Somewhere in Rome. Working on overcoming my innate shyness with strangers.
It's not that these machines are too expensive, historically, it's just that like cameras we hit the point of computer processing power sufficiency for applications like Photoshop and Lightroom about four years ago with the widespread adoption of iMacs based around Intel i5 and i7 processors. The multicore versions, along with ample RAM run most studios pretty quickly and make imaging changes about as quickly as one can click a mouse or touch a pad. Now all we really need is faster, better and more ample storage.
I'd love to have one of the machines but I'd love to have one in the same way I'd love to have a medium format camera; not because I need one but for the bragging rights and the idea of having the very best in a category. Do I need a brand new medium format camera to shoot portraits and to document live theater? Not a chance. I've shot shows with one inch sensor cameras, full frame cameras and everything in between and I can honestly say it doesn't make a lick of difference. Could I process a folder of uncompressed raw files quicker with one of the new Apple Super Computers? Sure, but then I'd have no excuse to get up from my desk every once in a while and enjoy a cup of fresh coffee, or witty repartee with my peers.
I think I would be too intimidated owning a computer on which post production is so quick that it's over before I can even start.
But, if I did happen to win the lottery you probably know I'd rush out to buy a couple of the new Mac Pros, and a couple of those sexy new monitors to go with them. Then, like a good Texan I'd also buy new, tricked out pick-up trucks for me and the wife.....and the boy before hitting the ATM and heading to Las Vegas.
For now? I've got my eyes on a new 27 inch iMac (not the iMac Pro, just the iMac) sporting one of the newest i9 processors. Not because I need one but because i9 sounds so much better than i7, and infinitely better than i5......
I know, I know, you can buy all the parts you need to build your own PC for only $99 at the nearest 7/11 and you can put it all in a beige box nearly for free. I'll get back to you as soon as I finish building my own car......
Any body here really in the market for a Mac Pro? Just curious what your rationale might be.....
16 comments:
No, I won't be buying one of these new Mac Pros. I have never been the type of customer who goes for high-end machines. Low to mid-range is the territory I work in.
I have purchased five Macs. The first was a Mac Classic, one of the last, old-style B&W Macs. The next was one of the first iMacs with an Intel processor. The next three have all been MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. My wife insisted a few years ago that we only buy laptops, so that we can put away our computers and keep them out of sight when we don't use them. Unfortunately, I don't have faith in the reliability of the current Mac laptops - their new butterfly-hinge keyboards are notoriously unreliable, and Apple critics and repair experts have shown that Apple's latest laptop engineering and design are highly flawed, and prone to premature failure. (The exception might be the old-school 2017 MacBook Air, which is still available.) Fortunately, our laptops have the old-style scissor-hinge keyboards. But they won't last forever, and I shudder to think of what I will replace them with.
I would prefer to just buy iMacs again. The 21.5" Retina iMac would be a good machine, especially if it had an SSD and at least 16GB of RAM. The 27" models, however, allow users to upgrade their own RAM. A dedicated graphics controller would be nice too, although I find built-in Intel graphics processors to be pretty good. I have heard that if you want an internal SSD rather than a hybrid HD/SSD you have to order from Apple directly. iMacs in stores (supposedly) don't come with built-in SSDs.
The news of the new Mac Pro is indeed exciting. News of improving the reliability of the various MacBooks would excite me even more.
I looked at the iMac Pro and decided that $5k was best left in my pocket.
I do use a 27" iMac with a 1TB fusion drive and 32GB of RAM. It is pretty snappy on my 30MP Canon files. It is little more sluggish on 50MP 5DsR files but nothing untoward.
The challenges I have seem related to the vagaries of PS and LR performance more than the limitations of my hardware.
As an aside, I had a card reader get flaky on me and I remembered that the iMac has an SD slot in the back. Voilá, it worked far faster than any external card reader that I had ever used. It seemed that it copied files faster than my USB 3 CF card reader with a fast card. I now use SD cards only as they copy fast and reliably irrespective of the claimed speed of the SD card.
I think it's a phenomenally niche product. Just as there were thousands of D700 owners who might have been minded to upgrade their cameras but weren't offered anything suitable, there are thousands of MacPro owners who would like an upgrade but still don't see anything suitable.
I'll probably upgrade but - from my MacPro 2009 model to a 2012 model.
Just think you get a wonderful cheese grater at no extra charge.
