[Frank Gothmann]

You used Barefeats benchmarks elsewhere (I think it was you, if not I apologise) so here is a comparison between TB and an SAS Raid.
https://barefeats.com/tbolt01.html

But also here:
https://www.macworld.com/article/160819/2011/06/pegasusr6thunderbolt.html

The Pegasus delivers 566 MBs read, an Areca SAS connected enclosure does over 1280 (It’s sitting right next to me) with standard desktop class Sata 6G 2TB drives from Hitachi.
Yes, the Areca has two more drives, I give you that. But there is no TB enclosure with more slots on the market (which, initself, is a problem).
Also, those benchmarks are with just one Thunderbolt device. Add more to the chain and they share the bandwith.

As far as expandability is concerned: I can choose larger enclosures holding up to 24 drives or I can stick with that one enclosure and connect up to 15 of those 8-drive boxes daisy chained to one SAS controller card.
And I still have all the performance in the world on my other pci slots unscratched.

Price wise, the Pegasus is more expensive.

But, again, TB is great and, I want to see it across the entire product line and it will flexibility to a lot of people. But not as a replacement for pcie for those who need and rely on it.

[Frank Gothmann]

But that is exactly not what’s happening. If a current iMac or Laptop with Thunderbolt works for you… great. But please stop suggesting that it has to be good enough for everybody else.
A Pegasus TB Raid enclosure gives you roughly 30-40 per cent of the performance you get from an Areca SAS Raid Box that has a similar form factor.
And the Pegasus is more expensive. So “smaller, cheaper and more powerful” is simply not correct.
Thunberbolt is a great addition to the list of connectivity option; seeing it as a replacement even for the current PCI standard (and the next one is around the corner) is a step backwards with regards to performance to a lot of people.

[Frank Gothmann]

So… what point are you trying to make? We all know the economy is tough right now. Even more reason to have choices at your disposal.

[Frank Gothmann]

“Apple tightly controls their hardware to offering a more controlled system to their clients for stability”

That’s what they say. One can also argue that they do it to keep buying into their ecosystem and only from them (App store anyone).

“You don’t have to RegEdit, you don’t have to install separate drivers, you don’t have to edit DLLs, you don’t have to rip apart your machine”.

You don’t have to do any of that either on Windows7. You can if you want to, but that’s pretty much like using the terminal under OSX for people who know what they are doing. What do you mean by “seperate drivers”?

“I could take my iMac clone, and boot it on one of the MacPro clones and continue working.”
Unless you have a recent Lion iMac and your MacPro clone is on Snow Leopard. You cannot even do a clean install with SL then.

“Can you do that with Windows?”
Actually, yes, you can. If your hardware is similar. If not, you obviously will have issues but the same applies to a Mac in principle, too.

“…f I had a free machine, I’d use it too and probably speak very well of it”.
I paid for mine. And speak very well of it.

“Macs favor a rock solid OS”
I see zero difference in stability with Win7 compared to Snow Leopard. I am very heavy workloads, batch encoding plus a lot of harware attached.

[Frank Gothmann]

You have a very valid point there. But if I have to choose the lesser of the two evils it certainly won’t be simplicity.

[Frank Gothmann]

Hi Helmut,

I have been using Win7 on Bootcamp MacPros for quite a while and although it hasn’t been my main day-in-day-out OS so far I always found it very stable, flexible and trouble free. I am actually looking forward to digging deeper into its bowels and spent more time with it. There is some stuff I like better in OSX but there are also elements that I find flat-out superior on Win7. Nothing out of the ordinary when moving from one OS to another – relearning, changing ones way of thinking, looking for helpful shareware to replace things one has gotten used to on the Mac side, some googling for tips and fine-tuning.
The z800s is the best workstation I ever had my hands on. Yes, its expandability is absolutely amazing, as is its horsepower in combination with Cuda.
All our add-on cards work smooth, no crashes, no blu-screens. So far the only issue has been the inability to encode to Prores on the Win side but DNX-HD looks like it can fill that spot just beautifully.

[Frank Gothmann]

It might be too early to really give conclusive answers as things are still in full swing. MC6 just came out, CS6 could be a major upgrade addressing several issues and wishlists so it will be a gradual transition from FCS3 to whatever one might pick in the end.

As we all knew, FCS3 could do a lot a lot quite well, very few things perfect and some stuff not at all.
Both Premiere and MC can do some stuff pretty perfect but are not really suitable for others. So, I will be using more than one program depending on the job.
I will also be evaluating Edius and Vegas in the weeks and months ahead.

The best thing I am taking away from the whole FCP-X story (the app itself , the way it was introduced and the weeks following the introduction) is that I do not want to rely on Apple any longer.
And I am calling this a “best thing” because it’s been an eye opener for me in many ways. We got two HP z800s in and it is fantastic hardware with so many possibilities. I cannot put it any other way… it’s been a relief looking on the other side of the fence and seeing what is out there. There are better things to do than worry about what other other innovative/destructive/disruptive surprises Apple has up its sleeve and there are apparently enough people around who happily play along so those who jump ship and don’t look back won’t cause enough havoc to change Apple’s ways.

[Frank Gothmann]

You cannot honestly believe that’s the reason, do you?
And when your anticipated machines arrive the put 12 Petabyte of Isilion storage and all the HP servers on Ebay, right?

[Frank Gothmann]

That doesn’t answer my question. If you think this is what’s coming, and it is a proper replacement performance wise for a tower archtitecture, why is Apple using “stoneage” server-class xeon hardware and pcie connectivity from other manufacturers?

[Frank Gothmann]

So, Craig, if your envisioned Mac-Mini with TB connectivity and dreams of clustering is such a great replacement for those oldfashioned towers… how come Apple is using server grade Xeon hardware with pcie connectivity and Isilion storage for their own icloud services.

No Minis there, no Thunderbolt, no OSX Lion Server. Or are you telling me that next year, when your Super-Mini shows up they’ll toss it all out and put your Minis in.
Or is it rather that the Mini (and current Mac Pro btw) just doesn’t cut it in high performance computing and storage environments including high-end broadcast (which also what Isilion is used for)?