I hope the letter helps. Apple has a unique gem with this software and might have big plans for it but from the outside it's really hard to tell.

So many professional editors love FCP but then have to use Avid or Premiere for work and it's like going back in time to a 1990s software paradigm.
While all the features for collaboration that the commercial industry needs are available now either internally or with third party apps, just adding these few features as standard would help these editors use what's best.

In recent years we've seen other NLEs adopt some of the magnetic timeline aspects in their software. I don't think anybody cares that it's trackless anymore.

Follow up on my project. What I ended up doing was a mix of four different cameras.

The scene is three characters have coffee then watch a video on a portable open reel deck.
For the live action part I rented a Digital Bolex, (which was really nice.) For some pickup shots a few weeks later I used the first gen BMPCC, added some film grain and they matched very well.
For the video tape that they watch I used two cameras, one was a black and white Panasonic tube surveillance camera from the late 1970s. The other camera was a colour Sony DXC-1200. It has a Trinicon tube. (It's huge and heavy.) Both cameras were recorded onto UMatic tape.
I could've gone straight to some type of capture device but was thinking the UMatic tape might add some characteristics. Not sure if it did.

I posted some stills on my Tumblr.
https://clarknikolai.tumblr.com

I agree. It's easier to get the look of a camera by using that camera than to add plug ins.
I'm working on a period short set in the early 1970s that has a character using an old open reel portable video recorder and camera. To get the POV of that camera it was easiest to just use a camera from that time. Gives a great look without any effort. Easier than trying to make something else look like it.

Pondering here... I was reading that it has a special sensor that isn't a Bayer pattern but a pattern that has some white pixels in addition to the usual red green and blue ones. This makes me think that it might be possible for them to have a monochrome shooting mode that involves only those pixels and that might make a nicer monochrome image than just reducing the chroma on what you get from the RGB pixels.

I've thought the same things for a long time. Why they keep showing artists as flakey, hard to understand, lacking in content, etc. when they themselves are an industry full of artists and craftspeople.
One of the things that I find working in the film industry is how conservative it is and how much they feed off previous work and not by observing real life. They use stereotypes to save time when introducing characters, often basing them on characters in other movies.

The only film I've seen where artists and art were framed as being important was 1989's The Top of His Head.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098493/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

So true. This was a mistake that many Canadian films made in the 1970s and 1980s. There was a sense that they must counter the misrepresentation that Hollywood did of Canada earlier and show a more accurate view. Since regular speaking is kind of dull (from a movie perspective) the films' dialogue was viewed as dull.
Stylization is more entertaining.