New Mac Pros and Mac Minis Launching in August

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Final Limit of displays

The True final limit of PPI-worth is when the density is so high, you can put your face all the way up to the screen and have your eyes pretty much 1 cm or 1mm away from the screen and still not be able to see the individual pixels.

 

[JohnDoe98]

Yeah I applaud your open mindedness by calling people lazy and backwards, because they don't subscribe to Apple's idiocy.

(golfclap)

You should really read more carefully. I asked what reason can be given to support BR Authoring. The answer I was given was "people's habits require it". That isn't an argument. So, i pointed out that, and here is the very important part so pay attention, if that is the reason and that alone, then you can't expect Apple to accomodate it. It is lazy, insofar as it is a very wea argument and it precluding innovation. Now, if that is not the reason, and the people of our topic have other reasons, I am willing to hear them and revise my comments. Do you have a better argument than the blatant appeal to convention given?

 

[iBug2]

Lossless CD quality is not dead among those with actual sound systems. iPods with ear buds need not apply.

Mp3 sucks really bad; mp4 is better, and and 320KB is close. But with a decent sound system, what you lose with even MP4 is depth and presense. Phase relationships get shifted, so "distance" cues become smeared. That may not make a difference with much music that is recorded a track at a time and pro-tooled to death with a bunch of effects, then compressed so there is no life left.

But carefully created music, even rock, metal, and pop, (especially well recorded drums) just seem veiled when played back on good systems with compressed formats as the source.

But for much mainstream stuff, yes, online, digital delivery in compressed formats seems to be the future, especially for indy bands. I released my EP that way because it's so much cheaper than pressing a bunch of CD's for CD Baby or some such and hoping I sell enough. It's only $49 to get an album on iTunes and others. If I have a lot of demand, I'll do a CD release, likely on Amazon CD on Demand.

Eddie O

This is completely off topic, but I, personally, find myself at a position to accept that 320kbit is virtually indistinguishable from CD.

I own a 15k stereo high end system myself, and have been an audiophile enthusiast as far as I had some money to spend on this stuff. I have listened to 500K systems on demo rooms and envied them.

All that said, whenever I performed blind tests for people who claimed that they can discern 320kbit from CD, they all failed, including myself, on systems quite expensive.

I haven't met a single audiophile who can pass a blind A/B test on this, I'm sorry to say. I'm sure there are people who can hear it, they probably are working in the mastering industry and they'd use their nearfield monitors, not farfield or midfield HiFi's to hear it, my guess.

One of the compression limitations is removing content above 18Khz, well, I myself can't hear 19Khz before 105 dB, and can't hear 20K at all. And that's when trying to listen to a pure sine wave. Hearing it in music is infinitely more impossible if you have a hard time hearing the sine.

 

[iBug2]

The True final limit of PPI-worth is when the density is so high, you can put your face all the way up to the screen and have your eyes pretty much 1 cm or 1mm away from the screen and still not be able to see the individual pixels.

Well, that limit is actually irrelevant since nobody can use a computer with their faces on the screen. I suppose this was a joke?

 

[JohnDoe98]

Lossless CD quality is not dead among those with actual sound systems. iPods with ear buds need not apply.

Mp3 sucks really bad; mp4 is better, and and 320KB is close. But with a decent sound system, what you lose with even MP4 is depth and presense. Phase relationships get shifted, so "distance" cues become smeared. That may not make a difference with much music that is recorded a track at a time and pro-tooled to death with a bunch of effects, then compressed so there is no life left.

But carefully created music, even rock, metal, and pop, (especially well recorded drums) just seem veiled when played back on good systems with compressed formats as the source.

But for much mainstream stuff, yes, online, digital delivery in compressed formats seems to be the future, especially for indy bands. I released my EP that way because it's so much cheaper than pressing a bunch of CD's for CD Baby or some such and hoping I sell enough. It's only $49 to get an album on iTunes and others. If I have a lot of demand, I'll do a CD release, likely on Amazon CD on Demand.

Eddie O

Right, serious audio or videophiles want high quality not offered by digital delivery. My question all along has been why should Apple care about them? They are a niche market.

