Apple is discontinuing the only monitor it makes, the Thunderbolt Display

[Tim Wilson]

[Lance Bachelder] “The Dell monitors were one of the highlights for me at NAB this year. “

I used to laugh at Dell for many, many years. Not anymore. My die-hard Apple days extend back to 1979, but I gotta tell ya, my Dell XPS 15 laptop is by far my all-time favorite piece of computing hardware. I find it very easy to believe that a lot of Dell monitors will be making their way into studios that previously never would have considered Dell for nuthin’…even if for folks not me, a the Windows-ness of a Dell computer remains out of the running forever.

[Lance Bachelder] “Mac Pro’s thus ending the support and interest in anything “pro””

Do you not consider iMacs doable for pro work? I’m not arguing with you. I’m just asking because, unlike me, you actually work for a living. 🙂

And I’m sure seeing a bunch of ’em on the What is your work computer / home computer? thread.

[Lance Bachelder]

iMac’s are great for most work but on my last feature we wanted to stay native 4K .r3d and not use proxies. We were able to do this with a new Mac Pro easily. Maybe the top-of-the-line iMac would have handled it as the raid array was a huge factor in driving the files at real-time but I didn’t have one to test. The issue with an iMac is the GPU – so much processing is handed off to the GPU these days in most of the NLE’s so having the dual D700’s with 6GB memory each in the Mac Pro really helped especially when it came to color timing. This is what makes PC’s so attractive right now with the new GTX 1080 and a free version of Resolve there may be no need for a new Mac Pro.

It was at a Vegas premiere that I resolved to become an avid FCPX user.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

[Walter Soyka]

[Tim Wilson] “You know what they need, though, is a touch screen. Mac people poo-poo this, but I’m tellin’ ya, after using one on a PC for the last couple of years, computing without a touch screen feels like computing without a mouse — it can be done, but the people actually doing it are mostly dour old men trying to prove a point. LOL”

Yes! My main portable computer is a Surface Pro 3. I didn’t think I’d use touch that much, but I find that I pretty freely mix the touchscreen/trackpad/mouse for pointing.

My MBP has fingerprints all over the screen from where I’ve tried to interact with it.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Tom Sefton]

This +1

Mac Pro performance with raw 4k, 5k and 6k media is fantastic. It isn’t with iMac.

I’ve seen nothing but great value for money from the Mac Pros we have bought and really hope that apple brings out a high res monitor to replace as I still love the thunderbolt display.

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Walter Soyka]

[Tom Sefton] “I’ve seen nothing but great value for money from the Mac Pros we have bought and really hope that apple brings out a high res monitor to replace as I still love the thunderbolt display.”

Tom, just out of curiosity, is the nMP small form factor important to you (I do prefer wheeling my nMP around compared to a big Z-series), or could you also benefit from a larger, more serviceable option?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Tom Sefton]

Good question.

We’ve got our own studio space and we don’t really have to worry about the increased size from something the size of the trashcan to the cheese grater, so if the Mac Pro was larger, it would be fine.

But having something small enough to either rack mount or put into a peli case as a custom DIT station is fantastic. I’ve packed some for long haul projects, along with a G Tech Raid and a single peli case holds this along with a monitor which is brilliant for on-set work and rendering.

I suppose it’s something I haven’t really thought about before – you make space on your desk for however large your edit machine is…

Co-owner at Pollen Studio
http://www.pollenstudio.co.uk

[Shawn Miller]

[Tim Wilson] “I used to laugh at Dell for many, many years.”

You should have… they were TERRIBLE for a good long while. I think their products started getting better after they went back to being a private company.

Shawn

[Tim Wilson]

[Shawn Miller] “I think their products started getting better after they went back to being a private company. “

That has worked for a number of companies. Heck, I think it’d work for Avid, but nobody asked me.

Speaking of Avid and Dell, when I was at Avid, I remember one round of QA where Dell machines kept burning out. Turns out that a batch of bad glue was causing fans to fall off, so they were winding up at the bottom of the box, blowing at nothing in particular, not really cooling anything. COMING UNGLUED. That’s weak, man.

Nowadays, who knows? If I had an mbp with the price-performance, finish, display quality and overall feature completeness of my Dell, I might still be using the mbp. LOL Okay, probably not. LOL

BUT STILL. Yes, Dell quality is a new thing that I personally was never expecting, but it’s an actual thing.

[Walter Soyka] “My MBP has fingerprints all over the screen from where I’ve tried to interact with it.”

I have some Mac folks in my life and one of ’em was sitting next to me when I touched my screen to scroll through an online takeout menu. They’re all “Ooo, that’s cool!” and touching my screen to scroll, zoom in, etc. — then turned back to their mbp to keep working…and reflexively touched their own screen to do the pinch-zoom thing after they’d just done it on my Dell. D’oh!

I wasn’t even going to say anything, but they laughed and fessed up: once you know you can do this, you WANT to. It’s how you’re used to interacting with Apple stuff.

Apple is surely working on this, right? RIGHT?

And somebody is already working on their comment to add to the review of Apple’s latest innovation coup, about how touchscreens on computers are just the latest example of Windo$e ripping off Apple. LOL

I’m obviously kidding, but it really is crazy to me that Apple hasn’t put ’em on laptops at the very, very least.

[Eric Santiago]

How many here are still using the Apple Cinema 30’s?

We have 4 left of the 12 from initial purchase (eons ago).
I found two online for my home just recently at a crazy price.
I use em on cMP and nMPs.
We still have the Cinema 24s on other cMP and they work fine.
Plus a few Thunderbolt ones that the graphics people hate (reflective).
I welcome anything they offer but if we have to go another route then I better write up a good case study for the Eizo’s as replacement 😉

[Mitch Ives]

[Tom Sefton] “I’ve seen nothing but great value for money from the Mac Pros we have bought and really hope that apple brings out a high res monitor to replace as I still love the thunderbolt display.”

+1

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill