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MacBook Pro 17″ vs. Mac Pro
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[Jim Giberti] “[Craig Seeman] “It think radical change is afoot and they don’t want to encourage people to buy interim models.”
Craig, I’ve asked this in a post below already? Suddenly it’s excused as “avoiding nterim”, as if it’s some compromise not worth dealing with.
There is nothing interim about it in the way you mean it. Sandy bridge brings more cores, PCIe3, more lanes, Sata6G, USB3, there are modern GPUs. None of that will change with Ivy Bridge. It’ll be 22nm and use less power. And by the suitable Ivy Bridge Xeons ship they will be “interim” because a new Intel roadmap will be out there.
If something is interim then it’s the current “update”. And that’s not even “interim”, just a “rim-job”.——
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[Jim Giberti] “Then say so.”
They have. Tim Cook. New Mac Pro (replacements?) next later next year.
They showed you the non update of the MacPro.
It’s not quite a clear regarding the iMac though except an easy update to Ivy Bridge did NOT happen (yet).[Jim Giberti] “There are many ways to communicate in that universe without damaging your cloak of invisibility.”
At least Tim Cook caught this quickly and responded between Pogue/NY Times and Forbes. He didn’t let speculation linger. He responded.
[Jim Giberti] “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.”
They communicated. When a product has low market share you have a couple of choices, kill it entirely, change it entirely. They choosing the latter. That Cook said latter next year is far more advance notice and roadmap than we got with 7/X.
They have something in the works that they believe will sell better and apparently targets who they believe is the MacPro or desktop user. In this case he’s been blunt head on about a change coming later next year.
Unlike FCP7, they’re keeping the old MacPro available for sale. Count that as step up rather than just doing a kill switch like they did with 7. They’ll keep the old Pro for sale (and iMac) until the change. Notice that they’re doing that with the old MBP and the new MBPr but that may in part be due to the huge price difference. Old MBP may well be gone by next year as well.
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[andy lewis] “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.” “Agreed, Andy. Anyone who looking for raw performance from a workstation older than 2 or 3 years is behind the curve.
Buying a high-powered machine and holding it longer gives you an early relative performance advantage that fades. Buying a mid-grade machine and turning it over sooner flattens the relative performance curve, trimming both the high and the low.
It might be interesting to plot CineBench score per dollar per month for a set of machines and holding times…
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
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[Frank Gothmann] “There is nothing interim about it in the way you mean it. Sandy bridge brings more cores, PCIe3, more lanes, Sata6G, USB3, there are modern GPUs. None of that will change with Ivy Bridge. It’ll be 22nm and use less power. And by the suitable Ivy Bridge Xeons ship they will be “interim” because a new Intel roadmap will be out there.”
Apple doesn’t want you to have that right now. Like it or not. I’m simply analyzing their business model.
Whatever they have coming isn’t ready yet whether it’s development on Intel’s side or development on Apple’s side. That I don’t know. It’s very CLEAR they’re not updating the MacPro until “later next year” and whatever it is, they want to create pent up demand for it. Apple is pushing people to move to new hardware and they don’t want you buying something this year that’s going to stay around. It may be “greater than the sum of the parts” as far as they’re concerned. -
[Craig Seeman] “They have. Tim Cook. New Mac Pro (replacements?) next later next year.
They showed you the non update of the MacPro.”Wow, epic communication – no wonder the professional community is so at peace with their relationship.
[Craig Seeman] “At least Tim Cook caught this quickly and responded between Pogue/NY Times and Forbes. He didn’t let speculation linger. He responded.”
He responded to the third party misinformation with a vague sense of something some time within the next 18 months or so. We’re talking businesses here, that have been crying for information regarding their platform for a very long time and you think this is the answer they need?
[Craig Seeman] “They have something in the works that they believe will sell better and apparently targets who they believe is the MacPro or desktop user. In this case he’s been blunt head on about a change coming later next year.
“Really, I didn’t see this press release from Apple.
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[Jim Giberti] “Wow, epic communication – no wonder the professional community is so at peace with their relationship.”
They’re communicating and being blunt about it. People want the news even if they feel it’s bad. No MacPro replacement until “later next year.” There’s good news, news, silence, Tim Cook gave us the news.
[Jim Giberti] “He responded to the third party misinformation with a vague sense of something some time within the next 18 months or so. We’re talking businesses here, that have been crying for information regarding their platform for a very long time and you think this is the answer they need?”
His not going to give out details he doesn’t want competitors to know. Timelines are not locked in stone. Any developer will tell you that. Heck talk to RED. He was very clear, MacPro related later next year. He clarified that it’s not related to iMacs.
Apple’s business. Cook jumped in quickly and clarified and the next major MacPro transformation. Now us business people can make a decision on that one way or another. You don’t have to like it but he gave it to us.
You can’t seriously think Apple would do this as a press release. That would truly be business stupid.
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[Craig Seeman] “You can’t seriously think Apple would do this as a press release. That would truly be business stupid.
“Well you were so definitive about it I assumed you must have read it somewhere.
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[Jim Giberti] “Well you were so definitive about it I assumed you must have read it somewhere.”
Tim Cook contacted a customer via email and Apple confirmed the contact and information to the media.
Apple CEO Tim Cook also confirmed the 2013 release of the Mac Pro in an email to a customer. Here’s a copy of the email, which Apple told me was indeed sent by Cook to a customer identified only as “Franz.”
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[Craig Seeman] “Apple CEO Tim Cook also confirmed the 2013 release of the Mac Pro in an email to a customer. Here’s a copy of the email, which Apple told me was indeed sent by Cook to a customer identified only as “Franz.”
“What is this, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ?
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[Walter Soyka] “Agreed, Andy. Anyone who looking for raw performance from a workstation older than 2 or 3 years is behind the curve.
“Walter,
I absolutely understand your desire for “absolute performance” since you work in the part of the pipeline where real time compositing, rendering and the hard core calculation makes the difference between you being more or less productive.
But I have to wonder whether the FCP-X model of expressing EVERYTHING as metadata is seriously changing that.
With the new X construct, I know I’ve simply moved “final output calculation” well downstream in my workflows. As I work in X, I’m really just building text lists that avoid almost all the processor heavy lifting – leaving the big calculation load i to after the client has viewed and approved my inter-stage work – that’s probably why I’m finding X so responsive in the laptop world.
I think more and more software is going to work this way. Less crunching code to do stuff in real time – and more simply building and manipulating metadata journals – not just in the database, but to express the actual editorial functions as well.
That “two stage” process – fast decisions now – optimal quality later when I need it – is driving HUGE efficiencies in my work.
It’s clearly the central factor that’s driven all the “change this small thing and wait for the section to re-render” mode that was so integral to working in Legacy.
And the fact that it’s gonna take my laptop overnight to calculate finals isn’t always a gig problem for me. What I need to do FAST is editorial – which in the world of X is kinda now all just metadata journaling.
As long as I can park on a frame and see the ultimate quality represented, I’m good. I can then get back to work making my decisions in a lower rez stream, and even email that stream out for editorial approval via email. I find this to be amazingly efficient in X compared to my years in Legacy.
I personally am rooting for whatever The 2013 “Pro User” refresh that Tim Cook has hinted at to be something that has some type of “scaleable” rendering engine under the hood – perhaps using TBolt and/or Grand Central to leverage additional horsepower. That might even provide for guys like you who currently require the big iron approach – and also let the same software work for someone like me with lower rendering requirements.
Seems like a pretty smart approach rather than requiring all of us to run on “big iron” whether we want to maintain a business infrastructure to support those kind of hardware arrays or not.
Fun to speculate.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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