Prediction came true and new apple stuff thoughts.

well, it turns out that my prediction might have come true about hardware acceleration in the extra GPU. Macbook Pro owners with the dual video card will get to take advantage of OpenCL and offloading tasks to the GPU when snow leopard rolls out. Of course it says, limited to the 9400M card only but then later in the article says that it supports both cards thats found in my macbook pro. So that is a little confusing.

http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/10/snow-leopard-h-264-hardware-acceleration-and-opencl-requirements/

Either way, with a $29 price tag and an extreme performance increase, I am very excited for Snow Leopard. I'll probably pony up for the $49 fee for the family pack since I own a couple of Intel macs.

Also, I must say I know that I am in the minority here, but it totally SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS, about what they did with the new line of laptops! I was so pissed when I saw the new models come out. Here are my gripes with explanations:

1 - This is the main issue. Why get rid of the expresscard port?

Ok, so as someone who owns the EX1. I absolutely love being able to throw in my SxS card and have it rip down all the footage screamingly fast! I can understand that they wanted to go to SD cards which is the most popular by far. I commend them on adding that. But really, the design should have been able to incorporate both expresscard and SD slots. My reasoning for this is that ports were limited before because of the removable battery and HDD compartment. BUT they went to a fixed battery....something else i'm not keen on, but would allow for more ports because of not having the big door on the back. I believe they even gave that as a reason that the 17" was able to have 3 USB ports instead of two. On top of that, i know they didn't change the 17" because they would really be shooting themselves in the foot since it just came out. I'm sure they'll remove the expresscard slot next go around on the 17" model. But really, what requires more to lug around an SD reader or Expresscard Firewire 800 adapter? Get what I mean?

2 - Fixed Battery

Basically, they are giving their laptops less life. Smart for them to keep making money. Make it harder to refresh items that wear out in hope the customer will buy a whole new laptop instead of, say, a brand new battery. Couldn't they wait another year or so for Silver-Zinc batteries and make removable versions of that? Not only would they be able to have awesome batteries that last a long time per cycle and per battery life, but they still would be able to keep the whole green claim going. See this for more info: http://www.zpowerbattery.com/

3 - Release Cycles

For a long time they had long release cycles for their pro gear and now they are updating the lines every year? WHY? To me that devalues the product. I kind of understand why moving the 13" over helps because of the new product which I'll discuss later in the post.

4 - Moving the 13" over....NOT A GRIPE BUT...

The move to take the aluminum 13" Macbook, add a firewire port, and move it to the pro line kills two birds with one stone. They fix their own screw up of removing firewire after enough people bitched about it, and they also give people a smaller more portable configuration for on the go creatives which many people have been requesting since the days of the 12" laptop. Although my 15" is just fine and I don't get why people want smaller than that....FCP is already somewhat cramped on the 15" model. I couldn't imagine editing on a 13" model. Moving the 13" model also helps shift the focus on them being wrong for removing firewire.

SO NOW FOR MY NEWEST PREDICTION...

The plastic macbook is the only macbook now, which they will probably kill off in lieu of some kind of larger simpler tablet device to compete with netbooks and such but way better. Think ipod touch with bluetooth, front facing webcam, USB ports etc. I think that is why they are maturing the iphone OS so much. Think 10" iphonish type device. With all that could be done from that OS, honestly for the browsing, email, word processing(think google docs) etc., that is all most people would need and everybody would have something really nice and portable. Notice how price point didn't really change from the name change of the 13". This will also give more distinction on their model lines. If you need something more than an elegant simple tablet device to do basic home stuff.....then go to the Pro Laptop line which offers many price points. I'm thinking the new device should be somewhere around $750-$1000.

FINALLY, WHAT I AM REALLY WAITING FOR AND APPLE NEEDS TO HURRY UP WITH...

Final Cut Studio 3. Why? Because of the After Effects killer that is supposed to be motion. Motion is a good program (minus crashes), but is limited. The ease of use and power it offers is amazing....but as everyone knows, can't come close After Effects. After Effects, has become stagnant though, It's roughly been the same program with features piling up. This upcoming Motion is rumored to take everything great from shake and everything great from Motion and create a revolutionary product. Coming from Avid DS, I am a big fan of Node based compositing. Mixing all things motion, such as a decent timeline, a 3D interface as well as easy to use Library of items with Shake's powerful Node based compositing will win me over to go all apple for video. Also, full revamp of Color. Color and Shake were not original apple programs. They were programs from other companies which apple took over. So giving a consistent UI and revamping the technology to their standards will be nice. Honestly, I'd rather see them incorporate all of Color into the new motion and kill the idea of having ANOTHER program to send your work to. Color Correction to me is really something that should be done along with compositing. Anyways, the new Motion coming out should be REVOLUTIONARY!

One last note.....

I may gripe but don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on apple. I'm quite the opposite, usually what people call a mac zealot, but I do question some of their decisions.

-Nate

P.S.- And why can't we get the antiglare screen from the 17" MBP's on the new 15's and 13's?



LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS............

(Message edited by iamnathanhudson on June 10, 2009)

(Message edited by iamnathanhudson on June 10, 2009)

Agree with almost everything but the release cycles. Faster updates are a good thing, it doesn't make the computer you have work any slower nor should a laptop be seen as an investment, it's a tool.

Faster release cycles just mean less time for us to be happy before we start jones-in for the newest model. OpenCL sounds pretty cool and I'm glad they've finally given us some info on how it works or should work (per your prediction Nate!).

