And I still think that Apple needs to purchase Maya...
If not Maya AND LightWave... Hell, throw Blender in there also, for kicks...<hr></blockquote>
Why should they? There is no reason for them to do that. 25 % of AW´s business is currently on the Mac. That`s a straight 25% INCREASE in their user base in about 8-9 months, and they`ve sold well on Linux and Windows as well. They won`t leave the Mac. SGI won`t sell them, and SGI won`t be bought (who`d want them, anyway?), at least not in the foreseeable future. Besides, Apple is already the new SGI, only it`s the same SGI that started loosing money...
Relax. They don`t need to buy AW. They actually needed to buy Nothing Real and Silicon Grail to get into a market with a lot of marketing significance, both historically and in the future. I think they`re shopping spree is over, and that`s a good thing.
Why should they? There is no reason for them to do that. 25 % of AW´s business is currently on the Mac. That`s a straight 25% INCREASE in their user base in about 8-9 months, and they`ve sold well on Linux and Windows as well. They won`t leave the Mac. SGI won`t sell them, and SGI won`t be bought (who`d want them, anyway?), at least not in the foreseeable future. Besides, Apple is already the new SGI, only it`s the same SGI that started loosing money...
Relax. They don`t need to buy AW. They actually needed to buy Nothing Real and Silicon Grail to get into a market with a lot of marketing significance, both historically and in the future. I think they`re shopping spree is over, and that`s a good thing.</strong><hr></blockquote>
gnurf- How does Silicon Grail's products factor into Apples strategy. They surely cannot support two App that are $5k. Where do they go from here?
I think Apple should stay outta 3D right now.
Lightwave is going strong
Cinema4d is there
Maya 4.5
Perhaps the market should be allowed to grow and compete.
We're all ready to be floored. OSX is progressing nicely but we need a thunderbolt to come from Apple regarding their hardware.
PC's are ok... mean it's somewhat exciting to hear about AGP 8x and Serial ATA but that's just evolutionary stuff...not revolutionary stuff. Apple..please ..one more time. Shock us...shock the world!
Last item is interesting...also the fact that the Mac version requires 800Mhz, and the P3 version only 550 tells me something that obviously contradicts what Steve's been telling us for a few years.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This could also mean that Apple wants to sell NEW computers. This is the first version of Shake available for the Mac of OS, so they are listing it with the minimum specs of the current PowerMac. This does not mean that it WONT run on a PowerMac 500, just that it is not a supported/recomended computer.
I'd just like to see Apple do one damn hardware thing 'ahead' of the curve when it comes to CPU performance...memory...bus...SOMETHING!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Since OSX (at least Jaguar) seems to be widely considered "ahead of the curve", they really just need at least equivalent hardware. In one area they can easily accomplish this: GPU. As this thread's title states, Apple needs to ship one of the new high end cards -- i.e. the Radeon9700. This card has reached a high enough level of power and capability that 3D packages can move most of their computations directly onto the card. ATI is working on a scheme for Maya and Renderman to do exactly that -- it takes shaders from those packages and translates them into R9700 shaders which execute entirely on the GPU. This doesn't just have to be for rendering the real-time display, it can now be used to compute the final images as well. Imagine a rack full of Xserve's bearing R9700s, all grinding away on your Maya shader.
We'll see CPU, bus (incl. AGP 8x), and memory improvements in the PowerMac, but that may be becoming less important going into the future. Functionality and integration will rule the day.
Man, you guys are all going to be disappointed with the new towers, I can tell already. No I don't know exactly what they're going to have in them, but you're ramping your expectations up so high that nothing short of a quad processor 3 GHz G7 with an ATi 9700 and an nv30 on the same card, and an 800 MHz FSB will impress you. Did I mention the 30 button mouse? Yeah, you don't need a keyboard any more! <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
Come on guys, cool down a little bit. You all know Apple can't jump ahead of the curve with Motorola slowing them down like they always have. The best we can hope for is some DDR, some improved clock speed and some improved bus speed - and even that should make a large difference in performance. So let's all just take a step back, take a deep breath and wait for Aug 24th or so.
Maybe next year Apple will use a Power4 variant and then we'll have something to really get excited about... but not any time soon.
