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Working Over the weekend…
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[Oliver Peters] “Hmmm… A shop with 30 Macs but only 4 edit suites is hardly a large post house. Granted that may be the case today, but if you come from the days of large linear bays and machine room infrastructure, it’s hardly the same thing.
Unfortunately today’s reality dictates frugality and yesterday’s edit boutique is today’s large post house. If you expect to survive these days, you really need to develop a business model that allows for a complete refresh every 3 years (or less) and to have most of that paid for by active projects and not by loans. Smart companies have alays done that. It’s called having an annual Cap Ex budget and sticking to it.
Like it or not, the direction Apple is taking is supportive of that environment. I see plenty of places that are still running FCP 6 on G5s or early Mac Pros. They followed the philosophy of not replacing it because it worked. Now the stuff is so long in the tooth that it’s not a simple matter of upgrading but rather a complete, expensive overhaul of the facility. Having smaller, cheaper gear with comparable (or more) power makes it easier to pursue a plan of more frequent refreshes without breaking the bank.
Oliver
“Most accurate and insightful post of the week, IMO.
Nice one, Oliver.“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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[Andrew Richards] “The one exception with the Mac Pro is GPUs. No other Mac has a GPU as a user-replacable card, and I have no idea what it is that keeps AMD and NVIDIA from shipping drivers for OS X on more of their products.”
No kidding. I don’t know if it’s the chicken or the egg. There has to be a good reason somewhere.
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easy there tiger, when did i say avid’s business model is great or they will survive?
I’m saying the 2 companies don’t compare to each other. If HP came along and bought Avid then you can compare them side by side. but right now they are in 2 different levels of business. Apple can afford to forget about FCP and never notice the chump change they lost, where Avid has no hope if MC6 tanks and will gladly gather up all the loose change apple dropped.
and as a side note, neither of these companies send me a paycheck so i could care less if they both vanish. I’ll find some other software to use.
Scott Cumbo
Editor
Broadway Video, NYC -
[Bill Davis] “If you read my post carefully, David, you would note that the metaphor was something to spark thought – it was not a position.
I know that’s a difficult distinction, but at least in thoughtful discussions (which are common here) I’d appreciate the freedom to put forth ideas that aren’t easily distilled down to inaccurate sound bites. “
Bill, would it help if I put a load of smiley faces next to my jokes? If so, I will do that in the future (though I’m loath to do so) if it helps you to distinguish my (obviously feeble) attempts at comedy from my more serious dialog.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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[Walter Soyka] “I know you keep saying that Mac Pros aren’t built for speed, but at launch, they really are. They are fast, and they are cheap compared to the competition. The value for a Mac Pro starts out high, then drops off until Intel’s next microarchitecture. Other vendors update more frequently to keep the value curve flatter.”
And what does that PC upgrade require? I’m not quite sure, I’m sure you know better, but with a MacPro, it’s buying a whole new box. With a PC it might be a proc change or a motherboard change, or both, but you don’t have to buy a whole new box.
[Walter Soyka] “Apple is a sporadic competitor in this space. It’s weird. They’re only showing half a commitment. If Mac Pros are not built for performance, what are they built for?”
“External connection” OSX users. I’m not saying MacPros don’t perform, they do. They perform for quite a while, but (again) Apple is not concerned about being the fastest computer on the market all the time. This would mean they would have to keep a growing and regular inventory of a bunch of spare parts that keep changing. That’s not how they got all the profit. They limit their hardware offerings, and have little refreshes here and there that are mostly proc updates, and some case designs in the case of MBPs to get some more battery life. If there was no Desktop Sandy Bridge delay, we wouldn’t even be talking about this because it would be obvious Apple was waiting to refresh the MacPros for Thunderbolt to being parity across the entire line, which they are pretty good at doing. Since it’s taking longer, it feels longer, and delays still happen in real time. How many more times can I say this? I think I should start saying it differently. 🙂
[Walter Soyka] “Apple has explicitly exited the enterprise market,”
You mean for servers? They can still use MacPros if they want. An Xserve is not a MacPro. As a matter of fact an Xserve was kind of like what Craig Seeman proposes the next macpro is going to be. I think Apple will just release another MacPro, but that’s just me. I think there’s also programming and AeroSpace/3D modeling that prefer OSX to Windows and it’s NOT about the speed of the CPU, but rather the Terminal. You know that whole thing I say that Mac’s aren’t always about the speed, but system stability (ease of use)?
