Apples M2 looks like a beast.

idiomatic · Sep 3, 2022

UnknownSouljer said:
I would say that's a pretty uniformed statement.
Apple works at a pretty high level in certain industries.

ProRes as an example is used in every single top cinema camera in Hollywood, whether discussing ARRI, RED, Sony, Panasonic, etc. It's known to be one of the best compressed formats ever created; it has very easy playback (especially while editing multi-track), All-Intra, excellent compression, and zero generational loss. Most of those features other formats like h.265 and h.264, as an example, don't have. If something isn't shot on some form of propretary RAW in Hollywood, it's nearly a 100% chance that it's shot on ProRes. And I'll note that most of the time RAW isn't used except on things that are particularly high budget. I would say in general I see 12-bit ProRes 4444 being used way more often than ARRIRAW.

In the audio and recording industry, Logic is still one of the top NLE's (NLE's are mostly about user choice and also about genre. FL Studio, ProTools, and Ableton also all being popular with I would say a majority of users using Macs to run). Which has been used to record, and mix countless albums and also used as the back end to mix films and shows.

The Mac Pro is for no one else other than professionals. How many casual users spend $6000 starting on a machine (up to $80k)? Or $5000 on a display? No one is buying a $4000 Mac Studio to work in iMovie, or as DukeNukemX brings up constantly: "to play games". This hardware is very specifically targeted at editing and grading houses, and VFX/SFX devs.
There are plenty of other people that use the CPU and graphical performance with MacOS software to do plenty of other things that don't necessarily relate to the Audio/Visual realm - that's just the industry I'm in and know best. But chances are whatever your favorite music is and whatever shows and movies you like were all edited on a Mac.

I was there when Apple stopped going to NAB, when they pulled FCP 7 *off the shelves* when they killed their servers and broadcast storage. FCP Server. Shake. Color. The 17" Macbook. When the new Mac Pro was the trashcan. When Apps stopped going full screen across multiple displays. When they made Nvidia the bastard child. When the iMacs stopped supporting jumbo frames on their NICs. When they straight refused to acknowledge 10 Bit displays for a decade.

ProRes pre-dates their turn against Pro's. In all the channels I have built systems and workflows for nobody has used ProRes except for dallies because its way to hard to render to it. And everyone's using RAW all over the place. Who the hell is buying a Mac Pro to edit on in 2022? If you build an Apple shop you are just begging to get your knees shot out. Again.

Apple is coasting on people who are die hards. The type who paid for the rack mounts for the trashcans.

Come on dude. There is a reason we all bench test in Resolve instead of FCP X.

UnknownSouljer · Sep 3, 2022

LukeTbk said:
If we like big budget it is more likely to have been on a Mac than on an Avid machine ? Until very recently it was a major deal when a studio affair was not on Avid no ? It changed that fast ?

Avid is a software company and is still one of the major players.
https://www.avid.com/
I’m not sure what you’re specifically referring to. AVID is the company and they make specific software. Media Composer is still used a lot on TV Shows and films, but again this is all done on Mac.

ProTools was the top audio NLE for a long time that did require proprietary hardware to work, but that’s in regards to audio interfaces, not “PC hardware”.

UnknownSouljer · Sep 3, 2022

idiomatic said:
I was there when Apple stopped going to NAB,

Who cares?

idiomatic said:
when they pulled FCP 7 *off the shelves*

Killing off FCP7 prematurely without developing software that had at least the same feature levels was definitely a mistake. Now this far in the future though, FCPX is definitely better software. It just took 10 years to get here.

idiomatic said:
when they killed their servers and broadcast storage.

Read articles about their servers. They had near zero market penetration and made a decision that they didn’t really want to be in the server support game. For the industries they serve it didn’t make sense anyway.

idiomatic said:
FCP Server.

Wasn't necessary.

idiomatic said:
Shake. Color.

Getting out of non-core areas to focus on core is done by every company on the planet.

Apple getting out of all this specialized software was a tipping point. They either needed to execute on Pro Apps to the level that businesses that only focus on this as their core business, at the time namely Media Composer, and Adobe Premiere - were doing vs creating the environment to allow those industries to thrive was likely a very wise choice in the long run.

Shake as an example has left now allowing for other players such as Nuke, Blender, Fusion, and Cineon. The industry has moved on, Apple didn't and doesn't need to make compositing software.

Half of your complaints is that Apple should be doing everything on Mac, when that isn't the expectation for Microsoft on Windows, or for any dev on Linux. It's not as if Microsoft needs to make banking and medical software. It just needs to make an environment palatable to those industries. Which is precisely what Apple has done.

idiomatic said:
The 17" Macbook.

