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Reactions to Apples business model
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Craig,
Yeah, it has 100gps in it’s roadmap. But don’t forget that top end is ALL optical. Unlike the first and 2nd generation schemes, which have copper involved – which means they pass POWER as well as data.
To get the highest possible bandwidth, manufacturers are going to have to find a way to move power around along with the data stream — that’s going to be at least a minor issue when every device you hang on the pipe needs it’s own separate source of operating power.
Particularly in mobile uses.
It’s probably trivial and the industry will settle on some form of standard “hybrid cable” that does optical and power in separate paths, but they’ll also probably stick us with cables priced according to the retail”monster cable” model.
Won’t THAT be fun!
(sigh)
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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Completely agree with you on all points here and in your other posts with the exception of calling TB solutions “cheap”.
Last time I looked the Pegasus Raid was almost 2000 Dollars. An Areca 8040 hold two more drives, costs less and is almost twice as fast when looking at real world tests (but, of course, it requires PCIe slots). -
[Walter Soyka] “What’s cool about Thunderbolt isn’t how fast it is — because it’s not nearly as fast as other internal expansion options. The game changer here is that it’s external.”
Which is my point. It’s not limited to “workstations.” The entire Mac line can use it (and next year certain Windows computers)
[Walter Soyka] “And back to Darren’s point, Firewire had FW3200 on its roadmap.”
But was never supported.
[Walter Soyka] “but it’s not “high-end expansion.””
Good enough for uncompressed 1080p which at least brings it to HD broadcast. I guess one might argue that Firewire was capable of “broadcast” but it couldn’t handle commonly used DigiBeta’s throughput. That still involved conversion for input. Thunderbolt starts out being further along in its capabilities and certainly in it’s flexibility.
[Walter Soyka] “it’s currently outperformed by 8x and 16x PCIe 2.0 as well as PCIe 3.0 (all shipping today).”
True but I think, unlike FW3200, Thunderbolt’s 100Gb throughput road is more likely to happen unless you really think something else will come along . . . radical change in USB3 to …. ?(I don’t think so). Given Intel’s involvement I think Thunderbolt will see 2nd and 3rd generation much faster than Firewire’s evolution.
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[Bill Davis] “Yeah, it has 100gps in it’s roadmap. But don’t forget that top end is ALL optical”
But long runs sans power will probably serve facilities fine where power can be provided at a common end point/machine room.
While I’m sure there’s always a demand for long cable runs for mobile use I’m not sure power on the cable is mission critical. Think of the typical use of Ethernet cables for example.
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[Craig Seeman] “Think of the typical use of Ethernet cables for example.”
Or current optical fibre channel.
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[Frank Gothmann] “What I find most amazing in this discussion is the way people claim to know how Apple thinks”
And then you go on to claim to know how Apple thinks.
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There’s something about the idea of dropping the Mac Pro that I don’t get: on the basis of “good, better, best” marketing, the top of the range kit isn’t necessarily there to shift units. The purpose of it is to set a top price point that validates the rest of the range, i.e., the stuff that you actually sell in quantity. Most people don’t want or need the ultra-powerful, ultra-expensive machine but they’ll pay a premium price for the mid-range stuff because of the association with the top-of-the-range.
That’s a principle that applies to selling just about everything (not just computers), and Apple are at least as much a marketing company as they are a technology and design company, so it seems very strange to me that they would drop the top priced product because then the next one down the range becomes the top price one, so the median choice for the consumer goes down…
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[Andrew Rendell] “That’s a principle that applies to selling just about everything (not just computers), and Apple are at least as much a marketing company as they are a technology and design company, so it seems very strange to me that they would drop the top priced product because then the next one down the range becomes the top price one, so the median choice for the consumer goes down…”
You don’t get 70 billion bucks in the bank by having expensive MacPros sit out on a dock in China.
Apple is definitely about perceptions of premium, but when they are paying for those expensive intel processors and they aren’t selling, they won’t keep buying them just to say, “look, we have really expensive shit, too!”
The truth of the matter is, if you want a MacPro, or want to save the MacPro, buy them. Buy them early and buy them often, and Apple will keep supplying them.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “You don’t get 70 billion bucks in the bank by having expensive MacPros sit out on a dock in China.
Apple is definitely about perceptions of premium, but when they are paying for those expensive intel processors and they aren’t selling, they won’t keep buying them just to say, “look, we have really expensive shit, too!””
Exactly. Within each model series there’s a bottom to top range. There’s no point to having an entire product line such as MacPro, that doesn’t sell well. And given that small subset I wonder how few 12 core systems they’re selling vs 6 core systems.
That’s why if Apple does anything it’ll be a line that will sell to a wider market. I suspect there is some demand for 6 core systems so they’d probably find a means to integrate that option somewhere. Hence my speculation about how that might work.
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Well, to my mind, there are two types of computer: desktop and laptop (which I tend to think of as fixed and mobile).
So the desktop range goes: Mac Mini – iMac – Mac Pro. Take out the Mac Pro and it goes: Mac Mini – iMac.
So with the Mac Pro in the range, lots of people will buy the top spec iMac (because it’s seen as the median in the “good, better, best” hierarchy). Take out the Mac Pro and the top spec iMac becomes the “best” option and it’s a lower spec iMac that most people will buy.
The marketing contention is that people in general don’t work out exactly what specification they need and buy precisely that, they buy on a compromise of many influencing factors, some of which are purely psychological, so there is a degree to which the top spec Mac Pro really is there to say “look, we have really expensive shit, too!”, because that drives price perceptions lower down the range.
Then, if you’re only going to sell a few of your top spec machines, you only make a few of them. Surely no one’s obliged to manufacture the same number of units of a small selling item as they make of a big selling one, are they?
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