Mac Pros?

Has anyone any thoughts about the future of the MacPro, or heard any buzz?

Don't want to start another rant-fest here, but the MacPro is a big part of the equation looking forward, with or without FCPX. In Apple's thinking thus far, soft and hardware have been closely related. Now that they're not really selling any apps anymore that require the horsepower that a machine like the MacPro provides, and have backed out of making servers, I'm venturing the guess that the MacPro's days may be numbered. I hope that I'm completely wrong, but hey, after what we've been through...

I keep hearing about them being much smaller, rack mountable with only one or two PCI slots inside requiring either Thunderbolt external devices or an expansion chassis.

Of everything I hear about the new Mac Pros, those are the things that keep coming up.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Something like what you describe would be excellent. Especially a rack-mount unit. Very configurable for each workstation from a central machine room.

We're really stuck in the midst of the decision-making process in my shop as we're expanding to a larger facility soon, but just don't know which solutions to go with.

My biggest issue is I would need expansion chassis for every single suite to keep using the cards or transition over to external boxes with each new computer purchase.

Then again, 5 to 7 slot PCs are also available and since both the platforms we're looking at for NLEs run cross platform, there's a real viability to that too.

Lots and lots of choices these days. We will start to transition in new computers possibly by the end of the summer if we bring one or two more edit suites online. Then next year will definitely replace at least two or three existing workstations.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
biscardicreative.com

Thinking along the same lines.

We'll be running 3 new suites, with an option to expand to 5 towards the end of the year. Intergration is a lot more horizontal than vertical. By that I mean, 90% of our work is collaborative amongst a group of specialists (edit/grade, composite/vfx, 2D/3D and graphics), so each suite has it's specific requirements although almost all of the software is platfrom independent. I don't really like the idea of migrating the enitre shop over to windows, but we wouldn't be alone in that. For us to remain on OSX, there has to be an announcement re the MacPro kinda soon. After x-day, they owe us at least that heads-up.