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Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

engadget.com

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Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#61

Post by davidcuddeback »

jordache wrote: post #47
bolololo1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is not the main point of his comment.

sure it is.. it's all under the sentiment of Macs not producing products with performance parity with PCs.. What's wrong with just using a high-end windows laptop for field? Is that gap in the laptop space that big that warrants dealing with two distinct platforms that do not work well together?

He's most likely using the laptop for capturing photos (possibly tethered capture), and doing post-processing on the PC. Post-processing is what requires high performance hardware. It's also likely that he already had the Macbook and didn't feel the need to replace it at the same time.

I'm in the same boat, as it turns out. I switched from macOS to Windows for post-processing this summer, but I still have my Macbook for image capture and driving a telescope in the field.

Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#62

Post by fhood »

jzymbaluk wrote: post #56
xedarius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and have taken time to build a PC recently, after living in Mac world for 10 years. The hardware you can get is quite amazing (this is what I built https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/6FXPxr ). Everything works and it's rock solid, it's also very quiet (something a lot PC users aren't so concerned about). Windows however I'm finding a lot harder to get on with. Windows 4K support is awful. So many broken and blurry…

Maybe I'm snowblind to it because I've been using Windows for so long now, but what are some examples of "awful" 4k support on Windows? I have a 15 inch 4k laptop and have been fairly pleased with the high DPI support Edit: Also, that's a rad build!

4k support on Windows 10 is ok. Most major applications work but there are little things, like my home screen photo last night wasn't high enough resolution. For me they aren't usually a big deal, but coming from the Mac ecosystem you definitely notice them

Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#63

Post by jawngee »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #53
jawngee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you wait a few days. The hackintosh community is very active. Also, at this point, the things that would brick you in the past are no longer applicable with a modern hackintosh.

> That's why you wait a few days. The hackintosh community is very active. That may be fine for a home user, but if my livelyhood was dependent on this machine I'd rather buy something less hacked together and with actual support options. This is not about wether or not it will actually work, it's about liability.

I depend on this machine to pay my rent, keep the lights on, keep insulin in my kid, keep us all fed.

If this machine bites the dust, I swap out the part or I restore from Time Machine. At least with this machine, I have the option of swapping out the part.

It's not some mystical black box. These are standard PC parts that are supported by macOS. I think I only use two kexts that aren't shipped with macOS to get to 100%.

Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#64

Post by xedarius »

jzymbaluk wrote: post #56
xedarius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and have taken time to build a PC recently, after living in Mac world for 10 years. The hardware you can get is quite amazing (this is what I built https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/6FXPxr ). Everything works and it's rock solid, it's also very quiet (something a lot PC users aren't so concerned about). Windows however I'm finding a lot harder to get on with. Windows 4K support is awful. So many broken and blurry…

Maybe I'm snowblind to it because I've been using Windows for so long now, but what are some examples of "awful" 4k support on Windows? I have a 15 inch 4k laptop and have been fairly pleased with the high DPI support Edit: Also, that's a rad build!

There's quite a bit. The services dialog is blurry. The dialog that details the network devices is blurry. I have an ongoing battle with IntelliJ and PyCharm, fonts are all broken.

Steam is totally broken, not to mention the games. I got QuakeLive (best bit about being back on Windows). Quake was all broken (rendered at twice the DPI), I had to find the shortcut and disable Application Scaling (wtf?).

I could go on.

Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#65

Post by jbob2000 »

leetrout wrote: post #2

> ... it might hit the sweet spot for studios that need a powerful desktop they can easily carry to the set. That's an interesting idea. I loved my imac for portability while travelling to a "fixed location". I still have my iMac from 2011 with the box and foam it came in and with the carrying handle it makes it super easy to securely pack up and move. I was about to comment that this really is too litte, too late, f…

> ... it might hit the sweet spot for studios that need a powerful desktop they can easily carry to the set.

I've met a couple of Data Grips before (the guys who manage all the digital files on set). First, these guys are hired on contract and they usually need to have some of their own equipment. And second, they all use macbook pros... and stacks upon stacks of hard drives. The macbook is their personal computer that they use for all their jobs and carry around in backpack. The hard drive arrays are owned by the production company and are kept in sturdy boxes on wheels so they can be moved around the set easily and locked up at night.

