This is not a "Pro" machine.

[echoout]

He *is* rad. Somewhere, I have a photo with him, too.

Also rad is the stunt crew he brought with him, led by Bobby Ore. The photo on that page was taken by my coworker. I was right in front of him with a video camera. Bobby told us not to run away when that truck approached the camera crew. It looked like he was going to mow us all down, and everyone fled except me as he stopped a cool two feet from my camera. He yelled something like, "Marcus here is the only one that isn't a p_ssy!" I think I was just stupid.

I worked on graphics for the "World Stuntman Awards" special on ABC about 10 years ago. I was such a dork, I only knew him as a director since I was a BMX kid.

 

[freejazz-man]

Gettin' money with a mouse and a Wacom pen.

FWIW, I've loved my G4s, G5s and Mac Pros up until a few years ago. I'll continue doing preproduction on my MBP and will still be knee-deep in Mac Cult-ery. Just sitting out their workstations for a bit. I've got jobs brewing even if I wanted to wait, so I'm moving on... for now.

----------



Well, la-dee-DAH! Look who's on his high horse. You probably wear a monocle, DON'T you??!!! Yeah you do.

So if we both work in retouching, how can our experiences be so different? Is it because I work in a department and you do this by yourself?

 

[echoout]

So if we both work in retouching, how can our experiences be so different? Is it because I work in a department and you do this by yourself?

Oh, I actually do motion design, editing, rendering and some visual effects....even the occasional Flash technical animation now and again. Lots of odd jobs working from Austin.

Yeah, I think you're onto something about the freelancer/contractor versus the office setting. A lot of what I do is working onsite with my MBP and a portable RAID and then bring it home to finish, sometimes returning to the office to turn in but more and more-so submitting renders online. My big clients on each coast will often overnight me a drive to throw my source and archives on that gets mailed back. I would rather handle it online but it's not always up to me.

The video/animation generalist nature of what I do also probably contributes to me needing my computer to do so many things well. For instance, people are always recommending I use online render farms for my heavy C4D work, but my shots are usually several seconds of something bigger...so too long to render on a wimpy computer but too little to get set up with a farm. I'm also involved in work who's content changes very quickly and I can't always schedule out a spot in a farm days ahead.

My biggest needs are:
-10Gbe connectivity to my NAS
-capture/output I/O card/s
-legacy connectivity for client drives (eSATA/FW800/USB3)
-ultra-fast RAIDs for 2K/4K uncompressed workflows
-SSD system drive, SSD scratch drive, HDD system mirroring, HDD for Time Machine
-multiple monitor connectivity plus Cintiq

That's all doable with the new MacPro but a LOT of external expense on top of everything else.

So, what kind of retouching do you do?

 

[phoenixsan]

Apple.....

is changing their design paradigm, their focus about the "Pro" concept and about storage and expansion. About the loss of Blu-ray, Mr. Phil Schiller had said "people dont want it". So, the real judgement will come in the marketplace. Like or not like it, always not buying cries out loud by changes....

 

[bigpoppamac31]

Yup! They sure do. External media rocks! It can go mobile from station to station or from location to location. Here, check this out:

YouTube: video​

Almost every storage device they use is external. External devices make so much more sense to me. And unless you're silly in your consumerism at very very little added cost.


.

Keep in mind that's a 3 year old video. Nonetheless it's a pretty darn sweet setup. If only I had the money (and knowledge) for such a set up. I wonder how is workflow will change (if at all) with the new Mac Pro?

 

[Tesselator]

Keep in mind that's a 3 year old video. Nonetheless it's a pretty darn sweet setup. If only I had the money (and knowledge) for such a set up. I wonder how is workflow will change (if at all) with the new Mac Pro?

Yeah, I bet in the past three years it gone even more external.

You don't need much knowledge to set that up tho. Just get the parts, hook them up, create the shares and you're good to go. Well, pretty much... The photography is a different matter of course...

 

[bigpoppamac31]

Yeah, I bet in the past three years it gone even more external.

You don't need much knowledge to set that up tho. Just get the parts, hook them up, create the shares and you're good to go. Well, pretty much... The photography is a different matter of course...

I'm sure I could learn fairly quickly but setting things up in RAID and such is foreign to me. I do backup my HDD but it's a simply use of CCC. Nothing fancy. But I'm no photo or video professional (in the traditional sense. Not the new Apple sense) so I'm sure I'd have no need for all that stuff. But in a fantasy world with lots of money to burn it'd be cool to have.

