Blu Ray is 25GB per layer of 50 GB for a long movie with lots of extras. To put it simply a 300GB file is a joke.
The price of Blu Ray disc have come down because it is a market failure plain and simple. The supposed extra quality was never worth the extra expense. The fact of the matter is most people don't place their faces ten inches from the TV screen so they can justify the extra resolution.
If people can't tell the difference the quality is equivalent.
They didn't encourage anything, they had to work with the record companies. I'm not sure why Apple is still blamed for this.
It is a 15" screen, do you really believe it will offer that much extra viewing pleasure over a regular 15" screen?
Yeah sure.
I find these attitudes with respect to Blu Ray puzzling at times. It is almost as if people are more concerned about the movie being Blu Ray than actually getting into the story being offered up. I mean really how do you suspend disbelief if you are concentrating on every artifact you see in the flick. At that point you aren't watching the movie but rather are watching the screen.
1. Lord of the Rings Extended Edition is 6 discs. Assuming they used double-layer that means it's up to 300 Gb. If he didn't use double-layer there is no reason to split the movie over two discs, he could have fit each film on one disc! I know Peter pushed the limits of SD bit rates and likes to push for the highest quality possible in most things, such as 48 fps in The Hobbit. The extra quality is worth it to me.
2. There is still a technical difference between lossy and lossless audio. My point is that there is no reason or need to go backwards anymore, even if most people can't tell the difference, though some people (like the post above) claim they can. Some people even want to move forward and make double the bit rate of CD audio the new standard. At least give us the option. If you don't want the larger download, stick with 256.
3. For well made Blu-Ray films you can absolutely tell the differenc and the rMBP has the pixels to show it off, even though it won't be as obvious as on larger screens and TVs. Any suggestion that you can't tell the difference between SD and Blu-Ray is laughable. I didn't say I was comparing Blu-Ray on regular version retina 15" MBP.
4. Thanks for your passive agressive dismissal but I love my job. I wish I could have got the 12-core but it still wouldn't have been enough power. I'm eagerly waiting to see what the major update will bring.
It's 189GB for the 3 movies and 41Mbps. People have 50Mbps+ broadband now so it would be possible to stream down but it's not necessary to use that high a bitrate. Some will always say lossless or at least very high quality is better but it's really about what is good enough to the eye in a given process otherwise going by specs, people would similarly claim Blu-Ray pales in comparison to 300Mbps 10-bit ProRes. JPEGs are rarely complained about for example and the same goes for cinema viewings where the colours are faded and the frame might be askew or have marks on the screen or projector lens or be slightly out of focus at the edges or someone's shadow is being cast onto the bottom of it.
I'm all for movie distribution on Blu-Ray when it comes to keeping movies you like and for data backups but I think streaming works best for movies and TV that you'll most likely only watch once or twice and for the exception when people do demand the highest quality then external drives will suffice. Hardware manufacturers shouldn't compromise their devices or services for the many to satisfy the few.
That's why I feel the Mac Pro needs an overhaul and rather than design it to satisfy the few who don't want it to change, its design should reflect its purpose. The purpose of movie distribution is to get movies to consumers in a way that makes the most money. If the distribution method requires you to buy new hardware and expensive discs, it acts as a barrier to that content and is a barrier to sales and it will get worse the more that new hardware like the following offers diminishing returns for the investment:
It's a similar deal with the Mac Pro. Apple can design it in the same way by trying to cover everything but it has diminishing returns. What do you really get for your $6200 over an iMac? It's 3x faster than an iMac at raw processing for 3x the price, fine but you also get lumped with tons of things the majority of people never use and you pay for that. You also have to buy your display on top. That's why I say keep the core machine as simple and as focused on the core purpose as possible and for the few people who need more, let them build it out externally. I don't believe the core purpose of the Mac Pro is expansion, I think it's power. While it seems contradictory to make a powerful machine smaller, it has to be balanced with price and market volume. A more attractive machine will attract more buyers and if it offers significantly better performance per dollar, then that's a huge incentive to buy.
They didn't encourage anything, they had to work with the record companies. I'm not sure why Apple is still blamed for this.
Cheap content works in Apple's favor. They can sell expensive hardware if subsequent purchases don't appear daunting. As for the music companies, their problems extended far beyond things like torrenting. If you look at how they've behaved more recently, they've been extremely conservative in what they produce.
It's 189GB for the 3 movies and 41Mbps. People have 50Mbps+ broadband now so it would be possible to stream down but it's not necessary to use that high a bitrate. Some will always say lossless or at least very high quality is better but it's really about what is good enough to the eye in a given process otherwise going by specs, people would similarly claim Blu-Ray pales in comparison to 300Mbps 10-bit ProRes. JPEGs are rarely complained about for example and the same goes for cinema viewings where the colours are faded and the frame might be askew or have marks on the screen or projector lens or be slightly out of focus at the edges or someone's shadow is being cast onto the bottom of it.
Production quality keeps increasing. 4k is more common today, especially in feature films. It doesn't have to be the same resolution as the final product. You still see some gains, especially in primary colors with the effect of bayer array sensors and the fact that rasterization isn't a lossless process. It's possible to realize gains even if they aren't theoretically displayed in every possible output. Resolutions like 4k+ may still hold some value in terms of what you see at the theaters. It's also quite possible that the ever increasing resolutions may help alleviate a portion of the undesirable behavior inherent to the bayer array when the problem is defeated through incredible resolution. It's a weird issue. When you go to really tight pixel counts, you reach a point where camera shake even can eclipse more than one pixel. The problem came up in still cameras first. On the positive side, You get to a point where you may have sufficient detail in primary colors and can overcome some of the issues of interpolating gaps.
Cheap content works in Apple's favor. They can sell expensive hardware if subsequent purchases don't appear daunting. As for the music companies, their problems extended far beyond things like torrenting. If you look at how they've behaved more recently, they've been extremely conservative in what they produce.
I suspect you have glossed over what I was trying to get at. To put it plainly it took a huge amount of effort on Apples part to convince many of the record companies to allow for high quality downloads. The idea that Apple was the one surprising audio quality on iTunes is not supported at all in the history.
Production quality keeps increasing. 4k is more common today, especially in feature films. It doesn't have to be the same resolution as the final product. You still see some gains, especially in primary colors with the effect of bayer array sensors and the fact that rasterization isn't a lossless process. It's possible to realize gains even if they aren't theoretically displayed in every possible output.
Of course you can see higher quality, that isn't the point. The point is most people weren't willing to pay for it. Especially when the evilness of the BluRay empire is well known amongst consumers.
Resolutions like 4k+ may still hold some value in terms of what you see at the theaters. It's also quite possible that the ever increasing resolutions may help alleviate a portion of the undesirable behavior inherent to the bayer array when the problem is defeated through incredible resolution. It's a weird issue. When you go to really tight pixel counts, you reach a point where camera shake even can eclipse more than one pixel. The problem came up in still cameras first. On the positive side, You get to a point where you may have sufficient detail in primary colors and can overcome some of the issues of interpolating gaps.
There is little doubt in my mind that 4K can be used to great effect in a theater. For casual home viewing I just don't see a huge draw. In many cases I fully believe that people go to movie theaters for a different experience than can be had at home. It is the use case that has made BluRay a major joke.
I suspect you have glossed over what I was trying to get at. To put it plainly it took a huge amount of effort on Apples part to convince many of the record companies to allow for high quality downloads. The idea that Apple was the one surprising audio quality on iTunes is not supported at all in the history.
I read through it. I'm getting over the flu, so my thought process is definitely slower than normal. In terms of blind studies, other mp3 players were ranked higher. To the best of my recollection, Apple had several things. They had a dedicated system for managing mp3s in the form of itunes, which also became a point of distribution. They had a product with a distinct look that was marketed brilliantly. They had a lot of purchasing power when it came to NAND. The main points being that organization and distribution were covered.
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Of course you can see higher quality, that isn't the point. The point is most people weren't willing to pay for it. Especially when the evilness of the BluRay empire is well known amongst consumers.
That's not quite what I was getting at. Source footage is manipulated in a lot of ways, none of which are really lossless. Manipulating rasterized media is never really lossless. The cameras capture with filtered arrays. Out of 4 pixels, 2 would be filtered to detect green, one would be filtered red, one would be filtered blue. They have gaps reserved for supporting electronics as well, but the important thing is that a really saturated red or blue object is of effectively of lower resolution in this system of measurement. Further the data is rasterized. The behavior is remapped entirely. Rounding errors and interpolation affect what you really get in the end. Using a higher hardware resolution is effectively allowing for some oversampling of data to ensure that the end requirements are met. If something is going to be displayed up to 1080, it still may be shot higher than 1080 to allow for some loss of quality before it becomes noticeable to the end viewer.
