Random Apple Memory
One man was behind both of the apps that dominate Mac video editing. Adam Banks recalls how Apple got into the movie business
Flashback: We recall how Apple got into movies.
At the sta rt of the 1990s, electronic non-linear editing (NLE) systems were in use for TV and had begun to be adopted in Hollywood, but the final cut still had to be done by cutting and splicing film. Avid brought NLE to the Macintosh II in 1988, using add-on hardware to handle video. Meanwhile, a company called SuperMac was working on a more affordable video card. After developer Randy Ubillos wrote an editing program to demonstrate its potential, the company sold it to Adobe, where Ubillos soon moved too. In less than a year, he completed Premiere 1.0, released at the end of 1991.
By 1995, Premiere was expanding rapidly, and Adobe’s major competitor, Macromedia, poached Ubillos to create a rival NLE. While Premiere was still Maconly, Key Grip would target Windows too. But indecision and licencing issues left the project drifting, and when the team took their work-in-progress to the huge NAB TV show in 1998, it was with an eye to finding a new home.
That turned out to be at Apple, where Steve Jobs wanted a creative application to unite the QuickTime video framework and FireWire high-speed interface. The Windows version was scrapped, and Final Cut Pro was born.
When it was released in January 1999, its performance and features were hailed as revolutionary, and in 2002 it was awarded an Emmy for its contribution to TV. (FireWire had won the year before.) By 2003, Adobe, which had balked at Apple’s decision to offer its own NLE, gave up competing, suspending the Mac version of Premiere Pro.
But Ubillos wasn’t done innovating: At NAB 2011, his team unveiled Final Cut Pro X, with a “magnetic timeline” that radically revised the editing process. Rejected initially by the industry, it was vindicated when Adobe, returning to the Mac, adopted a similar approach. Ubillos retired from Apple in 2015.