5 ms·

If I were a user in the music/film industry I would be worried if I depended on Apple. Apple has shown pretty clearly they see themselves as a consumer electro

by rrmm 6y ago

If I were a user in the music/film industry I would be worried if I depended on Apple. Apple has shown pretty clearly they see themselves as a consumer electronics and services company above all. If all the "professional" users who rely on Logic or FC or Apple in general jumped ship, Apple wouldn't likely notice it in their bottom line (loss of mindshare not withstanding). They have no vested interest in catering to these users and have produced hardware intended for them as an afterthought. The high cost of hardware and absence of middle tier products that make sense for these users is just icing on the cake. "Professional" users of Logic or FC have little leverage to affect the course of Apple one way or another (unlike a more focused company whose business model is catering to these groups). On the other hand Apple pro users do have a long history of being abused by the company so they might be alright with it in the end. Anyway, I'd be looking for an out if I were them.

flir 6y ago
It seems to be such short-term thinking to me. They became a desirable brand because creatives both used and recommended them.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I'm currently in the market for a pro NLE. In the mockups I've seen of actual workspaces on some NLE websites, not a single Apple logo was seen (but other logos were).
samatman 6y ago
I think this is completely backward. To a first approximation, Apple only cares about video producers, software developers, publishers, and musicians, in their Mac strategy. In approximately that order. The only reason developers are on that list, is because XCode is how software gets written for the rest of their platforms; the dominance of Macs as personal workstations for Valley-style development is only a side effect of that. These users provide a halo for everyone else. A college student might spend an extra $1000 on their laptop because they want to moonlight on some beats, or have a YouTube channel, that sort of thing. I remember seeing this disconnect when the new Mac Pro was released and many here dismissed it as too expensive. Someone who works in CGI came around to say that, no, $50,000 is a normal amount of money to spend on their workstations and that their company was ecstatic to be able to keep working with macOS.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Yeah, unless you’ve actually priced out business-class setups, the Mac Pro’s pricing seems crazy. I’ve repeatedly found that the “Apple Tax” is at most something like $500: other companies tend to advertise configurations that I wouldn’t buy, and when I tweak them to match my requirements, their price is not notably different from a Mac
  - rrmm 6y ago
    If you price like for like sure. My issue is usually that I almost never do. I usually fall into needing something akin to a mac mini but slightly bigger. The last mac pro I bought was a dual-G4 model when the gap between the mac pro and lower end models didn't seem so severe. (Although I obviously do not represent a sizeable demographic of the market). For Apple, not catering to every particular consumer whim/need out there is just smart business. But for the consumer, that is just another weakness of the mac ecosystem.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      If you include the iMacs (e.g. the iMac Pro), I think there aren’t really all that many gaps in the product line, spec or price wise. It’s mostly that you can’t necessarily get the machine you want in the form factor you’d like.
      - hakfoo 6y ago
        That's sort of a deal-breaker for a lot of use cases. Think of all those small corporate desktops out there which are beefier than a Mac Mini and wired to cheapo VGA-only 19" LCD monitors because finance isn't going to pay to replace a working screen. The iMac form factor is never gonna compete there. And of course the neglected "I just want internal drives or expansion cards" demographic. I;m not sure if the cheese grater design fixes it, but with the trashcan Mac Pro, there were plenty of configurations where the equivalent Dell/HP/Lenovo workstation was one clean self-contained box stuffed with PCI-e cards and SATA/SAS drives, and the Mac Pro was an angry squid of Thunderbolt, USB, and power cables to feed an array of external drives and devices. I understand that their brand is based on seamless design and we-make-the-decisions-for-you presentation, but it feels like there'd be an opportunity for them to use a small-scale clone program as a market research tool. Have it sell the form factors that Apple won't. The long-whined-for xMac. Units with servicable/cleanable designs for embedded markets. A mini-ITX Mac mainboard you can fit into existing kiosk/appliance designs. A rebranded Toughbook running MacOS. Something in a huge rackmount/server cube case that you can fit with a dozen internal drives. Frankly, I'd envision it as a wholly-owned operation, that charges over-the-odds prices. If people are still willing to put their money where their mouth is, they can claim epiphany and make an Apple version of the same design. If not, they can declare the business a failure, shutter it in a year, and start over next time they want to trial a product.
p1necone 6y ago
(From my perspective) Apple needs to keep up the appearance of being a "pro" brand - a large part of their marketing to non professional users relies on it.
berkut 6y ago
Most of high-end VFX is on Linux these days anyway... And a lot of the GPU stuff is CUDA, so nvidia only... I know for certain that many VFX software companies aren't too happy about OpenGL being deprecated and Vulcan not being supported on recent MacOS releases. IMO it's going to depend quite heavily on the demand for high-end VFX software on MacOS as to whether they bother with ARM ports if the MacPro does move over...
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Speaking of VFX, while everyone here jumps of love with Vulkan, big names like OTOY are already using CUDA (for OctaneRender), because Vulkan does not provide what they are looking for.

