Is Apple Pushing Away Professionals? 556
Barence writes "Is Apple turning its back on professional users to focus on consumers? That's the argument in this article, which claims Apple is alienating the creative professionals who have supported the company for 20 years or more. Fury over the dumbing down of Final Cut Pro, Apple's refusal to sell non-glossy screens and poor value hardware is fueling anger from professional Mac users. 'People will get hacked off. I'm only Apple because I want the OS, but if I could come up with a 'Hackintosh' with OS X, I'd be so happy,' claims one audio professional."
Define professionals? (Score:2, Insightful)
But if you mean image/video field workers as professionals, then you probably are right.
Apple product lines are just following the industry trend of consumerism and becoming more targeted for home users, rather than enterprises(for which they never were targetting to begin with).
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"1k mac book and that 300-500 dollar intel based acer, or hp, or e-machine share the same intel cpu, foxconn motherboard, ram brand and hard drive. all your paying for is casing, logo, and os, "
and greater testing and hardware integration and better heat and power management and the magnetic cable attachment and walk-up service centers in most major cities. And nobody else really has something as good as the Air --- because it requires expensive physical mechanical and thermal design and custom parts. As
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and walk-up service centers in most major cities.
I've always wondered about this... Why do people consider this better? If my HP breaks, I call HP - and someone is out the very next day to where I am, to fix/repair/replace what is needed. No need for me to find and trek down to an Apple store (if there is one). I've used the Dell and HP on-site service rarely, but it's invaluable. Even had a tech guy show up the next day at Ice Harbor dam in Eastern Washington when working out in the middle of nowhere (and 4 hours from an Apple store).
Having the c
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Any narrow advantage held by the Power architecture was quickly disappearing by 2003 when the first Operton chips with AMD64/SSE2 hit the market (for users able to jump to 64-bits), and pretty much obliterated with the introduction of the Core Duo in January 2006.
x86 had an ugly childhood, but it turns out there wasn't anything desperately wrong with its performance potential. Jobs made such a big deal of x86 being somehow deeply inferior. The x86 is deeply inferior
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Some "Professionals" Aren't (Score:3)
I'm not a professional at all but an amateur who has used Apple professional tools for music. I was also excited about Final Cut Pro X since I also like to create shorts and wring every last bit of power from iMovie.
I read the message boards to see what was going on with the different tools and--personal opinion--some professionals aren't very. First, as a professional you constantly evaluate your workflows and tools to deliver your end product. I get that some people do not want to change what works, bu
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Exactly. Pros are a tiny minority of their customers.
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I dont think engineers and such have ever been target customers for Apple. But if you mean image/video field workers as professionals, then you probably are right. Apple product lines are just following the industry trend of consumerism and becoming more targeted for home users, rather than enterprises(for which they never were targetting to begin with).
The only "professional" I've ever associated with Apple products was in the image/video arena. Used to be, if you were "serious" about making a living doing graphical and video work you had an apple workstation and used photoshop and final cut.
So, is Apple pushing them away? Maybe. I think TFA might be a little flamebait-ish tho. Apple has made some decisions that might be pushing away the pros, but I don't think their decision was to push away the pros. Follow what I'm sayin?
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if I could come up with a 'Hackintosh' with OS X, I'd be so happy,' claims one audio professional."
Why the Hell would an audio professional complain? He has no valid grievance against Apple. Video pros, I understand their angst. But what did Apple ever do to wrong the audio pro? Mac OS X and the Mac it runs on is the least expensive and most versitile and essential tool in the audio pro's studio! Now... the audio pro might be pissy at Digidesign for one reason or another. But if they're upset about something in Logic... I suggest they try Ardour.
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My boss upgraded to Lion, and I used it for about two minutes before deciding to stick with Snow Leopard for the foreseeable future. Lion feels like a toy.
Care you elaborate? Lion still has all of the same stuff as Snow Leopard. It also improves things like Time Machine and File Vault. The POSIX stuff is still there. If you do Objective-C development, then automatic reference counting with weak references is a huge improvement. The gesture interfaces are nicer, and the full-screen mode is great when you want to work in a terminal without distractions. The sandboxing stuff in the kernel is also massively improved, and a lot of the standard programs use i
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He has no reason. Anyone who has read the Ars Technica overview of the OS or isn't just trying to be a hipster knows that. I can see some people not liking the interface changes but he's a snob that thinks that because the OS has inherited some visual features from iOS that it feels like a toy. Making the decision after "two minutes" is a joke.
Although I will say, in my experience, Snow Leopard was the most stable version of OS X I have ever used and I installed it the day it came out. It was rock solid out
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I would completely agree that the non-visible changes to Lion are mostly good. It's very stable. However, I think many people have genuine complaints about the user interface. Apple changed things for no good reason, just to do it. When Microsoft does that, people complain like mad yet when Apple does it, it's an attack on users.
For example, why can't i click away from a widget to get out of dashboard now. I have to click a button in the corner or hit escape. It made it much less efficient to use. Wh
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I have to click a button in the corner or hit escape. It made it much less efficient to use
You can now swipe with four fingers on the trackpad to get in and out of dashboard, which I find means that I actually use dashboard regularly, for the first time since it was introduced.
Why did they invert the mouse?
Invert the mouse? They inverted the default scroll direction, but it's trivial to change it back by going in to system preferences.
What's the point of launchpad?
No idea. Dragged it from the dock, don't care about it. The dock or spotlight (only a command-space away) are faster ways of launching applications.
Why did they make address book and ical look like "real" items. It's ugly and requires extra clicks to add calendar entries from different calendars
I can't disagree there, but making iCal suc
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What happened to Rosetta Stone?