 

[Atlantico]

iOS 'disaster'? Yeah, what a disaster, that has propelled Apple into the stratosphere, benefitting Apple itself, shareholders, developers, and most importantly, customers- while enabling it to enter and dominate the smartphone and tablet industries.

Except Mac users from the hand of Apple. Though 3rd party support has benefitted a lot.

I don't care one squat about Apple's profits (even though I am a shareholder, I don't get that much dividends), but as a Mac user I care a lot about the future of the Mac. Apple is selling more and more Macs, but is treating the development of Macs as second tier.

As a Mac user I was quite a lot happier 10 years ago, so the recent success of Apple is quite meaningless to me. Good for them, I suppose.

Nor do I care one iota whether iOS is successful or not - what is annoying is getting OS X dumbed down because Apple seemingly things everyone should love touch features. Even those using desktops.

You are seriously misunderstanding everything if you think there's any problem with the iOS success in and of itself. It's the side effects that are bothersome. If you want to know what they are, well there are threads about that - honestly you're late into the discussion.

 

[iBug2]

Just one more little step and you're there: being able to criticize Apple for doing something bone-headed. So close, I gave that post a thumbs up!

We aren't here to criticize Apple. We are here to discuss Apple. Criticizing nor praising doesn't deserve any thumbs up from anyone, let alone from someone as ignorant as you.

 

[edoates]

At what point does all this quality no longer become visible to the human eye? If there are retina displays for the iphone, presumably there is a treshold beyond which detail is no perceivable. If our internet can get up to that speed with the help of a little bit of buffering, that would effectively kill off optical media right? How close are THunderbolt, lightpeak, and fiber optics for home internet to meeting that treshold?

Well, I think it about 35mm film quality, or 70mm for movies: 4K should do nicely on large screens. 720p is fine for iPad (even when they get retina displays): the actual pixels are small enough you won't likely notice.
But for home theater use, were we seem to be closing in on everything being 1080p 120Hz or better, you need BR to avoid compression artifacting (and you can still get some depending on lots of variables during compression and source material: HDV has lots of issues; the new canon 50Mb/sec mpeg2 fewer - to mention two camera types available to movie makers who are not hollywood studios).

But as oleds start to roll out, we may see even larger formats for home usage appearing often: 120" or large. For those, 1080p has visible little squares, even on DILA projectors; I've seen the Meridian 4K on a large screen: it is smooth even very close up. When viewed specially prepared 4K source material (done with Red), WOW. But even upsampled BRD is very good.

BTW: DVD upscaling on Mac is, how you say, terrible. Jaggies all over the place, even on progressive source (I have a 30" Cinima display); compared to DVD upscaling by Faroudja on a 1080P projector or even by my Sony Playstation to a 55" LED TV, the Mac is AWFUL - essentially unwatchable.

Eddie O

 

[JohnDoe98]

The bride doesn't want to give an URL to her guests, etc. to see the event movie; she want to hand out a physical thing. USB sticks don't cut it, and to view them means tranferring the content to a computer, then watching it there. Aunt Emma (whatever) can stick her DVD or BR into a player next to her TV and press PLAY. Done. Not everyone (actually, almost NO ONE) is a techie. Why do you think most old VCRs are still flashing 12:00?

Excellent. Do you have evidence the bride doesn't want to send a url? I think Apple's vision is that they do. If right after I recorded the movie or took pictures I can email you a link that immediatly opens the photos or the movie on your TV without having to do anything other than click on a link in your email, or in your text message, i think the bridge and grandma will prefer that. All these devices is too complicated. The Apple ecosystem is in the process of doing away with a significant portion of it.

 

[Bear]

This is completely off topic, but I, personally, find myself at a position to accept that 320kbit is virtually indistinguishable from CD.
...
All that said, whenever I performed blind tests for people who claimed that they can discern 320kbit from CD, they all failed, including myself, on systems quite expensive.

I haven't met a single audiophile who can pass a blind A/B test on this, I'm sorry to say. I'm sure there are people who can hear it, they probably are working in the mastering industry and they'd use their nearfield monitors, not farfield or midfield HiFi's to hear it, my guess.

And when has a thread this long ever stayed totally on topic?