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There is little doubt in my mind that 4K can be used to great effect in a theater. For casual home viewing I just don't see a huge draw. In many cases I fully believe that people go to movie theaters for a different experience than can be had at home. It is the use case that has made BluRay a major joke.
Theater viewing is a huge source of distribution, so that point alone could drive higher resolution. I don't see a huge draw for home viewing either. What Blu-Ray needed was the ability to drop in at a similar price point. Even then it's hard to overcome the convenience factor of something like itunes or netflix. If you want to watch something at home, you don't really leave your home to retrieve whatever it is you want to watch. I never liked video stores, and most of them no longer exist at this point. Once it's beyond 30 minutes or so to grab a movie to watch, I go to the theater instead.
The discussion of Blu-Ray after all of this time is amusing. I remember similar discussions when the Mac Pro was first introduced in 2006 when Blu Ray players were first showing up. Apple has held off this long, don't be surprised when you see the same 18x Superdrive as the standard (and only) drive offered.
I'm glad to see the Mac Pro finally getting some attention, though. I've had mine since 2006 and it has been the longest I've owned a computer without having to upgrade. Looking forward to finally upgrading when the new towers are released.
I'm glad to see the Mac Pro finally getting some attention, though. I've had mine since 2006 and it has been the longest I've owned a computer without having to upgrade. Looking forward to finally upgrading when the new towers are released.
Another example that shows the MP really is the cheapest Mac you can buy.
Another example that shows the MP really is the cheapest Mac you can buy.
It depends, you can keep using any machine for as long as it will last. You could still be running a $599 Mac Mini from 2006 in which case it's a cheaper option. A $999 2011 Server Mini is about 50% faster than the $3299 top-end 2006 Pro. After about 3-4 years, the performance of the top-end machines matches machines that are 1/3 the price. So you could go either route - buy high and ride it down or keep upgrading and in 3-4 years, you end up at the same place. Upgrading from the low-end works out cheaper and you stay in warranty but you have to make do with lower performance at the beginning. It also means Apple is more likely to put out new models regularly though because there is a stronger demand. If Mac Pro owners made a point of upgrading every 3 years, Apple would probably feel more inclined to update it more frequently than once every 3 years - if people won't buy, there's no reason for them to sell.
Another example that shows the MP really is the cheapest Mac you can buy.
I am visiting AI daily now simply hoping for a crumb of information about a new MP. As you say $ for $ over the long haul they are worth every penny and then some. I have owned all the top of the line Mac towers since they came out. I sold my 8 core MP in late 2010 and got the top of the line MBP i7 and maxed it out with RAM and an big SSD ... I had convinced myself it would do the job as part of me lusted for portability. It is and always has bee SO much slower than the MP I sold as to be untrue. I was an idiot thinking it could even compare to a MP for HD video or even Aperture and thousands of RAW images ... I suspect even the latest MBPs would be slower at rendering and multi tasking or only recently faster. I should have kept the 8 Core MP till now for sure. Lesson learned!
I am truly hoping a new MP comes out soon as I for one am 'going home' to a real work horse!
I am visiting AI daily now simply hoping for a crumb of information about a new MP.
Ivy Bridge EP doesn't come out until the 2nd half of the year so it'll be WWDC in June at the earliest. Apple has had early CPU releases on occasions in the past but WWDC is a good time to announce it.
I have owned all the top of the line Mac towers since they came out. I sold my 8 core MP in late 2010 and got the top of the line MBP i7 and maxed it out with RAM and an big SSD ... I had convinced myself it would do the job as part of me lusted for portability. It is and always has bee SO much slower than the MP I sold as to be untrue.
If you sold a $6000 8-core workstation for a $2700 dual-core i7 laptop, which was about 1/4 the speed, that's to be expected. The 2012 quad-core MBPs are about 70% of the top-end 2009 8-core MP and have powerful GPUs. The Haswell ones will be coming soon too. As I said above, you have to give it 3-4 years before you can expect to drop from an expensive workstation to a machine that can be bought for 1/3 the price. If you could do it in a year, the prices would be very different.
I am visiting AI daily now simply hoping for a crumb of information about a new MP.
Well it is 2013. So that new Mac Pro ought to hit the streets sometime soon.
As you say $ for $ over the long haul they are worth every penny and then some. I have owned all the top of the line Mac towers since they came out. I sold my 8 core MP in late 2010 and got the top of the line MBP i7 and maxed it out with RAM and an big SSD ... I had convinced myself it would do the job as part of me lusted for portability.
People post many numbers on these forums trying to prove that you don't need a Mac Pro anymore because XYZ solution is the equivalent of that 3 year old machine. For the most part that is complete non sense as artificial benchmarks do not reflect on the Mac Pros capability to get work done under heavily load.
It is and always has bee SO much slower than the MP I sold as to be untrue. I was an idiot thinking it could even compare to a MP for HD video or even Aperture and thousands of RAW images ... I suspect even the latest MBPs would be slower at rendering and multi tasking or only recently faster. I should have kept the 8 Core MP till now for sure. Lesson learned!
For a specific task a recent MBP might be as fast or even faster than a Mac Pro. However that is a useless metric for professional use. Most laptops are very constrained when it comes to multitasking which makes them questionable machines for a professional work station. At least for any professional able to multitask himself.
I am truly hoping a new MP comes out soon as I for one am 'going home' to a real work horse!
Yeah it is hard to say what Apple is up to with the refactored Mac Pro. Frankly we don't know if it will even be the work horse of the past. The lack of real or even imagined rumors though kinda indicates that it may be several months before the machine debuts. This will be sad if true as Apples poor management of this machine is driving sales into the gutter. Personally I was hoping for a new machine by the end of the month, but that is looking to be more difficult as you would expect leaks or even rumors by now.
To put it plainly Apples whole desktop line up is hosed. This is a extremely bad example of management and if it goes on to long I would imagine the board would want to know what the hell is up. Let's face it they can't even meet iMac demand which is a big fail for the bread and butter Mac. The Minis rev was one step forward and two back with the Mac Pro has rightfully become a joke among professionals. All of this just looks really bad especially when they can and do execute with the laptop line up. Your big worry should be that this screw up causes them to cancel the Mac Pro due to lack of sales. Everything about the desktop line up and its management is just plain ugly.
To put it plainly Apples whole desktop line up is hosed. This is a extremely bad example of management and if it goes on to long I would imagine the board would want to know what the hell is up. Let's face it they can't even meet iMac demand which is a big fail for the bread and butter Mac.
What's funny here is that you could make the exact same post back in late 1998, early 1999 and it would be just as relevant.
People post many numbers on these forums trying to prove that you don't need a Mac Pro anymore because XYZ solution is the equivalent of that 3 year old machine.
Mostly that Apple doesn't need to make one any more, not that the need for higher performance disappears but as I've said before, high resource tasks can be done in a different way. You can offload computing to a Mini Server or two leaving your Macbook Pro or whatever under zero load.
For the most part that is complete non sense as artificial benchmarks do not reflect on the Mac Pros capability to get work done under heavily load.
For a specific task a recent MBP might be as fast or even faster than a Mac Pro. However that is a useless metric for professional use. Most laptops are very constrained when it comes to multitasking which makes them questionable machines for a professional work station. At least for any professional able to multitask himself.
In what way would the Mac Pro be better at multi-tasking? If the raw CPU performance is comparable, the memory bandwidth comparable:
the amount of RAM, the performance of the drives (faster in the laptops as they use SATA 6G not SATA 3G), what other components determine that the Mac Pro will do a better job? The comparison made above was a dual-core laptop vs an 8-core Pro to draw the conclusion that not even the modern laptops would make a suitable workstation.
If the 2009 8-core makes a suitable workstation then so does the current MBP. I can understand that people will refuse to accept that but that's not Apple's problem.
Apples poor management of this machine is driving sales into the gutter.
The sales wouldn't be far off even if they managed it better though. There just aren't many people who need a $2500+ desktop when the other models perform so well now.
It doesnt help matters when Intel delay Xeon chips so long that they end up a whole year behind the lower-end ones.
Achieving performance in a different way implies that you have software to support it. Frankly it doesn't look like Apple is strongly supporting such arrangements with XGrid and similar support up in the air. I'm actually hoping that Apples silence with respect to XGrid is the result of having something better in the pipeline but it really doesn't look good. Even CLangs support of clusters is wanting and apparently not even driven by Apple.
As for memory bandwidth and multitasking, the independent channels in a multiprocessor Mac pro can be a big benefit to many uses. It is the aggregate bandwidth combined with less contention that you don't have with a single processor Mac implementation.
