HD For Indies

(Photo lifted from Apple site, I figure they won't mind)

UPDATE WEDNESDAY

I forgot to include that the Cinema Displays had their prices cut - 20" is now $699, 23" is now $999, and 30" is now $1999. Closer to competitors, but still a bit more in cost. But lovely design - decide your priorities.

Macworld: Feature: Comparing prices: Mac Pro versus PCs which is close but not quite tit for tat - MacWorld comes up with a package $1350 more than a Mac Pro.

I'd argue the Dell had a better graphics card included (Quadro FX 3450 vs GeForce 7300GT), and the Dell comes with a 19" monitor, which Apple charges $700 for their 20" model. I'm guess the $350 upgrade to an ATI X1900GT might be a more equitable comparison (update - somebody commented (read comments) that these two are comparable, so more like a $600 difference, not $300), so taking those two things into comparison (how can you compare a system with a large LCD to one without?) the price difference is about $300 roughly. The Dell has a few more slots and USB ports, the Mac has more FireWire and optical audio i/o.

While I've heard numerous complaints about Dell's consumer support (and I've witnessed it myself with my own Dell 2407 monitor troubles), Dell biz support has online, "we steer your machine remotely" software included, and some other support stuff.

In the end it boils down to this - Mac Pros are cost competitive with a high end Dell workstation, and depending on how you want to slice it, probably cost less. But I don't think it can be effectively argued they cost more.

-mike

end update
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WWDC wrap up:

I've started writing my WWDC 2006 coverage about 3 times now, and each time bogged down in what I've nicknamed "blogstipation" - getting mired in the dozens of links, the handsful of products, and my writing process gets all...blocked up. I'm holding up the line of news, trying to finish one thing.

I'm halfway giving up instead of writing it all myself, it's too much to do, and getting too late, and others have done it well, so let me point you their way and add some comments. This is a bit slapdash, but all that's going to happen if I don't just give up and move on. Too many other things to do and cover!


Apple's Keynote viewable here of Steve Jobs giving his usual show. I haven't watched it yet.

Pictures from Keynote

As to the new Mac Pros, here's some articles and info:

Basics of the Mac Pros:

Apple's pages on Mac Pro:

Main Mac Pro Page
about the Xeon processor (with some benchmarks from Apple)
chassis design - with nice rollovers and descriptive text - actually quite informative and good page
Graphics card stuff
with some gaming benchmarks
Expansion covering storage, optical drives, RAM, and PCIe stuff
Performance - more on this below
Tech specs - well, duh.

Mac Pro Developer Notes here, with the deep geeky bits. Oh, and more here, here, here, and here.

Best third party coverage I've seen yet: Ars Technica coverage of Mac Pro - bravo guys, excellent as always!

Macintouch's Mac Pro: Initial Experiences report, which I'm sure will grow daily, and is worth checking in on - they like to get nitty gritty like I do, but aren't HD or video specific

As previously reported, here is a good takeapart photo gallery

No time for that? Here's a nice little 90 second tour under the hood of a Mac Pro from MacWorld (nice one guys!) that is extremely informative. That page also includes some other useful links, so dig around there.

