There in is the problem, GPU acceleration is a lot more important than a lot of people realize. All sorts of software can leverage the GPU and it isn't always clearly advertised. That is probably the result of Apple providing a clean fall back mechanism.
As to being a CPU power house I don't buy into that either. All of Apples 15" MBPs are faster.
As to the iMac, I see shipping times have slipped again, this makes me wonder what is up. Apple admitted to a production problem at release but you would think that was addressed by now. So is it a production issue now or a demand issue? I was actually hoping for some news with regard to that today.
Dave
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
Hopefully not too ideal or we wont get it.
The only reason the mini lost discrete graphics was because it's become a CPU powerhouse. The only things that the iMac does significantly better is anything GPU accelerated.
If the $799 2.3Ghz Core i7 Mini had the GT 630M I think a lot of folks wouldn't be buying the iMac. Especially given the lack of supply. Heck even as an extra $100 BTO option for the top end $899 2.6Ghz Core i7 model to push it to $999 and a lot of folks would be doing that over an iMac.
It's just one of those things that Apple does. It's smart for them even if it is annoying.
That still doesn't make sense. Intel demoed Heaven at 17W and they said it was targeting Ultrabooks. Also why would the M line start at 37W when it only has GT2 but still offers dual-core?
A Q3 launch is late too, it was supposed to be April:
"Haswell therefore arrives substantially later than originally anticipated and it appears that Intel's product cadence has become much more elastic recently. The original tick-tock model that was introduced in 2006 predicted die shrinks in uneven years and new architectures in even years. With the June launch date, Intel is about six months behind its own plan."
:applause: Intel, you've done it again. So nothing until WWDC basically.
And yet AMD is skewered for an and all glitches they have on the way to a new product. This is certainly a case of biased reporting and support of a glory boy.
Hardly, I'm not sure why this keeps coming up when there were clear problems that had to be addressed and major workflow changes.
Doesn't matter one bit. People where well informed that FCX was built on an entirely new code base. As such anybody with a bit of maturity would have realized that such a change would lead to different functionality. Further FCP didn't get to the point it was over night o to expect a new code base to be perfect upon release is ridiculous.
Every other program tries to work in native formats and that was the goal everyone was working towards. Apple instead decided everything should be transcoded to ProRes. Drop an hour long Motion JPEG clip into FCP 7 and you can edit it natively, chop it around and export to Motion JPEG, almost zero CPU usage and very fast. Do it in FCPX and it will try to transcode the entire thing to ProRes - even if you stop it doing that, your only export options are limited or you have to convert through Compressor. Sure it's an ideal world to use ProRes with fixed aspects as an edit codec and H.264 for delivery but we don't live in an ideal world.
So? This is nitpicking about how a new code base operates.
This applies to consumers too. Apple makes an iPhone that lets you (for whatever reason) shoot video in portrait when it should really shoot widescreen video no matter how you hold the phone (and crop it horizontally on the portrait display for preview) but you can't edit that video easily because FCPX likes standard widescreen video formats.
That is your opinion. I'm certain that you can find people that would prefer anther approach as easily as you can find people that like Apples approach. You really can't damn a product simply because it deals with one mode of operation differently than you expect. Especially when there are enough people out there satisfied with the current approach.
Sure people can adapt to it just like people adapted to the many FCP 7 flaws but when people have legitimate concerns about software they base their entire careers around, it's not justified to say they are just being immature. Not allowing migrating old projects was a huge mistake and they've still just left it to 3rd parties.
I know of no better word to address such people with. Look at any other industry where you have different manufactures delivering the same basic functionality with vastly different user interfaces. One example might be CNC controls where machinist and engineers develop preferences for specific software interfaces. Just because a software change modifies the interface to the point that the user has to reeducate themselves doesn't make that change a bad one. As an individual, being unwilling to change or adapt is like to get you fired, because those that cant quickly become useless.
In a nut shell the whining seen with the release of FCX would not be accepted in any other industry. The expectation is to learn the new tool or find something better. Often with a strong expectation to learn what you are given. This same expectation of adapt or die applies to many industries where complex software is used.
People should be receptive to change and putting up immediate barriers before the change is presented is immature but there's no problem complaining about things they can and should fix. I'm not sure they fully appreciate how important Quicktime is to the media world.
