This some kind of Guinness Book Record of longest MR thread? Anyhoo...Im wondering if apple will start selling 1080p titles in light of all the LION res image bumps hinting at higher res displays
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Steve Jobs Suggests Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon
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1. Built-in card reader negates need for external card reader. Aren't you one of the people that likes to use the "what if you lose the <insert connector here>" argument?
2. Plug one bus powered Firewire external drive into Firewire port.
3. Plug one bus powered USB external drive into low-power USB port.
4. Plug USB powered mouse into standard-powered USB port, though I highly recommend upgrading to a Bluetooth mouse to forgo the USB cable which you might lose.
I never understood the need for a card reader when you can hook up the camera directly to the laptop. I also don't understand why people continue to use card readers or cables when there are much more elegant solutions (Example: http://www.eye.fi/), including among high end Nikons and Canons.
Same here.
Interesting. Possibly.
However, I just wish they would drop the DRM. Then maybe I'll start buying them. Still likely to wait for 4K, though, before upgrading my library.
For the record, I have attempted to get the thread back on topic today. However, it keeps devolving back into Mac vs PC.
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God, I hope you meant to say Firewire or faster.
Actually, some high end models have wifi built in and don't need those cards. But CF is faster than SD, holds more, and frankly, easier to manage for those really taking pictures, like pros. Not to mention just plain raw speed, wireless is not fast, and has more latency than USB. Ugh.
And man, your brick picture a page back....I hope that was a cell phone or something crappy. Barrel!!
As mentioned, the Compact Flash card from the DSLR doesn't fit into the Apple SDHC/SDXC slot.
The task was
so this fails.
BTW, have you noticed that 1394 bus-powered drives are about as rare as Apples with built-in BD drives? (...and as pricey?)
One right.
Bluetooth mouses can't be used on airplanes, so no go. And, although they probably exist, I've never seen a USB mouse with a detachable cord - impossible to lose the cord without losing the mouse.
With a card reader, you can just drag-and-drop the photo files to where you want them. With the camera connection, you have to have the camera running (and draining its battery) - and often there's software that attempts to <sarcasm>"help"</sarcasm> you copy the files.
Wireless hacks fail the airplane test. EyeFi has small, slow SD cards - I use 30 MB/sec Extreme cards for shooting RAW+JPEG. Radio-based methods also fail the camera battery test.
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So, in essence your suggestions are that I buy special equipment and change my workflow to suit the limitations of the laptop?
No, just Demi-God.
I'm much more concerned with the writing speed in the camera, rather than the reading speed in the laptop. Faster is nicer, but USB 2.0 is adequate.
Yes, more added-cost dongles to carry around, all for the want of a third USB port on the Apple.
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I started reading but actually got exhausted from you constantly moving the goal posts. And you actually accuse Linux2Mac of the same thing? Seriously?!! LOL
Wait, so now you're on a plane? Do you still have the card reader out, camera, two drives and USB mouse? I didn't realize there are airplane trays that large. What airlines are you flying?
Goals didn't change, you just didn't meet them
No goalposts moved - the original question was
Your suggestions of WiFi, Bluetooth and 1394 weren't addressing the original question.
Actually, the mouse is on the tray, and the drives in the seatback pocket.
I never connect the camera to USB (except to upgrade the firmware), so it's not out.
The mouse issue is also that I don't want to have to carry two mice, so I get a corded one that can be used anywhere.
No goalposts moved - the original question was
Your suggestions of WiFi, Bluetooth and 1394 weren't addressing the original question.
Actually, the mouse is on the tray, and the drives in the seatback pocket.
I never connect the camera to USB (except to upgrade the firmware), so it's not out.
The mouse issue is also that I don't want to have to carry two mice, so I get a corded one that can be used anywhere.
Professionals working in video/film would like to connect their laptops to proper, broadcast quality displays in the field. When Apple removed the ExpressCard slot from the 15" MBP they pretty much cut it off at the knees in terms of functionality. ThunderBolt was a welcomed addition.
Japan isn't that great of a measuring stick, IMO. What they demo, or have as a test bed, usually takes decades to become viable commercially on a large scale.
A built in 5-in-1 or 7-in-1 card reader would be much more useful. There are a number of professional cameras and tapeless recorders that don't use SD (or a variant of).
From that link:
That I can agree with and will add that a big hurdle to bumping up to 4K is will our internet structure grow enough to support it at a mainstream level?
