Getting the Final Cut Pro on iPad narrative right
So many reviewers are missing the forest for the trees when it comes to assessing Apple’s new pro apps for iPad.
After literally years of customers asking, “Where are the pro apps for iPad?” Apple released Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro this week. Here I want to focus more on Final Cut Pro since video editing tends to get a lot more attention than audio mixing.
Much of the discussion of Final Cut Pro for iPad has been around its bugs and its “missing features” compared with the macOS version. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out the shortcomings of this app! But I feel like a few people are misplacing their expectations.
Yes, ideally Final Cut Pro for iPad would have all of the features that its macOS counterpart has, and hopefully it eventually will. But for this release, Apple had to almost completely rethink how Final Cut Pro needs to function on a touch-first device. That’s no small undertaking. I don’t think it excuses how long it’s taken to bring its pro apps to iPadOS. That should have happened well before 2023. But it does justify the limitations of this initial release.
Secondly, as I wrote in my last column, the release of these apps for iPad, and Apple’s careful presentation of them using primarily photos of people using them in touch mode, not keyboard and trackpad mode, further emphasizes that Apple still sees the iPad as a special and distinct computing device, not as a future target for a port of macOS. I haven’t seen anyone else mention this fact in reading and watching reviews of Final Cut Pro for iPad.
If you’re expecting a feature-for-feature port of Final Cut Pro for iPad from the Mac version, you’re going to be disappointed. But it also means you had your expectations misplaced. In exactly the same way that iPadOS is a re-conception of how to do general purpose computing, frustrating at times and ever-evolving, Final Cut Pro brings that same energy to professional (or even just advanced) video editing to iPadOS. And these devices are going to appeal to different users.
People intimidated by Final Cut Pro for Mac are going to become extremely adept at producing high quality video projects on iPadOS. And as I’ve long said, a day is coming when a new employee will onboard at a company and request an iPad instead of a Mac or PC.
iPad becomes more of a peer to the Mac with each passing year. Deficient in some areas, more capable than others. Bringing first party pro apps shows that Apple’s commitment to the continuation of the iPad as a unique platform is healthy.
These apps have arrived. Now the test for Apple is this: how quickly will they update these apps to add new features and rethink things that don’t work well? Hopefully we see Final Cut Pro make tangible advancements over the coming months, not years. For now, I can’t wait to see projects created entirely on iPadOS come to YouTube, Twitter, and more.