When well-respected FCP advocates like Larry Jordan need to publish statements to their user-brethren to clarify the limitations on their involvement in a software release, and Walter Biscardi immediately starts to share his journey to an alternate application, I think it's clear that the development philosophy, if not the majority of the process wasn't really opened to the installed user base for discussion, even though apparently Apple did solicit input. As Michael Wohl, an FCP user who had pre-release access to FCPX put it in a recent LAFCPUG meeting demo, he submitted "pages of notes...", then indicating none seemed to have been used.
While I have to admit that as a bit of a software advocate myself for a competitive product, I can relate to the feeling you're not being taken seriously when you're asked for this type of input...however, depending on the company, a user asked for input may not be completely informed of larger company plans or initiatives, either because of corporate confidentiality, or even just because the company may be interested in a completely unbiased perspective.
In any case, the reaction of shock on the part of users seems odd as Apple is known for decisive innovation, as well as pretty effective feature-set intuition when it comes to creating products that are popular and profitable. Apple's genius has never been so much in knowing what the market wants as much as it has been in persuading the market that what Apple has is what the market wants. Steve Jobs himself has been quoted multiple times uttering statements that are various iterations of "Customers usually know what they want when you show it to them..." In my opinion, Apple's track record indicates this cannot possibly be a significantly flawed philosophy.
In the case of FCPX, Apple has made a move to get into position for the "everybody will edit video" marketplace and I think that they'll likely see revenues in a couple years that will validate their fundamental revamp in FCP's operating philosophy from a stockholder benefit perspective.
However, when a company decides to change their market target, that effort can be especially clumsy when the existing customer segment they've been highly publicizing as an indication of their product's legitimacy is actually part of the casualties. Apple has been standing on the shoulders of their vast installed base of professional Final Cut Pro users who edit high profile entertainment projects in network television and film to show proof of their established legitimacy for the last couple years as their users have been waiting for some sort of significant upgrade. Apple's customers (who have a brand loyalty that is likely the envy of any business in any market) have been some of the most effective promoters of the Final Cut Pro application, even as it has been left behind in features and versatility by its competitors in the years since its last significant release.
Final Cut Pro's installed base bought it some time, as Avid's installed base did 5 years before. Even as it became obvious during the "DV years" that multiple players in the industry had passed Avid in feature set and cost-effectiveness, Avid wasn't completely out of the race until a significant portion of their users got frustrated enough to undergo considerable stress to change platforms...not something a professional facility can do spontaneously.
However, after spending their "customer base inertia" capital buying a couple years of customer patience, Apple created a new piece of software. No upgrades. No legacy version project loading. Existing FXplug-ins (a completely new plugin standard for Apple alone that the industry was forced to comply with, introduced a few short years and one version ago) aren't compatible.
To top it all off, the new "professional" application not only looks like Apple's consumer editing application, it's actually project-compatible with it. While this iMovie compatibility isn't a cardinal sin, it certainly is an embarrassing feature to have front-and-center for a customer base and a company that has traditionally been so professional image-conscious up to now.
Ryan from FilmRiot in this clip sees the iMovie compatibility and legacy FCP version incompatibility as a "...big middle finger to professional editors signed: Apple..." and it gets more entertaining from there:
