This is not a "Pro" machine.

[goMac]

Why does 'Pro' seem to automatically mean professional video editor? I do professional audio, and as long as I have a machine where I can upgrade the RAM (which does unfortunately exclude the rMBPs) I don't care how great the GPU is or if I have 12 or 24 processing cores. I'm sure many other professionals would agree.

It's a lot of people who've had the same workflow forever, and now have to change. Pro users freak out a lot about that more than normal users. The optical drive complaints are driven by people who have been burning to optical disks for the last 15 years, and now have to work their heads around a different workflow. It's hard for people to do.

One of the biggest complaints about FCPX was that it wouldn't export to a tape. I feel like that's a similar thing. Export to tape probably wasn't the most efficient way to do things, but you had people who were forced to changed their habits and weren't happy about it. They'd rather leave their habits intact instead of adopting a more efficient workflow.

 

[Colpeas]

Well I guess I'll be better off upgrading my '09 MacPro to Dual 3.33 or 3.46GHz Hex-Core and AMD 7970. That will get my ageing machine get on par with the new cylindric Mac "Pro", which just sucks for my use.

 

[clamnectar]

One of the biggest complaints about FCPX was that it wouldn't export to a tape. I feel like that's a similar thing. Export to tape probably wasn't the most efficient way to do things, but you had people who were forced to changed their habits and weren't happy about it. They'd rather leave their habits intact instead of adopting a more efficient workflow.

You're missing the "pro" point, which is that many delivery contracts for films and television shows require tapes, so tapes have to be made. It's not about efficiency. Real world needs always lag far behind the latest technology.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

It's a lot of people who've had the same workflow forever, and now have to change. Pro users freak out a lot about that more than normal users. The optical drive complaints are driven by people who have been burning to optical disks for the last 15 years, and now have to work their heads around a different workflow. It's hard for people to do.

Yeah, but its 2013 not 1993. Time to adapt or go extinct.

 

[Lancer]

I think it comes down to what you're doing, many people hove no need for DVD or BluRay and already have vast external storage to meet their needs so for them the new Mac Pro is well worth having for the extra processing power it brings at a fraction of the desktop space needed.

Also maybe Pros will have more than one computer, holding on to older ones and putting them in a back room. If they ever need to burn their work to DVD just share the drive, ditto for the internal storage.

I agree the market place will decide this debate, remember when the original iMac was released with no floppy. Doomsdayers said it would not sell. The future is online and network storage with not DVDs, I'm grade Apple is seeing it that way and if you don't like it get a PC or buy an old Mac Pro while they last.

 

[MattInOz]

It seems like Apple made the new Mac Pro for themselves. It is almost as if Apple management was reading all the blogs saying they were abandoning the Mac and couldn't innovate. To prove to themselves they could still innovate they created this new Mac Pro. Schiller essentially said as much on stage at WWDC. It is an amazing piece of engineering, that's for sure. But innovation for the sake of innovation often results in a computer no one needs or wants.

The big unknown was whether Apple listened to any Pros and designed something for their needs. Only time and sales will tell if Apple's gamble pays off.

Or they consulted the institutional groups who buy Mac Pros by the palette load. Most of those group aren't likely to be represented on this board in any great volume. In a supported environment the new Mac Pro seems to be a very tidy and ideal machine. No wasted volume on things the server or touchdown workspaces provide. In a standalone environment well in has compromises.

If Apple knows the products profile is now a very distinct 80/20 split between supported/standalone use why not gear it towards the volume of sales?

 

[ValSalva]

Or they consulted the institutional groups who buy Mac Pros by the palette load. Most of those group aren't likely to be represented on this board in any great volume. In a supported environment the new Mac Pro seems to be a very tidy and ideal machine. No wasted volume on things the server or touchdown workspaces provide. In a standalone environment well in has compromises.

If Apple knows the products profile is now a very distinct 80/20 split between supported/standalone use why not gear it towards the volume of sales?

This could very well be what Apple did. We may never know.

Part of me is appalled at what they did to the Mac Pro but another part of me is thrilled that Apple put so much time and engineering into it. The Mac Pro is not for me any more but I'm greatly in favor of anything that strengthens the Mac overall. I hope it sells like crazy.

 

[Lesser Evets]

People always have manure scared out of them by change. The fatuous thing is that the Pro hasn't even been released yet and people are frothing.

Wait and see.

It could be a disaster, but it could be an excellent direction. I've been hampered by the size and weight of my MacPros many times in the past; tech is changing; external devices might let the price of a Pro machine stay low. There are good reasons for the redesign. It won't kill you to use one--it will force you into a new paradigm.

