-
What will Apple do with the Macintosh?
-
As I pointed out somewhere else in this thread. To be completely mercenary about it- even if WE didn’t matter to Apple as a customer base, the strongest case for a MacPro is in support of iOS and Mac developers running Xcode. Doing code-builds in extremely processor intensive, and when you’re testing software, you’re building over and over again. It’s the same advantage that we have when we can half our AE Renders when you’re working on a complicated comp.
And since so many people believe that Apple is ALL ABOUT iOS, it starts to make a lot of sense for Apple to have a machine that serves the developers that serves their biggest profit sector. If Apple can do that, AND serve high-end Audio/Video professionals to boot, that makes lots of sense.
Apple’s never going to back off the Mac platform- it’s the platform for people who MAKE stuff for iOS. You can’t have one without the other. As long as iOS is important to Apple’s business, the Mac will be too.
-
Marcus, just so I’m clear, I DO agree with you that it would make sense for Apple to release a Mac Pro. If I HAD to bet, I would guess that they will. But, there are also a ton of reasons why they might not. It is certainly nothing that I would pin my hopes on. It would be nice, however, if it happens.
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “fwiw – according to Phillip Hodgetts – there are twenty people left in Pro Apps.”
Which is fine. As I’ve often said, if it take one woman 9 months to have a baby, how long should it take 2 women?
The size of the team of coders is important if you’re trying to be all things to all users – since you have to write and adapt code all over hell and back to keep the zilion rooms you’ve created in order and interacting.
If you’ve got a nice tight app like X, you just add well-conceived modules (like their multicam implementation from 10.0.3) and leave the rest of the suite largely intact.
All I’m hoping for is a couple of geniuses working on something useful in the audio module. Maybe something useful in extra color grading hooks, a nice set of I/O calls so that multiple users can make it a little more a “team sport” for the larger shops – then a LOT of work in database I/O so that X increasingly talks to and from the outside world like any smart database should.
Get that modest list done, and I’ll be delirious for the rest of my career.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
-
[Chris Harlan] ”
It blows my mind how much weight you guys put on a single cryptic email, and are able to disregard all other evidence to the contrary. It is pseudo-messianic, the faith some of you have.”It also ignores the fact that Apple could simply decide to not introduce something if the business climate has changed and no longer warrants it. Remember, they are “Apple” and no longer “Apple Computer”. Might the situation of pulling Mac Pros from the EU market be a bit of a test, albeit unintended? Namely it provides a gauge of pent up demand.
Unfortunately for pro users there are three “sort-of” reliable, mainstream vendors: Apple, Dell and HP. Discounting a slew of no-name PCs, Hackintoshes and maybe Lenovo, this doesn’t bode well for companies that rely on that class of machine in the future. I suspect the iMac design model (as well as the HP Z1) might be something developers will increasingly embrace simply out of self-preservation.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
All these leads me to bring up something I mentioned a while back.
Perhaps the “next big thing” will be improvements in clustering. Granted it doesn’t solve a lot of issues currently but it would be interesting if one could build CPU/GPU clusters for the routines like decoding and FX rendering just as one encodes across multiple machines for file delivery. Granted the technology might not be there, to replace the direct access on the motherboard but perhaps Apple/Intel is already doing research in that area.
-
Oliver –
I think that you should definitely include Lenovo in the workstations choices – the D30 compares quite favorably to some of the HP high-end offerings, at a comparable or better price point:
https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414794,00.asp
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
[Craig Seeman] “Perhaps the “next big thing” will be improvements in clustering.”
Don’t know if you saw this one yet, but intel is looking to do just this in their servers.
The interconnect is 100Gb/sec light pipes. 🙂
Of course, this is all rack based technology.
An excerpt:
“Future. Ultimately, the industry will move to subsystem disaggregation where processing, memory and I/O will be completely separated into modular subsystems, making it possible to easily upgrade these subsystems rather than doing a complete system upgrade.”
Jeremy
-
[Oliver Peters] “t also ignores the fact that Apple could simply decide to not introduce something if the business climate has changed and no longer warrants it.”
That would be true of any vendor. PC side included. Yes there will always be servers, but will the needs of the server market and the pro workstation market diverge? After all servers don’t need sophisticated graphics cards. And blade servers will likely replace the big box servers. Predicting the future is always dicey whether you are doing it with Macs or PCs.
The bottom line is that processing power and buss bandwidth are going to continue to increase. So I don’t know why people assume I’m banking on Apple doing anything. What I’m sure of is there will be an Apple solution that I can work with. Heck, I just ordered a 27″ iMac that will work fine for me. Next year if there is a Mac Pro that works for me I’ll buy that.
-
I had heard about that and the first rumors I heard were some time back which is why I brought up the theoretical clustering a long while back.
I am curious about what functions will be clusterable. Right now you can cluster across machines for encodes in Compressor of course. I can’t help but think down the road one would cluster on import for optimized and proxy media and also internal FX rendering functions (and wouldn’t it be great if GPUs could be clustered as well).
Personally I think this is where things will be heading. It would be nifty if they can get there by the time 100gbps Thunderbolt becomes available.
I also think as part of Apple’s MacPro rethink, they’re going to be banking on people buying new MacPros as Thunderbolt technology progresses. Again this is Apple’s move to “commoditization.” I’ve mentioned that before as well. Apple wants us to upgrade our computers more frequently. Buying a MacPro and holding on to it as a “lead” computer for 4 years or more doesn’t make them as much money as buying an upgrade every two years like an iPhone.
This is why I’ve said it’s not that Apple has become a “consumer” company, it’s that they’ve learned how to make a commodity that one buys and replaces frequently. The older versions don’t get retired though (not for some time at least) and as they stay in circulation, Apple increases its market share. They also increase sales by more frequent replacement.
As much as some of us “power” users (MacPro buyers) keep upgrading components (as I did with my 2008 MacPro GPU and, now, can do so again) some things will require a new purchase. That would be for changes in Thunderbolt technology on the motherboard. As a tangent, it’s why I think Apple may have one motherboard socketed GPU on the new MacPros.
Basically I think the reengineering of the MacPro will result in wider sales and more frequent replacement. Of course it’ll still be relatively niche but the niche might be a bit bigger and ROI for Apple will be greater than the current MacPro… which some of us have kept going with 2006-2008 models.
-
[Brett Sherman] “After all servers don’t need sophisticated graphics cards. “
And that’s why I’m guessing Apple will have a motherboard socketed GPU in the MacPro replacement. It’ll be enough to take care of Thunderbolt as needed but you won’t need to put a GPU in the 16x slots. It’ll make it easier (and maybe a hair less expensive?) to sell a server model without a 16x PCIe GPU installed.
It’ll be a “fat blade” as I suspect tossing out the two optical bays and having only two PCIe slots (currently 4 if you include the GPU), they’ll find a way to make the case a bit smaller.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up