Mike's Buying Advice If You're Going To Get A Mac Pro: Starting at $2200 for a Quad 2.0 box , $2500 for the Quad 2.66, and starting at $3300 for a Quad 3.0 GHz box, that's cheap power. Interesting to note that unlike previous configs, it is very clear that in the step up from 2.66 to 3.0 GHz, ALL you are getting for your $800 is a faster processor - no RAM or HD upgrades included in that. Welcome to Intel pricing, kids, here's your accordion, go sit in that boiling tar over there. Intel charges a VERY beefy premium for their fastest processors - $800 for 0.34 GHz is, well, owie - steep. My advice? If you're building some massive systems where $800 is a drop in the total bucket, and you've already got everything else you want in the system and that's not painful for you to part with the cash, go ahead and get the fastest so you won't be obsoleted as fast. If, on the other hand, you're Joe Indie, $800 will buy you that X1900GT graphics card AND some third party RAM AND an additional third party hard drive (maybe two), so I wouldn't pop for that unless there was some proven, mission critical advantage to the Quad 3.0 that the Quad 2.66 didn't have - such as X number of realtime layers that you needed to have, or YES the 3.0 does something in realtime that the 2.66 has to render. I'm not aware at this time of any such THRESHOLD (yes or no) type differentiation between the two, so until I hear of one, the 2.66 is my recommendation for most folks on a tight budget. I'd personally MUCH rather have a Quad 2.66 with a better graphics card, more RAM or another drive or two than a bare bones 3.0 GHz box. And, as always, Apple charges a fortune for their RAM and hard drives. An argument can be made for high quality Apple RAM, but not an overwhelming one. Find a good vendor with a no questions, money back/replacement/lifetime guarantee (and they SHOULD) on RAM and do that. Hard drives? Please. Buy third party, just good sources, and for GOD'S SAKE, DO NOT NOT NOT buy the non-retail, bare bones hard drives from Fry's, CompUSA, etc. - those are LITERALLY the ones everyone else has picked over and passed on. I have my favorite vendors I use, I'm sure there are others out there just as good - do some research, and ask and do not accept B-stock. Would you want a factory not-quote-spec parachute? Then why get a B-stock hard drive? Same logic.

Oh, and to pop it in here somewhere - Bluetooth and Airport Extreme are BTO, NOT standard, unlike other Intel Macs. Drat! But I figure this is just a cost savings gesture on Apple's part. If this is going to be your primary box, I recommend getting both of these options if you can afford it. I'll betcha lunch that by MWSF Bluetooth and Airport Extreme will be stock on these machines at or below current prices. They have to withhold SOME candy to get you to come back later...

Oh, and DO DO DO get the BTO option X1900GT card - it already helps with Motion, and with Leopard and what I expect of the next rev of Final Cut Pro (maybe NAB next year?) it'll make a performance difference. On a tight budget? Sit and suck it on the current stock card, and when the performance gains do occur, THEN buy a retail graphics card (price will be lower then than now...and I'll bet they might upgrade the stock graphics card by MWSF 2007 at the same price point as well).

Oh, and just to put it in somewhere - supposedly Dell's similarly equipped box is SUBSTANTIALY more expensive - some PC fan - find me a similarly equipped Dell to prove or disprove that one, OK? What I'd like to see: a 1GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, Quad 2.66 same chips, ATI X1900GT.

Benchmarks:

Apple's own are on the performance page linked above, roll over (not obvious) to see different apps' performance. Quick summary of stuff I care about:

FCP (unreleased beta version) DV rendering is 30% faster than Quad G5 for 2.66 Xeon box, 40% faster for 3.0 GHz box
FCP beta DV encoding to MPEG-2: same 30 & 40% speedup as above for 2.66 & 3.0 GHz
FCP beta HDV rendering (1080i60): 20 & 30% faster than Quad G5
FCP beta HDV 1080i60 MPEG-2 encode to HDV: both 2.66 & 3.0 were 40% faster than Quad G5 (so what's the bottleneck if not processor?)

Logic and Soundtrack Pro were 40 to 80% faster than Quad G5, depending on task, app, and box

...but one of my favorite quotes was about lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. Manufacturers can be counted on to make their products look good, so it helps to see independent testing. So therefore:

BareFeats: Mac Pro 2.66GHz versus Quad-Core G5/2.5GHz includes Photoshop CS2, After Effects, iMovie 6, and some limited FCP testing; as well as analysis and recommendations. I know and trust the guy running this site.

Macworld: First Look: 2.66GHz Mac Pro sets the speed mark - Compressor 2.1 was the only app that I cared about where the Intel based system beat the Quad G5...and then not by much.