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Craig, just because commoditization made things artificially cheap for awhile, doesn’t mean they will stay that way. Commoditization burned through the PC market over the last two decades. We went from few people in the world having computers to everyone in the industrial world having computers. The emphasis changed then from having a computer to having a portable computer. Apple has actually been a relative bit player in this commoditization frenzy, and only came into its own with the success of the iPhone. “Mobile device” is now at the center, but how long it will remain there before saturation, I don’t know.
Now, when the focus of computer commoditization was on the desktop, market forces drove chip and video card development to a point where ordinary desktops competed with and even out shown workstations. But, that is not the norm. Its a false condition. The market is now saturated, and the focus has moved to mobile devices. And, Apple has moved with it. They are surfing the commodity wave. BUT, workstations are still needed. Specialized computing is still needed by the scientists, doctors, designers, and other heavy lifters. For that matter, heavy lifting editorial software is still needed. It will be provided by smaller companies, as it has been traditionally, with niche foci. Quantity will go down, prices will go up. We may even end up partially back in the world of custom software. If it is not Avid, it will be somebody else.
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[Scott Cumbo] “and as a side note, neither of these companies send me a paycheck so i could care less if they both vanish. I’ll find some other software to use.”
Hmm. Must be a sign of the times.
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ah bill now… don’t pay attention – don’t you mind those nasty.. what did you call them again.. oh yes; “editing country club set” talking down to you.. you keep feeding seabiscuit that hay there…
tee hee hee.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
[Oliver Peters] “I see plenty of places that are still running FCP 6 on G5s or early Mac Pros. They followed the philosophy of not replacing it because it worked. Now the stuff is so long in the tooth that it’s not a simple matter of upgrading but rather a complete, expensive overhaul of the facility. Having smaller, cheaper gear with comparable (or more) power makes it easier to pursue a plan of more frequent refreshes without breaking the bank.”
It’s very new that there is smaller, cheaper gear with comparable power. You could run Smoke on a iMac today if you wanted to, but it wasn’t practical to use iMacs instead of G5s for editorial in 2005.
The cash flow advantages of buying a $2500 iMac every two years instead of a $5000 Mac Pro every four are real, but that’s only a viable option if the iMac suits your needs.
You don’t need a workstation for editorial anymore, but there is still a workstation market for creative professionals around editorial. I’d argue that by handicapping the Mac Pro, especially in conjunction with the other ripples they’ve made in the professional space, Apple is inviting studios to consider PCs.
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 -
[Jeremy Garchow] “And what does that PC upgrade require? I’m not quite sure, I’m sure you know better, but with a MacPro, it’s buying a whole new box. With a PC it might be a proc change or a motherboard change, or both, but you don’t have to buy a whole new box.”
I’m not talking about PC upgrades. I’m geeky, but I never got my soldering merit badge. I wouldn’t even consider upgrading a processor myself. I’d buy a new box irrespective of platform.
I’m talking about PC manufacturers continually making small refreshes. Speed bump? Make the new processors an option. USB3? Update the motherboard if necessary, or use one of those extra PCIe slots to provide the connectivity.
If I buy a PC today, in 6 months, it will be 6 months out-of-date. If I buy a Mac today, in 6 months, it will be 2 years out-of-date.
Maybe it’s immaterial. They’ll both be made obsolete by Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge, just to varying degrees. In between the big lurching industry-wide advances, though, falling a year behind is a big deal when a machine has a three-year duty cycle.
[Jeremy Garchow] “You mean for servers? They can still use MacPros if they want. An Xserve is not a MacPro. As a matter of fact an Xserve was kind of like what Craig Seeman proposes the next macpro is going to be.”
Mac Pros aren’t as server-friendly as you might think. They’re way too big, they don’t offer server-specific features like redundant power supplies and lights-out management.
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
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