Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Serious question about loyalty.

A

ArtMoony

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 27, 2013
7
0
Why on earth would anyone invest the kinda money required for a nMP setup when Apple has clearly shown the professional market the door? For 3 years they left FCP languish without an update while we remained patient and loyal. For nearly 4 years they left the Mac Pro community with seriously expensive, outdated hardware. They killed Shake, Soundtrack, Studio Pro, Final Cut, destroyed Quicktime and a myriad of other useful things we'd invested time and money in. I have no use for this ridiculous FCPX nonsense (nor does the entertainment industry), nor do I have any legitimate use for the nMP. But even if I did, after spending the last 6 months forced to waste $1000's making the financial and educational move to Media Composer, I certainly can't trust Apple with my professional future anymore; hardware OR software.

Having had my post professional world burned to the ground by people who clearly don't want or need me as a customer anymore, who in their right mind would trust them again? Especially with this kind of investment? If history serves, Thunderbolt will soon go the way of FW400 and 800 and in a few years you'll have a desk covered in $1200 TB HD enclosures, $1000 PCIe expansion chassis and handfuls of $100 cables that no longer plug into anything - as well as projects you poured mountains of cash and time into that will only open in abandoned software. At any moment Apple could dictate some arbitrary hatred for another industry standard leaving us all in the lurch (See; flash, Blu-Ray, 3D, 120Hz etc).

I used to eat sleep and drink Apple - but how many times can they kick me in the teeth before I have to say 'no more'? Personally the new Mac Pro is the last straw. No more Apple. No more.
 
If anyone believes apple plans to stay in the pro business, I think they are delusional.

As you have pointed out, apple is shifting to prosumer, its not going to go back to pro. Not long before hey are just consumer focused.

The money is in the IToys. It's a very good business move. They have bugger all profit to make from the pro machines, I'm surprised they even launched the new Mac Pro .
 
Nail - Head

MH01 said:
If anyone believes apple plans to stay in the pro business, I think they are delusional.

As you have pointed out, apple is shifting to prosumer, its not going to go back to pro. Not long before hey are just consumer focused.

The money is in the IToys. It's a very good business move. They have bugger all profit to make from the pro machines, I'm surprised they even launched the new Mac Pro .
Click to expand...

I don't see why all of us missed the fact that the new Mini Pro is perfect for developing IOS apps out-of-the-box.

You don't need thousands of dollars of T-Bolt expansion and a rat's nest of cables on your desk.

If you're not an "IOS pro", however, your mileage may vary.

</sarcasm>
 
Last edited:
With 10.1 FCPX is actually quite nice. You should have a look again :)

With Shake gone we got Nuke. We're better off :D
Soundtrack being abandoned wasn't really a shock. Not a great deal of use professionally with the product in general.

Spending money and time to learn new software comes with the job. If not we'd be stuck on the same old clunky workflows as 15 years ago - Not cool!

I'd say it all depends on the scale of the business concerned. If you're WETA, you're not going to see widespread use of it, but if you're a smaller boutique studio you will find great use in the machine.

That said, being a 'professional' isn't as black and white as some people make out.
 
Last edited:
AidenShaw said:
I don't see why all of us missed the fact that the new Mini Pro is perfect for developing IOS apps out-of-the-box.

You don't need thousands of dollars of T-Bolt expansion and a rat's nest of cables on your desk.

If you're not an "IOS pro", however, your mileage may vary.

</sarcasm>
Click to expand...

Okay.

Pray tell, where does the second GPU and OpenCL acceleration come into play? That second ATI card would basically just sit there, totally idle, doing absolutely nothing if all you're doing is developing iOS apps.

Yup. Seems like the perfect machine to me (ya know, rather then something with more RAM, or a second CPU, or parts that actually matter today and not in some mythical future where everything is accelerated by OpenCL).

-SC
 
ScottishCaptain said:
Okay.

Pray tell, where does the second GPU and OpenCL acceleration come into play? That second ATI card would basically just sit there, totally idle, doing absolutely nothing if all you're doing is developing iOS apps.
Click to expand...

Don't both GPUs sit idle for most current apps?

OpenCL is a possible future thing, today there's not much use for it -- especially dual GPU OpenCL.

