Can we talk about the Retina MBP for just one second?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Frank Gothmann] “Out of curiosity: how do you see/rate all this? Do you think this is all due to technical reasons or motivated by other intentions? Do you rate it good, bad or don’t you care, also with regards how this might start to carry over to other products?”

Do I think it’s due to technical reasons, or is it motivated by other intentions? That’s easy. Yes.

I see this as Apple’s next move. They always start slow with newer tech. I think retina is a very big winner in the iOS world, and now they are going to see if it can be sustainable in the portable/desktop market. If anyone has the balls to really build an affordable 4k monitor, it will be Apple, and you won’t need a 250W GPU power supply to do it (or whatever it would take today). Sure, maybe with way retina works (more resolution, same screen size) it’s a cheat, but you know what, human vision is a cheat. Compared to other living vision systems out there, our system is broad, but fairly limited in a technical sense. Things look pretty. We like contrast, then color, and some resolution thrown in to leave us at the top of the food chain.

As far as locking down the macbook pro,

I think that people have been talking about soldering RAM to motherboards for a long time (or maybe that’s how it was way back in the day) and I hope there’s a performance gain from this. Apple is the first to do it, and call it “Pro”. I also think an all solid state future means more efficiency for battery power, and at much faster working speeds than spinning disk. Apple does appreciate efficient computing. Design has also driven Apple’s business upon Steve Job’s return. Design, and pushing what’s possible within those design constraints is really how Apple has made a living, like it or not. THe inside of that computer are all design decisions that are probably driven from the case.

I have said for a while now, Apple is not overly concerned about raw power. They derive power and speed from other sources, which is an easy to maintain OS and surrounding “ecosystem” (and the more I use it, the more I actually appreciate the AppStore, I hated it at first), and things like an all solid state computer. Not that Apple are the first to do make an all solid state device, they certainly aren’t, but I would say they are probably the first to do it with brand new procs, a 4.5 pound laptop and claim 4 streams of 1080p24 8bit Uncompressed HD off of the boot drive. They are certainly the first company I’ve seen to put an NLE and photo app on primetime TV and market to “Pros” without really marketing to just pros.

I still believe that Apple has smart people working for them, and that overall they are a smart company. They are huge, their business is huge, and now they have more responsibility than ever, more eyes on them than ever, and therefore some more financial and social pressures, and therefore more legal fees than ever. They have a lot of plates in the air, I can’t expect them to serve me and my needs personally.

I have no idea if this laptop is good or bad, but I do think this is a big glimpse of what’s to come. This is computer miniaturization in the flesh and Apple is pushing it very very hard. I also think that Thunderbolt is going to allow them to lockdown the internals of their computers. They have been trying to do this for a long while, and the latest Retina MBP is proof of this (as if the first blueberry iMac wasn’t enough). I have a hunch their next MacPro, or iMacPro or whatever the hell it’s going to be called will also model this design motif. It might have more room for tinkering than the RMBP, but my guess it will be just enough to let you add a new drive, perhaps swap some sort of GPU (maybe), or something crazy like add 16 SSD drives and build a raid 6 array that gets tons of speed and fits in a kids sized shoebox. I don’t know. I am done predicting what it’s going to look like, but I would bet on solid state, and I’d bet on retina, and just enough GPU to drive it all and it will be a wicked fast architecture, but it won’t be the fastest machine available.

At this point, you have to decide to take the ride or not. Apple will not give us post sale user configurable computers anymore. Perhaps that will be a good decision, or maybe it will be a terrible way to run a video business. I don’t know, but I most definitely care. If you need the upper echelon of CPU power, the decision is already made for you, Apple isn’t it.

Personally, as far as video software goes, I don’t see a huge reason to jump ship to Windows quite yet. Sure, there’s some more speed, but nothing is working as well as FCP7 for us, as editing is not only about speed. I am sure that will change as it is a “good” time to be an NLE developer right now. A media software company stands to gain so much if you can make the system work well and price it right, while taking advantage of modern hardware, while bringing modern media sensibilities to the table as well.

I am not interested in switching platforms just to switch, there has to be a compelling reason. Time will eventually be that reason, but right now, I feel as if I have just a bit more time than compelling reasons at this point.

Jeremy