The problem with your position is that it depends. You say a 8 core machine from 2009 is the equivalent of the current MBP but the reality is far different. It is very easy to configure that old Mac Pro to do things that a laptop can't do.
Well I consider a $2500 desktop to be a management problem! The price is simply unjustified. Now you may be able to justify that pice in your mind and discount its impact on sales but I have a very hard time buying it. Frankly I see it as a mistake from the management standpoint and possibly the result of a determined effort on Apples part to move people to laptops. In any event does a $2500 desktop with just 4 cores make sense by any measure?
I'm not going to dismiss Intels role in the fiasco that is the Mac Pro, that is a real issue. However it does not explain Apple recent "update" to the Mac Pro that could at best be seen as two years late and too little now. Nor does the Intel problem explain Apples shipping the same old GPU card for 3 years now. These are all creations of Apple not Intel. I still fall back on the same premise that the desktop line up is stagnate and is basically being ignored by Apple.
If you look at each desktop product one at a time it is pretty hard not to see a lack of commitment from Apple. First; you have a long drawn out update to the iMac and even after that long delay they can't meet production demand. That is very telling all on its own. Second; you get the Mini with its give a little take a little update. Of course knowing Apple they take the most important part of the machine most in need of an update. Third; you have the Mac Pro that has become so neglected that it is legend on these boards. It is pretty hard not to see how Apple has shot themselves in the foot here. I'm certain that they will blame the "post PC era" and say told you so but the reality is many of us have been waiting for Apple to straighten out its desktop product line up for a very long time. In my case well before I purchased that 2008 MBP because Apple had nothing suitable in a desktop machine. Even a little bit of experimenting would do wonders for the user base out there.
I really don't see any benefit in making excuses for Apple. They have neglected the desktop and should be put on notice that it isn't cool anymore.
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Originally Posted by Marvin
Mostly that Apple doesn't need to make one any more, not that the need for higher performance disappears but as I've said before, high resource tasks can be done in a different way. You can offload computing to a Mini Server or two leaving your Macbook Pro or whatever under zero load.
In what way would the Mac Pro be better at multi-tasking? If the raw CPU performance is comparable, the memory bandwidth comparable:
the amount of RAM, the performance of the drives (faster in the laptops as they use SATA 6G not SATA 3G), what other components determine that the Mac Pro will do a better job? The comparison made above was a dual-core laptop vs an 8-core Pro to draw the conclusion that not even the modern laptops would make a suitable workstation.
If the 2009 8-core makes a suitable workstation then so does the current MBP. I can understand that people will refuse to accept that but that's not Apple's problem.
The sales wouldn't be far off even if they managed it better though. There just aren't many people who need a $2500+ desktop when the other models perform so well now.
It doesnt help matters when Intel delay Xeon chips so long that they end up a whole year behind the lower-end ones.
As for memory bandwidth and multitasking, the independent channels in a multiprocessor Mac pro can be a big benefit to many uses. It is the aggregate bandwidth combined with less contention that you don't have with a single processor Mac implementation.
I don't see how there's any contention issues that will affect real-world performance. Computers have changed dramatically since we had to use things like RAM Doubler. We don't have 2-core/2-thread chips. The MBP has a 4-core/8-thread chip and the memory bandwidth is really high so it's perfectly capable of balancing multiple processes.
The same arguments that were relevant 5 years ago will be used forever to avoid the reality that outside of raw processing performance, large workstations don't have a practical advantage over a laptop now.
There are tasks like compositing previews that use as many cores as possible and are in the class of real-time productivity but doing those on the GPU is the way to go and mobile GPUs are pretty fast now. Like I say, the need for raw power exists, but arguments about resource-intensive tasks only being possible on a Mac Pro are no longer valid and more importantly the volume of high-resource users goes down the more that lower-end machines meet the minimum performance bar for certain tasks.
You can never point to specs and say that some spec might cause a problem and that justifies a solution. If it does, it does and there would be real world examples.
It is very easy to configure that old Mac Pro to do things that a laptop can't do.
You can tie a rope to it and moor your boat but it's about practical and not theoretical usage scenarios. You can obviously configure it with 4 drives and a RAID card but now Thunderbolt and the Pegasus allows you to get the same with a laptop/iMac (arguably better because you don't have to change it between different computers). You can put in a high-end desktop GPU and you can put in 96GB RAM but does a 650M (or 680MX in the iMac) and 16/32GB RAM prevent you from doing anything? You can set your RAM cache in an app to 64GB and suggest that because the app fills it up that it can't work with less but it's not the case.
Well I consider a $2500 desktop to be a management problem!
It's a market problem first of all and the price has to reflect that. Say their margins are 80% (we know they are higher than the other products), their costs are $1388. If they went to 40% like the other products, they'd hit $1999. They half their profits but will they sell double the amount? I very much doubt it so why bother?
You see the Mac Pro enthusiasts here all the time - "I have a Mac Pro from 2006, why doesn't Apple give me something I want 6 years later, don't they know how important we are to them?" If people want more interest to be shown in them, they need to display more interest first and that doesn't mean expecting everyone else will pick up the slack. If you own a Mac Pro, upgrade it every 3 years. If every Mac Pro owner doubles their buy rate, Apple's figures double too, then they adjust to the demand.
You can't just expect them to use cheaper parts to put into the most expensive machine they sell either. If it's to be cheaper, they have to setup the manufacturing chain to allow it and engineer it to be more cost-effective without compromising the quality.
Hopefully, this is what they're doing now. If all they are actually doing is switching the motherboards, chips and GPUs like the old-style MBPs, you know what's coming.
possibly the result of a determined effort on Apples part to move people to laptops.
I don't see this as a bad thing any more and I think it's a combination of the market going this route and Apple maximising on it rather than forcing people against their will. HP and Dell are examples of what happens when you try to keep pushing things the market just doesn't want (or at least doesn't want to pay a lot for).
Nor does the Intel problem explain Apples shipping the same old GPU card for 3 years now.
Yeah, there's no reason to be shipping the 5770 GPUs, same deal with SATA 3G. That 2012 update would actually have been worthwhile if they'd just put in SATA 6G for better SSD speed and the latest GPU.
I still think they were ready to kill it off. It's the same thing they always do before they EOL something. This "something" coming next year looks to me like a clear enough message that they don't have to do it at all but the staff there must want to. It might be demoted to 'hobby' status like the ?TV though if it hasn't already been. I definitely think it will be manufactured in the US from now on and could have also contributed to the delay.
It is pretty hard not to see how Apple has shot themselves in the foot here.
If you shoot yourself in the foot, you are the one who suffers for it. I can only see Apple doing better than ever. It's Mac Pro buyers who have shot themselves in the foot by not buying frequently enough while being happy their machines last so long.
I don't see how there's any contention issues that will affect real-world performance. Computers have changed dramatically since we had to use things like RAM Doubler. We don't have 2-core/2-thread chips. The MBP has a 4-core/8-thread chip and the memory bandwidth is really high so it's perfectly capable of balancing multiple processes.
That is debatable. Remember on some of Apples machines that bandwidth is decivided up between the cores and video. Sometimes that works to your advantage and sometimes it doesn't. Even if onboard GPUs are not used you can still have performance curves that look like bandwidth limitations.
The same arguments that were relevant 5 years ago will be used forever to avoid the reality that outside of raw processing performance, large workstations don't have a practical advantage over a laptop now.
Well this I somewhat agree with, there is no need for the massive box that the Pro comes in anymore.
There are tasks like compositing previews that use as many cores as possible and are in the class of real-time productivity but doing those on the GPU is the way to go and mobile GPUs are pretty fast now. Like I say, the need for raw power exists, but arguments about resource-intensive tasks only being possible on a Mac Pro are no longer valid and more importantly the volume of high-resource users goes down the more that lower-end machines meet the minimum performance bar for certain tasks.
I really don't see the market for high performance apps (with the required high performance hardware) dying, if anything I would expect it to expand as more and more difficult problems are attacked by developers. As for GPU computing it is great for apps that translate well to the hardware but GPUs still have a ways to go to be useful running more generic code.
You can never point to specs and say that some spec might cause a problem and that justifies a solution. If it does, it does and there would be real world examples.
You have people right in this thread telling you precisely that, laptops are in no way a substitute for a workstation class machine.
You can tie a rope to it and moor your boat but it's about practical and not theoretical usage scenarios. You can obviously configure it with 4 drives and a RAID card but now Thunderbolt and the Pegasus allows you to get the same with a laptop/iMac (arguably better because you don't have to change it between different computers). You can put in a high-end desktop GPU and you can put in 96GB RAM but does a 650M (or 680MX in the iMac) and 16/32GB RAM prevent you from doing anything? You can set your RAM cache in an app to 64GB and suggest that because the app fills it up that it can't work with less but it's not the case.
