The system's speed and strength put it a step above Tektronix Lightworks and other nonlinear systems that came out around the same time. Gradually, the industry started spending millions on Avid's two main systems, Composer and Symphony, making Avid the de facto standard. This is still true today. Ninety-six percent of the shows on television are cut with an Avid, and there are more than 75,000 certified Avid editors, according to company figures.

But at some point over the past few years, Avid users started to feel frustrated with the company's constrictions. "They've pissed a lot of people off," says Jon Ettinger, executive producer at FilmCore, a San Francisco post-production firm focusing on high-end commercials. "They announce upgrades to their system, then don't make it compatible with older versions, so what you just bought often becomes quickly obsolete. Then you have to go back and buy everything through Avid. It's quite a racket. They've know that they're the only game in town, so they take advantage of it."

To be fair, Avid does work with some other products, QuickTime, for example, and its file capacity is far greater than what most standard Apple computers can offer. Filmmakers wanting advanced special effects still require an expensive Avid workstation and many say that Avid is more reliable than the cheaper options. And regardless of Avid's steep price and inflexibility, FilmCore and other post-production companies aren't planning to abandon it. It still beats Final Cut "in terms of processing speed and other features," Ettinger says.

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Yet, Avid is no longer the fastest option in every category. Final Cut is "far more adaptable," says Wachter. It lets editors easily drop in images from QuickTime, Adobe PhotoShop and other software, and third-party developers have already started expanding the product's reach. At the very least, it's an appealing alternative. Those who either can't afford an Avid or dislike Avid's "island" status, as one editor described it, now have another option.

Computer historians might find some irony in the fact that Apple is, in this battle, being praised for being open, for beating a company that's regularly denounced for creating closed "turnkey" systems, those that lock proprietary hardware and software together. After all, didn't Steve Jobs insist that proprietary systems work best, even as his computers lost market share to IBM clones?

Despite Final Cut's success, Avid argues that its products represent a better value. Though the company wouldn't comment specifically on Final Cut Pro, Charlie Russell, a product marketing manager, pointed out that Avid remains the top choice for the vast majority of film and television projects. The company has also had to achieve "the democratization of Avid video," he says, releasing a low-end version of its product that works with digital video and competes with Final Cut. It retails for $700 more than Final Cut, but the company maintains that sales are brisk.

Which raises the question: With the film industry continuing to expand and diversify, is there room for both Avid and Apple? Perhaps. Many editors say the jury is still out on Final Cut. The next few versions will determine whether Apple beats Avid or simply joins its market. In the meantime, though, Final Cut's rise seems poised to divide the industry. On one side are the veterans who swear by Avid. Doug Wellman, for example, the former director of "The Facts of Life" and a professor at the USC School of Cinema, which uses only Avid, argues that Avid is and will be "what the pros use."

But there's also a growing, wily contingent of filmmakers, editors and educators who are determined to topple what some call "the Avid monopoly." They're convinced that Avid won't survive the oncoming onslaught.

"None of us are using Avid unless we can get it for free," says Wachter. "As we age and move into the industry, we are going to take Final Cut Pro with us and slay the giant. Avid is dead. It's a dinosaur."

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