Apple and the "Pro" Market

[Christoffer Glans]

They make nice products for personal application but make inferior products for professional work that require powerful hardware, so there's nothing to it really. If you're super rich you can get whatever 15 000 USD Mac you want for heavy work, but for those who like to think about smart investments a very expensive PC gives you probably more powerful hardware for half the price of a mac. I do like the OSX better though, but that's just my preference in how the operating system works, but I don't trust a Hackintosh system so I'll stick with PC. The only hassle is that the industry is so addicted to ProRes that you sometimes need to use the Macbook to convert files to ProRes before sending it to clients.

 

[Bob Gundu]

My Mac pro from 2013 edits my 6k red files without transcoding in FCPX just dandy. I get to use prores and now Prores raw without needing another device to convert. I would say it was a sound investment for me.

 

[Med D]

There are many professions that Apple absolutely dominates, including pretty much every creative industry including ours. The need to crunch heavy video files or render complex animations is a very small -- but noisy -- piece of the pie.

They make nice products for personal application but make inferior products for professional work that require powerful hardware

 

[Mike Halper]

Apple made a mistake with the nMP, and they've admitted it. They erred with the FCPX launch, and I absolutely hated it when it was released. But Apple has followed through with awesome updates and FCPX is probably my favorite editing software now. (Seriously, give it an honest try and you'll find yourself editing it Premiere, Resolve, and Avid and thinking "I wish I could do this the way I could in FCPX" to a whole bunch of commands and methods of editing)

With the new "modular" Mac Pro, I trust that Apple is really listening this time and I commend them on taking the time necessary to get it right. The only concern I have is that the Mac Pro will be more expensive than I would like to spend on it (Xeon is pointless for 99% of users and makes it so much more expensive), but we'll see.

As far as the 5 year gap goes, well it's 5 years later and computers with similar core count aren't much faster... maybe 10%. And they do have the option of the iMac Pro right now if you really need something faster and with more cores. So they filled that hole fairly decently if you absolutely need something right now. The real downside with the nMP is the GPU, but with 2 D700's it's not too bad, even compared to a newer PC with a 1080Ti.

The notion that Apple is a phone company is getting old. They're a tech company. Their computers have the best OS, best reliability, best refinement out of all computer manufacturers. That's not what you'd expect from just a "phone company". Sure, they may not be the absolute fastest computers out there, but when Apple did make the absolute fastest computers it didn't really help them much. Apple's computer market share is bigger now (when their computers aren't the fastest) than it was before (when their computers were the fastest). So you can't blame them for going with designs that pleases a larger 99.9% of the population that doesn't need to pull every drop of performance out of the hardware. If they never changed to that philosophy maybe Apple wouldn't be around still.

 

[Joachim Hoge]

Wise words Mike. I really got to love fcpx after a while too. For me it’s just so much more efficient, but I don’t need the integration of the adobe suite that some do. And I the renting model sucks for me. I’m holding out on a old Mac Pro to see what comes next. iMac pro is a big investment when I don’t do that much editing at the moment, it would be great if the modular Mac Pro lets one be able to buy “bit by bit” to spread the cost some

 

[Marc Wielage]

With the new "modular" Mac Pro, I trust that Apple is really listening this time and I commend them on taking the time necessary to get it right. The only concern I have is that the Mac Pro will be more expensive than I would like to spend on it (Xeon is pointless for 99% of users and makes it so much more expensive), but we'll see.

My problem -- as with a lot of things in the tech business -- is that the timing is very bad. Bear in mind the last Mac Pro came out in December 2013. If the new machine doesn't come out until the end of 2019 (or even the beginning of 2020), that's a long, long gap between models. Computer life is expressed in dog years: 2 years is an enormous amount of time, and 7 years is a lifetime. I would be perfectly happy with a "stopgap" machine like an HP z8 that just runs Mac OSX and has all the other HP features they already have, and just buy that for $10K and live with it until the new design comes out in a couple of years.