Geek Patrol | Mac Pro Benchmarks are of purely scientific/geeky value, included to be thorough. Gives an idea of what the hardware can do, IF it can get optimized sofware

Mike's Mac Pro Performance Comments: Based on these benchmarks, I'm not seeing anything that makes me want to dump my Quad G5 for one of these boxes at this time. The architecture has some great capabilities, but AT THIS TIME I don't see major benefits to upgrading from a Quad G5. If buying new? I'd look carefully at what your needs are - if you need to do heavy After Effects, for instance, NOW, I'd say a Quad G5 is a better box for that task...NOW. Although the Mac Pro, even under Rosetta emulation, was close behind. If you're a dual booter, WinXP After Effects is way to go (if you're comfortable with that) until native ships. Once they ship an Intel native version of After Effects (next year I hope/presume), then we're talkin'...but not until then. Similarly, just take a careful and thorough look at your needs and applications, and KNOW what is native or not, supported or not, mission critical performance or not, and MOST ESPECIALLY, "fast enough" for your needs or not. I can live with non-native support for office type apps, but not graphic apps. I DO think, however, that in time the apps will run faster on this hardware. But compounding a lack of FULLY optimized apps for this box, and that it is Apple's first Intel tower, I feel no compelling need to sprint out and get one now. In a few months, after a tweaked version of FCP ships (I hope), and I'm sure all the 1.0 bugs get worked out, I'd like to have one so I have a pimp daddy Mac AND a pimp daddy PC. I like the idea of rebooting and my BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme works fine in either world - won't THAT be nice for maximum choice and flexibility!

Compatibility:

Again, double check your apps for compatiblity, but ESPECIALLY be careful about hardware - I now have a number of PCIe cards, and only SOME of them will work in a Mac Pro. There are two main categories I'm concerned with for editing:

1.) HD-SDI I/O - Both AJA and BlackMagic Design have announced current or imminently forthcoming driver support for the Mac Pro towers, so no problems expected there. (BTW, those are links to the press releases on Mac Pro support if you want more details.)

2.) Storage - at present, none of the SATA card vendors have announced support for the Mac Pros AFAIK. I checked with Sonnet and found a short message on their page that they are working on Mac Pro driver support but it isn't ready yet. I'd expect that Highpoint, Firmtek, LaCie, etc. are all working on driver support as well. But for the moment, external SATA drive arrays are SOL on connecting to Mac Pros. Apple is selling a PCIe fiber channel card (presumably same as before) with the Mac Pros, so XServe RAID users are in luck. Xsan IS supported on Intel Macs (I checked) so that is good news. ATTO, however, gets good points for stepping up immediately (which means it had prior access): "ATTO ExpressPCI SCSI adapters, Celerity Fibre Channel adapters, and ExpressSAS RAID adapters are the only PCI Express (PCIe) adapters available today that support Mac OS X on the Intel platform," the company said on MacNN

UPDATE 8:20pm - Barefeats report: Seagate 750GB and Hitachi 500GB four drive RAID 0 inside the Mac Pro has some interesting stuff going on about the internal drive ports. Read before buying! They also have a another report that goes into good detail on the overall box.

Upgradeability:

Apple has done an excellent job of addressing complaints about the G5s:

-RAM on riser boards, so literally a snap to install - no more pulling fans or awkward "I can't see what's going on here" installs - quick and easy, 8 slots for up to 16 GB or RAM - kudos Apple! And a fast (if pricey) architecture means full on maximum speed. By committing to this RAM architecture, it does push up the price point

-Optical drives - with no high def burners available from Apple yet, Apple at least is planning ahead, and has TWO optical drive bays in these towers. Standard is a dual layer DVD/CD burner, but I'm betting a BTO option of a Blu-ray (my fave and leading candidate based on prior Steve Jobs statements) or HD-DVD will become available by MWSF in January '07 at the latest. In the meantime, you can get two SuperDrives if ya want'em as BTO options.

-PCIe slots - a 16x, a 1x, and two 4x are the standard config, although the speeds can be rearranged...which I do not understand fully (somebody got a link to explain?). But the good news is that they FINALLY offset the graphics card slot, so that if you get a double wide card (more and more common for the Big Kahuna space heaters we graphics folks want to put in there), it will NOT block the adjacent slot, thus limiting your card configurations as well as total card count. HOORAY Apple, SO glad you listened on that one! Also appears that they are thumb screws, so tool-less. Another great example of Apple's attention to detail for this box.