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The gesture interfaces are nicer, and the full-screen mode is great when you want to work in a terminal without distractions
Yeah, even if that "distraction" happens to be a web browser on your second monitor so you can code web apps on a dual monitor setup. That "distraction" is gone now, and your second monitor now goes dark..gee how thoughtful of them. #1 reason I am not upgrading to Lion.
Lion much better than you think (Score:2)
Lion is really good when you get used to it. At first I was really annoyed to have my grid removed in spaces for the flat line that is Mission Control, but after some use I greatly prefer it, in part because of the integration now between Spaces and Expose.
Mail is greatly improved, and the tokenized search is genius. It's the best way I've ever seen of exposing a more complex search to users that have no idea what "AND" means.
If it was just the reverse scrolling then you can switch it back, though again a
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Yes, but the way it works now is better where you can have a good view of you current space but still easily transfer stuff to a different one without having to have everything smaller still... Also the way fullscreen integrates with Spaces is really good.
Re:Define professionals? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that the X button sometimes closes the application, and sometimes leaves the application running without a UI is also bad. The green + shrinking the screen is a poor UI choice. The list goes on and on.
It is just strange that the UI gets held up as Apples triumph, when the UI is sub par and the good parts of a OSX are under the hood.
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Re:Define professionals? (Score:4, Insightful)
With Windows or common Linux desktop environments when you maximize a window the window takes up the full screen, regardless of whether there's enough content in the window to fill the whole screen. This often leaves vast areas of white space on the sides and bottom of the window.
On the Mac, the green button zooms the window to be big enough to see everything that's inside the window, and if you click it again it just returns to the size it was before. The maximize button to exit full screen in Windows behaves *identically* to the green button in OS X when exiting full screen. It returns the window to a user-determined size that doesn't necessarily show the full content of the window. Your lack of understanding of it doesn't make it bad design.
In the same way, having the icons on the right side makes more sense, because normally the windows cover up the space on the left. When I hit the green button, I can see 1. All of the content of the window, 2. the icons on my desktop, and 3. the windows behind my front window. How exactly is having vast areas of white space within the front window better than being able to still see the full content of the front window but also being able to use your much-valued screen real estate to see other things in the unused space around and behind it?
The x button closes the application if the application is only capable of having one window(like utility programs) and closes just the window if the application is capable of having multiple windows. This makes it so you don't have to wait for a whole application to relaunch if you accidentally close the last window. But most Mac users know that you can hit command q to completely close a program(which is the functionality you're claiming that OS X doesn't have) or command w to close just the window. It's interesting that you'd deride OS X for the fact that Windows lacks that granularity of function.
Re:Define professionals? (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to have gotten the whole point of the menu-on-top thing wrong. It's not a matter of maximizing usable space in a low-res environment, it's a consequence of Fitts's Law: The acquisition time for a target on screen is something like log(distance/size). If the menus were on the windows, the distance would be smaller, but by having the menus against an edge of the screen, you can't overshoot towards the edge, so the target size is effectively infinite. No bad UI about that.
Also, leaving an application running without a UI is a perfectly reasonable idea, once you dissociate applications and windows -- in fact, there are many, many programs that practically demand it (mail, bittorrent, IM in general). If you look at the windows world, this distinction also exists, except that windows handled this in a completely hackish way until Windows 7, which was via the system tray icons. Windows 7 finally supports windowless applications properly, though that's a recent advance and many applications still don't support it. I can't honestly think of any non-X11 applications that actually close completely when you close the last window.
All in all, though, I agree: the best part of modern Macs is what's underneath the hood. They're effectively the only consumer-grade machines in the market that are purpose-made to run Unix.
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Also, leaving an application running without a UI is a perfectly reasonable idea, once you dissociate applications and windows -- in fact, there are many, many programs that practically demand it (mail, bittorrent, IM in general). If you look at the windows world, this distinction also exists, except that windows handled this in a completely hackish way until Windows 7, which was via the system tray icons. Windows 7 finally supports windowless applications properly, though that's a recent advance and many applications still don't support it.
Programs that still have user interface demands (even if transitory, like IM) should have some means of accessing them - and in Windows 7, they still exist in the system tray (usually bunched up in the sys tray popup). A program that does not need user interface should be a service - not a program.
Re:Define professionals? (Score:5, Funny)
so the target size is effectively infinite. No bad UI about that.
That would be true if the menu bar were the target. But typically we target menu ITEMS.
It also fails to account for the fact that AFTER we use a menu item, we tend to want to put the cursor somewhere in the application window we were using... which if on a different monitor in a 2 large monitor system is a small target a VERY long way away. And we wouldn't have to make that trip if we hadn't had to go up to the menu bar.
Trying to suggest suggest the OSX menu bar is a good application of interface design using fitte's law in a multi-monitor setup is like concluding the best place to put the ketchup on a large picnic table would be at the bottom of a steep slide attached to the picnic table that ends in a brick wall.
Anyone who wants the ketchup can just run down the slid at full tilt into the brick wall... its pure genius.
Re:Define professionals? (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that the X button sometimes closes the application, and sometimes leaves the application running without a UI is also bad.
Why is it bad? It's a developer choice do do whichever is more appropriate for the app. On Windows an app MUST close when its last window closes, unless the developer puts it into the system tray.
The reasoning for leaving the app open when a multiple document app has it's last window closed is straight forward. It's a common usage pattern to finish working on one document and then start working on another. If apps quit when the last window closes, then this happens:
The user closes the first document, and the UI to open the next document (File/Open) disappears. They then have to restart the app, which involves waiting, before they ca open their next document.
