Mac Pro Petition on Facebook

[Tim Wilson]

[Jim Wiseman] “Good dealer here,”

Yes, a good dealer. In much of the lower 48, the only dealer is the Apple store. 🙂

I’m not sure where the $15K comes from though. You CAN go that high, because, well, you can. Twice as many card slots, twice as many bays, twice as much RAM, and the ability to use a top of the line graphics card, and of course it costs more. But if you want a computer as underpowered as a Mac LOL it’s quite comparably priced…except it comes with twice as many slots/bays/RAM slots, and, your local dealer notwithstanding, a corporate commitment to service for high-end customers that Apple has never had.

But it’s not about Apple vs. HP. They’re playing a different game. If you commit to Apple, you just have to stay aware that they’re not as committed to you. You have to commit to a computer that’s inevitably hobbled because Apple isn’t interested in maximum performance.

This is nothing new. Their commitment to mid-range graphics – or lower- goes back to the beginning. The “world’s first supercomputer” was nonsense and they knew it, and so did we, and we all (and I definitely include myself) had a lot of fun with it. But max performance has never been their top priority. It took me over 22 years as a diehard Mac guy to figure that out, and decide that I wasn’t going to keep paying Apple to frustrate me.

No boo-hoo Apple doesn’t love me, Apple doesn’t care about pros. Please. Apple likes me fine, and cares about pros…just not enough for what I need.

It’s just an awful lot of energy to expend on a company that’s going to do what it does, regardless, and no matter what it does, it will lead the industry in sales and deep, abiding love of its customers and Wall St. But not computing performance, which is the main thing I buy computers for.

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Jim Wiseman]

These are points well taken. I guess we will see what happens with the Mac Pro soon enough. The one that seems possible via the rumors described above would more than enough performance for me and apparently many others. Ivy Bridge Dual 6/8/MAYBE 10 with NVidia Kepler/Telsa ought to do. Actually, with the software and work flow I currently spend almost all of my time in the one I have now performs quite adequately. I’m not rendering 4k 3D, or extremely complex graphics. Even the current Mac Pros will take 128GB of RAM (OWC) and 12TB (soon 16TB) of storage internally. More if you use one of the optical bays where I have my SSD boot drive. Access to graphics cards is problematic, but that is an EFI vs BIOS thing, and as much up to the card manufacturers as Apple. Looks like Apple and NVidia are taking up with each other on that one.

I suppose an awful lot of it comes down to the OS. Apparently there are a lot of people who really like OS X, some of it’s available software and it’s secure, solid UNIX base better than they do Windows 7. We will see about 8. I’ll give up a few seconds or minutes of render time in my own particular workflow rather than the frustrating time I and others have spent troubleshooting Windows. Maybe it has improved, but I’m not willing to spend thousands of dollars to find out. It isn’t always about raw performance, at least to me. OS X just seems a better experience that helps me bring out my best w/o a lot of interference.

Nice jabbering with you. You’re the editor, so you will certainly have the last word if you choose. :)) Honestly hope you had a good Memorial Day weekend.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1,Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1, Premiere Pro 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Avid MC, Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz 24Gb RAM GTX-285 120GB SSD, Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 8Gb SSD, G5 Quadcore PCIe

[Gary Huff]

[Devin Crane] “My theory is if they were going to kill it they would have done so already, I would imagine that there will be a newly redesigned machine released during WWDC. Possibly one that can be rack mountable and serve as a desktop or server.”

And what will the response be if they announce the new Ivy Bridge iMacs, Airs, and the re-designed 15″ Pro, but no 17″ and no MacPro replacement. What will the response be then?

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “And what will the response be if they announce the new Ivy Bridge iMacs, Airs, and the re-designed 15″ Pro, but no 17″ and no MacPro replacement. What will the response be then?”

For me, if they’re still selling MacPros then it’s still holding a place for a replacement. Apple with pull the MacPro when they feel it is replaced. I don’t know if I’ll be happy with the replacement but we’ll certainly know when they’ve made their decision.

17″ MBP may be a different situation. It too isn’t selling well from what I understand. If people buy it for the screen real estate they may be disappointed when it goes away. If people buy it for CPU/GPU/Expansion then they may find that in the new 15″ MBP. I think the 17″ MBP is less critical (screen real estate) than the MBP Xeons and two 16xPCIe slots.

[Gary Huff]

I can use eSATA on my 17″ because I have an ExpressCard. If that goes away, do I now have to purchase the Sonnet ExpressCard adapter for Thunderbolt in order to duplicate that functionality?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jim Wiseman] “An iMac just doesn’t cut it.”

I am trying to stick with OSX for as long as I can as well.

Just curious, though, as to why you think an iMac won’t work for editorial?

I guess, what software are you planning on running that doesn’t work on an iMac today?

I understand that some repurchasing of Thunderbolt hardware will need to happen.

I am just curious as to your thoughts, and to see if you have even tried cutting on a new iMac.

Jeremy

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Huff] “I can use eSATA on my 17″ because I have an ExpressCard. If that goes away, do I now have to purchase the Sonnet ExpressCard adapter for Thunderbolt in order to duplicate that functionality?”

I think that’s likely. The issue isn’t so much “17 inches” but connectivity. That’s going to change I think. One rumor is that a new 15″ MBP will have two Thunderbolt ports. That would give you the freedom to buy the connectivity you need. It can vary from person to person so I value the option. I’d actually prefer that to the 17″ so I can buy use change adaptors as needed for the job at hand. For example, Express Card when I need it. Two Thunderbolt if I need two camera inputs for live streaming.

I like not having to make either/or choices when I buy a computer. My bigger concern is the number of end chain Thunderbolt devices on the market. Daisy chaining is a nice concept but if most devices don’t, you’re left with a very limited number of ports to use. So far, mostly hard drives have pass through and mostly everything else doesn’t. That’s a problem.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “I’d actually prefer that to the 17″ so I can buy use change adaptors as needed for the job at hand. For example, Express Card when I need it. Two Thunderbolt if I need two camera inputs for live streaming.”

But see, I do a lot of traveling with my MacBook. So now I get to add a rather hefty device to be able to plug in my thin ExpressCard into my backpack in case I need eSATA support.

Your ideal setup is not very practical or elegant for people, like myself, who prefer to travel light and self-contained.

I will absolutely purchase an Ivy Bridge 17″ MacBook Pro with ExpressCard, especially if USB3 comes with it. Otherwise, I’m staying put.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Gary Huff] “Your ideal setup is not very practical or elegant for people, like myself, who prefer to travel light and self-contained.”

Yeah but the laptop will be much lighter and thinner, so it all evens out in the end. 🙂

This is meant as a joke.

[Gary Huff]

Something else I just thought of. Let’s say I get a new 15″ Ivy Bridge. So far it’s rumored to have 3 USB ports and 2 Thunderbolt ports. What am I supposed to do with my FireWire 800 external drives?