New Apple 12 core Mac Pro and iMac announced

edwinc said:
Good news for theimac27 inch users,it seems that this company had a way to add a esata port. Check this out!

http://blog.macsales.com/6374-owc-offers-first-ever-esata-interface-for-imac?APC=XLR8YourMac09
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I bet those 2010 imacs have 3 internal sata ports. $169? A sata to esata bracket is about $3.

Edit: Yes, there is a third SATA port. It looks like the typical 30cm bracket length is more than enough. Perhaps it needs to be an angled sata connector.

This is a bracket of this type:

http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/12-226-003-03.jpg

And this is the $169 turnkey solution:

http://blog.macsales.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/imacesata.jpg
 
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Cris Daniels said:
Enough with dodging Blu-Ray. Give it up, it is the HD standard and here to stay.
Click to expand...

Nothing in the video industry is 'here to stay.'

andythefilmer said:
I have the 27" i7... That thing can handle 4k in final cut no prob!
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Really? Hmmm.
You may just sway me, Andy.
I do need to seriously look at the iMac.
They definitely aren't the iMac of yesteryear.

I may want a Macpro...but I'm starting to realize I don't necessarily need it.
 
joker454 said:
Maybe this is a naive question, but if you are a professional who relies on video editing for your income, why would you buy a pre-configured box like this? Not sure I understand. Wouldn't you instead hand build one to your exact needs and specifications? I built a core i7 machine in 2009 exactly as I wanted it, I can't imagine just buying an off the shelf machine and using it for my income. As a bonus I took the money I saved and put it towards a better video camera. Maybe it's just me, but it seems really strange to just go off the shelf when it's for your main source of income.
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Yea, it's a naive question, if you work on any thing important in film / tv (not a little indie) you have to own a certified machine, not a home built. It's the way it is for a reason.
 
If SD DVD is still a very viable and common format, Blu-Ray isn't going to die any time soon. Apple's resistance to Blu-Ray is at the very least highly annoying from the perspective of all HD content creators.


From a company that prides itself in meeting the hardware and software tool needs of content creators, Jobs has made it clear that Blu-Ray support is an ego decision.
 
Blu ray will run about $169.00 as either an external or internal burner.

Encore CS5 and Toast 9/10 and Compressor 3.5 can author one offs without an issue.
 
The option to have eSATA is attractive for the new iMacs.

One thing I noticed on my wife's iMac is how hot it became.

I wonder if this affects motherboard longevity.
 
Luis Caffesse said:
Just caught this....
Nice.
:beer:
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I saw your Rant video on the front page of a big site a week or two ago, thought about emailing you but was limited on time. It was a major site, I was projecting a key note speech from the former VP of Apple (R&D) and saw it and smiled to myself. :thumbup: Your video was 4 or 5 away from his.
 
ChipG said:
Yea, it's a naive question, if you work on any thing important in film / tv (not a little indie) you have to own a certified machine, not a home built. It's the way it is for a reason.
Click to expand...

Certified - Shmerified.

Ha ! I saw certified machines crashing and drop like flies.

No way I would do something mission critical on a machine,
I haven`t build myself (or at least someone in whom I trust).

If my customer sees constant blue screens or beach balls, he don't gives a sh..t if the machine is certified.

Certified machines use the same - of the shelf - components that I can buy (thou I can buy the same components for a way better price)
There is no VooDoo Mumboo-Jumboo involved - you just gotta know your stuff.

1. Set your owns specs - what do you need, what do you want the machine to do.
2. Select your components wisely and make sure they are working together.
3. Overengineer everything especially RAM, housing and cooling
4. Hand massage your OS and install only the programs that are absolute necessary. Deinstall or disable any program, widget, gadget andwhatnot that you don't need for editing.
5. No firewall, anti virus program whatsoever
6. MOST IMPORTANT: No physical connection to the Internet.

Frank
 
Off the current topic, but I don't see on Apple's website anywhere that they will offer the Mac Pro tower with just the one 6 core processors. Options seem to be 4 core single, 4 core dual (8 core total) and 6 core dual (12 cores). I thought somebody mentioned the single 6 core (which is what I would want) but I don't see that it will be offered. Is that correct?
 
Postmaster said:
Certified - Shmerified.

Ha ! I saw certified machines crashing and drop like flies.

No way I would do something mission critical on a machine,
I haven`t build myself (or at least someone in whom I trust).

If my customer sees constant blue screens or beach balls, he don't gives a sh..t if the machine is certified.

Certified machines use the same - of the shelf - components that I can buy (thou I can buy the same components for a way better price)
There is no VooDoo Mumboo-Jumboo involved - you just gotta know your stuff.

1. Set your owns specs - what do you need, what do you want the machine to do.
2. Select your components wisely and make sure they are working together.
3. Overengineer everything especially RAM, housing and cooling
4. Hand massage your OS and install only the programs that are absolute necessary. Deinstall or disable any program, widget, gadget andwhatnot that you don't need for editing.
5. No firewall, anti virus program whatsoever
6. MOST IMPORTANT: No physical connection to the Internet.

Frank
Click to expand...

Frank, showing up to the set of a major network TV show with your custom built PC just doesn't fly in many cases, especially when you have to conform to workflows set in FCP land.
 
Michael Olsen said:
It's the only legitimate way to run Macintosh OS X. Thus, the only way to run Final Cut Studio, which is a rather popular NLE suite. Not to mention a number of other editing tools which are made only for the OS X platform.

Also, Apple owners get the benefits of customer service and warranty through a single supplier (Apple) rather than through individual component companies (i.e. Asus for the mainboard, Kingston for the RAM, Lite-On for the drive, etc.). There is also something to be said that the Mac Pros are, in many ways, "industry standard hardware". When I walk into a room and see an iMac or a Mac Pro, I know just what it is and how reliable I can expect it to be. When I walk into a room and see a custom built computer, I have no idea of knowing how well it may work*. The same holds true for clients.

