[Andrew Kimery]

Sorry to hear about your loss, Chris. Never easy to lose someone close to you, especially a parent.

[Andrew Kimery]

[andy patterson] “I am glad you disagree because I never made that statement. I stated it would be easier for Adobe (the programmers) to only support one OS and one GPU platform. CS 5.5 was bug free for the most part. “

You make the statement every time you say you want Adobe to only support Windows and Nvidia because you think that will lead to better performance (i.e. fewer bugs, Adobe coders not being stretched as thin, etc.,).

[andy patterson] “As I stated you don’t write software exclusively for an i7 VS an i3 CPU. “

But you could write software that takes advantage of Quick Sync, and Quick Sync is only available on some CPUs.

My point is about looking at computers holistically. For example, different CPUs can have different motherboards which can have different chipsets, drivers, firmware, etc., which means greater potential for miscommunication with the OS which means greater potential for miscommunication with Adobe’s software. That’s three totally different companies trying to work in concert (four or more if you start filling up PCI slots or plugging in peripherals) compared to Apple which oversees it’s hardware, OS, and first party software under one (soon to be round) roof.

[andy patterson] “As I sated you are implying Adobe would get a performance boost by excursively using only a Sky Lake Quad Core i7 , Zotac GTX 1070, Corsair Power Supply and Crucial RAM. I am saying that would not be the case. Some one would pop in an 8 Core AMD and blow it out of the water. “

Hardware is the constant and software is the variable in this situation. Hypothetically, let’s say Adobe makes two versions of PPro. One version is what we have today and it supports MacOS, Windows, OpenCL and CUDA. The other version is tailored for only Windows and CUDA. Both versions on installed on a Windows PC with a GTX 1070 card. Which version do you think runs better on that PC?

[andy patterson] ” I want options as far as hardware goes. What I am saying is opt for Windows and CUDA only. “

That seems a bit contradictory. ????

[andy patterson] “None the less this thread has been interesting.”

Agreed. 🙂

[Andrew Kimery]

So are we talking about the UI look of the panels (which is mostly up to the dev) vs the more GUI restrictions in X, or additional functionality that can be created in PPro via the panels that is beyond what’s capable in X? Or both?

[Andrew Kimery]

[Shawn Miller] “Of the corporate producers I know, about half of them are on Windows and the other half is on OSX. As (maybe) a curious side note, it seems like the more they lean toward 3D/VFX/mograph work (AE, C4D, Max), the more likely they seem to be on Windows, I’ve also seen a number of people switching in the last few years as they move from FCP, or consider hardware upgrades.
“

Over the last 10yrs or so there certainly seems to have been an influx of Macs into the ‘no one ever got fired for buying IBM’ world. For 3D and animation work I too generally think of that as PC dominated. Which makes since because a render farm of PCs can be cheaper and faster than a render farm of Macs and PCs have a lot more flexibility when it comes to GPUs, drivers, etc.,. I mean, it’s only been in the last few years (I think since 10.9) that you could put pretty much any GPU in a Mac as opposed to only Mac-specific GPUs. AFAIK even now non-Mac GPUs still don’t fully function if installed on a Mac (you lose the boot screen which means no access to pre-boot features like Safe Mode, selecting a different boot drive, etc.,).

[Andrew Kimery]

I think we’ve gotten into the weeds a bit and are talking past each other. Long story short, I just disagree with your statement that if Adobe dropped Mac support and went PC-only that somehow performance would increase remarkably. I think the hurdles created by so many hardware and software variables on the PC side dwarf the hurdles created by maintaining MacOS compatibility.

I’m aware that AMD and Intel both produce x86 CPUs, I’m also aware of how differences in things like chipsets, drivers, and firmware in various PC components can have ripple effects that cause performances issues/bugs in Configuration A but not in Configuration B even though both meet the recommended system requirements. Adobe could ‘go narrow’ and severely limit the range of hardware and software it supports in an attempt to get meaningful performance boosts at the cost of broad compatibility, but I think that would be a penny wise/pound foolish tactic. IMO a large part of Adobe’s general appeal is that the software is incredibly accessible from a device standpoint. Mac or PC, laptop or desk, Android or iOS… Adobe’s solutions are there regardless of your choice of mainstream computing platform.

In 5 or 6 years though, who knows. That’s eons in tech time, but I do think Adobe likes being ubiquitous.

[andy patterson] “Actually there are PC gamers playing XBOX games at 4K instead of 1080 and they can also get more FPS than an XBOX. That is not to say the XBOX does not work good.
“

A more apples to apples hardware comparison with optimized vs non-optimized software was what I getting at. Those PC gamers aren’t playing 4K games on PCs that have the similar hardware specs as an Xbox One (which by PC gaming standards are pathetic).

[andy patterson] “You are saying an XBOX 360 from 5 years ago can play the newest games as good as a brand new XBOX ONE?”

No, I’m saying the games that come out near the end of a console’s lifecycle generally look and perform much better than games that came out in the beginning of a console’s lifecycle because devs learn how to better optimize for a fixed hardware platform.

For example, the Xbox 360 came out in 2005 but one of the best looking games for the 360 was Crysis 3 which came out in 2013. Contrast that with a PC where its gaming performance goes down over time, not up. Trying to play an FPS from 2013 on a middle of the road PC from 2005 won’t be pretty (assuming the game will even launch). For another example, the PS3 was much more powerful than the PS2 but many early PS3 games didn’t look remarkably better than late cycle PS2 games because the devs had ‘mastered’ the PS2 but were still figuring out how to take advantage of the PS3’s hardware.