The whole "get those damned 3rd party apps rewritten to use OpenCL" mantra sounds just like the "get those damned 3rd party apps rewritten to use AltiVec" mantra. We all know how successful the earlier chant was.
 
I have felt this way for a while. I'm on a 3,1 at the moment, and am an avid Hackintosher. This seems the only viable route, as I am a huge fan of OS X, just not the expensive, unupgradable Apple logic board hardware. I've been using Windows 8.1 a bit for certain other reasons, and the little things like iMessage support or multi desktop support, or having no ads on my Skype client stick me to OS X. Apple assumes its consumers have 3K to drop on a new desktop machine when one can be built for half the price. I know Xeons and workstation grade hardware isn't perfect at the moment, but I know many professionals who use Hackintosh hardware for FCP X.1 and especially for Logic or Pro Tools. All loyalty aside, I like the OS X ecosystem, but I also agree with you. The lack of a real tower in the Mac arsenal is a killing blow. It's really quite unfortunate. Just my two cents on the subject.
 
ArtMoony said:
Why on earth would anyone invest the kinda money required for a nMP setup when Apple has clearly shown the professional market the door? For 3 years they left FCP languish without an update while we remained patient and loyal. For nearly 4 years they left the Mac Pro community with seriously expensive, outdated hardware. They killed Shake, Soundtrack, Studio Pro, Final Cut, destroyed Quicktime and a myriad of other useful things we'd invested time and money in. I have no use for this ridiculous FCPX nonsense (nor does the entertainment industry), nor do I have any legitimate use for the nMP. But even if I did, after spending the last 6 months forced to waste $1000's making the financial and educational move to Media Composer, I certainly can't trust Apple with my professional future anymore; hardware OR ...
Click to expand...

Meh. Anyone who invested in the first Avid DVxpress had this happen when version 2 came out, only those systems were even more expensive. It's not like this is a new thing.

Personally, I like the direction the nMP is going in, and can totally see it fitting in nicely to a workflow I'd want to set up. To each their own.
 
Sure, Apple abandons markets from time to time. Just ask me about having to explain myself when the XRAID, and then the XServe, were left in the dust just a year after I had purchased some at work.

But if you think PC vendors are magically going to treat you better, dream on. It's all a business, and if it's not profitable, they will drop it like a rock.

I buy Apple because I'm used to the OS, and I have enough invested in applications that I really don't want to switch, and I have yet to seen a compelling argument that Windows is better.

So, loyal? no. Comfortable? guess so.
 
Can we get a mod to change the title of this thread to "Rhetorical Question about Loyalty" since clearly it's not an actual question.
 
ArtMoony said:
...They killed Shake,
Click to expand...

I will take this section.
1. Shake was a great compositing app by Nothing's Real located in Santa Monica CA.
2. Apple bought them and discounted the 10k app to $499.99. A great price to sell units but there were two problems (a) competing with The Foundry (Nuke) and (b) approaching "Shake" like one of their iToys. It was a 2D app vs. a 3D app!
3. While the Nothing's Real team were thinking "with our know how and Apple's $, nothing can stop us"! Well, Apple got in the way! At the time there were several "Shake" forums. Apple mentioned Shake would be rewritten and named Phenomenon. There was a serious buzz for months. Then they mention when rewritten it would be based on their app "Motion"! So this meant no longer "node" based! The forums laughed, the brains from Nothing's Real left and went to The Foundry! "Phenomenon" never came out!
4. There was a post on VFXtalk.com "3D in Shake, King Kong, LOTR (Lord Of The Rings) and other considerations". There were several people speculating on 2D v 2.5D v 3D and what was Shake. A few were very emphatic. Then this guy name Taffy chimed in. He spoke using language like "on King Kong we" and while "we did not" etc. So he was speaking first hand and mentioned they developed their own 3D tools and did not use the multiplane node.
5. While others looked to Nuke for answers, Taffy, WETA and others developed their own 3D tools. Something the Nothing's Real people would have done before Apple blew it!
 
"How dare anyone find value in something I don't like! Because I don't personally prefer FCP X and the nMP, it is objectively bad for everyone! Nobody will ever use an apple product to create something I deem 'professional' ever again!"

Did that about sum up your thoughts?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back