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In college I brought an iMac to learn edit video in FCP7. It was nice, not really fast but functional, a lot of my professors were apple fanboys since the Jobs

In college I brought an iMac to learn edit video in FCP7. It was nice, not really fast but functional, a lot of my professors were apple fanboys since the Jobs era. Then came FCPX, even if it's good right now, the first version released was basically a stab in the back to those video pros who were faithful to apple for years, those were who keep buying in the hardest times of the company. I saw a lot of video professionals jumping to the Adobe Ecosystem or to things like DaVinci for the GPU rendering. In my case I ended up selling my mac, and with the money build good PC for the price. I feel stupid of not building one from the beginning. Good bye external disks and weird perif; hello SSD, RAID Storage, expandable RAM, and a GPU with CUDA that I can upgrade in two years, without trashing the rest of the system. This is not a debate of Mac vs PC (that can go forever), or a PC Master Race propaganda, but the Mac Pro it's a bad taste joke. I get the idea of the "apple tax", but it's ridiculous here. The CPUs, SSD, and RAM are old, but specially the fact that the GPU it's soldered in the Motherboard it's just stupid. GPU are one of those rare things were you can still see the double of performance in each new iteration. I love my Macbook Pro because reasons, but in Desktops, the PC it's the King.

rz2k 10y ago
What do you think about USB-C and Thunderbolt 3? In a dream world they'd make all iOS devices USB-C, release new Mac Pros, all types of laptops, and all of them able to use the same Thunderbolt 3 eGPUs, RAIDs, etc, albeit at different levels of performance. When you look at the public reaction to iPhone dropping the headphone jack (I agreed with) and the revenue from wireless headphones, we know nothing compared to the analysts locked in a vault at Apple who knew more about making money for their company. And yet, I still think of the not-quite dichotomy of the two Steves. Making out-of reach-tech available to everyone, and making tech available to cool-people, where cool-people turned out to be a large superset of 'everyone'.
- tofflos 10y ago
  I was under the impression that most people were very aware that removing the headphone jack would become a revenue stream for Apple? That's what all the fuzz was about - a lot of people didn't want to buy adapters or new wireless headphones.
goblin89 10y ago
I value a lot the existing versatility of my Macbook Pro, and lament that it falls short when it comes to 3D rendering in C4D/AE. However, I’m aware that my case is abnormal. The only thing preventing me from owning a high-GPU Windows machine for certain kinds of work is that I haven’t yet figured out how to use it for rendering remotely, since I move around a lot and I can’t bring it with me due to the bulk. So far I’m just sticking to 2D. If I were a stakeholder, I’d be against Apple trying to dominate the professional market. People increasingly have multiple computers for different tasks so there’s more win in focusing on whichever market has thicker margins.
- Lio 10y ago
  I have an iPhone because it works nicely with my Mac. You might be thinking "well all phones will work well with your Mac" but before I started with iPhones I had Nokias for years and that they didn't. I've had generation after generation of iPhone because of my Macs. If Apple give up or continue to put out poor value machines (they don't have to be cheap they just have to be good value to my business) then I'll move everything to other vendors. If that happens I'll probably never return to Apple's ecosystem regardless of which segments of the market are most profitable to Apple. It's like the halo effect in reverse.
- raesene6 10y ago
  For me the "thicker margin" argument only holds if Apple were cash constrained or could get a better return elsewhere. Apple has a massive massive pile of cash sitting around (over $200 billion) and I'd be surprised if standard investments make a higher return than actually investing in their Desktop line. That's what confuses me about Apple's approach. Just because you make less margin in a line doesn't mean you shouldn't do it...
root_axis 10y ago
Great summary. The Macbook Pro is still, arguably, the highest quality laptop on the market, but when it comes to the Desktop, there is absolutely zero reasons to consider Apple. I know that there are those who swear by OSX, but I find that on a functional level, the UX is essentially interchangeable with Windows 10 and in a few cases Windows is even preferable. I'm aware of the Apple ecosystem synergy, and I don't find it surprising that an individual who uses all Apple products experiences a kind of lock-in dysphoria that makes any other alternative appear unattractive, but at the end of the day, when hardware performance is a critical factor in the type of work being done, I just can't justify the insane rigidity and mark-up of Apple's desktop products.

rz2k 10y ago

What do you think about USB-C and Thunderbolt 3? In a dream world they'd make all iOS devices USB-C, release new Mac Pros, all types of laptops, and all of them able to use the same Thunderbolt 3 eGPUs, RAIDs, etc, albeit at different levels of performance. When you look at the public reaction to iPhone dropping the headphone jack (I agreed with) and the revenue from wireless headphones, we know nothing compared to the analysts locked in a vault at Apple who knew more about making money for their company. And yet, I still think of the not-quite dichotomy of the two Steves. Making out-of reach-tech available to everyone, and making tech available to cool-people, where cool-people turned out to be a large superset of 'everyone'.

tofflos 10y ago
I was under the impression that most people were very aware that removing the headphone jack would become a revenue stream for Apple? That's what all the fuzz was about - a lot of people didn't want to buy adapters or new wireless headphones.

goblin89 10y ago

I value a lot the existing versatility of my Macbook Pro, and lament that it falls short when it comes to 3D rendering in C4D/AE. However, I’m aware that my case is abnormal. The only thing preventing me from owning a high-GPU Windows machine for certain kinds of work is that I haven’t yet figured out how to use it for rendering remotely, since I move around a lot and I can’t bring it with me due to the bulk. So far I’m just sticking to 2D. If I were a stakeholder, I’d be against Apple trying to dominate the professional market. People increasingly have multiple computers for different tasks so there’s more win in focusing on whichever market has thicker margins.

Lio 10y ago
I have an iPhone because it works nicely with my Mac. You might be thinking "well all phones will work well with your Mac" but before I started with iPhones I had Nokias for years and that they didn't. I've had generation after generation of iPhone because of my Macs. If Apple give up or continue to put out poor value machines (they don't have to be cheap they just have to be good value to my business) then I'll move everything to other vendors. If that happens I'll probably never return to Apple's ecosystem regardless of which segments of the market are most profitable to Apple. It's like the halo effect in reverse.
raesene6 10y ago
For me the "thicker margin" argument only holds if Apple were cash constrained or could get a better return elsewhere. Apple has a massive massive pile of cash sitting around (over $200 billion) and I'd be surprised if standard investments make a higher return than actually investing in their Desktop line. That's what confuses me about Apple's approach. Just because you make less margin in a line doesn't mean you shouldn't do it...

root_axis 10y ago

Great summary. The Macbook Pro is still, arguably, the highest quality laptop on the market, but when it comes to the Desktop, there is absolutely zero reasons to consider Apple. I know that there are those who swear by OSX, but I find that on a functional level, the UX is essentially interchangeable with Windows 10 and in a few cases Windows is even preferable. I'm aware of the Apple ecosystem synergy, and I don't find it surprising that an individual who uses all Apple products experiences a kind of lock-in dysphoria that makes any other alternative appear unattractive, but at the end of the day, when hardware performance is a critical factor in the type of work being done, I just can't justify the insane rigidity and mark-up of Apple's desktop products.