The Apple apps like FCP and Aperture and games will probably benefit from it more initially then 3rd party since they will have to re-code to take advantage of it (remember the switch to Intel?)

SD card? I agree why that format?? All the pro cameras I know of use CF cards. Express card to USB is going to slow that process way down and there goes the E-sata RAIDS. I guess Apple doesn't think Pro users should be able to do it all with a laptop!

I can probably sell my MBP 2.8 to an unhappy EX1 owner!! I guess I'll have to sell the EX1 first though!?

The 8 gigs of RAM is nice especially with the new OS coming. Has anyone read anymore about the wider color gamut Apple claims the new LCD has? I can't find anything on that technically online at this point.

I started off posting just the part about the prediction because i remember having that conversation with you, Rich. But then i figured i'd go into my thoughts on the new MBP's to get it out of my system. It's unnerving just thinking about it.

It seems as of late that Apple doesn't really care as much for the professionals as they used to. They are making their line of pro computers a consumer type product. Soon, I am confident all mac laptops will have the Pro label on them. Hell, like i said before, there is only one old laptop left in the traditional macbook line. Hell, why even distinguish them as Pro at this point? Just call them all Macbooks.

Hopefully, we'll see an expresscard to FW800 adapter at the very least.

CNET published an article on the new Apple product line that's kinda interesting- http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10260125-37.html

Maybe they're slowly killing off the MacBook line so that they can replace it with that rumored tablet PC? Maybe they're thinking that the tablet will fit the bill for most MacBook owners' needs and if they need anything more they can pay through the teeth for a MBP? Total speculation, but this wouldn't be the first time that Apple tells consumers what they 'need.'

"Hopefully, we'll see an expresscard to FW800 adapter at the very least."

Doubtful, too different of protocols.

Going back to our original conversation, I said we're a long ways away for the OS to make use of both those graphics cards and if you read the reports from the WWDC you'll see they're still very vague as to how much and when. But at least the famework is now in place.

Don't be surprised when you've got to buy a new MBP to really take advantage of openCL because the original ones we've got now weren't completely "wired" properly to allow for this - (hope not though, I'd like your prediction to come true.)

I think Apple made a bad move when they removed the expresscard port on the MBP. I was thinking about upgrading to a new one but this is a deal breaker for me. I suppose I will stick with my $600 HP laptop with expresscard port for unloading my EX1 media.

I was also disappointed to hear nothing about Final Cut Studio 3. It has been a while. Lets face it, there is nothing that Apple can do to put Final Cut Studio on the same level as Avid DS. While DS has shortcomings it is still the swiss army knife of post production and nothing comes close. Even Smoke/Flame is #2 in my book.

" they can pay through the teeth for a MBP?" -scott a

The base model alum. macbook was $1299 last week. Now the base model macbook pro is $1099? It is the lowest priced "pro" model Apple has ever had!

My wife bought the alum. macbook last week. When the announcement came out, I called the store she bought it from and they are going to give her the free upgrade to the "pro" and a $100 refund. The new model is $200 less and increases the processor speed, better battery, SD cardslot(which she will use a lot with her P&S and HF-10), and illuminated keyboard.

Mikel.....I would wait until we see what they are able to pull out of their hat with FCS3....the one thing on DS I loved was how you control your effects with the little bar, stretching over the clip, or line, or complete timeline. Creating an effect and just throwing it where you need and stretching to meet your time constraints was just genius. DS however, is probably the most unreliable, of systems though. The machines are so finicky and sometimes would crash hard. I HATE how the project management worked. Made no sense to me. In final cut i just grab my a folder and back it up to disk or some other media. The constant rendering drove me nuts too. Lastly, the 3D interface kinda blows on DS....i stayed away from it purposefully. Other than that, I did love the program.....in a perfect world, they would figure out a way to fully update DS to be on a mac only with a nice lush Mac-like interface. Most of the problems were from the limitations of XP. The machines have way more RAM than XP can handle so they tweaked XP to make it work. So when you installed an update to minor things such as quicktime, or any program they didn't approve, it would cause your whole machine to crash. Really sucks because most programs have auto-update.

Don't get me wrong.....I still think the power behind it is not matched to this day....but looking forward to see what they do with the new FCS3.

(Message edited by iamnathanhudson on June 11, 2009)

Nate, I am not sure why your DS had issues but mine (64 bit vers 10) is very stable and even when it does crash the auto save and recover allows me to pick up right where I left off most of the time. I feel that DS has way better project management than FCP and hope they never make it look like final cut. Give the interface a chance, it is very powerful and fully customizable.

But yeah, 3D sucks in DS. Cinema 4d or Maya compliments the system very nicely though.

As far as the interface, it was very cool because you can make it to be whatever you want. It just always seemed dated to me, which is very insignificant. Can't remember what version we were running. I think there was an issue of that the company was already hurting and the machines needed replacing for the next MAJOR versions. I'm pretty sure we weren't running your version but not terribly far behind. Of course, I can't really give it a chance, because one, i no longer work there, and two, i'm not loaded and can't afford one a DS suite. Definitely wouldn't mind editing on it again though. Sometimes, I get pissed when i want to do something that was so simple in DS and is so difficult in whatever other program. I find myself saying to myself "If I were on a DS suite I could have this ••••••••• 2 hours ago."

One note about all this is, we were using Unity with it which had issues. Probably a combination of many things that caused the issues that i experienced.

I definitely feel priveleged to have learned DS.