Broadcasting in 4k basically means SD to HD upgrade 2.0. It won't be quite as bad but, still, collectively people spent billions not to long ago to shift from SD to HD and I don't know how many people are keen on doing it again so soon. Not only will it involve ripping out and replacing industrial broadcast gear but also improving compression standards using legacy codecs to get a 4k signal to fit down pipes that originally were designed to carry analog SD. That was one of the major hang-ups in moving to HD broadcasts. Getting an HD signal to fit into the same bandwidth as a current SD signal and that just wasn't possible in the analog world. It's not like someone can just zip up to the decades-old communication satellites orbiting the Earth and upgrade it by swapping out some cards.
So, coming back to internet infrastructure, the more we depend on our ISP for everything the more we are putting all our eggs in one basket. When AT&T announced it's 150gig limit I read that watching a couple of HD movie streams a day from Netflix would hit that limit before the end of the month. Now bump that up to 4K sizes and the whole household sharing the same pipe for everything from streaming movies to playing video games to just everyday surfing and 150gigs isn't very much.
Using the camera as the xfer device means you are out of commission for the duration of the xfer. Irritating for consumers and deal breaker for pros, IMO.
Lethal
I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball sitting in front of me. I just know that watching BD on a computer is useless to me. I have a dedicated home theater with 90" plus screen for movie watching. That's what I call a theater, not some 15" laptop with 7.1 Logitech speakers. When I do watch BD's I play them on my dedicated BD player. I could care less about watching movies on any of my Macs. I have not even watched one DVD on my Macs. My Macs are for work and the best work machines I have ever owned. Especially since I am also a Linux guy. Nothing beats the stability of a *NIX system. No way Windows comes close.
CF, like BD and FW are only needs of a minority like us demanding creative professionals. Since we are not mainstream, Apple doesn't care about us.
While most of the mainstream Windows switchers became hardcore Apple fans, about every other creative professional I know has turned from evangelist into a concerned Apple sceptic.
I miss the days when you bought a Mac and you could be certain that every state-of-the art interface or storage technology was included.
Every decent new idea from Apple now comes at the price of losing one or two other important (at least for us pros) options. Now that the Macbook Air has become very successful I'll bet the Macbook "Pro" will eventually merge with the Air and then will be crippled beyond any creative pro use.
Nowadays the only choice of restoring at least some of the missing functionality is buying an expensive Mac Pro tower, a BD burner and PCI cards as a halfway acceptable workaround, and what's most embarrassing and troubling - a copy of Windows...
If you were a professional photo/videographer who shoots RAW and/or 1080p and thus fills several cards easily, you would understand.
Sure, 8GB WiFi cards as a solution for shooting HD 1080p video...
The larger data consumption rates found in higher end equipment pragmatically means that interfaces that have relatively poor bandwidth are a waste of the Pro's time (remember: Time=Money). As such, it is a false economy to try to save $20 or $50 here and there by using the camera's included USB interface, or even the slower-still WiFi.
Of course, one of the more egrarious mistakes one can make to kill productivity is to hook up a USB external HD for writing the data out onto while also trying to import the data across a USB reader that's on the same USB channel ... your already slow USB transfer times just doubled because of this poor selection of which ports to use.
Even the trays in First Class aren't that big.
The broader fallacy here is that the inference is that a "Pro" needs to do this, which is nonsensical: A Pro isn't going to carry around with him on his laptop's internal hard drive the last 20 years of his photos/videos which is what's forcing him to use an external HD all the time...that's simply stupid business.
Instead, he's going to conduct simple, good housekeeping ... and leave his old data that he doesn't need for the project at home. Plus, he will be willing to pay the extra bucks for a larger-than-default internal hard drive to begin with when he buys his new laptop.
Furthermore, if we recall our original subject (physical Blu-Ray optical drives), it is precisely this in-the-process-of-creation Pro with a Laptop on the road who should be venting his spleen about how having a second internal HD is preferable to any optical drive whatsoever, since it would be so much more useful for his 'travel' use case.
In any case, I'm recently back home after being on the road with my gear, and my dSLR's data consumption was roughly 70GB. Yes, it was a relatively small shoot - only ~1400 images or so, plus some incidental 1080p...but my point is to illustrate that this is clearly much higher than the average "consumer demographic" use case, plus going all the way up to needing a whopping 1TB of external storage isn't particularly all that commonplace of a use case to justify something around.
