thoughts on the next gen "pro" macs...

ive always had the practice of selling off aging apple hardware while it still has value. in order to subsidize the purchase of the next, more powerful machine.

but with current apple trends i kind of find myself second guessing that...

ive been made a very attractive offer on my existing 2.8 octocore xeon box. but i fear what if the next "pro" mac is as much a clusterf#@k as fcpX was?

my logic is that i could get by on my ssd MBpro for a few months and redirect the cash into the next gen "tower" (or whatever it is) but what if the next "pro" mac is some glorified mac mini with nothing but hdmi for monitoring. or some other such nonsense? in which case my old gray octocore suddenly looks like a very long-term relationship ; )

so. im just canvasing the room to see what the group feelings are about the next gen? rumors, speculations,just plain guesses...?

I'm in the same boat. Have a buyer for me ageing MacPro, but no idea if it's better to hang on to it, buy a new MacPro now or wait and see what happens. I had a problem with the MacPro so bought a stock iMac to get a job done. Think I'm gonna sell and see what happens.

If it were in my budget i would go for a 12core and be happy with that but I too am wondering about the next Macpro as every update in the last 7months has been ANTI-PRO user.

As i read all of the speculation on the next Sandy Bridge processor macpro it seems like Apple is kicking us out. They seem to be going with more consumer products like samsung does. They have a a line of TVs coming out and big upgrades to everything short of the macpros. Macpros have dropped in sales by 40% over the last couple of years.

I am seriously considering the strongest 8core or 6core as a purchase in February. To me there is normally more buzz than what what we have now on the next gens. This leads me to believe that Apple is not actually in development for a new macpro.

Theres a guy from disney that just purchased 2600+ shares of Apple and became a board member. [www.macrumors.com]
However this guy is not from the motion picture wing of disney so i don't thing he is going to be pushing for a proline machine.

The executive of apple are not heavy load users of macs. They think that Thunderbolt is excellent, but Thunderbolt is not feasible for HD workflows in my opinion (10gbps max). Neither is Lion.

Think about it like this FCPx was a downgrade, Thunderbolt is only for consumers, Logic is slowly getting screwed, color is gone, no cuda on the macpro without flashing and the 12core is their maxed out machine. I think its all downhill from here.
We maybe looking at the best macpros ever to be made right now.

They say its sales that caused this but they have not looked at their pricing. You can buy 3 octo-core 8gig ram PC-thingys for the price of 1 octocore. I think sales would pick up if that was a 2:1 ratio.

If there is no more Macpros and that is announced at the beginning of the year. There will be a run on these current 6 & 8core machines.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

J. Corbett,

>Thunderbolt is not feasible for HD workflows in my opinion (10gbps max)

Exactly how many streams of 4K DPX files do you usually work with? Many hard drive arrays I come across, aren't even able to come close to the maximum bandwidth that Thunderbolt offers.



www.strypesinpost.com

I don't know about the future, but I'll love to be the fly on the wall when Apple makes their internal announcement that their next version of iCloud would be hosted on a bunch of Mac Minis held together by thumbdrives and USB cables. That or an HP running Windows 8. Pro to some degree is important to internal Apple operations. And they need some mean engineering feats to make the Mac minis do what the Mac Pros do. Not impossible, but hard.

Agreed that FCP X is a game changer- most pros are seriously looking over at Avid and Adobe if they haven't already made the leap.



www.strypesinpost.com