IIRC, the panels on the previous MBPs were 6 bit ones - doesn't that pose more of a problem than the increased contrast from a glossy screen?
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Apple destroying it's base of hardcore customers?
- Thread starter Chaos123x
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IIRC, the panels on the previous MBPs were 6 bit ones - doesn't that pose more of a problem than the increased contrast from a glossy screen?
OMG...are some people just ignorant
Firstly, Apple were not at the last NAB - just like Avid - due to two reasons.
1. They had launched FCS 2 at NAB 2007 and had nothing to release there this year and 2. The cost of exhibiting has gone up. That is why Avid wasn't there and why the future of many trade shows -including ones that Apple put on their selves are in doubt.
Secondly, it is not good business sense for a company to abandon their "hardcore" market. That how businesses go bust. Apple, still serve the creative sector extremely well- with excellent products. They are simply trying to diversify that product range and make them more distinctive to each target market. Most Mac Pro and the 17 inch Mac Book Pro have been designed and targeted at the creative sector. Anyone who believes that a 13' mac book is a serious tool for the creative user is fooling themselves. Yes, it is a great piece of technology and powerful. But it is really a consumer product.
As for your comment about Shake. Yes, Apple have stopped developing of it...so that can work on its successor "Phenomenon" that i think will likely appear at NAB 2009...
As for the Firewire issue. Yes, Firewire 400 support has been dropped. Firewire 800 has never really caught on and Firewire 3200 is due to be released soon and will compete with USB 3.0.
As for the whole Nintendo thing...the Wii has saved the company from going under! The X Box and PS/PS2 had taken to many people away from Nintendo-including game developers. As they could not compete with Sony and Microsoft they had to produce a product that is unique and very different- and that is a familiar idea...
...isn't that what Apple do...make products that are unique and different from a PC???
And the iPod is just a fad? They have been saying that since 2001 and yet it is still the most popular mp3 music player in the market and sells annually in its millions? Use some common sense, people will pay for a good product like the iPod and will stick with it-if its good
Sorry if this sounds like a rant...but it is. I am just fed up of people jumping the gun and drawing conclusions and adding 2 and 2 together to make 5 without using an ounce of common snese
Firstly, Apple were not at the last NAB - just like Avid - due to two reasons.
1. They had launched FCS 2 at NAB 2007 and had nothing to release there this year and 2. The cost of exhibiting has gone up. That is why Avid wasn't there and why the future of many trade shows -including ones that Apple put on their selves are in doubt.
Secondly, it is not good business sense for a company to abandon their "hardcore" market. That how businesses go bust. Apple, still serve the creative sector extremely well- with excellent products. They are simply trying to diversify that product range and make them more distinctive to each target market. Most Mac Pro and the 17 inch Mac Book Pro have been designed and targeted at the creative sector. Anyone who believes that a 13' mac book is a serious tool for the creative user is fooling themselves. Yes, it is a great piece of technology and powerful. But it is really a consumer product.
As for your comment about Shake. Yes, Apple have stopped developing of it...so that can work on its successor "Phenomenon" that i think will likely appear at NAB 2009...
As for the Firewire issue. Yes, Firewire 400 support has been dropped. Firewire 800 has never really caught on and Firewire 3200 is due to be released soon and will compete with USB 3.0.
As for the whole Nintendo thing...the Wii has saved the company from going under! The X Box and PS/PS2 had taken to many people away from Nintendo-including game developers. As they could not compete with Sony and Microsoft they had to produce a product that is unique and very different- and that is a familiar idea...
...isn't that what Apple do...make products that are unique and different from a PC???
And the iPod is just a fad? They have been saying that since 2001 and yet it is still the most popular mp3 music player in the market and sells annually in its millions? Use some common sense, people will pay for a good product like the iPod and will stick with it-if its good
Sorry if this sounds like a rant...but it is. I am just fed up of people jumping the gun and drawing conclusions and adding 2 and 2 together to make 5 without using an ounce of common snese
Let's hope it comes out. Apple originally said 2008...
I think what Apple does with the Nehalem update to the Mac Pro in the next few months will clearly show the direction as to where Apple is going with the creative crowd.
I have not used After Effects much, but Encore DVD is terrible compared to DVD Studio Pro.
I've heard quite the opposite. Encore CS4 is supposed to be able to burn HD content on DL DVDs and of course Blu-Ray without needing support from Mac OS X.