While others (particulary those doing more 1080p than I was) are sure to use more than 70GB on a shoot, when we look at the Apple Store, the full retail price from Apple to bump the 13" MBP's HD from 320 to 750GB is only $150. YMMV, but I see it as well worth $150 to have an additional 430GB (6x more than what I used for 1400 images) worth of low hassle internal storage, before we have to even start to worry about the even more extreme use cases.
and
A fair statements IMO. I'm not particularly enamored with Apple's decision awhile back to eliminate the EC reader off of their smaller MBPs either.
Although... (continuing)
Agree with the latter, but far less so on the former. I'm pretty cynical that any one individual has been so disorganized with his gear that he has so many different memory card form factors to worry about managing. As such, the more common use case is an individual who needs two, maybe three.
For example, my current solution here is to just have a CF reader and then use an CF-SD adaptor card to plug in the occasional SD (and by extension, micro-SD) into my CF reader to get it imported.
I understand where you're coming from, but in counterpoint, my compact little 12" G4 Powerbook also weighed 5lbs and only had 3-4 hours of useful battery. I'll accept the trade-offs that Apple has offered, particularly since the contemporary 13" MBP of that machine today has a 20% lower MSRP, even before factoring in 8 years worth of inflation.
-hh
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You are working under the assumption that it is always only one guy using his own gear which isn't always the case and, at least in the video world in larger markets, it's probably the minority of situations.
In the video world it's very common to run into CF, SD, ExpressCard, and PMCIA form factors for media and if you are responsibly for managing data the fewer adapters you have to lose, break, or potentially kernel panic your machine the better (especially if you are on location). While I don't expect Apple, or any manufacturer, to be able to address all needs in all situations Apple has been much better about it the past than they currently are. For example, ditching the ExpressCard slot for an SD slot on a 'pro' machine is just ridiculous, IMO.
Lethal
A very fair point; I was thinking more of stills. Plus also more of "own work" (or small team), which doesn't necessarily have a high degree of collaboration with others that would more likely invoke proliferation of media forms (and formats). But I can easily see how in stuff like a Journalism setting the value-added of being able to "import many" can be very useful from the perspective of locally importing media from a hundred different "civilian" cellphone/cameras to some newsworthy event.
100% agreed there: an SD is for the consumer-centric MacBook, whereas all of the MacBookPro should have nothing less than an ExpressCard slot.
Of course, the topical question here then becomes if one is then willing to trade-off having any internal optical drive in order to make room for the EC. Sure, "more is better", but that then means bigger/heavier/etc. Overall, this might make for an interesting design study for a 15" MacBookAirPro.
-hh
FCP X says otherwise.
They should have gone to NAB. I understand it was nothing but a sea of Mac laptops.
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I don't doubt it. An optical drive the three times I used it during my last MBP was useful, too. Was the weight, bulkiness, added fragility, and cost worth it for those three times than any inconvenience from using Remote Disk Share? No.
A consumer and likely the 99% of prosumers can get by with importing their film via the card reader and then disconnecting it to free up the port. Why would it need to stay on during the entire session? Meanwhile, professionals are used to dealing with carrying large amounts of equipment around with them, and not because Apple has refused to include 5 standard-power USB ports on all of their laptops.
I will concede that the lack of PCMCI slot for eSATA (which has always stunk in my experience) on the 15" MBP was a bit premature with Thunderbolt only now having come out.
If physical media is to survive, than the studios are going to have to step it up much more than a notch above what we get from our OTA, cable and dish HD experiences. 4K provides a big contrast with what the consumer has ever seen. All indications are that the home media manufacturers are priming the pump for 4K now that people are kind of over 1080p and 3D had been met with a collective "meh."
Getting to the subject of streamed content, as of October 2010, the United States is currently ranked 16th for broadband and 20th in broadband penetration. If the United States, or any country, is going to remain competitive, than we are going to need faster, cheaper, more ubiquitous, and higher caps on broadband; even the President has made it a priority and launched programs to expedite the matter. At the risk of sounding xenophobic, who is number 1? A: South Korea. Where is the HQ of my TV and phone manufacturer and a plethora of other devices lying around my house? A: South Korea.