 

[freejazz-man]

The only mistake I think they made was not providing for a 10GbE option out of the box as that would be the most obvious high-end need to provide for.

Yeah, externalizing many things will add the cost of cables and enclosures, but this was pretty much happening anyway and in the end I prefer the modular design to 'lets see what ridiculous internal adapters 3rd parties can come out with to support pro users'. Workflow is always about most efficiently distributing burdens and sole proprietorships are going to have the hardest time with that as it's much more difficult to justify multiple purpose-driven workstations. I get a lot of criticism but I think it's misguided as we haven't really seen the beginning of the tb2 solutions that will be coming out.

I myself don't retouch, I run the IT for a business that does a lot of retouching and the subsequent printing of images.

 

[anim8or]

Keep in mind that's a 3 year old video. Nonetheless it's a pretty darn sweet setup. If only I had the money (and knowledge) for such a set up. I wonder how is workflow will change (if at all) with the new Mac Pro?

In my experience of post production video and gfx facilities this setup is pretty standard.

In fact sitting at my desk right now I have my Mac Pro with an external esata RAIDed drive and 1 additional internal drive fro local storage, everything else lives on the server that is currently connected via gigabit ethernet.

I dont see the new Mac Pro's lack of internal capacity or storage to be an issue at all... even when I freelanced I tried my best to mirror the workflows of the facilities that I visited and worked for... these setups are designed for their data redundancy capabilities and the ability to share media with other editors and designers....

My point is, the new Mac Pro will slot right into places like this.

The only issue I see with the new Mac Pro is the GFX card(s), but this is something that in time will change as more and more software companies start using tech like OpenCL over CUDA or better still, both!

 

[Transeau]

Well, la-dee-DAH! Look who's on his high horse. You probably wear a monocle, DON'T you??!!! Yeah you do.

LOL I never said that *I* was a "Pro". I'm just an lowly network engineer that happens to be the default Mac IT guy for a studio. I can't even come close to affording the gear that I get to work with. Nor do I really know how to use it.

 

[mikeishi]

I'm sorry, but what kind of "pros" are all you guys? Is EVERYONE here who is complaining about the Mac Pro a video editor or someone working in 3d modeling? I've worked with designers, engineers and mathematicians and this new Mac Pro is more than enough to do that type of "pro" work for today's world. If we need more computing power, we do distributed computing over supercomputer clusters.

Do you guys really think Apple is going to make a computer targeted just toward video editors? While it does suck that external expansion may end up costing more, these complaints are a bit silly. For 95% of the "pros" out there, this new Mac Pro is ideal since it is blazingly fast (for those tasks which we will do locally), quiet, and small. Do you guys really think Apple will totally scrap such an innovative design for such a small share of the market?

For the problems that the "pros" (what a terrible term) I've worked with face, the problem usually falls into one of three categories:
1. Greatly underutilizing the computing power of our computers (maxed-out Mac Pros, maxed-out retina Macbook Pros)
2. Strongly utilizing the computing power of our computers with small and sparse spikes of intense usage (i.e. it's not even worth the extra money to do internal expansion, we'd rather wait for the next-generation models).
3. Far too large of a problem to be handled on our workstations (i.e. there is seriously no point in doing internal expansion, it is much more reasonable to instead buy/use distributed computing time).

I just don't see video and 3d as being a big enough market.

 

[Omnius]

FWIW, intel have similar visions for the future of data centers.

http://arstechnica.com/information-...e-traditional-server-rack-with-100gbps-links/

Things change fast in the computer industry.

I'm inclined to agree. The way I view the new Mac Pro is connecting to a large rack style setup. It's a workstation. If you need massive computing power, people are using distributed computing. It's really not even a new concept. The people complaining are mostly heavy users of photoshop who ought to be fine with the new pro and a mysterious subsection of video editors that are not amateurs but not large scale enough to run large studios with access to large dedicated distributed computing clusters. I think those who are complaining will see the external component market that will quickly rise to meet their needs and be pleasantly surprised. They're going to have 1 or 2 big racks that their mac pros plug into.

----------

I can't understand why Apple is calling a non-expandable, no disc drive machine a "Pro" machine.

"Pro's", aka Professionals, do NOT want external expansion boxes cluttering their desk just because Apple deems it necessary to not allow people to expand it's internal components. ("expansion is external")

Professional users also want to burn media (videos, photos, etc) to DVDs and Blu Rays. Now, on top of a ~$3000+ machine, they have to purchase an additional external drive just to do that. Apple is not gonna undercut the price of the high end ridiculously priced 15" rMBP. ($2799)

Don't get me started on the internal storage. WHY can Pros NOT expand the internal storage? Yes, there are external drives, but when it comes down to it, it's yet ANOTHER external expansion box, cluttering an already cluttered desk.

