Andrew Richards
Forum Replies Created
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[Ronald Lindeboom] “It wouldn’t be hard to do and Apple is already doing it with the iPad and the iPhone. They are even in court fighting their very own supplier, Samsung, so it’s not even like it’s a marriage made in heaven. But I could easily see where Apple would keep many more of us years longer by letting HP build the machines we need.”
Do you think they aren’t working like crazy to get away from Samsung as a supplier? And do you think they have any interest in stepping on that rake again? Plus, it isn’t even an analogous situation with Samsung. Samsung is huge- they are a semiconductor manufacturer and a consumer electronics marketer. HP is just a marketer. There isn’t an HP chip foundry. HP outsources all their manufacturing same as Apple, so there isn’t some sort of manufacturing advantage.
So let’s forget that Apple has nothing to gain from outsourcing a product they supposedly don’t want to make themselves. Let’s say they do it. What does an https://www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13278_na/13278_na.HTML“>HP Z800 running OS X look like?
- It still has the same old OpenGL (this is an OS X problem, not a hardware problem)
- It still has the same limited options for GPUs (if we are assuming EFI instead of BIOS for OS X)
- It still won’t support Blu-Ray drives (not any more than a Mac Pro will today)
- Same number of PCIe slots, same distribution of PCIe lanes as the Mac Pro today
- Same number of HDD bays as the Mac Pro today
- Same number of built-in NICs
- More RAM slots (12 on the Z vs 8 on the Mac Pro)
- One additional external 5.25″ bay vs today’s Mac Pro
That doesn’t look so compelling to me. Honestly, what do you get from a Z800 running OS X that you don’t get from a Mac Pro? 50% more RAM? A third optical drive bay? I don’t get it.
Best,
AndyEdit: Oops, totally misread the number of PCIe slots. That’s 2×16 and 2×8 and 2×4. Those extra two x8 are a big deal.
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[Bobby Mosca] “Guess what… you can’t do real work on an iPad!”
Depends on the nature of the work.
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Andy -
[Dennis Radeke] “Apple in some cases is going to force some of their customers to move to another platform quite possibly.”
Yes, IF they drop the Mac Pro. They haven’t played their hand yet, or folded for that matter.
Best,
Andy -
[Chris Harlan] “What’s with the crazy numbering/naming system for iPads? It just shouts chaos.”
Apple is notorious for naming products the same thing time after time. The iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 are the exceptions to this rule. Everything else has a “3rd gen” or “mid-2011” subtitle to tell it apart.
Best,
Andy -
[John Heagy] “Apple should not put all it’s eggs in the consumer space and rely solely on the “mob mentality” which can turn on a dime.
Apple stayed afloat serving the pro user and, given their wealth, wouldn’t put much of a dent in there current “fight to the death with google war chest” to continue serving them.
“This is an excellent argument in favor of Apple continuing to produce the Mac Pro. It does not however support the idea that Apple would benefit at all from outsourcing workstations to their biggest rival in the PC space.
Best,
Andy -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I lobbied a long time ago back around June 21st for this and practically got my head cut off.”
That’s what you get in this business for suggesting changing a workflow. New technology is great but we’ll be damned if we have to break a habit to use it!
Best,
Andy -
[Frank Gothmann] “Yes, but Avid doesn’t use MXF for its deliverables. You cannot export DnxHD MXF files from an Avid to work with most other applications, only QT. What would make sense though is to allow DnxHD in an avi wrapper, just like Cineform, so that would avoid QT on Linux (and on Windows).”
AVI and QuickTime are the only way out of Avid? Sounds like Avid has some legacy container baggage to shed. Just allow export to MXF. This is exactly the kind of thing MXF was designed for- platform agnostic media exchange.
Best,
Andy -
[Dennis Radeke] “Like Ron and Tim, I have long thought very well of HP and agree that the Z800 is easily a better Mac in case design and overall execution than the current Mac Pro is. I have also thought that licensing OS X to a single vendor would make sense and HP would be on my short list. I also agree that it would be a win-win. “
Licensing OS X might be great for Adobe and HP and pro users, but it is all bad for Apple. There is no upside for them. If Apple doesn’t want to play in the workstation market, they will just leave it. What does Apple gain by partnering with HP on workstations? They don’t save dev work on OS X, if anything they add significant hassle. They have the best industrial designers in the world, so it isn’t like they are short on talent. I just can’t see what advantage there is for Apple to hand over the keys to the OS X castle to a competitor, even if it is only for a class of computer Apple isn’t interested in selling anymore.
Apple is in a position where they can be in any market they want to be in. They could decide they want to make original content for iTunes and outspend NBCU’s entire 2010 production spending with 5% of their cash hoard. If Apple wants OS X on a workstation, they’ll make one. If they don’t, they won’t.
Best,
Andy -
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Yeah, but then they have to support three OSes, and all the variants therein.”
No, they’d drop support for the Mac since obviously Apple is going to kill OS X because they make so much money on iOS toys and because they hate pros and love pulling the rug out from under us.
/sarcasm