Was killed because users preferred other hardware. The 17” in particular because everyone bought the 15” instead. Even in the PC space, 17" machines are niche.
Given the option now, I much prefer the 14" MBP over the 16", especially since now they have exactly the same internal hardware.

idiomatic said:
When the new Mac Pro was the trashcan.

The trash can was built out of customers needs, not Apple. They recognized that most users, including pros, attached all upgrades externally. So they developed a system that would be as small as possible with the fastest external interface possible. This isn’t to say it wasn’t a miss-step as they wildly miss calculated how much heat future processors and video cards would produce. It’s obviously been rectified by the 2019 Mac Pro, so how is this even a complaint about Apple today?

idiomatic said:
When Apps stopped going full screen across multiple displays.

Not sure what this is about. I do multi while editing all the time.

idiomatic said:
When they made Nvidia the bastard child.

Nvidia made their own bed. And they’re the known dicks of the industry.

idiomatic said:
When the iMacs stopped supporting jumbo frames on their NICs.

This I know less about.

idiomatic said:
When they straight refused to acknowledge 10 Bit displays for a decade.

As far as I can tell, and I’ve been on Mac for 10 years, they’ve better supported 10-bit displays than PC. PC it’s still a cluster. Again what’s the point of looking at the previous space when it’s not even the current space?

idiomatic said:
ProRes pre-dates their turn against Pro's.

All of this discussion you've presented "pre-dates" the current state of Mac... Literally everything in here is around a 10 year old complaint. With I suppose the only exception being the 2013 Mac Pro, which is slightly less.
In context to our discussion, ProRes was made in 2007 and 12-bit ProRes in 2014. Basically during the time in which you have considered Apple to of turned against Pros. It can't be both ways.

idiomatic said:
In all the channels I have built systems and workflows for nobody has used ProRes except for dallies because its way to hard to render to it.

It’s incredibly easy to render to ProRes. One of the easiest in fact because it’s much lower compression than either h.264 or h.265 as an example. That’s one of its features. It is by nature not resource intensive.

Its used for dailies precisely for that reason. It can be rendered quickly and easily in either full resolution or a proxy format perfectly without generational loss. It’s also the most common movie delivery format. If you’re watching a movie in a theater it’s more likely than not ProRes.

idiomatic said:
And everyone's using RAW all over the place.

They really aren’t unless they have the budget to store it and the time in terms of protracted workflow to grade it and work with it. RED RAW, takes way more system resources for basic things like playback than ProRes. Let alone multi-track.

idiomatic said:
Who the hell is buying a Mac Pro to edit on in 2022? If you build an Apple shop you are just begging to get your knees shot out. Again.

Everyone in Hollywood.

idiomatic said:
Apple is coasting on people who are die hards. The type who paid for the rack mounts for the trashcans.

Statistically that isn’t true. As has been discussed in this thread a huge number of new buyers are coming to Mac due to the M1. The number of buyers of Macs are increasing not decreasing since the 2013 Mac Pro. If you’re going to make broad statements, at least make ones that are verifiable.

idiomatic said:
Come on dude. There is a reason we all bench test in Resolve instead of FCP X.

I use Resolve personally. But it’s still on a Mac.
FCPX is still a reasonable NLE to use. It’s what MKBHD uses to edit all his YouTube content and the channel “This Guy Edits” uses specifically FCPX because it is the fastest editor. It was also the first NLE I learned. I only moved to Resolve to get greater control over exports, more powerful grading tools, and because I don't want to round trip anything.

If you’re an editor there isn’t a faster tool than FCPX. Then the colorist can move it to Resolve and the Title artist can use AE or whatever and the effects people can use Nuke, etc etc.

I personally don’t have the budget or time to bounce between NLE’s, but in big budget stuff that’s common. Resolve is the de facto color grading software of choice, but it’s a loooog way from being the de facto editor of choice. I’d say there are more people in Hollywood still using Media Composer over Resolve for editing. Sad to say but there are more people in Premiere than Resolve for editing, and Premiere is straight trash.

However, either way it’s on a Mac.

idiomatic · Sep 4, 2022

UnknownSouljer said:
Killing off FCP7 prematurely without developing software that had at least the same feature levels was definitely a mistake. Now this far in the future though, FCPX is definitely better software. It just took 10 years to get here.

Every one of those items was killed because users preferred others hardware. The 17” in particular because everyone bought the 15” instead.
Read articles about their servers. They had near zero market penetration and made a decision that they didn’t really want to be in the server support game. For the industries they serve it didn’t make sense anyway.

Most of this stuff again seems very bias and wildly misinformed.

