MacBook Pros “underpowered?” Not for FCP X editors. Not AT ALL.

[Santiago Martí]

I thought Radeon Pro 460 had 4 Gb of ram. Other than that, one could notice that last year Dell, at half the price is 3 times faster than the new MBP running PPro.
I’d like to see the new Dell and a Razer in the same test, and Da Vinci’s Resolve too.

Santiago Martí
http://www.robotrojo.com.ar
Red Epic Dragon, Sony FS7, Sony a7S, Red Pro Primes, Adobe CC, Assimilate Scratch

[Andrew Kimery]

[Santiago Martí] “I thought Radeon Pro 460 had 4 Gb of ram”

You are correct; the 460 has 4gig.

[Andy Patterson]

[Bill Davis] “Famously: When the tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.
On all sides.”

I think FCPX is a good program but I am not that impressed by FCPX making use of Intel’s Quick Sync. Keep in mind the Mac Pro has a Xeon Processors (no Quick Sync). Also when the new Mac Pro launched at $3,000.00 it could not play the native Red One Codec at full resolution using FCPX but there were PCs for $3,000 that could do it using Premiere Pro. For the record I will put my $800.00 PC with Premiere Pro against your Apple laptop using FCPX to see which one can play more layers of the native Red One R3D codec. Are you up for it Bill? You can feel free to bring a hammer, nails, screw driver and a torque wrench : )

[Shawn Miller]

[Andrew Kimery] “That probably wouldn’t go well as I’d bet the majority of Adobe’s base are Apple users.”

I don’t know if I would take that bet. ☺ I could possibly see the base for dedicated Photoshop and Illustrator users (designers and photographers) skewing a bit more towards OSX, but I would be surprised if motion designers, compositors, 3D/VFX artists, video editors, etc., were as Mac centric as their print/design/photography counterparts. I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but I feel like there’s been a steady stream of 3D, VFX and mograph artists switching to Windows PCs as they continue to offer more and better performance per dollar than any offerings from Apple. I could be completely wrong, but I would be really curious to know what the actual numbers are.

Shawn

[Andy Patterson]

[Bill Davis] “For some reason, no positive X post will EVER go unchallenged here.”

We are not challenging you or at least I am not. I am giving you actual information on why FCPX is faster when using an Intel CPU with Quick Sync. H.264 will render faster on a $2800.00 iMac than on an $8,000.00 Mac Pro. So much for FCPX making use of all the hardware on the Mac Pro. Do you see my point Bill? You could say “thanks for the info” rather than assuming we all hate FCPX. Most of us here say FCPX is a good program. When was the last time you said Premiere Pro was a good program?

[Andy Patterson]

[Shawn Miller] “I don’t know if I would take that bet. ☺ I could possibly see the base for dedicated Photoshop and Illustrator users (designers and photographers) skewing a bit more towards OSX, but I would be surprised if motion designers, compositors, 3D/VFX artists, video editors, etc., were as Mac centric as their print/design/photography counterparts. I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but I feel like there’s been a steady stream of 3D, VFX and mograph artists switching to Windows PCs as they continue to offer more and better performance per dollar than any offerings from Apple. I could be completely wrong, but I would be really curious to know what the actual numbers are.”

Adobe products seem to favor the PC according to the benchmarks. Adobe could just say to the Apple users the PC works just fine and we will no longer support Apple. Having said that I could use the CC on a Mac easy enough but as I have stated Adobe seems to work better on the PC. Adobe should go PC only and let the performance get even better.

[Oliver Peters]

[andy patterson] “Adobe should go PC only and let the performance get even better.”

They’ve been there before and it was not a winning strategy.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Andrew Kimery]

[Shawn Miller] “I don’t know if I would take that bet. ☺ I could possibly see the base for dedicated Photoshop and Illustrator users (designers and photographers) skewing a bit more towards OSX, but I would be surprised if motion designers, compositors, 3D/VFX artists, video editors, etc., were as Mac centric as their print/design/photography counterparts. I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but I feel like there’s been a steady stream of 3D, VFX and mograph artists switching to Windows PCs as they continue to offer more and better performance per dollar than any offerings from Apple. I could be completely wrong, but I would be really curious to know what the actual numbers are.”