But for apps which are not document based, that argument doesn't apply. Closing the window on a single window app really does mean you've finished working with that app for the time being.
Then there are other reasons for choosing one behaviour or another. If an app does useful work even when there are no Windows, then of course it makes sense to keep it open. iTunes is an obvious example.
There's a reason why Mac developers have this choice and Windows developers don't get it (apart from the system tray utility option). Because with Windows, the disappearance of the last window means that access to the menu has also disappeared. That's not the case with Mac.
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The fact that the X button sometimes closes the application, and sometimes leaves the application running without a UI is also bad.
Why is it bad? It's a developer choice do do whichever is more appropriate for the app. On Windows an app MUST close when its last window closes, unless the developer puts it into the system tray.
The reasoning for leaving the app open when a multiple document app has it's last window closed is straight forward. It's a common usage pattern to finish working on one document and then start working on another. If apps quit when the last window closes, then this happens: The user closes the first document, and the UI to open the next document (File/Open) disappears. They then have to restart the app, which involves waiting, before they ca open their next document.
But for apps which are not document based, that argument doesn't apply. Closing the window on a single window app really does mean you've finished working with that app for the time being.
Then there are other reasons for choosing one behaviour or another. If an app does useful work even when there are no Windows, then of course it makes sense to keep it open. iTunes is an obvious example.
There's a reason why Mac developers have this choice and Windows developers don't get it (apart from the system tray utility option). Because with Windows, the disappearance of the last window means that access to the menu has also disappeared. That's not the case with Mac.
Mac applications act this way due to legacy decisions made for the original circa 1984 Mac, not because it's the right way to do things. At the time, it took the Mac a long time to start applications. Apple decided on this behavior to make the computer more responsive when opening new documents. Now days, document open much more quickly and this behavior is no longer required. Personally, the behavior drives me nuts because when I click on a running app in the doc that has no open windows, the program d
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It's a culture shock that all switchers go through. I had it myself, and I've seen it umpteen times in others. It just tales a little time to get used to what's different from your previous platform.
If you were switching from Mac to PC you'd be wondering where the eject, volume up/down, brightness up/down, media control, and Expose/Spaces/Dashboard buttons were on your new keyboard.
You make a good point about the menu. But you don't have to have the menu on your primary monitor. You can put it on any monito
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Today, aesthetic quirks aside, the only difference between a Macbook and a PC laptop is the Macbook's ability to natively run OS X. Both of the aforementioned titles are available (and widely used) on Windows without limitations. Worse, Windows
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That's an interesting trinity you've got there. Although if christianity can worship a trinity and still be monotheistic, I guess a trinity with four members isn't do big a stretch.
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Today, aesthetic quirks aside, the only difference between a Macbook and a PC laptop is the Macbook's ability to natively run OS X.
Also...the PC laptops are cheaper, easier to maintain, and offer a broader range of features and quality components than the MBs.
For example: I'm writing this on a Thinkpad X60t, which has a tablet-convertible display, Wacom digitizer (active, pressure-sensitve stylus), touchscreen, 3-button mouse, IBM trackpoint, BOE-Hydis AFFS+ LCD (better than IPS)...and it weighs about 3½ pounds.
Apple has never made any machine that comes remotely close to that level of functionality and quality.
And then there is m
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Ever since the iLine, and Steve Jobs turning from a benevolent genius to a narcissistic, goose stepping lunatic, the scene has changed to apple being creative, and you can too, just as long as you're creative in the "Apple" sanctioned way.
When it comes to the iSheep, (read as the great unwashed, non-technological masses), taht's exactly what they want. They want to be "creat
Re:Define professionals? (Score:5, Insightful)
THIS was once the spirit of Apple Inc. Shame on you for losing your way.
Reminds me what Jason Newsted said, when asked for his response to people saying Metallica had sold out: "Yeah we sold out. We sold out every arena we played for the last five years."
Until the general public stops eating up every single thing they produce, it will never change. They make far too much money to give half a crap about the loyal customers that kept them viable before the iCrap era. They'd rather you just shut up and keep buying those iPhones/iPads. It's sad, but true.
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fanboys justifying fanboys. nice.
that would cost about $5k without the picture of the fruit on the side.
"lol look we're professional! it has FIBER NETWORKING!" hahahhahhahahha jesus, you seriously need to check into apple rehab.
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You use dumb terminology like "iCrap" because you're afraid of change.
No, I'm afraid of a future where all of our tech goods are so locked down we can't even change the fucking battery without voiding a warranty. If you were able to see the forest for the trees you would be afraid, too.
Re:Define professionals? (Score:4, Insightful)
If change is good, then what about the ability to change a battery, or a software configuration? If I weary of SuSE 11.4, I can change distros. How does one do this on an iPad?
I dislike such appliances not because they represent change, but because they prevent it.
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You've never heard of a vertical market, have you. You have no clue what it is, nor what depends on it. Worse, you have no clue how it doesn't work under the Apple scheme.
What the hell are you talking about? (Score:4, Insightful)
Name a single thing you used to be able to do on Mac OS X that you can't do anymore on Mac OS X. They fumbled around with the new Final Cut Pro release--and they're trying to recover from that now. There is absolutely nothing else you can point to. You can still run Flash on OSX.
The 'iLine' is a new line of products specifically targeted at the handheld/mobile market. It has different constraints and craves a different solution. In case you haven't noticed, they're doing pretty well. Millions of people who otherwise wouldn't be using smart devices now are; and it hasn't prevented anyone from doing anything they could do before on Macs or any other kind of computer. If you think there is something bad about a type of technology just because it is aimed at non-technical users; then you just flat out do not understand the point of technology. Like many other so-called nerds on this forum, you think the point of technology is to create some sort of exclusive club with a sign out front that says "you must know *this* much about tech to enter".
