Good points. Dell, Cisco and Microsoft are the go-to computers for business and enterprise. Macs have just become home entertainment computers.
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Still Waiting for Mac Pro Updates, Suitable Intel Processors Due in Q4
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Good points. Dell, Cisco and Microsoft are the go-to computers for business and enterprise. Macs have just become home entertainment computers.
Jeez, this comment is wrong in so many ways. For instance....
- They didn't lower any price. You couldn't get Final Cut Pro without the suite before. The entire suite cost more. See the difference?
- "Old hands" has nothing to do with the FCP X disaster. Most working editors can work on three or four different app's. Most Editors are smarter than you think.
"Pros need to consider the level of compatibility with their current hardware but sooner or later the software updates will add features missing today"
I have no idea what that even mean.
Shhh dont say that too loud
I just set-up a Resolve and Avid kick-ass system here for work.
I dont want my boss to think I built this just to play iTunes all day
Well the Mini has been the ugly stepsister for a long time. In fact many people assumed its block had already been chopped at one point and were surprised when Apple finally updated it.
Sad, but I believe you have summarized the situation succinctly and well.
I had planned on replacing my late 2009 Mac Pro with a new one soon. However now that it's patently clear that OS X Lion is about to be blended into iOS (or vice versa), I'm taking a wait and see approach on all Apple products.
Once Apple rolls out the A6 & single OS "system", then it will be possible to evaluate the viability of this for the work I do.
Even if it takes them until 2013, the wait will be worth it since I will save a huge sum of money by suspending further Apple purchases until I see what Steve's Post PC vision truly is.
Clearly the target is Jack and Jill average buyer. The big question is, what about the rest of us that use an Apple computer for mission critical work.
Once Apple rolls out the A6 & single OS "system", then it will be possible to evaluate the viability of this for the work I do.
Even if it takes them until 2013, the wait will be worth it since I will save a huge sum of money by suspending further Apple purchases until I see what Steve's Post PC vision truly is.
Clearly the target is Jack and Jill average buyer. The big question is, what about the rest of us that use an Apple computer for mission critical work.
Thats exactly why I built a Hackentosh. If Apple truly does go off the deep end at least I have a machine that runs windows. (back to the stone age I guess)
Indeed.
I don't know, I'm not as pessimistic just yet. I really doubt Apple will kill the Mac Pro. However, if they don't offer a redesigned rack-mountable chassis or an otherwise substantial update then I'd agree there is cause for pessimism. I agree that Apple no longer relies on the Pro community for survival, but I see many of the recent moves as shifting of product lines rather than abandoning of the Pro segment altogether. If Final Cut Pro never matures as a product, if the Mac Pros get unimpressive updates, etc ... then I'd say the writing is on the wall for the pro-customers of Apple. What happens in the next year will determine Apple's stance.
What most people here seems to be missing is that the graph represents an 11 year span from 2000 to present. It reflects the trend in PC sales in general and has more to do with the power of todays laptops, than any change of direction on Apples part. In 2000 the fastest Mac Pro was a 400Mhz G4 sawtooth, a computer that even the smallest 11" Macbook Air beats by orders of magnitude. I believe they shipped with 128Mb 133mhz memory and 9Gig hard drives, pre-installed with OS 9.
Above all it has nothing to do with the lack of updates to the Mac Pro line, there has been no new workstation CPU's released by intel. So there is nothing to update on the CPU front at least, we will almost certainly see Thunderbolt ports in the coming update as well at least. Well, that is what my crystal ball is telling me at least.
Above all it has nothing to do with the lack of updates to the Mac Pro line, there has been no new workstation CPU's released by intel. So there is nothing to update on the CPU front at least, we will almost certainly see Thunderbolt ports in the coming update as well at least. Well, that is what my crystal ball is telling me at least.
The chip has been shipping yes if you were buying them individually but HP/IBM/Lenovo just recently released products based on those chips.
I have no heard a peep about the E5 and wondered where it was, all the talk has been E3/E7.
My office used to use a half dozen Mac pros because there was no other choice. Especially for the kind of high powered cgi etc that we do.
Funny thing, late last year in a fit of insanity, the boss bought 4 iMacs. We had budget to burn or lose so he figured we could use them for office stuff if they sucked. They didn't. In fact they handed everything we tossed at them as well as our Mac pros. We got ten more during this last update along with a half dozen of the new 17 inch Mbps, two more Mac pros and six Mac minis (one of which is our email etc server). We also have a 12 machine Linux based render farm that was custom built for us.
Boss says that he won't likely buy anymore Mac pros because the iMacs are getting so good. No one so far is arguing with him
Mac Pro's come with W3xxx today
Are you aware that the current single socket Mac Pro uses a Intel Xeon W3530 - which is analogous to the E3? (Single socket only, basically a Core i7 Nehalem with ECC enabled.)