After Effects is still the industry standard when it comes to 2D and 3D titling.
It is not only the graphics designers who are pretty much abandonned by Apple. The same applies other groups as well.
Once Jobs returned to Apple this company has been gradually transformed from a computer maker to a life–style and «bubble–maker» company. The ideal of the «happy consumer» either promoted thru movies, music and media system leaves me absolutely indifferent but what i can see is that apple is working towards this direction.
Serious users that are either amateur or professionals (not everything serious is directly connected with money) have diverse needs and they do expect from a company that supported for dozens of years (and saved them from bankruptcy) more respect. When i got my first mac i knew that it was more a expensive than a pc but a good value for money. It was actually comparable to great machines like Amiga and far superior than pc with windows 3.11 and 95.
Apple machines then were actually champions of innovation. They had the best OS, great design (remember the pizza box and later the powermacs?), super power, great expandability and great customization. Their higher cost was justified by the use of different processor family and motherboards that were, however, making pc counterparts blush of shame with their performance. I remember eras when lots of pro and advanced programs were mac only. Even in the community of gamers, games like MYST for example ran first on Macs and then on pcs. Not to mention applications like Archicad, Pagemaker or Photoshop and many others. At these times pc users couldn't see even in their dreams the processors, gpus and the design of macs we had in our disposal. Now, things have changed. The hardware of mac and pcs is actually common (the «battle» of gpus is lost after Jobs return to Apple...) and pc makers have done really great progress in the aesthetics of their products. Their only serious drawback is the fact that they run windows but apart from that we all know that Sony, Dell, Toshiba and of course IBM produce excellent hardware quality, imporoved design and 50% lower price than Apple.
Apple is loosing the game of the creative professionals, education and serious amateurs. They do increase their share on people who follow the trends and the fashion. For us, though, Apple products epitomised always what i described above: ease of use, power, flexibility, freedom, aesthetics and a reasonable cost. We all know, in order to achieve the things above, that we have to pay some extra money. But apple is actually making huge profits taking advantage of the «weakness» of the conscious macuser not to switch to windows. It is unfortunately our «Achilles heel».
Day by day i feel that Apple is either addressing to either very rich customers or people who superficially approach computing. Apple is making a lot of money from ipods and i-tunes so we dont need to pay a high premium to get one of their computers. Day by day, the gap between powerful machines and slow machines with the Apple logo is increasing as well.
The problem is that we are not all «cosnumers» or big studios that own 10 or 50 macs. The vast majority of macusers during the 90's where students, free–lancers (designers, musicians, photographers, typographers, scientists, programmers,engineers and so on) and people who didnt own a newspaper or a big office. Apple survived thanks to these people because not only they paid money to get a mac from Apple, but most important they kept software for mac alive and thriving.
Most of these people, the creative users, want better prices, want more expandability, want more flexibility want more choices. The pseusodilemmas set by apple are hideous: they define the matte display as a necessity for all of us. No! There should be a choice.
They do impose an absolutely arbitrary definition of the «pro» laptop user: 17" and 15" go for «pros», 13" for consumers. It is not like this. There are pros who need a versatile machine with smaller footprint and not demanding users that they need a big monitor. There are people who need anyhow strong gpu but not the strongest cpu and vice versa. There are people who need fw, too.
How many of us really miss and need that machine filling the gap of the super powerful macpro and the non-expandable imac ????????
Just like the fantastic Powermacs 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600.... I really for nostalgia for these times.
Once Jobs returned to Apple this company has been gradually transformed from a computer maker to a life–style and «bubble–maker» company. The ideal of the «happy consumer» either promoted thru movies, music and media system leaves me absolutely indifferent but what i can see is that apple is working towards this direction.
Serious users that are either amateur or professionals (not everything serious is directly connected with money) have diverse needs and they do expect from a company that supported for dozens of years (and saved them from bankruptcy) more respect. When i got my first mac i knew that it was more a expensive than a pc but a good value for money. It was actually comparable to great machines like Amiga and far superior than pc with windows 3.11 and 95.