<strong>Maybe next year Apple will use a Power4 variant and then we'll have something to really get excited about... but not any time soon.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>...Apple can't jump ahead of the curve with Motorola slowing them down like they always have...</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is just flat out wrong. Motorola has not always held Apple down. The 68000 through 68040 were leading edge processors in their day. The PowerPC 601 and 604e were the speed champs at the time. The PowerPC 750 held its own. The 74xx family has been a disappointment in some ways, but AltiVec has actually been an outstanding success. Its been a rough couple of years, but don't go ignoring all that history.
I agree with the sentiment in the rest of your message though... people keep winding themselves up based on extremely thin rumours and they'll be let down over and over again. Some time in the next year or so I'm sure we'll see Apple take a big step forward in performance, but it will probably be later not sooner.
I'm getting indications of better things to come. But my whisperings never come with specs
I think there is a G4 based chip with on-die memory controller coming soon. Think about it. It would make sense from an embedded use point of view AND from a desktop processor POV.
<strong>Doesn't George Lucas have some relationship with the Star Wars movies and some relationship with Industrial Light and Magic.
Didn't he do a promo when the iMac first came out describing how great it was?</strong><hr></blockquote>
You may be thinking of Francis Ford Coppola, who was in the 6-minute iMac promo video.
[quote]Originally posted by Leonis:
<strong>I don't quite understand why they use Mac as renderfarm
If they are using PowerMacs for workstation stuff okay...but for renderfarm?!!!???! Doesn't really make sense. Expensive and sloooooow</strong><hr></blockquote>
These are not my words, but they are an <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,50454,00.html"; target="_blank">answer</a>: "The PowerPC architecture is vastly superior to anything else out there in terms of power consumption versus processing power."
<strong>I'm getting indications of better things to come. But my whisperings never come with specs
I think there is a G4 based chip with on-die memory controller coming soon. Think about it. It would make sense from an embedded use point of view AND from a desktop processor POV.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Same here. This new G4 may as well be a G5, it will have an on-die 333 MHz DDR memory controller, gigethernet controllor, and pci-X controllers, all on die. With this sort of bandwidth, altivec could finally spread its wings....
Moto has some brilliant designs, but the problem is getting them from paper into volume production. As always, they can make the chips, but they just can't fab them in volume or with any efficiency. When they finally do, they will be put Powermacs right back in the game, and then some. But for this to happen, Moto has to nail the 130 nm process.
When moto finally figures out how to fab chips on a 100 nm process, then stand back because Powermacs are going to be forcing lots of Mac users to suck their own dicks, bend over to let monkeys fly outta their asses, and all sorts of perverse, awful things!!
If anyone want's to move things along, then it might help to check out Motos fab and get yourself a broom and a dustpan. Rumor has it that they aren't really "clean rooms" in the true sense of the word.
gnurf- How does Silicon Grail's products factor into Apples strategy. They surely cannot support two App that are $5k. Where do they go from here?
[snip agreed stuff]
<hr></blockquote>
Well, Rayz/Chalice and Shake are quite similar, with only a few features from the old Cineon system by Kodak being the reason to get Rayz over Shake. Rayz was also quite slow and buggy (at version 1). They will most likely use the code and expertize of the guys behind it, and roll the few features of Rayz into Shake. Compositing code and algorithms are pretty much the same in every app, but I think Apple bought Silicon Grail partly because all the Shake users were migrating to it when Apple bought NR, and partly because there is some nice (although practically ancient) code from Kodak/Cinesite in there. But the Shake architecture and structure is quite superior to most other systems out there, not counting the realtime stuff on Irix, or Nuke - or so I`ve heard.
And I expect them to lower the price to 5K on the other platforms as well. A lot of important people in the film industry are seriously pissed off at Apples moves, as far as I can tell.
Comments
I realize that Studio is A|ws real money tree...
And I still think that Apple needs to purchase Maya...
If not Maya AND LightWave... Hell, throw Blender in there also, for kicks...
And I still think that Apple needs to purchase Maya...