by rrmm 6y ago

flir 6y ago

It seems to be such short-term thinking to me. They became a desirable brand because creatives both used and recommended them.

nitrogen 6y ago
I'm currently in the market for a pro NLE. In the mockups I've seen of actual workspaces on some NLE websites, not a single Apple logo was seen (but other logos were).

samatman 6y ago

I think this is completely backward. To a first approximation, Apple only cares about video producers, software developers, publishers, and musicians, in their Mac strategy. In approximately that order. The only reason developers are on that list, is because XCode is how software gets written for the rest of their platforms; the dominance of Macs as personal workstations for Valley-style development is only a side effect of that. These users provide a halo for everyone else. A college student might spend an extra $1000 on their laptop because they want to moonlight on some beats, or have a YouTube channel, that sort of thing. I remember seeing this disconnect when the new Mac Pro was released and many here dismissed it as too expensive. Someone who works in CGI came around to say that, no, $50,000 is a normal amount of money to spend on their workstations and that their company was ecstatic to be able to keep working with macOS.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
Yeah, unless you’ve actually priced out business-class setups, the Mac Pro’s pricing seems crazy. I’ve repeatedly found that the “Apple Tax” is at most something like $500: other companies tend to advertise configurations that I wouldn’t buy, and when I tweak them to match my requirements, their price is not notably different from a Mac
- rrmm 6y ago
  If you price like for like sure. My issue is usually that I almost never do. I usually fall into needing something akin to a mac mini but slightly bigger. The last mac pro I bought was a dual-G4 model when the gap between the mac pro and lower end models didn't seem so severe. (Although I obviously do not represent a sizeable demographic of the market). For Apple, not catering to every particular consumer whim/need out there is just smart business. But for the consumer, that is just another weakness of the mac ecosystem.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    If you include the iMacs (e.g. the iMac Pro), I think there aren’t really all that many gaps in the product line, spec or price wise. It’s mostly that you can’t necessarily get the machine you want in the form factor you’d like.
    - hakfoo 6y ago
      That's sort of a deal-breaker for a lot of use cases. Think of all those small corporate desktops out there which are beefier than a Mac Mini and wired to cheapo VGA-only 19" LCD monitors because finance isn't going to pay to replace a working screen. The iMac form factor is never gonna compete there. And of course the neglected "I just want internal drives or expansion cards" demographic. I;m not sure if the cheese grater design fixes it, but with the trashcan Mac Pro, there were plenty of configurations where the equivalent Dell/HP/Lenovo workstation was one clean self-contained box stuffed with PCI-e cards and SATA/SAS drives, and the Mac Pro was an angry squid of Thunderbolt, USB, and power cables to feed an array of external drives and devices. I understand that their brand is based on seamless design and we-make-the-decisions-for-you presentation, but it feels like there'd be an opportunity for them to use a small-scale clone program as a market research tool. Have it sell the form factors that Apple won't. The long-whined-for xMac. Units with servicable/cleanable designs for embedded markets. A mini-ITX Mac mainboard you can fit into existing kiosk/appliance designs. A rebranded Toughbook running MacOS. Something in a huge rackmount/server cube case that you can fit with a dozen internal drives. Frankly, I'd envision it as a wholly-owned operation, that charges over-the-odds prices. If people are still willing to put their money where their mouth is, they can claim epiphany and make an Apple version of the same design. If not, they can declare the business a failure, shutter it in a year, and start over next time they want to trial a product.

p1necone 6y ago

(From my perspective) Apple needs to keep up the appearance of being a "pro" brand - a large part of their marketing to non professional users relies on it.

berkut 6y ago

Most of high-end VFX is on Linux these days anyway... And a lot of the GPU stuff is CUDA, so nvidia only... I know for certain that many VFX software companies aren't too happy about OpenGL being deprecated and Vulcan not being supported on recent MacOS releases. IMO it's going to depend quite heavily on the demand for high-end VFX software on MacOS as to whether they bother with ARM ports if the MacPro does move over...

pjmlp 6y ago
Speaking of VFX, while everyone here jumps of love with Vulkan, big names like OTOY are already using CUDA (for OctaneRender), because Vulkan does not provide what they are looking for.