-
FCPX in action
-
[Michael Gissing] “The underperformance of Adobe on Mac is largely an Apple problem. To be fair why should Adobe give as much effort to develop software for a minority hardware/OS platform. I think that the long association for many of us with Mac hardware & Apple software has made us forget that most people use Win software and hardware.
Hard to fault Adobe’s logic. The fact that they do try to keep software parity shows they are keen to woo disgruntled FCP Legend users. Seems to be a good business strategy. Bitch to Apple about graphics card availability and cost.”
But isnt this is slowly seeming to change? You can add “unqualified” CUDA cards to Macs and they work. Nvidia has been seemingly constantly updating Mac drivers in the recent years.
This goes well beyond Pr.
Walk into any major print/web design agency, Ps, Ai, Id, most of those machines are Macs.
Many Ae designers are on Macs.
There’s an Adobe Mac history that goes way beyond Pr and includes the dark days when Pr wasn’t even available on the Mac.
Getting in bed with Adobe is going to mean getting in bed with Nvidia, like it or not. Choosing the right card is often confusing. You can by the “pro” cards for a lot of money, or the gaming cards that offer similar performance for dramatically less price. Nvidia sets the price, Apple doesn’t.
-
[John Davidson] “That logic is why Adobe programs on mac are limited and built for PC’s. That dog will only go as fast as its slowest leg.”
In this example, is the Mac or the PC the slower leg? You could make an argument for either one.
I imagine that Adobe, like most cross-platform developers, builds a common platform-independent codebase for the bulk of the app and writes platform-dependent wrappers for where it interfaces with the host OS.
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 -
[Jeremy Garchow] “Walk into any major print/web design agency, Ps, Ai, Id, most of those machines are Macs. Many Ae designers are on Macs. There’s an Adobe Mac history that goes way beyond Pr and includes the dark days when Pr wasn’t even available on the Mac.”
Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects were all originally Mac programs, and of of course, Macs do have a big design legacy.
And yet John Nack has said that Creative Suite sales are about 50/50, Mac/PC. (See the comments in his blog entry [link].)
I do wonder — where are all these hidden PCs? Is this just a US/international thing, or are there more PCs in production than we think?
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 -
If Adobe are saying 50/50 Mac to PC at the moment then I suspect that balance will be changing to PC with Apple’s decisions about MacPro and hardware/GPU in general. The general vibe I am getting is that the switch to CS6 and PC at the same time is the preference of editors and facilities that I deal with as they need to both update hardware and NLE. In fact the hardware issue is part of the reason some say they don’t want to go FCPX as it is Mac only. Oh the (big) Iron(y).
Apple are clearly responsible for being non standard with graphic cards in Intel based motherboards. Of course GPU card manufacturers have to charge more for a Mac only card. Apple is to blame for that.
Sure more people are going unauthorised with NVIDIA cards but that isn’t exactly the Mac way. As Apple software is usually ATI OpenCL oriented then the graphics card issue is for me a major deal breaker and one of the main reasons behind my move to PC. More card slots is another and so is USB3 & esata built into motherboards. Price to performance is the final qualifier.
I see no point in arguing that Adobe are somehow doing themselves a disservice by not making their software more capable of exploiting Mac OS & hardware strengths. No-one is saying Apple should have a PC version of their software and it better perform as well on a PC. I think Adobe have a good idea where things are trending.
-
[Walter Soyka] “I do wonder — where are all these hidden PCs? Is this just a US/international thing, or are there more PCs in production than we think?”
I think it is international, precisely.
[Walter Soyka] “Creative Suite sales are about 50/50, Mac/PC.”
I think you might have linked to the wrong blog post, but I’ll take your word for it.
So Adobe simply can’t give up the Mac platform unless the want to give up half their sales.
I’m not a business major, but….
-
[Michael Gissing] ” I think Adobe have a good idea where things are trending.”
“Things” meaning FCS3 refugees? Or hardware…or what? What trends?
What about the rest of Adobe customers who could care less about Pr, which most likely is probably a majority of their customers for now?
