Andrew Richards
Forum Replies Created
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[Craig Seeman] “It’s basically Apple, not just the technical limitation, that is the drawer of the line. While certainly they’re considering user experience, it’s one thing to not have something on the “supported” list and another to try to put a hard lock on the door as they did in the above cases and some might question where that line was drawn given the systems that did and did not work.”
In the case of FCPX, it isn’t arbitrary. Apple built FPCX around OpenCL, so it needs an OpenCL-capable GPU to function. Look at Lion. It isn’t unqualified to run on 32 bit Intel CPUs because Apple Marketing figured they could sell more Macs that way, it is unqualified because it no longer contains the code to run on such hardware. That is an engineering decision, not a marketing one. Same goes for FCPX requiring a GPU that supports OpenCL.
True, Apple did decide to compile Lion for 64-bit and build FCPX around OpenCL, and driving the sale of newer Macs is always the motivation for any software Apple produces, but I don’t see a larger Apple trend in FCPX not supporting three year old Macs, I see a trend in OS X dropping support for Macs that are generally about 5 years old. Lion insists on a 64-bit CPU, Snow Leopard insisted on Intel CPUs, Leopard dropped the G3 and slower G4s. Each of these cutoffs were for Macs that were roughly 5 years old (though entry-level Macs had shorter tails due to their typically B-list internals).
If FCPX is Apple’s platform stretcher, then you may be right that it will always need very recent hardware to run at all. We won’t know for a while. But that would be a new tactic for Apple, as their MO has been to carry software support for hardware that is five years old for any given release.
Best,
Andy -
[Phil Hoppes] “Yes, but their overall performance both in new products (none) and market share along with their valuation has been nothing short of abysmal. I like uSoft but they hardly innovate and certainly don’t lead, they are really “just there” anymore. Just existing simply because of inertia is a very bad place to be, especially in high tech. Darn near killed IBM and it did kill a host of others.”
That’s why I said “for now”. Microsoft needs to be able to compete with the iPad in order to avoid a decline like RIM has seen the past 5 years. They were caught flatfooted by the iPhone and Android, and they seem determined with Windows 8 to stay relevant in the post-PC era (though they insist tablets are still just PCs of another shape)
Best,
Andy -
[Walter Soyka] “Well, licensing an OS worked out fantastically the first time Microsoft tried it. “
And it might have worked again if Windows Phone 7 had been ready for market in 2008 instead of 2010. But it wasn’t, and Android ate its lunch. But Microsoft makes money either way, so their bottom line isn’t hurting for now.
Best,
Andy -
[Walter Soyka] “I’m somewhat afraid that anything other than an EOL will just be more tea leaves to try to read.”
Always is, with them. My take is that an all new design represents significant effort, investment, and commitment while another rev to a 2003 design represents reluctance and indifference. Sure, an all-new box could be a flop and they’d kill it after one cycle, but it would take crappy sales to do that. And if the sales are that crappy, then there wasn’t a market for it anyway.
This is why I keep bringing up Windows 8. Microsoft is driving even harder than Apple away from the conventional desktop computing model, as the mass market is speaking loud and clear with shrinking PC sales next to exploding iPad sales. Fewer and fewer people need a conventional windowing environment to do what they need to do with a computer. How will Windows 8 play in the workstation market? Can you imagine trying to use Windows Server 2008 as a workstation? Does the workstation transform back into what it was in the 90s- a specialty box that you only use for a few limited purposes?
I find this all fascinating.
[Walter Soyka] “Perhaps the concern isn’t about the technical separation, but the ideological one: OS X must retain its philosophy of layered complexity, and must never inherit any of iOS’s locked-down design philosophy.”
iCloud is their bridge. Local for conventional filing, iCloud documents for the iOS filing model on the Mac.
Best,
Andy -
[Walter Soyka] “Now I’m very curious. What OSes are you virtualizing? How many VMs (and with what specs) are you running on a single machine? What’s the nature of the work the apps running on your VMs do? If this is your primary use for the Mac Pro, what makes OS X on Apple hardware more sock rocking than Linux on PC hardware?”
I’ve got ESXi 5 on my Mac Pro 5,1 (not officially supported by VMware, but fully functional). It hosts everything from Red Hat Enterprise Linux for StorNext metadata controller experiments to FreeBSD to play with ZFS to Windows Server 2008 for some Active Directory testing to Ubuntu running a virtual tape library emulator to OS X Lion Server and Client to play with Xsan 2.3 (which takes some trickery to get working since 10.6 is the last officially support OS X guest on ESXi 5). The reason it needs to be Apple hardware is that is the only way OS X is allowed as a guest on a VM. You have to hackintosh it if you want to run OS X guests on non-Apple hardware.
For strictly server duty, I’ve essentially given up on OS X. Final Cut Server was the last reason to care about it for me. Stuff like Open Directory, MCX, and Profile Manager can run on a Mac mini server if you really need them, but for heavy duty stuff, I’d go with Linux or FreeBSD every time.
