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Steve Jobs – the man, the myth, the legend.  He is one of the true “legends in his own time.”  And although the ‘net is abuzz with his sudden announcement of retirement from Apple (having been on medical leave since January, 2011), I’m afraid that people will overlook the impact Steve Jobs had on the not only the studio system, but on post-production.

To begin with, I go along with Daniel Gross, of Contrary Indicator.  On his blog, at news.yahoo.com/blogs/daniel-gross, he points out that “Apple didn’t just invent cool new gadgets (the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone).  It invented new ecosystems — iTunes, Apps — that offered a lifeline to struggling established industries as well as immense opportunities for upstart entrepreneurs.  iTunes created a venue and method for music and entertainment companies, who saw their sales and futures threatened by digitization and the easy piracy it enabled, to reach new audiences and develop an entirely new business model. The iPhone provided opportunities for upstart programmers and established brands to develop, distribute, and sell gazillions of new applications.  The iPad offers book and magazine publishers — not to mention the huge television industry — the same type of opportunity that iTunes offered the music industry.”  One of those ecosystems was software – and that software is the famed Final Cut Pro.

Jobs recognized the potential that Randy Ubillos had at Adobe (having creating Adobe Premiere which, at the time, was the industry’s leading editing software) and, followed his progress at Macromedia, creating an editing tool called “KeyGrip,” built from the ground-up as a professional video-editing program based on Apple QuickTime.  Unfortunately, due to some legal issues with Microsoft concerning its technology (which would not allow a product to cross-platform with Apple), Macromedia sold KeyGrip to Apple, renaming the software “Final Cut” in 1998.  It was through Apple that Ubillos enhanced Final Cut Pro, with the first version released in April, 1999.  In November of the same year, Jobs elevated Ubillos to DEST (an Apple employee designation, meaning “Distinguished Engineer, Scientist or Technologist”), eventually receiving the 2002 Primetime Emmy Awards Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development Award (given to Apple Computer, Inc.) for Final Cut Pro.

 I don’t believe I have to tell you what Final Cut Pro did for the motion picture and post-production trade.  Part of the Final Cut Studio Suite consisted of DVD Studio Pro, which provides professional DVD authoring software, COLOR, which allows you to do color correction (not the most popular color correction tool, but impressive because of the way Apple introduced it, having bought-out a color correction business just to add the $20 thousand dollar package to the FCP Suite), COMPRESSOR, a powerful trans-coding system allowing a multitude of conversions between formats and clustering through the use of KeyMaster (another FCP component), and Cinema Tools, which is a powerful collection of editing abilities.

Mike Seymour, in his blog at www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/apple-post-steve, reminds us that Pixar was both funded and co-founded by Jobs, and that when he took over Pixar, it was not the industry legend it is today – it was a medical imaging company that made great Siggraph short films.

But it was the man – Steve Jobs – who showed us that while the PC had the better selection of technical and other programs, it was the Mac that had the superior graphics that is coveted in any field dealing with visual presentations – from the motion picture industry to post-production and from printing to photography.  Thank you, Mr. Jobs, for your dedication and service to the industry!  My hat is forever off to you, Sir!!!

Read the Apple Profile of Randy Ubillos HERE!