Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Steve Connor] “If Mac’s don’t offer what you need then of course switching is the best option, but at the moment, for me there is no reason to switch. I wouldn’t hesitate to though if I felt it would benefit my work..”
Agreed.
[Joe Marler] “As you said, it’s not about annual unit shipments but annual revenue.”
If you are an Apple shareholder you care about Apple’s annual revenue. If you are a third party company making hardware/software you care about how many Macs ship because that dictates the size of your potential user base which, in turn, directly impacts your annual revenue. Apple has been one of the most profitable computer makers for almost 20yrs, but their very small footprint in the overall PC market place has kept them as a niche player.
The switch to Intel from PPC was a boon though because it made creating/supporting Mac and Windows versions of hardware and software much easier. Even with that though there is a distinct lack of parity when it comes to hardware and software that works with Windows and hardware and software that works with MacOS. Apple deciding to only support it’s own GPU API is a step backwards towards a more isolated Apple (which is a bad step for customers).
[greg janza] “But my son who is almost 16 just shared with me a parts list from PC Part Picker that he researched and he’s getting very excited to build a custom PC. Most of his friends also have custom PC’s. The obvious reason is for gaming but this younger generation is also getting a taste of what the PC world has to offer – i.e., freedom of choice and I think that freedom will be something that they will want going forward.
“For me it’s been cyclical. Like many Gen-Xers I grew up with off-the-shelf PCs at home and Macs at school. When I got more into computers and computer gaming I started building PCs (for gaming and later for editing too). I built a PC for Premiere 5.5 (the old Premiere, not Pro) but I really hated the software. I also couldn’t afford Avid at the time so I chose to go with FCP 3 (which meant buying my first Mac). After years of being able to choose every part that went into my computer there was something nice about having a much more straightforward decision making process and getting a computer that ‘just worked’ (hence why VARs used to be a big thing).
Now that I’ve been in the Mac-eco system so long (with ever-dwindling options) part of me wonders if I’m handicapping myself by not throughly investigating the Windows PC world again. After almost a year of mainly editing on a Windows 10 machine my “OMG Windows!?!” knee-jerk reaction has long since disappeared and many of the things I ‘had to have’ on my Mac were mainly just creature comforts that I don’t really miss now that I haven’t been using them for a while.
Maybe I’ll go back to Windows for a number of years and then go back to Mac a number of years after that. Who knows…
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[Steve Connor] “and still every Agency and Production Company that I work with still use them as their primary computer so they must be doing something right!”
And everyone in Hawai’i knows a surfer, but that doesn’t mean surfing is equally as popular across the entire U.S. ????
Since the 90’s Macs have historically been very overrepresented in creative fields compared to their overall market share. On a related note, over the last 10yrs or so the amount of Mac users I’ve seen grumbling about Apple’s offerings, building Hackintoshs and/or switching to Windows entirely has steadily increased. But Apple will still make money hand over fist even if they lose hundreds (or even thousands) of Mac users so they probably aren’t too concerned about it. As has always been the case, they make the products they want to make, not necessarily the products customers want them to make.
In some necks of the woods there is a common lament about Avid remaining so popular mainly due to institutional inertia and I think a similar argument can be made for Macs in creative industries. As video production continues to democratize and grow we’ll see more and non-media more companies building their own in-house teams and it will be interesting to where companies that have no legacy/baggage land. Assuming of course they don’t ask their Mac-centric editor friends what platform they should go with. ????
For example, when I’ve worked for established media companies covering the video game and esports realms I’ve worked on Macs, but when I’ve worked for the game companies themselves I’ve worked on PCs (since the gaming world is PC-centric).
My default is still to go with Macs, but I know a lot of that is my comfort level with the systems, workflows, and ‘helper apps’ I’ve grown accustomed to over nearly two decades. Switching platforms would certainly present a learning curve in a few areas, but maybe that, in and of itself, should be a compelling argument to switch…
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[Craig Seeman] “So we should see a mass exodus of CUDA dependent software from the Mac platform since they are such an insignificant player? After all, why bother developing for such an OS. Or perhaps macOS is important enough that they’ll improve support for AMD as you say Adobe is doing.”