 

[derbothaus]

You're missing the "pro" point, which is that many delivery contracts for films and television shows require tapes, so tapes have to be made. It's not about efficiency. Real world needs always lag far behind the latest technology.

This is the point really. Professional content creation is not an island. Orchestrating platform changes to all departments and companies that you deal with is impossible. So while the editor may be OK with moving on the printing house or colorist or whatever isn't so you have to keep legacy stuff around. 99% of the Final Cut X users, if you want to call them that, don't ever use it. They can't. Even now. No one is set up to support or plan out the expense of complete changeover. So all this change is met with depression and remorse and worry. So telling the Pro's to 'stop complaining' is not helping anything and misses the point entirely. They are only looking ahead at how the hell they are going to get their job done with this fractured ecosystem we are weathering.

 

[handsome pete]

Yeah, but its 2013 not 1993. Time to adapt or go extinct.

That's an incredibly naive and simpleminded approach. "Pros" are not afraid of new methods or technology. It's quite the opposite actually. More efficiency ultimately means more work and more income. I can't even keep count anymore of how many different programs I've learned and had to keep up with, the different hardware I've had to learn, the different tape formats, codecs, and so on. Simply put, if it makes my job easier I'm all for it.

I love tapeless acquisition, but tape is still going to be around for a long time. There's an immensely large infrastructure for it already in place, it's still great for long format acquisition, and most importantly, archival.

 

[goMac]

You're missing the "pro" point, which is that many delivery contracts for films and television shows require tapes, so tapes have to be made. It's not about efficiency. Real world needs always lag far behind the latest technology.

And yet there are other ways outside of FCPX to load onto tape. FCPX not supporting tape wasn't the total end of the road for tape, it just required a workflow change. Given all the complaining, you'd never know that though.

 

[wonderspark]

Here I solved your problem, presenting the New Mac Pro Old Mac Pro (TM):

Image

Now you can have all internal storage, internal disc drives, and internal pci cards you had before, with room to spare. You're welcome.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Mac-P...1396?pt=US_Computer_Cases&hash=item23292d2b34

http://www.cabletiesandmore.com/cableties.php?gclid=CJqRre-S-rcCFUue4AodJjgAfQ

How many TB cables does it take to equal the data throughput of a single PCI slot? How many expansion boxes at nearly $1k will that take? This is not a solution at all, so you can keep your sarcasm and lack of understanding with no thanks at all.

 

[handsome pete]

And yet there are other ways outside of FCPX to load onto tape. FCPX not supporting tape wasn't the total end of the road for tape, it just required a workflow change. Given all the complaining, you'd never know that though.

To be fair, doesn't that explanation run counter to your earlier claim of efficiency?

 

[clamnectar]

And yet there are other ways outside of FCPX to load onto tape. FCPX not supporting tape wasn't the total end of the road for tape, it just required a workflow change. Given all the complaining, you'd never know that though.

FCPX was touted as a newer, better version by Apple, and FCP7 was immediately discontinued as if no one would ever need it again, and yet it was riddled by problems like this. The complaining was because non-amateur users wanted a new FCP but Apple gave them something they couldn't use. Anecdotally, not a single professional (narrative film and television) editor I've met uses FCPX. Everyone either continued with version 7 or went back to Avid. Some folks in slightly different niches went Premiere, so I hear, but I have yet to meet one.

 

[greenmeanie]

I have to agree real "PRO's" use Data Centers.
So called PRO's make wedding videos and youtube back yard fight videos.

There really isn't an argument. Apple and anyone with eyes knows this is Apple's attempt to gracefully exit the serious market and move into the Mickey Mouse/ "I'm a Director because I make wedding & graduation videos" market.

The serious folk need power with no compromises or middle man adapters. They want software that doesn't have excuses or silly limits. "What do you mean you need multi cam support? Just shoot with fewer cameras, see we SAVED you money !!!"

The wedding video guys are satisfied with a few sparkle dazzle spinning stars transitions and....a computer in a can.




Yes, it would seem most of Apple's shills have been posting all sorts of glowing comments.

 

[Radiating]

How many TB cables does it take to equal the data throughput of a single PCI slot? How many expansion boxes at nearly $1k will that take? This is not a solution at all, so you can keep your sarcasm and lack of understanding with no thanks at all.

As one of the few dozen people in the world who has actually bought one of those $1,000 boxes let me give you some first hand info.

First off, 90% of PCI cards out there do not need all 16 chanels, they will do fine with less. 99.999% of PCI cards will not have performance reduced more than 10%, which is less than the usual variance from CARD to CARD. Meaning the week that your high end high throughput card was maufacturerd plays more of a role than if it's through thunderbolt or not.

