Apple Launches New Magical Trackpad, 12 Core Macs 432
theappwhisperer writes "The Magic Trackpad is basically a larger version of the MacBook Pro touchpad, with 80% more surface area for all your swiping and pinching. The entire surface acts as a button, so it's also a possible mouse replacement. And all of the expected gestures are here: two-finger scrolling, pinch to zoom, fingertip rotation, and three- and four-finger swipes. You can enable and disable gestures at your discretion from System Preferences." They also launched 12-core Mac Pros coming in August.
I'm selling my neighbors kids to get one of these (Score:5, Funny)
works out great for me, I get a new computer and get one of those damn kids out of my hair.
Any takers? SHould I put them on craigslist or ebay?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I'm selling my neighbors kids to get one of the (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't know Apple did Trade-ins for non Apple products.
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They are bad apples, so it is more of a recall.
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Just FYI, Windows 7 has full multi-touch support. (Doesn't guarantee your applications will use it sensibly, but it's there.)
More magic? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More magic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Apple product naming (Score:2, Interesting)
It's brilliant, really. We're just complaining about "unified branding". People are forgetting that the prior marketing disaster was "My". My documents, Myspace, yecch.
"e" was taken and done to death. e-mail, e-zines, etc.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except I think the 'e' in "eMac" stood for "education" rather than "electronic." It would be odd if Apple had sold the "internet" Mac for years before building an electronic Mac.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
iFizzle. iFizzle. iFizzle. iFizzle. You begin casting iMagic. iTarget (iFanboi) succumbed to iMagic. iFizzle. iFizzle. iFizzle. You become better at iFizzle. iFizzle. iFizzle. You begin casting iMagic. iTarget (iNonFanboi) resisted iMagic. Try iMagic again after you reduce their reality distortion field shield with iMalosini.
Any sufficiently advanced technology... (Score:2)
Honestly, I find this "magic" marketing strategy to be a complete turnoff.
The fact that you're on Slashdot makes you Not The Target Market.
To most people, virtually any computer thingie is sufficiently advanced.
Re:Any sufficiently advanced technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the majority of people on Slashdot actually understand technology.
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I made a website in HTML once. Can I talk about things that 4chan told me to hate with the big boys, now?
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If you didn't hand type it with ALT-#### codes then it doesn't count. :p
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Ah, dont tease him, HTML doesnt count anyway.. unless you wrote the http-deamon hosting it yourself, on punchcard, uphill both ways, in ten feet of snow..
Re:Any sufficiently advanced technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
More like that what geeks think aren't that essential to selling computers. It's a bit like selling cars to race drivers (professional workers) or car mechanics (support people). They probably have some very different thoughts about cars than we do, and think the car commercials are quite silly. But the car companies don't care because there's a huge market of soccer moms and dads that need it for their commute and driving kids around. Just like there's a huge market of people that aren't very interested in computers but want to get stuff done using one. Even when it comes to choosing platform the fact that your geek prefers Linux/OpenOffice/Firefox/GIMP doesn't necessarily make it a good idea if your people are all experienced Windows/MS Office/IE/Photoshop users.
Funny enough, if you try bringing your product to Linux you get nothing but hate burn. Try reading the comments to uTorrent coming to Linux [torrentfreak.com] and see what I mean. It's 95% "we don't want no closed source shit, too little too late, $torrent-app rules, fuck off". This despite being quite probably the best and certainly the most popular client on Windows, and lots of people might look more favorably on Linux if they didn't have to learn a new application. "Here's Linux, ditch all your old software, but trust me all that G/K stuff is much better" is a WTF to everyone but OSS zealots. For a platform that supposedly promotes choice, it's amazing how militantly hostile some are to giving you one.
Re:Any sufficiently advanced technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, what about the 12-core Mac? I mean, the only people who are really going to be able to make use of that kind of power are the same type of people who look at Mac OS X as a friendly Unix that can run Matlab AND Photoshop, probably heavy on the Matlab. Maybe 3D animators, but I've known a few of those, and they were pretty on the ball in general. I mean, I see a 12-core Mac Pro and think back to the Mac Pro we had mixed in with the HP and Sun workstations in the FEL control room when I did an internship back in 2002, I don't think "web designer" or "philosophy major." Just saying.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Apple isn't about making cool technology any more - it's about marketing to the masses.