Look at what Ballmer says in Microsoft’s annual letter to shareholders: https://www.theverge.com/2012/10/9/3480696/steve-ballmer-shareholder-letter-2012-devices-services
What happens when Microsoft pisses off some all their hardware partners?
-
Trending as in hardware and software choices by editors and facilities in our industry. Even this forum is a good indicator with many reports of people moving to CS6 AND PC.
Will Microsoft piss off hardware vendors? Sure some be annoyed that they plan to make more phones & tablets. Will they do an Apple and refuse to license their OS on third party hardware? I doubt they are that stupid.
-
[Michael Gissing] “Trending as in hardware and software choices by editors and facilities in our industry. Even this forum is a good indicator with many reports of people moving to CS6 AND PC. “
Many? I’d say a few. Walter Biscardi just wrote a blog saying his sticking around on Macs for a bit longer. iMacs even.
As far as Adobe trends:
They have already started to Retina-ize the suite.
They have added support for Apple’s newest MBPs (with CUDA).
They have added OpenCL support for the non CUDA set.
I imagine that none of this is easy or cheap, so it must be worth it to them as a company or they know something we don’t.
I don’t know how many people you work with, but I know of exactly one person who is interested in Windows AND CS6, and he’s a DP. All my post buddies are slumming it on Macs and waiting around. Most of my Ae buddies won’t even consider a PC, even with the greater performance carrot dangle. We all know that Ae is not exactly a performance darling.
-
Small sample group anecdotal surveys are not the sort of thing that big companies plan their future on. Of course Adobe will support Macs. Crazy not to.
This whole discussion centers around John Davidson’s comment wondering why Adobe doesn’t favour Macs and develop in ways that utilise the Mac OS. As Walter Soyka prudently pointed out, there is good reason to standardise the UI and layout.
I am simply expanding on that thought by offering the opinion that PC versions of CS6 are more likely to outnumber Mac versions as Apple let MacPros slide and the price performance ratio on PC is so attractive. Win7 is not a dog of an OS. Far from it. Anyway time will tell.
-
What makes all these predictions so difficult is that we are projecting onto Apple the development path we saw with FCP “legacy”. In fact, that was an exception to Apple’s normal software development track record. With the exception of operating system software, Apple’s application development strategy seems to have followed two paths:
a) Purchase or create software, develop it for a short cycle, pull out core technologies to use elsewhere, kill it off. Color, Shake and Final Cut Server are prime examples.
b) Purchase or create software, develop it for a short cycle until it reaches a point of “stasis” and then let it languish as “good enough for most users”. iWork, iLife, Aperture and Logic (maybe) are examples.
The 12-year run that FCP 1-7 had didn’t follow either path, but that’s mainly because Jobs wanted to shore up Apple’s position with pro creative users. But it’s not 1999 any longer and Apple is in a different place. Apple hardware/OS as a platform is still highly preferred among pro creatives. Adobe, Autodesk and Avid have assured that Apple will continue there. Not because of Apple, but because it’s a good business decision for them based on their own customer demand. When companies talk about a 50/50 PC/Mac footprint, they often mean among NEW USERS, not total installed base. So it’s still Apple’s market to lose.
When it comes to software, Apple designs for the easy user experience, not power and features. Sometimes they come up with something really innovative, like gestures and control surface support in Motion – only to find that no one really cares. In the end, Apple develops its own software to round out the attractiveness of the Mac ecosystem and platform. Hence, applications only get developed so far and then the engineers move on. Incremental improvements come down the pike, but not major new features.
This leaves us wondering… Will FCP X follow the FCP 1-7 development path – OR – will it follow the Aperture path? If the latter, then we won’t see a lot of new features past whatever is released in this next version. Apple will remain content to view FCP X as a platform and let independent developers fill in the gaps. Native I/O based on FCP X XML will continue to be inadequate. Timecode/reel/etc issue will only marginally be addressed. If the former, then gambling on X will have been a good choice.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up