When I was deciding what bit rate to use for importing my CD collection, I found where I couldn't hear the differences on my assorted stereo equipment and then I bumped the settings a couple of notches. Now that disk space is less expensive and more abundant I would go to an even higher bit rate.

Sort of on topic... The same goes for differences among displays that you watch video on. Right now an important part of the chain of high quality video at home is BluRay. Macs should have BluRay drives. The Mac Pro more so for those who create and edit video professionally. And yes, I know you can add a third party drive for whatever the cost. That's not the point. The point is Apple shouldn't be ignoring BluRay like it has been.

Right, serious audio or videophiles want high quality not offered by digital delivery. My question all along has been why should Apple care about them? They are a niche market.

What about using a Mac to play a BluRay disc to be displayed through an Apple TV? Although you're right, serious ...philes would not be using a computer as part of their A/V system or would they?

 

[iBug2]

Nor do I care one iota whether iOS is successful or not - what is annoying is getting OS X dumbed down because Apple seemingly things everyone should love touch features. Even those using desktops.

What do you mean when you say OS X is being dumbed down?


Do you mean dumber people can use it now, or Apple is removing some of the features?

I have no idea if the first argument would be true, although I couldn't care less, but certainly there's nothing removed in Lion which was in Snow Leopard, except Expose's current version.

 

[edoates]

Excellent. Do you have evidence the bride doesn't want to send a url? I think Apple's vision is that they do. If right after I recorded the movie or took pictures I can email you a link that immediatly opens the photos or the movie on your TV without having to do anything other than click on a link in your email, or in your text message, i think the bridge and grandma will prefer that. All these devices is too complicated. The Apple ecosystem is in the process of doing away with a significant portion of it.

Only anectdotal: I offer both. They want something in their hands, and multiple copies. That may change with time.

 

[organerito]

Yeah it depends on where you live. Really, you get 160 megabit connection for 25euro a month w/unlimited download? Must be nice.

But then again, can you buy movies from iTunes in the Netherlands? If not, what good is that 10Mbit connection (or 160 megabit in your case) - and in reality to support a 10Mbit stream, you'd need a 15+Mbit connection and nobody else could use the internet in your home while you're watching that movie.

So perhaps a 30Mbit connection is more realistic. Then one has to wonder, how stable is that connection? Can you always get 1.25 mega BYTES per second from your internet? If it is cable or DSL, then it matters how many are using the internet in your street at any given time.

Or just pop in a BD and it will work. Always and immensely better quality than anything available through streaming. You'd even be able to choose subtitles and spoken languages (perhaps not useful in the Netherlands, but there are places, quite many places where that's pretty nifty)

Obviously, you haven't been outside of the USA or perhaps your state, Arizona? Is a fast internet connection only worth if you can buy movies form iTunes? Enjoy your 2 MB internet.

 

[skier777]

This doesnt come as a surprise really. We knew that apple was saving everything for after the lion release (which we know will be close to the end of July) and both the desktops need to be refreshed, so it doesn't take much to predict this.

The laptop line refresh should follow a few weeks later, although MBP probably wont be included.

 

[Atlantico]

Do you understand what a rack mountable server unit is? XServe isn't a Mac.

Second, 511 days between Mac Pro updates HAPPENED ONCE.

And gestures on Mac OS X is an indication that Mac is dying? Windows 8 is bringing gestures all over the UI. Does that mean PC is dying as well?

XServe was a Mac, it was a Mac server and it offered businesses to invest in Apple equipment from the ground up. It was Apple's way into IT, servicing or being able to service all computers on all levels, and even easier if they were Macs as well. The discontinuation of the XServe shows that Apple wasn't interested in that after all.

It unceremoniously dumped XServe users and admins without and exit strategy. Macs clearly not being emphasized any longer, Apple was moving out of that area. XServe ran Mac OS X and was a Macintosh just as much as any other, but it had a very specific purpose; to administrate other Macs (specifically, though anything could of course be admined)

511 days between this version and the last. 420 days between the last and the one before that - that's 14 months. Not quite as god-awful as the 17+ last time but still damn bad.

