

Apple Goes Semi-Pro (Part One) - rfreytag
http://www.cringely.com/2010/06/apple-goes-semi-pro-part-one/

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Hoff
Apple has a history of skating to where they think the puck will be.

That's not likely viewed as servers and even as desktops.

Likely mobile clients and clouds and ubiquitous communications.

The section of the D8 interview that Cringley has linked specifically targets
how the enterprise market operates; hardly supporting the rest of the
discussion in the article. Apple hasn't and doesn't aim at the enterprise
market. Duh.

In that same D8 interview, Jobs comments on how his view of a migration away
from traditional desktops gives him pause; it's been a familiar computing
model for many years for many folks, though the replacement clients are
clearly often better options. That he sees desktops around and available for
the foreseeable future, but that they're not going to be the platform for the
majority of users.

There will still be folks that need a desktop.

Video editing is one of those needs-a-desktop applications, but for how long?
How long until you're either rendering on the client, or rendering on hosted
services? And until then, yes, there will be boxes to deal with this.

The center of computing moved from IBM and UNIVAC mainframes in glass-walled
raised-floor computing centers, to VAX superminis, to Unix workstations, to
PCs running various operating systems to PCs running Windows, to bigger and
denser data centers and more capable and more mobile clients and now-massively
improved communications...

Welcome to computing.

Where's the puck headed?

Boxes for video editing?

I don't think so.

~~~
stcredzero
_Apple has a history of skating to where they think the puck will be._

And a history of being right -- exactly what the shareholders would want.

~~~
cookiecaper
I don't know if I'd say they have a particularly impressive history of "being
right". There are some things they do right, and of course the last several
years have been huge for Apple, but success now doesn't translate to
historical success. They had a pretty hard time through the 90s, and I think
that most of their stuff from that time was inferior to the competition.

~~~
bitwize
They didn't have Steve Jobs for most of the 90s.

~~~
cookiecaper
That's cool, but the parent didn't say Steve Jobs had been right, he said
Apple had been right.

~~~
bitwize
And I'm saying that Apple's rightness has a lot to do with Steve Jobs being an
influential part of the company.

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illumin8
Here comes Cringely again, giving truly cringe-worthy predictions. His main
prediction seems to be that there will be no more future Mac Pro releases
because the iMac now has four cores and can run anything including Final Cut
Pro.

He is totally wrong. There are still a huge number of video, audio, and design
professionals that need the power of a Mac Pro and are willing to pay for it.
Why would Apple intentionally drop this market? They've had a lot of success
breaking into the movie business and taking over from expensive Avid video
editing workstations; there is no way they would lose this market.

The high-end market definitely needs features like PCI-express slots to
connect real hardware to, 8 cores or as many as you can throw at it, and lots
of internal and external storage options. Hell, a lot of those Mac Pros are
connected to Fiber channel storage arrays that store terabytes of media. And
he is seriously predicting that we replace all of this with a USB 3.0
connection on our iMac? Get real.

~~~
jshen
"There are still a huge number of video, audio, and design professionals that
need the power of a Mac Pro and are willing to pay for it. Why would Apple
intentionally drop this market? "

Are we talking about the same company? Apple is known for focusing on a few
things and ignoring others that many believe would be "profitable".

I think Cringley is making a significant point, apple may lose focus on what
we think of as computers.

~~~
melling
Search for my down voted response on this page. It refers to another HN post
where Steve says Apple will continue to make the best computers in the world,
meaning he hasn't lost focus on that market.

~~~
jshen
he also said these things.

“There are no plans to make a tablet,” Jobs was quoted saying to Mossberg. “It
turns out people want keyboards…. We look at the tablet, and we think it is
going to fail.”

and

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people
don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read
one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because
people don’t read any more.”

Steve jobs is famous for misleading people with public statements

~~~
illumin8
Steve Jobs is famous for not talking about or acknowledging future products
until they are released.

This says nothing about cancelling existing products, and you should not
extrapolate it as such.

Can you name one example where Apple has cancelled a successful product? By
all accounts, the Mac Pro is a successful and profitable product, so why
cancel it? It makes no business sense.

~~~
jshen
"By all accounts, the Mac Pro is a successful and profitable product, so why
cancel it?"

By what accounts exactly? Cringely gave revenue numbers that show that their
consumer electronic business is far larger than their pro computer business.
This is a basis, you may disagree with the conclusion, but you are
exaggerating at best.

Also, I'm not too concerned with them outright canceling it, but I am
concerned that they won't particularly care about their computer business.
Snow leopard was a very minor update, and I haven't heard anything about the
vision for the mac in a long time. I think it's clear that Steve's focus has
moved on to the consumer electronic side of their business.

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commandar
I know the most disappointing thing about WWDC this year, for me, was the
nearly total absence of anything Macintosh from the keynote.

~~~
hexis
"Nearly"? Off the top of my head, I don't remember anything about Macs at all
in the keynote.

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jsz0
_What I wonder is whether that version will be more — or less — capable than
the current? Remember how they’ve dumbed down iMovie? Expect more of the
same._

I don't follow. iMovie is a consumer app. It's supposed to be simple and easy
to use. Same goes with Garageband/Logic -- the last update to Logic released 8
months ago or so didn't simplify anything or remove features. I don't see why
they'd go that route with FCP either. There's a big difference between a $500
pro app and a consumer app that comes for free with your new Mac.

 _though I’d much prefer Apple embrace eSATA, but probably not._

Maybe on desktops. eSATA is a terrible solution for mobile. It's storage only
so you have to dedicate space to a single function port at the cost of more
multi-function USB ports. The eSATA connector/port are not very rugged. I've
never seen eSATA with power so in a mobile environment you'll have to track
down 12V of power to use the eSATA port. There is apparently a spec for eSATA
+ power though I've never seen it in the real world. USB3 is just a much
better solution at this point. (whenever Intel gets around to integrating it
into a chipset we'll probably see widespread support)

~~~
jws
I think the next new connector will be Light Peak and if the transceivers are
inexpensive it will become "the" interface for all your devices.

If Light Peak is too expensive, then USB-3 will obviate eSATA in any event.

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petervandijck
Actually a good story, I hadn't thought about this but yes, clearly, Apple is
slowly abandoning the professional video/design market. If there is still a
market there (not a sure thing), someone else could step in.

~~~
jsz0
I don't really see that myself. Apple released Final Cut Pro 7 and Logic 9
less than a year ago. Aperture 3 less than 6 months ago. It's kind of
unreasonable to expect these apps to be updated every 6 months or something.
In both cases there were a few major features and lots of clean-up which was
definitely needed. Both are very mature applications so I wouldn't expect FCP8
or Logic 10 to radically change anything.

As for hardware -- even most professionals don't need Mac Pros. The high end
workstation market just isn't what it used to be.

~~~
wazoox
Hum, what about upgrading FCP to Cocoa and 64 bits, for instance?

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ehnus
I just noticed that they don't even feature the Xserve on their main store
page anymore.

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melling
Why is this story #3 on Hacker News? The guy is probably wrong about the Mac
Pro. Of course Apple is going to lead the way with USB3. The HN story where
Steve says Apple will continue to make the best computers in the world is more
interesting.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1457680>

