5 ms·

Is pro-film and audio production the target market for the new MacPro? At first I thought they might be going for the ML demographic, which has the budget and

Is pro-film and audio production the target market for the new MacPro? At first I thought they might be going for the ML demographic, which has the budget and demand for beefy workstations, but they're using AMD GPUs, not nvidia.

theodorton 7y ago
Apple seems to be somewhat unhappy with nvidia. I think AMD might have ML stuff in their roadmap and Apple is making a bet they will make it before they fix their relationship with nvidia.
- scarface74 7y ago
  From what I hear, Nvidia won't allow Apple to write "bare metal" drivers for their cards. I don't know enough about GPU programming to know exactly what Nvidia is allowing and what they aren't.
  - pfranz 7y ago
    I wish we knew the truth behind this. In my opinion Apple is losing more than Nvidia and Nvidia seems to be trying harder to make this work than Apple. From my understanding, Apple has been writing/maintaining GPU drivers. They've been pretty bad at optimizing them (they also are dropping OpenGL support) so Nvidia wants to maintain drivers themselves. As Apple has been locking down more and more of the OS, it's pushing out Nvidia from creating and distributing drivers. If Apple ceded to Nvidia, I imagine it would be harder for Apple to push things like Metal. The details of the fight are probably a lot more detailed since they would be negotiating about hardware supply and long term contracts.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      If Apple secedes control of the video drivers to Nvidia then they are beholden to Nvidia’s schedule and priorities. Something similar happen with Google. They couldn’t update some of their Nexus phones because they were dependent on drivers they didn’t control.
RandallBrown 7y ago
Mostly yes. Apple has traditionally been the computer for creatives. In recent years, they've let their pro hardware and software lines languish and I think they've lost quite a bit of ground since you can buy a windows computer that runs the same editing software for quite a bit cheaper. Pro film and audio production people also have huge budgets, as evidenced by the $43000 reference monitor they compared the new display to in the keynote.
- PascLeRasc 7y ago
  Macs are so, so, so good for audio, nothing else comes close. Super low-latency out of the box, no drivers to install for either interfaces or MIDI controllers, and compatibility with Firewire and Thunderbolt interfaces on every machine built in the last 10 years. CoreAudio is incredibly stable and performant thanks to a double-buffer queue [1]. Logic Pro is an incredible feature-complete DAW for $200 that competes with Digital Performer ($500), Ableton ($750) and Pro Tools ($600). [1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/slides/09-audio.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/slides/09-audio.pdf
  - village-idiot 7y ago
    Not if you use the regular audio channels. Both my MacBook Pro and Mac mini suffer really bad audio stutter because of the T2 chip.
  - jcelerier 7y ago
    As someone who develops a DAW, that's really not my experience. With the very same soundcard (so far RME, MOTU, Apogee) on the very same hardware, I get consistently lower latencies on Windows with ASIO than CoreAudio.
  - timc3 7y ago
    That’s not really true because Windows does come close, and I say that as someone whose every day DAW is running on MacOS. I also have Windows on other machines to compare it to. Out of the box a Mac is fine as is but a well configured well spec’d Windows box is really good once paired with a decent interface.
jpalomaki 7y ago
Just a thought: from purely brand perspective, do you want consumers to associate your name with film/audio production or with ”nerd stuff”. The real profits come from consumers. Pro-market is moneywise small (on Apple scale). Maybe one (or main?) purpose of the pro-lineup is to just make consumer products more attractive. Bit like with cars - some people read and dream about highend models and buy the $30-40k model.
- unicornfinder 7y ago
  A thousand times this. I genuinely don't think Apple expects to sell a huge number of these, but it's about establishing themselves as that company that sells that awesome high end Mac that creative professionals use.

theodorton 7y ago

Apple seems to be somewhat unhappy with nvidia. I think AMD might have ML stuff in their roadmap and Apple is making a bet they will make it before they fix their relationship with nvidia.

scarface74 7y ago
From what I hear, Nvidia won't allow Apple to write "bare metal" drivers for their cards. I don't know enough about GPU programming to know exactly what Nvidia is allowing and what they aren't.
- pfranz 7y ago
  I wish we knew the truth behind this. In my opinion Apple is losing more than Nvidia and Nvidia seems to be trying harder to make this work than Apple. From my understanding, Apple has been writing/maintaining GPU drivers. They've been pretty bad at optimizing them (they also are dropping OpenGL support) so Nvidia wants to maintain drivers themselves. As Apple has been locking down more and more of the OS, it's pushing out Nvidia from creating and distributing drivers. If Apple ceded to Nvidia, I imagine it would be harder for Apple to push things like Metal. The details of the fight are probably a lot more detailed since they would be negotiating about hardware supply and long term contracts.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    If Apple secedes control of the video drivers to Nvidia then they are beholden to Nvidia’s schedule and priorities. Something similar happen with Google. They couldn’t update some of their Nexus phones because they were dependent on drivers they didn’t control.

RandallBrown 7y ago

Mostly yes. Apple has traditionally been the computer for creatives. In recent years, they've let their pro hardware and software lines languish and I think they've lost quite a bit of ground since you can buy a windows computer that runs the same editing software for quite a bit cheaper. Pro film and audio production people also have huge budgets, as evidenced by the $43000 reference monitor they compared the new display to in the keynote.

PascLeRasc 7y ago
Macs are so, so, so good for audio, nothing else comes close. Super low-latency out of the box, no drivers to install for either interfaces or MIDI controllers, and compatibility with Firewire and Thunderbolt interfaces on every machine built in the last 10 years. CoreAudio is incredibly stable and performant thanks to a double-buffer queue [1]. Logic Pro is an incredible feature-complete DAW for $200 that competes with Digital Performer ($500), Ableton ($750) and Pro Tools ($600). [1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/slides/09-audio.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/slides/09-audio.pdf
- village-idiot 7y ago
  Not if you use the regular audio channels. Both my MacBook Pro and Mac mini suffer really bad audio stutter because of the T2 chip.
- jcelerier 7y ago
  As someone who develops a DAW, that's really not my experience. With the very same soundcard (so far RME, MOTU, Apogee) on the very same hardware, I get consistently lower latencies on Windows with ASIO than CoreAudio.
- timc3 7y ago
  That’s not really true because Windows does come close, and I say that as someone whose every day DAW is running on MacOS. I also have Windows on other machines to compare it to. Out of the box a Mac is fine as is but a well configured well spec’d Windows box is really good once paired with a decent interface.

jpalomaki 7y ago

Just a thought: from purely brand perspective, do you want consumers to associate your name with film/audio production or with ”nerd stuff”. The real profits come from consumers. Pro-market is moneywise small (on Apple scale). Maybe one (or main?) purpose of the pro-lineup is to just make consumer products more attractive. Bit like with cars - some people read and dream about highend models and buy the $30-40k model.

unicornfinder 7y ago
A thousand times this. I genuinely don't think Apple expects to sell a huge number of these, but it's about establishing themselves as that company that sells that awesome high end Mac that creative professionals use.