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OT: Apple to drop Mac Pro?
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“I’d be curious to learn what on earth Apple has to do to get on the bad side of some of these people.”
Perhaps stop their long successful march to the top of the modern business world?
(Just sayin’ )
“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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[Steve Connor] “Get some HP workstations, now there’s a company that may or may not be committed to the PC space.”
HP is keeping their PC business [link].
Also, HP is the clear leader in the workstation market [link]: they shipped 42.3% of units in 2Q11 (I haven’t seen 3Q’s numbers anywhere yet), with Dell at 33.8% and Lenovo at 9.9%.
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 -
That’s exactly what I mean. People are very much invested in what makes sense for Apple and their balance sheet rather than what makes sense for their business. I don’t care if Apple is at the top of the modern business world as long as they are profitable. World domination for Job’s mignions is not something I am interested in. I care about my business, my balance sheet, my customers and their needs.
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“Watson was built with server/workstation-class hardware.”
Absolutely, Walter.
What it WASN’T built with is a huge array of Towers, because the form factor is only smart for single purpose “closed” systems where you needed everything directly adjacent to the CPU to maximize throughput.
Watson clustered processors in the smallest physical continuity and attached the “clusters” of processors together using high speed, short pipes as you noted.
As Thunderbolt migrates from copper to optical – Intel’s proposed roadmap of speed capabilities increasingly makes a processor at one end of the “pipe” handle data FASTER than one in an “old style” box on an internal buss.
That’s the “tipping point” in computer design that makes the “tower” form-factor irrelevant.
Who cares if the CPU, the GPU, and the bank of memory modules are in one arbitrary box? Or in slots on a rack? Or in closets at different ends of the office? It’s meaningless if the result is a system that crunches the numbers, displays the result, and allows you to manipulate everything, at will, a hundred times faster than you can now?
(IIRC that was the Thundrerbolt spec for the version 3 (all optical) interation. 100 times the bandwidth of USB 3.0)
That changes EVERYTHING about computer form factor design, as I understand it.
So hanging on to the specter of a computer as a “box” with cards in slots isn’t in tune with where the hardware industry is clearly evolving.
To keep on topic for the forum, back when I started editing digital video, I dropped a lot of frames even working with 25Mbps DV on my Mac Quadra of the era.
Today, I NEVER drop frames editing HD-DSLR footage on my i7 MacBook Pro via FCP-X. That’s the point. Absolutely I can’t edit multiple streams of uncompressed RED footage on this same laptop right now, so I get those who still have to keep their brains “tower centric” and off-load stuff like video calculations to card-based sub-processors. But the writing is CLEARLY on the wall. That’s NOT going to be the case for very long.
So invest carefully. If you can’t “Section 179” it – maybe it’s not a great investment? Tho that’s obviously between you, your business model, and your accountant.
FWIW.
“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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THANK YOU!
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[Walter Soyka] “If you are primarily a video editor, then the Mac Pro is not for you anymore. It’s simply unnecessary. You can get by with the Mac Mini of the future (or maybe even the Mac Mini of today).
However, while you are editing on your Super Mac Mini, some of us are actually happy to pay for proper workstations for animating and compositing. While you are envisioning iPad editorial, some of us are building render farms to get better work done faster.”
Very true, most work I do does not require heavy duty animation and compositing, I don’t need the power so I don’t fear the change. However If I did do a lot of heavy duty animation and comps, I would have switched from Mac a while ago.
I don’t think there is any question Apple is moving away from many segments of the Pro market at the mid to high end. I think they are positioning their creative tools at the editorial content market, not for anything that requires real horsepower.
Of course it would help a lot of people if they just told us what they were planning!
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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[Frank Gothmann] “People are very much invested in what makes sense for Apple and their balance sheet rather than what makes sense for their business.”
You’re missing WHY Apple products sell well. This includes the Computers which are increasing in market share.
A cost effective power box will sell far more TO PROFESSIONALS than a PCIe driven box in which facilities have to make redundant card purchases. Thunderbolt Video I/O and RAID that can be moved locally or feed through a Thunderbolt tied “brain” will be much more cost effective for many facilities.
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“Advanced internal architecture” – it’s delusional to think that you can cramp the functionality and flexibility of a tower into an iMac or Mini.
For a lot of cards there is not even a Thunderbold equivalent or adapter anounced. Also, calling a choice of fast gpus and fibre connectivity “old crap” is just stupid and ignorant.Glad to hear three meters of cable is enough for you. Screw the rest of the community including larger companies for which it isn’t, right?
No, I don’t get the PCs for free. But I pay less for them than for the current Macpro and I DON’T have to buy any new hardware if a new Macpro or whatever may follow was TB only to get the same functionality that I already have and for which I already paid top dollar. -
[Frank Gothmann] “rrelevant because I can “choose” to buy HP, I don’t have to. I can go with any tower I like, from any manufacturer I like, and if I want I can get individual components and build my own machine according to my liking, needs and budget. Same if I just have to replace or upgrade a component. Nobody is dictating anything to me, what I should and shouldn’t use and how to use it.”
You’ve always been able to do that, if that’s so great why use Apple in the first place?
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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[Steve Connor] “You’ve always been able to do that, if that’s so great why use Apple in the first place?”
Because of FCP. It was the sole reason I ever bought a Mac in the first place. With it’s demise, it looks like I’m back in the land of hot rods.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf
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