It's a joke to think that data grips are going to buy a desktop computer and lug it around everywhere. You don't do any editing on set, just store the video and edit it in the shop. The on set computers are just throughputs to the hard drive arrays. Even in the shop, the rendering isn't done on the computers you do the editing on. The production company probably doesn't even do the final rendering, they'll just ship off the uncompressed files to a post-production company to handle all that.

Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#66

Post by fhood »

shams93 wrote: post #36
anilshanbhag wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't portability is the main point. If you work on a desktop all the time and want a Mac, you get an iMac. Price is high but its a small cost for a developer who will work on it for multiple years. Re: Price - when I saw the Iphone priced at $1k, I thought it was very expensive but they still sold like hot cakes.

If you're a developer you could build a smoking linux development box from a intel NUC for under $500.

I agree you can do it for cheap, but 500 is unlikely to get me the level of RAM I need.

Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#67

Post by matthew-wegner »

Gaelan wrote: post #50
matthew-wegner wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not. macOS has no DRM, but that could change at some point. Information on changes for updates come quickly, and it's pretty standard practice to clone your boot drive before major updates. In a worst-case scenario, you just stay on a version of macOS until it makes more sense to use that same hardware for a Windows/whatever OS change.

Not true IIRC. Several OS components are decrypted at runtime by “Don’t Steal Mac OS X.kext”. Not very effective, of course.

I'm aware of DSMOS, but as yet it doesn't do any verification of anything before decryption. Also, the actual key used is simply "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)AppleComputerInc". To virtualize OSX/macOS on hypervisors that don't natively support Mac, you have to pass this in yourself.

Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#68

Post by hungerstrike »

xedarius wrote: post #64
jzymbaluk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm snowblind to it because I've been using Windows for so long now, but what are some examples of "awful" 4k support on Windows? I have a 15 inch 4k laptop and have been fairly pleased with the high DPI support Edit: Also, that's a rad build!

There's quite a bit. The services dialog is blurry. The dialog that details the network devices is blurry. I have an ongoing battle with IntelliJ and PyCharm, fonts are all broken. Steam is totally broken, not to mention the games. I got QuakeLive (best bit about being back on Windows). Quake was all broken (rendered at twice the DPI), I had to find the shortcut and disable Application Scaling (wtf?). I could go on.

> The services dialog is blurry.

Not doubting you, but I just opened it and it's not blurry on my 4k monitor. To be clear, I hit Start, typed Services and pressed ENTER when I saw the Services desktop app. (Another way to open it would be to hit Win+R and type: services.msc)

> I have an ongoing battle with IntelliJ and PyCharm, fonts are all broken.

Sounds like a JetBrains problem. What's broken with them anyway?

> I had to find the shortcut and disable Application Scaling (wtf?).

That's called learning how to use a new OS. Also, I can't imagine that you have more complaints about games on Windows than you would on a Mac where there hardly are any games to begin with, are only half-supported or in perma-beta.

As a Mac and Windows user of over 20 years, I feel that Windows is generally more flexible; you can make it do exactly what you want way more often than with the Macintosh OS. Things are simpler on the Mac, but that comes at the price of inflexibility.

Re: Apple iMac Pro goes on sale December 14th

#70

Post by rbanffy »

thinkythought wrote: post #59
rbanffy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to rendering farms? When I did 3D (3D Studio DOS, long time ago) I had a couple beefy rendering slaves. My desktop was not even the fastest machine on the group - it just happened to have a better graphics card (a Matrox one IIRC). If I had to do it now, I'd have an iMac on my desk (because the screen is so incredibly awesome) and a bunch of Dells (or custom built) boxes on a rack at the other end of a…

I looked into this recently and a lot of apps mentioned here, like premiere, don't even support offloaded rendering now Yes, seriously

> Yes, seriously

With all the cloud offerings available, this is very fucked up. I can pretty summon a Top 500 cluster in minutes and can't use it to render my 30-second spot in 8K HDR for downscaling into broadcast...

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