Sure, I can use a 12-core device - but then again, I can write multi-threaded code in c, so I'm not dependent on a higher-level abstraction to hopefully "manage" my threading for me (while sucking so much resources that 12 cores becomes the new dual core). The average user simply can't even make proper use of 4 cores - and if you gave them a really pimped-out liquid-cooled overclocked single-core 32-bit machine (gobs o
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likewise the average program, even plenty of games, can't even make proper use of 4 cores. Wasn't there an article about this on slashdot recently?
Re:Any sufficiently advanced technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sense, the Mac Pro is the only "UNIX workstation" on the market today. There are tower machines made by Sun and IBM which can be used as such, but not sold as this.
Supposedly, Autodesk is going to start getting their mainstream version of AutoCAD on OS X RSN.
Of course, the question is why a Mac Pro over another x86 machine such as a Dell Precision? Multiple reasons:
1: OS X tends to have lower latency than Windows out of the box (you can disable services in Windows to help things). This, combined with the fact that Macs do not need a CPU and I/O draining antivirus program resident 24/7 means that a Mac Pro can outperform a similarly configured Windows machine.
2: Known quantity. Application makers have a far smaller number of combinations of machines and graphic cards they need to test and support.
3: Piracy. Mac users tend to pirate a lot less, so there will be more paid seats sold.
4: Support. At this level, it is assumed that the workstations come with premium support, so it isn't like the consumer market where Apple just puts the other PC vendors to shame. However, it does help having one vendor sell and support the OS and hardware.
5: Education. Professors used to buy UNIX workstations because they needed them for SPSS, Maple, and other tasks. Because Apple gives a discount for universities, this means that Mac Pros will end up in the statistical computing labs.
6: Security. This is debatable, but it can be said that UNIX is more secure than Windows, although the difference narrows if the Windows admin knows what he or she is doing. Since high end workstations tend to work on items that are crucial trade secrets, having solid security is a must.
7: Resale value. Mac Pros are priced competitively with other workstation class machines, so having the machines worth more when they are changed out at the end of an amortization cycle doesn't hurt.
Re:Any sufficiently advanced technology... (Score:5, Interesting)
1: OS X tends to have lower latency than Windows out of the box (you can disable services in Windows to help things). This, combined with the fact that Macs do not need a CPU and I/O draining antivirus program resident 24/7 means that a Mac Pro can outperform a similarly configured Windows machine.
I agree with most of your points except this. I have an antivirus (Microsoft Security Essentials) on my netbook, barely notice it's presence on my netbook. I also disabled all services (Windows 7 Home Premium), more for psychological (I don't like crap running I don't need) than any measurable gain. We are talking about a single Atom processor here - so do you think this would make a difference on a 12-core monster processor? Yeah, you may gain a few millisecond render time here and there, and well it can add up to a few seconds (maybe even a minute!!!) over a year... but seriously, this is not exactly a huge advantage ;)
As for reason #3 I think that's more an argument for why not. #7 I'm not sure, you can buy a G5 Mac Pro now for 200$, that's a fraction of the original price. The loss seems to me pretty much on par with (over 90%) PCs. I also wonder about your latency claim - I don't dispute it, I just don't know what to think... do you have any proof? The only benchmarks I saw comparing the three platforms (PC/Linux PC/Win7 Mac/OsX) was on phoronix, and I don't trust them too much (but the mac box lost on almost all benchmarks).
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But when it is in active mode, scanning data from the network, etc. It does slow down your machine. I had it running when playing EVE Online, and every second the frame rate/update rate would drop a bit, it was very noticeable. When I turned of the active part, it ran smooth again.
Re:More magic? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to make love to the product. If the product is useful to you, buy it. If not, do not buy it. Who cares what marketing has to say?
Re:More magic? (Score:5, Funny)
You don't have to make love to the product.
You would if my app wasn't rejected.
Re:More magic? (Score:5, Funny)
Does a Fleshlight run iOS? I know it works with an ARM processor... ;)
mod parent up... (Score:3, Funny)
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For the love of God, don't tell us anything about storage or capacity.
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Honestly, I find this "magic" marketing strategy to be a complete turnoff.
