Apple brings back Final Cut Studio, selling by phone only at $999

Apple has brought the classic Final Cut Studio product back and is selling it for $999, $899 for education customers, reports Macrumors. This is likely in response to the lackluster reception that most pros gave Final Cut Pro X, a drastically altered version of the popular editing application for Mac.

Apple provided confirmation via an Apple sales representative on the phone that Final Cut Studio, which is a suite of products that include Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, DVD Studio Pro 4, Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5. The Final Cut Studio product had been discontinued completely when the new version was announced.

According to the representative, Final Cut Studio is not available through any of the Apple Retail Stores or the online store, only over the phone.

After Apple revealed the new Final Cut Pro X in April, it became a hot topic for many, especially in light of the fact that Apple annoucned that it was going to discontinue sales of the older version of Final Cut as well. The new design and aggressive break with the past of Final Cut led to many customers leaving 1-star ratings and lengthy negative reviews on the Mac App Store – it even got blasted by Conan O’Brien.

Apple responded to the criticism by offering refunds for the software and producing a Q&A section addressing some issues that people were having with the transition.

After an initial backlash, many came to the defense of the product, including former Final Cut team member and Posterous founder Sachin Agarwal, who said that Apple was just continuing its history of producing a first rate alternative video editor that broke with common tropes. “FCPX isn’t defined by a feature chart. It’s not trying to do more than its competitors, it’s doing it better,” Agarwal said, “and once again, Final Cut Pro stands on its own. And once again, Final Cut Pro will expand the market of video editors out there, and I’ll be one of them.”

Bringing back Final Cut Studio makes some sense as it should act as a pressure valve that may release some tension from old-school editors looking to outfit enw machines with software that they are comfortable with. Offering it only by phone strikes me as a nice compromise because it keeps it out of the major fairway of video editing software purchasers. This ensures that Final Cut Pro X will remain Apple’s default recommendation to the video editors of tomorrow, and that its aggressive vision for the future of video editing remains on course.