Gesturing on W8 just means that once again MS is blindly copying Apple. That's all it means.. there's no vision or strategy behind that other than to say "we have that too!" and it will work. It has so far.

 

[iBug2]

What about using a Mac to play a BluRay disc to be displayed through an Apple TV? Although you're right, serious ...philes would not be using a computer as part of their A/V system or would they?

Serious videophiles certainly wouldn't watch Blu Ray on their Macs. Why do such a thing when you have a 60" already?

That being said, I think we'll soon see CD quality audio downloads again, and possibly even higher sample rate than CD. I don't think 256 is the end of the road on music sales, it just have been this way due to bandwidth, but soon that won't be an issue.

 

[Bear]

Obviously, you haven't been outside of the USA or perhaps your state, Arizona? Is a fast internet connection only worth if you can buy movies form iTunes? Enjoy your 2 MB internet.

There are many parts of the US that suck for internet connectivity. And the cable company quotes your speed "as fast as X Mb/sec" - at peak demand times you will not get anywhere near that in most neighborhoods. And what if the cable company has decided you've reached your cap for the month and cuts your speed to almost nothing? Even Australia has a monthly cap issue on some ISPs.

 

[Atlantico]

You should really read more carefully. I asked what reason can be given to support BR Authoring. The answer I was given was "people's habits require it". That isn't an argument. So, i pointed out that, and here is the very important part so pay attention, if that is the reason and that alone, then you can't expect Apple to accomodate it. It is lazy, insofar as it is a very wea argument and it precluding innovation. Now, if that is not the reason, and the people of our topic have other reasons, I am willing to hear them and revise my comments. Do you have a better argument than the blatant appeal to convention given?

There's no reason not to support BD on the Mac, it is by far the best way to experience movies, most ubiquitous way to buy, share and sell movies and it is backwards compatible with all the DVDs people have already.

It's a no-brainer and it is quite amusing watching some people twisting themselves into a pretzel in order to excuse or explain away why Apple doesn't support BD playback.

I'm not even saying they have to put the drives into the computers, just support the playback. Though it would be awfully kind of them to allow people to buy BD drives BTO or even include them by default.

 

[JohnDoe98]

Well, I think it about 35mm film quality, or 70mm for movies: 4K should do nicely on large screens. 720p is fine for iPad (even when they get retina displays): the actual pixels are small enough you won't likely notice.
But for home theater use, were we seem to be closing in on everything being 1080p 120Hz or better, you need BR to avoid compression artifacting (and you can still get some depending on lots of variables during compression and source material: HDV has lots of issues; the new canon 50Mb/sec mpeg2 fewer - to mention two camera types available to movie makers who are not hollywood studios).

But as oleds start to roll out, we may see even larger formats for home usage appearing often: 120" or large. For those, 1080p has visible little squares, even on DILA projectors; I've seen the Meridian 4K on a large screen: it is smooth even very close up. When viewed specially prepared 4K source material (done with Red), WOW. But even upsampled BRD is very good.

BTW: DVD upscaling on Mac is, how you say, terrible. Jaggies all over the place, even on progressive source (I have a 30" Cinima display); compared to DVD upscaling by Faroudja on a 1080P projector or even by my Sony Playstation to a 55" LED TV, the Mac is AWFUL - essentially unwatchable.

Eddie O

Well perhaps there is room for all this improvement... But with a 120" in screen I built, and with a 4 year old 720P projector, I typically watch itunes hd movies with no artifacts or squares from about 20 feet away and with 20/15 vision. So I do get the sense much of all this bickering stems from marketing agendas and not what people actually will end up paying serious money for. That is why I sympathize with Apple that much of the BR buisness is overkill. Perhaps when I see a 4k source though I will be blown away and think Apple has it wrong.

 

[Bear]

Serious videophiles certainly wouldn't watch Blu Ray on their Macs. Why do such a thing when you have a 60" already?
...

Because their spouse or kids are watching the 60" screen.

 

[iBug2]

XServe was a Mac, it was a Mac server and it offered businesses to invest in Apple equipment from the ground up. It was Apple's way into IT, servicing or being able to service all computers on all levels, and even easier if they were Macs as well. The discontinuation of the XServe shows that Apple wasn't interested in that after all.