Again, the trash can was built out of customers needs, not Apple. They recognized that most users, including pros, attached all upgrades externally. So they developed a system that would be as small as possible with the fastest external interface possible. This isn’t to say it wasn’t a miss-step as they wildly miss calculated how much heat future processors and video cards would produce. It’s obviously been rectified by the 2019 Mac Pro, so how is this even a complaint about Apple today?

Nvidia made their own bed. And they’re the known dicks of the industry.

As far as I can tell, and I’ve been on Mac for 10 years, they’ve better supported 10-bit displays than PC. PC it’s still a cluster. Again what’s the point of looking at the previous space when it’s not even the current space?

Erm, it’s incredibly easy to render to ProRes. One of the easiest in fact because it’s much lower compression than either h.264 or h.265 as an example. That’s one of its features. It is by nature not resource intensive.

Its precisely used as dailies for that reason. It can be rendered quickly and easily. It’s also the most common movie delivery format. If you’re watching a movie in a theater it’s more likely than not ProRes.

They really aren’t unless they have the budget to store it and the time in terms of protracted workflow to grade it and work with it. RED RAW, takes way more system resources for basic things like playback than ProRes.

Everyone in Hollywood.

Statistically that isn’t true. As has been discussed in this thread a huge number of new buyers are coming to Mac due to the M1. The number of buyers of Macs are increasing not decreasing since the 2013 Mac Pro. If you’re going to make broad statements, at least make ones that are verifiable.

I use Resolve personally. But it’s still on a Mac.
FCPX is still a reasonable NLE to use. It’s what MKBHD uses to edit all his YouTube content and the channel “This Guy Edits” uses specifically FCPX because it is the fastest editor. That is to say if you’re an editor there isn’t a faster tool. Then the colorist can move it to Resolve and the effects artist can use AE or whatever.

I personally don’t have the budget or time to bounce between NLE’s, but in big budget stuff that’s common. Resolve is the de facto color grading software of choice, but it’s a loooog way from being the de facto editor of choice. I’d say there are more people in Hollywood still using Media Composer over Resolve for editing. Sad to say but there are more people in Premiere than Resolve for editing, and Premiere is straight trash.

However, either way it’s on a Mac.

Most of your defenses there are "The market wasn't big enough so Apple killed it"

Apple is a phone and consumer company. It turns out though that their phone chips are now better (for purpose) than Intel chips in Laptops. Add a bunch of hardware acceleration for their codecs and boom. You are editing 4k on a phone, but with a big ass screen and a keyboard.

Apple have lucked into a system that may suit Pro's if they glue four or eight of the chips together. Maybe they will even put it in a proper chassis. I'm probably going to be a buyer if there is a workstation M2 in the pipeline. I might be picking up a 16" M2 as well. Would I recommend them to clients? No. Why not? Because this isn't something Apple is doing on purpose. It still hates the users like me.

They just happen to have a phone chip sooooo good that its good enough for NLE work. Maybe everything is getting so fast video codecs will go the way of add in sound cards. Certainly IP transports are nuking SDI routers anywhere that cares about budget.

But Apple isn't tooling up for us in any way shape or form, and if or when they get bored, or their chips stop being the most awesome, they won't give a shit about us. Maybe we go a decade with an M3 or M4 chip waiting for an update again. And a lot of people will stick with Apple cuz they're just die hards.

Apple serves like a few hundred million amateur film makers. With their phones. You can shoot and edit a feature on a phone, although plz God don't force me to.

Apple Silicon has absolutely got Apple back in the high end game, but so far it doesn't look like Apple really wants to play that game. Maybe that changes. I'd be happy.

UnknownSouljer · Sep 4, 2022

Not really sure what you're on about. It seems like it's more ideological than anything having to do with people that need to perform work.

idiomatic said:
Most of your defenses there are "The market wasn't big enough so Apple killed it"

Apple has always had to compete. When Steve Jobs was ousted and the company was rudderless it almost went under. I'm not sure why that gets overlooked by so many that deride Apple as just being popular or for die hards. Turns out if you make a garbage product people bail out. And that is definitely for software and OS' included. Apple has had to continue offering performative tools and good hardware or lose the base.

Continuing to support software that under-performs, when it is not your core business, is how you go bankrupt. I'm not sure how to explain basic math without sounding demeaning, but if something costs you 10x more to develop then the money you get out of it, then eventually you will have no money. This is also why Apple stopped selling printers, or do you also think they should be still in the printer game? Apple had to choose to make a lot of cuts in 1997-2008 or die. Those were the stakes.

idiomatic said:
Apple is a phone and consumer company. It turns out though that their phone chips are now better (for purpose) than Intel chips in Laptops. Add a bunch of hardware acceleration for their codecs and boom. You are editing 4k on a phone, but with a big ass screen and a keyboard.