Perhaps another reason is because people who really do some extremely expensive and mission-critical work - Post-houses, DIT companies, etc. - use "off-the-shelf" Macs, often augmented by a couple of PCI-Express cards and RAID solutions. In this way, they appear as very trustworthy solutions, whereas people may doubt the efficacy of something they built themselves.

*I say this with a great deal of experience building my own computers, which were always very reliable - more reliable than my family's "off-the-shelf" PCs. I know that custom PCs aren't inherently unreliable just because they are custom built.
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Thanks for the info. I guess different strokes for different folks. I do things a bit different because if I have a hardware failure say late Sunday night, I like to know that I can tear apart my machine and fix it on the spot with spare parts, then resume working immediately. Would be really creepy to have my business dead in the water having to wait for external support! But I guess if there is a perception issue like others say, like being viewed as a noob because you show up with hand built hardware, then you have no choice. I'm hyper paranoid about that I guess as I even have a spare quad core 18.5" laptop computer to do emergency render work in case the main one fails and I can't get it fixed asap, as well as an older spare quad core pc. Heck, I keep copies of all my footage in both magnetic and optical media at a bank vault as well, so I'm overly paranoid about downtime perhaps :) Then again it is my personal business so I really want to keep it running smooth. I suppose if you are an employee at a company then it's not as big of a deal.
 
joker454 said:
I do things a bit different because if I have a hardware failure say late Sunday night, I like to know that I can tear apart my machine and fix it on the spot with spare parts, then resume working immediately.
Click to expand...
Why wouldn't you be able to do that with a Mac Pro? I mean it's not like the desktop machines are locked up, and only Apple has the key to get inside to perform repairs.

One can train to be an Apple Certified Technician.
 
Well this has started to veer a bit from the intent of the OP

I for one am going to have a serious hard time deciding on a 6 core macpro or 8 core macpro or one of the i7 imacs

I've been waiting on replacing my long in the tooth 2.66 quad macpro for one of the new ones.

i like having lots of internal space but that 27 inch screen is sweet. i would love a macpro and cinema display but that would be out of my league.

I also work off external hard drives a lot so an imac would work fine for a lot of stuff i do (mostly wedding and event work) In fact internal or external there would never be enough hard drive space for me anyway. Which actually brings up an interesting thought which i kept having while reading this debate.

Isn't the need for a lot of the hardware centered horsepower going away. Things like fiber channel storage and specialized interface boards for hardware/software solutions getting pushed farther up market? to the point where the only people who need such things are not just working on big hollywood movies but doing the last few steps in the process on big hollywood movies (in workflows where 35mm is still being digitized and corrected from an offline/online world)
Didn't Avid dump all there hardware/software packages

And all i will say on the Mac vs PC front is this. i never had a PC running adobe premiere last more than 10 months (dedicated editing computers never hooked to the internet) and as i type this my dinosaur of a Quad core MacPro is chugging away with the latest software and the latest codecs 3 and a half years after i bought her. she has outlived easily 4 PCs and when i get a new one she is still going to be prepping my files and burning disks and managing my network. Every PC i ever had went to the scrapyard the day after it was replaced.
Macs are much more than the sum of their parts. crack open the side of a macpro and it is so obvious that a human being sat down and decided what should go in and what should be left out and where things should go and why.

And when things do go wrong (they are machines after all) you never have to listen to someone say "well we don't support that hardware/software."

my $.02
John
 
agcohn said:
Why wouldn't you be able to do that with a Mac Pro? I mean it's not like the desktop machines are locked up, and only Apple has the key to get inside to perform repairs.

One can train to be an Apple Certified Technician.
Click to expand...

But if you have the skill to tear apart and repair machines they why not just build a custom machine in the first place exactly as you want it and save a boat load of cash in the process? That's what puzzled me at first. But like another poster mentioned, in some places there is a stygma of being a noob unless you show up with a Mac so I guess people in that situation have no choice but to spend the cash. I hadn't thought about that. Plus for some reason I thought you could run FCP on pc hardware given that Mac and Pc hardware are so similar nowadays. For example I have friends that will by Mac hardware and install Windows 7 on it, I oddly thought the reverse was possible as well, my mistake :( I don't use FCP and my business partners could care less what hardware I use so I guess I'm more flexible in that regard. Note, I have no interest in turning this into a tiresome PC vs Mac debate, I was just genuinely curious why some are stuck spending $5k on a 12 core machine when I could build one for ~$2.5k. Makes more sense now so I'll step away...feel free to resume discussing the new machine.
 
joker454 said:
. But like another poster mentioned, in some places there is a stygma of being a noob unless you show up with a Mac so I guess people in that situation have no choice but to spend the cash.
Click to expand...

LOL... I always thought the opposite was true. Only noobs bought Macs because they couldn't or didn't want to build their own rigs, and wanted the "easy" way out.

Now it's not the case, because Macs have a purpose and Win 7 and OSX are so close for ease of use... It's not like it used to be.

That said I still would never buy a Mac... Well, unless... nope.. Never.
 
ChipG said:
I saw your Rant video on the front page of a big site a week or two ago, thought about emailing you but was limited on time. It was a major site, I was projecting a key note speech from the former VP of Apple (R&D) and saw it and smiled to myself. :thumbup: Your video was 4 or 5 away from his.
Click to expand...

Ha - cool.
Of course it would be a lot cooler if I knew which site it was.
:)


Now, in the interest of keeping this thread on topic - I just ran across this piece of info from OWC, which makes the new iMacs all the more tempting:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/turnkey/iMac_2010_27

Adding eSATA to an iMac would take it to a whole other level.
 
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