The reason they are playing ads in theaters is because this machine is more of a consumer item than a workstation. The ad looks like a car commercial. It's an embarrassing collection of all the marketing tricks in the book rolled into one. The only ones who fall for these ads are consumers. Not pros, because pros are the ones actually making those ads in the first place, and understand exactly how they work.
Sorry to digress on this further, but I both agree and disagree. I think the machine is clearly designed for demanding workstation tasks... compute wise, this thing will be a monster. However, Apple is wise to market this flagship computer to consumers, not only to build brand, but also to attract more buyers to the product.
The average Joe wants the same tools the pros use. No where is this more evident than in the photography field... The number of tourists with pro cameras hanging around their neck these days is mind boggling. It seems there's lots of people with more disposable income than skill or requirements.
The upside to the real pros is that all this consumerization of pro tools ensures a good long life for these things, ideally with added economies of scale and R&D investment that means more innovation, more often, at lower prices. There's no way that marketing this machine to the masses is anything other than a win for us.
Now what's the topic of this thread?
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The wrong perception that sandforce SSDs are bad no longer exists & they recaptured the storage world!
I'm not sure I agree. There was a perception that Sandforce was bad, and it was well deserved. There were tons of widely reported issues with the 22xx series controller in terms of freezing and premature death.
Intel spent over a year qualifying the controller before releasing a product based on it, so hopefully they got all the issues worked out, but honestly, by the time Intel released a Sandforce drive, anyone following the SSD industry was recommending Crucial or Samsung or Intels Marvell based products. So I don't think Sandforce recaptured much at all.
And, what have they done for us lately? Where is their next gen controller? They are way behind.
Samsung is the undisputed performance leader of the current generation of SSDs while Micron/Crucial have some of the best value offerings.