Apple have lucked into a system that may suit Pro's if they glue four or eight of the chips together. Maybe they will even put it in a proper chassis. I'm probably going to be a buyer if there is a workstation M2 in the pipeline. I might be picking up a 16" M2 as well. Would I recommend them to clients? No. Why not? Because this isn't something Apple is doing on purpose. It still hates the users like me.

They just happen to have a phone chip sooooo good that its good enough for NLE work. Maybe everything is getting so fast video codecs will go the way of add in sound cards. Certainly IP transports are nuking SDI routers anywhere that cares about budget.

As for the M1/M2, I think you're making a gross overstatement. Just because the M1/M2 is based on ARM doesn't make it a mobile phone chip. I realize your purpose here is just to deride, but it's also inaccurate. There's no way to put an M1 Ultra into a phone, at least one that would be powered for any longer than maybe 5 minutes. Even a regular M1, needs a machine the size of an iPad (or "Surface") to be viable.

Scaling up their processors so that they could have a unified architecture while also being a "desktop part" didn't just magically happen. It took a huge amount of time and engineering.

idiomatic said:
But Apple isn't tooling up for us in any way shape or form, and if or when they get bored, or their chips stop being the most awesome, they won't give a shit about us. Maybe we go a decade with an M3 or M4 chip waiting for an update again. And a lot of people will stick with Apple cuz they're just die hards.

Apple serves like a few hundred million amateur film makers. With their phones. You can shoot and edit a feature on a phone, although plz God don't force me to.

Apple Silicon has absolutely got Apple back in the high end game, but so far it doesn't look like Apple really wants to play that game. Maybe that changes. I'd be happy.

Apple is definitely having to fight for its place in the market place. People don't just magically buy their hardware or migrate to them from Windows. It has to earn those customers. The user base doesn't grow otherwise. And now since it designs its own chips, it finally is in the position to control its own destiny like never before. IBM got lazy. Intel got lazy (the 2013 Mac Pro can at least be partially blamed on Intel for not being able to make faster and at least the same wattage chips. They kept having to make things hotter to get them faster and the same thing happened in the GPU space). Apple can finally create the processor and GPU designs it wants for its hardware and integrate software in a way that can't be done on PC inside the power envelope it wants and then therefore the sizes it wants.

While the immediate future is murky, since the Intel transition hasn't fully happened yet; most of us are wondering what the Mac Pro replacement will look like. Will it have internal expansion capabilities etc? Other than that, for the most part Apple's future is looking brighter than it has in a long time. Certainly since Steve Job's exit and untimely death.

Lakados · Sep 4, 2022

idiomatic said:
Most of your defenses there are "The market wasn't big enough so Apple killed it"

Apple is a phone and consumer company. It turns out though that their phone chips are now better (for purpose) than Intel chips in Laptops. Add a bunch of hardware acceleration for their codecs and boom. You are editing 4k on a phone, but with a big ass screen and a keyboard.

Apple have lucked into a system that may suit Pro's if they glue four or eight of the chips together. Maybe they will even put it in a proper chassis. I'm probably going to be a buyer if there is a workstation M2 in the pipeline. I might be picking up a 16" M2 as well. Would I recommend them to clients? No. Why not? Because this isn't something Apple is doing on purpose. It still hates the users like me.

They just happen to have a phone chip sooooo good that its good enough for NLE work. Maybe everything is getting so fast video codecs will go the way of add in sound cards. Certainly IP transports are nuking SDI routers anywhere that cares about budget.

But Apple isn't tooling up for us in any way shape or form, and if or when they get bored, or their chips stop being the most awesome, they won't give a shit about us. Maybe we go a decade with an M3 or M4 chip waiting for an update again. And a lot of people will stick with Apple cuz they're just die hards.

Apple serves like a few hundred million amateur film makers. With their phones. You can shoot and edit a feature on a phone, although plz God don't force me to.

Apple Silicon has absolutely got Apple back in the high end game, but so far it doesn't look like Apple really wants to play that game. Maybe that changes. I'd be happy.

The Mac Studios are beasts…. I’m not a pro I just buy them and deploy them but the Art department shit itself with glee over how well they were performing.

Lakados · Sep 4, 2022

UnknownSouljer said:
Not really sure what you're on about. It seems like it's more ideological than anything having to do with people that need to perform work.
Apple has always had to compete. When Steve Jobs was ousted and the company was rudderless it almost went under. I'm not sure why that gets overlooked by so many that deride Apple as just being popular or for die hards. Turns out if you make a garbage product people bail out. And that is definitely for software and OS' included. Apple has had to continue offering performative tools and good hardware or lose the base.