One can certainly come up with all sorts of artificial constraints to prove one position over another. At the end of the day the only thing that counts is getting work done.
It's a market problem first of all and the price has to reflect that. Say their margins are 80% (we know they are higher than the other products), their costs are $1388. If they went to 40% like the other products, they'd hit $1999. They half their profits but will they sell double the amount? I very much doubt it so why bother?
Why bother to Mac Macs at all? Seriously if you aren't interested in making machines that maintain market share why bother? After the 2012 desktop fiasco it really looks like Apple doesn't give a damn and with the stagnation seen in the line up they certainly haven't tried to spur the market along.
You see the Mac Pro enthusiasts here all the time - "I have a Mac Pro from 2006, why doesn't Apple give me something I want 6 years later, don't they know how important we are to them?" If people want more interest to be shown in them, they need to display more interest first and that doesn't mean expecting everyone else will pick up the slack.
That is total BS and is the same logic that got Detroit into trouble. Hey guys lets make cars so crappy they have to buy new ones every four years are customer are both gullible and loyal so they will go for it!!
If you own a Mac Pro, upgrade it every 3 years. If every Mac Pro owner doubles their buy rate, Apple's figures double too, then they adjust to the demand.
You can't be serious? It is Apples job to build desktops that drive demand. If they honestly expect the customer to pick up the slack, as you call it, by turning over high performance hardware at an unreasonable rate then it is all over for Apple. Apple should be fully expecting the average Mac Pro customer to keep the machine more than 3 years with 5 years being rational for 50% of the customer base.
You can't just expect them to use cheaper parts to put into the most expensive machine they sell either. If it's to be cheaper, they have to setup the manufacturing chain to allow it and engineer it to be more cost-effective without compromising the quality.
Which is one; easy too do. Two; it has been argued at length in these forums that Apples lineup doesn't meet the needs of most desktop computer users. In a nut shell 2/3rd of the desktop line up is hard to justify for most purchasers. The Mini is forever castrated and the Mac Pro is so dated and retro no reasonable person would make the machine a long term investment. The iMac is an OK value but it isn't every bodies cup of tea due. To the integrated monitor.
Hopefully, this is what they're doing now. If all they are actually doing is switching the motherboards, chips and GPUs like the old-style MBPs, you know what's coming.
Well I'm expecting that. Is what they are doing after Cook more or less said so.
I don't see this as a bad thing any more and I think it's a combination of the market going this route and Apple maximising on it rather than forcing people against their will.
If you are interested in Mac OS you really have little choice other than the laptops for midrange performance machines. And then only if you are willing to settle for the associated shorter life span. Frankly it is a bit disingenuous to say Apple hasn't forced people onto laptops after taking a glance at the desktop line up.
HP and Dell are examples of what happens when you try to keep pushing things the market just doesn't want (or at least doesn't want to pay a lot for).
Both HP and Dell still sell a lot of desktop hardware though.
Yeah, there's no reason to be shipping the 5770 GPUs, same deal with SATA 3G. That 2012 update would actually have been worthwhile if they'd just put in SATA 6G for better SSD speed and the latest GPU.
Configurations like that are nothing more than management problems though. I honestly don't see any other explanation as newer GPU chips have come and gone in other Macs. You can't blame the chip makers nor can you call it a driver issue if the Pro is a generation or more behind other Macs.
I still think they were ready to kill it off. It's the same thing they always do before they EOL something. This "something" coming next year looks to me like a clear enough message that they don't have to do it at all but the staff there must want to. It might be demoted to 'hobby' status like the ?TV though if it hasn't already been. I definitely think it will be manufactured in the US from now on and could have also contributed to the delay.
Even the hobby status Apple TV gets more updates than the Pro
I have to agree with one point though, I do think that they where ready to kill it off. If not kill it off they at least lost their way on the desktop.
If you shoot yourself in the foot, you are the one who suffers for it. I can only see Apple doing better than ever.
They are not doing that well on the desktop. Long drawn out Mini updates for no good reason, iMacs that can't be shipped in volume and a joke of a Mac Pro. This all looks like shooting yourself in the foot to me.
It's Mac Pro buyers who have shot themselves in the foot by not buying frequently enough while being happy their machines last so long.
Again you can't be serious with that statement. Any company that relies upon frequent sales to the same customer to keep a product going has issues. Like I said it is the mentality that put Detroit in the gutter. Like it or not computers are seen as durable goods by consumers, much like a TV, Dishwasher, Microwave, hotwater heater or any other appliance the expectation is that they last. If Apples computers developed a reputation that they had to be replaced every three years, it would suffer the same massive abandonment that Chevy and Chrysler suffered from.
Even if onboard GPUs are not used you can still have performance curves that look like bandwidth limitations.
Maybe in a server environment because they run so many concurrent threads but when you are at the workstation level, it's under the control of one person and there's a handful of applications. Back when you could do less than 4 concurrent threads, it would be problematic but with 8 or more now, it's a pretty smooth experience.
There have been tests done between mult-core vs multi-processor (e.g 4-core vs 2x 2-core) and there's no real difference between them. The choice to use mutiple processors really comes down to it either being the only option for more cores or the most cost-effective. They have 8-core chips now and will soon have 10-core and 12-core chips. It's probably easier to cool two separate 6-cores than a single 12-core but real-world performance should be the same.
I really don't see the market for high performance apps (with the required high performance hardware) dying, if anything I would expect it to expand as more and more difficult problems are attacked by developers.
This is visible in the video game industry though. Real-time graphics is one of the most resource-intensive things a computer can do and the assumption is that they'd keep pushing the quality bar and to an extent they do but there's a human limit to how much work can go into a task and what you find now is that developers often just target consoles because it means there's a wider audience.
High-end software like Final Cut, Avid, Adobe CS, Autodesk apps and so on are ever more being adjusted to cater for more mainstream users because the audience just isn't there on the higher end. That's why their software has been so expensive. This is most evident with Autodesk Smoke - they ported it to the Mac recently and demoed it on iMacs with a new UI and dropped the price from $15,000 to $3495.
The high-price, high-resource, low-volume model just doesn't work for software any more because it's about getting the job done. The faster machines will of course get them done quicker but everyone has a "good enough" threshold. If you can encode an H.264 video in 5 minutes and that's your priority task, is it compelling to get a machine that can do it in 2 minutes? If it only saves you 20 minutes a day then you might decide the return on investing in a machine that costs 3x as much isn't good enough to justify it.
The people who have this idea that 'every extra processor cycle counts' can't be Mac Pro owners because Apple doesn't offer the fastest hardware Intel offers and they don't keep upgrading. If people can be perfectly content with a Mac Pro for 6 years then their acceptable performance threshold is somewhere in the middle of that cycle and that's where the iMac and MBP sits.
It's better for the buyer to have the option to go higher but it's not essential for Apple to offer the highest possible.
You have people right in this thread telling you precisely that, laptops are in no way a substitute for a workstation class machine.
Yes, older or dual-core laptops. Nobody is saying that their new Retina MBP is terrible compared to their 2009 MP and even if they did, it's people who have already made up their mind about what they prefer. I understand that way of thinking entirely and back when we had dual-core laptops 3.5 years ago, I was saying the same things about needing more power:
They came through eventually. They put 45W chips in the Minis, they put 95W chips in the iMacs and quad-i7s in the laptops. They now have pretty much the fastest desktop i7s you can buy in the iMacs alongside a GPU that holds its own among the fastest desktop GPUs and a Mac Mini really can give you a similar performance experience to the entry Pro for a fraction of the price.
Obviously there will always be improvements to be had but they've made some pretty good choices over the last 3 years for the lower-end lineup.
Why bother to Make Macs at all? Seriously if you aren't interested in making machines that maintain market share why bother?
What's the best possible marketshare a $2500+ workstation can get though? Their focus has to be where the demand is and that's the laptop line. The laptops will always get the first updates and the most publicity because it's what people want.
There were about 400 million PCs shipped in 2012 with 30% desktops = 120m. The top manufacturer shipped 16% so 19.2m desktops. This is 4.8m per quarter. Apple already sells 1.5m desktops per quarter and around 5% are MPs. What can they possibly do to the 75,000 Mac Pro sales per quarter to even make a dent there?
That is total BS and is the same logic that got Detroit into trouble. Hey guys lets make cars so crappy they have to buy new ones every four years are customer are both gullible and loyal so they will go for it!!
That's one solution to the issue but I'm not suggesting Apple makes a poorer quality Mac. Whatever the solution, buyers have to keep buying or a company has no incentive to sell. If Mac Pro owners want Apple to sell, they have to keep buying regardless of whether or not they need the update. Just look at the XServe as an example of what happens when people don't buy.