Well, I guess Steve Jobs learned his lesson with "really cool engineering". What else is left besides "magic"?
"Combining the really cool engineering of the iPhone 4, and the magic of the new iMac; I am pleased to announce to the world the iAlchemist. Yes that's right folks, as long as you don't hold it the wrong way, your iAlchemist can use the power of alchemy to turn lead into gold!"
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your iAlchemist can use the power of alchemy to turn lead into gold!
Uh, we're lead free solder here, thank you.
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your iAlchemist can use the power of alchemy to turn lead into gold!
Uh, we're lead free solder here, thank you.
I'd be happy to redirect a barge full of toys en route from China to one of your local ports; for a nominal fee of course. :)
Re:More magic? (Score:5, Funny)
At least they didn't call it,
iMagic.
Re:More magic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I find this "magic" marketing strategy to be a complete turnoff.
Agreed. I use the term magic when someone asks me how or why something I did worked, and it's complicated enough that I don't want to explain it. I say it's magic, we smile at each other, and each of us knows that it's complicated enough to avoid an explanation (if they say they really want to know, of course I'll explain it).
I also use it when I have enough contempt for the person that I don't think they would understand even if I tried to explain it.
So yeah, it's definitely a turn off when I see a company like Apple using it as a marketing strategy. It's like they assume we're stupid, and that's the only thing we can understand. But like someone else mentioned, I guess technical people are not Apple's target market. Sort of strange, but there it is.
Cores do not equal power (Score:3, Insightful)
As others have noted here in the past, the number of processing cores do not a powerful computer make. A lot of the time with both laptops and PCs the cores are entirely unused. You could get a finely made quad-core which is standard fare nowadays, and have it work much faster than a six or dozen core system like these Mac pros.
Since processing is largely a duopoly of AMD and Intel, both have been guilty of marketing their hardware by highlighting the core numbers. Yet it's the architecture, pressure under strain, among other things that actually equate to performance.
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:4, Informative)
All but the highest-end iMac are dual-core. The lowest-end Mac Pro is quad-core. If someone is going to drop $5K+ on a Mac Pro with 12 cores, they either have money to throw around or they know what they're doing.
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I don't think money is much of an issue for the target market. 12 core machines are aimed at the professional market who will use these devices to make money through rendering and other things lots-o-cores excel at.
That's why they're using Xeons, I think these one are around $900-$1K per.
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Right, that would be the "or they know what they're doing" part of my original comment.
These Xeons are currently over $1K each, at least on Newegg.
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Say a very good artist makes $50/hour. Cost to his company (Health insurance, his desk, power to his desk, 401k, taxes) is roughly double that: $100/hour.
If one of these new duodeccore processor computers is $12k. As soon as it saves the user from 120 hours of rendering, it's paid for itself. I can easily see someone hitting that in a year. Between opening a 20MP RAW to saving, to applying filters, etc.
Now these machines aren't going to be used for just a single year. Figure 3 year life span, at which point it's resold for $2,000 and the user is upgraded to the viginticore.
The 'machine' cost $10,000. They can subtract depreciation from taxes. Saved countless hours (one second at a time) of their artists.
/ These numbers are made up to be round. I have no clue what graphic artists make, so don't get on my case about that. Adjust numbers accordingly. //I also don't know Latin. I just copied wiki.
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If only Apple would finally get around to inventing something cool for OS X to do that. It'd make it so much easier for the developer. [apple.com] Knowing Apple they'd probably make it so that it was really simple. Like a few lines of code. [wikipedia.org]
It'd be even more awesome if they could make it open source [macosforge.org] so that other operating systems could have a chance to use it. [macosforge.org]
One can dream, right?
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Insightful)
For sure; but this is aimed at people who are would be rendering video on their desktop or other CPU heavy creative tasks (e.g. Photoshop on massively high resolution images).
This isn't aimed at your average Mac user, or even your 'power-user' - it's aimed at people who need huge amounts of CPU every now and then.
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That's true and the OP never denied that.
But the fact is that in 3 or 4 years 12 core technology could well be in place on standard home PCs, where the most strain possible is a newly released videogame.
The niche market of video renderers and other early adopters are only the first stage of buyers for this hardware - other customers will buy into it as the tech proliferates. History has shown we've seen widely marketed multi-cores aimed at everybody; and that's really what my beef is with AMD/Intel and othe
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of the time with both laptops and PCs the cores are entirely unused.
