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New Macbook Pros to be “thin” ?
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[Bill Davis] “MASSIVE pipes change EVERYTHING. The location of nodes becomes unimportant when the data FLIES around an optical racetrack as fast as the one envisioned in the TB future roadmap.
Simple as that.”
That’s not as true on laptops as it is on desktops. At the end of the day, any peripheral that you have to connect, makes it less mobile. You can’t daisy chain a bunch of peripherals on a plane. So yes, there absolutely is value to a dedicated graphics card, unless you are looking at a laptop as nothing but a terminal used to control other equipment. At that point, you’ve lost all the advantages of going small.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Chris Kenny] “In other words, you’re saying I’m not to be trusted because my position is too comprehensive. OK, then.”
Yes, that’s EXACTLY what I’m saying. You are so brilliant than you thoroughly knock down EVERY argument that EVERY person makes, no matter how much logic or evidence is behind those arguments. And you do it with SUCH class Chris. I’m in awe.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Andrew Richards] “Is Apple moving away from the market, or is a slice of the market moving away from Apple? Seems to me this mobile workstation niche is a relatively recent market development and probably too narrow for Apple to pursue. I don’t read what is happening as Apple abandoning pros, I read it as Apple not chasing dragons in the form of hardware niches that won’t sell sufficient volumes to justify development (again, see Xserve).
They’d need to create a whole new segment of their product line to meet the specs you’d like to see, and that ain’t gonna happen for the sake of a few thousand potential sales.”
I think we’re mostly in agreement here, and it is a good chicken/egg question. It might be more accurate to say that the traditional pro market and Apple are moving in different directions. I do think that truly powerful mobile workstations are only a recent phenomenon, due to new technologies. What is possible in a big laptop now is truly mind boggling, but you do have to commit to a bulkier laptop.
I think there is still a decent segment of the market that likes to have that kind of power in an 8-10 pound laptop. Count me as one of them. The fact that I can still put this computer into my backback, and take all my projects with me without offlining, is pretty attractive.
Apple seems uninterested in that market. The question is whether that market will become uninterested in Apple. If so, that is Apple and the traditional pro market shifting away from each other. If so, both sides will probably be fine with the change.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
[Andrew Richards] “Like this? Apple will never ever make such a thing. I would argue they never have. Heck, if you don’t mind lugging another 8 lbs, you could carry around a 21″ iMac.”
I was thinking fondly of my old G3 PowerBooks, with SCSI or Firewire and a flexible expansion bay that could hold an optical drive, spare battery, or hard drive, long before the notion of mobile versions of desktop processors even existed — but you’re probably right. Apple has never really competed in this space.
I think the comparison to the iMac is more than a little disingenuous. The iMac is luggable, but still requires power and a table. The GoBOXX is large and heavy, but still fundamentally portable by design, and can run off mains and on your lap.
I’m not saying that the GoBOXX is the ideal laptop. It is way too big and way too heavy for most uses. However, there are corner cases here, found almost exclusively in professional markets, that would gladly trade bulk and weight for more power.
There are a couple interesting trends in video on laptops throughout this thread that I think are worth calling more attention to.
First, Gary pointed out that he’s been comfortably editing on his MacBook Pro for some time. ProRes has even made online-quality editorial possible on a laptop’s internal drive.
Chris correctly points out that the introduction of Thunderbolt is a major improvement for video I/O and storage. This will be a huge benefit for new laptops.
Gerald has pointed out that laptops with docking stations can be dual purpose. You can have one machine that’s a reasonable laptop on the road and powerful desktop in the office (though I’d dispute that Thunderbolt is currently fast enough to be the bus for a workstation-style docking station with an external GPU).
That said, connectivity is not the feature that makes a mobile workstation. Raw processing power is, and it’s only recently that video editors have had a reason to look to this category which 3D artists and CAD designers have been using for years.
Previous-generation NLEs were 32-bit, lacked pervasive multithreading, and couldn’t use GPU acceleration. They incurred only a relatively small performance penalty on a portable when compared with a high-spec desktop. Current-generation NLEs (FCPX and Premiere Pro), however, can efficiently use all the hardware in the machine.
The performance gap between standard laptops and iMacs on one side and big-iron Mac Pros on the other will widen as modern applications make better use of the hardware. Focusing on miniaturization or reduced power consumption across the entire portable product line at the cost of processing power will exaggerate that gap.
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 -
[Bill Davis] “I was talking to a Phil Hodgets a month ago and he was describing the effect that Thunderbolt will have in version 2 and 3 (on the existing Intel development roadmap) and how that has the potential to transform how computers will work in the future.”
Intel is good at roadmaps. It’d be nice of Apple picked this up from their partnership.
The changes you’re talking about are still pretty far out, and aren’t practical on Thunderbolt 1.