Continuing to support software that under-performs, when it is not your core business, is how you go bankrupt. I'm not sure how to explain basic math without sounding demeaning, but if something costs you 10x more to develop then the money you get out of it, then eventually you will have no money. This is also why Apple stopped selling printers, or do you also think they should be still in the printer game? Apple had to choose to make a lot of cuts in 1997-2008 or die. Those were the stakes.

As for the M1/M2, I think you're making a gross overstatement. Just because the M1/M2 is based on ARM doesn't make it a mobile phone chip. I realize your purpose here is just to deride, but it's also inaccurate. There's no way to put an M1 Ultra into a phone, at least one that would be powered for any longer than maybe 5 minutes. Even a regular M1, needs a machine the size of an iPad Pro to be viable.

Apple is definitely having to fight for its place in the market place. People don't just magically buy their hardware or migrate to them from Windows. It has to earn those customers. The user base doesn't grow otherwise. And now since it designs its own chips, it finally is in the position to control its own destiny like never before. IBM got lazy. Intel got lazy (the 2013 Mac Pro can at least be partially blamed on Intel for not being able to make faster and at least the same wattage chips. They kept having to make things hotter to get them faster and the same thing happened in the GPU space). Apple can finally create the processor and GPU designs it wants for its hardware and integrate software in a way that can't be done on PC inside the power envelope it wants and then therefore the sizes it wants.

While the immediate future is murky, since the Intel transition hasn't fully happened yet; most of us are wondering what the Mac Pro replacement will look like. Will it have internal expansion capabilities etc? For the most part Apple's future is looking brighter than it has in a long time. Certainly since Steve Job's exit and untimely death.

And it’s not like Field of Dreams, if you build it they won’t just come, they need a reason to especially if there are major OS and Architecture changes. I’m old enough to remember developing for Sun Sparc systems and thinking these things were never going away because they were too good at their jobs. And Intel was arrogant enough to think that just building the Itanium architecture was enough to shift the market.

Apple didn’t just wake up and say to all their software and paraphernalia partners that they were changing from X86 to ARM or that they were dropping support for X, Y, and Z. Everything was researched discussed and backed up with financial reports to keep their partners onboard. Apple doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the people that use them have a job to do and if Apple doesn’t have a product capable of doing it then as reluctant as they may be they will move on.

idiomatic · Sep 4, 2022

99% of people developing for Apple products are not developing for laptops and desktops. Very few people developing for Microsoft's platforms are developing for Windows Phones.

I am agreeing with you. The Apple Silicon is very very good. Apple also has pretty much zero financial reason to put resources into professional platforms except they have a shit load of cash to buy a shiny halo. They won't have a financial reason to stay if the sector gets tough, unlike say Adobe, or Black Magic, Avid, Super Micro, Tyan etc...

Load up on Apple gear while its hot, but just have a back up plan.

LukeTbk · Sep 4, 2022

UnknownSouljer said:
Avid is a software company and is still one of the major players.
https://www.avid.com/
I’m not sure what you’re specifically referring to. AVID is the company and they make specific software. Media Composer is still used a lot on TV Shows and films, but again this is all done on Mac.

ProTools was the top audio NLE for a long time that did require proprietary hardware to work, but that’s in regards to audio interfaces, not “PC hardware”.

I did know studio people were running Avid mostly on Macs (specially, not all of them)
https://zworkstations.com/apps/avid-media-composer-workstations/
https://www.velocitymicro.com/avid.php
https://www.sharbor.com/build-yours/avid

Probably simply a bias introduced that people that sell workstation with it in mind will tend to make PC to have something to do and sell.

UnknownSouljer · Sep 4, 2022

LukeTbk said:
I did know studio people were running Avid mostly on Macs (specially, not all of them)
https://zworkstations.com/apps/avid-media-composer-workstations/
https://www.velocitymicro.com/avid.php
https://www.sharbor.com/build-yours/avid

Probably simply a bias introduced that people that sell workstation with it in mind will tend to make PC to have something to do and sell.

I'm sure there are companies that specialize in workstations for Resolve as well. I have to imagine though that the market is pretty small. But I suppose it doesn't cost a lot of time/money for a custom configurator for this specific purpose.
It's likely mostly the same as configurators they have for other major software. A configurator between Resolve and Media Composer and Premiere would basically be the same.

Apples M2 looks like a beast.

idiomatic

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UnknownSouljer

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idiomatic

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Lakados

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Lakados

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idiomatic

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