As far as the 5 year gap goes, well it's 5 years later and computers with similar core count aren't much faster... maybe 10%. And they do have the option of the iMac Pro right now if you really need something faster and with more cores. So they filled that hole fairly decently if you absolutely need something right now. The real downside with the nMP is the GPU, but with 2 D700's it's not too bad, even compared to a newer PC with a 1080Ti.

The problem for me is the lack of expandability. If I can't upgrade the GPUs, they're dooming us to 2012 technology (since the AMD D700 is basically from that era). And that's a very big deal for editing people, color people, VFX people, and others doing post-production.

BTW, I guarantee you a 22-core Xeon will blow away anything Apple has at the moment. Cores count, RAM counts, speed counts, GPUs count, and i/o count. All of them are very important, and pros will pay more for machines that get all these things right.

 

[dino g]

I can tell you from first hand experience that they care about us and are working hard to make us happy. specifically, i was in a very small room with about 20 other people 3 months ago where the head of pro products from apple gave us a demonstration of the iMac pro and also talked extensively about the future. at that event, to show off the computing power of the iMac, the exact thing he was demonstrating to everyone was processing 8k red footage...ill say that again, the person responsible for the pro division was working with and talking about 8k red footage as the thing that needs lots of horse power to process.

so they know about us and are working to make tools for us. he acknowledged his short sightedness and vowed to take care of us, because in his mind, we are important....

i felt so much better after that because if you get a "genius" at an apple store to talk with you about a DIT cart and what we are doing out in the world, 99 out of 100 times they look at us as if we are literally from another planet... this guy gets us!!!!

 

[Misha Engel]

I can tell you from first hand experience that they care about us and are working hard to make us happy. specifically, i was in a very small room with about 20 other people 3 months ago where the head of pro products from apple gave us a demonstration of the iMac pro and also talked extensively about the future. at that event, to show off the computing power of the iMac, the exact thing he was demonstrating to everyone was processing 8k red footage...ill say that again, the person responsible for the pro division was working with and talking about 8k red footage as the thing that needs lots of horse power to process.

so they know about us and are working to make tools for us. he acknowledged his short sightedness and vowed to take care of us, because in his mind, we are important....

i felt so much better after that because if you get a "genius" at an apple store to talk with you about a DIT cart and what we are doing out in the world, 99 out of 100 times they look at us as if we are literally from another planet... this guy gets us!!!!

The biggest issue is that RED introduced 8k in 2015(not 2019 or 2020), the good thing was that off the shelf standard hardware running on windows(multi Xeon E5-V3 + upto 4 titanX with 12 GVRAM) or linux(multi Xeon E5-V3 + upto 8 titanX with 12 GVRAM) in 2015 was (more than) capable of handling this footage.

 

[AndreasOberg]

I like working in an Apple environment but I do not plan to go back to Apple again.
The most glaring problems for me are:
- I do also color grade and I actually need very fast CPU and GPU
- I want to upgrade some components every second year, especially the GPU
- I want to add RAIDs or harddrives internally and not have lots of external units.
- Last update was 2013. I just cannot trust a company that takes 5-6 for even a small update.

I understand though if you mainly focus on editing then Apple is still a nice choice I think. The performance needs are not as strong and I still really love FCPX. To be honest I think they are a bit slow with new features in FCPX but they have a brilliant foundation.

/Andreas

 

[Björn Benckert]

I still stick with mac and wait it out a bit longer. The combo of having Flame, the Adobe package, and Resolve on the same OS is what makes me lean that way. I´m not using FCX I guess that would make me lean even more that way. Then also I had difficulty finding PC´s with good / compatible thunderbolt 2 and 3 connectors and I really like my LG 5k Ultrafine and I´m not sure what PC would fly with it.

Flame on linux is tempting but not sure how to set it up so it also run resolve on the same version of linux. Have not looked into it that much but know it´s not a all easy to set up. Then again not having photoshop and the rest on the same box is a real step backwards for me. That was back when using IRIX machines, had a PC on one side and a mac on the other... doing graphics and 3D. Now it´s 2018 seams like one box should be able to do it all... well part from the 3D bit but that I leave to others these days, to do 3D you need a stacks of computers so that does not really apply I think.

