Re: After a year has perception of FCPX changed?

I think it speaks to a larger, dare I say philosophical?, question of what a workstation is. You go back even 5 years and the processing advantage between a MacPro and an iMac was miles apart. Now you see demos of people working with 4K material on a MacBook Air via Thunderbolt. So I think part of my thought process is that the old tropes that some people hold up are becoming more irrelevant by the day. In fact, if 1080p were to be any kind of long-term standard, then I'd almost say we could see the horizon where processor power might catch up with demand. But with RAW 4K looming on the horizon for a broader slice of the market, I no longer think we'll see the ceiling anytime soon.

Now obviously sheer processor power only gets you so far. Render farms or high end graphics and color suites DO benefit from a 12core machine with 64GB of ram and multiple GPUs. I'm putting my money on Thunderbolt to be the solution. It isn't now (though man those transfer speeds come in handy!) but I don't think we're too far off from a TB capable of enough lanes to support a breakout box that can handle all the stuff that we shove into a PCI slot. I'd wager that Apple won't even make that breakout mini tower of power, but it will be there for those who have that need. And once you can outbound that, then the user can buy ANY Mac and it can be a workstation device.

If I had to bet, I'd say we will see one final TB MacPro, simply because TB isn't fast enough yet. But I agree that if it's going to happen it will have to happen soon. The natives are restless.

That's what I'm smoking.