I have tested both muilti chanel raid arrays (up to 16 3.5" hard drives) , and top of the line video cards (Nvidia Titan) and did not see significant declines in performance over thunderbolt. I also tested several other high performance cards with little decline in performance, and that was with a $700 Echo Express Pro box, and a Visiontek 450w external PSU over thunderbolt 1.

So considering that thunderbolt has no significant effect on the current generation of PCIe cards, at least not more than sample to sample variation according to passmark and HDDbench, I think it's safe to say that contrary to what you said, thunderbolt actually is a good solution.

Oh and those $1000 boxes? They cost the manufacturer $110 to make at current prices, they are price gouged to the stratosphere because the market allows for price gouging and the market is so small that there is no competition.

It's only a matter of time before competitors come to market and sell those $1000 boxes for $100. In fact chinese competitors ALREADY released a PCI express to thunderbolt interface that was $140. However it was discontinued so that they could revise the design. Considering the new Mac Pro will increase the size of the thunderbolt to PCIe box market by at least a thousand fold I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of months before someone starts producing these products at less than an 800% mark up.

 

[wonderspark]

As one of the few dozen people in the world who has actually bought one of those $1,000 boxes let me give you some first hand info.

First off, 90% of PCI cards out there do not need all 16 chanels, they will do fine with less. 99.999% of PCI cards will not have performance reduced more than 10%, which is less than the usual variance from CARD to CARD. Meaning the week that your high end high throughput card was maufacturerd plays more of a role than if it's through thunderbolt or not.

I have tested both muilti chanel raid arrays (up to 16 3.5" hard drives) , and top of the line video cards (Nvidia Titan) and did not see significant declines in performance over thunderbolt. I also tested several other high performance cards with little decline in performance, and that was with a $700 Echo Express Pro box, and a Visiontek 450w external PSU over thunderbolt 1.

So considering that thunderbolt has no significant effect on the current generation of PCIe cards, at least not more than sample to sample variation according to passmark and HDDbench, I think it's safe to say that contrary to what you said, thunderbolt actually is a good solution.

Oh and those $1000 boxes? They cost the manufacturer $110 to make at current prices, they are price gouged to the stratosphere because the market allows for price gouging and the market is so small that there is no competition.

It's only a matter of time before competitors come to market and sell those $1000 boxes for $100. In fact chinese competitors ALREADY released a PCI express to thunderbolt interface that was $140. However it was discontinued so that they could revise the design. Considering the new Mac Pro will increase the size of the thunderbolt to PCIe box market by at least a thousand fold I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of months before someone starts producing these products at less than an 800% mark up.

Until I see evidence that Thunderbolt can run a 16 disk RAID through your Echo Express Pro box with no loss in sustained throughput, I won't believe it. It should run at LEAST 2200MB per second using HDDs. Can you show me that? I'd love to see it, and will gladly eat my words.

 

[Transeau]

I'm reposting this from another thread I posted in...

I normally sit out on these types of threads... But...
I own an "Outside IT Management" company. I primarily deal with the medical field. However, a few years ago I picked up a few new clients. One is a well known movie studio. Along with three recording studios. So, here is my $0.02.


1) Lack of internal storage.. I can honestly say that a LOT of people that work with the "pro" boxes (mostly Mac Pro's, but I still see a few old Alpha's, SGI's and the like) have no idea what the boxes have in them, or what can be done to them. The recording studios all use fiber channel or just Ethernet with centralized storage. The movie studio has both internal and external. They only care about speed. As I see it, Thunberbolt 2 gives us a very nice upgrade path for massive and *FAST* storage. The internal storage is a non-issue for my clients.

2) Only 4 DIMMS? OMG so what? 64GB (4x16GB) is only $580. 128GB (4x32GB) is $1300. If you need that much memory, then is price really an issue? No, not in my field.

3) "Made Quite" is not a Pro feature? LOL okay.. I've been in no less than 12 studio "sound booths" that have the hardware in the room with them.

4) No Thunderbolt devices? Interesting. I just upgraded one of the recording studios with new iMac's and Universal Audio's "Apollo" with the Thunderbolt interfaces. They are pretty impressive and the engineers love them. They went with a Pegasus R6 (6x4TB, RAID10). No Fiberchannel for the iMac.

5) Legacy ports? Really? This is an issue? If you need firewire that bad, pick up a Thunderbolt display. It has 1394b on the back.

6) No PCIe? Isn't that Thunderbolt? In a "Pro" situation, most everything is 19" rack mount anyway. I've seen a few PCIe "accelerators" but with today's CPU power, that's a non-issue now.