This is true but the reaction that we saw was more of one where people considered FCX to be engraved in stone never to change or evolve.
Could people be going for the 21.5" iMac because the 27" iMac is taking too long? Now they are going to have to wait for a worse machine. Apple dropped the ball here but hopefully the Haswell ones will be in better supply.
Could people be going for the 21.5" iMac because the 27" iMac is taking too long? Now they are going to have to wait for a worse machine. Apple dropped the ball here but hopefully the Haswell ones will be in better supply.
We don't know if Apple dropped the ball here. All we know is that shipments are slipping. Which could be an Apple screwup or a result or stronger than expected sales.
As to the 21" being inferior to the 27" isn't that up to the buyer to decide? Many would consider a 27" iMac to be too large.
I will give the benefit of the doubt on strong sales as they did a redesign and pre-orders probably swarmed the Apple Store website. I'll put it this way, Apple has not dropped the ball but they are dropping the ball if they don't figure out a way to fix things.
Let me throw out this idea because I love bouncing random stuff off of people.
2013 Mini:
Kill the dual core model and make just a regular quad-core and a "server" model. As a bonus you could drop each by $100 but put that aside.
People where well informed that FCX was built on an entirely new code base. As such anybody with a bit of maturity would have realized that such a change would lead to different functionality. Further FCP didn't get to the point it was over night, to expect a new code base to be perfect upon release is ridiculous.
It took FCP about 5 years to get to production quality. It was 2 years since the previous FCP update and they started off from a much more mature codebase. It's not really too far out for people to expect feature parity. The major workflow changes aren't trivial either. If you relied on iWork for example and there was an update that gave you almost all the functionality but you could only put your text in black, green or red colours, you'd be stuck.
Just because a software change modifies the interface to the point that the user has to reeducate themselves doesn't make that change a bad one.
The interface is fine and wasn't an issue. It's things like having to convert hours of footage for no reason, like not being able to open clips easily in 3rd party programs once you've made events (akin to editing photos in Photoshop once they've been put into iPhoto), like not being able to share edits easily because the metadata goes into the filesystem not into the project (and because there isn't a save as or export function), like being restricted to certain output formats, like not having imports/export for colour and audio correction (now fixed), like not having certain codec support (now fixed) and so on. When they make something better, they should get credit for it, when they make things worse, they need to know about it.
If Avid did that sort of thing, they'd be finished. Apple gets a pass because the users are dependent on Apple, not the other way round and they did make some good decisions. Avid's success entirely depends on their customers so they have to do what's in their best interests. It is interesting to see how they treated FCPX and Maps differently though. What happened with FCPX was way more important than a few names being out of place here and there.
This is true but the reaction that we saw was more of one where people considered FCX to be engraved in stone never to change or evolve.
Applications used for work are generally more conservative in terms of their changes. One day they were selling FCP. The next FCPX couldn't even open the old files and FCP was taken off the market. It's an entirely new application either way, so there's no reason to just go along with it. It arguably takes roughly the same effort to switch to a competing package. Given that many of these guys may have already held Creative Suite licenses, Premiere was an obvious choice for many of them. The price of FCPX is cheap and Premiere can be part of a bundle. Those two are on roughly the same level of accessibility. Avid costs quite a bit more. Beyond that it's silly to label so many users by what you read online. Most of them just grumbled and either eventually came to use it or went with another package. The extremely verbal crowd was the minority there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
They'd have to find a way to cut the price. They could if they used the desktop i7-3770T but I doubt they'd do that.
I remember you referenced other machines that used a low end gpu and similar cpu in that price range. It could happen, but I'd expect it to be more when quad core further infiltrates the line. That could happen with Broadwell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
If Avid did that sort of thing, they'd be finished. Apple gets a pass because the users are dependent on Apple, not the other way round and they did make some good decisions. Avid's success entirely depends on their customers so they have to do what's in their best interests. It is interesting to see how they treated FCPX and Maps differently though. What happened with FCPX was way more important than a few names being out of place here and there.
They'd have to find a way to cut the price. They could if they used the desktop i7-3770T but I doubt they'd do that.
