PowerBooks to become obsolete in March

Just a heads-up: the following product lines will be obsolete on March 17th:

* PowerBook G4
* Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio)
* Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver)
* Macintosh Server G4 (Digital Audio)
* Macintosh Server G4 (Quicksilver)

The following lines will become "vintage" on March 17th (this means that replacement parts will only be available in California for a limited time):

* Xserve RAID
* Xserve (Slot Load)
* Xserve (Cluster Node)

If you own any of these items, it is worth stocking up on spares and getting any issues fixed before the March 17th deadline.

[via TUAW]

Posted by Jon Chappell on Wednesday February 4 2009 1:58 PM to Apple, Hardware
0 comments Posted Permalink

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Speculation on Mac Pro refresh

It's been more than a year since the current Mac Pros came out. Although the software to fully take advantage of them is still not here, a year is a long time and technology has moved on. As a 2009 refresh is very likely, here's some speculation on what the new machines are likely to be like.

First of all, a release to coincide with Snow Leopard is very likely, as the Mac Pros are the best-equipped machines in Apple's lineup to show off the new OS. Snow Leopard will be released (assuming no iPhone-related delays this time) in either Q1 or Q2 2009, discounting any hardware that is due to be released after this date.

CPU

I'm almost certain this will be a Xeon 5500 series "Gainestown". That will be Intel's most powerful CPU line until Beckton towards the end of the year.

Although the clock speeds are identical to the Harpertown range inside current machines, they offer significant performance boosts elsewhere. The biggest of these is an on-die memory controller (i.e. built into the CPU instead of on the motherboard). This reduces bottlenecking significantly and is something AMD's chips have had for several years. It will provide a major performance boost.

Another new technology is QuickPath Interconnect, which replaces the legacy Front-Side Bus (FSB). The FSB connects all system devices and memory to the CPU through a single interface. This is now split up, with the new memory controller handling memory and QuickPath Interconnect dealing with the other system components. You may have noticed that the caches on these CPUs are smaller than their predecessors - this is because the greater efficiency in the new architecture means data spends less time in cache memory.

There have been several optimizations to multithreading, including hyperthreading which allows two threads per core (great for Snow Leopard). Although Gainestown is limited to four cores per CPU (8 in total in a Mac Pro), Apple may market it as a 16-core machine because of the 8 extra logical cores. True 16-core machines will not be available until the end of the year when the Beckton series is released.

Memory

You're probably familiar with dual channel memory which doubles memory bandwidth. That's why you have to install Mac Pro memory modules in pairs.

The new architecture has triple channel memory! Mac Pro motherboards are expected to have three rows of four memory sockets, totaling a maximum of 96 GB (12 x 8 GB). You would be required to install chips in groups of three.

Hard Disk Options

2 TB internal hard disks are now available so it seems likely that Apple will offer these in their machines. This will allow up to 8 TB in total.

What about solid-state disks? I doubt they will be offered for the Mac Pro just yet. They're too small for media storage (unless you can afford to RAID them) and although they are a decent size for boot disks I don't think they are suitable for that purpose just yet.

I always put Western Digital Raptors (10,000 RPM) as boot disks inside my machines because they reduce boot times, load applications faster, and everything is generally more responsive as memory can be paged to and from disk a lot faster. So the fast read speeds of SSDs are welcome from me, but there are two problems. Writing is slow. The OS writes a lot of data to disk and you will notice a slowdown when multitasking or using a lot of memory at once.

The second problem is that each memory cell inside the drive has a lifetime of around 100,000 writes. You can easily exceed that in the lifetime of your computer, particularly if it is switched on constantly. Modern chips try to get around this by writing evenly to all areas of the disk in order to balance it out, but the usefulness of this will depend on the total size of the disk.

SSD technology looks very promising and these are problems that will be overcome as time goes on, but they are not ready for this kind of usage just yet in my opinion.

Graphics cards

I don't know what the stock graphics card will be but the following cards may be offered as options:

Radeon 4870 - This is a high-end card capable of accelerating H.264 and MPEG-2 encoding and decoding. ATI's drivers are traditionally much better optimized for Core Image than NVIDIA's so Final Cut Studio performance is likely to be good. Crossfire technology is available on the PC version of the card - it remains to be seen if this is something Apple will embrace. Another version, the 4870 X2 with dual GPUs, will not be available for the Mac.

It comes with DisplayPort and HDMI connectors. Apple may request a Mini DisplayPort connector instead (or in addition).

GeForce GTX 285 - This is a single-GPU card that is SLI-capable (NVIDIA's equivalent to Crossfire), should Apple choose to utilize that technology. This card does not offer DisplayPort by default so this is something likely to be requested by Apple for the Mac version.

Let's hope NVIDIA improve their Mac drivers to offer better Core Image performance.

Quadro FX 5800 - This card supports DisplayPort technologies as well as the brand-new OpenGL 3.0 specification (which the other cards do not). It's very fast but also very expensive. It is not necessarily guaranteed to make a significant difference to Pro App usage because, while it has a lot of raw power, it does not have some of the optimizations that the other cards have (e.g. H.264 hardware acceleration), and I don't know how well-optimized for Core Image they are. In addition, raw power is worthless if it is bottlenecked by other components in your system.

With the launch of Snow Leopard, Apple will be trying to sell us multiple graphics cards in our machines. I would personally wait until I have read reviews before deciding on purchasing multiple cards for Pro App usage. Also, I would have to wait until Final Cut Studio 3 came out anyway because multiple cards with FCS 2 cause problems.

