The golden master of Mac OS X has now hit the streets, and as curious consumers and would-be users of the new OS try to decide whether to jump into the Aqua, professional digital video editors are wondering what's in it for them. Well, I'll tell you right off the bat: Nothing. Yet. That's not to say that there will never be a valid reason for video editors to dive into OS X. The great potential of a stable, UNIX-based, multitasking and multithreaded operating system for video editing makes me eager to see the result of this nearly decade-long struggle to develop a modern operating system for the Mac. But, as usual, absurd missteps by Apple are continuing to shake my confidence in that Cupertino fruit company.

Perhaps the most astonishing discrepancy is the fact that Apple's own Final Cut Pro 2 will not run on OS X. Heck, the thing won't even run in the "Classic" mode of OS X. That tells me a long story: When a software company can't even support its own products, something's wrong. But wait. According to the Apple PR machine, "Carbonizing" applications was supposed to be an easy thing to do. If it's so easy, then where are all those video editing applications like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro? There's more trouble, too, like no DVD support. Huh? I thought we were just hearing Steve Jobs blathering to his flock about how everybody (especially digital video editors) wanted and needed to burn DVDs. Oh well. We won't even be burning CD-RWs with OS X, though. That's not supported, either. Yet. Neither is a seemingly innocuous feature, but one that I find myself using constantly: The mouse wheel. Want to scroll around or use extra buttons with a third party mouse? Forget it with OS X.

It's too early to tell when OS X will be embraced by the likes of Adobe, even though that venerable Mac developer has vowed to jump all over the new OS. Avid has also weighed in with its promise to exploit the virtues of OS X. Ken Miles, Director of Third Party Partner Programs and Relationship Management for Avid, said, "We remain committed to bringing the best solutions to our customers, and we look forward to leveraging the benefits of Mac OS X technology in our Macintosh-based products." Sounds good, but when? Unfortunately, we've heard no word on anything concrete from Avid through its front people or through back channels, either.

What do the above-mentioned developers have in common? They all need to make OS X cooperate with hardware devices. This is where Jobs starts glossing over the truth -- even though Carbon is a relatively straightforward tool for moving applications to OS X, it's suitable for software-only applications without hardware interactions. So products like Microsoft Office and Mac's poster child, Adobe Photoshop, should be among the first we'll see moved over once they've been fully Carbonized. But the problem for digital video developers is, these Carbon APIs leave out many of the hardware-specific features of the Mac OS, such as the SCSI Manager and FireWire. No, it's not just a simple port, as His Excellency Jobs would have you believe. To make digital video hardware work with OS X, it's necessary to develop kernel drivers to access the hardware, and that ain't easy, folks. If you don't believe me, look it up for yourself at http://www.devworld.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Kernel/Roadmap.html.

But don't get me wrong -- I have high hopes for OS X. I am a UNIX lover, and have dabbled in its mighty command line myself -- enough to bask in the awesome power of that industrial-strength operating system. So, to see the feeble Mac OS 9 supplanted by the heavy metal of UNIX makes me think that the huge Goliath that is Microsoft may be apprehensively looking over its corporate shoulder at its David-like competitor, Apple. I'm not sure run-of-the-mill consumers will be able to benefit that much from the UNIX power under the hood of OS X. But I am confident that the OS has huge potential for digital content creators. All this excitement makes me want to run out and upgrade right away!

But not yet, fellow editors. Obviously, OS X was released before it was ready. I say, don't even think of loading that OS X beast on any machine with which you expect to edit professional video. Let those computer geeks who still live in their mother's basement poke around the thing, but I would suggest you wait until it's up to its full industrial strength, sporting a raft of editing applications, hardware support and plug-ins to go with it. Confucius say: Better to be a moneymaking Luddite than a dead lemming, jumping off a cliff in hopes of landing in Aqua at the bottom but instead finding jagged rocks. However, keep your ears open for new developments. Just keep in mind that Steve Jobs will say anything, no matter how exaggerated, to get you (and Wall Street) to think OS X now represents the Promised Land Of Computing. Maybe so, but for digital video editors who want to make some money while they play with computers and video, I have two words: Not Yet.

4/2/01

Charlie White has been writing about new media and digital video since it was the laughingstock of the television industry. A technology journalist and columnist for the past eight years, White is also an Emmy-winning producer, video editor and shot-calling PBS TV director. Talk back -- Send Chazz a note at cwhite@digitalmedianet.com.