Apple condems SxS to the rubbish heap along with P2!

while I can certainly see the future being some type of solid state or equivalent media for delivery, I think 10 years isn't unrealistic before we see a real penetration of such a format. The reality is, within a few years such a media will have to compete with 50GB BR media for <$5 & 25GB media <$2.

CD audio may be giving into online sales but its something like 25years now and there are still lots of CD music stores.

If that write once SD type media actually started seeing some reality in the market and was avaliable in comparable capacity and $/GB as BR then I'd love to move to it.
 
I agree with SPZ - all this talk about what's coming is fine and good, but these MBP's are for sale now and would probably be replaced by the time these future developments arrive in the natural course of events. Right now the MBP has lost much of its usefulness for users in our field and that's just the way it is. I will keep my 2-generation old MBP for as long as it can be made to keep working.
 
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SPZ said:
Taking this out makes the 15" a machine that has limited expension. The FW800 port is the fastest you can get on that machine- which means not enough for High end HD work.

Forward thinking means pushing new technologies that you can use today and give you an edge over the competition. Having a Blu-ray drive and native blu-ray authoring, for example, accessible to the average consumer, an I-Blu, or whatever, would be forward thinking. As much as Apple wants to ignore, Blu-ray is a success, and Full HD digital online distribution is still many years from now. Blu-Ray is THE next format- after it, physical distribution will gradually give way to online and solid state distribution. Untill then, there's still 10 years or so of Blu-ray life left- this year and the next we'll see the massification of Blu-rays. Today, we are starting to see pirated blu-rays in CHina for 8 USD. You know Mass market penetration is happening when pirates "adopt" a format...
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Why isn't a FW800 or even a USB port good enough for HD work? Seems plenty fast to me to pull files off media.

Also, FYI, if you go into any music stores nowdays, you see the CD cases but in the MP3 section those CD cases actually contain a SDHC card of the songs. I first saw it in Wal-Mart a year ago.

I bet there will be SDHCs with movies on them pretty soon. All the Panasonic TVs and DVD players play movies off the SDHC slot. Im not familiar with other manufacturers SDHC capabilities.

It seems pretty clear that the SD format is going to be leveraged more and more.
 
jeff9329 said:
Why isn't a FW800 or even a USB port good enough for HD work? Seems plenty fast to me to pull files off media.

Also, FYI, if you go into any music stores nowdays, you see the CD cases but in the MP3 section those CD cases actually contain a SDHC card of the songs. I first saw it in Wal-Mart a year ago.

I bet there will be SDHCs with movies on them pretty soon. All the Panasonic TVs and DVD players play movies off the SDHC slot. Im not familiar with other manufacturers SDHC capabilities.

It seems pretty clear that the SD format is going to be leveraged more and more.
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You got it!
The SD era will be the bain of all manufacturers who produce a unit with an optical drive. In theory, new movie players could be the size of a matchbox.
 
Contrary to our opinion, companies as well heeled and staffed as Apple don't really make flippant decisions. I'm sure that there's a lot that we don't ever know in the public. How did the Mac Mini ever make it out of the R&D lab? The Macbook Air? So I know that what WE thinks doesn't count for much. Apple does NOT hire focus groups. APPLE decides what they want to sell us and they are at least 90% right.
That's not bad considering the overall bang that we get for the buck.
I've written elsewhere that if Apple want to design and deliver a Multimedia ( esp video) savvy laptop, they haven't don so with any of their offerings yet- and that's my point, they seem to have decided to always roll out the Pro-Editing capacity and features on the desktop first, insisting that the Laptop user demographic is different. My guess is that their sales numbers and aftermarket data confirm this.
I'm glad I opted to keep all my video editing on the MacPro.
When any company wants to build a serious laptop for Video, I've decribed what it should look like. Till then, just don't bother with the latest laptops.
 
those SD music 'cds' havn't really had any market penetration, I read somewhere they have been pretty much a flop with people returning them wanting the 'CD' they bought...
 
GuyB said:
those SD music 'cds' havn't really had any market penetration, I read somewhere they have been pretty much a flop with people returning them wanting the 'CD' they bought...
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A similar situation here in Canada - eh! Can we please get back to the days of honest engineering, good products that actually deliver the goods and value-for-our-hard earned money!
 
