Apple’s Final Cut Pro X is a program that exemplifies Apple’s recent design aesthetic: minimalist, powerful and a tad bit confusing. The dueling interests of adding sophistication to a tool while keeping that tool free of confusing interface elements is at the heart of all great design, and sometimes the complexity of a system gets so great that it’s easier to start from scratch.
That was certainly the case with Apple’s Final Cut Pro, a nonlinear video-editing tool born in an era before the modern Mac OS X, and which was completely rewritten in 2011 in order to embrace modern features and give the tool a major performance overhaul. Gone were the countless buttons, menus and pallets, and in its place came a slick, understated interface that only hinted at the program’s power.