---------- Post added at 14:47 ---------- Previous post was at 14:41 ----------
First half of 2000 was Sawtooth, in August Mystic (G4 Gigabit Ethernet) came out.
Looks like around 10-20 GB disk, 100 MHz PC100 RAM.
Lots of good history at:
http://www.apple-history.com/body.php?page=gallery&model=g4giga&sort=date&performa=off&order=ASC
---------- Post added at 14:50 ---------- Previous post was at 14:47 ----------
Interesting, the forum is auto-merging consecutive posts now....
Are you aware that the current single socket Mac Pro uses a Intel Xeon W3530 - which is analogous to the E3? (Single socket only, basically a Core i7 Nehalem with ECC enabled.)
---------- Post added at 14:47 ---------- Previous post was at 14:41 ----------
First half of 2000 was Sawtooth, in August Mystic (G4 Gigabit Ethernet) came out.
Looks like around 10-20 GB disk, 100 MHz PC100 RAM.
Lots of good history at:
http://www.apple-history.com/body.php?page=gallery&model=g4giga&sort=date&performa=off&order=ASC
---------- Post added at 14:50 ---------- Previous post was at 14:47 ----------
Interesting, the forum is auto-merging consecutive posts now....
Actually what he said was that the future is with consumers and prosumers, rather than the pros. Thus they would no longer be using 'what would the professionals want' as their key question. Instead they would be making things for the bigger audience that the pros can enhance via plugins etc.
Pity the pros forget that Apple is about making money, lots of money. Cause that, not art, is what the shareholders want
If you are a pro editor and you have bought fcpx for anything more than truing at this point, you deserve what you get.
Real pros aren't stupid about new tech. They don't buy software and use it before vetting it. They don't expect a total rewrite to be perfect. They also don't hold out for rumors when they need software licenses or hardware for expected projects.
Or there won't be
Huge margins on a handful of sales against smaller margin on thousands of sales, guess which one wins for a business with shareholders to answer to. Especially when the cheaper equipment is getting seriously powerful.
Yeah you can't diddle yourself blind with a Mac mini but that's not Apple's issue. Actually given they have to fix the screwups from folks that actually don't know what they are doing, you can see why they want to discourage such behaviour
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My PM G4 was a Sawtooth (which I actually still have sitting in a corner gathering dust). It had a 400MHz G4 w/ 320MB RAM (256+64) and a 20GB drive. The first system with an AGP graphics bus as I recall. But later I upgraded the CPU to 1GHz, added another meg of RAM, added a SATA controller and a couple 300GB drives, and a faster video card. That made the system a viable performer for several more years.
Yes, computers have gotten faster all around in the last decade, of course. But my activities still center to a large degree around my desktop system, with the laptop being a conveniently mobile junior partner.
Jeez, this comment is wrong in so many ways. For instance....
- They didn't lower any price. You couldn't get Final Cut Pro without the suite before. The entire suite cost more. See the difference?
- "Old hands" has nothing to do with the FCP X disaster. Most working editors can work on three or four different app's. Most Editors are smarter than you think.
"Pros need to consider the level of compatibility with their current hardware but sooner or later the software updates will add features missing today"
I have no idea what that even mean.
Yes, Apple did lower the price of Final Cut Pro. You could not buy Final Cut Pro for AUD $300 before Final Cut Pro X.
Experienced professional editors can be just as set in their ways as any other people who have made a living by using more or less the same software for over a decade. These people would feel naturally inclined to resist change as the introduction of FCP-X puts them on the same level as any student learning how to edit video for the first time.
What I said in the last line is that if you have a system with peripherals for video capture, storage, etc then you need to consider what is compatible with Final Cut Pro X before switching to it. For example, I could have downloaded FCP-X on day one, found out my 2007 iMac would not run it, and then joined the chorus of people complaining about it online. Instead I read the comments, looked at Apple's product pages and decided to hold off buying it until I have a suitable system and the software has been updated a few times.
I completely agree with you about the speed/performance. I'm running the 2006 model at work and a 2010 model at home. Sure I have 16 "cores" at home and only 8 at work but it works like a charm.
However the long refresh affects people upgrading. If Apple would't have made the 2010 upgrade when they did I would have gone for a Dell workstation instead for the same pricerange and just ran a hackintosh instead.
Apple do of course care about their pro's as much as they do in every line of business, just look at the pro software (Final Cut), the Xserve, XSan, MacBook Pro's moving towards MB Air.
It's a strategic move for Apple to meek their margins high on "crap" consumer products instead of low margin on high profit pro products.