Who are these people mass producing dvds and blu-rays in their offices? Seriously. When was the last time anyone was in a studio that genuinely benefitted from having more than 1 dedicated machine operating with optical media. Hell, just look at this forum and the number of users operating with Multiple SSDs inside the optical bays.

The only places I ever see optical media anymore are law offices (because the legal profession is slow to adopt technology in a way that would be ruinous to any other) and people with those dedicated external boxes with several optical drives so they can quickly produce a few dozen disks to send out to god knows who.

 

[goMac]

Who are these people mass producing dvds and blu-rays in their offices? Seriously. When was the last time anyone was in a studio that genuinely benefitted from having more than 1 dedicated machine operating with optical media. Hell, just look at this forum and the number of users operating with Multiple SSDs inside the optical bays.

It's such a strange attitude.

Writing should have been on the wall for that when FCPX supported Bluray encoding but no Bluray drive option was ever offered. That was Apple pretty much saying "Why would you ever want to burn from an internal drive at your desk?"

At this rate, though, I'm not sure why one would even do Bluray encoding only from their local machine. Especially when Compressor supports shared network nodes.

 

[FluJunkie]

I'm sorry, but what kind of "pros" are all you guys? Is EVERYONE here who is complaining about the Mac Pro a video editor or someone working in 3d modeling? I've worked with designers, engineers and mathematicians and this new Mac Pro is more than enough to do that type of "pro" work for today's world. If we need more computing power, we do distributed computing over supercomputer clusters.

I've been complaining rather vocally about the new Mac Pro, and I'm a computational scientist.

While it is tempting to just shunt everything over to the cluster the moment it requires "power", that line of reasoning ends up questioning the entire purpose of the workstation as a machine. If you're just going to offload it, why not buy a really light, portable (and inexpensive) notebook and be done?

I found that since I moved from a notebook + cluster to a workstation + cluster that my productivity has skyrocketed - there's so much more I can do at my desk, prototyping is easier, etc.

Do you guys really think Apple is going to make a computer targeted just toward video editors?...

I just don't see video and 3d as being a big enough market.

It's a vastly bigger market than engineering, math and science. You'll note, for example, that Apple's once rather robust support for science is really nowhere in evidence anymore - their science page went from helpful to obsolete to non-existant.

 

[deconstruct60]

I've been complaining rather vocally about the new Mac Pro, and I'm a computational scientist.

But wasn't it a computational scientist with a bucket load of proprietary CUDA code ? If it was two embedded Titans would the opposition be as much?

It's a vastly bigger market than engineering, math and science.

Math and science maybe but not engineering. Not academic engineering... the commercial practice. Unless trying to sweep up anyone with a video camera there are a ton of companies (far more than media industry is populated by) that design and build things.

Is Apple's penetration there very deep ? Probably not. But it is a much bigger market. Narrowly pitching the Mac Pro as "just a media content manipulator machine " has been one of the primary problems with the product. It can't really survive on just that.

 

[FluJunkie]

But wasn't it a computational scientist with a bucket load of proprietary CUDA code ? If it was two embedded Titans would the opposition be as much?

*Sheepish* Nope I might be a little grumbly, because my Mac Pro is currently not on my desk, and I'm pretty sure it'll be an even worse mess of cables, but that's a much more fiddly objection.

Math and science maybe but not engineering. Not academic engineering... the commercial practice. Unless trying to sweep up anyone with a video camera there are a ton of companies (far more than media industry is populated by) that design and build things.

Is Apple's penetration there very deep ? Probably not. But it is a much bigger market. Narrowly pitching the Mac Pro as "just a media content manipulator machine " has been one of the primary problems with the product. It can't really survive on just that.

Fair. I think my implicit assumption there was math and science at least seem to have Macs as a major competitor. That hasn't been my experience with commercial engineering, which is admittedly limited. It would be nice if Apple tried to compete for that space, but my guess is its not worth the effort for them.

 

[beelzebubba]

Math and science maybe but not engineering. Not academic engineering... the commercial practice. Unless trying to sweep up anyone with a video camera there are a ton of companies (far more than media industry is populated by) that design and build things.

Is Apple's penetration there very deep ? Probably not. But it is a much bigger market. Narrowly pitching the Mac Pro as "just a media content manipulator machine " has been one of the primary problems with the product. It can't really survive on just that.

