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A Mac Pro prediction
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[Chris Kenny] ” If it’s really four Thunderbolt ports and two and PCIe slots, it’ll be fine. It’ll annoy some people, but it’ll fundamentally do everything a “pro” Mac needs to do.”
Except run Avid, a Red Rocket and Pro Tools HDX on the same box.
Or large Pro Tools HDX systems with extra process cards and third party cards like UAD…
Last time Apple tried to “define the paradigm” they pooped out FCPX and forced the bulk of their Pro customers to Avid and Adobe…
This is of course assuming there will even be a new Mac Pro. Magic 8 ball says “Signs point to no.”
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[Walter Soyka] “Resolution is interesting to study, because resolution increases step-wise (we jump discontinuously from one raster size to another), whereas Moore’s Law ultimately suggests that computational power will increase exponentially. This means that as the time from any resolution increase progresses, computers will become drastically more powerful. In isolation, this would support your theory that capabilities are rising faster than expectations (computers get faster while resolution remains constant), but look at what actually happens industry-wide after resolution jumps: expectations grow, too, in the form of reduced budgets and compressed schedules.”
I think we’re talking completely at cross-purposes at this point. Including reduced budget as a form of higher expectation obfuscates what’s occurring here. The reason budgets are falling is precisely because hardware capabilities are growing at a rate that exceeds the growth of people’s technical expectations.
[Walter Soyka] “What if expectations grew faster than capabilities? Expectations can’t reasonably grow faster than capabilities; without the capability, there would be no justification for the expectation.”
Again, you’re confusing the issue by mixing price expectations in with technical capabilities. Expectations can hypothetically outpace increase in technical capabilities. If it used to be the norm that action movies had x visual effects shots, and now it’s the norm that they have 2x visual effects shots, but VFX shots haven’t gotten any cheaper to do, that’s an instance of expectations advancing faster than technical capabilities — and you deal with it, in this case, by just spending twice as much.
[Walter Soyka] “What if capabilities and expectations grew at the same rate? Producers and consumers, through a functioning market, could get better products cheaper, better products faster, or cheaper products faster. Basically, as something desirable becomes feasible to produce at a low-enough cost, the market demands it, and competition squeezes out excessive profit, passing the savings on to consumers.”
There seems to be an implication here that I’m arguing such value won’t be passed onto consumers. Though I think there are some issues with that in the current market (bottlenecks in distribution, general inertia with respect to industry practice), I do believe this is what will eventually end up happening.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[MIke Guidotti] “Except run Avid, a Red Rocket and Pro Tools HDX on the same box.
Or large Pro Tools HDX systems with extra process cards and third party cards like UAD…”
This is a consequence of the peripherals currently available, not the fundamental capabilities of the hypothetical system that has been proposed. A single Thunderbolt channel has the bandwidth for thousands of uncompressed audio channels, for instance, and the machine that has been proposed would have eight of them (it’s two channels per port). In fact, audio might be one of those instances I was discussing, where you’re better off with external Thunderbolt devices than internal cards, because the number of physical slots is more of a bottleneck than bandwidth is.
[MIke Guidotti] “Last time Apple tried to “define the paradigm” they pooped out FCPX and forced the bulk of their Pro customers to Avid and Adobe…”
There is absolutely no systematic data available showing that any such thing has occurred.
[MIke Guidotti] “This is of course assuming there will even be a new Mac Pro. Magic 8 ball says “Signs point to no.””
Tim Cook says yes. At least, he indicates there’s something coming next year for pro customers. What it will be called, I can’t say, and as we’ve been discussing I believe it may differ significantly from the current Mac Pro.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[MIke Guidotti] “This is of course assuming there will even be a new Mac Pro. Magic 8 ball says “Signs point to no.””
Tim Cook has already said there will be a replacement (My hunch is it’ll be called something other than MacPro).
The HDX is a 4 lane card last I checked. Thunderbolt is currently 4 lanes.
RedRocket is an 8 lane card so that would currently be best served in a PCIe slot 8 (or 16) lanes. Although it does work in a Sonnet Echo PCIe to Thunderbolt Chassis although it may not utilize the full resources
https://www.sonnettech.com/news/pr2011/pr092211_redrocket.htmlSo RedRocket and HDX would work in the MacPro replacement some of us suspect.
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[Chris Kenny] ” the machine that has been proposed would have eight of them”
Is there any systematic data showing such an item is currently under design?
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[Chris Kenny] “I think we’re talking completely at cross-purposes at this point. Including reduced budget as a form of higher expectation obfuscates what’s occurring here.”
Well, we’re certainly talking past each other.
You seem to think that talking about budgets in a discussion about price and performance obfuscates the point. I think that failing to consider economics in a conversation about price and performance and considering only the technology is fallacious.
Technology alone is meaningless. The Dark Knight used 8K for some shots way back in 2008 — why doesn’t everyone use 8K all the time now, if it’s so much better? You can’t explain people choosing 2K production over higher resolutions for technical reasons; you can explain it with economic reasons.
