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MacBook Pro 17″ vs. Mac Pro
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[Walter Soyka] “The transition to Retina Displays will be more jarring than the PPC/Intel transition?”
This might be one of the reason’s I like using Apple products.
Apple has undergone some pretty significant changes.
OS9 to OSX.
68K to PPC to Intel.
(all of which I experienced)The retina displays is probably another one. I’m not sure it’s completed, even on iPhone and iPad. But it appears to be headed that way.
I like the fact that Apple chooses to move forward. They typically provide a relatively smooth, though sometimes short transition. (FCS to FCPX was none of the above) Microsoft seems to take a different approach. They seem to do a good job trying to support older technologies. You can emulate WinXP environments in Win7. I suppose there’s good and bad to both approaches. But I lean towards the approach of moving forward, dragging some baggage with you, but only for a limited amount of time.
Why do you feel the retina transition will be jarring?
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[Bernard Newnham] “One more thing I don’t understand is the desperate preoccupation with Xeon chips. Core i7s – even i5s if you’re are me – are good enough for everyone else except the server market, which is what they were designed for.”
For straight editorial, I think i7 and even i5 is fine.
However, for mograph and 3D animation (my main business), Xeons are great. With multiple processors in the same machine — and multithreaded renderers able to use them — there’s a huge performance gain over the Core series.
Even in editorial, more total cores provided by multiple processors can mean more realtime effects, faster decode of compressed material, or faster renders.
If you don’t need performance, Xeons are overkill. If you do need it, Core series CPUs aren’t competitive.
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 -
[Craig Seeman] “The one difference between 7/X is that they’re not pulling the old hardware entirely. MacPro is consolidated as well as MBP (no 17″) for example. It would seem rather than killing old models they’re allowing them to stay (unlike what they did with 7).”
Let’s change our perspective — what if FCP7 was the transition between FCP6 and FCPX, just like the 2012 Mac Pro and MBP updates? Relatively minor updates prior to a one big one?
[Craig Seeman] “It think radical change is afoot and they don’t want to encourage people to buy interim models.”
I think you’re right on.
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 -
“However, for mograph and 3D animation (my main business), Xeons are great. With multiple processors in the same machine — and multithreaded renderers able to use them — there’s a huge performance gain over the Core series.”
Entirely understood, but I rather think that your niche area isn’t typical of the majority here. I just get the feeling that the joke about the man who goes to heaven might be appropriate –
“Welcome to heaven”
“I’m very pleased to be here – but what’s that big wall over there?”
” Ahh – that wall separates everyone else from the Catholics – they think they’re the only ones here”The world of everyone else is much bigger than the world of the Mac Pro, and it moves much faster. I think at this point it would be a mistake to sit inside the big wall and not look out .
Bernie
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[Bernard Newnham] “Entirely understood, but I rather think that your niche area isn’t typical of the majority here… The world of everyone else is much bigger than the world of the Mac Pro, and it moves much faster. I think at this point it would be a mistake to sit inside the big wall and not look out .”
Oh, I certainly agree. I’ve been saying here for some time that many editors here do not need a Mac Pro and can very comfortably use an iMac. CPU power grows exponentially, and has outpaced video needs. However, even within editorial, I think that saying that saying there’s such a thing as enough computational power is short-sighted.
Like you say about the sitting inside the big wall and not looking out — I think that it’s a mistake for editors to ignore ancillary fields like mograph, animation, compositing, color correction, and audio, all of which benefit from more CPU, GPU, and expansion options.
It does not benefit professional editorial on the Mac if the platform loses these related disciplines because there is no suitable hardware to support them.
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 -
[Kevin Patrick] “I like the fact that Apple chooses to move forward.”
Sure, and I think that Apple’s risk-taking is a net positive for computing — but it’s a double-edged sword for us, too. I talked about that in FCPX and the Domino Effect [link]. It’s all cool and groovy while the surprises are good, but a misstep has magnified impact.
This is one of the things I like about working cross-platform. I can take advantage of Apple’s good surprises, but I’m not stuck with their bad surprises.
[Kevin Patrick] “Why do you feel the retina transition will be jarring?”
Apple provided long support over the PPC/Intel transition. I’m saying that the retina transition could be jarring if Craig is right and Apple is encouraging Mac users to all upgrade to retina around the same time by withholding a meaningful interim update. Essentially, by neglecting the desktop now, they can get a huge population of Mac-using pros to hold their current machines longer and all upgrade to retina at around the same time — and that means fewer older machines to support, or a shorter window of support for old machines than has been offered previously.
Brilliant strategy? Conspiracy theory? Totally off-base lunatic ramblings? You decide!
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 -
[Craig Seeman] “I suspect FCPX will continue to tie more closely with the OS and hardware and they want to drop backward compatibility as quickly as possible. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly 10.6.8 support falls, which by this summer, will be two OSs back.”
It’s interesting to speculate about Apple dropping support for 10.6 in light of these numbers:
https://insights.chitika.com/2011/mac-os-x-lion-fails-to-roar/
That data is 6 months old (I’d like to see more recent data) but it shows that Lion isn’t the upgrade success they might like it to be.
Franz.
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “That data is 6 months old (I’d like to see more recent data) but it shows that Lion isn’t the upgrade success they might like it to be.”
Note that they’re now giving away 10.6.x free to those on 10.5.x to get them to move to 10.7.x
This is all part of what I think is their accelerated push to leave to the “old” behind.
Note how 10.8 will only be $20 rather than 10.7’s $30.Apple’s new strategy is the great lurch forward.
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[Craig Seeman] “It think radical change is afoot and they don’t want to encourage people to buy interim models.
“Then say so.
This isn’t idle speculation in the schoolyard about the new iPod.
They created a universe in which countless businesses operate.
There are many ways to communicate in that universe without damaging your cloak of invisibility.
Besides, why should their vow of secrecy apply to a lowly market share that apparently doesn’t pay for the window washing in Cupertino – just communicate with the non i users about your/their future together if you see one.
Or continue with the let-them-eat-cake attitude that’s serving you so well now.
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“I’ve been saying here for some time that many editors here do not need a Mac Pro and can very comfortably use an iMac. CPU power grows exponentially, and has outpaced video needs.”
I’d better say first that I think there absolutely should be a performance beast option from apple, and there are areas that definitely benefit.
But…there seem to be a lot of people on these boards who talk about the importance of performance and then say that they buy a top-end workstation and only replace it every 5 or 6 years.
If you what you care about is computational power (and I accept that workstations might have other advantages) then you’re always better of buying mid-range and replacing more often. Because “CPU power grows exponentially.”If you’d had a fixed budget to spend on macs over the last 10 years – let’s say enough to be on your second, ageing mac pro screamer- you’d have got far more calculations per second from 4 generations of imacs. On average you’d have had a much faster computer for the same money.
Sorry for the off-topic. Yes, apple will come up with something and it will “infuriate and amaze” pros.
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