[Shawn Miller]

[Brett Sherman] “Boxx and Promax require others to manufacture motherboards. So if those companies find it unprofitable to make motherboards then they are SOL.”

You can make that argument for any electronics integrator or manufacturer. Every electronic device you own has dependencies on suppliers somewhere down the chain.

[Brett Sherman] “SuperMicro makes motherboards but they require Intel to make the chipsets.”

To make Intel compatible motherboards, yes (obviously). But they also make AMD compatible motherboards. Would it surprise you to know that neither Intel or Supermicro makes every component in their system boards?

[Brett Sherman] “The point is that that one company cannot control what happens in the entire industry.”

Sorry, I don’t follow… I don’t think anyone was making that case, unless I missed something.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Brett Sherman] “[Dennis Radeke] “$1M a year isn’t big enough for a multi-billion dollar a year company to get involved with. Extrapolate for a company the size of Apple…”

So Apple’s sucess is actually a detriment? Brilliant. Allow me to be skeptical with someone who has a vested interest in Apple abandoning the pro market with no inside information.

I just don’t see it this way. To me Apple’s success means they don’t have to worry about losing a small bit of money on the Mac Pro market.”

No, I see Dennis’ point. It reminds me of a course I was covering for a technology company a number of years ago. They were teaching some of their top folks how to use a tool that allowed them to do company wide OS deployment to 50,000+ seat organizations. I remember the comments of one instructor in particular; he said something to the effect of “Yeah, I know that these large scale deployments aren’t all that interesting. If I was an enterprising young guy, and I wanted to make a comfortable living with minimal effort, I would subcontract these small, million(ish) dollar desktop deployment jobs, and let the big guys like (company X) do the heavy lifting for the real work.”

You might be surprised at how uninterested very big companies can be in smaller sections of their business, ones that only represent a fraction of a fraction of their overall income. It isn’t just Apple either… “they” are all (understandably) like that.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Oliver Peters] “Unfortunately for pro users there are three “sort-of” reliable, mainstream vendors: Apple, Dell and HP. Discounting a slew of no-name PCs, Hackintoshes and maybe Lenovo, this doesn’t bode well for companies that rely on that class of machine in the future. I suspect the iMac design model (as well as the HP Z1) might be something developers will increasingly embrace simply out of self-preservation.”

There are a few more players to consider, I think. Boxx, Promax and SuperMicro immediately come to mind. I don’t doubt that the market for high-end, Xeon based workstations is shrinking, but I do believe that smaller systems integrators will serve those who need that kind of power on the desktop for a long time to come. Just my opinion. 🙂

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Bill Davis] “That’s how MS came to dominate computing. You literally could NOT buy a non-Mac PC without paying the license for that OS. The box and the OS were essentially fused PRIOR to the point of purchase.”

Not true at all. You could always build or by computers without MS-DOS installed. Some vendors sold generic machines without an OS, some didn’t. Also, remember that there were other choices outside of
Apple or Microsoft (Commodore, IBM). I myslef was a huge fan of Amiga before I started using Windows. Finally, Microsoft didn’t build the dominance of Windows PCs in the consumer market, Compaq, Tandy, and thousands of systems integrators did that.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Bill Davis] “Remember Microsoft missing the whole “on-line” idea for years in favor of just selling boxes full of ever incrementally improved processors and only making large shifts when it was impossible not to do so?”

Microsoft never sold “boxes”. They’ve always made their money by licensing technology and selling services.

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Lance Bachelder] “I agree – I immediately felt sorry for Canon and Nikon after watching this… a game changer in the truest sense. I’ll take 3 with a side of Zuiko please…”

LOL – I was JUST watching this before I read your post! I already have my pre-order in and I’m really anxious to see how my Voigtlander and Lumix lenses pair with this camera. I agree with you about Nikon and Canon. I also think Panasonic, Red and Sony missed the boat here. As it turns out, a lot of people really do want relatively inexpensive, high DR cameras that record lightly compressed CODECs onto commodity media… go figure.

If the BMPCC fits my needs like I think it will, my next question will be; is the higher spacial resloution and global shutter of the BMPC 4k worth the tradeoff of an extra stop in DR of the BMCC. 🙂

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

Hey Walter,

I spoke to Michael Gibson earlier this evening. MoI v3 beta has Mac and PC versions. When it’s released, you will be able to buy a single license for both platforms at no extra cost.

Thanks,

Shawn

[Walter Soyka] “Totally OT post to follow. Please forgive me.

[Shawn Miller] “MoI3D”

You use MoI3D? I just ran across this a few weeks ago — looks really cool. I’d love to hear your thoughts.”

Hey Walter

MoI 3D is great; easy to use, streamlined UI, powerful functions and very stable. It’s the best NURBS modeler I’ve ever used. You can punch holes in meshes without mangling polygons, it’s great for creating very smooth, curvy surfaces and the OBJ exporter produces fantastically clean objects. Best of all, you can throw it on a thumb drive and create on just about any PC. MoI uses OpenGL, so you don’t need a beefy GPU to get good performance. I use it for about 50% of my modelling needs, everything else is done Cinema 4d.

MoI was developed by Michael Gibson, he’s the original developer of Rhino3D. He’s an independent developer and his standards are VERY high, so if you have questions about the software, he’s really good about providing helpful information. It really deserves

[Shawn Miller]

[Walter Soyka] “Totally OT post to follow. Please forgive me.

[Shawn Miller] “MoI3D”

You use MoI3D? I just ran across this a few weeks ago — looks really cool. I’d love to hear your thoughts.”

Hey Walter

MoI 3D is great; easy to use, streamlined UI, powerful functions and very stable. It’s the best NURBS modeler I’ve ever used. You can punch holes in meshes without mangling polygons, it’s great for creating very smooth, curvy surfaces and the OBJ exporter produces fantastically clean objects. Best of all, you can throw it on a thumb drive and create on just about any PC. MoI uses OpenGL, so you don’t need a beefy GPU to get good performance. I use it for about 50% of my modeling needs, everything else is done Cinema 4d.

MoI was developed by Michael Gibson, he’s the original developer of Rhino3D. He’s an independent developer and his standards are VERY high, so if you have questions about the software, he’s really good about providing helpful information. I highly recommend downloading and taking it for a spin. 🙂

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Mathieu Ghekiere] “Hi Shawn,

I can get that not having multiple projects open isn’t a problem for you (although I think this is pretty limiting).”

Fair, enough. I was just pointing out that you can have multiple sequences open in Premiere. I suppose we can argue what’s operationally better, but let’s at least agree to be accurate. 🙂

Shawn

[Shawn Miller]

[Paul Neumann] “So….Indy or Tracker?”

Hi Paul, I assume you’re talking to me… are you asking what I do for a living?

Shawn