Apple machines then were actually champions of innovation. They had the best OS, great design (remember the pizza box and later the powermacs?), super power, great expandability and great customization. Their higher cost was justified by the use of different processor family and motherboards that were, however, making pc counterparts blush of shame with their performance. I remember eras when lots of pro and advanced programs were mac only. Even in the community of gamers, games like MYST for example ran first on Macs and then on pcs. Not to mention applications like Archicad, Pagemaker or Photoshop and many others. At these times pc users couldn't see even in their dreams the processors, gpus and the design of macs we had in our disposal. Now, things have changed. The hardware of mac and pcs is actually common (the «battle» of gpus is lost after Jobs return to Apple...) and pc makers have done really great progress in the aesthetics of their products. Their only serious drawback is the fact that they run windows but apart from that we all know that Sony, Dell, Toshiba and of course IBM produce excellent hardware quality, imporoved design and 50% lower price than Apple.
Apple is loosing the game of the creative professionals, education and serious amateurs. They do increase their share on people who follow the trends and the fashion. For us, though, Apple products epitomised always what i described above: ease of use, power, flexibility, freedom, aesthetics and a reasonable cost. We all know, in order to achieve the things above, that we have to pay some extra money. But apple is actually making huge profits taking advantage of the «weakness» of the conscious macuser not to switch to windows. It is unfortunately our «Achilles heel».
Day by day i feel that Apple is either addressing to either very rich customers or people who superficially approach computing. Apple is making a lot of money from ipods and i-tunes so we dont need to pay a high premium to get one of their computers. Day by day, the gap between powerful machines and slow machines with the Apple logo is increasing as well.
The problem is that we are not all «cosnumers» or big studios that own 10 or 50 macs. The vast majority of macusers during the 90's where students, free–lancers (designers, musicians, photographers, typographers, scientists, programmers,engineers and so on) and people who didnt own a newspaper or a big office. Apple survived thanks to these people because not only they paid money to get a mac from Apple, but most important they kept software for mac alive and thriving.
Most of these people, the creative users, want better prices, want more expandability, want more flexibility want more choices. The pseusodilemmas set by apple are hideous: they define the matte display as a necessity for all of us. No! There should be a choice.
They do impose an absolutely arbitrary definition of the «pro» laptop user: 17" and 15" go for «pros», 13" for consumers. It is not like this. There are pros who need a versatile machine with smaller footprint and not demanding users that they need a big monitor. There are people who need anyhow strong gpu but not the strongest cpu and vice versa. There are people who need fw, too.
How many of us really miss and need that machine filling the gap of the super powerful macpro and the non-expandable imac ????????
Just like the fantastic Powermacs 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600.... I really for nostalgia for these times.
Not that I am trying to dispute you completely, but linky
I am more interested in seeing if it's going to benefit me more if I switch to Encore and After Effects from DVD Studio and Motion. At that point I might as well get Premier, and since i need InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop I could get the Master Collection and stop using borrowed licenses.
uhhh no, USB was and is for hooking up mice and keyboards.
Firewire is for hooking up video cameras and audio equipment.
Sure USB 2.0 is faster and lets you hook up multimedia devices, but it's very shoddy compared to firewire.
As for blue ray I will make a decision after DVD Studio Pro 5 comes out.
This whole phenomenon is really odd, isn't it? Can the creative/pro category be such a small niche that it's not worth targeting? I understand Apple going for the consumer market, since that's where the lion's share of the sales is, but why not go for the creatives too?
Well after this move, I will stop buying any apple consumer devices and stop telling people to buy macs.
As long as they keep making FCP and Mac Pros I am fine. If not I will be forced back to Windows or just be happy using old equipment.
ma2ha3 is horribly wrong here. Firewire didn't lose to USB at all, especially since FW800 is a little under twice as fast as USB2.0 and is sustainable. FW400's biggest benefit over USB2 was that it was sustainable at 400 MBits/sec, while USB kicked back down to about 350-380 Mbits/sec after that initial burst for a few seconds.
As for DVD Studio Pro, I am waiting for an update of the FCP suite before I pull the $2500 trigger on CS4 Master collection. I do really hope we get an update of DSP and a more consistent look and UI in Color. And I hope Apple doesn't throw out some bu!!$h!t reason like they did last time to NOT update DVD Studio.
Skunk, where does it say that it does BMDV on DVD? It says it authors Dual layer DVD's and BD-R media. I've burned discs with Encore and NEVER have had the option to burn it to a DVD+/-R
BDMV on DVD is a whole seperate can of worms because you need to modify the bit rate at which it plays. I'm pretty sure that a dvd can't do 40 megs a second. But I could be wrong
So...use one of the new Macs with Firewire? It's just the Macbook so far that has dropped it.
