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What if there actually IS a new Mac Pro?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Most things they have EOLd, they’ve announced. Final cut studio being the exception, but even then they had a replacement. I’m not saying its a suitable replacement, but it is a replacement via Apple’s eyes.”
To the extent that the future is unknowable and that we are all in a constant state of flux I understand what your saying. Just because a company lays out a “plan” it’s not much of an assurance that the plan, or the company, is going to be there in a few years.
However …
Apple is a company that prides itself on NOT listening to it’s customers; it wears that indifference as a badge of honor, they see it as a virtue. Apple customers are not given a plan because it’s none of our concern – when they make something either take it or leave it. This leads to moments like the X rollout when only a Martian would have seen X as a “replacement” for Legacy at the time of the EOL, and i’m doing a disservice to our neighbors from the red planet.
Some of us prefer the illusion of concern. If I’m going to invest my money with you I want you to look me in the eye and lie to me, tell me that you value me. A plan may not be worth the paper it’s printed on, but it’s a worth a whole lot more than the promise you never made.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Jeremy Garchow] “If I switch to windows and HP or Dell or Boxx, should my confidence automatically be recharged for the foreseeable editing future? If so, how?”
That’s a two-part question. There’s a hardware and a software component. If you really believe in the future of FCPX, then no, switching platforms should not recharge your confidence.
If hardware is the main thing shaking your confidence, and if you are comfortable with the alternatives from Adobe and Avid (and maybe GVG or EditShare), then in my opinion, yes, your confidence could be recharged on another platform.
Windows and PCs exist in a functioning free market that has no parallel with Apple. When you look outside the Apple ecosystem, if there is a need, someone will fill it in exchange for money.
If HP, the workstation market leader, pulled an FCP7 and dropped the workstation market tomorrow, it would create a $3 billion gap [link] in the market. Someone would step up to fill it. More likely, several someones would compete to fill it. As long as someone needs performance computing, there will be a vendor to offer it.
Apple behaves capriciously, and as long as you stay on the Mac platform, you are tied to the decision-making of a single vendor. Voting with your wallet doesn’t work, because within the Mac platform, you have no alternatives to Apple. Moving to another platform with multiple competing and specializing vendors gives you a far better shot at getting the product you need.
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 -
[Herb Sevush] “Apple is a company that prides itself on NOT listening to it’s customers; it wears that indifference as a badge of honor, they see it as a virtue. Apple customers are not given a plan because it’s none of our concern -“
It’s not as if Apple have suddenly become like that, they have always been like it. That hasn’t stopped a large amount of us buying Mac Pros in the past.
Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television -
[Steve Connor] “It’s not as if Apple have suddenly become like that, they have always been like it. That hasn’t stopped a large amount of us buying Mac Pros in the past.”
I might suggest that staying the same as the world changes might not be the best policy. What might have been acceptable once is often not acceptable now.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “I might suggest that staying the same as the world changes might not be the best policy. What might have been acceptable once is often not acceptable now.
“Very true, it will be interesting to see if Mr Cook steers a different course than Mr Jobs
Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television -
[Darren Durbin] “In the enterprise space things are more stable ( see the e3000 example ), but partly that is because large enterprises will pay *significant* amounts of cash to hp/microsoft/ibm in order to keep things that way, but at the lower ‘corporate/departmental/pro/consumer’ level it’s a lottery”
Thank you. You said it much more eloquently than I did and I appreciate it.
Jeremy
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[Tim Wilson] “But when you’re the one guy steering a billion-dollar ship’s IT, you need more than a pretty good idea.”
Call me cynical, but I have only observed CEOs, CFOs, and COOs being worried about current quarter EBITDA, end of month closing. Next quarter, and the quarter after that are a million years away.
Product Development departments present plans to those big corporate officers but they too cannot build a roadmap further out than next year’s capital expense proposal.
Who also would want to be the technical guru who has to explain to the Financial wizards why the current IT and computing products need to be changed…*shuddering at the thought*.