Apparently you paid more attention to it than me. It looked like what they did with Aperture to me, at which point I had no interest in the application. It's the same thing there. It generates a large clunky library file where Lightroom can just leave a tiny XML in each folder.
There in is the problem, GPU acceleration is a lot more important than a lot of people realize. All sorts of software can leverage the GPU and it isn't always clearly advertised. That is probably the result of Apple providing a clean fall back mechanism.
As to being a CPU power house I don't buy into that either. All of Apples 15" MBPs are faster.
The mini 2.6ghz benches really well for the price compared to the rest of the lineup. Stick even a crappy GPU in the mini that'll run Resolve and other GPU required apps and its a significant iMac challenger.
The mini 2.6ghz benches really well for the price compared to the rest of the lineup. Stick even a crappy GPU in the mini that'll run Resolve and other GPU required apps and its a significant iMac challenger.
Although I have an iMac, I'm still not completely satisfied with it. I know that apple won't build an xMac similar to a smaller version of the MacPro, but I'd like to see a larger version of the MacMini (in addition to the current one) that would be as powerful as the iMac with the same components. Connected with a 27" Cinema Display, this would be perfect for me.
Possibly have one case larger than the current Mini, but with two versions - one with Mini components and one with iMac components.
Apple wouldn't have to continually make the iMac thinner and thinner and could cut out one step in building an iMac.
Maybe I misread the original question, I thought it was regarding the advantages of a desktop computer with an external display versus an all in one design like the iMac.
Of course many of the advantages apply to using a Mini with an external display, that was the point. And yes, the hot components glommed onto the back of the iMac's display do indeed affect display longevity. iMac displays lose their ability to calibrate correctly over time faster than dedicated displays in a studio environment. A general rule of thumb with electronics is that higher operating temperatures decrease longevity. Doesn't matter if it's in a pretty Apple case or not.
Comments
There in is the problem, GPU acceleration is a lot more important than a lot of people realize. All sorts of software can leverage the GPU and it isn't always clearly advertised. That is probably the result of Apple providing a clean fall back mechanism.
As to being a CPU power house I don't buy into that either. All of Apples 15" MBPs are faster.
As to the iMac, I see shipping times have slipped again, this makes me wonder what is up. Apple admitted to a production problem at release but you would think that was addressed by now. So is it a production issue now or a demand issue? I was actually hoping for some news with regard to that today.
Dave
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
Hopefully not too ideal or we wont get it.
The only reason the mini lost discrete graphics was because it's become a CPU powerhouse. The only things that the iMac does significantly better is anything GPU accelerated.
If the $799 2.3Ghz Core i7 Mini had the GT 630M I think a lot of folks wouldn't be buying the iMac. Especially given the lack of supply. Heck even as an extra $100 BTO option for the top end $899 2.6Ghz Core i7 model to push it to $999 and a lot of folks would be doing that over an iMac.
It's just one of those things that Apple does. It's smart for them even if it is annoying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
That still doesn't make sense. Intel demoed Heaven at 17W and they said it was targeting Ultrabooks. Also why would the M line start at 37W when it only has GT2 but still offers dual-core?
A Q3 launch is late too, it was supposed to be April:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-haswell-cpu-processor,20042.html
"Haswell therefore arrives substantially later than originally anticipated and it appears that Intel's product cadence has become much more elastic recently. The original tick-tock model that was introduced in 2006 predicted die shrinks in uneven years and new architectures in even years. With the June launch date, Intel is about six months behind its own plan."
:applause: Intel, you've done it again. So nothing until WWDC basically.
And yet AMD is skewered for an and all glitches they have on the way to a new product. This is certainly a case of biased reporting and support of a glory boy.
Hardly, I'm not sure why this keeps coming up when there were clear problems that had to be addressed and major workflow changes.
Doesn't matter one bit. People where well informed that FCX was built on an entirely new code base. As such anybody with a bit of maturity would have realized that such a change would lead to different functionality. Further FCP didn't get to the point it was over night o to expect a new code base to be perfect upon release is ridiculous.