It's a larger market but the Mac penetration is very small. Apps like Autocad and Solidworks rule the roost for that sort of manufacturing/engineering work. Then there is the issue of vertical CNC apps and the like that are nearly exclusively Windows based. The only possible exception is the low and mid range 3D printing/rapid prototyping where there are a significant number of Mac users but at this point that's really a single seat shop or hobbyist/enthusiast market. If Autodesk would fix the Mac version of Autocad and Desault, Geomagic and Stratsys started porting their apps to the Mac the new canister would make a fine machine on which those could run.

 

[deconstruct60]

It's a larger market but the Mac penetration is very small. .... If Autodesk would fix the Mac version of Autocad and Desault, Geomagic and Stratsys started porting their apps to the Mac the new canister would make a fine machine on which those could run.

In the short term, the Mac Pro 2013 with bootcamp , Windows , and certified graphics might actually make that penetration bigger.

Not take over that whole segment, but perhaps help sell as many (or more) new Mac Pros they formerly sold into the upper 30th percentile in the "soon to be old" dual processor space.

The only possible exception is the low and mid range 3D printing/rapid prototyping where there are a significant number of Mac users

Yet another potential growth market with the expanding interest of 3D printing/manufacturing. Things like that where more folks are pouring into a market rather than to a market with a relatively fix number of players and extremely high barriers to entry (e.g. mass distribution media) that are largely stagnant.

 

[beelzebubba]

In the short term, the Mac Pro 2013 with bootcamp , Windows , and certified graphics might actually make that penetration bigger.

Not take over that whole segment, but perhaps help sell as many (or more) new Mac Pros they formerly sold into the upper 30th percentile in the "soon to be old" dual processor space.

Bootcamp disrupts workflow quite a bit. We still have it on several of the boxes at the gig but at home I quit using it and went to a virtual machine. I think there is a better chance at small shops doing this but at a big shop if the corporate IT infrastructure is Windows and there aren't any compelling reasons to use a Mac in the first place. With the power of the cylinder and the use of GPU and OpenCL I think this could be a turning point to take virtualization to the next level. An issue with virtualization now is support. If corporate is paying thousands for a support contract with someone like Autodesk and that contract doesn't support virtualized or Bootcamp solutions it's a non starter in those environments. For us Autocad is as critical as Pro Tools or Nuendo or Ableton (or Logic for the composers) coupled with the fact that the corporate IT structure is a Windows/Sharepoint/SAP environment means we'll have at least a few different OS/hardware flavors. On the production side we are able to choose best of breed for our application regardless of the platform but on the business operations side it's dictated from top down.

 

[deconstruct60]

If corporate is paying thousands for a support contract with someone like Autodesk and that contract doesn't support virtualized or Bootcamp solutions it's a non starter in those environments..

Virtualization but not Bootcamp. Frankly the vast majority of PC sold today run a flavor of a Bootcamp BIOS compatibility mode equivlent. So claiming that Mac Pro "really running EFI down there" is evil is a bunch of manure. So is everyone else. That is effectively as native mode as anyone else is running.

And no big shops with IT police aren't going to be happy with it unless it got them dramatically cheaper GPU cards. If Apple manages to knock a bit of the markup off the stratospherically high markup FirePro cards that may be a factor. But Apple doesn't really need big, regimented shops. A number of smaller ones will do just fine.

 

[beelzebubba]

Virtualization but not Bootcamp. Frankly the vast majority of PC sold today run a flavor of a Bootcamp BIOS compatibility mode equivlent. So claiming that Mac Pro "really running EFI down there" is evil is a bunch of manure. So is everyone else. That is effectively as native mode as anyone else is running.

Which is why I stated it as i did, virtualization and Bootcamp. I'd agree that a BIOS compatibility mode is the base of PCs. It's not too difficult to make a few UEFI changes (or change the DSDT), use Chimera and boot right into OS X on a wide variety of of vanilla Intel hardware. (I've got an i7 Haswell project going into a G4 Cube I've had since they came out...) That doesn't change the fact the people that support the software don't consider a Bootcamp box to be a "real" Windows box when it's as real as a Windows box gets. The big issue in that space isn't hardware, it's software. Once you get out of the low and mid range 3D printer gang there just aren't many alternatives on the platform (and none for some applications).

