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Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

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Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#151

Post by aaronblohowiak »

cbsmith wrote: post #102
icegreentea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt you can get the same performance out of a MacBook Pro. Professional media software (audio or video) takes a -lot- of power. Trying to run through a big multi-track synth setup would probably bring a MBP to it's knees. I mean for one thing, despite all the awesomeness that is Ivy-Bridge, I still do not think that Intel can cram in the same level of performance into a 35W chip that use to go into a 90W p…

> I really doubt you can get the same performance out of a MacBook Pro. Professional media software (audio or video) takes a -lot- of power. Trying to run through a big multi-track synth setup would probably bring a MBP to it's knees. With audio, it is seriously child's play. Compression is about as CPU intensive as you can get with audio outside of voice recognition, and it just isn't there. Video is mostly offloade…

> Compression is about as CPU intensive as you can get with audio outside of voice recognition

Highly polyphonic physical modeling synthesis is more CPU intensive than compression... then you start adding on many instances of complicated reverb effects, some effects that require fft/ifft passes, autotune, &on and on, all with realtime constraints (not to mention all of the copying of buffers and context-swapping that goes on with the way these systems are designed)... and you get a high-cpu monster pretty quickly.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#152

Post by huggyface »

brunorsini wrote: post #70

If you're into home recording (who isn't, these days?), this is a huge blow. When your Pro Tools/Cubase/Logic project has 40+ tracks of high resolution audio files and several high quality real-time plugins processing each one of them you really need a lot of CPU power. I purchased a Thunderbolt display just a couple of months ago. I wanted to use it with my Macbook Air while waiting for the Mac Pro to be updated, fe…

Cubase VST was doing 32 track audio flawlessly on Windows back in the late 90s on an original Pentium. Seriously weird seeing people demanding more power for audio work.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#153

Post by super_mario »

Bud wrote: post #38
forrestthewoods wrote: post #29

Our sound guy is PISSED at the lack of update. Seriously, incredibly pissed. I've honestly never seen him this angry before. He'd been counting down the days till WWDC and a long overdue update. There are three major pieces of software he uses on his Mac that he swears by. It sounds like they have all just released or are about to release Windows versions. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly…

Except there's not really a premium Windows platform to compete with the overall integration that a high-end Mac and Mac OS X offers. If you can get the same performance out of, say, the new MacBook Pro plus a couple Thunderbolt displays and a Thunderbolt RAID, the pros can just move in that direction. Notice that there was no iMac update at all today; Apple might be planning to release a new high-end iMac to better…

I have 2008, 8 times 2.8 GHz core, 32 GB of RAM Mac Pro with SSD for boot drive. That thing is still faster than latest and greatest 17'' Macbook Pro when it comes to doing actual work, like compiling, transcoding video etc (rather than running benchmarks, where newer CPU in the laptop gets about 15% higher score). And the Mac Pro does all this without breaking a sweat. The cooling solution in the large case with huge slow rotating fans means Mac Pro stays quiet and cool under serious multi-hour load.

17'' Macbook Pro gets all huffy and puffy after just a minute of actual work and stays pretty loud and too hot to hold on lap during entire compiling/transcoding session.

So, no currently, you can't replace Mac Pro with a laptop, nor with iMac (I have a couple of latest 27'' iMacs as well, and it's pretty much the same story).

I don't think this will change any time soon. The box size of Mac Pro will always be able to contain more cool, quiet computing power than any laptop.

True, not everyone needs this kind of computing power. It seems Apple's target audience most certainly does not. Majority of them need an appliance running on a phone/tablet it seems.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#154

Post by gdubs »

MBlume wrote: post #137
gdubs wrote: post #63

A souped-up iMac and some sort of thunderbolt 'bay' for expansion cards would serve the pro market, one would think. A large-scale touch display would be on the wish-list as well. That's my complete guess as to where they might be headed. I can't really imagine that Apple is unaware of how important the pro market is to their image, if not the bottom line. Consider the strong ties with Pixar – they must get constant…

Perhaps you should actually bet with OP then!