Zephyrnoid said:
Contrary to our opinion, companies as well heeled and staffed as Apple don't really make flippant decisions. I'm sure that there's a lot that we don't ever know in the public. .
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Apple posted second quarter fiscal 2009 total revenue of 8.19 Billion.

I work for a company about the same size.

These big companies are not nearly as smart and well run as you would like to think. It's also incredibly slow to make things happen when you have to get hundreds or thousands of people on board. There are also lots of people with "visions" and "stratagies" at the very top. Thankfully our management team tells them to see a doctor if they are having visions and they usually back off.

Apple is having visions too. Too bad they don't tell us what they are, we have to guess.
 
Well, yes it's a bummer that Apple dropped the support on some laptops, but does it really matter that much? The SDHC way is reliable and solid and I have been using it for months now without any problems. I only use SxS now when I need over cranking and for that I have 2 cards which came with the camera and they cover my daily needs for that type of shooting so I can just take them to the office and empty them. Besides it's just a matter of time till SDHC can do overcranking too. Some say it already can.
Also, the 17" MBP still has the slots right? Yes, it's more expensive but you still can use it. If the 17" is too expensive for you why not just go the SDHC card way?
About switching to PC, the problem for me is not the hardware but the software end too. There's nothing on the PC end that can do what FCS and the other Apple Pro apps do for me at a comparable price. Maybe if Autodesk bought Avid and started selling Media Composer, Lustre, Cleaner, Pro Tools (at least the LE version) and Toxik in a package competitively priced with the Apple pro apps I could see myself moving back to PC. That is still not considering livetype, DVD Studio Pro and the other smaller apps from FCS.
But that is not going to happen.
This is what attracts me to Apple, the software end offers so much bang for you buck even when you factor in a Mac Pro. So a 17"MBP is still a bargain when you consider what you would have to buy on the PC end to match the power FCS and the other Apple pro apps give you.
I use to be PC by the way.
 
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Exactly. Pro Users in any sector aside from those labeled PRO are the bottom of the barrel. Consumers run the market, not us.

Best bet is to just use what you have if you're comfy with it or search elsewhere.

I was JUST about to buy a Macbook Pro 13.3 inch. In fact, I was stoked as hell because it's not that much larger than my NetBook but as I started digging further I decided that if I was gonna spend that much money I want every penny to count.

Just went with a Quad Core Laptop that had everything the Macbook Pro 13 and 15 SHOULD have, and it cost less for more bang.

Time to pretty much face the Capitalist Music: find other solutions if you don't have an ample amount of money to throw around. I know I don't, so I did.
 
I don't know. All the PCs at the school I teach at have SDHC slots. A few day ago I thought, "man, it would be nice if Apple had these." Suddenly here they are. Am I the only one so not bothered by this. I have a card reader anyway but it would be nice to simply pop one of these into the laptop and go.

-Nate
 
No one is compaining about Apple adding a SDHC slot, my Asus laptop has one and I appreciate it too (heck I want a CF slot as well). The difference is my Asus laptop also has an Express Card slot we can use to load SxS and install 3rd party cards (a number of I/O cards are EC now). In all but the 17" Apple have dropped the Express Card slot.
 
Barry J. Anwender said:
Steve Jobs has hinted that Apple keeps hitting road-blocks that are preventing Blu-ray from becoming mainstream on personal computers. Behind that statement is Sony, one of the major Blu-ray stake holders with it's protectionist market agenda.
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And yet, every other major manufacturer has somehow unlocked the secret to dealing with Sony and Blu-Ray and can offer it on their laptops and desktops. So is Sony the problem or is Apple the problem?


Barry J. Anwender said:
Then Sony's SXS technology is proprietary which also goes against the grain of Apple's vision to use open standards. The PCExpress Card bus is open but Sony's SXS memory is totally closed.
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SxS is closed? How did JVC get it?


Barry J. Anwender said:
So at the end of the day, we can rag on Apple but I think there is more to this than meets the eye. It is more probable that Sony has shot itself in the foot with SXS which by the way still has not lived up to all the marketing spin of SXS providing us we cheaper memory prices. The Yen and global recession are also working against any hope of falling SXS prices.
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Have you CHECKED prices? Compare SxS prices against P2. What's even more entertaining is that Panasonic has been crying wolf since day one about how P2 was expensive to do, and they just couldn't do it any cheaper. Until Sony's SxS cards started seling like hotcakes with the EX series cameras. All of a sudden there's a "new" P2 technology that's price competitive.

