My 2003 self can’t believe I’m saying this, but right now Premiere Pro is the Professional single user non linear editor to use. InDesign and everything they got from Macromedia are giant steaming piles of shit, but their big four, PhotoShop, AfterEffects, Premiere, and Illustrator are still without legitimate competition. Final Cut Pro used to be better, as did Shake, but those days are gone. Things like Pixelmator and PaintShopPro are nothing close to Photoshop if you’re actually a power user, same goes for Illustrator.

In 2001 Mac users had a problem. Photoshop was for OS9 but worked OK in classic. Premiere did not. Final Cut Pro wasn’t ready for prime time until 3.0. Personally, once I started getting to know OS X I was hooked. I wasn’t going to dual boot. I could tolerate Photoshop 5 under classic but my pro video was done in Premiere 5 under Windows 2000. Compared to its predecessors, Windows 2000 was stable, lightweight, and even kinda pretty. It was the Windows 7 of its day.

With the crippling of Final Cut Pro, Apple’s pro users are once again at Adobe’s mercy. When a job needs to get done they’re probably more likely to be loyal to the application rather than the OS, even if begrudgingly. Sure Photoshop has only innovated / iterated over the years and the same is true of Premiere, but for now we’re without legitimate alternatives and it sucks.