No, it means that nobody was interested in that after all, because the reason they dropped out was "we can't sell any of them".

It unceremoniously dumped XServe users and admins without and exit strategy. Macs clearly not being emphasized any longer, Apple was moving out of that area. XServe ran Mac OS X and was a Macintosh just as much as any other, but it had a very specific purpose; to administrate other Macs (specifically, though anything could of course be admined)

There is always an exit strategy. Switch to something else. XServe could run OS X, but most XServe clusters did not actually run OS X. That might have been an issue to why it was dropped.

511 days between this version and the last. 420 days between the last and the one before that - that's 14 months. Not quite as god-awful as the 17+ last time but still damn bad.

Take it up with Intel.

Gesturing on W8 just means that once again MS is blindly copying Apple. That's all it means.. there's no vision or strategy behind that other than to say "we have that too!" and it will work. It has so far.

Gesturing has to be incorporated into desktop OS's. The aim is to slowly merge the desktop OS to the mobile OS after all. And you need to start somewhere. You can wait 10 years and suddenly say, "hey now you need gestures to do everything".

They'll keep adding gestures more and more with each release, you can be sure of that.

 

[Atlantico]

Right, serious audio or videophiles want high quality not offered by digital delivery. My question all along has been why should Apple care about them? They are a niche market.

I'm afraid there are more CDs sold than all digital distribution put together. The niche is what you're advocating, ironically enough.

And this is almost a decade after music became widely available for purchase on the internet.

Movies are even farther behind. On-line sale of movies hardly registers compared to the sales of DVDs/BDs and the sale of BDs is growing far faster than online sales, despite online sales being smaller and thus in a much better position for fast growth.

What color is the sky in your world?

 

[iBug2]

There's no reason not to support BD on the Mac, it is by far the best way to experience movies, most ubiquitous way to buy, share and sell movies and it is backwards compatible with all the DVDs people have already.

It's a no-brainer and it is quite amusing watching some people twisting themselves into a pretzel in order to excuse or explain away why Apple doesn't support BD playback.

I'm not even saying they have to put the drives into the computers, just support the playback. Though it would be awfully kind of them to allow people to buy BD drives BTO or even include them by default.

We'll never know what the reason is. Apple claims it's licensing agreements, but this is a company who is known to do those kinds of agreements better than any other Silicon Valley giant. So I don't buy it.

One can assume they do it to drive iTunes sales, but I don't think that's the issue. iTunes content is not the same as BD content. iTunes content is used to view at home, and at mobile devices. Since you wouldn't be able to copy your BD to your mobile device, it wouldn't have the same usage as iTunes content even if Apple supported it. So the buyer groups are different imho.

So, no clue why they still don't support it.

 

[Atlantico]

We aren't here to criticize Apple. We are here to discuss Apple. Criticizing nor praising doesn't deserve any thumbs up from anyone, let alone from someone as ignorant as you.

Now you give me a break.

Discussing Apple involves criticizing them when they do something stupid, and for those of us who have been paying attention to their antics for the last couple of decades, there's plenty to criticize. Always has been.

Plenty to praise too. That's discussing things. And Apple is easy to discuss. They always manage to get pie on their face by doing something bone-headed and then every once in a while the do something great.

They're fun to watch because of this. The list of Apple's great things is short compared to their blunders, also-rans, bad ideas, flops and general miscalculations of the market.

Calling me ignorant really made your argument, wow. Well played. How to counter that!??

 

[iBug2]

I'm afraid there are more CDs sold than all digital distribution put together. The niche is what you're advocating, ironically enough.

And this is almost a decade after music became widely available for purchase on the internet.

Movies are even farther behind. On-line sale of movies hardly registers compared to the sales of DVDs/BDs and the sale of BDs is growing far faster than online sales, despite online sales being smaller and thus in a much better position for fast growth.

What color is the sky in your world?

You are right about movie sales, but that's only because of bandwidth limitations.

About digital vs CD, even if the total amount of CD sales is still stronger than total digital sales (although this needs proof because I remember otherwise), we know that CD sales are diminishing every day and digital sales are growing. So even if today CD's are selling more, tomorrow they won't be.