It is Apples job to build desktops that drive demand. Apple should be fully expecting the average Mac Pro customer to keep the machine more than 3 years with 5 years being rational for 50% of the customer base.
If that's the case then why do people complain when there isn't a proper update for 3 years? If the minimum expectation is 3 years then 2010 buyers should be fine with another one coming in 2013.
You simply can't do both at once - you can't build a machine to last (in terms of need not reliability) and have the same machine drive a demand to buy a new one, you can only prioritize one or the other.
There's no harm in upgrading more often - the machine depreciates anyway so your upgrade cost is higher the longer you wait.
The Haswell one should be pretty good. Hopefully Ive will keep his glue-gun away from it and they won't solder the RAM in but they might solder the RAM to give better bandwidth to the GPU. If they do that, they'd have to go with 8GB minimum, raise the price $100 and charge $200 for 16GB. It seems like castration but it's just emphasising different things.
One of the problems is that because it's mini, people think it's slow but the quad-i7 is actually faster than a lot of the iMac chips. It also doesn't have an afforable Apple display to go along with it and you have to pay for accessories on top. The GPU issue is just to do with the power limit and the 13" MBPs are worse as they aren't even quad-cores so I don't really think the Mini is all that bad.
I'm really looking forward to the Haswell one. 15% faster than the already fast quad-i7, a GPU that can run Heaven in real-time, support OpenCL 1.2 and OpenGL 4, USB 3, add 16GB RAM and a Fusion drive and it's a good desktop. That setup might cost $1350 of course but it's only going to get better in future.
Both HP and Dell still sell a lot of desktop hardware though.
Only 3x what Apple sells each and the margins are less than 1/5th. Like I say, if they half the margins, they won't double the volume and even if they did, it's still a tiny marketshare.
At this stage, people should be grateful Apple is even bothering to make another one instead of condeming them for not doing it sooner because really, dropping it wouldn't affect them one bit and where would that leave potential buyers? They have no option but to buy a crummy PC and they're the ones that suffer for it.
[VIDEO]
^ Mac Pro buyer on the phone to the Apple Store wondering when the new one is coming out.
At this stage, people should be grateful Apple is even bothering to make another one instead of condeming them for not doing it sooner because really, dropping it wouldn't affect them one bit and where would that leave potential buyers? They have no option but to buy a crummy PC and they're the ones that suffer for it.
It's not that Apple is EOLing the Mac Pro, it's that they're giving up on the pro content creation market. They were dominant in video editing, and then inexplicably gave up. It's just stupid.
Ultimately the platform will suffer if Apple has no presence in content creation. OS X will be dumbed down into a consumer platform, and anyone serious about using their computer for work will be forced into Windows. It's just so sad.
It's not that Apple is EOLing the Mac Pro, it's that they're giving up on the pro content creation market. They were dominant in video editing, and then inexplicably gave up. It's just stupid.
Ultimately the platform will suffer if Apple has no presence in content creation. OS X will be dumbed down into a consumer platform, and anyone serious about using their computer for work will be forced into Windows. It's just so sad.
Here's this posturing again that it's not possible to be a professional content creator with anything less than a Mac Pro. The FCP transition could have been smoother but it had to be done and they haven't given up on it. Competing NLEs might offer better functionality than where FCPX is right now but the worst you could say is that it's not the leading NLE, which might not have been the case before, depending on how you look at it. Is it a leading app if more people use it or more important people use it? 80% of feature films might be cut on Avid for example but there might be 10x more people overall using FCP so who's in the lead? Having a large marketshare and being powerful are also not mutually exclusive e.g Photoshop. Apple demonstrated a high-end workflow for FCPX:
"We’re now shooting the show on the RED EPIC cameras in 4K ... and we’ve moved to Final Cut Pro X. We’ve been able to do things on Leverage that no other cable show does simply because we can afford to do it using our all-digital workflow. It’s very rare to see a television show that averages 40 digital effects per episode. Or has four- or five-day sound mixing sessions. We’re able to do it and still produce a show for basically $1.8 million an episode. We think that Final Cut Pro X shows how simply and inexpensively a powerful file-based workflow can be implemented - not only does it change the price, but it actually changes creatively the way in which we work. We don’t have to wait to lock picture to start our digital effects shop.”
If someone rests a $1.8m budget on the ability of a $300 app to produce the final product, they either have to replace it when it fails or the software can handle it just fine.
When it comes to the Mac Pro, 80% of high-resource workstations might be HP/Dell with multi-Xeon chips but it's 80% of a small market and it's not that the jobs couldn't be done on something lower, it's just quicker to do them on a Xeon workstation.
An easier way to think about it is if you imagine that the Mac Pro was just discontinued, write down a list of things that are no longer possible without a Mac Pro. You can add things that are no longer possible with FCPX and things that are no longer possible without the XServe.
Obviously faster machines will offer a better experience and some people are willing to pay the extra but it's the same thing with televisions. They are bringing out 60"+ 4K TVs (one of them at 110" costs $300,000). Some people just don't want a 60" 3D 4K TV because there's no 4K content yet (not likely to be soon either) and a 40" 2D 1080p TV offers a good enough experience. If someone can cut 4K video on a laptop, multi-task the title sequences in AE and churn it out to 1080p H.264 for Blu-Ray or the web, at what point do you stop calling them a professional content creator? You can call them slow and maybe even cheap but you can't judge their skill by their tools.
Comments
Blu Ray is 25GB per layer of 50 GB for a long movie with lots of extras. To put it simply a 300GB file is a joke.
The price of Blu Ray disc have come down because it is a market failure plain and simple. The supposed extra quality was never worth the extra expense. The fact of the matter is most people don't place their faces ten inches from the TV screen so they can justify the extra resolution.
If people can't tell the difference the quality is equivalent.
They didn't encourage anything, they had to work with the record companies. I'm not sure why Apple is still blamed for this.
It is a 15" screen, do you really believe it will offer that much extra viewing pleasure over a regular 15" screen?
Yeah sure.
I find these attitudes with respect to Blu Ray puzzling at times. It is almost as if people are more concerned about the movie being Blu Ray than actually getting into the story being offered up. I mean really how do you suspend disbelief if you are concentrating on every artifact you see in the flick. At that point you aren't watching the movie but rather are watching the screen.
1. Lord of the Rings Extended Edition is 6 discs. Assuming they used double-layer that means it's up to 300 Gb. If he didn't use double-layer there is no reason to split the movie over two discs, he could have fit each film on one disc! I know Peter pushed the limits of SD bit rates and likes to push for the highest quality possible in most things, such as 48 fps in The Hobbit. The extra quality is worth it to me.2. There is still a technical difference between lossy and lossless audio. My point is that there is no reason or need to go backwards anymore, even if most people can't tell the difference, though some people (like the post above) claim they can. Some people even want to move forward and make double the bit rate of CD audio the new standard. At least give us the option. If you don't want the larger download, stick with 256.
3. For well made Blu-Ray films you can absolutely tell the differenc and the rMBP has the pixels to show it off, even though it won't be as obvious as on larger screens and TVs. Any suggestion that you can't tell the difference between SD and Blu-Ray is laughable. I didn't say I was comparing Blu-Ray on regular version retina 15" MBP.
4. Thanks for your passive agressive dismissal but I love my job. I wish I could have got the 12-core but it still wouldn't have been enough power. I'm eagerly waiting to see what the major update will bring.
Someone extracted it here:
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4915
It's 189GB for the 3 movies and 41Mbps. People have 50Mbps+ broadband now so it would be possible to stream down but it's not necessary to use that high a bitrate. Some will always say lossless or at least very high quality is better but it's really about what is good enough to the eye in a given process otherwise going by specs, people would similarly claim Blu-Ray pales in comparison to 300Mbps 10-bit ProRes. JPEGs are rarely complained about for example and the same goes for cinema viewings where the colours are faded and the frame might be askew or have marks on the screen or projector lens or be slightly out of focus at the edges or someone's shadow is being cast onto the bottom of it.
I'm all for movie distribution on Blu-Ray when it comes to keeping movies you like and for data backups but I think streaming works best for movies and TV that you'll most likely only watch once or twice and for the exception when people do demand the highest quality then external drives will suffice. Hardware manufacturers shouldn't compromise their devices or services for the many to satisfy the few.