Editing, at least in my experience, is very Mac-centric. I’m over 15yrs in and between CA and IN I’ve seen maybe 5 or 6 PC-based NLEs in use. Maybe the shift to PCs will keep happening naturally (depending on what Apple does), but if Adobe just killed Mac support out of the blue it would go very, very poorly for them.

[andy patterson] “Adobe could just say to the Apple users the PC works just fine and we will no longer support Apple.”

Adobe tried that with PPro and came back to the Mac because a huge part of the editing community is on the Mac. Avid merely hinted that they might try that and there was a near riot from their Mac user base.

I’ve thought about switching a lot in the past couple of years, but as a freelancer in LA I move around a lot and it’s just easier to have a Mac because almost everyone else has a Mac. Switching would be more of a headache than it’s worth to me. If anything I’ll do a Hack before I go Windows. Again, not because I have anything against Windows, but just because I work in a Mac-centric part of the industry in a Mac-centric city.

[andy patterson] “Adobe should go PC only and let the performance get even better.”

It doesn’t work like that. Apple can wring out a performance boost because they control both the hardware and the software. Adobe can’t wring out a performance boost by going PC-only because they still have to support millions of possible PC configurations. Now if Adobe went Mac-only then they might be able to better optimize their software for Mac hardware because Macs have very few variables compared to PCs. Or Adobe could build their own Adobe-brand PCs and optimize their software for their machines, but I don’t see that happening either. 😉

[Shawn Miller]

[andy patterson] ”
Adobe products seem to favor the PC according to the benchmarks. “

I think the performance discrepancies on Adobe software (between Windows and OSX) have more to do with Apple’s hardware. FWIW, every cross platform, power hungry creative software application that I can think of runs faster on Windows and Linux computers when equipped with faster hardware (Resolve, Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Renderman, Maxwell, Arnold, Octane, etc.).

[andy patterson] ”
Adobe could just say to the Apple users the PC works just fine and we will no longer support Apple. Having said that I could use the CC on a Mac easy enough but as I have stated Adobe seems to work better on the PC. Adobe should go PC only and let the performance get even better.”

I’m a PC user, but I would hate to see that happen. I think being a cross platform software/services provider makes Adobe a stronger company and helps to make their products better. I also like having a landscape where creative professionals have choices – I want Apple to offer more powerful computers for less money, I want to see Adobe extend the Creative Cloud applications to Linux, and I want BMD to stop giving Resolve and Fusion away for free… of course none of that will happen, but I think those would be good things for the creative community in general. Like I said, I’m a PC user, but I want Apple to give me serious reasons to consider their platform, and once I’m there, I want more than just their applications to choose from. ☺

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Andrew Kimery] “[Shawn Miller] “I don’t know if I would take that bet. ☺ I could possibly see the base for dedicated Photoshop and Illustrator users (designers and photographers) skewing a bit more towards OSX, but I would be surprised if motion designers, compositors, 3D/VFX artists, video editors, etc., were as Mac centric as their print/design/photography counterparts. I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but I feel like there’s been a steady stream of 3D, VFX and mograph artists switching to Windows PCs as they continue to offer more and better performance per dollar than any offerings from Apple. I could be completely wrong, but I would be really curious to know what the actual numbers are.”

Editing, at least in my experience, is very Mac-centric. I’m over 15yrs in and between CA and IN I’ve seen maybe 5 or 6 PC-based NLEs in use. Maybe the shift to PCs will keep happening naturally (depending on what Apple does), but if Adobe just killed Mac support out of the blue it would go very, very poorly for them.”

I do wonder about that though – is it industry , strata or geography? I’ve been banging around in corporate and indie film production for about as long, and in my corner of the creative universe (event, corporate, indie, local, etc)… editors aren’t nearly as OS centric. I think I’ve only been required to use a Mac twice in my whole career… and that was at Microsoft. ☺ Like I said though, I don’t have any real numbers to support my beliefs, but I would be interested in knowing what the breakdown is.

Shawn