But the wait for new macs is / has bene quite painful. Got 3 machines one trashcan and two older Macpros with 1080ti cards just screaming for retirement. When is the release date for the new Mac pros, whats the latest rumours, what will it be built vice?

 

[Misha Engel]

I still stick with mac and wait it out a bit longer. The combo of having Flame, the Adobe package, and Resolve on the same OS is what makes me lean that way. I´m not using FCX I guess that would make me lean even more that way. Then also I had difficulty finding PC´s with good / compatible thunderbolt 2 and 3 connectors and I really like my LG 5k Ultrafine and I´m not sure what PC would fly with it.

Flame on linux is tempting but not sure how to set it up so it also run resolve on the same version of linux. Have not looked into it that much but know it´s not a all easy to set up. Then again not having photoshop and the rest on the same box is a real step backwards for me. That was back when using IRIX machines, had a PC on one side and a mac on the other... doing graphics and 3D. Now it´s 2018 seams like one box should be able to do it all... well part from the 3D bit but that I leave to others these days, to do 3D you need a stacks of computers so that does not really apply I think.

But the wait for new macs is / has bene quite painful. Got 3 machines one trashcan and two older Macpros with 1080ti cards just screaming for retirement. When is the release date for the new Mac pros, whats the latest rumours, what will it be built vice?

Adobe and Resolve run on everything (Mac, Windows, CentOS or Red Hat) and are not picky on hardware.
Flame is picky on hardware and runs on Mac, CentOS and Red Hat.

 

[Thomas Koch]

My biggest fear of the nMP is that Modular is not synonymous with PCIe. In theory the graphics cards on the trash can were upgradeable, however, no one made an upgraded card to put in there. AND the fact that it's taking this long, means they are not just going to make a standard motherboard layout, with PCIe and limit what you can do. If they really wanted the pro market back, they would just make a machine similar to the 2012 model and call it a day. But they won't. They have to be special and do special things, and that's going to screw all of us with their proprietary interfaces and non standard way of doing things.

It is 100% form over function. Just like the trashcan.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Because what we really need is to go back to 2012. LOL

Sorry. Just hard not to laugh at that strategy for a technology based industry. (But I am sure I misunderstood.)

 

[DJ Meyer]

Because what we really need is to go back to 2012. LOL

Sorry. Just hard not to laugh at that strategy for a technology based industry. (But I am sure I misunderstood.)

I guess its either industry standard PCIe or another proprietary standard that nobody will ever make upgrades for. Apple certainly isn't going to make them.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Flame me if you must, but I still have 4 of the old school cheese graters and would happily retrofit them with new internals if a comprehensive kit was available. Yes, from new school I/O ports to the backplane it would be all new components in the old tower chassis. The upper drive sled design could be retained, but with a newer connection standard like PCIe4 and enough lanes to support solid state RAIDs, etc. Doubt anyone will endeavor to engineer such a retrofit kit due to the limited market, but it does seem like an upcycle opportunity.

Cheers - #19

 

[Terry VerHaar]

A quick google suggest PCI-e was introduced in about 2004. How long should an "industry standard" last without choking off innovation? Apple was blasted for killing the floppy, DVD drives, FCP (legacy), most recently the standard audio jack and many more things I can't even remember right now. The timing for killing off a product/feature is always hard. Change happens. IMO it might be better to jump the gun a little rather than waiting around for your products to become obsolete - even if you make mistakes in the process (e.g. "trashcan" MacPro).

FWIW - I am still editing on a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 - so I get it.

 

[Misha Engel]

A quick google suggest PCI-e was introduced in about 2004. How long should an "industry standard" last without choking off innovation? Apple was blasted for killing the floppy, DVD drives, FCP (legacy), most recently the standard audio jack and many more things I can't even remember right now. The timing for killing off a product/feature is always hard. Change happens. IMO it might be better to jump the gun a little rather than waiting around for your products to become obsolete - even if you make mistakes in the process (e.g. "trashcan" MacPro).