If not Maya AND LightWave... Hell, throw Blender in there also, for kicks...<hr></blockquote>
Why should they? There is no reason for them to do that. 25 % of AW´s business is currently on the Mac. That`s a straight 25% INCREASE in their user base in about 8-9 months, and they`ve sold well on Linux and Windows as well. They won`t leave the Mac. SGI won`t sell them, and SGI won`t be bought (who`d want them, anyway?), at least not in the foreseeable future. Besides, Apple is already the new SGI, only it`s the same SGI that started loosing money...
Relax. They don`t need to buy AW. They actually needed to buy Nothing Real and Silicon Grail to get into a market with a lot of marketing significance, both historically and in the future. I think they`re shopping spree is over, and that`s a good thing.
<strong>If not Maya AND LightWave... Hell, throw Blender in there also, for kicks...</strong><hr></blockquote>
Blender is going cheap for around 100.000 Euro right now :cool:
edit: smiley correction
[ 07-24-2002: Message edited by: xype ]</p>
<strong>
Why should they? There is no reason for them to do that. 25 % of AW´s business is currently on the Mac. That`s a straight 25% INCREASE in their user base in about 8-9 months, and they`ve sold well on Linux and Windows as well. They won`t leave the Mac. SGI won`t sell them, and SGI won`t be bought (who`d want them, anyway?), at least not in the foreseeable future. Besides, Apple is already the new SGI, only it`s the same SGI that started loosing money...
Relax. They don`t need to buy AW. They actually needed to buy Nothing Real and Silicon Grail to get into a market with a lot of marketing significance, both historically and in the future. I think they`re shopping spree is over, and that`s a good thing.</strong><hr></blockquote>
gnurf- How does Silicon Grail's products factor into Apples strategy. They surely cannot support two App that are $5k. Where do they go from here?
I think Apple should stay outta 3D right now.
Lightwave is going strong
Cinema4d is there
Maya 4.5
Perhaps the market should be allowed to grow and compete.
[ 07-24-2002: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
<strong>see this thread... <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=002091"; target="_blank">here</a>
thanks.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Bad link
Those macs better be good.
I just hope Steve's pressing Moto' as hard as teh rumour sites...
Here's hopin'.
I'd just like to see Apple do one damn hardware thing 'ahead' of the curve when it comes to CPU performance...memory...bus...SOMETHING!!!
Lemon Bon Bon
PC's are ok... mean it's somewhat exciting to hear about AGP 8x and Serial ATA but that's just evolutionary stuff...not revolutionary stuff. Apple..please ..one more time. Shock us...shock the world!
And what is up with the lack of high-end graphics cards...?!?
I say that ATI needs to release the FireGL X1 for Mac OS X...!
Unless the rumored Apple/nVidia co-developed card surfaces...
<strong>
Last item is interesting...also the fact that the Mac version requires 800Mhz, and the P3 version only 550 tells me something that obviously contradicts what Steve's been telling us for a few years.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This could also mean that Apple wants to sell NEW computers. This is the first version of Shake available for the Mac of OS, so they are listing it with the minimum specs of the current PowerMac. This does not mean that it WONT run on a PowerMac 500, just that it is not a supported/recomended computer.
<strong>
I'd just like to see Apple do one damn hardware thing 'ahead' of the curve when it comes to CPU performance...memory...bus...SOMETHING!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Since OSX (at least Jaguar) seems to be widely considered "ahead of the curve", they really just need at least equivalent hardware. In one area they can easily accomplish this: GPU. As this thread's title states, Apple needs to ship one of the new high end cards -- i.e. the Radeon9700. This card has reached a high enough level of power and capability that 3D packages can move most of their computations directly onto the card. ATI is working on a scheme for Maya and Renderman to do exactly that -- it takes shaders from those packages and translates them into R9700 shaders which execute entirely on the GPU. This doesn't just have to be for rendering the real-time display, it can now be used to compute the final images as well. Imagine a rack full of Xserve's bearing R9700s, all grinding away on your Maya shader.
We'll see CPU, bus (incl. AGP 8x), and memory improvements in the PowerMac, but that may be becoming less important going into the future. Functionality and integration will rule the day.
Come on guys, cool down a little bit. You all know Apple can't jump ahead of the curve with Motorola slowing them down like they always have. The best we can hope for is some DDR, some improved clock speed and some improved bus speed - and even that should make a large difference in performance. So let's all just take a step back, take a deep breath and wait for Aug 24th or so.