Every other program tries to work in native formats and that was the goal everyone was working towards. Apple instead decided everything should be transcoded to ProRes. Drop an hour long Motion JPEG clip into FCP 7 and you can edit it natively, chop it around and export to Motion JPEG, almost zero CPU usage and very fast. Do it in FCPX and it will try to transcode the entire thing to ProRes - even if you stop it doing that, your only export options are limited or you have to convert through Compressor. Sure it's an ideal world to use ProRes with fixed aspects as an edit codec and H.264 for delivery but we don't live in an ideal world.
So? This is nitpicking about how a new code base operates.
This applies to consumers too. Apple makes an iPhone that lets you (for whatever reason) shoot video in portrait when it should really shoot widescreen video no matter how you hold the phone (and crop it horizontally on the portrait display for preview) but you can't edit that video easily because FCPX likes standard widescreen video formats.
That is your opinion. I'm certain that you can find people that would prefer anther approach as easily as you can find people that like Apples approach. You really can't damn a product simply because it deals with one mode of operation differently than you expect. Especially when there are enough people out there satisfied with the current approach.
Sure people can adapt to it just like people adapted to the many FCP 7 flaws but when people have legitimate concerns about software they base their entire careers around, it's not justified to say they are just being immature. Not allowing migrating old projects was a huge mistake and they've still just left it to 3rd parties.
I know of no better word to address such people with. Look at any other industry where you have different manufactures delivering the same basic functionality with vastly different user interfaces. One example might be CNC controls where machinist and engineers develop preferences for specific software interfaces. Just because a software change modifies the interface to the point that the user has to reeducate themselves doesn't make that change a bad one. As an individual, being unwilling to change or adapt is like to get you fired, because those that cant quickly become useless.
In a nut shell the whining seen with the release of FCX would not be accepted in any other industry. The expectation is to learn the new tool or find something better. Often with a strong expectation to learn what you are given. This same expectation of adapt or die applies to many industries where complex software is used.
People should be receptive to change and putting up immediate barriers before the change is presented is immature but there's no problem complaining about things they can and should fix. I'm not sure they fully appreciate how important Quicktime is to the media world.
This is true but the reaction that we saw was more of one where people considered FCX to be engraved in stone never to change or evolve.As to the 21" being inferior to the 27" isn't that up to the buyer to decide? Many would consider a 27" iMac to be too large.
Let me throw out this idea because I love bouncing random stuff off of people.
2013 Mini:
Kill the dual core model and make just a regular quad-core and a "server" model. As a bonus you could drop each by $100 but put that aside.
More profits for Apple with all these new processors coming out every 6 months .It never ends.
It took FCP about 5 years to get to production quality. It was 2 years since the previous FCP update and they started off from a much more mature codebase. It's not really too far out for people to expect feature parity. The major workflow changes aren't trivial either. If you relied on iWork for example and there was an update that gave you almost all the functionality but you could only put your text in black, green or red colours, you'd be stuck.
The interface is fine and wasn't an issue. It's things like having to convert hours of footage for no reason, like not being able to open clips easily in 3rd party programs once you've made events (akin to editing photos in Photoshop once they've been put into iPhoto), like not being able to share edits easily because the metadata goes into the filesystem not into the project (and because there isn't a save as or export function), like being restricted to certain output formats, like not having imports/export for colour and audio correction (now fixed), like not having certain codec support (now fixed) and so on. When they make something better, they should get credit for it, when they make things worse, they need to know about it.
If Avid did that sort of thing, they'd be finished. Apple gets a pass because the users are dependent on Apple, not the other way round and they did make some good decisions. Avid's success entirely depends on their customers so they have to do what's in their best interests. It is interesting to see how they treated FCPX and Maps differently though. What happened with FCPX was way more important than a few names being out of place here and there.
They'd have to find a way to cut the price. They could if they used the desktop i7-3770T but I doubt they'd do that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
This is true but the reaction that we saw was more of one where people considered FCX to be engraved in stone never to change or evolve.Applications used for work are generally more conservative in terms of their changes. One day they were selling FCP. The next FCPX couldn't even open the old files and FCP was taken off the market. It's an entirely new application either way, so there's no reason to just go along with it. It arguably takes roughly the same effort to switch to a competing package. Given that many of these guys may have already held Creative Suite licenses, Premiere was an obvious choice for many of them. The price of FCPX is cheap and Premiere can be part of a bundle. Those two are on roughly the same level of accessibility. Avid costs quite a bit more. Beyond that it's silly to label so many users by what you read online. Most of them just grumbled and either eventually came to use it or went with another package. The extremely verbal crowd was the minority there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
They'd have to find a way to cut the price. They could if they used the desktop i7-3770T but I doubt they'd do that.