So? That is more a problem of application programmers than hardware designers.
Since processing is largely a duopoly of AMD and Intel, both have been guilty of marketing their hardware by highlighting the core numbers.
This does not even make sense. Why shouldn't a company tout the fact that they have more cores on a chip than before? And this is Apple's advertising anyway, not AMD/Intel. The price alone would keep most people from buying the high-end, as it always has. However, for my work in radar signal processing using heavily-threaded applications, this machine would be a great addition to my desktop since I would no longer have to run my signal processing streams distributed over several hosts; one host could do the job just fine.
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on how you define "power." If it's in terms of the number of calculations per second the computer is capable of doing, then of course more cores equals more power. The question is whether you're going to be running software that uses that power. The sterotypical "I just want to surf the web and read e-mail" low-end user isn't going to, but then, that guy isn't in the target market for this machine.
In bioinformatics, many of the problem we work on are "embarrassingly parallel," and I can guarantee you that I'd have no problem keeping all 12 cores on this machine busy. But scientists are a tiny niche market, of course. Presumably the new Mac Pro is mainly being pitched, as previous machines in the lines have been, to graphics and video pros. Can Photoshop and Illustrator and Final Cut use an arbitrarily large number of cores efficiently?
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Informative)
Can Photoshop and Illustrator and Final Cut use an arbitrarily large number of cores efficiently?
Arbitrarily large numbers of cores? No, not a chance, certainly not on a shared memory architecture like the system in question. 12 cores is probably going to be OK, but when you pass 16 cores you'll start to notice the memory bottleneck; once you are at 64 cores you are basically at the limit of usefulness for shared memory architectures, and you have to be careful about memory access patterns or your software will be slower. Even "embarrassingly parallel" can suffer if the memory access patterns are bad.
There is a reason that almost all of the supercomputers in use today use some sort of NUMA or distributed memory architecture.
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Informative)
Grand Central Dispatch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch [wikipedia.org]
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a very nicely specced quad core that I built before I bought my Mac Pro, and the Mac Pro absolutely blows that computer out of the water. When you have real work to do, of the type that the Mac Pro is built for, it's an awesome machine and worth every penny. If you don't need the power, then of course it's more than you need.
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Insightful)
1. More cores means lower clock speed, by necessity, because it means more power consumption, so you have to turn down the frequency to keep the TDP the same. This doesn't mean you have to get cheated out of clock speed though. You will note that Apple is not forcing you to get the 12-core version: 8- and 6- core versions are available at higher speeds.
2. What you need out of the architecture depends on what you're doing. Many Mac Pro customers are doing embarrassingly parallel workloads like 3-D rendering, where increasing your cores increases your performance almost linearly. That's a way better tradeoff then a couple percent of performance from a higher clock rate. Or, if that's not what you're doing, you can get the faster chips, see above.
3. Yeah, architecture matters, but... the architecture's all the same? No matter which core count/frequency you get, they're all Xeon chips, they're all Nehalem. It's not like you have another choice. And for my money, Nehalem is a damn good architecture for workstation/server machines (laptops, less so, but it's still an improvement over Core 2).
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TFA suggests the 12-core Mac Pro is actually a dual 6-core running at 3.33ghz. My last (albeit, budget) machine was a dual-core @ 3.15ghz. You're right that fewer cores = lower clock speed, but I don't think anything over 3ghz is really that bad (especially when you have 6-12 of them).
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That is certainly true for the average to power user.
However, if you use software specifically written to take advantages of all the cores then you are the intended audience of the Mac Pro. We use the 8-core version and have slashed computing times down from over 5 minutes per data file to less than a minute. I can see an application for the 12-core version and the completely guessed $6000 price tag makes
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Any OS X app that leverages GCD could benefit from those cores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch [wikipedia.org]
Although any existing app could also be written to utilize multiple cores effectively, GDC makes it much easier and requires far less raw code to accomplish.
Re:Cores do not equal power (Score:5, Interesting)
In case you missed it:
Mac OS X 10.5's entire userspace app collection is agressively multi-threaded. Even the e-mail client runs multiple threads. Browsers like Google Chrome and now Firefox are multithreaded. Not to mention the tons of processes that take up lots of time if serialised. Now couple that with the driver for you graphics card that compiles on the fly and runs on the CPU and you might get the picture.