BTW: if you are naive enough to think that the absence of web standards leads to a better, more democratic internet, then you are a lost cause.
Nobody cares that you are having some sort of one-sided feud with Apple. What the hell is your deal with Turing, anyway? did you just watch some documentary?
Re:What the hell are you talking about? (Score:4, Informative)
If you limit yourself to Apple software:
And the alternatives are either Adobe or Microsoft, who build products that suck
Re:What the hell are you talking about? (Score:5, Informative)
Name a single thing you used to be able to do on Mac OS X that you can't do anymore on Mac OS X.
If you limit yourself to Apple software:
Wait what? Why would you limit yourself to apple software? You mean to say that if Apple stops offering some feature in a product then, for people to use only Apple software those people are limited? How does that make any sense? You might as well say that for people who use only HP products you can't do any real video editing because HP doesn't make any decent video editing software. Man that's just full of crazy!
On top of that, it's just plain factually incorrect. DVD Studio, iDVD, and Final Cut are all still available after a brief period where Apple stopped making them, then listened to users who said their needs weren't being filled and put them back up for sale until they can roll those features into the new product line. iWeb isn't gone it was updated 3 months ago and can be used to publish automatically to any site that supports FTP or publish to other sites by transferring the files in amore secure way. Dasshcode is still available although no one seems to use it. You're really trying to claim Apple is limiting users by not continuing the abysmal HTML export from their word processor? Seriously?
And the alternatives are either Adobe or Microsoft, who build products that suck
Or, you know, every other company on the planet. I don't even understand how wrongheaded you have to be to think that Apple not offering a few features in their own software packages limits the consumer, under the assumption that no other software vendors count. Bizarre.
Re:What the hell are you talking about? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What the hell are you talking about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because FCX won't ever catch up. It's a question of scale.
The old versions of FCP are designed to allow teams to work on projects. The new software is designed to be used by a single user. If only one person at a time is editing, the new version may well be better than the old version. That workflow matches how a huge number of people work, so it makes sense for Apple to focus on that market. From amateur home user to professionals working on smaller projects, Apple is moving in the right direction.
For the broadcast market, it's the wrong direction. If your work scales beyond one user per project, it's time to move on. Apple makes high margins on consumer electronics, lower but OK margins on home computers, and not much at all from businesses or government sales. Apple is going to focus on the market segment where they make higher profits, not the niche market with high sales and support costs.
At one time, if it had an engine, Ford and GM made it. Ford sold tractors and airplanes. GM sold buses, locomotives, and heavy trucks. Those markets are willing to pay a higher initial price for products which last a long time and can be repaired and rebuilt over and over. The market for cars is different. People will junk cars after 10 years if they get a lower price up front. Consumers don't see cars as an investment used to make money, cars are an expense. Make it as cheap as possible and sell me a new one every couple of years, driving the latest model impresses people. Ford and GM still sell light trucks, and probably always will. But they got out of those other markets. Some of the technology may be the same, but each market demands a different set of trade-offs, a different way of doing business. It's easier to structure your business around one large market than try to do everything.
Apple sells to consumers. They're good at it. If they sold vehicles, they'd sell cars. If you need the equivalent of a van or pickup, Apple is still in that market. But they won't, can't, scale up a pickup to a tractor trailer.
"Steve Jobs - Goose stepping lunatic" (Score:3)
Ever since the iLine, and Steve Jobs turning from a benevolent genius to a narcissistic, goose stepping lunatic, the scene has changed to apple being creative, and you can too, just as long as you're creative in the "Apple" sanctioned way.
Do you know anything about Steve Jobs' history?
He was always a "goose stepping lunatic", as you put it. He was always obsessed with his idea of perfection, to the point where many of the early software engineers on the Mac project absolutely hated his guts. If you disagreed with his ideas, you weren't just wrong, you were wrong, stupid, and bad.
One of the reasons he was forced out at Apple the first time was that he was absolutely awful to work with (there's a bracing account in one of the biographies about
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This is the driving motivator behind Apple bashing. It's an attempt to convince yourself that you are so damn smart for not using something that's popular.
Since when has 5% of the market meant "popular"? Only when there's an "i" in front of it...
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Programmers and SE's? Apple early on pretty much stole the Linux development crowd around the OSX 10.2 days. Seems to me DarwinPorts, Fink, Terminal and Quartz-wm still exist and offer a very good environment. As far as OSX development, Developer tools are more popular than ever, approaching visual studio levels of use (though this is driven mostly by iPhone apps).
Only glossy screens? (Score:5, Informative)
You can buy a macbook pro with an "antiglare" [apple.com] screen.
They are talking desktop screens (Score:3)
Which is where anti-glare is the most popular. Glossy makes some sense on laptops because you get better light transmission which means more brightness with less battery. Ok fine. However on a desktop screen, that's not an issue. You have more backlight than you need. Only real reason to go glossy is on cheap displays it is cheaper to do right. Well again, not an issue here, mac displays are high end. However they aren't just glossy, they are monkey-fuck retarded glossy because they have a glass cover.
That'
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Actually, glossy doesn't improve the brightness at all. It improves contrast, by allowing deeper blacks. Matte gathers light from all angles and scatters it, making black areas slightly gray. Glossy screens reflect it without scattering. Most of the time that means it's reflected away from where you are, but when the light is behind you, you get a bright, sharp reflection which conceals information more than matte screens' even gray reflection.
Glossy is actually best used on desktops where you don't hav
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Expresscard slot, firewire 800 port.
