melgross said: But Apple seems to be going for the larger mass market, and losing sight of their most loyal customers, who are power users.
Catering to power users doesn't pay the bills. Besides what is a power user anyway? Cutting edge performance does what? - Opens applications 2 seconds faster, runs 10 applications at the same time? How many mathematicians are there doing large number theory research who don't already have a rack of UNIX servers?
Apple already conceded the professional video market when they axed FCP so even though just about any Mac "can" do video editing the pros left a long time ago.
Originally Macs were mostly used by desktop publishers like myself. I don't really think of myself as a power user although everyone I associate with seems to. I'm making a comfortable living using Macs. I do DTP, web, video, app development and technical writing. Nothing to complain about here regarding Macs. Even older Macs still get the job done.
I don’t agree. Higher end products have higher profit points, and higher markup.
when doing the tasks most power users do, from database to video editing, pretty common tasks, among others, a more powerful machine makes a big difference. If you’re do8ng a rendering, for example, and a machine takes 8 hours, that’s more than one shift, which leads to high overtime costs, or a wait until the next day. If you can cut that down just a little bit - to 7 hours, it changes the entire proposition.
with my own company, we had 32 Macs in our graphics/photo/publishing department. These were all PowerMacs. It was before 2004, when we sold the company.
every year, we replaced the 10 newest machines with all tricked out machines, put last years into secondary status, and moved the two year old machines to the bottom rung. The year later, we did the same thing, with that third rung pushed ou, giving the machines to employees.
competitively, you need to do that, if your work is at a high level, as ours was. Otherwise, your competitors will be doing it, and you lose customers, as it takes you longer to do the same work, thereby charging more, or lowering your hourly rates. Neither is a winning proposition.
as far as FCP X goes, you’re out of touch. It’s gained a lot of share back, with the main problem being the hardware itself. I know some who are using the new iMac Pro for feature video editing, and they are very pleased, though they still want to see the new Mac Pro when it comes out, as I do. Price is not an issue. If you can’t pay for a new machine in 3 months, then there’s something wrong with your business model.
melgross said: If you can cut that down just a little bit - to 7 hours, it changes the entire proposition.
I can tell you what is wrong with that business model. If you are rendering on a single Mac you missed the memo about server farms.
Please don’t tell me that what we were doing was wrong. This isn’t a simple this or that way argument. Some projects need one machine, and others need several. The point was that if rendering time could be cut by one eighth, which doesn’t seem like much, it changes the way you work. Whether one machine is used, or 20. We didn’t do full length feature films. We did segments, soecialitybwork.
I hope not. Despite the naysayers, most of who have never actually used the Touch Bar, it’s really very useful, and will become more so over the years. I have no interest in the fuddy duds who have no imagination, and who talk every new feature down. In the l(Bluetooth r8n, they’re almost always wrong.. if we listened to them, we’d still be using S-100 bus computers with C/PM.
Nobody in my company is a big fan of the Touch Bar, which is a dead piece of weight for all the software we use. If Apple would make a Touch a little bit smaller, so we still could have a real esc key with haptic feedback, I would not mind the touchbar.
I hope not. Despite the naysayers, most of who have never actually used the Touch Bar, it’s really very useful, and will become more so over the years. I have no interest in the fuddy duds who have no imagination, and who talk every new feature down. In the l(Bluetooth r8n, they’re almost always wrong.. if we listened to them, we’d still be using S-100 bus computers with C/PM.
Nobody in my company is a big fan of the Touch Bar, which is a dead piece of weight for all the software we use. If Apple would make a Touch a little bit smaller, so we still could have a real esc key with haptic feedback, I would not mind the touchbar.
I know more than a few people who have the touchbar, and most are pretty happy with it. In fact, the overall opinion is that they would like to see the height of the touchbar increased by about 50% so as to better be able to contain more detail.
Comments
when doing the tasks most power users do, from database to video editing, pretty common tasks, among others, a more powerful machine makes a big difference. If you’re do8ng a rendering, for example, and a machine takes 8 hours, that’s more than one shift, which leads to high overtime costs, or a wait until the next day. If you can cut that down just a little bit - to 7 hours, it changes the entire proposition.
with my own company, we had 32 Macs in our graphics/photo/publishing department. These were all PowerMacs. It was before 2004, when we sold the company.
every year, we replaced the 10 newest machines with all tricked out machines, put last years into secondary status, and moved the two year old machines to the bottom rung. The year later, we did the same thing, with that third rung pushed ou, giving the machines to employees.
competitively, you need to do that, if your work is at a high level, as ours was. Otherwise, your competitors will be doing it, and you lose customers, as it takes you longer to do the same work, thereby charging more, or lowering your hourly rates. Neither is a winning proposition.
as far as FCP X goes, you’re out of touch. It’s gained a lot of share back, with the main problem being the hardware itself. I know some who are using the new iMac Pro for feature video editing, and they are very pleased, though they still want to see the new Mac Pro when it comes out, as I do. Price is not an issue. If you can’t pay for a new machine in 3 months, then there’s something wrong with your business model.
Avid is still king in Hollywood.
According to a recent job listing by Apple for video editor they don't even mention FCP X, Only Avid, Premiere, DaVinci, Photoshop and Adobe audition.