-the power supply has also been moved up top as well. More details about the innards in the excellent Ars Technica article linked elsewhere, go read that.

-Storage - not just room, but an elegant solution for more drives inside the box, including drive trays, power, and SATA connectors...even two unpopulated connectors on the motherboard that can be externalized with a commonly available adaptor (offhand, I know MacGurus used to carry them, I'm sure others do as well). Firmtek/Seritek has a nice little two bay hotswap SATA enclosure with inexpensive cages. So if you wanted to do uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2, you could buy 5 additional drives third party, put two of them in the external enclosure/s (although a fixed drive enclosure or two makes sense too), and have a dedicated boot drive and a 5 drive SATA array. I've been against internal drive RAIDs in the G5 tower, but this tower is designed to accomodate 3 drives beyond the boot drives, with ports for two more. This isn't my most recommended solution, but for Duly Starving Indies, it'd be cost effective (but have some workflow limitations). Also a tantalizing idea - a prize to whomever can verify yay or nay as to whether these ports (and they are clearly SATA II, as evinced by ""two unpopulated 3 Gbps SATA buses for expansion" in Apple documentation) - do the 2 additional ports support port multiplication?((Last picture on page.)) If that were the case, you could then attach up to TEN additional drives to the Mac Pro in external port multiplying enclosures. It is possible but not necessarily likely - if they did this, they'd be ticking off a lot of third party vendors, like Sonnet, Firmtek, Highpoint, etc. But 3rd party developers are not Apple's first consideration. I recently set up a 10 drive port multiplying array (I'll be writing about the experience soon), so that's an enticing if unlikely possibility. Going back the internals of the unit, I see NO room to fit any additional drives into the Mac Pro without compromising room for cards. WELL, actuallly, I wonder if you could fit a drive or two in that empty optical drive bay...hmmm...hmmm...you'd have power and cooling in that vicinity already, you'd just need some kind of a mounting bracket. Accessory makers? Are you listening? Hmmm....again I prefer external solutions, but that ain't bad.

Also, more ports - a second USB 2.0 on the front, a FW800 as well as FW400 on the front, and on back another USB 20 port, and the ports have been arranged in tidy rows according to type. VERY nice (see pick at top of article, click to enlarge).

New XServes

Based on Quad Xeon like Mac Pros, similar specs, but in a 1U (but DEEP!) package that FINALLY has redundant power supplies. Like on the Mac Pros they listened and rearranged ports etc., and the card config offers the tantalizing possibility of a true HD editing station in a 1U package (attached to storage of course), with monitor, HBA card, and HD-SDI card. I've asked vendors and they say it sounds possible but they'll need to test with actual hardware, of course. Beyond that, I'm not terribly interested in these boxes other than as Xsan metadata controllers or other server usages.

As for Apple bragging rights, somewhere I read that Dell's similarly configured server was about $300 more (these start at $3K).

Links:

MacNN article: Xserves may be good for business

WWDC: Apple flirts with enterprise - are you Xserved?

MacWorld: WWDC: Xserve makes a strong showing

OK, more stuff:

Intel transition seen going as better than expected

Leopard is going to be OS X 10.6.

Things of interest to me:

-TRULY, full on, unqualified, 64 bit support. With concurrent 32 bit app support, side by side. NICE! Means everybody should be able to run as fast as possible. This opens the possibility that next year's apps may run faster on current Intel based hardware once optimized.

-QuickTime is getting some serious under the hood work done, I hope they tidy up some loose ends that have been hanging out for a while

-Time Machine - is a built in incremental backup and restore system - this sounds GREAT for everybody, consumers and pros alike - so few people actually do backups the way they shold (Um....me included), and this will make it a snap to do so over a network or to a local drive. Sounds like a cool UI, too, but I haven't seen it.

