Re: Pretty amazing Thunderbolt demo.

[Jeremy Garchow] "It is astounding to me the amount of people that use iMacs for their primary editing system, even over MacBook Pros... People have been making lower power CPUs work for a while, and i bet Apple knows it... Plus, if you allow user GPU upgradability, you'll be able to squeeze more out of the box as CPU speed won't be as crucial for editorial."

I agree. I've been saying for months here that you don't need a Mac Pro anymore to edit HD video. A small, moderately user-expandable i7-based box would be a great fit for a lot of editors. They are certainly very popular in the PC world.


[Jeremy Garchow] "There's not many people who say, "gee, I wish this thing was bigger, heavier, more loud and a little faster", beyond Walter and the Sizzle Cores. ;)"

Great name for a band!

There may not be a lot of people who would say that (compared to the size of the iPhone-buying public), but there are entire disciplines in our industry who gladly trade big, heavy, loud, and expensive for faster renders, because faster renders lead to better client results.

A dual Xeon workstation may be a little faster than a quad-core i7 box for editorial, but it's a lot faster for compositing, motion graphics, or 3D. Moving from a real workstation down to a SuperMini for AE, C4D, Maya, or Nuke on the i7 SuperMini would be like putting a bird in a cage. I think it would continue pushing people like me away from the Mac platform.

I'm sure Apple could drop Xeon workstations and barely feel the blip in their bottom line, but it would certainly change the landscape in our business quite a bit.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
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