The present and future of post production business and technology

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 58.

Recorded after the announcement of the new Mac Pro this episode covers that, 3D and 4K. http://www.theterenceandphilipshow.com/?p=513

Correction: A couple of people have bought to our attention that the SSD in the MacBook Pro Retina and the MacBook Airs are in fact socketed and user replaceable.

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18 responses to “The Terence and Philip Show Episode 58.”

  1. Kamil Dobrowolski

    A correction on the Macbook Pro SSDs. They are removable, the are custom SSDs but OWC has 3rd party SSDs for the Retina Macbook Pros and also for the Airs. SO if you’re factory SSD dies, you don’t have to throw away the computer. Now if the RAM goes thats another story.

    1. Philip

      Are you sure? OWC has SSD for the non Retina MacBook Pros but the Retina have the SSD in pieces soldered into and glued onto, the Motherboard. Apple are very clear there is no upgrading because nothing is in the standard form factor that OWC sell.

      1. Kamil

        I am sure. Here is the link below

        http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Retina_2012

        Apple uses their own custom SATA 6Gbps connection for the 13 and 15 Retinas. This makes upgrading it very difficult and besides OWC I have not found anyone selling replacement SSDs sticks.

        Now that Apple is ditching SATA for PCIe for SSDs, we will have a hard time getting SSDs for the new Mac Pro, Air and the rest of their lineup going forward but the SSDs will be replaceable at least by Apple if they fail.

        Apple keeps pushing their machines to be smaller and people complain of their abandonment of the pro market but they have a 1 GBps read/writes on their $1,000 Air. I don’t see others running to abandon SATA for PCIe, which is sad since SSDs have already pushed the limits of 6Gbps SATA.

        1. Philip

          Interesting. Thanks for the follow through and the link.

          1. Kamil

            Glad to help out. You bring up a great point on Apple making the GPU boards removable. This allows Apple flexibility on GPU configuration upon purchase, since the base model will not ship with dual Firepro 9000 cards with 12GB of DDR5. Also there is no word if the GPUs have to be matching. Maybe I want a Firepro 9000 for Open CL background rendering in FCP or Resolve and use a cheaper 7000 series Radeon to power the GUI on my displays, since personally Im not planning on running 3 4K displays simultaneously, I can save some cash on the display out.

            Also because it is socketed it does open the option for a repair to be made without replacing the entire Mac Pro from Apple and makes Applecare.repairs cheaper for Apple.

            And 3rd parties can attempt to build custom boards that would allow upgradability down the road. Although I see this more like CPU upgrades, sure you can bump the CPU speeds in mac towers but a small percentage ever bothered with Sonnet’s or OWC’s solutions to gain a modest speed increase for a huge cost and headache with the installation. But if that option is out there people can sleep more soundly since they have the option of upgrading even though the majority never add on extra cards or swap out cards in their macs. Having a Mac Pro with 4 PCIe lanes is like having a car that can travel 400 miles on a single tank or charge. 99% will not drive that in a given day but the fact that option is available makes them more comfortable.

      2. Kamil

        I am sure. Here is the link below

        http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Retina_2012

        Apple uses their own custom SATA 6Gbps connection for the 13 and 15 Retinas. This makes upgrading it very difficult and besides OWC I have not found anyone selling replacement SSDs sticks. Apple often claims that there are no other upgrades but unless its soldered, there is a usually a way.

        Now that Apple is ditching SATA for PCIe for SSDs, we will have a hard time getting SSDs for the new Mac Pro, Air and the rest of their lineup going forward but the SSDs will be replaceable at least by Apple if they fail.

        Apple keeps pushing their machines to be smaller and people complain of their abandonment of the pro market but they have a 1 GBps read/writes on their $1,000 Air. I don’t see others running to abandon SATA for PCIe, which is sad since SSDs have already pushed the limits of 6Gbps SATA.

  2. Chris Wilby

    “since the base model will not ship with dual Firepro 9000 cards ”

    Thats funny, because, thats not what the website says…

    “Not only does it feature a state-of-the-art AMD FirePro workstation-class GPU with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM — it features two of them.”

    1. Kamil

      No where in that statement from Apple do I see them saying the FirePro9000 comes stock with the base model.

      http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195116&Tpk=firepro%20w9000

      Newegg sells one these cards for $3,400. Even with Apple’s steep discount from AMD on two of these cards they still can’t keep the price within the current $2,500 base model.

      The key words in Apple’s statement is “with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM”. The W5000 is also a FirePro workstation GPU and its nearly 10x cheaper than the W9000. So if you want to read into their statement then expect something a little less costly and powerful for the entry price.

      So like I said the base model will not ship with dual FirePro W9000 cards, unless the base model costs over $5,000. Believe me, I wish you were right since I’m buying 20 of them once they ship but you have to realistic and look at Apple’s pricing model and not assume the cream of the crop comes with the base model.

      1. Philip

        Nowhere from apple do we see any information about configurations at all. Therefore every comment about configuration is pure speculation and a waste of time.

        They may ship a single GPU version, but that would – as Chris says – not be what they have been saying. However I do tend to agree that two of those GOUs for under $5K would be impressive. And right down the direction Apple has been going with pricing.

        It’s kind of ridiculous being as adamant as you are about unannounced product configurations. Kind of a waste of brain power really.

        1. Chris Wilby

          Yep!
          People seem to be getting themselves into all sorts of knots over this. Second guessing Apple, on anything, is utterly pointless. But, having said that…
          We are calling them ‘graphics cards’, when, they just look like gpu’s on a plate of metal! Shurely it would be a lot cheaper for Apple just to buy the chips off ATI/AMD (or from nVidia for that matter) and not a full ‘card’? Not only that, I shouldn’t think that ATI/AMD sell an awful lot of these things in the first place, so having someone like Apple pony-up a wad of cash, they would be very willing to ‘do a deal’. Sort of makes sense to me. 🙂

        2. Marcus R Moore

          Price. Specs. Performance. Everyone seems to be an expert on this unreleased product.

          Only the people who’s physically used one can really make any kind of informed judgement call. And those people have had nothing but great things to say.

  3. Shameer M.

    My understanding is that the new Mac Pro will come standard with 2 GPUs, base model or otherwise.

    1. Philip

      At this point no-one who knows is talking. Anyone who is talking doesn’t know 🙂 I’m not prepared to guess at this point – too little data. It would be nice if all configs had GPUs but Apple do like to hit specific price points.

  4. dr.no

    Terence wanting G5s to be functional after 8 years is really ridiculous.
    It is like he doesn’t know what depreciation or leasing is.

    Broadcaster thought that viewers would be willing to pay more for HD.
    So they are treating as premium to pay $100 a month on cable bills.
    So When people don’t want to pay more for content then 3D is going to fail.
    Even advertisers didn’t want to pay for HD commercials.

    Broadcasters are using their second and third channels as old analog content
    because even that they couldn’t sell to businesses.

    So 4K will fail if it treated as premium instead of being the next standard forced by FCC. But today FCC only regulates what companies want not consumer.
    4K is going to 10 bit color that should help desktop computer too.

    One scenario I see is that Government will try to take the spectrum back
    and force broadcasters to go InternetTV because gov. wants to get paid for spectrum.