Including reduced budget as a form of higher expectation doesn’t obfuscate what’s going on here — it explains it. If the expectation for a certain quality at a certain price remained constant or decreased, then production budgets would remain constant or increase while technology costs dropped, resulting in increased profits for the producers. That is not happening — competition prevents it, keeping expectations in line with capabilities.
[Chris Kenny] “Expectations can hypothetically outpace increase in technical capabilities. If it used to be the norm that action movies had x visual effects shots, and now it’s the norm that they have 2x visual effects shots, but VFX shots haven’t gotten any cheaper to do, that’s an instance of expectations advancing faster than technical capabilities — and you deal with it, in this case, by just spending twice as much.”
If the expectation is higher than the capability, you cannot possibly satisfy the expectation.
And I see you are now willing to include budget in the conversation.
[Chris Kenny] “There seems to be an implication here that I’m arguing such value won’t be passed onto consumers.”
No, it’s not an implication. I’m explicitly saying that retained value is a direct consequence of slow-growing expectations and fast-growing capabilities. It’s not until competition forces the expectation back up that the value is forced free and is able to flow downstream from the producer.
If you don’t like the consequence, you can reject the premises or prove the logic false. However, if we’re only talking about technical expectations and capabilities and not about economic expectations and capabilities, I don’t see why you’d even have an interest in the concept of value.
If you want to strictly limit the discussion to the idea that technology is improving faster than required by the demands of some specific market segments’ needs, you have no argument from me — but I think there’s a lot more going on here than technological improvement that such a discussion would gloss over.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “You seem to think that talking about budgets in a discussion about price and performance obfuscates the point. I think that failing to consider economics in a conversation about price and performance and considering only the technology is fallacious. “
If we look at the history of this market, we can see periods where prices aren’t really dropping, because products at the same price still aren’t doing everything users want them to. We can also see periods where prices are dropping, because products at lower price points become sufficient for user needs. We’re presently seeing the latter. That was my point. You’re trying to set up a system of definitions under which this latter scenario can’t be described as capability advancing faster than expectations, but that’s essentially just a meaningless argument over definitions.
[Walter Soyka] “And I see you are now willing to include budget in the conversation.”
I’ve continuously included it in the conversation, I’ve just argued that when you’re discussing whether capabilities are advancing faster than expectations, mixing budget into technical expectations makes it very hard to figure out what’s happening. Rather than being an expectation itself, budget is better understood as a consequence of where capabilities lie relative to expectations. When capabilities advance faster than expectations, things get cheaper. When expectations advance faster than capabilities, they get more expensive.
[Walter Soyka] “No, it’s not an implication. I’m explicitly saying that retained value is a direct consequence of slow-growing expectations and fast-growing capabilities. It’s not until competition forces the expectation back up that the value is forced free and is able to flow downstream from the producer.”
This construction is contingent on your inclusion of cost in expectations; see above.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “If we look at the history of this market, we can see periods where prices aren’t really dropping, because products at the same price still aren’t doing everything users want them to. We can also see periods where prices are dropping, because products at lower price points become sufficient for user needs. We’re presently seeing the latter. That was my point.”
And it’s all consistent with my point. So what do we disagree about?
[Chris Kenny] “You’re trying to set up a system of definitions under which this latter scenario can’t be described as capability advancing faster than expectations, but that’s essentially just a meaningless argument over definitions.”
You’re trying to set up an overly narrow system of definitions where costs somehow don’t come into play in the decisions people make. I think talking about technology in isolation is silly. We don’t make decisions based on technology alone. Cost matters.
I agree with your point that technology’s capabilities can grow faster than some users’ ability to exploit it. Once I factor in how costs influence behavior, though, you seem to disagree with my argument, but you’re not identifying a flaw in the premises or logic (other than to say we’re having a meaningless argument over definitions).
My proposition is economic in nature. You are trying to refute it with non-economic examples. If you exclude my reasoning about costs, it’s not surprising at all that my economic argument would fail.
If we can’t agree on the scope of our conversation, then there’s no point in continuing.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “You’re trying to set up an overly narrow system of definitions where costs somehow don’t come into play in the decisions people make.”
No, I’m trying to set up a system of definitions where the costs people decide to pay are based on where capabilities stand relative to expectations — rather than including cost itself as an expectation, which obfuscates shifts in purely technical capabilities vs. purely technical expectations.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “No, I’m trying to set up a system of definitions where the costs people decide to pay are based on where capabilities stand relative to expectations — rather than including cost itself as an expectation, which obfuscates shifts in purely technical capabilities vs. purely technical expectations.”
There’s no obfuscation intended on my part.
Cost is not external to expectation/capability when you have to pay for the things you use. Considering it separately is impractical.
Quick question: do you have different expectations with respect to the capabilities of a $20,000 product versus a $2,000 product in the same category?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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