY getting around this monopoly because they leave "options"...you know...codecs...you don't HAVE to export to a .mov file...but they're not going to include a good decompressor with their software that will go directly into .mp4, .avi, .mpeg, .mts, .m2t, .wmv, etc. and to make things worse, they set the default export format to a codec (one of the many that are disguised as .mov) which you cannot view on a PC.
Granted, there are all sorts of .mov files--that doesn't mean anything other than that the file was made on a mac (codecs are different from files types). But the codecs, THEY are original. You see, DVPRO is one such codec that Apple doesn't release to windows. And yet it is one of the "best" decompressors that final cut has to offer as far as quality goes--it's also the type of codec used when importing from a digital device. Let's say you plug your camera in and import a video into final cut--BOOM it's automatically a mac only format. And to add to it, it's a format that can't even be played on windows computers.
What this amounts to is that you can't upload the files to final cut, then have your buddy edit half of the video on adobe or avid or my favorite Sony Vegas...instead, they have to be exported as a different file/codec type--legally that's fine, but practically speaking that's not realistic: The only way around it is to render a separate file--Why would I want to make 2 copies of a video on my harddrive: one that is great for final cut and one that is great for the rest of the world? Videos can take up gigabytes of space and hours of time to render into the proper format--this solution is very unrealistic in a world where even a 1 tb harddrive is still expensive and even fast computers still take hours to render.
Such is why I don't support Apple at all. (Yes, windows does it too, but they don't do a good job at it and so the best codecs tend to be accessible everywhere, not just on windows wmv or avi)
