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Looks like the end of the road for mac pro
- Thread starter pat500000
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"Someone" is quite confused.
Flextronics built a factory in Texas to assemble the Mac Pro - not Apple.
There were most likely Apple contributions to help offset the startup costs, and guarantees of minimum order levels.
Does Apple actually manufacture any product that it sells?
Well really it depends on the type of work you do, period. Frankly considering how poor performance of Creative Cloud is, I don't think you'd have a pressing reason to worry about hardware upgrades if you stick with older software, and for many people that's feasible to do—you won't be missing out on much. Our old Mac Pros would still be doing fine on most of our video projects (and they haven't been upgraded—still on spinners, 16GB of RAM, and cards like the Quadro FX 4800) except for the increasing number of projects shot with 4K footage (and even then, the actual *need* for 4K is low, and we certainly aren't delivering anything at 2160p—most of our deliverables are still at 720p in fact.)
Years back I would have thought people crazy for trying to use eight or ten year old computers for work, but these days it's much more feasible. Having the very fastest new Z840 workstation is realistically not a great investment for day-to-day... I guess when we get the quick turnaround change for a live event is when it will show the advantage of all that new power
And for my home work, while I'll always salivate at the newest and fastest kit, I really haven't felt like my Mac Pro is holding me back at all.
Very few feature films are edited on a Mac running either FCP or Premiere Pro, nor are they edited on a PC running Premiere. They are almost all edited on Avid. There are a very few rare exceptions to this such as the Will Smith movie Focus that was edited on FCP X, and the David Fincher film Gone Girl which was edited on Premiere.
yes, avid on a mac. and the only reason you mentioned those two films (who's post workflow is based on marketing dollars from adobe and apple) is because they were on whatever prosumer blogs you read.
The case of the nMP comes off easily and in about 3 seconds, you can easily access the RAM, SSD, and with some work, the CPU.
Don't even bother with logic, it won't work on those people
Well ladies and gents I bid this sub-thread adieu because this guy apparently has it all figured out and anyone who dares favor one OS over an other are "blind apple followers" and/or "elitist." The IT lord has passed judgement on us and we have no more room for an opinion on this matter. Seriously thank you for shaking me free from the drug-induced RDF that I've been trapped in for years. Hallelujah! I hope I can one day climb to that all-knowing IT cloud in the sky and breathe in that pretentious air. Everyone burn your macs and go buy a grey-box PC immediately! REPENT!
In case you can't sniff out obvious sarcasm I was being, well sarcastic.
You may prefer OSX but that does not mean Windows is bad software, which a lot of you subscribe to, hence peoples defence of PCs. If you were truly "professional" switching from a Mac to Windows would not present a problem. I truly enjoy both OSes as an IT support person, yes there are subtleties with software on different platforms, but to argue Mac OSX is a more stable platform is just plain wrong (let alone ignorant) I prefer OSX as well but use both platforms (Windows primarily for gaming) and have not seen a BSOD since Windows 7. Horses for Courses people.
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There are more professions than just IT support and let me assure you pro musicians or visual artists switched without warning to another operating system would have a massive problem. I know people who operate about three programs fluently and would cry like babies if the dock suddenly disappeared.
If they've not already jumped ship.
Its funny. On the one hand, I can see the business case argument being that such SMB/Prosumer profile of customers are not "profitable enough" to keep Apple interested in the segment, even though the reality is that while they may only drop $5K for a workstation every ~5 years, they're nevertheless a steady repeat business customer ... so long as you don't cut them off.
Similarly, one needs to have a development group who understands and is responsive to differences in customer segments, and this is really where the cMP vs nMP discussions come from in terms of data storage: the big old tower design could easily support some respectable amount of storage at respectable bandwidth rates - - case in point, just a pair of 6TB's in RAID0 will run at ~300MB/sec, and PCIe SSD based solutions can hit double that: for a SMB, that's a healthy bit of horsepower on a quite minimalistic budget ... how much does it cost to have a similar capability on a corporate LAN? Not just capacity, but also bandwidth. In all likelihood, that design choice also risked pricing the SMB customer out of your market.
Ditto for off-site "cloud" stuff ... without forking out for a high end ISP connection, the "feature" isn't really an actual step forward in workflow productivity/capability/etc for that customer segment...so they're now being effectively motivated to go take their business elsewhere.
Particularly when from that customers' workflow needs perspective, the "new stuff" isn't really an actual upgrade, but more of a downside risk because of what's been lost/abandoned/broken. Again, its just business too...mine.
-hh
Yeah, I don't get statements like that at all. I'm constantly working in both Windows and OSX and honestly, once you're in the software, the OS is irrelevant.
I wonder how long it would take them to learn Alt+tab on Windows once the software is minimised? They would probably have one of those genuine "aha" moments!
Dont get me wrong -I have showed many Windows users this shortcut, and they are genuinely suprised and rapt. Dont underestimate OSX users either.
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It's because you're constantly working in both Windows and OSX. My mom is 61 and the way she uses the computer is click on that little thing in top left corner which is a shortcut for Word. Once Word is open, she's amazing with it, but if one day for some reason the shortcut disappeared or My Computer appeared on top pushing the icon down, she'd be on the phone with IT shrieking "My computer is broken what to do!!!".
A friend of mine is a professional musician. Again, he's really good at what he does. But he hasn't quite understood that you can have two applications open in Windows at once. He doesn't get the taskbar. So if he opens Thunderbird, and then Explorer on top, he thinks that Thunderbird has quit and goes back to Start menu to open it. And when he needs a CD with a song of his, he comes to me with a USB stick so I can burn him a CD. Somehow he can copy a file to a USB stick but burning a music CD is outside his capabilities. Now imagine what would happen if one day his Start menu disappeared and some icons appeared on the bottom of the screen. I half-heartedly tried to convince him to get a Mac mini but I think I'd have to move in with him for the first six months to explain what the dot under an icon means and how the green button works, etc.
TL;DR: not every "professional" works in IT.
Hahaha, so true. "What's minimised?" – my musician friend
Another point about the software is when After Effects borks and crashes every time on MediaCore, I know exactly what tedious troubleshooting steps I have to do to fix it. By virtue of not spending as much time in Windows, troubleshooting is never going to be second-nature for me, and that means slowdowns outside of the optimal case where After Effects is After Effects and all I have to do is remember to swap Command for Control in my shortcuts.
I don't work in IT and we weren't talking about you 61 year old mom. You mentioned "professionals."
What software are these musicians and visual artists using that allows them to be completely incompetent in basic computing?
I would fall under your visual artist label, and again, need to go back and forth in both OSs all of the time.
And how much effort do you think it takes to understand how alt-tab or the task bar works compared to the dock? Are the mac using professionals so mentally chalenged that they can't understand how to click an icon on the task bar compared to clicking an icon on the dock?
I think that this is an excellent point particularly given the new relationship Apple has with Cisco and IBM. If anything, Apple is making a concerted effort to turn the iPad into a business, enterprise capable device.
I agree with the other posters who suggest that Apple is waiting for a number of component parts that are on the horizon, but are not yet available, before they release a new nMP. Apple does not do incremental changes to the MP.
Oh, the picture that started this thread? It looks like a back-to-school, up-coming holiday pic to me.