Apple dumps Intel and shows Final Cut Pro on new Mac with Apple CPU !

Thanks guys. Yeah I know it should be fine. You probably know there always a big emotional component to these big purchases. I'm excited for a new computer but I also try to temper my enthusiasm. It's not like my life is going to change after I get it, so I try to keep things in perspective. Even though my current mac is old. It has served me well. Besides hardware rarely holds you back, you're ability, creativity, and drive are more important.
 
Computer hardware always holds you back if you need more power and speed for what you do...if you'd try to open Blender or Maya with your PowerMac it probably would start smoking.
 
Normally I'd agree with you, Peter, but actually I think this upgrade may save you time while improving your work quality and experience. Because dealing with dropped frames and rendering is such a buzzkill and a roadblock to creativity
 
Holy 2009 power Mac... usually I’d say a computer upgrade won’t change your life, but uh, a computer upgrade will change your life. You have no idea what you’re missing if you’re using that thing to work everyday.
 
filmguy123 said:
Holy 2009 power Mac... usually I’d say a computer upgrade won’t change your life, but uh, a computer upgrade will change your life. You have no idea what you’re missing if you’re using that thing to work everyday.
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My laptop is a 2011 MBP. I stopped editing on it years ago, it's fine for web browsing, email and writing on Word. But year, 2009, that's pretty old.
 
Come on now you’re making me feel bad. I almost exclusively work in 1080p and surprisingly still delivered most of my dance recitals and musicals in standard def because that’s what people wanted. I’m not denying it’s going to be a big upgrade.
 
Peter C. said:
Come on now you’re making me feel bad. I almost exclusively work in 1080p and surprisingly still delivered most of my dance recitals and musicals in standard def because that’s what people wanted. I’m not denying it’s going to be a big upgrade.
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I find a LOT of stuff is still 1080p.

I seem to recall as stat (2019 or 2020) that said over 60% of Broadcast TV was still SD and most of the HD was 720 not 1080. Also over 50% of residential broadband is not up to streaming 4K.... at least not if the majority of users tried to stream 4K at the same time. It is unclear if it was the internet or Netflix that had a similar problem due to contention rations when Netflix said it would throttle it's 4K streams to 1080 during the COVID pandemic and Netflix usage shot up.

So the majority of the world can only just do 1080 let alone 4K.

Then there is the reality that modern TV's can do very good upscaling from 1080p to 4K so humans, at normal viewing distances can't notice the difference. On small screens i.e. phones and tablets, laptops it is irrelevant as they are too small to see the difference anyway.
 
Sorry Peter, not trying to make you feel bad at all, that was intended as more of an encouragement. A $1000-$1500 computer today is likely going to be a quantum leap in performance compared to even a $10,000 computer a decade ago. I just upgraded from an extreme top-tier 2012 build and I am floored by the performance difference. Things I thought were "fine" before... well, I had no idea how much a difference it would make in regards to responsiveness. Micro stutters, slight lag on menus, etc. Not just in heavy lifting tasks but in the simple everyday things.

The encouragement here goes beyond kicks and giggles. As someone else pointed out, it really makes a marked difference in work. I can't tell you much clearer I think and how much faster I work - and how much easier it is to get into the creative/productive flow - when the computer just gets out of the way without any pause, delay, or distraction. If you are only using the computer a few hours a week here and there for low key stuff, maybe it can go another couple years. But if you are actually spending any significant, regular hours on the computer and generating real money, it's a no brainer to upgrade within the next 12 months.

There is always, always, always something better and faster right around the corner. That doesn't mean there aren't optimal times/cycles to purchase on, it's just that they can be rather difficult (if not impossible) to predict in advance. I do think it might be worth waiting 6 months for the next M1 releases from Apple if you want a powerful Apple desktop or mobile machine, but I'd say you're well (well!) past due to treat yourself to an upgrade. If you use your computer much, it will likely impact you in a more significant way on the day to day than you might suspect. There was a lot of CPU advancement from 2008-2012, and you're on the early end of that cycle. Things slowed for a while, but horsepower has more than doubled again from 2012 to today. Jumping to a CPU over 4x faster, with the benefit of a SSD drive, faster GPU, etc. is a tangible difference in user experience that numbers can't capture. It's something like going from an older, noisy, roughly running carbonated engine with a lot of vibration that pulls 0-60 in 10 seconds to a lightweight, all electric tesla that hits 0-60 in 2 seconds. It's a quantum shift in not just benchmarked raw numbers, but in "feel" - even for basic tasks. Sure, maybe if funds are tight in a pandemic and you drive 3,000 miles a year... but if you make a living driving... even a used entry level tesla would be a quantum shift.