Each company is going to decide what’s a better use of their time and resources (developing for Metal because Apple gives them no choice or dropping Mac support so they can keep focus with Nvidia), but if it looks like Apple will block Nvidia indefinitely I wouldn’t be surprised to see companies dropping MacOS (or just maintaining a token presence while shifting primary focus to Windows). Apple is already a bit player in many/most computing areas (hence the 7% marketshare) so it’s not like they are indispensable (generally speaking).
Weird how Apple drops support for the two most widely used GPU APIs in order to force people to adopt their Mac-only, proprietary API yet some how everyone else is the problem.
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[Craig Seeman] “But Apple’s business model is hardware and they’re fourth (although a distant fourth. They’re bigger than Acer and Asus. If you break out computers over $1000, Apple’s share would be larger. We’re talking about higher end GPUs here aren’t we. “
Since Apple is the only hardware maker that lacks support for Nvidia GPUs it doesn’t matter that they are a distant fourth overall, it matters that the other 93% of the personal computer market supports Nvidia GPUs.
Nvidia makes a wide range of GPUs so we talking about everything from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand.
[Craig Seeman] “On Macs, Resolve performs much better than Premiere Pro using the same AMD GPUs, keeping this to the two cross-platform NLEs commonly used on Mac.”
Just because Resolve has a faster render doesn’t mean Adobe hasn’t been improving theirs. If Adobe was being intransigent then they wouldn’t have 1.) increased the GPUs that can be used for hardware acceleration beyond just Nvidia, 2.) improved their OpenCL performance, and 3.) added support Apple’s proprietary API Metal.
Why is Resolve faster at rendering? I don’t know, but Adobe can both be improving (thus not intransigent) *and* still slower than Resolve at rendering. They aren’t mutually exclusive positions.
[Craig Seeman] “Apple’s decision to use AMD exclusively only seems to impact Adobe negatively so far.”
Apple’s decision impacts anyone that wants to use Nvidia GPUs on a Mac. They could be gamers, 3D modelers, Premiere users, RED users, game developers, computer scientists involved with AI/deep learning, etc.,.
Below is a link to a list to some Mac software that uses CUDA:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/gpu-accelerated-applications/catalog/?product_category_id=&search=macIf Apple wanted to ship computers w/only AMD GPUs I could understand that from a supply chain and/or business partnership relationship, but to not support Nvidia’s drivers in Mojave (thus cutting out the eGPU and cMP crowd) is just belligerent. It hurts Apple as a platform, hurts Apple’s users, and underscores the general fear that Apple is an unreliable partner that will brick your workflow at a moments notice for no good reason.
I’ve accepted that Steve Jobs’ dream of computers being a sealed, appliance-like, user-inaccessible device grows closer everyday (much to Woz’s horror), and that whenever the next MP drops it will likely be as un-upgradeable as an iMac or Mac Mini. But to arbitrarily block what peripherals I can use with it based on brand (i.e. an Nvidia GPU) just can’t be justified. What’s next? They block all eGPUs from working except for the overpriced offerings from their business partner Blackmagic?
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[Craig Seeman] “In tests that I’ve seen Resolve takes much better advantage of the AMD GPU on Macs than Premiere Pro. That would be Adobe’s intransigent.
“I don’t see Adobe as being intransigent. They are willing to change. They have changed. They’ve done a lot to get non-CUDA performance to be much closer to CUDA performance because their users asked for it. Comparing Adobe to itself (CUDA vs OpenCL vs Metal) on the same platform is the only Apples to Apples comparison, right? Not having the fastest render on the Mac is just not having the fastest render on the Mac. I don’t see it as a sign that Adobe is suborn or acting like it’s their way or the highway since over the years they’ve greatly expanded the GPUs that people can use in order to get hardware acceleration (form a small selection of Nvidia GPUs to basically any GPU that meets some pretty basic hardware specs).
