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[Pros] What do you do?

Abulia

Abulia

macrumors 68000
Original poster
I apologize if this is OT. It isn't my intent...I really want to reach those who use Mac Pros (the "pros") and this forum seemed the best fit. 🙂

My question is pretty straightforward: For those of you who are self-employed pros using your Mac Pros as a business what is it that you do? What is your job function?

This is more of idle curiosity than a career change...I'd really like to know what cool things you're doing! 😀
 
During the day I am really alot of things for 1 company. I am an application developer (ADO .NET), Web Developer, IT Manager, SQL Server Admin, Graphic Designer and I take care of all marketing needs. I wish there was one title that summed all that up lol

My side business is Graphic Design, mostly corporate identity packages, logos, biz cards, websites ect. That is what I am trying to focus on right now. I find logos and corporate identitys the most challenging and also the most rewarding, because its got to be something completley different for every customer, something new, and still look professional and not like it came out of a template.

I just got my mac pro and acd 23" (4 grand out of the door) and am planning on putting in more ram and more hard-drives as I go.

Thats me 😛
 
Video editing (obviously) in both SD and HD for documentary production, commercials, corporate video, DVD authoring, intense encoding for various web formats, my iPod, and other formats, pretty heavy Aperture use, very intense Motion graphics production, and games (in the remaining 1% of my day). I work freelance and for a big company as a film/video producer, editor, videographer, and DVD author. The corporate gig is incredibly boring as far as content goes, but it certainly has its perks. I'm in Miami right now filming some training segments for the company, a very short taxi ride from South Beach, and everything is paid for....very sweet. 😎

EDIT: My Mac Pro is also my DVD server to my Mac Mini hooked up to my HDTV (until iTV comes out anyway). 2.5 TB of drive space gives you space for LOTS of DVDs.
 
Magazine Production (In Design), graphic design, web design (hand code some Dreamweaver), photography (Aperture).

Going to be getting into film soon as well.

Mac Pro 2.66, 3GB(soon), 160GB, 200GB, Firewire RAID 640GB, 23" ACD.
 
Any more pros want to chime in? I wanna hear what all this computing power is being used for! 😀
 
VFX designer... 3D and compositing on a PC (bleh) is my day job, but I use my Macs at home for freelance motion design, editing, 3D, etc. If it moves and it's made of pixels, I'm into it 😉
 
I work with a multimedia agency and use my mac pro for video editing, mainly sd but soon hd since I'm getting a new camera and firestore (yay!). Plenty of time in photoshop, illustrator, and director.

Dual 2.66 Ghz
2GB RAM
74GB 10,000RPM system disk
74GB 10,000RPM scratch disk
450GB Internal Storage
360GB External Storage
standard video card for now...

I'm planning on adding 4GB and maybe the high end video card soon
 
Abulia said:
I apologize if this is OT. It isn't my intent...I really want to reach those who use Mac Pros (the "pros") and this forum seemed the best fit. 🙂

My question is pretty straightforward: For those of you who are self-employed pros using your Mac Pros as a business what is it that you do? What is your job function?

This is more of idle curiosity than a career change...I'd really like to know what cool things you're doing! 😀
Click to expand...


Wedding photographer
 
I'm only a student but I'm in the final year of a Physics with Theoretical Astrophysics course. While I haven't needed sheer computational power before I've always wanted it. If things work out for me over the next week and I get the final year project that I've applied for then I'll be using the Mac Pro to create simulations. I also do some video production and graphics editing for a media design group on the side as well as providing them with technical support.
 
I make most of my income as an independent/self employed Registered Professional Civil/Evironmental Engineer designing water supply, wastewater treatment, wastewater reuse and industrial waste treatement facilities.

I also freelance as a recording engineer and recording musician (guitar, flute, sax, and keyboards). Prior to becoming a Civil/Environmental engineer I made my living this way and still get the urge from time to time.

Quite a mix of professions isn't it?

Dave
 
daveporter said:
I make most of my income as an independent/self employed Registered Professional Civil/Evironmental Engineer designing water supply, wastewater treatment, wastewater reuse and industrial waste treatement facilities.

I also freelance as a recording engineer and recording musician (guitar, flute, sax, and keyboards). Prior to becoming a Civil/Environmental engineer I made my living this way and still get the urge from time to time.

Quite a mix of professions isn't it?

