"Apple pushes the reset button on the Mac Pro"

I am both interested in what they will be coming out with but am also trying to move as far away from the Apple brand as work will let me.

I've already built myself an awesome editing PC at home. It's easy to upgrade the hardware, has lots of expandability, and was quite affordable compared to the equivalent Mac Pro. I was not happy with the Mac Pro tube design. It reminded me of the G4 Cube they came out with. Limited to no expandability, no way to change or upgrade the hardware, expensive. That's why I moved from my old silver beast of a MacPro to my new PC. But at work, everyone loves their Macs. I guess that's what happens when you work in the "creative" department. Everyone has to have a Mac. At least by the time the new MacPros are out, I should be in line for a machine upgrade. If I can't talk them into letting my build a PC, I'll try to at least get a semi-maxed out MacPro.
 
I like my MacPro. I've got it hooked up to two 4K monitors, three RAIDS, Sound Devices USBPre 2, Etc. It runs FCPX and the rest of the Apple software like a champ.
 
For me the single BEST thing on the new Mac Pro is how quiet it is.
I can record a quality voice over without any fan or hard drive noise, unlike when I had my liquid cooled Alienware Aurora.
 
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The new Mac Pro is a great machine but it was really designed and optimized around the Apple Pro apps. If one happens to be a FCPX, Motion or Logic user then it was a great machine to buy. Pretty much any other professional who used software not created by Apple only found the nMP to be an average computer. Fancy looking and an engineering masterpiece but there were always 100x better options for 3D animation, VFX, CAD, Adobe/Avid/Blackmagic Design post production work.

The nMP was too limited to fit the broad range of professional users and professional work required of a workstation. Apple now realizes this and will be going back to a modular design that doesn't assume one computer fits all for the professional user.
 
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^^^ That is the cleanest MP I have ever seen.... Mine has a minimum of 9 cables spilling out onto my desk.
Also, is it solar powered? :)
 
Yeah, one would have thought they had learnt the lesson with G4 Cube back in 2000...

The cylindrical Mac Pro would have been great if it was a headless iMac with beefed up GPUs at (i.e i7 cpu etc) at iMac prices... as a really high end machine it lacked the expand ability...
 
Well I am glad they have made the decision. I have used MacPros for years in my edit suites, but when the MacPro trash can came out I passed. I still have two older MacPro suites that run very well with both FCP7 and X and have paid for themselves many times over. In 2010 I built a Hackintosh monster which ran super well until last summer when for some reason the MB died. I now prefer working on my iMac though it too is getting long in the tooth. I suspect I will make it last until the new iMacs come out and see what they have to offer. But I am also going to build a box again as I am becoming VERY fond of BlackMagic's DaVinci Resolve as an edit platform and looking towards grading down the road. This build won't be a hackintosh however, I will just run win or linux on it since it will do nothing other than edit and cc. Will probably also go that route for my laptop too...
 
little bobby said:
I am both interested in what they will be coming out with but am also trying to move as far away from the Apple brand as work will let me.
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Same here. I saw the writing on the wall when Apple released FCPX. I jumped ship to Adobe and never looked back. About 16 months ago I transitioned from my 2010 Mac Pro to an over-clocked PC that has twice the processing power and half the cost of the top tier 2013 MP. And I'm about to upgrade to those new Nvidia GTX 1080Ti cards for even better performance. Try doing that with a trashcan from 2013.

Apple's focus is mostly on consumers these days (iPhones & Services account for more than 80% of their revenue). Their Mac sales (only 10% of their revenue) is targeted towards the kind of professional who can get by on an iMac. For those professionals who need modern CPUs (dual CPUs anyone?), fast RAM, Nvidia GPUs in SLI, and ability to upgrade the choice is clear.
 
Benjobe said:
Apple's focus is mostly on consumers these days (iPhones & Services account for more than 80% of their revenue)…
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Guess what? That is what the world looks like. There are many bread munchers per baker. Many passengers per pilot. Many comic book readers per artist. Many citizens per politician.

As I'm sure you understand, that list could go on and on and on. There will ALWAYS be MANY more consumer device users than professional tool users. It's just the way it is. It in itself says nothing about if Apple cares about pros, or not. As long as Apple makes stuff for both categories, they will always produce much more 'stuff' for (and generate income from) consumer devices.
 
Benjobe said:
Same here. I saw the writing on the wall when Apple released FCPX. I jumped ship to Adobe and never looked back.
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Funny. FCPX was what made me decide to get into video work professionally... There was finally an NLE that was exciting to use.
I'm moving away from Adobe... have replaced Photoshop and Illustrator with Affinity Photo and Designer...
 
I am glad to hear this, but maybe if they had listened better to begin with. It's a fine line between Henry Ford "people don't know what they want until you show them" and being tone deaf to what pros need and use.

Shocker... pros want a modular computer that they can self upgrade because they often need (or at least want) to be on the cutting edge... welcome to 1984. Welcome to the original Mac Pro design.