I remember you referenced other machines that used a low end gpu and similar cpu in that price range. It could happen, but I'd expect it to be more when quad core further infiltrates the line. That could happen with Broadwell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
If Avid did that sort of thing, they'd be finished. Apple gets a pass because the users are dependent on Apple, not the other way round and they did make some good decisions. Avid's success entirely depends on their customers so they have to do what's in their best interests. It is interesting to see how they treated FCPX and Maps differently though. What happened with FCPX was way more important than a few names being out of place here and there.
They'd have to find a way to cut the price. They could if they used the desktop i7-3770T but I doubt they'd do that.
Apparently you paid more attention to it than me. It looked like what they did with Aperture to me, at which point I had no interest in the application. It's the same thing there. It generates a large clunky library file where Lightroom can just leave a tiny XML in each folder.
The mini 2.6ghz benches really well for the price compared to the rest of the lineup. Stick even a crappy GPU in the mini that'll run Resolve and other GPU required apps and its a significant iMac challenger.
http://barefeats.com/imac12p2.html
So the extra 300MHz really makes a difference for $100?
Although I have an iMac, I'm still not completely satisfied with it. I know that apple won't build an xMac similar to a smaller version of the MacPro, but I'd like to see a larger version of the MacMini (in addition to the current one) that would be as powerful as the iMac with the same components. Connected with a 27" Cinema Display, this would be perfect for me.
Possibly have one case larger than the current Mini, but with two versions - one with Mini components and one with iMac components.
Apple wouldn't have to continually make the iMac thinner and thinner and could cut out one step in building an iMac.
Originally Posted by sequitur
…I'd like to see a larger version of the MacMini… Connected with a 27" Cinema Display…
I don't understand the distinction. How is this different from (or better, since it's a more complex setup) than the iMac?
It would be less complex for Apple to build and it could be tweaked more than the current iMac.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
16 GB for $300 is still ridiculous though ah well. I am surprised there is not even another HDD option on the base model. Oh well.
That much Ram in the Mini is ridiculous anyway.
Anyone needing 16GB, also needs a higher end Mac.
I disagree. 16 GB is perfect and some people don't want the iMac display, they want their own. I say you can never have too much RAM.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
I don't understand the distinction. How is this different from (or better, since it's a more complex setup) than the iMac?
1. More display choices.
2. Ability to share a display with the xMac mini and another computer.
3. Longer display life without all the iMac's hot components.
4. Ability to upgrade drives without a complete teardown (assuming Apple pulled their head out of their arse when designing the xMac mini).
5. Ability to upgrade the computer without throwing out a beautiful 27" IPS display.
There are probably other advantages, but those are off the top of my head.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshA
That much Ram in the Mini is ridiculous anyway.
Anyone needing 16GB, also needs a higher end Mac.
640K ought to be enough for the mini.
Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg
1. More display choices.
Stet.
2. Ability to share a display with the xMac mini and another computer.
You can do this now.
3. Longer display life without all the iMac's hot components.
False.
4. Ability to upgrade drives without a complete teardown (assuming Apple pulled their head out of their arse when designing the xMac mini).
It's a Mac Mini.
5. Ability to upgrade the computer without throwing out a beautiful 27" IPS display.
Which you don't have to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Stet.
You can do this now.
False.
It's a Mac Mini.
Which you don't have to do.
Maybe I misread the original question, I thought it was regarding the advantages of a desktop computer with an external display versus an all in one design like the iMac.
Of course many of the advantages apply to using a Mini with an external display, that was the point. And yes, the hot components glommed onto the back of the iMac's display do indeed affect display longevity. iMac displays lose their ability to calibrate correctly over time faster than dedicated displays in a studio environment. A general rule of thumb with electronics is that higher operating temperatures decrease longevity. Doesn't matter if it's in a pretty Apple case or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winter
So the extra 300MHz really makes a difference for $100?
Dunno...they didn't bench the $799 one...