My 2 cents - budget now for a 2021 upgrade to an M1 16" MBP with external monitor, or an M1 iMac. Or an AMD Ryzen 5000 series PC Build if you'd prefer that direction (puget systems makes great premade PC workstations for a very reasonable markup over DIY).
 
puredrifting said:
My laptop is a 2011 MBP. I stopped editing on it years ago, it's fine for web browsing, email and writing on Word. But year, 2009, that's pretty old.
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Yeah, I'm still kicking a late 2013 MBP for my mobile machine! And just upgraded this month from a 2012 desktop. I like to get long life from gear investments and upgrade when really needed as well. There's always something new and shiny... but man has computing gotten faster since 2009 between all of the CPU/GPU/SSD advancements.
 
filmguy123 said:
Yeah, I'm still kicking a late 2013 MBP for my mobile machine! And just upgraded this month from a 2012 desktop. I like to get long life from gear investments and upgrade when really needed as well. There's always something new and shiny... but man has computing gotten faster since 2009 between all of the CPU/GPU/SSD advancements.
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Just sold my two intel iMacs and ordered an M1 mac mini 16GB RAM, delivery in 2-3 weeks from Apple. Still have an old 2012 MBP and 2 dinosaur Macpros, first-gen Xeon and a Powermac G5, both still work but no resale market.
 
My only concern so far was that most of the major FCPX plugin vendors except motionvfx hadn't ported their plugins to M1/silicon. Apple didn't add the checkbox in FCPX to run it Rosetta2. But some clever guys found out how to do that:

Apply this command in the terminal and FCP will open in Rosetta2 but only ONCE. Next time you would need to execute the command again.

To launch Final Cut Pro:
screen -d -m arch -x86_64 "/Applications/Final Cut Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/Final Cut Pro"

To launch Motion:
screen -d -m arch -x86_64 "/Applications/Motion.app/Contents/MacOS/Motion”

(it's on your own risk!)

FCP in Rosetta2 isn't that slow as I would have expected. Fine for me to check footage on location.
 
I shall keep all informed on both delivery dates and performance.

My 2011 iMac was a maxed-out beast i7, 3.4Ghz, 16Gb RAM, SSD, 2GB graphics card etc. It could still edit 4k but the OS was Catalina and some of the newer software plugins required Big Sur.
My second machine an eBay special, again a high spec i7, 1 TB SSD, 4GB graphics etc...well it was noticeably faster but the fans came on at every opportunity, a noisy beast but faster. But nothing to write home about. It ran Big Sur but it was the oldest machine Big Sur would run on.

My observations will be subjective as I never timed any projects but they still lurk on my Raid and I will see how the M1 performs.
 
traded in my 2011 17" MBP with 16GB of ram and a 2012 i7 27" iMac 24 GB with 680MX GPU and picked up a base M1 MBA. I was concerned about only having 8 GB of ram and only the 7 core GPU but this thing is a beast. No regrets at all and it weighs a fraction of what the 17" MBP weighed and faster is almost every possible way. Really is a great portable machine that runs on battery forever.

Decoded not to get the base MBP to save $300. I find the battery on the MBA already great and I don't need the extra 100 nits of brightness. I also prefer real function keys to the Touch Bar and the keyboard is more comfortable with the smaller front of the laptop. Plus I love the concept of a fanless design.

Resolve and Braw are a bit weak but it handles 4k so far fairly well. Well enough to use in the field for a rough cut. FCPX is insanely amazing on this thing. It should be illegal how good this $899 MBA is for editing 4k video in FCPX.

I don't use Adobe anymore but I do use all the Affinity apps which are native and work perfectly and super fast and snappy. Even Sketch which I use for some UX designs is now native and works 100% beautifully.

In fact there are only a few apps that are not native for me. A few command line software development tools which are single threaded and even under Rosetta run faster than any other Mac I have. Blender which renders with the CPU with Rosetta just as fast as my 6 core i7 Intel Mac Mini and a few other software development tools which so far run perfectly fine under Rosetta.

My BMD Intensity drivers do not work yet with the M1. The beta for the video capture device drivers doesn't support many devices yet. I'm sure that will get fixed soon.

I don't use many plugins for FCPX so I have not tried any yet but so far I have run into very little to no compatibility issues.

I do kind of miss bootcamp and being able to use my eGPU but oh well. Not enough so to ever want to use Intel ever again. Apple Silicon is amazing and I think has a bright future for Apple. Even if alternatives might out perform the systems its amazing what can be done with very little power usage. While a desktop workstation might be ok with huge power draws I see very little reason going forward to not use a Arm based laptop.
 
Makes sense...but if you're shopping at B&H keep in mind not to only look at the Thunderbolt 3 section if you're open to using Displayport/USB-C options and/or adapters which would save you hundreds (like TB <--> HDMI).
 
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