That's why I feel the Mac Pro needs an overhaul and rather than design it to satisfy the few who don't want it to change, its design should reflect its purpose. The purpose of movie distribution is to get movies to consumers in a way that makes the most money. If the distribution method requires you to buy new hardware and expensive discs, it acts as a barrier to that content and is a barrier to sales and it will get worse the more that new hardware like the following offers diminishing returns for the investment:
http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1354605554
It's a similar deal with the Mac Pro. Apple can design it in the same way by trying to cover everything but it has diminishing returns. What do you really get for your $6200 over an iMac? It's 3x faster than an iMac at raw processing for 3x the price, fine but you also get lumped with tons of things the majority of people never use and you pay for that. You also have to buy your display on top. That's why I say keep the core machine as simple and as focused on the core purpose as possible and for the few people who need more, let them build it out externally. I don't believe the core purpose of the Mac Pro is expansion, I think it's power. While it seems contradictory to make a powerful machine smaller, it has to be balanced with price and market volume. A more attractive machine will attract more buyers and if it offers significantly better performance per dollar, then that's a huge incentive to buy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
They didn't encourage anything, they had to work with the record companies. I'm not sure why Apple is still blamed for this.
Cheap content works in Apple's favor. They can sell expensive hardware if subsequent purchases don't appear daunting. As for the music companies, their problems extended far beyond things like torrenting. If you look at how they've behaved more recently, they've been extremely conservative in what they produce.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Someone extracted it here:
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4915
It's 189GB for the 3 movies and 41Mbps. People have 50Mbps+ broadband now so it would be possible to stream down but it's not necessary to use that high a bitrate. Some will always say lossless or at least very high quality is better but it's really about what is good enough to the eye in a given process otherwise going by specs, people would similarly claim Blu-Ray pales in comparison to 300Mbps 10-bit ProRes. JPEGs are rarely complained about for example and the same goes for cinema viewings where the colours are faded and the frame might be askew or have marks on the screen or projector lens or be slightly out of focus at the edges or someone's shadow is being cast onto the bottom of it.
Production quality keeps increasing. 4k is more common today, especially in feature films. It doesn't have to be the same resolution as the final product. You still see some gains, especially in primary colors with the effect of bayer array sensors and the fact that rasterization isn't a lossless process. It's possible to realize gains even if they aren't theoretically displayed in every possible output. Resolutions like 4k+ may still hold some value in terms of what you see at the theaters. It's also quite possible that the ever increasing resolutions may help alleviate a portion of the undesirable behavior inherent to the bayer array when the problem is defeated through incredible resolution. It's a weird issue. When you go to really tight pixel counts, you reach a point where camera shake even can eclipse more than one pixel. The problem came up in still cameras first. On the positive side, You get to a point where you may have sufficient detail in primary colors and can overcome some of the issues of interpolating gaps.
There is little doubt in my mind that 4K can be used to great effect in a theater. For casual home viewing I just don't see a huge draw. In many cases I fully believe that people go to movie theaters for a different experience than can be had at home. It is the use case that has made BluRay a major joke.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I suspect you have glossed over what I was trying to get at. To put it plainly it took a huge amount of effort on Apples part to convince many of the record companies to allow for high quality downloads. The idea that Apple was the one surprising audio quality on iTunes is not supported at all in the history.
I read through it. I'm getting over the flu, so my thought process is definitely slower than normal. In terms of blind studies, other mp3 players were ranked higher. To the best of my recollection, Apple had several things. They had a dedicated system for managing mp3s in the form of itunes, which also became a point of distribution. They had a product with a distinct look that was marketed brilliantly. They had a lot of purchasing power when it came to NAND. The main points being that organization and distribution were covered.
Quote:
Of course you can see higher quality, that isn't the point. The point is most people weren't willing to pay for it. Especially when the evilness of the BluRay empire is well known amongst consumers.
That's not quite what I was getting at. Source footage is manipulated in a lot of ways, none of which are really lossless. Manipulating rasterized media is never really lossless. The cameras capture with filtered arrays. Out of 4 pixels, 2 would be filtered to detect green, one would be filtered red, one would be filtered blue. They have gaps reserved for supporting electronics as well, but the important thing is that a really saturated red or blue object is of effectively of lower resolution in this system of measurement. Further the data is rasterized. The behavior is remapped entirely. Rounding errors and interpolation affect what you really get in the end. Using a higher hardware resolution is effectively allowing for some oversampling of data to ensure that the end requirements are met. If something is going to be displayed up to 1080, it still may be shot higher than 1080 to allow for some loss of quality before it becomes noticeable to the end viewer.
Quote:
There is little doubt in my mind that 4K can be used to great effect in a theater. For casual home viewing I just don't see a huge draw. In many cases I fully believe that people go to movie theaters for a different experience than can be had at home. It is the use case that has made BluRay a major joke.
Theater viewing is a huge source of distribution, so that point alone could drive higher resolution. I don't see a huge draw for home viewing either. What Blu-Ray needed was the ability to drop in at a similar price point. Even then it's hard to overcome the convenience factor of something like itunes or netflix. If you want to watch something at home, you don't really leave your home to retrieve whatever it is you want to watch. I never liked video stores, and most of them no longer exist at this point. Once it's beyond 30 minutes or so to grab a movie to watch, I go to the theater instead.
The discussion of Blu-Ray after all of this time is amusing. I remember similar discussions when the Mac Pro was first introduced in 2006 when Blu Ray players were first showing up. Apple has held off this long, don't be surprised when you see the same 18x Superdrive as the standard (and only) drive offered.
I'm glad to see the Mac Pro finally getting some attention, though. I've had mine since 2006 and it has been the longest I've owned a computer without having to upgrade. Looking forward to finally upgrading when the new towers are released.
Another example that shows the MP really is the cheapest Mac you can buy.
It depends, you can keep using any machine for as long as it will last. You could still be running a $599 Mac Mini from 2006 in which case it's a cheaper option. A $999 2011 Server Mini is about 50% faster than the $3299 top-end 2006 Pro. After about 3-4 years, the performance of the top-end machines matches machines that are 1/3 the price. So you could go either route - buy high and ride it down or keep upgrading and in 3-4 years, you end up at the same place. Upgrading from the low-end works out cheaper and you stay in warranty but you have to make do with lower performance at the beginning. It also means Apple is more likely to put out new models regularly though because there is a stronger demand. If Mac Pro owners made a point of upgrading every 3 years, Apple would probably feel more inclined to update it more frequently than once every 3 years - if people won't buy, there's no reason for them to sell.
I am visiting AI daily now simply hoping for a crumb of information about a new MP. As you say $ for $ over the long haul they are worth every penny and then some. I have owned all the top of the line Mac towers since they came out. I sold my 8 core MP in late 2010 and got the top of the line MBP i7 and maxed it out with RAM and an big SSD ... I had convinced myself it would do the job as part of me lusted for portability. It is and always has bee SO much slower than the MP I sold as to be untrue. I was an idiot thinking it could even compare to a MP for HD video or even Aperture and thousands of RAW images ... I suspect even the latest MBPs would be slower at rendering and multi tasking or only recently faster. I should have kept the 8 Core MP till now for sure. Lesson learned!
I am truly hoping a new MP comes out soon as I for one am 'going home' to a real work horse!
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
Another example that shows the MP really is the cheapest Mac you can buy.
Exactly! Upgradability and expandability aren't sufficiently appreciated by many Mac users. But Mac Pro owners know their value.
I suspect this is the reason Apple hates the Mac Pro. They prefer to sell landfill fodder.
Ivy Bridge EP doesn't come out until the 2nd half of the year so it'll be WWDC in June at the earliest. Apple has had early CPU releases on occasions in the past but WWDC is a good time to announce it.
If you sold a $6000 8-core workstation for a $2700 dual-core i7 laptop, which was about 1/4 the speed, that's to be expected. The 2012 quad-core MBPs are about 70% of the top-end 2009 8-core MP and have powerful GPUs. The Haswell ones will be coming soon too. As I said above, you have to give it 3-4 years before you can expect to drop from an expensive workstation to a machine that can be bought for 1/3 the price. If you could do it in a year, the prices would be very different.
Yeah it is hard to say what Apple is up to with the refactored Mac Pro. Frankly we don't know if it will even be the work horse of the past. The lack of real or even imagined rumors though kinda indicates that it may be several months before the machine debuts. This will be sad if true as Apples poor management of this machine is driving sales into the gutter. Personally I was hoping for a new machine by the end of the month, but that is looking to be more difficult as you would expect leaks or even rumors by now.
To put it plainly Apples whole desktop line up is hosed. This is a extremely bad example of management and if it goes on to long I would imagine the board would want to know what the hell is up. Let's face it they can't even meet iMac demand which is a big fail for the bread and butter Mac. The Minis rev was one step forward and two back with the Mac Pro has rightfully become a joke among professionals. All of this just looks really bad especially when they can and do execute with the laptop line up. Your big worry should be that this screw up causes them to cancel the Mac Pro due to lack of sales. Everything about the desktop line up and its management is just plain ugly.
