The State of Apple's Professional Line

[Elektroakoustika]

After the release of the new Mac Pro's, I found an interesting opinion article on Apple and their contributions (or lack there of) to the professional line of Mac products. Just thought I'd post it here for conversation:

http://brookwillard.wordpress.com/2010/ ... ional-line" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The author may be young, but I think he offers up some great arguments for what Apple's been doing lately.

So what do you think?

-ea

[toodamnhip]

After the release of the new Mac Pro's, I found an interesting opinion article on Apple and their contributions (or lack there of) to the professional line of Mac products. Just thought I'd post it here for conversation:

http://brookwillard.wordpress.com/2010/ ... ional-line" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The author may be young, but I think he offers up some great arguments for what Apple's been doing lately.

So what do you think?

-ea

Bravo, Great article.
I have been bitching for months about Apple Effing around with their "toys"
Shortsitedness must be coming unto Steve Jobs as he becomes short minded (senile).
He's getting older, he doesn't have the balls anymore maybe?
As people age, they tend to get more conservative, going for only the "proven" taken fewer chances. And thus Jobs sells toys over professional products.

But this will bite apple in the butt if another company decides to be the NEW leader in technical advances!

Mac is still in the lead, but they have shrunken their edge and opened the door to be replaced by a newer company with the guts to really push the envelop again.

Stupid i phones!!!

[amplidood]

God, who told people that bright white text on a pure dark background was cool for an entire blog. I feel like I've been staring at the sun after reading one paragraph.

[Kubi]

God, who told people that bright white text on a pure dark background was cool for an entire blog. I feel like I've been staring at the sun after reading one paragraph.

Ha! Word... I copied and pasted into a text file. Good article, though.

[cuttime]

God, who told people that bright white text on a pure dark background was cool for an entire blog. I feel like I've been staring at the sun after reading one paragraph.

Ha! Word... I copied and pasted into a text file. Good article, though.

Thanks for the link. A lot of food for thought.

Check out Readabilty:

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- a little Javascript that is the next best thing to canned beans.

[James Steele]

I have to say that the author's analogy regarding NASCAR and how even though car makers lose money on racing, the prestige of their brand being associated with winning races sells more production cars (consumer products) is a good argument for Apple not to forget their "high end" segment.

Another good analogy is Sony. They make a big effort these days to make the public aware of their role in content creation and professional video (the Peyton Manning/Justin Timberlake 3D TV ads for example) because it enhances the perceived value of their consumer and prosumer products. Apple would be wise to consider this.

[KEVORKIAN]

There are two problems Apple is facing that are affecting it's decisions and abilities to offer tricked out pro machines:

1) Retail.
2) 64-bit.

Apple has about 300 retail stores around the world and those stores are some of the busiest retail stores in the world. This is how Apple is making serious $ and reaching customers. The problem here is that most customers are not buying Mac Pros or top end powerbooks and that Mac Pro's especially take up excessive stock space for the amount that they sell.

The other issue is 64-bit support. That is the real performance bottle neck. There really isn't anything extra that Apple can put in a current Mac Pro to make a material performance difference. The real difference in performance will arrive with the additional memory access that a fully 64-bit architecture will bring.

I'm hoping that Apple returns to form when the 64-bit world really takes shape. Right now there is no reason for them to add anything more than what they have to their pro machines. IMO, the main issue with the current ones is that they are just damn expensive.

BTW... removing the expresscard from the MacBook Pro is the worst move they have made in a long time but it's not the first time they have messed up in such a fashion. I think it's just that the iPhone and iPad have created a paranoia among pro users.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I didn't get far into this spoiled brat's blog either. I don't really see his problem or what he is actually complaining about, perhaps because his verbosity is only exceeded by his own self interest. Exactly where is his work suffering with the new Macs? He's a cinematographer, and Macs are still doing a good bit of the heavy lifting in filmmaking. Seriously, what is his problem aside from his perception of what he thinks is wrong at Apple?

No, I don't like Quicktime X either, so I use QT 7.6.6. So he's unhappy with Final Cut, so use something else. Mac Pros are still plenty useful for "those of us" making our living on the machines. But Apple also has to actually sell machines to a wide variety of customers including his group A and B.

Now if Apple blew off Firewire users and didn't include FW ports, sure, I'd see his point. I'm looking at the damn 12 core machine for my next update. That's not a pro model in his opinion? Even the lower core models are fine machines. What is this guy looking for and what is his point? I don't get it.

Please don't ask me to go back and read the whole thing. It ain't gonna happen. Again, if I want to hear whining brats I'll go volunteer at my wife's elementary school.

[Elektroakoustika]

I didn't get far into this spoiled brat's blog either. I don't really see his problem or what he is actually complaining about, perhaps because his verbosity is only exceeded by his own self interest. Exactly where is his work suffering with the new Macs? He's a cinematographer, and Macs are still doing a good bit of the heavy lifting in filmmaking. Seriously, what is his problem aside from his perception of what he thinks is wrong at Apple?

No, I don't like Quicktime X either, so I use QT 7.6.6. So he's unhappy with Final Cut, so use something else. Mac Pros are still plenty useful for "those of us" making our living on the machines. But Apple also has to actually sell machines to a wide variety of customers including his group A and B.

Now if Apple blew off Firewire users and didn't include FW ports, sure, I'd see his point. I'm looking at the damn 12 core machine for my next update. That's not a pro model in his opinion? Even the lower core models are fine machines. What is this guy looking for and what is his point? I don't get it.