[Walter Soyka] “Ron pointed out OS X’s poor OpenGL support. This may not a problem for most, but it’s a big deal for 3D application’s viewport performance. The same hardware has historically performed better on Windows than on Mac. 10-bit DisplayPort output is still impossible with OS X. I’m not saying that this won’t improve — I’m just saying that being able to pop the latest and greatest GTX series GPU into a Mac Pro won’t immediately address the ongoing criticisms of OS X’s graphics support.”
These are some of the warts I alluded to, for sure. I’d put a new, modern filesystem ahead of these, but only slightly. Both are long overdue.
[Walter Soyka] “Personally, I feel like Apple used to be interested in providing my solutions I could use. I’m feeling that they are less and less committed to users like me. Even a little thing like pre-announcing a new Mac Pro, like HP has done with the Z820, would go a long way towards re-assuring other longtime Apple users in my position.”
If it is to die I wish they’d just get it over with and let the world move on. The lingering of the Mac Pro today is one of the more compelling bits of evidence that a new model is in the pipeline. This is why I feel right now is make-or-break time for the Mac Pro. Are we getting a freshly-drafted stud quarterback to lead the team for the next decade? Or are we getting one last season in the sun from a fading veteran at the end of his career?
This is also why I’m keen to see Adobe (and others) embrace Linux. I would be very sad if Windows became the only viable platform for big work should Apple shrink from the niche. Yes I’m prejudiced and biased. I just don’t like using or supporting Windows.
[Walter Soyka] “The only possible concern I see at the moment for OS X is a big maybe: Apple’s potential war on hierarchical filesystems in general. Apple’s own apps may not need them, but most of the other apps I use assume a hierarchical file system. I’ll be curious to see how this shakes out in coming versions of OS X.”
I have faith (misguided though it may be) that the “dumbed-down” veneer being incrementally added to OS X is only a toggle or two away from being disabled for the sake of power users like you and I. I think the vast majority of users are pretty clueless when it comes to filesystems, so I’m actually in favor of abstracting the storage a bit. Just so long as I can still dig in when I need to.
Best,
Andy -
[Craig Seeman] “Certainly Macs in general can remain compatible, regarding OS and various apps going back several years. When it came to FCPX it was under 3 years. To put it another way, will the new MacPro replacement you buy in 2012 be able to run FCPX in 2015. My guess (obviously just a guess) is no and it there many be no simple “unsupported” swap of the GPU (again my guess).”
Maybe. I don’t think it is likely though. The hardware dividing line for FCPX is OpenCL-capable GPUs, and there would need to be some all-new, low-level, hardware-dependent APIs that 2015 FCPX requires in order for your projection to come true. I think that is unlikely. Not impossible, just unlikely.
Apple chose to draw a very modern line in the sand for FCPX’s starting point, and that would serve them well for the decade they see as its codebase’s lifespan. If they built FCPX atop older, less featured APIs, it would not be able to do all that it does (which was/is already fairly limited in the eyes of its critics).
Since FCPX is built on APIs that scale with hardware, there will be a strong incentive for users to give it the best Mac they can to get all the performance they can, but the minimum system requirements of 2011 will probably not expand much in terms of hardware requirements in the next few years. Hardware requirements for working with third party add-ons will carry their own restrictions, but that has always been true for any NLE.
I guess my bottom line is I don’t think Apple has a more aggressive duty cycle in mind as a business model for growing the Mac. Growing the Mac comes at the expense of other PCs far more than it does from forcing existing users to upgrade so they can run a new app that won’t work on a 3-year-old Mac.
Best,
Andy -
[Craig Seeman] “Apple has done this for some time. I remember doing a system hack to fool Leopard into installing on a Dual 800 G4. There were those who found FCPX installing on ATI 1900 systems even though it wasn’t on the recommended list with FCPX 10.0.0. I believe some prevously compatible systems (maybe only “unofficial) dropped of the list as well.”
So that’s nothing new, like you said. I don’t think Apple needs to have people throw out their Macs every two years to be successful, and they don’t drop support for three year old Macs on any given rev to OS X. Lion dropped support for 2006-vintage Macs in 2011, a 5 year backfill. Mountain Lion might be a little more aggressive than that, but the supported list hasn’t been finalized to say for sure.
FCPX is an outlier, since it relies so heavily on many new aspects of OS X, but most apps don’t, even Apple’s own. In most other cases, any given Mac will have broad software support for 4-5 years. That’s a good long life for a computer.
Best,
Andy -
[Craig Seeman] “Of course Microsoft will support Windows 7 for the next 10 years though.”
Yeah, but will they still sell it?
Best,
Andy -
[Craig Seeman] “I think Apple’s new business model is not about limited power but limited expandability of hardware, building in planed obsolescence. “
Seems to me Moore’s Law marches on and the pace of development, of hardware and software, is what creates obsolescence.
Best,
Andy
