Nvidia's Studio Laptop Lineup Aims to Compete With 15-Inch MacBook Pro

[bvz]

Yep, that's what I heard too, from friends and colleagues working there.

We had a bunch of PowerMac G5's at Framestore back around 2004-2006 in the Texture and DMP department. They were fantastic to work on but were phased out around 2008-2009 because they didn't want to spend the extra money on specially trained Mac IT support staff. It's all PC workstations now running Windows and Linux.

At Weta Digital only the production/coordinators had Macs, as well as some sort of proprietary software running on Macs for their dailies sessions. But most VFX sups complained about it due to the frequent occurrences of the dreaded spinning rainbow during client sessions. (I can tell you, James Cameron is not a patient and compassionate man, haha ) I think their art-department had some Macs, but certainly not the 3D teams. In fact, the IT department laughed at me when I requested a Mac. This was around the Avatar period, not sure what they've got now. I'm guessing mostly PC hardware.
MPC London (don't know about the other sites) never used any Macs for their 2D and 3D artists. Only MacBooks for their producers/coordinators. Simple stuff only.
Now I'm here at Square Enix Tokyo and not a single Mac in sight. Have yet to even see one since I started here a little over a year ago.

So yeah, it's safe to say that Apple blew it with the VFX and game industry. There was a significant upsurge in interest from said industries when Apple went Intel and it looked good for a few years. But they've since turned their backs on us. Even if Apple somehow manages to come out with an incredible new Mac Pro, priced very competitively, it will take a looooong time and a lot of subsequent upgrades/products accompanied by pro-level support and macOS upgrades to win back the trust of the 3D community.

And don't forget that time they bought then killed Shake.

Of course I think that was kind of a forgone conclusion given how bad the codebase was. When they killed it they offered us the chance to buy the source code. We did and apparently it was a complete mess.

Still didn't endear Apple to the VFX community though (even beyond them abandoning the pro time and time again).

And now they are dropping openGL in favor of metal. Another step in the wrong direction if they are interested in the high end 3D market (note: they aren't actually interested. We are simply too tiny as a market to make it worthwhile).

 

[richinaus]

And don't forget that time they bought then killed Shake.

Of course I think that was kind of a forgone conclusion given how bad the codebase was. When they killed it they offered us the chance to buy the source code. We did and apparently it was a complete mess.

Still didn't endear Apple to the VFX community though (even beyond them abandoning the pro time and time again).

And now they are dropping openGL in favor of metal. Another step in the wrong direction if they are interested in the high end 3D market (note: they aren't actually interested. We are simply too tiny as a market to make it worthwhile).

That’s the feeling I get. They simply aren’t interested. Which is fair enough, as they can be everything to everyone.

A simple truth is working in 3d is more productive on a pc than Mac.

 

[Onelifenofear]

I’d say there’s no competition. MacBooks nowadays are surpassed by every manufacturer when it comes to reliability, performance and usability ( their keyboards work)

Yawn. Utterly depends what you are doing.

My keyboard for past 3 Gen MacBooks all have worked fine.

Reliability - Compared to my 4 PCs - desktop and Laptops - I laugh at you.

Performance - This is indeed true. You can get an Nvidia GPU and they do perform faster at certain tasks, but it depends on your tasks. I make 3d Animation and Video work. Probably the more intensive stuff a laptop will do and make quite a lot of cash doing so. Would I ever trade that 20% speed boost to use windoze. Nope. Not till they actually drop all the redundant Code, Duplicate and awful control panels / Settings and the Cluster fudge that is the Windows Registry. It’s just terrible.

Usability - Oh please. That is an utterly pathetic statement and just proves you probably have not even used a mac.
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And don't forget that time they bought then killed Shake.

Of course I think that was kind of a forgone conclusion given how bad the codebase was. When they killed it they offered us the chance to buy the source code. We did and apparently it was a complete mess.

Still didn't endear Apple to the VFX community though (even beyond them abandoning the pro time and time again).

And now they are dropping openGL in favor of metal. Another step in the wrong direction if they are interested in the high end 3D market (note: they aren't actually interested. We are simply too tiny as a market to make it worthwhile).

Shake was crushed by Flame then Fusion and Nuke. They couldn’t develop the bad codebsase they inherited quickly enough. And the Other apps had a much more extensible core. The lead Apple Shake coder stated later that it would have taken 3-4 years to catch up to Nuke when they were making leaps every 3 months. They did at least run it for 7 years.

OpenGL outdated - last version was 2 years ago. It is still being developed though. Vulkan is they new API being developed to replace it.

Vulkan will work on top of Metal using the open source MoltenVK library ( also OpenGL backward compatible ) and it’s actually works a lot faster then Apple’s OpenGL implementation anyway which was always a bit rubbish.

 

[Kinotto]

Yawn. Utterly depends what you are doing.

My keyboard for past 3 Gen MacBooks all have worked fine.

Reliability - Compared to my 4 PCs - desktop and Laptops - I laugh at you.

Performance - This is indeed true. You can get an Nvidia GPU and they do perform faster at certain tasks, but it depends on your tasks. I make 3d Animation and Video work. Probably the more intensive stuff a laptop will do and make quite a lot of cash doing so. Would I ever trade that 20% speed boost to use windoze. Nope. Not till they actually drop all the redundant Code, Duplicate and awful control panels / Settings and the Cluster fudge that is the Windows Registry. It’s just terrible.

Usability - Oh please. That is an utterly pathetic statement and just proves you probably have not even used a mac.
[doublepost=1559481152][/doublepost]

Shake was crushed by Flame then Fusion and Nuke. They couldn’t develop the bad codebsase they inherited quickly enough. And the Other apps had a much more extensible core. The lead Apple Shake coder stated later that it would have taken 3-4 years to catch up to Nuke when they were making leaps every 3 months. They did at least run it for 7 years.

OpenGL outdated - last version was 2 years ago. It is still being developed though. Vulkan is they new API being developed to replace it.

Vulkan will work on top of Metal using the open source MoltenVK library ( also OpenGL backward compatible ) and it’s actually works a lot faster then Apple’s OpenGL implementation anyway which was always a bit rubbish.

So you have your experience with Macs, I have mine: all good so far, until you start laughing at my considerations and calling my statements pathetic, on the basis of your experience only.
In a few sentences you passed from being a possible interlocutor to an ignorant and arrogant person.