As for protectionist, NO ONE does that better than Apple. You need only look as far as ProRes. Why on EARTH are they protective of a stupid codec that is native to their NLE? After all this time, you STILL cannot write to pro-res except from FCP. Not even it's sibling FCE can write to it. Not until Avid opened the door with DNxHD (a better codec in many respects) which works equally well on Mac and PC and they give away for FREE, did Apple relent and finally allow PC users to read ProRes. Let's not even talk about Apple refusing to implement any reader strategy for NTFS disks. So that every time a PC and Mac user need to share any files over 4GB, the disk MUST be Mac HFS formatted and the PC user has to bend to read and/or write the Mac format. The NTFS file structure hasa been available since the mid 90s. Apple just refuses to play. Meanwhile, with a copy of MacDrive 7 on my PC, I can read and write Mac disks like they are are native. Cost me $70.

Apple has some great things going for them, but there are some seriously arrogant pricks at the big table. I wonder if the joker who decided to pull the DVI connection off their cinema display's has been fired yet. What a crock that is. Only putting display ports on their premier display unit, when their NLE can't support more than a single display port. Essentially forcing editors to go to competitors displays if they want dual heads on their editing machines.

Vegas is getting better quickly. Avid is getting better quickly. FCP is getting long in the tooth. They are supposed to be dropping a 64 bit version "soon" but they're behind everyone else. I hope it's a killer app.
 
PerroneFord said:
Have you CHECKED prices? Compare SxS prices against P2.
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Have YOU checked prices? :evil:

B&H lists the following:
8GB SxS: $430, and 800mbps
16GB P2: $410, and 1200mbps

32GB SxS: $845, and 800mbps
32GB P2: $615, and 1200mbps

What's even more entertaining is that Panasonic has been crying wolf since day one about how P2 was expensive to do, and they just couldn't do it any cheaper. Until Sony's SxS cards started seling like hotcakes with the EX series cameras. All of a sudden there's a "new" P2 technology that's price competitive.
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Okay, a few things:
1) the original P2 technology is still priced like it was. You're trying to paint it that there's something dishonest going here. All you have to do is look at SSD drives and research MLC vs. SLC memory. There is plenty of evidence to show that what they said is happening, is exactly what is happening. At NAB I asked plenty of people about this, and the general vibe I got from them was "we didn't think anyone would want MLC, we engineered it all around SLC. Guess we were wrong on the demand for cheap cards." So they still offer the SLC cards for those who need them and want them engineered for that level of reliability, and for "the rest of us" they offer the shorter-lifespan MLC cards. It's a funny thing, how when you actually give people what they want, they tend to buy it... everybody was talking about the cheaper cards at NAB.

2) SxS cards are "selling like hotcakes"? Seriously? Do you have any statistics to back that up? I've talked to plenty of dealers, and the EX1 is trickling along, the EX3 is doing pretty well, but -- nobody talks about SxS cards. They're all talking about the adapters and the SD cards.

And this isn't being facetious, this is a serious question -- who's buying them? It sure isn't broadcast, with 75% of USA stations that have gone tapeless going P2, and 85% of Europe, and 95% of Asia. And of those stations that have gone XDCAM, most have gone disc. I haven't found a network or even a single TV station yet that's running on SxS. I imagine there must be some out there, but I haven't found any. So -- if it's not the networks, and it's not the stations, and it's not the end users (who are apparently running KxS with SD cards) then -- who's left to buy up SxS cards "like hotcakes"?

With (according to Panasonic) over 110,000 P2 units out there, being used at over 1,000 stations worldwide, and those customers being major networks like NBC, ABC, and Fox, it's customer demand, not phantom competition from SxS, that led to the introduction of the E series cards and the lower prices.

And yes, I agree 100% about Apple's attitude. Thing is, it's served them well for a long time, but -- well, we'll see if it continues to. Looks like there's quite a bit of backlash over the latest MBP changes.
 
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