Mac Pro Pricing

[Marcus Moore]

To counter that- I work in several “virtual workgroups”. Some as a defacto partner, and others as a straight freelancer. Over the past 5 years we’ve pillaged loads of business from high-end agencies and post houses. Not necessarily because our prices are that much cheaper [though sometimes we are where agencies have gotten particularly comfortable with huge commercial margins…].

All this is to say that the idea of internal storage in MacPro setup is completely useless to me now. Work comes to me on client-specific drives, and that’s where it lives while I work on the job until I deliver it. Outbound storage allows me to keep clients work compartmentalized and portable. Only when I get material on a USB drive [my iMac is pre USB3] will I bother to copy it to one of my base TB work drives. And as I educate clients to buy TB storage that becomes less and less of an issue.

So this configuration is worth it to me.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Paul Dickin] “Hi
According to that page’s links the A300/A320 are ‘”accelerated processors” only using DDD3 memory, so don’t seem to fit the info that Apple have sneak previewed.
“

Thank you.

[Gary Huff]

The beefier 12-core will begin at $3,499. The high end configuration will be $4,999.

There is no way it’s going to be that cheap.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Paul Dickin] “According to that page’s links the A300/A320 are ‘”accelerated processors” only using DDD3 memory, so don’t seem to fit the info that Apple have sneak previewed.”

Sheesh, I should have just read the PDF.

[Neil Hurwitz]

Herb,
I am truly glad to be out of this biz.
It was my life for Twenty Five years and you know what
I made more money from 1980 to 2000 with old school,
really old school stuff than anybody can make today.
I didn’t care about awards (although my shop and guys won a boatload)
I was in it to MAKE MONEY. Nobody cares about the commercials or
shows we did a few years ago.
So you’re correct, I quess if a 250.00 buck difference a month
means a whole lot, then margins must be NON-EXISTANT
If you bill 125 hours a month (part time work in my book)and working
with NEW, BETTER,FASTER tools, which will allow you to
complete tasks quicker adds 2 bucks an hour to your cost
and it’s a deal breaker, then the guy driving a black car limo
must be making more than you because he’s got to buy, maintain, gas and insure the vehicle.
It must be really hard to not have face to face interaction
with your clients and be locked up in an edit suite all day?
For me the people and characters that I encountered on a daily
basis and playing with all the new toys was what made
this business fun.
Like I said before, I am Truly Glad to be out of this biz
I ain’t NO DIGITAL SLAVE

[Rick Lang]

[Jeremy Garchow] “If you look at this page, then look towards the bottom, you will see the desktop version, the mobile version, then the OEM version (called the A300 here).

https://www.fireprographics.com/adobe/index.asp

That seems to be what would be in the MacPro if it is a closed GPU system, right?
“

Thanks for the feedback, Jeremy. Adobe and AMD are sure doing a great marketing job for the OpenCL consortium! I’ve always looked to NVIDIA for the best performance I thought I would need personally but AMD with Adobe and Apple are forcing us to look elsewhere this time and it may not be a bad thing.

You may well be right about the A300. But at this time, I’m not sure unless it is an unannounced next-generation version of the A300 series. Nothing here quite fits the Mac Pro Tube descriptions. I’m still guessing that it may not be off-the-shelf and Apple may never say. That’s one way to distinguish your offering and get the price-point you want. IFixIt or their partner that X-rays chips will tell us eventually.
https://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/APU/Pages/APU.aspx#4

I am sure when this is released, there will be third-party products announced ready for shipment that will take advantage of the opportunity to complete the picture in terms of using Thunderbolt 2 interfaces on their peripheral equipment. Certainly LaCie and Promise will be there day one for storage at least. I can’t speculate about the PCIe extenders since I only have a cursory knowledge and no need to use then but likely one will be there day one too.

$8,000 for the high-end configuration taken to the max may be a very good estimate. Fortunately, I’ll never know since I don’t plan to go that high personally. I am going to wait for the BMD DaVinci Resolve 10 Configuration Guide to tell me what I need to make full use of the BMD BMPC4K camera shooting raw 3840×2160! I’m sure they already know but can’t say yet. Thanks again for your insights.

Edit: Sorry about my gentle remarks doubting the A300. I posted this in response to your reply to me without reading the later posts from Paul and you. Yes I saw that is an APU using DDR3 memory, but I thought you may have information I didn’t see. Next time, I’ll try to fit into the attack mindset here and say something like, “Read the fact sheet!!!” Ah, that feels better, eh?

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Herb Sevush]

[Jeremy Garchow] “No doubt it will require a bit of coin.”

Everything requires a bit of coin, the Tblt-PCIe thing is just another part of the calculation. As on the NLE side there are now lots of options:

– Tube with PCIe extensions
– Hackintosh
– PC/Linux Workstation

pairing that with

FCPX – MAC only – best Multicam, negative on the rest
Avid – MAC & PC – good multicam, like stepping backwards in time
Ppro – Mac & PC – inadequate multicam, CC a negative, best suite of tools
Lightworks – Mac, PC, Linux – have no idea if it’s suitable for my workflow

The decision matrix for next year is getting interesting.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Marcus Moore] “All this is to say that the idea of internal storage in MacPro setup is completely useless to me now.”

Internal storage is not the issue, PCIe lanes are. When I get client drives they are no way fast enough for me to work with. Everything gets copied to my very fast external raids and it’s the lack of internal PCIe slots for my controllers that are the issue.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Gary Huff]

The decision matrix for next year is getting interesting.

Reminds me of the supposed Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

[Brooks Tomlinson]

[Gary Huff] “There’s the iMac for that. The Mac Pro is for people who want serious speed.”

yep that was my though exactly, they cover the high end with mac pro. Mid level now shifts to the iMac. Low end with the macbook pro’s. Now that it is all unified over thunderbolt, you can just upgrade your processing power as cash permits, and just keep the external devices.

Ugh, what I now wouldn’t give for a lto thunderbolt solution that is south of $2,000.

Brooks Tomlinson
“I dream in 32bit float”