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Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

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Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#271

Post by pmarin »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #249
ktizo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They practically give away the results of their development costs on OSX. Most of the development was already done for them in the development of Open-BSD.

I really wish people would get over this meme. (1) You're thinking of FreeBSD. Not OpenBSD. A lot of the command line utilities Unix nerds would use in the terminal are ported from FreeBSD. (2) The kernel, Darwin, is NOT based on FreeBSD. Darwin is a direct descendant of NextStep, based on the Mach microkernel. (3) And pretty much all of the GUI and indeed the whole Cocoa API are also from Apple/Next. Not FreeBSD. Es…

(2) The kernel, Darwin, is NOT based on FreeBSD. Darwin is a direct descendant of NextStep, based on the Mach microkernel.

Darwin[1] is not the kernel, is the operating system. The kernel is called XNU[2] which was a combitation of a non microkernel version of Match with the 4.3BSD unix kernel interface. Apple remplaced the 4.3 BSD code with FreeBSD code[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU#BSD

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#272

Post by jiggy2011 »

rurounijones wrote: post #202
bombtrack wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just built a fairly powerful desktop hackintosh and I'm running OSX 10.7.3. The little bit of research that went into ensuring all the parts were compatible was well worth the cash savings.

Just to make a slight change: "I just build a fairly powerful desktop hackintosh and I'm running OSX 10.7.3 illegally" Now you might not care about the licensing restrictions on Mac operating systems (I don't) but saying "Oh you can just do this" when it is technically* breaking the law is not an alternative for many people. * Rather up in the air at the moment to be sure, but err on the side of caution

Your not breaking "the law" as nobody can come and arrest you for running OSX on your PC.

The worst that could happen is that Apple would try to sue you, but have there been any successful cases of this? End user being sued that is , not companies that were selling PCs with OSX on.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#273

Post by zokier »

petercooper wrote: post #92
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…

Is the future of professionals going to be Windows? Which itself is going super-consumery with Windows 8..

I believe that professionals are now excepted to skip every other version. Windows 7 is the new XP. I bet we will be seeing it for a long time.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#274

Post by zokier »

Osiris wrote: post #59

I'm curious, why is it not possible to buy pre-configured, off-the-shelf dual or quad CPU PC systems? I know that you can get dual CPU server motherboards and build your own system, but as far as I know no one sells a pre-built desktop system that looks anything like the Mac Pro (spec-wise). EDIT : Looks like I was mistaken. You can get high-end PC workstations.

HP has the Z-series of workstations. Z600 and Z800 are rather nifty (and pricy too).

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#275

Post by seclorum »

mathnode wrote: post #268
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…

Why is he pissed? I assume he has custom sound hardware anyway, what can't he do with the last gen Xeon he can with the latest gen Xeon? It's Xeons...in a box. Most editors (video/sound) would be provided with fibre storage links from an all-in-one vendor, whilst it might be nice to see thunderbolt on a mac pro, you can't put infiniband on an imac...

Audio folks like to have as much power as possible - it allows them to pile on plugin after plugin without much fuss.

Every bit of CPU power gained from an upgrade is promptly put to use in doing audio processing .. and I would imagine that this Audio guy is probably using Pro Tools or Logic, and has reached the ceiling for what he can do without upgrading to a faster CPU.

Fact is, Mac Pro's are no longer the really best solution for a high-end audio/studio situation - sure, they look good as furniture, but for the same price you can get 2x the number of plugins running on self-built hardware. This matters in the audio business.

(Disclaimer: My DAW is a Linux machine. It rocks. I also have a portable DAW: Macbook Pro. It also rocks.)

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#276

Post by speleding »

abruzzi wrote: post #19

I think there are two possible explanations: 1. Marco's pessimistic take that they are clearing through existing inventory in slightly reconfigured and cheaper machines. 2. grecy's comment here that they needed to keep people hooked while they get the real bump out the door. If the answer is 2, then they really can't wait too long. A few people will be satisfied that they can get 12 cores for $3800, but it's only a s…

Mountain Lion won't even be available for older MacPros, that speaks to answer 1

(my 2007 MacPro is still humming along nicely, I really can't see why Apple won't allow me to install their new OS on it, other than that they just want the whole line to disappear)

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#277

Post by rurounijones »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #272
rurounijones wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make a slight change: "I just build a fairly powerful desktop hackintosh and I'm running OSX 10.7.3 illegally" Now you might not care about the licensing restrictions on Mac operating systems (I don't) but saying "Oh you can just do this" when it is technically* breaking the law is not an alternative for many people. * Rather up in the air at the moment to be sure, but err on the side of caution

Your not breaking "the law" as nobody can come and arrest you for running OSX on your PC. The worst that could happen is that Apple would try to sue you, but have there been any successful cases of this? End user being sued that is , not companies that were selling PCs with OSX on.

You're breaking "the law" in that you are (in the US at least) violating the DMCA (Possibly, like I said, grey area).

Having said that, I am not interested in arguing pedantic semantics about about what constitutes "the law" and what "breaking" it entails.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#278

Post by jiggy2011 »

cageface wrote: post #141
cbsmith wrote: post #102

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. 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. Not true. Try running a really complicated Logic set with a lot of virtual instruments on a low-end machine and watch it grind to a halt. In the last year we've seen new virtual instruments that bring analog emulation to a new level but they can eat as much a…

This is true, there is still a gulf in performance requirements between something that needs to run a browser and angry birds and something that will be used for high end gaming (or game dev) and stuff like Music, CAD , Video creation.

Assuming that we can keep cranking the moore's law handle in one way or another people will always find a way to use that extra power even if the rate of return is somewhat logarithmic there is always a wow factor in something that is better even if only by a marginal amount.

The question I guess becomes how much of this can we move to the cloud? If the math for the virtual instruments in this example could be run inside a data centre and then streamed to the computer , perhaps some of the need for high end local hardware is alleviated.

Of course this will be cyclical , we move to a world where software is something that is paid for by the month and after a while of paying lots of different monthly fees for different apps somebody will start offering people a "local cloud" that will look like a great deal because you only pay once.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#279

Post by theEconomist »

tedunangst wrote: post #256
EvanKelly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. Any profit, however small, will exceed any savings you get. I guess maybe we have different assumptions about what "profit" means. I'm assuming that when someone refers to a line of products as profitable, they are taking into account all administrative costs as well.

The factory could be used to make other even more profitable widgets. The guy who writes hardware drivers for it could be writing drivers for some other next big thing. If you're offered the choice between a penny and a dollar, you choose the dollar, even if the penny is "all profit".

Youre talking about opportunity cost. Most definitions of profit account for opportunity cost. So that penny in all profit takes into account the dollar you are forgoing.
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