I remember this camera well. Such a strange design. It actually is a pinhole camera so infinite depth of field. 15 FPS, huge pixels, black and white, converted to sound and recorded onto one channel of an audio tape.
I remember reading about it and the weird image back when it was still sold. A friend and I got together and bought one then shot lots of cool things with it. A lot of experimental stuff but I never thought of doing narrative with it. I still have it somewhere along with dozens of VHS tapes of footage. (We'd dub to VHS and reuse the audio tapes.)
The image was so strange. Recording to tape was unreliable. If you bought an off-brand tape you wouldn't get an image at all. When the signal would fade in and out it was sometimes interesting. Sending it live to an external recorder gave a better image but you wouldn't get the nifty digital snow effect.

There's a film festival of Pixelvision films coming up in November in Venice, California.
http://laughtears.com/PXL-THIS-28.html

What would pulling the rug out look like? That they discontinue FCPX for something else? There's no indication of that. It keeps on getting better and better and more pro features added with every update. They have a team of pros working on workflow issues in the new hardware design. To me that looks like they haven't abandoned the pro user base. Some people will always hold their grudge but I think most will get past it. I know I have.
Nobody can predict the future of course but at this point in time in my opinion it's the best NLE there is. I use all the major ones now and I see the differences. Apple appears to sincerely be working hard to make reparations to pro users both with FCP and their hardware. I suspect also that their sights are with the needs of the future of video production and not so much accomodating its past.
I've heard people speculate that Resolve will become the editor of choice for those still attached to tracks but personally I don't know of anyone using it to edit with. To me it's clunky.
I've been in the biz long enough to have seen all sorts of new things come along and there was initial resistance. I remember when FCP 6 was the new thing and Avid editors were resistant to it but it eventually took over and became what most used.
Switching from shooting with film and videotape to files on a hard drive was hard for me to become accustomed to it. I didn't trust it but that's the way things were going so I learned it and now it's normal and the industry developed procedures to work with its characteristics. (Though I still wish LTO backup drives were cheaper.)

From what I see at the post houses I work in is that while they wish that getting things in and out of FCPX was easier they know they can do it.

Initially I didn't use the Timeline Index but at some point an editor I was working with showed me how it works. Now I use it all the time. I recently assistant edited on a feature and while preparing the files for online, I was able to quickly find clips that I needed. What would have been in the past an entire day of preparation for that, now takes about two hours total.
Working with closed captioning it's so fast to find a certain caption with the Index.
It's an example of good design. Well thought out, practical, simple, useful.

This is so true.
I wish I had been told this years ago instead of the messages I got which were "If you can't do something well then don't do it at all."
I remember at a directing workshop I took, filmmaker Jean-Pierre Lefebvre was asked if he thinks he'll ever make the perfect film. He replied "Why would I want to do that? I would have nothing left to do after."

I look back at my first attempt at a feature and see that it "failed" simply because of my perfectionism. I only had so many resources both time and money. I ran out of steam and it ended up being salvaged into a short that hardly anyone has ever seen. I wish now I would have just done it sloppily and got it done. Then I could have moved on from there having had a feature under my belt.

I agree. It's the best NLE in the world in my opinion and just a few things would make it great!
I know there's X2Pro which works very well but it's an extra expense. I realize Apple chose to leave things like that to third parties but having AAF export built in would mean so much to the decision makers at post houses who would need to purchase a few dozen licenses.

I heard rumours a few years ago that this was going to happen. Here it comes.
I'll miss it but not really all that much to be honest. FCPX is so amazing and now has all the pro features that were initially missing that I really only go back to 7 if I have to do something to an old project.
I sometimes open up FCP 7 to do a tweak on an old project and when I do it just seems so slow compared to FCPX.
I have the utility to convert an FCP7 sequence to an FCPX project but haven't used it much. (What I should probably do soon is update every one of my old sequences just in case in the future I need to do something and can't find a Mac with an old OS to open it with.)

I remember FCP 3, then 4 then 6, then 7 changing the world of video and film production. It was first (I think) with the idea of cutting your HD originals instead of doing offline/online. So many people got their editing and assistant editing careers started with it.
When FCP 6 was current, I was working at a post house doing features with it. The big conflict there was Avid vs FCP. There were the old farts who took forever to cut a feature on Avid and were set in their ways and then there were the young guys and gals who had recently graduated from film school using Final Cut who got a movie out the door in a couple months. Those supporting Avid had some idea of "industry standards" and dug in their heels. They got surpassed in the end by Final Cut.

(I see history repeating itself now with FCPX. There are the old farts who are resisting the change of timeline interface and then there are the others who embrace it and are getting more done.)