Let's say Solidworks is your primary app. If you have to reboot to get back to your productivity suite, check email, Skype, etc it's a non starter right out the gate. At that point you might as well buy a Solidworks box and a Mac or a nice PC and be done with it. The sort of virtual machine I see is like a combination of VMWare or Parallels presented in a Rhapsody type of Yellow Box window. While you may have to have a copy of the other OS installed, the apps native to that OS run in a window like they would if you maximized them in the virtual machine window. It's not Openstep or a common API but it does do what I find a multi platform user needs, apps from different platforms running on a single machine with a way to easily switch between them and share data. The ship has likely sailed on getting Mac specific versions of most of these software packages. This way the small shop can keep his Mac while he uses the same tools the bigs shops use.

 

[OS6-OSX]

Do you guys really think Apple is going to make a computer targeted just toward video editors?

How about the target being "all inclusive"!
The new MP 6.1 commercial shows 3 lines of people.
1. The line for Dell has about 5 people in it
2. The line for HP has about 7 people in it
3. The line for the new MP 6.1 (close up shot) seems to have the same amount. But as the camera dollys and pans you see the line continues over the mountain side. A person at a time leans out of line and says: I'm a scientist, I'm a teacher, I'm a gamer, I just surf the web, I edit videos, I'm a wedding photographer, on and on and on!
4. The sound is muted from the people in line but you see them lean out and their lips move.
5. This is when the new MP slogan is stated.
"We at Apple thought about including everyone but our design and ego got in the way!"

 

[deconstruct60]

"We at Apple thought about including everyone but our design and ego got in the way!"

The fact that Apple is running the exactly the opposite ad on TV and print right now points to how this will never happen.

They aren't trying to design something for everyone. The objective to put devices that make a difference to the people they do target.

For the pros who "don't care what the box looks like, I just need the cheapest container for my stuff" .... well there is an obvious disconnect there between Apple's objectives and theirs.

 

[TennisandMusic]

The fact that Apple is running the exactly the opposite ad on TV and print right now points to how this will never happen.

They aren't trying to design something for everyone. The objective to put devices that make a difference to the people they do target.

For the pros who "don't care what the box looks like, I just need the cheapest container for my stuff" .... well there is an obvious disconnect there between Apple's objectives and theirs.

This is a red herring. Of course pros "care" about what it looks like, many people lauded the previous Mac Pro design as having a beautiful case. However people generally NEED storage beyond an SSD boot drive. You just do. So you are spending more to hook up an expensive box via Thunderbolt, and now your supposedly great looking desktop becomes a spaghetti mess of cabling.

What IS Apple's objective? It's almost like they don't have one aside from making the most different looking thing they can, function be damned. Seriously, what was the goal? It's a completely weird machine. They could have made it much smaller still and included the ability to put in drives.

 

[deconstruct60]

That doesn't change the fact the people that support the software don't consider a Bootcamp box to be a "real" Windows box when it's as real as a Windows box gets. The big issue in that space isn't hardware, it's software.

For some very high end packages with rigid hardware requirements it is far more so "not paying the gatekeeper toll" problem. John Doe's home build WinPC with his trusty screwdriver isn't on their certified hardware list either.

There is just a barrier of assigning someone to run the certification tests. It is a matter of whether Apple wants to make the investment or not. Drop off "free" hardware and "run the test" money and that typically solves the "this isn't real windows" problems.

BootCamp is in Microsoft's Compatibility matrix for Windows.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...ocale=1033&BreadcrumbPath=apple&tempOsid=win7

So are some of the Apple GPU cards.

Let's say Solidworks is your primary app. If you have to reboot to get back to your productivity suite, check email, Skype, etc it's a non starter right out the gate. At that point you might as well buy a Solidworks box and a Mac or a nice PC and be done with it.

Companies that have limited resources will only buy one box. Deployed on user A's desk it may be a 99% time Windows/Solidworks box and Deployed on user B's desk it may be a 80% time OS X box. The "cold spare" box if either ones goes down ... again flipped into either image.

If a 100% hard core Windows shop then not going to crack. But for shops that have a more fluid mix it can work. That's why Apple puts effort into BootCamp. It has likely paid off.

A hackintosh isn't going to help if get audited. Absolutely going to fail on OS X license requirements.

The sort of virtual machine I see is like a combination of VMWare or Parallels presented in a Rhapsody type of Yellow Box window. While you may have to have a copy of the other OS installed, the apps native to that OS run in a window like they would if you maximized them in the virtual machine window.

That is usually where the graphics software support folks start getting twisted because it isn't a native video card you are on.

A version of VMWare Fusion / Parallels where they use advanced IO-MMU capabilities ( (AMD-Vi and VT-d) to run that window natively on a 2nd GPU that would probably mute some of these complaints.... although still on hook for "run the compatibility test" bribe.