Quote:
To put it plainly Apples whole desktop line up is hosed. This is a extremely bad example of management and if it goes on to long I would imagine the board would want to know what the hell is up. Let's face it they can't even meet iMac demand which is a big fail for the bread and butter Mac.
What's funny here is that you could make the exact same post back in late 1998, early 1999 and it would be just as relevant.
Mostly that Apple doesn't need to make one any more, not that the need for higher performance disappears but as I've said before, high resource tasks can be done in a different way. You can offload computing to a Mini Server or two leaving your Macbook Pro or whatever under zero load.
In what way would the Mac Pro be better at multi-tasking? If the raw CPU performance is comparable, the memory bandwidth comparable:
http://macperformanceguide.com/mbpRetina2012-speed-memory-bandwidth.html
the amount of RAM, the performance of the drives (faster in the laptops as they use SATA 6G not SATA 3G), what other components determine that the Mac Pro will do a better job? The comparison made above was a dual-core laptop vs an 8-core Pro to draw the conclusion that not even the modern laptops would make a suitable workstation.
If the 2009 8-core makes a suitable workstation then so does the current MBP. I can understand that people will refuse to accept that but that's not Apple's problem.
The sales wouldn't be far off even if they managed it better though. There just aren't many people who need a $2500+ desktop when the other models perform so well now.
It doesnt help matters when Intel delay Xeon chips so long that they end up a whole year behind the lower-end ones.
Achieving performance in a different way implies that you have software to support it. Frankly it doesn't look like Apple is strongly supporting such arrangements with XGrid and similar support up in the air. I'm actually hoping that Apples silence with respect to XGrid is the result of having something better in the pipeline but it really doesn't look good. Even CLangs support of clusters is wanting and apparently not even driven by Apple.
As for memory bandwidth and multitasking, the independent channels in a multiprocessor Mac pro can be a big benefit to many uses. It is the aggregate bandwidth combined with less contention that you don't have with a single processor Mac implementation.
The problem with your position is that it depends. You say a 8 core machine from 2009 is the equivalent of the current MBP but the reality is far different. It is very easy to configure that old Mac Pro to do things that a laptop can't do.
Well I consider a $2500 desktop to be a management problem! The price is simply unjustified. Now you may be able to justify that pice in your mind and discount its impact on sales but I have a very hard time buying it. Frankly I see it as a mistake from the management standpoint and possibly the result of a determined effort on Apples part to move people to laptops. In any event does a $2500 desktop with just 4 cores make sense by any measure?
I'm not going to dismiss Intels role in the fiasco that is the Mac Pro, that is a real issue. However it does not explain Apple recent "update" to the Mac Pro that could at best be seen as two years late and too little now. Nor does the Intel problem explain Apples shipping the same old GPU card for 3 years now. These are all creations of Apple not Intel. I still fall back on the same premise that the desktop line up is stagnate and is basically being ignored by Apple.
If you look at each desktop product one at a time it is pretty hard not to see a lack of commitment from Apple. First; you have a long drawn out update to the iMac and even after that long delay they can't meet production demand. That is very telling all on its own. Second; you get the Mini with its give a little take a little update. Of course knowing Apple they take the most important part of the machine most in need of an update. Third; you have the Mac Pro that has become so neglected that it is legend on these boards. It is pretty hard not to see how Apple has shot themselves in the foot here. I'm certain that they will blame the "post PC era" and say told you so but the reality is many of us have been waiting for Apple to straighten out its desktop product line up for a very long time. In my case well before I purchased that 2008 MBP because Apple had nothing suitable in a desktop machine. Even a little bit of experimenting would do wonders for the user base out there.
I really don't see any benefit in making excuses for Apple. They have neglected the desktop and should be put on notice that it isn't cool anymore.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Mostly that Apple doesn't need to make one any more, not that the need for higher performance disappears but as I've said before, high resource tasks can be done in a different way. You can offload computing to a Mini Server or two leaving your Macbook Pro or whatever under zero load.
In what way would the Mac Pro be better at multi-tasking? If the raw CPU performance is comparable, the memory bandwidth comparable:
http://macperformanceguide.com/mbpRetina2012-speed-memory-bandwidth.html
the amount of RAM, the performance of the drives (faster in the laptops as they use SATA 6G not SATA 3G), what other components determine that the Mac Pro will do a better job? The comparison made above was a dual-core laptop vs an 8-core Pro to draw the conclusion that not even the modern laptops would make a suitable workstation.
If the 2009 8-core makes a suitable workstation then so does the current MBP. I can understand that people will refuse to accept that but that's not Apple's problem.
The sales wouldn't be far off even if they managed it better though. There just aren't many people who need a $2500+ desktop when the other models perform so well now.
It doesnt help matters when Intel delay Xeon chips so long that they end up a whole year behind the lower-end ones.
I don't see how there's any contention issues that will affect real-world performance. Computers have changed dramatically since we had to use things like RAM Doubler. We don't have 2-core/2-thread chips. The MBP has a 4-core/8-thread chip and the memory bandwidth is really high so it's perfectly capable of balancing multiple processes.
The same arguments that were relevant 5 years ago will be used forever to avoid the reality that outside of raw processing performance, large workstations don't have a practical advantage over a laptop now.
There are tasks like compositing previews that use as many cores as possible and are in the class of real-time productivity but doing those on the GPU is the way to go and mobile GPUs are pretty fast now. Like I say, the need for raw power exists, but arguments about resource-intensive tasks only being possible on a Mac Pro are no longer valid and more importantly the volume of high-resource users goes down the more that lower-end machines meet the minimum performance bar for certain tasks.
You can never point to specs and say that some spec might cause a problem and that justifies a solution. If it does, it does and there would be real world examples.
You can tie a rope to it and moor your boat but it's about practical and not theoretical usage scenarios. You can obviously configure it with 4 drives and a RAID card but now Thunderbolt and the Pegasus allows you to get the same with a laptop/iMac (arguably better because you don't have to change it between different computers). You can put in a high-end desktop GPU and you can put in 96GB RAM but does a 650M (or 680MX in the iMac) and 16/32GB RAM prevent you from doing anything? You can set your RAM cache in an app to 64GB and suggest that because the app fills it up that it can't work with less but it's not the case.
It's a market problem first of all and the price has to reflect that. Say their margins are 80% (we know they are higher than the other products), their costs are $1388. If they went to 40% like the other products, they'd hit $1999. They half their profits but will they sell double the amount? I very much doubt it so why bother?
You see the Mac Pro enthusiasts here all the time - "I have a Mac Pro from 2006, why doesn't Apple give me something I want 6 years later, don't they know how important we are to them?" If people want more interest to be shown in them, they need to display more interest first and that doesn't mean expecting everyone else will pick up the slack. If you own a Mac Pro, upgrade it every 3 years. If every Mac Pro owner doubles their buy rate, Apple's figures double too, then they adjust to the demand.
You can't just expect them to use cheaper parts to put into the most expensive machine they sell either. If it's to be cheaper, they have to setup the manufacturing chain to allow it and engineer it to be more cost-effective without compromising the quality.
Hopefully, this is what they're doing now. If all they are actually doing is switching the motherboards, chips and GPUs like the old-style MBPs, you know what's coming.
I don't see this as a bad thing any more and I think it's a combination of the market going this route and Apple maximising on it rather than forcing people against their will. HP and Dell are examples of what happens when you try to keep pushing things the market just doesn't want (or at least doesn't want to pay a lot for).
Yeah, there's no reason to be shipping the 5770 GPUs, same deal with SATA 3G. That 2012 update would actually have been worthwhile if they'd just put in SATA 6G for better SSD speed and the latest GPU.
I still think they were ready to kill it off. It's the same thing they always do before they EOL something. This "something" coming next year looks to me like a clear enough message that they don't have to do it at all but the staff there must want to. It might be demoted to 'hobby' status like the ?TV though if it hasn't already been. I definitely think it will be manufactured in the US from now on and could have also contributed to the delay.
If you shoot yourself in the foot, you are the one who suffers for it. I can only see Apple doing better than ever. It's Mac Pro buyers who have shot themselves in the foot by not buying frequently enough while being happy their machines last so long.
I have to agree with one point though, I do think that they where ready to kill it off. If not kill it off they at least lost their way on the desktop. They are not doing that well on the desktop. Long drawn out Mini updates for no good reason, iMacs that can't be shipped in volume and a joke of a Mac Pro. This all looks like shooting yourself in the foot to me. Again you can't be serious with that statement. Any company that relies upon frequent sales to the same customer to keep a product going has issues. Like I said it is the mentality that put Detroit in the gutter. Like it or not computers are seen as durable goods by consumers, much like a TV, Dishwasher, Microwave, hotwater heater or any other appliance the expectation is that they last. If Apples computers developed a reputation that they had to be replaced every three years, it would suffer the same massive abandonment that Chevy and Chrysler suffered from.