Of course this whole issue would be moot if Apple would just allow Nvidia’s drivers to work with Mojave instead of only supporting their first party API, Metal.
[Craig Seeman] “You’re holding it wrong. Apple was 4th in hardware sales”
Platform vs platform shows that Apple, per your graph, has about 7.2% of the market while non-Apple PCs have 92.8%. And of that 92.8% I’d guess at least 90% of those non-Apple computers run Windows. So to Michael’s point, Apple is a small player in terms of user base.
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[Craig Seeman] “Adobe is not taking the best advantage of AMD (GPU assisted encoding/decoding) from what I’ve heard.”
Over the years Adobe has improved it’s OpenCL performance and it also adopted Apple’s proprietary API, Metal. Obviously Adobe supports CUDA as well, so I think it’s just the normal performance trade off between creating software that only runs on a vary narrow range of OS and hardware vs creating software that runs on a wide range OS and hardware.
And if there is some magic in CUDA that allows Adobe apps to run best with Nvidia cards (regardless of host platform) why shouldn’t Adobe leverage that? RED partnered with Nvidia to create an off-the-shelf replacement to their REDRocket cards so maybe Nvidia is just making a better product right now?
Apple has dropped OpenCL/GL support, won’t allow certify Nvidia’s drivers (thus blocking CUDA) so the only game in town is Metal if you are on the Mac. I don’t see anyone being intransigent except Apple (and that has been their MO historically).
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[Craig Seeman] “Of course, both Adobe and Apple are stubborn forces but in Apple’s case, alternatives to Adobe are evolving. It may take a couple of years but Adobe intransigent hurts Adobe”
Maybe I’m missing something, but how is Apple refusing to certify Nvidia’s drivers for Mojave the fault of Adobe?
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Going by the video, I don’t why the creator says that both companies need to come to their senses when seems like Nvidia is writing drivers for the Mac, but Apple refuses to support them in Mojave. It doesn’t sound like Nvidia is doing anything to prevent their cards from being Mac-compatible.
[Bob Zelin] “The only reason this debate goes on and on about Nvidia is because of Adobe software. Why won’t Adobe and AMD (or Adobe and Apple) play ball ? “
Adobe software runs fine on AMD cards, it just can have better performance leveraging Nvidia’s secret sauce in CUDA. Of course now we are getting into the area of Apple using out dated versions of OpenCL in order to force people onto Metal.
And it’s not just Adobe users on the Mac that get shafted by this. For example, if you have one of the new Nvidia cards it’ll debayer your 8K REDCODE RAW footage in real time thanks to Nvidia’s partnership with RED. Nvidia cards are still the go-to choice for many GPU-centric needs and Apple’s refusal to support them only hurts end users.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/12/13/red-digital-cinema-nvidia-8k-movie-editing/
I’ve been a Mac-centric user for nearly 20yrs, but for the last year I’ve been editing on a PC and to be honest I don’t miss Macs nearly as much as I thought I would. Even my Mac tower at home has spent more time booted into Windows 10 and MacOS.
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[Tom Sefton] “Out of interest have you used a MacBook Pro with premiere pro recently?”
From the complaints I’ve seen it’s only been with 2018 MBPs so it might be some odd intersection of the 2018 MBP, Mojave and PPro. No other hardware and software combo seems to be having this problem.
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[Oliver Peters] “Personally I suspect a 2019 MP will build upon the design of the Mini and rely heavily on eGPUs. Then it’s less of a card issue and more of a driver issue.”
Right, I poorly worded my statement. It’s is a driver issue, as opposed to a physical piece of hardware issue, but if the drivers aren’t good (or aren’t available at all) there’s no reason to use an Nvidia GPU/eGPU with a Mac.