I'm sitting here on a MBP with a non-glossy screen that has a 36 channel sound card hooked up.
I see no issue here.
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More importantly – thunderbolt port.
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But if you're going to buy an external monitor, there are plenty of matte screens available. You don't need to buy it from apple.
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What dumb ass "creative professional" does all their work on a laptop screen?
What dumb ass 'technical know-it-all' doesn't understand the value of having a portable workstation?
Don't get it (Score:2)
Apple has always been more of a consumer company, but it did provide some top notch Pro tools in the A/V field. From TFA, it seems they are abandoning that top-tier niche with lesser tools. Can't Apple have a division that works only on top-notch pro tools? I'm an Apple guy (I like it, I have no special needs for Windows only software), but if Apple doesn't reverse a trend of alienating a group (albeit a small group) of previously staunch supporters, could this be a first step to Apple losing what profes
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Apple has always been more of a consumer company, but it did provide some top notch Pro tools in the A/V field. From TFA, it seems they are abandoning that top-tier niche with lesser tools. Can't Apple have a division that works only on top-notch pro tools? I'm an Apple guy (I like it, I have no special needs for Windows only software), but if Apple doesn't reverse a trend of alienating a group (albeit a small group) of previously staunch supporters, could this be a first step to Apple losing what professional footprint it does have?
I think it comes down to how much money each group makes - does a selection of lesser-featured apps that covers usage from the mid-range amateur to the mid-range professional bring in more profit than two different selections of apps (and two development teams) each targeted to the amateur/consumer and the professional?
Does having two different products on the market make sense when the high end one is significant amounts of money and not bought in huge quantities?
I don't know Apples sales figures for Final
Re:Don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The high end of the "Pro" market is touchy because they tend to depend on fairly large tangles of interconnected products: If asked "what do you use?" they might say "Final Cut"; but they actually mean "Final cut, two dozen specialized plugins, one or more boutique hardware components for capture or output, some sort of storage backend, possibly some in-house custom tools...".
One of Apple's strengths, particularly of late, has bee their ability(and willingness) to just pick up and say "fuck everybody who thinks some legacy feature/interface/API is good enough. As of today, it is the new shiny or nothing!"(see ADB, Adobe/64-bit Carbon, Final Cut Pro, etc.). Combined with some good taste, this has worked very well in the consumer and low-end "prosumer" markets. By largely ignoring legacy issues and expecting people to keep up or suck it up, they've been able to maintain a pretty aggressive release schedule for new and interesting features with a comparatively small engineering team. However, that is absolutely incompatible with the requirements of more esoteric professional environments(along with institutional IT, their less colorful but considerably larger counterparts). You just can't keep a spaghetti ecosystem of critical 3rd party hardware and software moving that fast, at least not at a price anybody is willing to pay.(Even fairly basic things, like supporting pro-level video cards, can be pretty dire, despite the fact that Mac Pro is more PC-like than it has ever been. The default options suck to an almost comical degree, and driver support for anything else is atrocious.)
For consumer and prosumer requirements, where it is much more likely that the integrated hardware and a small number of common software packages are enough, Apple's approach works just fine. It seems unlikely, though, that they can reconcile that with the requirements of the more specialized users. And, now that they have a big, lucrative, consumer market, their incentive to try isn't what it once might have been.
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Isn't Apple's whole marketing strategy to make a platform that "just works" - as soon as you start talking about having people code their own drivers you might as well go with either windows (where EVERYTHING has a driver from the vendor), or linux (which is FOSS). Especially if you couple it with the software missing features you need in the first place.
They are not "lesser tools" (Score:2)
it seems they are abandoning that top-tier niche with lesser tools.
This is not the case; Apple is a company inherently not satisfied with simply building what existed, but in trying to advance the state of the art. So they are willing at times to throw an interface under the bus for something new they consider to be better.
Yes in FCP a few pro-specific features were left behind, but much of that has been addressed already and they also continued to sell the old FCP for those that want to keep using it unti
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What you are not seeing is that Apple is trying to change at times what it MEANS to be a professional, how they work...
'Professional'.
That word doesn't mean what Apple thinks it means. For the purposes of this thread, professional is much closer to fuzzyfuzzyfungus' definition of someone who has "Final cut, two dozen specialized plugins, one or more boutique hardware components for capture or output, some sort of storage backend, possibly some in-house custom tools..." then Apple's view of a couple of metrosexuals hammering out some cheezy TV ad at Starbucks. People with a serious workflow that does what THEY want it to
Re: (Score:3)
I'm an Apple guy (I like it, I have no special needs for Windows only software), but if Apple doesn't reverse a trend of alienating a group (albeit a small group) of previously staunch supporters, could this be a first step to Apple losing what professional footprint it does have?
I'm a Windows guy, and I've always hated most Apple things I've come into contact with. But I'm also a professional in the video production and broadcast industry... and Final Cut Studio has always been the best A/V production suite in existence. I've used Adobe CS, Vegas, EDIUS, and several I can't remember the names of... Adobe takes second place, but it was still nowhere near as good as Final Cut. Now that Final Cut has been ruined, Apple and I are breaking up for good.
Apple is going where the money is... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the past, Apple catered to pros because they were the ones who would spend $10,000 on a Quadra or //fx model. However, since their pricing model has changed, they are best served at catering to Joe/Jane Consumer.
The only gripe I have is that Apple needs consider the IT market as well, and not just focus on consumers. Right now, Apple is doing well, but the enterprise is not just a huge market, but also is very hungry for Apple products. (As an IT person, oftentimes the top brass of companies will be using Macs as their own laptops. It makes me glad Lion has complete hard disk encryption, although having a TPM chip and BitLocker-like access would be ideal.) Apple could easily get some offerings into the IT sector. A redesigned Mac Pro that could work horizontally and fit on a drawer with attachable rack ears would be a start. A standalone disk array with redundant drive controllers and FCoE would bring them up to date for SMBs needing storage.
