Final Cut Pro X 10.0.6 is UNUSABLE!

Welcome to the family.

Sorry about your issues. Yours is a highly unusual situation and can probably be fixed. Might take some of the wonks a few days to walk you through it but these guys have seen it all.

Meantime. Do you have an Apple Store anywhere nearby? Make a genius appt but be sure you ask for someone who has a clue about FCPX. Most of those well-meaning folks do not know from video or big apps like FCPX, bless their iPhone-centric little hearts.

There have been some other threads here about forced restarts after launching FCP, try to search for some of those.

Your RAM should be bumped up as soon as you have the funds to do so.

Is your profile correct? That is, your Mac is running Mountain Lion and your version of FCP X is 10.0.6?

I'm not really sure whether an Apple Store will in fact tackle this. Not to put too fine a point on it (don't work for Apple), the license for Final Cut is not transferable. No matter how this is resolved one of the issues you'll face is that unless the seller wants to share his/her Apple ID, you won't be able to update the app. (There have been 8 updates since 10.0.6.)

To the immediate problem: I suggest downloading Preference Manager from Digital Rebellion. (All those crashes surely have corrupted some files, probably including preferences.) I'd also run Repair Permissions in Disk Utility.

Russ

Hey, Dan. Just a warning: that if you were to update to Yosemite, that would guarantee that your copy of Final Cut would never work. Only 10.1 and up will run on Yosemite,

Russ

So a couple of key things here. May as well swallow the frog early on this one--the Apps on that Mac are permanently tied to the Apple ID (email address and password) of the original owner. The operating system is too, so even if you want to upgrade to Yosemite, you must sign into the App Store under your Apple ID. If you use your personal one, the security system is likely to catch the mismatch and give you an error message (it's likely the cause of your crashes and probs). As soon as you do successfully take the OS X Yosemite upgrade, any apps affiliated with the original owner will be out of reach for you. After a major operating system install like Yosemite, you will be obliged to sign into the App Store again, and without the Apple ID of the person who paid the $299 for Final Cut X, you will no longer have access to the software. It's kinda like trying to start a Cadillac with a Toyota key. Options: go ahead and buy Final Cut---(hey it used to be $1600!) Or if you already have Adobe licenses you can certainly call them and ask about options. Honestly the very best thing to do is to set up a Genius Bar appt and have them wipe the computer, install Yosemite and then help you get going. Definitely go up to 16 GB of RAM if you're editing video---it's really inexpensive these days..... www.crucial.com www.macsales.com and there are more. Macsales has videos under their tech support header that show you how to put in the ram, easy-peasy. I know you can get great deals on used Macs---I always sell mine in great condition, but I always have Apple wipe them first (they don't charge anything for this, and can also run diags to make sure all is well.) Hope this saves you some struggle. Cheers.

No, every Mac comes with the iLife and iWork suites of software for free (that covers iPhoto, Garage Band, iMovie, Pages, Numbers, Keynote etc).

Final Cut Pro, Motion, Compressor, Logic Pro X, all all Pro Apps, so yeah, everybody pays extra for those. The person who sold you the used Mac should have explained that--maybe he/she assumed you knew. For security reasons (and sure, licensure protection) those Pro Apps are inextricably tied to the Apple ID of the purchaser--there's really not a way around that. When the Apps are purchased under your Apple ID you'll have smooth sailing buddy, and you won't keep running into this headache every time Final Cut has an update for you to take.(it's vital to take those updates to keep Final Cut in stride with the operating system updates.) The whole things works in concert with all the software configuration. Apple offers a One to One training membership for only $99 a year for as much training as you want--even on the Pro Apps. It's well worth every penny of it. I did it for 2 years while I started up my video production company and it was tremendously helpful. Best to you! There are a few growing pains but it's so well worth it in the end. Final Cut X edits sooooo much faster than the other programs---I have them all and keep relying on FCPX! It's a beast!

Oh, BTW, if you do have the Genius Bar give your Mac a fresh start, you will have all the software on it except the ProApps---the Yosemite upgrade brings in Pages (word processing), Numbers (spreadsheets etc.) and Keynote (Like PowerPoint) as free downloads in the App Store.

I think you've got a great start actually---have the Genius Bar check out your hardware--if that's solid then I would just buy FCPX, then just upgrade the RAM when you can. Then you're set.

Don't shoot the messenger, but you're going to run into the same problem with Photoshop---the license is tied to the original purchaser's email address and password... (I think the seller should give you a bit of a refund if they led you to believe FCP and PS would be usable by you... just saying....)

Not sure if Adobe offers their CreativeCloud in your country but I only pay $9.99 ($10.81 after tax...) a month to have the latest and greatest of Photoshop and Lightroom at their full use. I don't keep any content on their Cloud, but this is just a really affordable way for me to have access to the constantly updated versions of both PS and LR. Adobe also offers Premier and AE in CreativeCloud as well. I think it's $49 a month for the full Adobe Suite on Creative Cloud.

If you're buying new, check the FCPX marketing page for the minimum system specs and start shopping. But you want two to three times as much RAM as the stock configuration. And you'll need some external drives, most likely. I think you will find the Macintosh to be delightful to both run and maintain compared to anything you run Windows on.

http://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/

Let's see, pounds to dollars...You've got about $2,000 to spend? FCPX and Motion and Compressor are about US$400 total so include that.

The new wee MacBook does the job. But "best for least" may not be a good editing platform. Personally, I can't edit on a laptop. With every new Apple introduction there are many used Macs that hit the streets. You know a bit more than you did a while ago so the next used Mac will be a better deal.