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New Macbook Pros to be “thin” ?
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[Chris Kenny] “- FCP X has “pro” in the name, was introduced at an event for pros, and is portrayed by Apple by Apple has a pro product. “
Of all your arguments, Chris, this has got to be the most frustratingly naive. To offer this as evidence is basically saying “it’s pro because Apple said it’s pro.” Of course, Apple would NEVER mis-represent a product to gain exposure and credibility (this sentence is sarcasm). Who are you going to believe, Apple or you lying eyes?
Please, stop making excuses for every single concern people have. It makes it hard to take you seriously.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Chris Jacek] “Aside from the dedicated graphics card that we discussed earlier, there are concerns like hard drive space. The SSD are awesome for speed, but not yet reaching practical video storage sizes. If you get to the point of having 1TB of total SSD storage, then it’s probably time to consider completely replacing spinning drives.”
I could see thinner MBPs adopting the stick SSDs the MBAs use and still having room for an HDD where the optical drive used to be. OWC sells a kit that let’s you do that now, in fact.
[Chris Jacek] “Also, there is not an upgrade option for graphics cards. The 17″ offers the stock card only, so you top-out at 1 GB, despite there being much beefier cards out there. In the past, you could BTO higher-end cards for a price. Usually a high price, but at least available.”
That just means they used to sell a 17″ with less GPU then the maximum they could stuff in there and still meet their targets for thermal output and power consumption. Note the 15″ options up to the stock GPU of the 17″. There are indeed higher end MGPUs, but they will run too hot and heavy for Apple to consider them for MBPs. Apple will not sacrifice thinness and battery life for a slightly more powerful GPU.
[Chris Jacek] “And there are absolutely no options for CUDA capable NVIDIA cards, so there is no chance of hardware acceleration for Premiere Pro. Of course, this could be argued as a competitive choice.”
You can thank Intel and NVIDIA for that. Until very recently, Intel would not license NVIDIA to support the Core iX chips on NVIDIA’s chipsets with their embedded GPUs like the 340M that Apple used on the later Core2 MacBook models. This might not technically preclude Apple from using dedicated GeForce MGPUs with Sandy Bridge CPUs. I don’t know if they’d be Thunderbolt compatible or not or if there is any other technical gotcha. I do know there was considerable political strife between Intel and NVIDIA last winter when the Thunderbolt MBPs were being finalized.
Best,
Andy -
[Walter Soyka] “Miniaturization comes at the cost of processing power, storage, or battery life.
Instead of a smaller, lighter computer, Apple could offer one at the same size, the same weight, and a lot more power. Personally, I’d prefer the former for my personal use and the latter for my professional use.”
Given that current quad-core MacBook Pros are as fast as 2008 8-core Mac Pros, I don’t really see the problem. Apple’s pro laptops have maintained largely the same form factor for a decade now — it seems like we’re actually overdue for another round of miniaturization.
Especially since Apple is probably going to continue to use the same processors and GPUs that would have been used anyway, and accomplish the space savings by moving to lower capacity but faster SSDs (arguable either way in terms of ‘pro’ use) and elimination of the internal optical drive (which takes up way too much space given how infrequently many users use it these days).
[Walter Soyka] “I invite you to explore some of the “mobile workstation” offerings from PC manufacturers. They’re big, heavy laptops with serious onboard graphics, more memory slots, two hard drives instead of one, etc. Apple hasn’t had a product in this category in a long time, and they’ll get even further away from it if they Air the entire line.”
Apple has never had a product in that category. Certainly not in the last decade, since the introduction of the Titanium PowerBook. This is another instance where people are making the argument that Apple is shifting directions by, essentially, misrepresenting Apple’s past direction.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Andrew Richards] “There are indeed higher end MGPUs, but they will run too hot and heavy for Apple to consider them for MBPs. Apple will not sacrifice thinness and battery life for a slightly more powerful GPU.”
I agree, but I think that supports the theory that Apple is trending away from power-users, pros, whatever you want to call them. There is clearly a conscious choice toward small and light, over powerful.
At no point have I suggested Apple is completely abandoning the pro market, but they are certainly trending away from them in favor of a larger market-share.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Chris Kenny] “Apple has never had a product in that category. Certainly not in the last decade, since the introduction of the Titanium PowerBook. This is another instance where people are making the argument that Apple is shifting directions by, essentially, misrepresenting Apple’s past direction.