[Bill Davis] “The computer itself becomes more the “sum of it’s connected parts” rather than a physical BOX sitting somewhere. Thinking has to change here folks. The future will NOT look like the present. Not in software – not in hardware – not in workflow.”
You’re right. The future will not look like the present. It will look like the past. Sun Microsystems was a quarter century ahead of their time.
I think it’s critically important that we always maintain the understanding that the future will be different, but that the present still matters today.
Let’s assume that FCPX and Thunderbolt are all the foundations of Apple’s plan for the future of professional editorial — it won’t change the fact that these future solutions you’re describing don’t exist yet. We still have to get our work done until the future gets here. Too much forward-thinking leaves too big a gap between where we are today and where we will be tomorrow, and Apple isn’t helping us to build that bridge from where we are to where we all will be.
I am not suggesting that we fear or resist change. In my niche in the industry, display and playback technologies turn over roughly every 18 months, and they all require different workflows. I get that change is a constant, because change is at the heart of my business model.
I am suggesting that we be nimble. We need to look forward to see where we’re going (which is easier said than done — as Chris Jacek and Chris Kenny illustrate, two smart people can look at the same trends and predict different futures). We need to be ready for the change that will inevitably come, but we need to be practical about when and how we adopt it.
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 -
As always Chris, most of your reply is insightful and interesting, but then you just can’t help yourself I guess …
“They’re still in the NLE market, despite having to rewrite their NLE from scratch to remain competitive.”
They were more than competitive at the time, they didn’t have to rewrite their code from scratch. They chose to, and that choice is open to various interpretations. Yours is one, but not the only one, and not the only thoughtful one.
“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.”
Oh, come on now, do I really have to go research and list the number of misleading names by major corporations, the only point of which is to increase sales. The rest of that paragraph was fine, but this is foolish.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[Herb Sevush] “They were more than competitive at the time, they didn’t have to rewrite their code from scratch. They chose to, and that choice is open to various interpretations.”
This is the simply not the case. Pre-X FCP was written directly on top of Carbon and QuickTime, two deprecated 32-bit APIs that would have made it effectively impossible to for Apple to modernize the app. There was no reasonable alternative to rewriting.
It’s true that Apple could have chosen to write a new app that worked more like the old one (and therefore allowed for more backwards compatibility), but it was fairly predictable that Apple would take the opportunity provided by a rewrite to try to do something new and interesting — that tends to be how Apple operates.
[Herb Sevush] “Oh, come on now, do I really have to go research and list the number of misleading names by major corporations, the only point of which is to increase sales. The rest of that paragraph was fine, but this is foolish.”
It makes no sense, given Apple’s larger pattern of behavior around FCP X, to believe Apple is lying about what market it targets.
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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] “Yes, that’s EXACTLY what I’m saying. You are so brilliant than you thoroughly knock down EVERY argument that EVERY person makes, no matter how much logic or evidence is behind those arguments. And you do it with SUCH class Chris. I’m in awe.”
I’ve advanced a substantive argument in this thread, in response to your direct request, and you’ve chosen to ignore my points and respond by attacking me personally. I can’t quite figure out how you think this benefits your case.
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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] “I’ve advanced a substantive argument in this thread, in response to your direct request, and you’ve chosen to ignore my points and respond by attacking me personally. I can’t quite figure out how you think this benefits your case.”
I disagree. You are more often prone to knee-jerk defensiveness than thoughtful discourse, and I don’t want to play that game any more. Anything that threatens your desire to see Apple as infallible is met with resistance.
Unfortunately, your responses that are thoughtful and substantive are marginalized by some of your other responses. If you are going to argue against every single negative word, even if it means resorting to illogical positions like “Apple wouldn’t call it pro if it wasn’t”, you are going to diminish your credibility.
We are trying to make sense out of the everchanging industry that we work in, and need to open-mindedly consider whichever path that leads us down. Doggedly defending the Apple like a mother cub (sorry for the animal mixed metaphors) only serves to cloud rational debate.
Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee -
What do you think would have been the result of calling it Final Cut X, leaving out the pro? If they came out with a product that didn’t call itself “Pro” no high school kid in America would have touched it, let alone an experienced editor, it would have announced that they were no longer “cool.” They had to keep the word Pro in the title, even if they dropped the Final Cut. Calling it Final Cut Pro X was strictly a marketing move, nothing else can be inferred other than cash flow.
I guess this comes down, as so many arguments do, to semantics. What do we mean by the word “pro.”
FCPX is obviously not aimed at the Imovie market. I maintain that just as obviously, it’s not aimed at the “high end” or, if you will, the “complex workflow” market.
It was rolled out when it was because it had the feature set that was aimed at their target market: emerging video makers, pro’s creating work to be distributed on the web, shops who’s workflow doesn’t require collaboration. Many of these people are by definition professional, many of those that aren’t will one day be. So yes, FCPX is absolutely “Pro” if that’s the definition of the word you want to use.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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