In case nobody does: multiple cores prevents everything from slowing basically everything down. Not to mention the multi-thread potential of eventually stuff like ray tracers and whatnot. But oh well... my clue train needs to be driven to some other place. *choo-choo*
BTW which idiots modded that guy insightful? -_-
Re:Agreed. That +50% comes out of nowhere. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, you have +50% cores (12 instead of 8). Now in terms of productivity, how much are you likely to gain?
I recently tried to spec out a render node for a graphics artist friend of mine. I was trying to convince him that a single CPU mid-range Nehalem based Xeon system might be more cost effective in the long run. His plan was to build a single CPU Extreme Edition Core-i7 system. This was based on Netrender's benchmark utility placing this single CPU system ahead of the dual C2Q systems by a large margin, and even way ahead of dual Nehalem systems.
My logic failed to win the argument. I simply can't spec a dual quad-core Nehalem that can beat a single i7-EE. Even cost over time, it looks more cost effective to build two i7-EE systems instead of a single dual CPU system.
So, to answer the question directly, I would guess my friend is looking at gaining perhaps ~1hr a day in rendering time. That might be huge.
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That article is from 2005 (5 years ago). It discusses OS X servers before x86 architecture was even implemented and PPC was ditched.
Expected gestures (Score:5, Funny)
And all of the expected gestures are here: two-finger scrolling, pinch to zoom, fingertip rotation, and three- and four-finger swipes.
Ah, nope. You missed one.
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Ah yes, the most communicative of the fingers. I wonder why it isn't used to close apps when you're finished - seems like that would be a great stress reliever.
Re:Expected gestures (Score:5, Funny)
Editing images (Score:2)
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As an added bonus you can yell "Enhance!" every time you zoom-in.
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Just to be sure, the technology required to track fingers is much different than the one required to track a stylus, in power, complexity and components. For one thing, the stylus requires pressure or conductive contact, while the finger requires capacitive contact.
Think about this, if it is all the same, how come phones are now including touch-screens instead of the old, tried-and-true stylus like the PDAs of yore? Perhaps it's because the technology has improved enough, and its cost lowered enough as to
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If only someone could invent a device that would simulate the human finger, but had a finer point.
It'd be even better if it was in the shape of a pen, because that's what most people are used to holding.
You could call it... iMagicBicPenPointer.
I guess here's cross post to this one... (Score:4, Interesting)
So .. since all their touch technology derives from FingerWorks [ http://fingerworks.com/ [fingerworks.com] ]. They revived the iGesturePad from 1999 and added a raiser.
Question 1) Do we get to see any of the 60 or so gestures they used to use a decade ago that Apple declined to reuse?
Question 2) Is there a chance that it means the TouchStream LP is coming back in a form I could potentially get for my windows9x+/*nix9x computer again ... without having to pay several hundred on eBay + driver hunts... just several hundred to Apple?
-------------
My hope is that they are answered as followed:
1) Yes
2) Yes, more than a chance, and soon.
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just several hundred to Apple?
The trackpad is only going to cost $70 according to TFA, so while it isn't as cheap as a bottom-barrel USB mouse you can buy at best buy, its certainly not a couple hundred dollars.
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The iGesturePad was a similiar price point. The Touchstream LP(on the website link) was significantly more ... functional ... and cost a lot more.
Question 2 was more in hopes that the latter product will be delivered as well as the smaller cousin.
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Bottom barrel mice are not found at best buy.
I get my "bottom barrel mice" out of the bottom of my barrel (technically it is a large plastic tub) that contains a random assortment of computer components left over from the last 20 years of hoarding parts.
The $20 USB optical mice from best buy are over priced, but hardly bottom of the barrel.
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Actually, Apple already posted Windows drivers for the trackpad for 32bit [apple.com] and 64bit [apple.com].
They're labeled as BootCamp, but I guess they'd work on any PC (haven't tried it of course).
What a hose job.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, I'm a Apple Fanboy but this is just a screw job. No SATA III, No USB 3.0 ????
I need a good platform for my 3D work and was hoping that there might be something making the new MacPro's worth waiting for but not this.