“It’s not an argument of the past. These mobile workstations are quite possibly the trend of the future for video professional, and Apple does not want to be a part of that. They want to redefine what video professionals are. If that redefinition is to sacrifice power for size and cool factor, then it is not a large leap of logic to assume that they are trying to appeal to a different group. It would be smart business.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Chris Jacek] “Of all your arguments, Chris, this has got to be the most frustratingly naive. To offer this as evidence is basically saying “it’s pro because Apple said it’s pro.” Of course, Apple would NEVER mis-represent a product to gain exposure and credibility (this sentence is sarcasm). Who are you going to believe, Apple or you lying eyes? “
In any event, I believe the idea that Apple is effectively lying about FCP X to sell a few more copies to — Who again? Consumers don’t actually buy $300 software — is seriously implausible, and there simply is no requirement to believe this unless one has already bought into the “Apple doesn’t care about pros” meme.
[Chris Jacek] “Please, stop making excuses for every single concern people have. It makes it hard to take you seriously.”
You asked me to provide alternative explanations for Apple actions that you believe represent Apple abandoning the pro market, and to provide a positive argument for the idea that Apple was not doing this. I did so, in significant detail… and your response is to ignore everything except a single point and tell me you can’t take me seriously because I responded to all of your concerns?
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “You asked me to provide alternative explanations for Apple actions that you believe represent Apple abandoning the pro market, and to provide a positive argument for the idea that Apple was not doing this. I did so, in significant detail… and your response is to ignore everything except a single point and tell me you can’t take me seriously because I responded to all of your concerns?”
Frankly, I just decided to pick the one that bothered me most. I don’t have the energy to keep up with you. You incessantly try to defend Apple against EVERY SINGLE CRITICISM any person on this board has had. I chose to refute this one, because I think it best illustrates your fervent state of defensiveness against any comment made against the infallible Apple.
I think I could knock down at least half of your “significantly detailed” responses, but you’ve worn me down, so I guess I’ll just say “you win.” You’re right about everything, and we’re all part of the vast conspiracy.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Chris Jacek] “It’s not an argument of the past. These mobile workstations are quite possibly the trend of the future for video professional, and Apple does not want to be a part of that. They want to redefine what video professionals are. If that redefinition is to sacrifice power for size and cool factor, then it is not a large leap of logic to assume that they are trying to appeal to a different group. It would be smart business.”
I don’t understand the case for these mobile workstations being the future trend for video professionals. This class of system has been around for quite a while, and seems to mostly appeal to the LAN party crowd. I’m not saying nobody uses them, but I’ve yet to see one on-set, and I’m on a fairly large number of sets.
Why would there be a trend toward bulkier laptops among video pros now, when MacBook Pros have really started to come into their own just in the last year, with Thunderbolt and quad core processors? What specific use cases are these bulkier machines better for? Not offline editorial, certainly. An 11″ Air can breeze through that these days. Not online editorial either; a Thunderbolt-enabled MacBook Pro can online uncompressed 1080p/2K with little difficulty. VFX work? There’s typically not much possibility to perform that in the field, since it’s usually rather meticulous work. Color grading? We’re probably within two years of real-time 1080p grading in Resolve on MacBook Pros.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Jacek] “Frankly, I just decided to pick the one that bothered me most. I don’t have the energy to keep up with you. You incessantly try to defend Apple against EVERY SINGLE CRITICISM any person on this board has had. I chose to refute this one, because I think it best illustrates your fervent state of defensiveness against any comment made against the infallible Apple.”
In other words, you’re saying I’m not to be trusted because my position is too comprehensive. OK, then.
I’m still not sure what’s so obviously reasonable about accusing a company of outright lying about what market a product is intended for, and so “fervent” about disagreeing with such an accusation. Particularly given existing features and announced future features that make no sense if Apple is lying.
[Chris Jacek] “I think I could knock down at least half of your “significantly detailed” responses, but you’ve worn me down, so I guess I’ll just say “you win.” You’re right about everything, and we’re all part of the vast conspiracy.”
No, you’re all a bunch of people who have bought into a theory and are now fitting the facts to it. It happens all the time. No conspiracy is required here; all of the coordination between the “Apple is abandoning pros” folks has taken place in full public view.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Andrew Richards] “Then again, they could go even thinner and taper at an angle closer to that of the MBA if they dropped the Gig-E and FW800 ports from the chassis and sold Thunderbolt adapters for them. I wouldn’t put it past them. Those ports are duplicated after all on the new Thunderbolt Display.”
And I think that’s a decent hint Apple will do precisely that. Getting rid of those thick ports is probably half the reason Apple pursued Thunderbolt in the first place.
It’s going to be entertaining to watch people claiming Apple doesn’t care about pros because they’ve replaced a couple of ports with a new port 10x as fast.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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