Please don't ask me to go back and read the whole thing. It ain't gonna happen. Again, if I want to hear whining brats I'll go volunteer at my wife's elementary school.

I'm not sure I'd call him spoiled. I think he makes some great points about what the computer is for the money. He's not really complaining about CPU power, more about how Apple has handled the other parts of the Mac Pro.

I happen to know some people who work in the workstation department of a PC company and we often talk about computers. Their top of the line machines offer expansion of up to 6 hard drives, 6 PCI Express slots, as well as 6 RAM dimm slots per processor (for an option of up to 192GB of memory). While that stuff doesn't seem necessary at the moment, I can see how having the option to upgrade it in the future would be of great use, especially since I've got all 4 of my hard drive bays filled with 1TB drives and 16GB of memory on my machine that I fill up every time I use the computer. And also the option for having a machine that has more PCI Express slots would be nice.

It just seems like Apple hasn't expanded a lot on the Mac Pro to make it better in years other than adding more CPU power and some more RAM (and graphics cards I guess). There was a small internal change when they brought out the Nehalem Mac Pro's last year, which made things a little easier inside the machine, but nothing drastic. I think film guys would also really appreciate some of these features. Now he must be doing some heavy photo editing to need all that power, but I can see his point from my perspective.

I do understand your points MLC, but every day it looks like the iMac is becoming a great prosumer machine in addition to the low end Mac Pro. Don't get me wrong, I love my Mac Pro, and I think it will last me awhile, but I will probably be upgrading to 32GB of ram sometime in the future as well as moving to SSD's. What I'd like to see them do is offer something for the true power users, with lots of room for expansion.

cheers,
ea

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Comparing Macs to PCs in terms of PCs offering more is not really useful. PCs do offer a lot more in terms of the number of viruses you get, as well. Not a feature I'd want.

We can all use more HD space, but even the most demanding app can do with 4 bays. At 2TB each (a modest array...) that 8TB of storage. Unless you;re running a very busy server like the Library of Congress, I think 8TB should hold you for a while.

PCI slots? Aren't PCIs sort of becoming less frequent these days? Besides, there are always breakout options for PCI, eSATA, FW, USB ports, etc.

As for iMacs, never touch the stuff. The only iMac I have is the old all in one "Snow" version (500mHz). Picked it up for $4.99 at a thrift store. Runs great in my wife's classroom and the kids can beat on it all they want.

OK, I shouldn't have called him spoiled. But I'm sticking to verbose!

[James Steele]

Viruses are indeed more likely than on a Mac, but if you're sensible and install something like Avast on your system when you first get it you should be okay. I have a Windows XP machine that I've had for years and never got a virus because of this. The performance thing is important. I'm hearing of more and more guys who are setting up Windows machines to run as slave machines-- I think there's a Windows version of VE Pro isn't there? I remember someone posting to an email list about getting really great VI performance on one.

[Elektroakoustika]

Comparing Macs to PCs in terms of PCs offering more is not really useful. PCs do offer a lot more in terms of the number of viruses you get, as well. Not a feature I'd want.

We can all use more HD space, but even the most demanding app can do with 4 bays. At 2TB each (a modest array...) that 8TB of storage. Unless you;re running a very busy server like the Library of Congress, I think 8TB should hold you for a while.

PCI slots? Aren't PCIs sort of becoming less frequent these days? Besides, there are always breakout options for PCI, eSATA, FW, USB ports, etc.

As for iMacs, never touch the stuff. The only iMac I have is the old all in one "Snow" version (500mHz). Picked it up for $4.99 at a thrift store. Runs great in my wife's classroom and the kids can beat on it all they want.

OK, I shouldn't have called him spoiled. But I'm sticking to verbose!

Haha... verbose... good word...

I made the PC comparison mainly to make the point that its possible to add those things and somebody's doing it. Even if they're running Windows

I actually wish I had a couple more hard drive bays. Its not the amount of storage, but the streaming from the drives. I have a lot of disc streaming going on with my template. My template consists of over 135 MIDI tracks all running from VI's that stream in one way or another from a hard drive. I'd love to raid some drives together to get some more performance but right now having the different orchestral sections on separate drives works well. I'm sure this issue will go away as soon as SSD's come down in price, but that seems like a slow process right now.

PCI slots do get filled quickly if you're doing a lot of stuff. And plus OCZ has released the revodrive, which is a dual SSD on 1 PCI slot. Cool stuff and would be fun to get a couple of those running. Granted, I don't think I'll be filling up all my slots any time soon. So that one isn't a big deal to me.

I wouldn't touch an iMac either, but I know a lot of prosumers or hobbyists who have found them quite useful with basic audio/MIDI needs. Especially with the fact that you can get a fairly powerful computer and a 27 inch monitor for $1700.

Good talking with you MLC.

Oh and yes they do make VE Pro for Windows James. I've got an old PC workstation in the basement that I may pull out one day and hook up to see, but I do need to get another dongle for VE Pro to work on that machine, and I just haven't gotten there yet. But I've heard some great results from others.

-ea

[jlaudon]

The white type on a dark background messes me up, but I'm thankful for Safari 5's reader option.

About the article, I have to agree with many of this guy's points. I could really really use more PCIe slots, as well as separate Firewire busses (and I'd pay for them...). I'm realizing more now that my reason for using a Mac is mostly because DP is Mac only, but if it was PC, I might rethink my computer purchases (yikes, I can't believe I just said that ).

[BKK-OZ]

Please don't ask me to go back and read the whole thing.

Hey MLC, would you please go back and read the whole thing?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Don't ask!