Haha. We need a Hacker News version of intrade: prediction markets for the speculative hacker.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#155

Post by betterth »

quanticle wrote: post #145
chao- wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Linux desktop user, I want to agree with you. As a Linux desktop user, I'm not sure that I can.

The real problem is that the most popular Linux distribution (Ubuntu) and one of the two most popular window managers (Gnome) are going in exactly the same direction as Apple and Windows. These two projects are so busy emulating what Apple and Windows do, they can't see that they're going to go right off the usability cliff for desktop users. That, more than anything either Apple or Microsoft does is what worries me…

As a strangely pertinent anecdote: I've been a Windows "poweruser" for a long time, and have never used much of Linux. I never had a real need for it. But I've been doing rails development lately and Windows kept getting in the way, and so many people are using OSX and I can't afford a Mac... so I tried Ubuntu.

I'm using 12.04, and it's the first significant amount of time I've used spent with Ubuntu. I can say that a month in, I'm digging it. It beats Windows for me in a number of ways but I actually like the level of ui polish -- it's smoother than Windows. (That and it renders fonts far better than Windows, for some reason).

Rails on Ubuntu is also far, far easier. Terminal beats every pretend version on Windows, rvm and bundler work the way they're supposed to, and I really like gedit more than Notepad++.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#156

Post by anigbrowl »

cbsmith wrote: post #102
icegreentea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt you can get the same performance out of a MacBook Pro. Professional media software (audio or video) takes a -lot- of power. Trying to run through a big multi-track synth setup would probably bring a MBP to it's knees. I mean for one thing, despite all the awesomeness that is Ivy-Bridge, I still do not think that Intel can cram in the same level of performance into a 35W chip that use to go into a 90W p…

> I really doubt you can get the same performance out of a MacBook Pro. Professional media software (audio or video) takes a -lot- of power. Trying to run through a big multi-track synth setup would probably bring a MBP to it's knees. With audio, it is seriously child's play. Compression is about as CPU intensive as you can get with audio outside of voice recognition, and it just isn't there. Video is mostly offloade…

With audio, it is seriously child's play. Compression is about as CPU intensive as you can get with audio outside of voice recognition, and it just isn't there.

No offense, but that's not even wrong.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#157

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

Well, if you are banking on OS X as your platform for scientific computing, it seems you have chosen very poorly. I still don't understand why an organization would choose Mac Pros for workstations. That seems to me to be a class of machines where price/performance is very important, and Apple hasn't been very competitive in that area.

I think Apple has done a pretty good thing today. They've politely signaled to the market that they want you to f' off and buy someone else's product in this segment, because you aren't worth the effort anymore.

The money is in iOS and the laptops. And you don't need more than an iMac to develop for iOS or the laptops, so they just can't be bothered to make a workstation anymore. If you are pissed off about this you should investigate Linux or Windows.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#158

Post by bronxbomber92 »

robomartin wrote: post #98

This illustrates the issue I highlighted in another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097141 The fact that Apple keeps hardware and, increasingly, software, so tightly controlled leads to a situation like that of this "new" Mac Pro. If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways. Performance would go up an…

If you want non-Apple hardware, go buy it. There's nothing stopping you (or anyone else) from doing so. I think Apple fills an obviously valuable niche (several niches, really) and I don't see any incentive for them to open up like you suggest. A lot of us do like to pay for design, reliability, and the end-to-end experience, and I'm glad there is a company like Apple to provide for customers like myself.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#159

Post by anigbrowl »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #55
blueprint wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To confirm, what kind of professionals are you talking about for whom a new Macbook Pro isn't going to be fast enough?

Video game audio. He does all of our audio work. Sound effects, voice over, music composition, etc. I asked him what audio he used and his answer was Pro Tools, Digital Performer, and Peak. He's got a super top of the line Mac Pro that's only 2 years old and he's been salivating at the prospect of an upgrade for a long time. He was extra pissed that the new machines don't even have Thunderbolt. He has many hundreds o…

Funnily enough, Peak has just become a dead product as BIAS are out of business: http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/06/bias-makers-of-peak-ce...
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