IT is definitely a market that Apple might do well in, although Apple's main success is with consumers.
Piffle (Score:3)
Apple is absolutely clueless in all things enterprise. The fact that board members prefer and get mac's for personal desktops means nothing more than they have the power to get their personal preferences paid for by the company. The idea that Apple could easily get their offerings into the IT sector is laughable at best.
From imaging new computers with a standard image (PXE, you know the standard everyone in the world except apple uses), to the lack of virtualization (what do you mean I can't load Lion onto
Research (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like the author has only done some superficial research on some aspects.
For example, 3ds Max is a Windows-only application, but it's far from the only major application in this sector. For example, LightWave licenses are less expensive, there's a Mac client as well and right now the features it has to offer are running circles around Max. And that's coming from a long-time Max user.
It's one of the major applications in the business, but far from dominating.
CAD is mostly done on Windows and *nix, but that's partly for historical reasons (code bas which has grown over decades in some cases).
Part of the problem is also the specialized hardware support on the Mac platform. You just can't expect an overpriced two year old entertainment graphics card to beat the results professional graphics software will achieve on a Quadro/Fire with optimized drivers and certified compatibility. That's like expecting an AMC Gremlin to beat a well-tuned Formula 1 racer.
Re: (Score:3)
Thing is 3D Studio Max did have a macintosh OS 9 version back before they were purchased by Autodesk. (I believe the last version of 3D studio max for Mac was 3.5 iirc). Lightwave still has an OSX version as does Maya (which is owned by Autodesk as well now). But there's been some rumblings that Maya's support for Mac maybe discontinued in the near future. (Which I think would have more to do with Autodesk)
Maya has really eclipsed Lightwave in recent years, especially for Film work. Lightwave has alway
worse than microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
At least microsoft targets business users as well.
However, if this trend continues, and other companies follow Apple in targeting the average Joe, then I foresee a sad future, where devices are locked down, professionals pay big bucks to get the tools they need, and universities and open source developers can't get hardware they can freely develop on.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't, really. The tools we have today are good enough most professionals. If the latest version of your OS of choice doesn't work with your tools... why the hell would you upgrade?
Photo editing, drawing, video editing... has anything really revolutionary come up in software for these things in the last few years? Can you envision any improvement that would cause people to switch over to a locked-down system?
Basically, there's almost nothing we'd need to do now that we can't already do on stuff like Windo
color (Score:2)
I thought pros like the better color accuracy of the glossy screens?
Re:color (Score:4, Informative)
Glossy screens do not make color accurate.
Working in a color managed environment with color aware applications is what does. That means using calibration devices to measure all the color output of your devices, printers monitors etc... and creating color profiles.
Glossy screens can make blacks look deeper, but also have a lot of glare and reflection. Pros arent looking for deeper blacks, they're looking for accurate blacks and color temperature. A monitor that puts out a good wide color gamut, that fits into the adobe rgb color space.
Most monitors are too bright actually for accurate color representation.
Re: (Score:3)
I was skeptical of the glossy screen when I got my last MacBook Pro, so I figured I'd try a little real work at the Apple Store before buying it. Within minutes I found that I had to bob my head up, down, left, and right to see around spots of screen glare that obscured content and controls. That seems a ridiculous trade-off to me.
I know that in your home you can set things up so that there is no screen glare. Does anyone really stay that static any more? I take my laptop all over the place and use it in di
Same goes for matt (Score:2)
Matt screens also are affected by outside sources, just not as strongly - which is why professionals to whom that would matter either control the environment to eliminate them or buy a monitor hood (or both).
Small Computer Domination Means... (Score:2)
Offering it all.
To that end I expect to see Macs continually improve in running VM and native OSs other than Mac OS X.
The more options you offer, the more customers you drag in & ...
Commoditization (Score:2)
This is a software thing (Score:5, Insightful)
First off Apple still offers anti-glare displays as an option on ALL their MacBook Pros. So the rant about not offering matte displays is completely off base. In fact, I'm writing this post on a later model Macbook Pro with an antiglare screen and a quick glance at the store shows this option still available.
The real ire is the SOFTWARE, namely the utter fiasco that is Final Cut Pro X. But this is a well known issue and Apple has tried to smooth things over a bit by letting people DOWNGRADE to the last version. So it seems that Apple is well aware of how badly it messed things up and being that Final Cut has been a huge success until now, it only stands to reason that Apple will not make the same mistake twice and will release a new version that addresses their user's concerns. And while that is mere speculation, seeing how much money FCP has brought in and how much hardware it has ended up selling for Apple, it stands to reason that they will not idly stand by while their egg laying goose dies a painful death at the hands of an angered user base.
Also, Apple is more reliant upon developers now than ever. Those trendy consumer gadgets such as iPhone and iPad require a strong developer base, and it requires those developers to develop within OS X and with Apple Tools, even Flash Builder and Titanium require XCode to do the compiling. So to drive away your development community would also make no sense since that would only boost rivals creating apps for other products such as Android phones and tablets.
Apple is trying to normalize the look and feel of it's two operating systems iOS and OS X to make them not only easier to use for the consumer but easier to develop for for the developers. OS X Lion, while causing ire for it's sweeping UI changes now features a lot of the same features as iOS -- which from a UI development standpoint simplifies the development process.