When it's time for me to get rid of my 2006 MacPro there will not be a replacement for me. I either will switch my home MacPro to my office and get myself a decent Dell workstation for home (or the other way around) but seeing a new macpro well.. not really
Adobe OS?
After thinking about it, the programs i use the most are Adobe - photoshop, in design, after effects. I use FCP, but after the debacle, i would not mind using premier. I think Adobe would make good money if they built their own machines and pre - loaded their suite.
ps - you guts seen the Apple patent for retention bar? the new mac pro does not seen to have an optical drive bay...hmm
http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/7995350.html#show-page1
it could be hiding somewhere, but i read the whole patent, and there was no mention
After thinking about it, the programs i use the most are Adobe - photoshop, in design, after effects. I use FCP, but after the debacle, i would not mind using premier. I think Adobe would make good money if they built their own machines and pre - loaded their suite.
ps - you guts seen the Apple patent for retention bar? the new mac pro does not seen to have an optical drive bay...hmm
http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/7995350.html#show-page1
it could be hiding somewhere, but i read the whole patent, and there was no mention
You realize that this is the consumer market, right? It's massive. "Just" becoming "home entertainment computers" is huge - as in, huge market, huge growth opportunity, huge opportunity to expand in terms of being what everyday people turn to for PERSONAL computing. You know, the kind that they choose for themselves, instead of having it forced on them by IT drones. What people come home to, etc.
Apple doesn’t want to support a server because they want to be the server. For individuals, iCloud is the server. For the enterprise, watch for an iCloud version to support enterprise clients as the server.
It's all part of Apple's Grand Plan, folks.
I think the time is ripe for someone else to step in and OWN the pro market.
Part of what is making people really unhappy is that, we have spent the latter of 10 years
switching from analog to digital - and now that we have perfected our trade, our tools are being changed against our will. People like mac pro's because it is a box that you can put stuff in without dragging a bunch of little boxes with wires behind it. Local servers work because if there is an issue you can put yours hands on it instead of calling 1 800 apple. Mac used to work with high end software instead of against it.
I don't like writing hate mail. Apple has more money than Exxon - good for them. If that is their path then let it be.
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This is ridiculous, what makes someone a pro? Not the machine, that's for sure, it's the service you provide. Fact is the machines used to do something 20 years ago is different than today, and in 20 years they will be different than what we have today, bottom line, things are changing. No one seems to be more sensitive about the "pro" epithet than folks in the creative sector, perhaps since nowhere else, is the line between doing actual work and living in your parents basement so thin. How god then to be able to get some reassurance from the gear you use, "see all those cables and big piece of machinery over there?, yep I'm a pro alright".
So with the new Final Cut Pro X, how are we supposed to make a film that has more than one camera? I live in LA and work in the Movies, and I can assure you this is the feeling across the board. People are switching to Avid and Adobe Premiere.
p.s. I don't know too many people who are living with their parents, or in a basement out here
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Dell, Cisco and Microsoft ? You're missing quite a lot of business and enterprise grade vendors there. HP is bigger than Dell in enterprise and business for one and there's quite a few small vendors catering to more niche needs out there than you'd think (we have about 15-20 vendors where I work).
Not this crap again. iOS and OS X have always been "blended". There is no more blending that can be done. They have never been seperate entities and will never be just 1. You'll always have OS X as long as there are Mac laptops/desktops and you'll always have iOS for mobile devices.
Some gestures and a few new ways to display icon grids on OS X won't change that.
I don't know what to say, it has nothing to do with what we are discussing here. It would be no different with or without a Mac Pro, or the release of new Xeons from intel.
Seems to me it is being discussed here quite a bit. Under-powered program for an under-powered computer, seems like it fits apple's consumer based direction
You can't rush Intel
I don't see why so many people are acting like the Mac Pro delay has anything to do with Apple not caring about them anymore? Clearly, they want to design it to use a certain CPU which Intel doesn't have ready yet.
Like someone else said, even a 2006 Mac Pro is still a really useful machine in 2011! I own one myself and simply by adding an SSD as the boot drive and adding more RAM, it feels completely up to date and speedy.
As much as these cost, you want it to be right when a new one comes out. I'd rather wait for the new Intel chips than buy one with older tech in it, just to have it today!
I don't see why so many people are acting like the Mac Pro delay has anything to do with Apple not caring about them anymore? Clearly, they want to design it to use a certain CPU which Intel doesn't have ready yet.
Like someone else said, even a 2006 Mac Pro is still a really useful machine in 2011! I own one myself and simply by adding an SSD as the boot drive and adding more RAM, it feels completely up to date and speedy.
As much as these cost, you want it to be right when a new one comes out. I'd rather wait for the new Intel chips than buy one with older tech in it, just to have it today!