7) Single CPU only.. I'm not sure on this one yet. In general I don't think this is a big deal. 12 core is pretty nice. 24 even better for rendering. But again, if you are doing work that needs more, wouldn't you have the money for a nice little Mac Pro farm?

To be honest, I would bet that most of the people complaining about any of these things simply don't need them anyway. I don't.. I'm happy with my iMac. I would Love a Mac Pro, but honestly it doesn't offer me anything that I don't already have or need. But that's me. I don't do animation or video editing. I do audio mixing on the side, but still, nothing the iMac can't handle.

----------

Until I see evidence that Thunderbolt can run a 16 disk RAID through your Echo Express Pro box with no loss in sustained throughput, I won't believe it. It should run at LEAST 2200MB per second using HDDs. Can you show me that? I'd love to see it, and will gladly eat my words.

See my post above. Next time you are in Los Angeles, I can show you.

 

[wonderspark]

http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/623-17-thunderbolt-performance-5big.html

These guys threw everything they had at Thunderbolt, and only got 1300MB/second tops out of it. If you can get 2000MB+/second from your external Thunderbolt expansion box, you should write up a nice article and show the world how it's done.

In the meantime, the future Mac Pro (at this point) is going backwards in performance by forcing TB onto people that are used to much better performance for less money.

----------

See my post above. Next time you are in Los Angeles, I can show you.

I can be in LA tomorrow. Give me an address via PM, and I'll meet you... let's say Tuesday, anytime.

Just to be clear, you'll be showing me a Thunderbolt external expansion card that can move more than 2000MB/second, correct? Is this on an iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, or what? If it works, I'm sold, and I'll be buying one for my laptop.

 

[Transeau]

How many TB cables does it take to equal the data throughput of a single PCI slot? How many expansion boxes at nearly $1k will that take? This is not a solution at all, so you can keep your sarcasm and lack of understanding with no thanks at all.

1 "Thunderbolt 1" cable = 20 PCI slots. (PCI is 512MB/s)

Yes, I know you meant PCIe. Yet you didn't specify x1, x4, x8 or x16, or PCIe 1, 2 or 3. So, to answer your question. it's 1. 1 single TB2 cable is equal to 1 x8 slot. and the Mac Pro has 6 of them.

Uncompressed 4k 24fps video is 3.82Gbps. Thunderbolt is 10Gbps, or 20Gbps for v2. Throughput isn't an issue.

 

[wonderspark]

1 "Thunderbolt 1" cable = 20 PCI slots. (PCI is 512MB/s)

Yes, I know you meant PCIe. Yet you didn't specify x1, x4, x8 or x16, or PCIe 1, 2 or 3. So, to answer your question. it's 1. 1 single TB2 cable is equal to 1 x8 slot. and the Mac Pro has 6 of them.

Uncompressed 4k 24fps video is 3.82Gbps. Thunderbolt is 10Gbps, or 20Gbps for v2. Throughput isn't an issue.

Don't you mean one TB2 cable is equal to one x4 slot, because TB2 simply aggregates two 10Gbps channels into one 20Gbps channel, which is still x4 lanes?

 

[wonderspark]

Anyway, I'll book the flight if you are confident that you can show me 2000MB/second flowing through two Thunderbolt ports to/from a single volume, because until that point, my 2009 Mac Pro is much faster.

 

[Transeau]

I can be in LA tomorrow. Give me an address via PM, and I'll meet you... let's say Tuesday, anytime.

Just to be clear, you'll be showing me a Thunderbolt external expansion card that can move more than 2000MB/second, correct? Is this on an iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, or what? If it works, I'm sold, and I'll be buying one for my laptop.

PM sent

 

[wonderspark]

PM sent

Hmm, the PM server must be slow tonight. Usually they go right through, and I've still not seen any PMs... I'll check back later.

 

[GermanyChris]

It's a lot of people who've had the same workflow forever, and now have to change. Pro users freak out a lot about that more than normal users. The optical drive complaints are driven by people who have been burning to optical disks for the last 15 years, and now have to work their heads around a different workflow. It's hard for people to do.

One of the biggest complaints about FCPX was that it wouldn't export to a tape. I feel like that's a similar thing. Export to tape probably wasn't the most efficient way to do things, but you had people who were forced to changed their habits and weren't happy about it. They'd rather leave their habits intact instead of adopting a more efficient workflow.

Or those that have no option. Thumb drives cannot be plugged into a networked computer an dropbox is verboten. All the interviews I edit and training videos I create are distributed on DVDs. We have over 400 employees that do not have computer access and you cannot ask them to work from home. Because of the thumb drive issue If I create a product on the Mac it must be burned to a CD so it can be emailed or printed on a network printer.