Sometimes it's easy to imagine that the Mac platform is past its darkest days and it's all sunshine and roses from here on in. What with six consecutive Street-beating Apple profits, phenomenal iMac sales, hardware and software that just keeps getting insanely greater, and Steve Jobs holding hypnotic sway over the majority of the media, it's tough not to relax a bit, kick back, and enjoy a frosty beverage. There's no more red ink, market share's on the rise, very few people are still predicting Apple's imminent and bloody demise (people who used to say that are typically now changing their tune to "Apple will always be a niche player")-- hey, it's Miller time. Then something comes along that taps you on the shoulder, smacks you upside the head with the Reality Stick™, and does the platform equivalent of sleeping with your spouse and kicking your dog. (Incidentally, we are both puzzled and immensely gratified at the surprising lack of country songs about Apple's travails.)

We are speaking, if you haven't already guessed, about the news that Avid has dropped development plans for the Macintosh; one of Apple's so-called "niches" may be forced to migrate to Windows. For the uninitiated, Avid makes all kinds of nifty content creation tools, including the Big Daddy of video editing-- Avid Media Composer. The fact that Avid stuff ran on Macs is one of the big reasons that Macs are as popular as they are in the video editing market. A MacWEEK article spills the details on Avid's NT migration, while a MacInTouch page includes lots of reader response to the news, including speculation about what spurred the decision. There seem to be lots of factors here, including Apple's lack of six-slot machines and Avid's reluctance to port all the drivers for their custom hardware to Mac OS X-- but the dirt being dished is that it really all comes down to a falling out between Avid and Apple, and the fact that both Microsoft and Intel have recently invested in Avid. "Sell-out" is the phrase we're hearing around the virtual water cooler.

If Apple wants to hang onto this "niche" that is such a crucial part of one of its two "key markets," they're going to have to change some minds at Avid, like they convinced Intuit not to drop Quicken for the Mac. Or is this further evidence that Apple is focusing all of its efforts on growing its consumer presence at the expense of its professional market? Last year, Apple's gig at NAB was all about how QuickTime would be such a great standard for professional video production, but this year, it's all about QuickTime 4-- which, with its flashy new look and features like MP3 support, seems very consumer-focused-- and Final Cut Pro-- which, despite its name, is apparently not a Media Composer-league editing application; it's being pushed by Apple as a "prosumer" level video editing system. Who knows exactly why these things happen? Personally, we have an optimistic suspicion that Avid will reverse their decision all on their own once multiprocessor G4's preloaded with Mac OS X start shipping and shining, while Windows 2000 is either still not released or problematic at best...