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[Walter Soyka] “If HP, the workstation market leader, pulled an FCP7 and dropped the workstation market tomorrow, it would create a $3 billion gap [link] in the market. Someone would step up to fill it. More likely, several someones would compete to fill it. As long as someone needs performance computing, there will be a vendor to offer it.
Apple behaves capriciously, and as long as you stay on the Mac platform, you are tied to the decision-making of a single vendor. Voting with your wallet doesn’t work, because within the Mac platform, you have no alternatives to Apple. Moving to another platform with multiple competing and specializing vendors gives you a far better shot at getting the product you need.”
Bingo.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Darren Durbin] “In the enterprise space things are more stable ( see the e3000 example ), but partly that is because large enterprises will pay *significant* amounts of cash to hp/microsoft/ibm in order to keep things that way, but at the lower ‘corporate/departmental/pro/consumer’ level it’s a lottery”
Thank you. You said it much more eloquently than I did and I appreciate it.”
Except it’s still not true. e3000 not only cost in the same neighborhood as Xserve — it could cost a lot less. Remember the 146 gigs MAX? The 3.5″ form factor? 8 gigs of RAM? That’s not exactly heavy iron. The A-line was marketed explicitly as entry-level, low cost, near-commodity stuff. I’ve posted enough links that don’t work — you can look this up on your own. There are PDF brochures and still-active support sites a-plenty.
Even at 20 units/rack, 3TB only scratches the bottom rung of enterprise. I bet you have more than that at your shop.
Continuing to support it was a big deal to HP because it was popular, not because it was expensive. To most big companies, big groups of customers matter.
Now having said all that, I think that the idea that there exists a single person who is waiting on Apple to SPEAK before making a decision is…uhm…curious at best.
It’s like when I heard somebody say there was a Bigfoot sighting in Utah. No way, I said. Everybody knows Bigfoot lives in swamps.
So, I won’t say that folks will be waiting until hell freezes over before they hear from Apple. More like waiting until there are a lot of swamps in Utah.
And here’s the last thing I’ll say about this. Corporate roadmaps are worth the paper they’re printed on….and they’re almost never printed on paper. But the question was, are there companies that do roadmaps, and the answer is yes, and they offer products in the same ecosystems and price ranges that we live in — and hey! They’re products and companies that we actually work with.
You may not like them or believe them when they’re talking to you, you may not like what they’re saying, but Microsoft and HP are talking. They’re providing exactly the kind of forward-looking guidance and ongoing support through changing operating conditions that people want Apple to provide.
This isn’t theoretical, and I’m not meaning to be argumentative. Simple question. Are there roadmaps? Simple answer: Yes. Standard operating procedure. Except from Apple. If you want those things, you need to get them from somebody else.
Nothing new here, except that people are finally saying it out loud, because it’s becoming a problem it wasn’t before.
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[Walter Soyka] “Apple behaves capriciously”
Actually I think Apple behaves consciously, not capriciously although some not like their business model.
The inner works of Apple’s process is only revealed through the bits and pieces we get, often by former employees and even then the real workings may not be entirely known.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple want’s to “reserve the right” to change things in very short time frames which would mean revealing roadmaps could be problematic. Of course there may well be development paths where that’s not likely and in those moments you get things like announcements about multicam support or development paths being revealed at WWDC. Apple did reveal FCPX months before it was released but obviously not enough about it for many (most) people.
Also revealing a roadmap isn’t always a great “selling point” unless one likes the roadmap revealed. I certainly can’t speak for others but HP saying they won’t support Thunderbolt is just one such example for me. By the same token, hearing Asus, Acer, Lenovo reveal a roadmap supporting Thunderbolt is something I find encouraging as might Thunderbolt peripheral developers as well.
Basically I feel revealed roadmaps have pluses and minuses for a variety of reasons. My only concern would be sudden changes in hardware which might shorten the life of some key piece of hardware I’ve invested in.
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