Resolution Independence - I've been waiting for this one a LOOOOOONG time - this means you can tell your UI to make the cursor 1/2" tall, REGARDLESS of the DPI of your screen. This requires some substantial reworking on the developer's side, but if done correctly, means you should be able to resize the UI elements the same way you resize Finder icons - so if you have a massively high res screen, your cursor, UI elements, text, etc. doesn't have to be itty bitty. Think this doesn't matter? Try seeing small text in an FCP bin on a 30" monitor at arm's length.

Information gleaned from here,

Leopard vs. Vista articles links here on XLR8YourMac.com

Developers got a preview copy to take home with them, and it didn't start long for their cheatin' hearts to start singin' - it's already out there on the warez scene as of Aug 11th.

MORE RUMORS! WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

So now that we've addressed what HAS shipped, or has been stated to ship, let's talk about other stuff that hasn't happened or might not happen -

Multiple sources think we'll see Core 2 Duo chips in the Macbooks and Macbook Pros. Personally, while I'd LIKE to see the pro and consumer lines both get the faster chips, I'm betting Apple would like to see a pro/consumer split in their product lineup - so MacBooks Pros would get Core 2 Duos, and MacBooks....wouldn't...yet. Or at least it would be a pricier BTO option...or somethin'.

Sources for rumors: AppleInsider, MacRumors.com, DigitTimes.

Mike's Buying Recommendations, Final Thoughts

OK, you've waded through all this dreck you deserve SOME kind of a prize - so if you KNOW a Mac Pro is right for you, I'd be inclined to wait about a month (let's see if I can hold out THIS time!) or more to let the 1.0 bugs shake out, or find out if there are any nasty gremlins in there to be avoided. Once you DO decide to buy (if right choice for you), I'd get the following config:

-quad 2.66 (unless you're clear on spending the extra $800 for 0.34 GHz faster)
-standard RAM config (buy more third party)
-MAYBE bump up the standard drive to bigger...or not (third party always an option). If a single drive is all you're using for now, and you want to have Windows too, BIG drive recommended, either from here or elsewhere
-any additional hard drives? Buy from other reputable vendor, Apple is pricey (but hey, single source vendor ain't the end of the world, either!)
-single SuperDrive
-DO get the optional X1900GT, Bluetooth and Airport Extreme - I find they come in handy - Bluetooth sync to cellphone is AWFULLY nice for calendar/address book synchronization
-I skip the modem - can't imagine using it (unless you want to fax with it, but you should be faxing from an edit station anyway! What happens if fax comes in while capturing or worse, mastering to tape?)

Right this minute, if you want to do HD stuff and dual boot OS X & WinXP, I think BlackMagic has the advantage, because I know for a fact that you can take the same exact card and put it in a Mac or PC, so I see no reason why you couldn't dual boot with one of their PCIe based cards or Multibridge devices and have it work in BOTH OS X and WinXP. I've inquired just minutes ago as to whether AJA was going to consolidate their Kona/Xena lines, or at least allow installation of one of those in a Mac Pro and be able to dual boot, I'll update this article when I hear something back I can "share with the group", as they say. I don't know how similar the Kona/Xena cards are under the skin - are they engineered differently? Different firmware? Or is the Mac/PC split just a marketing differentiation? I don't know at this time.

Some further thoughts on those benchmarks - those Intel performance numbers in Adobe products weren't TOO bad....that emulated Rosetta performance doesn't blow when comparing a Quad G5 to these new boxes. But I think we need more performance testing done by more third parties to know what the emulated performance in working environments is likely to be.

-there's some kind of deal where you can save money on Final Cut Studio when purchasing with a Mac, so investigate that. If anybody finds the link that explains how to save on Final Cut Studio when buying a Mac Pro, PLEASE post in comments or email me (address at top of page).

-Apple also will deal aggressively for business purchases, so look into that as well - talk to their Enterprise sales guys, but don't expect then to know the video stuff, for that, a good VAR, like Omega in Austin or Silverado in California, or ProMax, or....etc. etc. etc.

OK, whee! Thank god, I'm done, and I can now move on. Blogstipation over! Ahhhhhhh.............I'll stop the metaphors there, in the interest of all parties concerned. Dinner time.

-Mikey, The "Super Colon Blow" Blogger