For every lobbyist currently in Washington convincing politicians caps are a necessity, there are going to be twice as many pushing for higher or no caps. Why? The advent of more and more industries incorporating some functionality of cloud computing, whether it be Netflix or DropBox, requires it. All of these nascent businesses create a lot of jobs and a lot of tax revenue.
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No VAIO's? I guess it doesn't make any sense to invest in the proper gear like Macs and FCP X if you are only in business part time.
Now that I think about it more, wouldn't the vast majority of photo and video professionals working remotely go for the larger 17" over the 15"? I would expect the larger screen to be much more beneficial.
I don't really see 4k adding much, if any, value to the average home set-up 'anytime soon'. In the same way that people argued there isn't much difference between DVD and BD at small screen sizes (and they are right to some extent), there isn't going to be much difference at even big screen sizes between 1080p and 4k. The difference is people can buy bigger TVs to make 1080p video well worth it, but I question whether people would really want to turn their entire wall into a TV in order to get the value of a 4k image. Not for a long time at least.
4k will be great for cinemas, events, etc, but I think its use in the home is so far off being worthwhile we can kind of disregard it for now. It's certainly not a good argument against Apple supporting Blu-ray *now*, any more than repeating the mantra of 'but downloads are the future' helps any film fans who favour Apple computers in the present, where we all live.
4k will be great for cinemas, events, etc, but I think its use in the home is so far off being worthwhile we can kind of disregard it for now. It's certainly not a good argument against Apple supporting Blu-ray *now*, any more than repeating the mantra of 'but downloads are the future' helps any film fans who favour Apple computers in the present, where we all live.
I don't know that it would be absolutely necessary to get a wall-sized screen to get any benefit from 4K. B&H sells displays only slightly larger than the average HD TV. Again, viewing distance will come into play. Of course, I'm sure the Michael Bays of the world and a few professional athletes are already plopping down money for six figure Meridian projectors, even if content is lacking.
Plus, we're already seeing 4K camcorders roll out, and not just for professionals.Let's face it, outside of press releases, Blu-Ray has not been the resounding success that was the DVD. You don't have to far to see the signs (see linked article below). The last data I saw still had computers purchased with Blu-Ray drives below 10%, and the 22 week average still has Blu-Ray sales to DVD sales at less than 1 in 5 (and that's with DVD sales dropping like a rock).
Why Has Blu-ray Failed to Catch Hold?
BTW, what about the digital copies you get with the Blu-Ray?
But who really knows. Maybe with the next hardware refresh, you'll get your wish. Perhaps Apple will have capitulated to the various Blu-Ray licensing bodies as well as spent some time duck-taping AACS into the guts of Lion (Not that it seems to be slowing down anyone from ripping their collection via freeware.).
HD was met w/a collective "meh" too but all it took to turn that around was for manufacturers to stop making SD TVs and a government mandated switch from analog to digital (which freed up enough bandwidth to get HD signals across an infrastructure built for analog SD).
TV and camera manufacturers will keep pushing the next big thing because they feel they have to in order to survive. That doesn't mean there is an actual consumer demand for it or that the consumers will even be able to tell the difference.I have to disagree about the jump to 4K being unequivocally massive. 480i to 1080p is a bigger leap and a good chunk of that is because you are going from interlaced to progressive. From what I've read the jump from interlaced to progressive is so significant that it is one of the primary reasons why so many people think their SD, 24p DVDs look better scaled up on their HD TV than on their SD TVs.
I hope you are right but guys like TimeWarner, NewsCorp, Viacom, etc., have significant political influence and know how to use it. I also think the next big battle should be with companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint over cellular data plans. Assuming everything keeps moving onwards and upwards I think in 10yrs landline internet access will be in the same place landline telephones are today.
It really depends. From what I've tended to notice is if the machine is used purely as a desktop replacement the 17" might get the nod but if it's going to be mobile at all it's the 15". The 15" form is a real sweet spot for
price, portability and functionality.
The displays from B&H are most likely designed to be used up close for color grading and critical monitoring. And by up-close I mean desktop monitor type close. 17" and 24" broadcast quality HDTVs are commonly used as reference monitors in edit bays but obviously that's a tad small for a home thetaer (even on a budget).
Sure you don't need a wall sized screen... as long as you don't mind sitting 4ft in front of your 60" TV.
I know RED has said that they want to see 2012 as the year of 4K in the home and that they'll make a 'consumer' 4K projector if no one else does so we'll see what happens...