FWIW - I am still editing on a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 - so I get it.

Yes and than PCIe 2 and than PCIe 3 and now PCIe 4 and in 2 years time PCIe 5, NVidia came with NVLink 1 and 2, AMD with infinity fabric, Intel with FPGA's so a lot of tech companies are innovating for the Pro's....

Apple didn't make mistakes, they went after the money(with big succes). 10.000 consumers who value "lifestyle", have a lot more to spend than 1 guy/girl who does post production for audio and/or video.

Atleast they also make (consumer) products and are not like companies, like google, facebook, etc... where you are their only product.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

I think even Apple considered the latest MacPro something of a mistake.

The rest of your rant is the “usual Apple doesn’t care about pros” which I would contend is disputed by the very beginning of thread. But that just takes us back around the same circle doesn’t.

 

[Mike Halper]

My problem -- as with a lot of things in the tech business -- is that the timing is very bad. Bear in mind the last Mac Pro came out in December 2013. If the new machine doesn't come out until the end of 2019 (or even the beginning of 2020), that's a long, long gap between models. Computer life is expressed in dog years: 2 years is an enormous amount of time, and 7 years is a lifetime. I would be perfectly happy with a "stopgap" machine like an HP z8 that just runs Mac OSX and has all the other HP features they already have, and just buy that for $10K and live with it until the new design comes out in a couple of years.


The problem for me is the lack of expandability. If I can't upgrade the GPUs, they're dooming us to 2012 technology (since the AMD D700 is basically from that era). And that's a very big deal for editing people, color people, VFX people, and others doing post-production.

BTW, I guarantee you a 22-core Xeon will blow away anything Apple has at the moment. Cores count, RAM counts, speed counts, GPUs count, and i/o count. All of them are very important, and pros will pay more for machines that get all these things right.

The point was that a 12 core computer from today isn't much faster than the 12 core Mac Pro from 2012. Sure it is a little bit faster, but really not much. And those have dual D700's in them, they have as much RAM as today's GPU's. Again, I know it's still not as fast as what's available today, but they really aren't that much slower than a comparable spec'd computer you can buy today. Not talking price either. I'm talking about if you bought a maxed out 2013 Mac Pro it's not that much slower than a similarly spec'd (12 core 64GB RAM) computer today. Yes, you can throw $10K at a new PC today and it will blow away the Mac Pro, but that's a 22 core, 128GB RAM, etc. computer.

In the interim they do have the iMac Pro and that's working as a stopgap for many. Not everyone, but a lot of people.

Apple screwed up. We know it. They know it. They admitted it. Why keep repeating the same criticism and complaints over and over again? The discussion is getting old. If you need a new computer now, go buy an iMac Pro or a PC and use that. If iMac Pro doesn't work for you and you don't want to run Windows, try Hackintosh. Plenty of guides out there that will tell you how to put it together and get it running. Here, this one should probably even blow away the new Mac Pro coming out next year: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...c-pro-successful-build-extended-guide.229353/ If you don't want to do that then just wait. It's another 1-1.5 years away. It'll be here soon enough.

 

[Mike Halper]

Flame me if you must, but I still have 4 of the old school cheese graters and would happily retrofit them with new internals if a comprehensive kit was available. Yes, from new school I/O ports to the backplane it would be all new components in the old tower chassis. The upper drive sled design could be retained, but with a newer connection standard like PCIe4 and enough lanes to support solid state RAIDs, etc. Doubt anyone will endeavor to engineer such a retrofit kit due to the limited market, but it does seem like an upcycle opportunity.

There are plenty of people that have done that with those, but they are Hackintoshes. I've been tempted to do that myself over the years, but always find myself having a need for more than 4 slots (micro ATX) and you can't really fit an ATX motherboard in those without losing those drives and doing some major modifications.