About 10 years ago Mac for pro use was awesome. FCP 7 was cutting edge and OSX destroyed Windows Vista. Today with Premiere CC 2017, Windows 10, and all the hardware innovation that Apple spurred in the PC market, it's hard not to yawn at this. Perfectly happy with my already modular, headache free Windows 10 PC based rig.

Until Apple can really do something special again on both the hardware and software front, when it comes to utilitarian professional use, Mac offers more limitations for a higher price.
 
Article from 2011, but still true today:

http://www.onerivermedia.com/blog/is-the-trust-for-apple-gone-for-good/

"The writing was on the wall for some time actually, but myself, like many others didn’t see it coming—at least not this badly. Let’s go back a few years. Apple’s acquisition of Shake from Nothing Real was huge, and ultimately sold under the Apple Store for a mere $499 (original price was $9900 prior to the Apple buy-out). People, myself included, felt that Apple was really getting serious about post-production based software. The excitement was huge and people (large companies included) really started to take notice. But by 2009, Shake was quietly removed from Apple’s line-up and officially EOL’ed (End-Of-Life).

his really should have been the first hint that Apple didn’t have a huge interest in the pro apps market. Why they initially bought them out in the first place, I do not know. Even worse, why they EOL’ed an awesome app like Shake is even more strange to me. It’s as if Apple became the black hole of pro apps software—they buy it and kill it.

But Shake isn’t the only app gone astray. It seems that with the FCPX release, Color is now the next major pro app to hit the chopping block. I received an NFR (Not For Resale) copy of Final Touch HD directly from Silicon Color (along with some control surface hardware that I still have today) before Apple bought Final Touch out and renamed it to Color. First using Final Touch HD, my mind was blown, despite the fact that, at the time, the software was in dire need of video card hardware acceleration (which later came about). But like Shake, Apple bought it, and “chopping-blocked” it.

hall I go on? How about Cinema Tools… Originally developed by my old friends at DigitalFilm Tree under the application name of FilmLogic. If EOL’ed, how will FCPX work with telecine? Oh that’s right, there is no more telecine because it’s not the next wave of the future (sarcasm).

DVD Studio Pro? Bought and gone from Astarte. Next.

Final Cut Server? Eeeeeesh.

QuickTime Player 10 is even a pile, compared to QuickTime Player 7. I outline it here in a blog post I coincidently wrote hours before the release of FCPX.

Soundtrack pro has been reported that it might be integrated into Apple’s Logic Studio. But beware, although Logic is still alive, this too was an app originally bought out by Emagic, and it too, like FCPX, has been simplified down to a degree. At any rate, Soundtrack Pro is nowhere to be seen as a stand-alone, and the current state of Logic Studio is making people scratch their head.

Seeing the trend here? Seems like Apple’s best pro apps were bought out by other companies, only to be ultimately killed in the end; again, the black hole syndrome."

Tombstones.jpg
 
Yeah, ouch. I remember being excited about those software acquisitions when I had faith in Apple's Pro software division. Sad to think all of those programs would have been endlessly better off left in the original companies hands, or purchased by Adobe. So much code and work down the drain. At least they could have sold the software elsewhere.
 
Benjobe said:
And I'm about to upgrade to those new Nvidia GTX 1080Ti cards for even better performance. Try doing that with a trashcan from 2013.
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As soon as I can find the ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme in stock somewhere, I'll be picking it up. Nothing like an over-clocked GPU to make your processor be the bottle-neck :cheesy:

If Apple can forge new relationships with other hardware makers and make it easier to install upgraded GPUs, RAM, and pcie cards, then I would definitely take a closer look for the replacing the office machine with a new macpro. But having to flash the firmware on a graphics card to make it work with a Mac is a task to take lightly. I understand why they like their closed hardware model, but it severely limits those in the market that only want to upgrade their components and not an entire machine.
 
Being that Apple currently solders the hard drive and the ram onto the MBPro motherboard, I would be floored if they made anything on the new Mac "Pro" user upgradable.
 
I picture them making upgrade slots or cartridges, IE slide a GPU that looks like an external HDD into a slotted port on the side of the computer. Same with RAM and HDDs. Sort of a quasi mix between internal & external. Just guessing here, but seems like something they would do. Making it truly plug & play easy for people scared of GPUs and upgrade cards that look bare and full of circuitry.

I think that could work fine for them, so long as the cartridges can be opened by the user and have anything put into them in case a manufacture is slow to release their pre-packaged "Apple Cartridge" version.

But yeah, I don't picture Apple just making an old style Mac Pro with the ease of upgrade of a custom built PC, especially given their statement of how they are "still hard at work on this" and need more time. Even though the irony is that most Pro's want just that.

Really, all an Intel based Mac is is just a home built PC using good parts that has a TPM chip on the motherboard. Home-built Hackintoshes that bypass the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) are almost the perfect Mac except for the problems you can hit when trying to do software or hardware upgrades.
 
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