Open Letter to Steve Jobs – Don’t Forget The Pro Users

By Kfir Pravda | Published: June 21, 2009
CUPERTINO, CA - OCTOBER 14: (FILE PHOTO) Appl...
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Dear Mr. Jobs,

I was happy to hear that soon you’ll be back at the helm of the most inspiring company in the market today. We are all looking forward to your next keynote.

However, I have a request for you – please don’t forget your Pro users. And no, I am not talking about Final Cut Studio 3.

I have a Mac for couple of years, and I’ve become one of the most active Mac ambassadors in Israel. I have a video podcast called Mac Anonymous, the first Hebrew video podcast about Mac. I’ve written several blogs about Mac and the transition from PC, and convinced many of my friends to buy one, even though they cost so much in Israel.

When asked what do I like Mac so much, I would say two things:

1. I see my laptop more than anything else during the day, so it better be beautiful.

2. With a Mac, the gap between vision and reality is a single click, with Final Studio and iLife.

However, I am afraid that Apple’s latest announcements are changing my second statement.

Two main hardware changes makes it extremely difficult to use your laptops as creative hub:

1. Removal of one firewire port

2. Removal of Express Card slot

Now it is impossible to capture HDV with 15″ Macbook Pro – one needs two FW ports for that (one for the camera and one for a fast hard disk), and there is only one in the latest models. This could have been bypassed with an Express Card Firewire adapter – but it was removed as well.

A lot of Pro equipment is using Express Card slot. I am using a mobile editing, high performance F2 Sonnet HD. I Can’t use it with the new laptops. Matrox released some amazing capture devices using Express Card – bye bye to those as well. So if I want to use  my laptop and  HDV camera, the same format used by indie filmmakers, ENG and video bloggers, I have to buy 17″ Macbook Pro – an able machine, that is way too large,  heavy and expensive for my needs.

I love Final Cut Studio. You changed the market with its features and pricing. I love the fact that I can use my laptop for my day to day work and for my video editing.

But it feels that you are neglecting the pro users.

I hope we will see more pro features in the Macbook Pro line.

Sincerely Yours,

Kfir Pravda

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This letter was sent to Steve Jobs’ email, found in online forums. I have no way to validate this address. It will be helpful if you’ll share and retweet it as much as possible.

Thanks!

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  • Excellent letter, Kfir. I don't personally use the Express Card slot, but I saw no reason to remove it from the "Pro" line of computers. It seems the MacBook Pros took a step down, rather than the MacBooks taking a step up. Apple can't leave these Pro users out in the cold--they are some of the most powerful, and vocal, proponents of the company.
  • Guys, I am sure there are technical ways to bypass this issue. However, the question is bigger than HDV - Is Apple Still Committed to its Pro Users?
  • Although prior models had multiple Firewire ports, these were connected to the same bus, meaning it was exactly the same as daisychaining. So there's no loss there in terms of performance.

    However, if you did want an extra Firewire bus for more heavy-duty HD codecs, with the older laptops you could just add an ExpressCard, and it is this loss on the newer machines that has hit pro users the most.

    What Apple fails to realize is that we WANT to give them our money, if only they'd give us a laptop we could use.
  • cool post.
    Just 1 comment regarding:
    >>Now it is impossible to capture HDV with 15″ Macbook Pro - one needs
    >>two FW ports for that (one for the camera and one for a fast hard disk),

    what do you mean?
    Why cant you daisychain?
    FireWire standard should allow up to 63 devices (if memory serves) to be daisychained on to 1 port and have them all working simultaneously.
    Have you tried it?
    Or does some specific mac/finalcut error occurs?
  • Josh
    Yes, you can daisy chain, but that only solves part of the problem. The problem Kfir is revering to is bandwidth. A single firewire port isn't thick enough to both pull HDV from a camera and push it to a hard drive at the same time.

    However, you can capture to your internal drive, and then copy the footage to an external drive afterwards. But that adds time and the possibility of error to the workflow.

    This may prove to be a false premise, since the previous MacBook Pros shared the firewire bus and have no problems capturing HDV footage using both ports...

    In any case, Kfir is absolutely correct in that the new 15" MacBook Pro is not a true professional machine since it has no way to expand the capabilities of the computer beyond what is already in the box. In most cases, expandability = professional (consider point & shoot cameras vs. slr, or a honda civic vs. a formula 1, or blogspot vs. wordpress)
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