So in the end, time will heal these wounds. Give it a few more months and see what the upcoming release of FCP has to offer it's core user base as well as how iCloud and iOS5 reshape how users and developers interoperate with OS X and iOS based devices. I think then a lot of these changes will make sense and some of the shock at these changes and the handful of missteps will die off.
Re:This is a software thing (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who makes their living doing Mac and iOS development, I'd like to point out the flip side to the story of rejections and stuff. For every very vocal person complaining that their app was rejected, or that they can't figure out how to install an app on their phone (As a registered developer, I have no problem re-signing an ipa with my own keys and installing it on my devices, without the appstore or jail breaking. Enterprises have even less issue), there are probably a hundred of us who are making our livings at this and not running into any of these issues.
That's not to say there's no truth to it either. But on a day-to-day basis, the irritations I'm having with Apple as a developer are not any of these things.
Re:This is a software thing (Score:5, Informative)
Certainly not focusing (Score:2)
Certainly not focusing for some time now, so eventually a few things are left behind. Businesses tend to look at it more rationally, what productivity increases do we get - which translates fairly directly to dollars, compared to the costs. Consumers generally don't have any tangible productivity or revenue, it's more a matter of disposable income and what they like. It's like trying to compare the army and a regular person buying a sweater. The army will look at technical things like thermal properties, du
Not all "professionals" are graphic artists... (Score:3)
Macs are no longer limited to graphics artists and web designers. While that market may not be what it was for Apple it's being more than made up for in other areas. I'm a Data Center Architect and use nothing but Macs. Cisco, EMC, and VMware now offer Macs as standard offerings for their SEs and field people and last I heard Cisco had gone 30% Mac in just a few months. It's rare I'm in a meeting with those guys where Mac is not the majority.
Pushing away professionals? Hardly. Nice link bait.
They killed their IT market! (Score:2)
Apple was supporting IT with their XServes, and they worked with a company called Aqua Connect [aquaconnect.net] in developing a terminal server which works under OS X. Then they killed the XServe, and tried to send people to Mac Pros, not really designed for racks.
Dumbing down the UI is not always a sign that you are killing professionals, but making it lower learning curve entry.
What has to be asked is does the new, dumber interface, make the work more difficult or is it just bitching because the interface is different
Re: (Score:2)
The market for the XServe just wasn't working out for Apple (and never has, though they've tried more than once in their history), so they killed it. But that's a different sort of professional than the "creative" professionals which they have historically done well with. Far as I can tell they haven't been abandoning them, they just screwed up with Final Cut.
Physics is mostly Apple (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a research scientist at particle physics institute and my anecdotal experience is the opposite: Nowadays, it seems like at least 3/4 of the laptops I see at conferences are Apple laptops (plus a growing amount of iPads). The desktops at my institute are either Linux or OS X.
OS X is a great environment to use LaTeX in, make presentations (Keynote + LaTeXit for equations is awesome), code scientific software or run apps like Mathematica or Matlab.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
- bash unix environment
- good user interface, better for personal use than Linux variants
- laptops had state-of-art hardware (though, not so much anymore) and excellent battery life (still the case)
- academic discounts
Of these, the bash unix environment is by far the most important for scientists. This means that they can write a program or
Re: (Score:3)
I recently switched from Matlab on the mac (I had been using it for about 8 years) to Python. I got fed up with the Matlab license annoyances (it was much easier to install a cracked version than to install the official server-authenticated version) and the artificial limitations. I would recommend Python, which is UI-wise slightly less polished, but otherwise equally or more capable than Matlab for my purposes! I even managed to get a factor of 20 speed improvement in a monte-carlo method I wrote.
Go instal
Re:You still use Latex?? (Score:4, Informative)
One reason is that WYSIWYG sucks up time and never quite works out while WYGIWYM is better. Plus Latex isn't that painful.
Collateral sucess (Score:2)
Someone once explained to me, that sales in enterprise IT are considered collateral success by Apple.
schools and business use as well (Score:2)
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1236352 [macrumors.com]
read post 6
what a joke.
Apple needs mac os sever for any VM
need a midtower and bigger mini (Score:3)
The mac pro is about $1000 - $1500 over priced as it is and only 3gb ram at $2500?
The mini is ok but it should be a little bigger for better cooling / easier to get to hdd are the 2 big things also bigger will give it room for desktop cpus / better video chips/ more ram slots.
Base mini with 5400 RPM HDD's?
The sever mini has quad and 2 hdd's but why do have to pay for sever and a 2th HDD just to get quad? and they it has Intel video but the mini other that has a low end ati chip but no quad (best is a Core i7 dual)
Also a mid tower at $800-$900? $1000-$1500 with desktop cpu quad core or better with at least 2-3 pci-e slots 1 X16 dual wide for video card and maybe 1-2 x4 or x1 slots. 4 ram slots or 6 ram slots (if useing higher end i7's) 2 or more HDD bays, DVDRW or a bay for 1 also 1 or 2 TB ports.
Maybe have have on board video with the base system having no video card.
The mac pro can be the dual cpu (dual quad or better) 4 slot (at least all x16 or x8) system with 4 or more HDD bays. With the room for 12 or more ram slots.
Maybe even room for dual high end video cards.
The imac are ok but can we get a way to get to the HDD with out having to take the screen off?
Have the Xserve come back or let mac os sever run on any hardware in a VM.
They've already driven away the geeks! (Score:3)
Apple has already been highly successful in alienating all the geeks (I include myself in this) and pushing them over to android (and to developing for it, and recommending it to their friends). Policy decisions which drive the "love the product; hate the company" would include:
- constant lockdown of iDevices. (yes, we understand that jailbreaking should only be for the techies, should be warranty-voiding, and should not be easy for
"grandma" to do by accident and then get upset about the consequences, but if we really want to, we should be able to).