Maybe next year Apple will use a Power4 variant and then we'll have something to really get excited about... but not any time soon.
<strong>Maybe next year Apple will use a Power4 variant and then we'll have something to really get excited about... but not any time soon.</strong><hr></blockquote>
...or x86. After all, Steve does like "options."
<strong>...Apple can't jump ahead of the curve with Motorola slowing them down like they always have...</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is just flat out wrong. Motorola has not always held Apple down. The 68000 through 68040 were leading edge processors in their day. The PowerPC 601 and 604e were the speed champs at the time. The PowerPC 750 held its own. The 74xx family has been a disappointment in some ways, but AltiVec has actually been an outstanding success. Its been a rough couple of years, but don't go ignoring all that history.
I agree with the sentiment in the rest of your message though... people keep winding themselves up based on extremely thin rumours and they'll be let down over and over again. Some time in the next year or so I'm sure we'll see Apple take a big step forward in performance, but it will probably be later not sooner.
I think there is a G4 based chip with on-die memory controller coming soon. Think about it. It would make sense from an embedded use point of view AND from a desktop processor POV.
<strong>Doesn't George Lucas have some relationship with the Star Wars movies and some relationship with Industrial Light and Magic.
Didn't he do a promo when the iMac first came out describing how great it was?</strong><hr></blockquote>
You may be thinking of Francis Ford Coppola, who was in the 6-minute iMac promo video.
[quote]Originally posted by Leonis:
<strong>I don't quite understand why they use Mac as renderfarm
If they are using PowerMacs for workstation stuff okay...but for renderfarm?!!!???! Doesn't really make sense. Expensive and sloooooow</strong><hr></blockquote>
These are not my words, but they are an <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,50454,00.html"; target="_blank">answer</a>: "The PowerPC architecture is vastly superior to anything else out there in terms of power consumption versus processing power."
<strong>I'm getting indications of better things to come. But my whisperings never come with specs
I think there is a G4 based chip with on-die memory controller coming soon. Think about it. It would make sense from an embedded use point of view AND from a desktop processor POV.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Same here. This new G4 may as well be a G5, it will have an on-die 333 MHz DDR memory controller, gigethernet controllor, and pci-X controllers, all on die. With this sort of bandwidth, altivec could finally spread its wings....
Moto has some brilliant designs, but the problem is getting them from paper into volume production. As always, they can make the chips, but they just can't fab them in volume or with any efficiency. When they finally do, they will be put Powermacs right back in the game, and then some. But for this to happen, Moto has to nail the 130 nm process.
When moto finally figures out how to fab chips on a 100 nm process, then stand back because Powermacs are going to be forcing lots of Mac users to suck their own dicks, bend over to let monkeys fly outta their asses, and all sorts of perverse, awful things!!
If anyone want's to move things along, then it might help to check out Motos fab and get yourself a broom and a dustpan. Rumor has it that they aren't really "clean rooms" in the true sense of the word.
[QB]
gnurf- How does Silicon Grail's products factor into Apples strategy. They surely cannot support two App that are $5k. Where do they go from here?
[snip agreed stuff]
<hr></blockquote>
Well, Rayz/Chalice and Shake are quite similar, with only a few features from the old Cineon system by Kodak being the reason to get Rayz over Shake. Rayz was also quite slow and buggy (at version 1). They will most likely use the code and expertize of the guys behind it, and roll the few features of Rayz into Shake. Compositing code and algorithms are pretty much the same in every app, but I think Apple bought Silicon Grail partly because all the Shake users were migrating to it when Apple bought NR, and partly because there is some nice (although practically ancient) code from Kodak/Cinesite in there. But the Shake architecture and structure is quite superior to most other systems out there, not counting the realtime stuff on Irix, or Nuke - or so I`ve heard.
And I expect them to lower the price to 5K on the other platforms as well. A lot of important people in the film industry are seriously pissed off at Apples moves, as far as I can tell.
"You may be thinking of Francis Ford Coppola, who was in the 6-minute iMac promo video."<hr></blockquote>
opps, thanks for the correction.