Dave
Click to expand...

too bad there's no land surveying softare for mac os x, or i would be all over a mac pro
 
Architecture 🙂

Architecture...!
Doing a lot of heavy 3d modeling, rendering and lots o heavy posters-
I use:

Maya
Sketchup (still not universal and darn slow)
Maxwell (well i cheat and use it in XP)

iMovie
FC Express
Shake (Amazing preformance)
and CS2 (Can´t wait for CS3)

Rendering on this thing is just AMAZING.. Compared to my 2.8ghz P4 its 8.4x (maxwell) and 9.1x (maya) faster... Simply crazy - makes me wonder how many hours of my life I have wasted...

Mac Pro + my 23 ACD = Best hardware i´ve ever bought..!!
 
twoodcc said:
too bad there's no land surveying softare for mac os x, or i would be all over a mac pro
Click to expand...

I had the same concerns about AutoCAD. However, you don't need to concern yourself with that problem because the Mac Pro runs Windows XP faster then any PC that I have ever used, bar-none.

If your surveying software runs on Windows XP and your data collectors interface via USB or firewire than your in business. However, if your data collectors use serial or PC parallel ports, you will need to find a way to connect them to the Mac Pro since it does not have any serial or parallel ports. For my Plotter I found a centronics to USB interface cable that worked fine once I figured out how to get the drivers loaded correctly in Windows XP. It is slower then using a direct centronics (parallel) connection but is speedy enough so as not to slow me down and it works fine.

Dave
 
illustrator...3d stuff

3ds max/silo/vray/photoshop...some running well under Macos, all running well on my new shinny macpro and bootcamp. Very happy 🙂
 
Wedding & Event videographer (P/T).

FCS 5.1, CS2, Aperture, Nikon Capture NX

I don't usually upgrade often, looking for 4 years productivity. Still use a DP500 after a brief foray into G5 2.3, I was well aware of intel when I bought the G5 but had a rethink so have sold it and ordered a 2.66 with the X1900XT for the longer term having also got the universal binary FCS5 software now.
 
GFX designer & Artist

Quark / InDesign / Photoshop / Illustrator / Corel Painter IX.5



This will be the machine that will replace my Powermac G5.

At the moment the 4 cores may be a tad overkill, but this machine is to last 3-4 years, so spending a bit extra on more power now will mean in a few years I'll still have a viable computer and one with still fair resale value.

The iMac 24" looks lovely and tempting, but I'd probably end up upgrading it in 18 months.

A mac pro is an expensive tool, but its a worth it for me.
 
I'm doing the self-owned video production company thing right now. While a lot of what I do is Wedding videography, my username is more of a joke (an insult I use with my video-geek friends).

I'd like to be doing more commercial work now that I have a good assortment of gear (HDV camera) and a machine that can handle some high end graphics creation. 😎

I also occasionally shoot short films and fancy myself as a director and/or editor(I'd like to more often, but time is a constraint). Right now I'm in post production hell on a short film we shot in June. -So many things keep popping up. Hope to finish it this week though. It’s looking very nice.

By the way, the JVC HD-100 is a dream-come-true camera for indie filmmakers. -Highly recommended. 😀
 
I draw and paint comic books for Marvel Comics. While the comics are hand drawn, I still utilize 3D apps and photoshop. I also use a touch of digital photography to shoot models. I also use iweb to keep up with my website.

currently using a 1.8ghz imac G5, But am ordering one of the 24" monsters next week!
 
Sit in front of computer all day and night....

I also do 3D architectural vis work using Max, Rhino, Vray and Photoshop. Most of it over on the XP side but I'm looking forward to PS in Universal.
 
Network/System Admin for a School District during the day.
On the side I do photography / 3D Rendering etc.

Vue 5 Inf, Poser, Photoshop, etc.

I love the mac pro, it does all very well. Except I get out of memory errors in vue 5 but thats not the mac pros fault lol.
 
daveporter said:
I had the same concerns about AutoCAD. However, you don't need to concern yourself with that problem because the Mac Pro runs Windows XP faster then any PC that I have ever used, bar-none.

If your surveying software runs on Windows XP and your data collectors interface via USB or firewire than your in business. However, if your data collectors use serial or PC parallel ports, you will need to find a way to connect them to the Mac Pro since it does not have any serial or parallel ports. For my Plotter I found a centronics to USB interface cable that worked fine once I figured out how to get the drivers loaded correctly in Windows XP. It is slower then using a direct centronics (parallel) connection but is speedy enough so as not to slow me down and it works fine.

Dave
Click to expand...

yeah, we hook up our data collector via serial, and the plotter is parallel. where there's a will there's a way to hook it up, but since we already have a fine working pc, there's really no need to buy a new system.

but we hate autocad and the new surveying software we have now (forgot the name for some reason, but it also uses autocad )

they try to charge a yearly fee for the software
 
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