I've been using Mac Pros since 2000 and bought the 2013 tin can version. I almost choked when I saw the price of the 2019 version - $6000+ USD or $8000+ Canadian. I can see no path to that kind of money even though I earn my bucks in IT. Frankly a fully loaded Mac Mini at $2700 is a much better bet and I can use the external storage I bought because the 2013 had none... I have no interest in the iMacs, I already have a 32" 4k wide-gamut monitor that I won't have to chuck when I upgrade. Oh, and $5000 will buy a lot of lenses, paper, ink, beer, etc.
Apple was aiming for a specific market that won't hesitate to spend $10K on a workstation. And that is what these are, the modern version of the old SGI and Sun workstations that we used to use for high end scientific, graphic, and motion video work. And in that respect they are just a little overpriced, not a lot. I also agree that while you could, in theory, buy commodity parts and build something similar, it won't offer the cohesive experience and unified performance of the uber-Mac.
It's just money. Spend it.
Just bought a new 27” I Mac with the 512 SSD. The plan was to keep all my photos on an external drive for editing and storage. But, so far I am having trouble with the external drive I chose. It, for no reason, disconnects from time to time. So, more money, different drive, more time to get tings working.
Definitely see these as high end market - a you know if you need one of these. If you have to ask, you probably don't. In a couple of years, the used/refurb market might be worth checking out. Marques Brownlee has a good take on where the monitor sits in the market.
«I think I would be too intimidated owning a computer on which post production is so quick that it's over before I can even start.»
Sarcasm at its finest. Love it!
I was thinking of getting one, but no card reader! Deal breaker!!.
Peter Wright
Peter, surely you know they have an optional card reader. It's made out of a platinum and titanium alloy specifically for these new machines. It's highly cost effective at only $1900. Send your advance, cash only payments to: The Visual Science Lab- Apple project.
Price wise this new cheese grater is in line with Hp's Z8 series when fully kitted out. I think Apple wanted to stem the flow of PC type machines running Linux in production shops. I suspect this machine is aimed at video editing and 3D applications as there is no need for this much computing power for PS and LR. Very few serious video shops use FCPX which can only be run in a Mac environment. Resolve, Avid and Premiere Pro are mainstays in high end video editing. Resolve will run on PC and Linux, PP and Avid will run on both Mac and PC. From what I read a lot of the FX work is done on Linux boxes. So in the end it will be interesting to see if these new boxes from Apple can gain traction in a field that has all but ditched Apple due to their unresponsiveness to high end professionals computing demands.
What Apple needs to do is build a competitive MacBook Pro with user upgradeable RAM and HD. In addition to this don't cripple the machine by eliminating most of the ports! And like most people I hate paying taxes, especially the Apple tax!
Eric
I think the machine might have been mis-named. It's not really a continuation of the old "Pro" line, it's really something different, and not really aimed at the old Pro users. I had a Pro for a while, but used it to run LR and PS at a time when the Pros weren't really as fast as a current iMac. "Sufficiency" seems to be the key here -- current iMacs and MacBook Pros are sufficient for what photographers need. Buying one of these things for photography would be like buying an F-350 dually to take home your Christmas tree.
"Over-sufficiency" is really starting to hurt. I bought a Versa sports watch basically because I wanted it to tell me how many laps I was swimming (I lose track after about four) and because it had some other interesting functions (step counters, heart-rate monitor.) It's a nice looking watch, but has an operation guide more than eighty pages long. I just can't make myself read it. If I did read it, I probably couldn't remember most of it. Thom Hogan's book on the Nikon Z6 is 1,010 pages long...what ever happened to f8 and be there?
John Camp
A year ago I spent some time on HP's website seeing how much I could (could, not would) spend on an HP computer. I stopped at $82,000.
Maybe those are for rocket scientists and plasma physicists but I bet a few are sitting in editing suites.
Photoshop and Lightroom don’t/can’t make use of many cores, the key metric for these apps is processor speed. The problem is Intel is having trouble making faster processors. Their solution is to keep adding cores to the processor but that does nothing for photographers. intel processors have a base speed and a turbo boost speed. The problem with turbo boost is that the chips heat up under load and the chips then throttle back the turbo boost speed and under sustained load the actual processor speed may decrease below the base speed of the chip. I bought an iMac Pro because Apple redesigned the cooling in the computer to handle sustained load even though the chip turbo boost speeds of the iMac Pro chips is lower than the iMac chips. So the iMac theoretically runs faster than the iMac Pro but for sustained demand the pro is actually faster. For Photographers the new Mac Pro is a Veblin Good (get better soon Mike). For serious engineering, serious Video and 3D work the new Mac Pro is killer. For photographers it’s the wrong tool.
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