- making it so hard for iPods to work on Linux - why can't they help out the libgpod devels by publishing specs.
- support for patents in general, and litigating against the competition rather than competing fairly. Also, DRM (though they've now mostly learnt that lesson).
- iTunes not working on Linux (or under Wine).
- not giving back as much as they take. Yes, Darwin is BSD, so it's legal, but it's really not cool to give back so little.
- killing off the "hacker" culture that they began with. Apple's hardware is really hard to tinker with: of course some of this is just because it's harder to experiment with a BGA A4 CPU than a DIL socketed 68k, but at least making parts available to hobbyists, and not suing them, would be a good start!
Finally, a personal gripe: Apple have lead the industry into making sure that only shortscreen-LCDs are available on any new hardware. I want 16:12 aspect, not 16:9 (and no doubt soon to be 16:8) !
Re: (Score:3)
over to android ... lol come now
The android market is fantastic if you are wanting to distribute software. If you are wanting to get paid for writing software, well good luck with that.
Been saying this for years (Score:3)
Apple is not the same company it was even in the 1990s. Yes, it's more profitable. Yes, they have a wider range of products.
No, they are not a computing company. I've made this argument here recently, and people argue the nitty points without looking at the broader picture.
Apple does not produce a server platform (hardware + software). This right here should be telling: they make consumer products, not production products. Even their "Server" OS is quite lacking.
Apple has been short-changing developers on their platform for some time, both with their developer programs for App Store and how they've made fairly drastic API changes without giving the bigger shops a forewarning.
Every single one of Apple's products in the past 10 years has been a reductionism - a move towards minimalism. This is contrary to what a professional wants. Professionals need more, better tools, not fewer.
Apple's consumer 'media players' intentionally lack features audio and video professionals would like, such as the ability to do what the Sony Discman could do 10 years ago (record high quality lossless audio). Playback quality is also significantly lacking.
The distinction is nuanced, but there is a distinction. Apple doesn't really give half a shit to the nuanced or professional user. Many graphics professionals abandoned Apple a long time ago due to dick moves they pulled that made things difficult for eg. Adobe to continue producing software or for graphics artists to work effectively with the platform (threading, multiprocessing, etc.).
Anyone who thinks Apple is still a "computing" company and not a "consumer electronic device" company needs to pay better attention. Apple has not done a single innovative thing in the world of computing for quite some time. Marketing, sales, and consumer products? Absolutely - they're incredible. But don't expect them to be the same company they were for professional needs in even the late 90s.
Re: (Score:2)
no, most are built into the machine except for the mac pro and the price tag that could get you 2x the machine elsewhere and the mac mini which you could use the same amount of money to make a much better mini-itx system.
Re: (Score:2)
Uhhh can't it? That's funny, I just fullscreened an app on a second monitor... I just dragged it there and pressed the full screen button.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe appropriately so.
While it is my preferred desktop OS, it leaves a lot to be desired as a server.
Only high end servers (Score:2)
Apple may want out of the high end rack mounted server market, but they are very happy to sell a quite capable small server in the Mac mini (which you can order pre-configured as a server).
For a small company that only needs a handful of servers a number of mac minis could make a lot of sense.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I have never understood (Score:5, Informative)
It's because they infiltrate and dominate all of the colleges that produce creative professionals. Any art/design school basically requires you to have a Mac, and as a result, almost every art/design job requires a Mac.
BS. I recently financed my stepson's education at Vancouver Institute of Media Arts, a fairly well known "art/design" school. We went up to the campus, looked around. Lots and lots of Windows. A couple of Macs in the corner, sitting unused.
Talking to the faculty (who to a person started out on Macs) one finds two major issues: Graphics cards for the MacPros suck hard compared to Windows offering and Apple's random walk as far as long term strategies make it hard for a company to invest a couple of million dollars in Apple gear. Nobody suggests using Macs for anything other than cool laptops.
There were a bunch of MacBooks running around - all running Bootcamp.
So, you're view of the Mac centric artistic universe was probably true a decade ago, but it certainly isn't true now. Windows 7 really is a pretty good, quite stable applications platform. Same for the Windows toolchain. And, as TFA points out, SolidWorks and 3DS Max, two very important 3D programs are Windows only.
Apple has lost this battle and really isn't even fighting a credible rearguard action.
Re: (Score:2)
There are currently 16 definitions for "professional" in the Urban Dictionary. Care to clarify the ones that apply?
How many of those 16 definitions [urbandictionary.com] involve prostitution, oral sex, or alcoholism? You must be able to narrow it down at least a little.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Audio Pros are so silly. You dont need a Mac! (Score:4, Insightful)
Audio Pros are all snobs.
Well, that's a problem with elitism in general, and is hardly limited to Apple users, but they're guilty of it. In the real world, a dispassionate evaluation of one's own requirements generally results in better purchasing decisions, a close match between work requirements and the equipment meant to service them. That's one complaint I have with the Apple-using community: they tend to see all problem domains as having the only solution in terms of Apple. When your only tool is a hammer ... well. The world of computing is vast, the needs of users varied, and the products of one single company cannot reasonably be expected to serve the needs of everyone.
... but why would you want to?"
The other aspect to that mindset is the ability to rationalize away faults and missing capabilities. Blows my mind. I've had more than a few conversations with Apple users that usually run along these lines:
"How come your nav is still talking? You're playing an MP3 and browsing the Web."
"Multitasking."
"Huh. Well, mine doesn't do that
"???"
Yes yes, I know I'm talking about an early iPhone, that's not the point. I'm talking about attitudes here, not the hardware.