Just priced a nice Win 7 system from Newegg and me thinks for work I'm switching back. This is just absurd.
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Depends, how much is your time worth? I worked as an IT guy for a medium sized production house that switched from a mix of PC's and Macs to all macs back in 2002 - 2004. It saved them something like $100,000 in salary costs per year because the 3 MCSE's on staff were let go. All they did was update anti-virus and then clean all the malware & viruses off the machines the AV missed.
In 2005/2006 I left the company and did some freelance editing & 3D (lightwave) work for other videographers I knew i
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I run Maya, FCP, Adobe Master Suite. I am a one person shop. I've gone back and forth between Win and Mac for the past 25 years and very knowledgeable on both systems. I have Shake but it is dead. Apple bought it and killed it. I compose using Toxik which comes with Maya. Most, if not all, available plug-ins for Maya run under Windows. Only some run under Mac. A critical one I currently use only runs under windows. I currently run under bootcamp so I can use that plug-in. Rendering time, especiall
Oh for [insert deity]'s sake (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, you can argue it ought to have come with them (and I'd agree, for what it's worth) but the cost of implementing it yourself is hardly the end of the world.
Simon
Re:Oh for [insert deity]'s sake (Score:4, Insightful)
because the *software* is better ?
because you'd be throwing away all that in-house expertise ?
Or, maybe it's not for you. Your call, I couldn't really care less. I just don't think that $40 for a USB-3 port or two is any justification for that decision.
Simon
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Yea, but I need Adobe in my workflow. No way around it. Dual booting sucks. Win 7 is not near as sucky as previous versions of Windows and my video workflow in HD would scream with the new Premium Pro and an NVidia card. I will wait to see what the new FCP looks like but if it is the rumored iMovie on roids that will be the final nail in the Apple coffin for me as far as professional workstations.
You call that thing magic? (Score:2, Funny)
$2500 for quad, 3GB ram and only 5770? (Score:2)
$2500 for quad, 3GB ram and only 5770?
You can get quad cores for $800-$1500 with 4gb and 5830 or better.
at least the 5770 is much better then the past for base cards. But will apple make you pay for the 5870 $300 making it cost $150-$200 (5770 cost apple price likey higher) + $300
Not a twelve core computer (Score:2)
Its a system with dual six-core cpus. Its like saying a computer with two one-core cpus is a "dual core" system. It may be literally true but very misleading and not what a customer expects.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
2 x AMD Opteron 6168 (1.9GHz) - $760 x 2 = $1520
2 x AMD Opteron 6172 (2.1GHz) - $1000 x 2 = $2000
2 x AMD Opteron 6174 (2.2GHz) - $1300 x 2 = $2600
Motherboard:
ASUS KGPE-D16 Dual Socket G34 - $439
Everything else is cheap.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
and it's absurd for you not to consider 1/3 of the equipment in a price comparison.
A) Its not 1/3rd of the price. That would be $1100 worth of equipment.
B) I didnt ignore it. I just didnt detail it.
C) absurd is the inclusion of a $50 firewire card, and a $100 OS, for a server.
The bulk of the cost is in the CPU's and Motherboard, and I still had as much as $1340 of headroom. You don't like that fact, thats fine. But dont try to muddy the waters... we are comparing a 24 core AMD server vs an 8 core Intel server sold by Apple for $3300. AMD wins massively on performance in this comparis
all of the expected gestures (Score:2, Funny)
Why do cheaper Imacs have more base ram? but only (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do cheaper Imacs have more base ram? But only have ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB in the $2000 system 27" screen and apple wants to push games on mac os x?
Flash 10.1 supports the new hardware (Score:5, Funny)
Adobe has assured its customers that Flash 10.1 will be able to "...make full use of the new machines. Flash will be able to utilize 100% of the 12 core hardware without fail. That's the reliability customers have come to expect from Adobe."
Boot Camp users running Windows will have to deal with "compatibility issues" that might limit utilization to a mere 15-25%
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Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
And enhance the biggest disadvantage of trackpads - RSI.
I really do not want to think on how my hand will feel after 8-10h a day of pinching, zooming and rotating your finger on a touch surface. It is OK on a notebook or a phone once in a while. It will be an absolute ligament killer on a desktop when used in a work environment.