Maybe in a server environment because they run so many concurrent threads but when you are at the workstation level, it's under the control of one person and there's a handful of applications. Back when you could do less than 4 concurrent threads, it would be problematic but with 8 or more now, it's a pretty smooth experience.
There have been tests done between mult-core vs multi-processor (e.g 4-core vs 2x 2-core) and there's no real difference between them. The choice to use mutiple processors really comes down to it either being the only option for more cores or the most cost-effective. They have 8-core chips now and will soon have 10-core and 12-core chips. It's probably easier to cool two separate 6-cores than a single 12-core but real-world performance should be the same.
This is visible in the video game industry though. Real-time graphics is one of the most resource-intensive things a computer can do and the assumption is that they'd keep pushing the quality bar and to an extent they do but there's a human limit to how much work can go into a task and what you find now is that developers often just target consoles because it means there's a wider audience.
High-end software like Final Cut, Avid, Adobe CS, Autodesk apps and so on are ever more being adjusted to cater for more mainstream users because the audience just isn't there on the higher end. That's why their software has been so expensive. This is most evident with Autodesk Smoke - they ported it to the Mac recently and demoed it on iMacs with a new UI and dropped the price from $15,000 to $3495.
The high-price, high-resource, low-volume model just doesn't work for software any more because it's about getting the job done. The faster machines will of course get them done quicker but everyone has a "good enough" threshold. If you can encode an H.264 video in 5 minutes and that's your priority task, is it compelling to get a machine that can do it in 2 minutes? If it only saves you 20 minutes a day then you might decide the return on investing in a machine that costs 3x as much isn't good enough to justify it.
The people who have this idea that 'every extra processor cycle counts' can't be Mac Pro owners because Apple doesn't offer the fastest hardware Intel offers and they don't keep upgrading. If people can be perfectly content with a Mac Pro for 6 years then their acceptable performance threshold is somewhere in the middle of that cycle and that's where the iMac and MBP sits.
It's better for the buyer to have the option to go higher but it's not essential for Apple to offer the highest possible.
Yes, older or dual-core laptops. Nobody is saying that their new Retina MBP is terrible compared to their 2009 MP and even if they did, it's people who have already made up their mind about what they prefer. I understand that way of thinking entirely and back when we had dual-core laptops 3.5 years ago, I was saying the same things about needing more power:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/99222/intel-core-2-quad-on-mbp-and-imac
They came through eventually. They put 45W chips in the Minis, they put 95W chips in the iMacs and quad-i7s in the laptops. They now have pretty much the fastest desktop i7s you can buy in the iMacs alongside a GPU that holds its own among the fastest desktop GPUs and a Mac Mini really can give you a similar performance experience to the entry Pro for a fraction of the price.
Obviously there will always be improvements to be had but they've made some pretty good choices over the last 3 years for the lower-end lineup.
What's the best possible marketshare a $2500+ workstation can get though? Their focus has to be where the demand is and that's the laptop line. The laptops will always get the first updates and the most publicity because it's what people want.
There were about 400 million PCs shipped in 2012 with 30% desktops = 120m. The top manufacturer shipped 16% so 19.2m desktops. This is 4.8m per quarter. Apple already sells 1.5m desktops per quarter and around 5% are MPs. What can they possibly do to the 75,000 Mac Pro sales per quarter to even make a dent there?
That's one solution to the issue but I'm not suggesting Apple makes a poorer quality Mac. Whatever the solution, buyers have to keep buying or a company has no incentive to sell. If Mac Pro owners want Apple to sell, they have to keep buying regardless of whether or not they need the update. Just look at the XServe as an example of what happens when people don't buy.
If that's the case then why do people complain when there isn't a proper update for 3 years? If the minimum expectation is 3 years then 2010 buyers should be fine with another one coming in 2013.
You simply can't do both at once - you can't build a machine to last (in terms of need not reliability) and have the same machine drive a demand to buy a new one, you can only prioritize one or the other.
There's no harm in upgrading more often - the machine depreciates anyway so your upgrade cost is higher the longer you wait.
The Haswell one should be pretty good. Hopefully Ive will keep his glue-gun away from it and they won't solder the RAM in but they might solder the RAM to give better bandwidth to the GPU. If they do that, they'd have to go with 8GB minimum, raise the price $100 and charge $200 for 16GB. It seems like castration but it's just emphasising different things.
One of the problems is that because it's mini, people think it's slow but the quad-i7 is actually faster than a lot of the iMac chips. It also doesn't have an afforable Apple display to go along with it and you have to pay for accessories on top. The GPU issue is just to do with the power limit and the 13" MBPs are worse as they aren't even quad-cores so I don't really think the Mini is all that bad.
I'm really looking forward to the Haswell one. 15% faster than the already fast quad-i7, a GPU that can run Heaven in real-time, support OpenCL 1.2 and OpenGL 4, USB 3, add 16GB RAM and a Fusion drive and it's a good desktop. That setup might cost $1350 of course but it's only going to get better in future.
Only 3x what Apple sells each and the margins are less than 1/5th. Like I say, if they half the margins, they won't double the volume and even if they did, it's still a tiny marketshare.
At this stage, people should be grateful Apple is even bothering to make another one instead of condeming them for not doing it sooner because really, dropping it wouldn't affect them one bit and where would that leave potential buyers? They have no option but to buy a crummy PC and they're the ones that suffer for it.
[VIDEO]
^ Mac Pro buyer on the phone to the Apple Store wondering when the new one is coming out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
At this stage, people should be grateful Apple is even bothering to make another one instead of condeming them for not doing it sooner because really, dropping it wouldn't affect them one bit and where would that leave potential buyers? They have no option but to buy a crummy PC and they're the ones that suffer for it.
It's not that Apple is EOLing the Mac Pro, it's that they're giving up on the pro content creation market. They were dominant in video editing, and then inexplicably gave up. It's just stupid.
Ultimately the platform will suffer if Apple has no presence in content creation. OS X will be dumbed down into a consumer platform, and anyone serious about using their computer for work will be forced into Windows. It's just so sad.
Here's this posturing again that it's not possible to be a professional content creator with anything less than a Mac Pro. The FCP transition could have been smoother but it had to be done and they haven't given up on it. Competing NLEs might offer better functionality than where FCPX is right now but the worst you could say is that it's not the leading NLE, which might not have been the case before, depending on how you look at it. Is it a leading app if more people use it or more important people use it? 80% of feature films might be cut on Avid for example but there might be 10x more people overall using FCP so who's in the lead? Having a large marketshare and being powerful are also not mutually exclusive e.g Photoshop. Apple demonstrated a high-end workflow for FCPX:
http://images.apple.com/finalcutpro/in-action/electric/
"We’re now shooting the show on the RED EPIC cameras in 4K ... and we’ve moved to Final Cut Pro X. We’ve been able to do things on Leverage that no other cable show does simply because we can afford to do it using our all-digital workflow. It’s very rare to see a television show that averages 40 digital effects per episode. Or has four- or five-day sound mixing sessions. We’re able to do it and still produce a show for basically $1.8 million an episode. We think that Final Cut Pro X shows how simply and inexpensively a powerful file-based workflow can be implemented - not only does it change the price, but it actually changes creatively the way in which we work. We don’t have to wait to lock picture to start our digital effects shop.”
If someone rests a $1.8m budget on the ability of a $300 app to produce the final product, they either have to replace it when it fails or the software can handle it just fine.
When it comes to the Mac Pro, 80% of high-resource workstations might be HP/Dell with multi-Xeon chips but it's 80% of a small market and it's not that the jobs couldn't be done on something lower, it's just quicker to do them on a Xeon workstation.
An easier way to think about it is if you imagine that the Mac Pro was just discontinued, write down a list of things that are no longer possible without a Mac Pro. You can add things that are no longer possible with FCPX and things that are no longer possible without the XServe.
Obviously faster machines will offer a better experience and some people are willing to pay the extra but it's the same thing with televisions. They are bringing out 60"+ 4K TVs (one of them at 110" costs $300,000). Some people just don't want a 60" 3D 4K TV because there's no 4K content yet (not likely to be soon either) and a 40" 2D 1080p TV offers a good enough experience. If someone can cut 4K video on a laptop, multi-task the title sequences in AE and churn it out to 1080p H.264 for Blu-Ray or the web, at what point do you stop calling them a professional content creator? You can call them slow and maybe even cheap but you can't judge their skill by their tools.