When you can optimize the software to the hardware then you can get better performance than using unoptimized software on the same hardware. Video games are just an easy example to illustrate this point.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Shawn Miller] “That is interesting – I wonder what explains the differences we’re seeing in OS preference… region maybe?”

I mainly do doc/unscripted as well as larger web/digital companies. Especially in LA a lot of the work is directly or indirectly connected to TV and film (and broadcast/film is Mac-country in LA) so I think that has something to do with it. You are either working on a TV/film project or you are working with people that have worked on TV/film projects and bring their workflow with them. Or you have no connection to TV/film, but you aspire to work in TV/film so you mimic their workflows as best you can in order to become knowledgable about them.

But even when I was in Indiana it was Mac-centric for audio and video post production. Corporate guys seemed to be mainly PC and I always assumed that had something to do with their clients and/or IT departments being PC-centric (birds of a feather and all that). Plus (real or imagined) there is always the ‘Apple tax’.

[Andrew Kimery]

Thanks for the extra info, Joe.

[Andrew Kimery]

[andy patterson] “Premiere Pro was only brought back to the Mac because Apple opted for Intel CPUs. If Apple opted for Motorola next week Adobe would have to decide if it is worth it or not. Adobe already has to worry about Open CL and CUDA both. I think they should stick to one or the other. I would hate to have them write for the instruction set of a non X86 CPU on top of that. “

I partly agree with you. Many of Adobe’s programs started on the Mac and then went to PC and, AFAIK, Premiere is the only one of Adobe’s major programs that went from cross-platform to PC-only. Adobe went PC-only with Premiere because between Avid and FCP they had no significant market share on the Mac side (it was more about ROI than technical hurdles of being cross-platform). If Apple stayed PPC then Adobe probably would’ve stayed away until FCP 7 was killed. That’s the opening Adobe needed for PPro and if a Mac vesion didn’t already exist you would’ve seen them create one and ship it in record time.

[andy patterson] “Switching would be super easy if you use Premiere Pro because every Adobe user would be forced to do it. You also would not have the option to go Hackintosh if they quit support for OS X. I highly doubt Adobe would do it but it would make things easier for them.
“

I’m not just a Premiere user though so the switch would not be super easy. Trust me, I’ve thought about it a lot and once in a blue moon I work with someone that’s on a PC and there’s always bumps in the road that you don’t experience if everyone is all Mac or all PC (and for my needs I might as well consider LA to be all-Mac). I haven’t reached my tipping point yet.

I used to build PCs so I’m not afraid of Windows, it’s just easier being on a Mac in my situation.

[andy patterson] “What if Premiere Pro gets a boost in performance from the new AMD CPUs?
.
.
.
Actually if it was not for Apple Adobe could have kept supporting CUDA only. All PC vendors offer Nvidia but Apple does not offer Nvidia in the Mac Pro.
.
.
.
It is the CPU and GPU that the programmers must worry about. Not hard drives and RAM.
“

That’s my point about more variables in PC hardware vs Mac hardware. Even if Adobe picked Nvidia GPUs and Intel CPUs to focus on (leaving out Intel GPUs, AMD CPUs and AMD GPUs) which CPUs and GPUs are they going to pick? Are they going to pick reference or non-reference GPUs? What if computer makes like Dell and HP focus on a different roadmaps? What if AMD CPUs and/or GPUs are a better value? Don’t you think customers will be mad that Adobe only supports a tiny handful of PC parts?

It’s in Adobe’s best interests to support as much hardware as is feasible so they aren’t alienating good sized chunks of their user base (and potential user base). I think a good example of this is that Adobe’s Mercury engine used to be CUDA only on select Nvidia GPUs. Then it went to a wider selection of Nvidia GPUs. Then they started supporting any GPU with at least 1gig of RAM and OpenCL was thrown into the mix as well.

[andy patterson] “They would still be writing for Windows, Intel and Nvidia so it would work on any PC with those components or are you suggesting Adobe actually be like SGI and make their own CPU, GPU and OS”

If Adobe picked one build of Windows, one Intel CPU, one Nvidia GPU and one Mobo and wrote a custom version of PPro (or whatever app) exclusively for those components they could get a sizable performance boost compared to running the ‘works everywhere’ version of PPro on the same hardware.

It’s like console gaming vs PC gaming. An Xbox One is basically a low spec PC running Windows but the games on it can look and perform better than PC games on a similarly spec’d PC because the devs can focus on getting the most of a specific set of components. And the longer into the console’s lifecycle you get the better the games look because the devs have had that much more time to how to optimize their games for the hardware. Contrast that to PC gaming where the older your computer gets the more it struggles to play newer games (forcing you to turn the quality sliders down).

[Andrew Kimery]

[Walter Soyka] “I think the Adobe trial is down a preposterously tight 7 days.
“

That’s right… well thank you very much Adobe. I guess at worst you pay for a 1 month subscription to check it out.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Hugue Loiselle] “Does FCP X as a good workflow with 16 G RAM or does it absolutely need 32G? (Wich the MBP can’t have)”

IMO more is better, but 16 is fine.

[Hugue Loiselle] “Should I go with AVID and and monthly membership?
or an ADOBE PREMIERE and the Adobe Bundle?
Is Davinci Resolve a good option? “

The first two have 30 day trials and Resolve Lite is free so you should probably kick the tires on each if you want to.

[Hugue Loiselle] “Should I think of an IMac with 32G?”

Do you need to carry your NLE around with you on a regular basis? If the answer is ‘yes’ then get a MBP. If the answer is ‘no’ then get the iMac. Besides more RAM the iMac also gives you a nice 5K screen and a bit of a performance boost over the MBP. With that being said, the current iMac is over a year old so a new one is probably coming soon.