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I really do not want to think on how my hand will feel after 8-10h a day of pinching, zooming and rotating your finger on a touch surface. It is OK on a notebook or a phone once in a while. It will be an absolute ligament killer on a desktop when used in a work environment.
The life of a porn star is tough.
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Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't used a mouse in 6 months, laptop trackpad only. No indications of RSI and my hand and wrist actually feel better than when using a mouse. I for one have wanted a track pad off to the side instead of below my typing surface as it is a more natural movement for me.
So now I can close my screen, use only my external monitor, and use a wireless keyboard and trackpad. No wires or moving parts on my desktop.
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No desk space required ... but it will probably retain most of the disadvantages of other trackpads while adding a bit more usability.
My mouse only takes up as much room as my mouse pad. From what I have seen on TFA, my mouse pad is comparable in size to this device. Plus I use a wired mouse, so no batteries needed either. About the only benefit I can see is in multi-touch. But my normal operating paradigm doesn't need multi-touch.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here at work I am using one of these Apple touch surface mice. Its the nicest mouse I have used in a very long time. I love the 2D touch scrolling on it.
I guess multi touch would be nice but I cant see this being better than what I have here for the work I do. Maybe for graphics and video work it would come in more handy.
On the other hand this thing would be perfect as an input device for controlling my media sever from my coffee table.
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Scrolling should be a lot nicer. The only couple of things I miss from my MBP are the multitouch scrolling (drag two fingers around to scroll), and the way you could hold down two fingers and click the button to simulate a right click. I've been back using a normal PC touchpad for over a year now but I still like that better than having two trackpad buttons.
A lot of games would still be better with a mouse though IMO, I guess because you use your wrist to control movement while your fingers are free for but
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Trackpads are more enjoyable to use under most circumstances.
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They needed this a couple of years ago. Too many OS X applications fail to recognize and support gestures.
Why? Because they were only supported on the MacBooks. Why bother if half the Mac universe can't use them?
Now Apple's desktops can finally catch up to the functionality that their notebooks have had for years.
In fact, this really should be the DEFAULT option for iMacs, Mac minis, and Pros. Reply
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These have an actual physical click, and tap to click is always off by default on a Mac.
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Or, you know, you could just laugh at it because it was so overused in other iProduct discussions.
It's not a troll. It's a pun.
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It must be miserable life you live where some marketing guys in california that you've never met have so much power to make you angry. Or you're actually indifferent but have decided to complain because it's easy to do so and it makes you feel better about yourself.
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sorry, but that original comment did not even begin to approach humorous. I trust you can see why I was confused.
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If I hear them describe their tech a magical one more time I'm gonna...
... roast their ass with a level 5 firebolt.
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The gestures would be a serious plus. Being able to scroll with the two fingers, zoom in, out, trigger expose, etc would all be quite nice. Also, if you had wrist problems, not having to move the mouse around would probably help.
The gestures become second nature on a MacBook(Pro).
I could see it. I'm not sure for me. For my work desktop it might be nice. But at home, if I still had a desktop, a big part of it's reason for being would be gaming, and you need a real mouse for shooters and many other games.
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I haven't used the device so I can't comment how well it works, but Apple's notebook trackpads are usually regarded as pretty good. Personally I always prefer to use a mouse, but I can see how a person might be able to be more productive if the device were really precise, the person
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Sure.
Maybe I should have used another title for my post.
Regular mouses can't do such intuitive gestures such as pinch and zoom.
I am sure there are people who will love this new touchpad.
But others might want to just get a tablet for extended functionality such as handwritten input, design, etc...
And I have not tried it out, but if its anything like the macbook's touchpad, moving around with the mouse and clicking with it is IMHO a much comfortable experience with a regular mouse.
I can see how others might b
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And OS X is certified UNIX. There was no lie there whatsoever.
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If you want to run linux that's fine. I run lots of linux machines myself, where OS X is not an appropriate choice for a variety of reasons. But if you want to be take seriously you can't complain that OS X isn't UNIX-y enough based on the default choice of a case-preserving file system.
A) It's trivial to add another, case-sensitive partition to your system. The standard Apple tools allow this without even the need to seek a command line or a secondary boot disk.
B) Even if you're too lazy to resize your par