I think Apple is targeting the Mac Pro to this creative crowd.
Unless the Mac Pro gets a downgrade with Nehalem.
On the same token, Apple may give only the 17" MacBook Pro a matte option, so those who want matte will have to pay for the 17".
That's pretty ironic since creative professionals are often "starving artists". How are they gonna be able to afford that overpriced crap? I don't need or want a computer that costs me a ton of money, I want one that is reasonably-priced and works well.
Are there rumors that this could be the case? If so, they would have to go with some completely different design for the 17". If that's what they end up doing, I'll want one.
For prosumer and professional applications (which this thread is about) Firewire is far and away the standard. It's only at the consumer level where USB is dominant.
It looks to me like Apple acquired Color from another company and basically threw it into FCS after a hasty port. The "X" style cursor when Color is busy with a render or playback looks like an old school cursor from Xwindows.
My guess is that the chance of the revised 17" having a matte screen is pretty low. Jobs seemed to make it clear that they're going all glass for their portables.
Which is exactly why the consumer level Macbook doesn't have FW and the 'Pro' does.
However, if they were to also remove FW off the Pro, we should be up in arms! (And unfortunately, I have a feeling they are heading this way)
But the thing is Macs have traditionally offered a lot of 'pro' features on their consumer models, that was part of their big appeal and their advantage over consumer PCs. That's why they cost so much more money than an equivalent PC.
FW400 has been on iBooks/MacBooks since 2001, on iMacs since '99 and DV (a consumer format adopted for professional use) helped usher in a resurgence of home movie making we haven't seen since the days of 8mm and now suddenly FW400 is a 'pro level' option? Seriously?
FW was dropped from the MacBooks because the MBs were becoming too much like 'MBP lites' and eating into MBP sales. The performance for basic handling of DV, HDV, DVCPro HD (three very popular formats that can also be run from FW400 drives) is negligible between the MB and MBP (and eons better than any G4-based laptop) thanks to ever-increasing computer speeds so Apple had to look someplace else to separate their 'pro' and 'consumer' laptops and that place was to remove a linchpin interface that has been on consumer Apple computers for nearly a decade.
Phenomenon is vaporware based on a rumor from an unidentified source and was supposedly going to be released in '08. I wouldn't hold my breath for Phenomenon for a few reasons w/a big one being
Apple's MO is to purchase new software apps for 'assimilation' not to build them from scratch. Also, the creator of Shake left Apple a while ago to work on Nuke so that could be telling of the state of things at
Apple.
Creative professionals are often 'starving artists' starting out, but they shouldn't stay that way for too long. If a $3k laptop is key to one's livelihood but one can't find a way to afford it maybe one is in the wrong business?
FW is dominant in the consumer and prosumer video markets. It doesn't matter if you are using a $300 camera from Best Buy or a $5,000 prosumer camera your workflow is based around FW.
Apple Color was originally FinalTouch 2k, a $25k app made by Silicon Color.
Lethal
I know that Firewire *used* to be on everything, but that is when it was competing with USB. It was (and should have) been what USB has become.
As was pointed out earlier, USB has 'won' the consumer place, and Firewire really only has a place in today's world with Pros, and hence only appears on the pro machines.
I don't like it either.
I also agree to a point, that one of the other reasons to kill it was to leave compelling reasons for people to upgrade to the pro machines. However, with a major case redesign, it also made sense that it was the right time to do it.
As was pointed out earlier, USB has 'won' the consumer place, and Firewire really only has a place in today's world with Pros, and hence only appears on the pro machines.
I don't like it either.
I also agree to a point, that one of the other reasons to kill it was to leave compelling reasons for people to upgrade to the pro machines. However, with a major case redesign, it also made sense that it was the right time to do it.
FW400 and USB 1.1 were never, ever competitors and the goal of FW was not the same as the goal for USB. Different protocols w/different end goals in mind even though they did cross over sometimes (especially when USB 2.0 came around). Again, I don't see how FW400 has been elevated to 'pro' status when it was in part designed with a consumer video standard in mind. FW isn't even considered a professional interface.
I have a feeling that the new case design came into play as well.
Lethal
EDIT: FW isn't considered a pro interface for video.
I assume you're referring to SDI and cards like P2/SxS that can directly plug into expresscard slots?