Lethal
I love Blu-ray. I have nearly 400 of them and I'm an avid movie collector (see the links in my signature for the movie collecting apps my company makes as an example). The quality is incredible, owning a physical format means something to me, and I can tell the difference between it and some digital file crap that Apple gives us or some compressed 1080i junk Comcast TV gives me.
I also love Apple. We have 6 Macs in my home, 2 iPads, two iPhone 4's, and AppleTV, and numerous other devices associated with Apple. I think nearly everything they do is the correct way to go, and that is why I buy their products. They work for me and my family.
But know this... Apple will NEVER put Blu-ray in their products. It's over. Don't even think about it. There are a number of reasons for this:
1. iTunes. Digital purchases. Most people could care less or even notice the difference between 720p and 1080p. Hell, most people don't even have a 5.1 surround setup in their home. Apple is trying to be the #1 place to go to get digital media, and Blu-ray doesn't fit with that. And they know most consumers just aren't smart enough to know quality differences in "HD" formats anyway.
2. Movies. Really, who watches movies on their Mac? Now-a-days, everyone who downloads movies does so to stream them to some other device... hence Apple TV, Boxee, Netflix on game consoles, etc. Would I love a Blu-ray player in my Mac? Sure! Would I actually watch a lot of movies on my machine? Probably not.
3. Device Size. Even if you say to yourself "but what about laptops on a plane!", consider the iPad and how it's changing how plane rides are happening. Want to do work? Bring a laptop. Want to have fun with a casual device? Bring an iPad. And it's practical to not include the drive in a device like an iPad to avoid moving parts and added weight. My last plane ride in first class I saw three people with iPads and one with a laptop. The people with the iPads were using it for media, while the laptop was for work.
4. Digital Copies. Most new major blockbuster Blu-rays include Digital Copies of the film. They recognize that with portable devices you need files, not discs. People don't care about quality as much when you become more portable. The convenience of not having to carry around a package of Blu-rays outweighs the quality loss.
5. Screen Size. True 1080p requires at least 1080 lines of resolution as well as specific view distance from the screen. Most computers don't even meet these standards. I wouldn't even care about watching Blu-ray on anything less than a 27'' iMac... otherwise it's nearly pointless.
I love Blu-ray. It's never coming to Apple products. If you think it will you are fooling yourself.
I also love Apple. We have 6 Macs in my home, 2 iPads, two iPhone 4's, and AppleTV, and numerous other devices associated with Apple. I think nearly everything they do is the correct way to go, and that is why I buy their products. They work for me and my family.
But know this... Apple will NEVER put Blu-ray in their products. It's over. Don't even think about it. There are a number of reasons for this:
1. iTunes. Digital purchases. Most people could care less or even notice the difference between 720p and 1080p. Hell, most people don't even have a 5.1 surround setup in their home. Apple is trying to be the #1 place to go to get digital media, and Blu-ray doesn't fit with that. And they know most consumers just aren't smart enough to know quality differences in "HD" formats anyway.
2. Movies. Really, who watches movies on their Mac? Now-a-days, everyone who downloads movies does so to stream them to some other device... hence Apple TV, Boxee, Netflix on game consoles, etc. Would I love a Blu-ray player in my Mac? Sure! Would I actually watch a lot of movies on my machine? Probably not.
3. Device Size. Even if you say to yourself "but what about laptops on a plane!", consider the iPad and how it's changing how plane rides are happening. Want to do work? Bring a laptop. Want to have fun with a casual device? Bring an iPad. And it's practical to not include the drive in a device like an iPad to avoid moving parts and added weight. My last plane ride in first class I saw three people with iPads and one with a laptop. The people with the iPads were using it for media, while the laptop was for work.
4. Digital Copies. Most new major blockbuster Blu-rays include Digital Copies of the film. They recognize that with portable devices you need files, not discs. People don't care about quality as much when you become more portable. The convenience of not having to carry around a package of Blu-rays outweighs the quality loss.
5. Screen Size. True 1080p requires at least 1080 lines of resolution as well as specific view distance from the screen. Most computers don't even meet these standards. I wouldn't even care about watching Blu-ray on anything less than a 27'' iMac... otherwise it's nearly pointless.
I love Blu-ray. It's never coming to Apple products. If you think it will you are fooling yourself.
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