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What the new Mac Pro means for those evaluating FCP X
It seems to me I was Apple’s ideal target customer. A “closed” shop, meaning I don’t have to pass projects around much. I’m also heavily invested in Apple hardware and am actually open-minded about FCP X’s magnetic timeline and other features. However, I was waiting till this fall to make a switch with new hardware and software because of scheduled projects. Also, I wanted to see what happened with the Mac Pro. After all, it doesn’t matter how good FCP X is if there is no workstation to run it on. Quite frankly I thought it was a no brainer for Apple to renew the Mac Pro line if they were truly serious about FCP X.
Now in the wake of this announcement I would say my probability of switching to FCP X dropped from 70% to 30%. Short of Apple announcing a road map of what they plan for their hardware, I’m not sure how they can retain my business. The current offerings don’t work for me and I’m not waiting two years for a workstation with Thunderbolt. It makes me a little sad. But, I think it will push more people to Premiere which will give it more of a critical mass of professionals using it, which had given me pause.
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27 Replies
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Not only that, but if you use Adobe Creative Cloud and end up switching to a Windows workstation, you don’t have to purchase new software.
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[Brett Sherman] “What the new Mac Pro”
Oxymoron
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It depends on what the MacPro offers you over their other options and why.
The market for MacPros are small (were small even when last introduced in 2010).
David Pogue says he was “assured” by an executive that MacPro and iMac will have major updates in 2013.
That’s not good if true. When one includes the iMac, that leaves ALL desktop users in a lurch. It means even the iMac isn’t getting updated to Ivy Bridge and USB3.The self defeating thing is that FCPX likes lots of RAM and lots of GPU. So they’ve seem to have limited FCPX itself as a result.
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And why 2013? Doesn’t make any sense at all? Virtually all PC makers are shipping workstations with new Sandy Bridge Xeons.
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“You also agree that you will not use these products for… the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”
iTunes End User Licence Agreement -
[Frank Gothmann] “And why 2013? Doesn’t make any sense at all? Virtually all PC makers are shipping workstations with new Sandy Bridge Xeons.”
I assume that the MBPs, MBAs and iDevices were the top priority so the desktop machine dev got delayed. I’ve read that Apple doesn’t like expanding and contracting its workforce so they just move people around internally to work on priority projects as opposed to bringing outside workers in to help out during busy times.
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[Frank Gothmann] “And why 2013? Doesn’t make any sense at all? Virtually all PC makers are shipping workstations with new Sandy Bridge Xeons.”
That makes little sense to me either. Even if they couldn’t add Thunderbolt, I’d think Sandy Bridge, new GPU, 6Gb SATA, PCIe3 would have been a reasonable speed bump.
And I can’t see not updating the iMacs to Ivy Bridge and USB3 now. -
[Andrew Kimery] “the desktop machine dev got delayed.”
I can understand that the MacPro would be a major ordeal given Thunderbolt and GPU integration and case redesign but that wouldn’t have the case for iMac with Ivy Bridge and USB3.
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It makes little sense unless going all mobile is what they want and that’s what they’re pushing.
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“You also agree that you will not use these products for… the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”
iTunes End User Licence Agreement -
It just makes me wonder why they even bothered with FCP X to begin with. I would say this raises the question of whether they will kill it eventually. One might suspect that there is a strategy at Apple. However, my suspicion is that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing and there actually is no cohesive strategy for the pro market. And as a result they are going to eventually kill the pro apps without fully intending to do so. The take away, though, is that they simply do not have a commitment to the pro apps for me to wager on Apple for the future. 2013 is no sure bet for a Mac Pro update, and I’m not going to attempt to eek another year(or two really) out of my 2007 Mac Pro. It’s just mind-boggling. After all the man hours that went into FCP X, they’re going to kill it because they can’t be bothered to spend a much smaller amount of man hours updating the Mac Pro.
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[Craig Seeman] “I can understand that the MacPro would be a major ordeal given Thunderbolt and GPU integration and case redesign but that wouldn’t have the case for iMac with Ivy Bridge and USB3”
No, they get the board design directly from Intel. A bend shim and mutilate and there is no reason, in 6 months time, with a minimal staff of people that they could not spin a new version. What you see is a spin that was done by a marketing dept not an engineering dept.
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