Things you shouldn't hold your breath for

* eSATA - Apple has completely ignored this particular technology in the past - this time around will most likely be no different.
* FireWire S3200 / USB 3.0 - It's early days and I'm not aware of any devices currently supporting the new standards.

Conclusion

It's pure speculation but if my predictions come true, there will be a hell of a lot of new tech in the Mac Pros. Which is great because they'll be leaving a lot of legacy technologies behind - but on the other hand, new things carry a certain degree of risk.

The first-gen Mac Pros needed a couple of firmware updates to fix minor issues, and I have my own rule that says I refuse to use an operating system for professional work until at least 10.x.4. This rule will be particularly crucial for Snow Leopard which now has a 64-bit kernel, meaning every system component will need new drivers. This is fine for the hardware that ships with your machine but what about third-party capture cards, graphics tablets etc? I don't think it's going to be a huge problem but it's worth thinking about in advance.

Either way, 2009 looks pretty good for video professionals.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Wednesday February 4 2009 8:21 AM to Apple, Hardware, Analysis
0 comments Posted Permalink

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Detailed review of new LED Cinema Display

AppleInsider has a 5-page review of Apple's new 24-inch Cinema Display. What I particularly like about this review is that it shows the professional viewpoint as well as the consumer one.

No review of this monitor is complete without a discussion of glossy screens (and I know that's the bit everyone wants to hear), so here it is:



I'm posting this review because, if the MacBook Pro is anything to go by, Apple will probably not offer matte alternatives when it upgrades the 20" and 30" displays. It's good to hear that the new displays are at least as color-accurate as the previous generation but the glossy screen will be a deal-breaker for many people. It all depends on the environment though. The best thing to do is buy one (when a compatible Mac Pro comes out of course), try it and return it within 14 days for a refund if you cannot stand it. Because, to my mind, this sounds like a great monitor for a well-lit environment - and if you are doing color-critical work, you should be in a well-lit environment, glossy screen or otherwise.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sunday December 7 2008 9:54 AM to Apple, Hardware
0 comments Posted Permalink

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Replacing the CRT

Broadcast Engineering has a great article called Replacing the CRT. This details some of the existing and upcoming technologies looking to resign CRT broadcast monitors to the grave. They are:

* Plasma
* DLP
* SED (which looks very promising - not out yet though)
* OLED
* FED

This article is well worth checking out.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Friday October 31 2008 3:46 AM to Video Editing, Industry, Hardware
0 comments Posted Permalink

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Is this the death of FireWire?

One of the biggest things making the rounds this week is the fact that Apple's new MacBooks have had their FireWire 400 port removed. Now why would Apple do this when they were the company that popularized it in the first place?

Someone posted an email purportedly from Steve Jobs onto Flickr in which Steve states that most modern consumer camcorders nowadays operate over USB 2. That may well be the case but as we all know, FireWire is the superior standard and it seems silly in my eyes to phase it out in favor of an inferior format. It seems like a case of Betamax vs VHS in which the most convenient format and not the best format actually won, with the best format relegated solely to the professional market. It's a great shame in my eyes.

Advertising may also play a part too - USB 2 is advertised as operating at 480 Mbps vs FireWire's 400 Mbps which looks good on paper but as we all know, FireWire is capable of sustaining 400 Mbps whereas 480 Mbps is just a theoretical limit for USB 2.

FireWire still hasn't achieved mass adoption among PC users. Apple is its primary proponent so if Apple lets it go, it will most likely die (as a consumer format at least). It's good to see it remain on the professional side - where I think it will stay for some time - but it's a little more inconvenient to now need an adapter to use FireWire 400 equipment. This is inconvenient because there seems to be considerably more 400 equipment out there than 800.

The most troubling thing for me isn't the demise of FireWire, it's the lack of a suitable replacement from Apple. eSATA would be great for hard drives but Apple seems to be shunning it for reasons unknown.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Friday October 17 2008 5:03 PM to Apple, Hardware, Analysis
0 comments Posted Permalink

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Blu-ray is a "bag of hurt" says Steve Jobs

This was something I missed on Tuesday as I didn't see the actual keynote address, only what Apple posted on their web site.

According to Engadget, Steve Jobs is blaming licensing issues for the current lack of Blu-ray on the Mac.



It's good to finally hear something from Apple on this subject. I guess, much like when Apple introduced DVD burners, they are waiting for larger consumer adoption and significant falls in the price of media before committing. Unfortunately that's not so helpful for Pro App users.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Wednesday October 15 2008 9:51 PM to Apple, Hardware, DVD
1 comment Posted Permalink

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New laptops and Cinema Displays

Apple today released complete redesigns of their laptop line and, unexpectedly, they are offering a new Cinema Display. The new designs are in the black and aluminum style of the new iMac.

Cinema Displays
* 24" screen
* Price: $899
* ONLY the new design is available in black and silver. The old designs (20", 23" and 30") are still available on the store but we don't know for how long.
* LED backlight (easier on both the eye and the environment at the same time)
* Built-in iSight camera, mic and speakers
* Internal MagSafe power adapter that allows you to charge a MacBook
* Built-in USB ports, NO Firewire
* Connects via MiniDVI
* Max resolution 1920x1080
* Glossy glass screen
* Contrast ratio 1000:1 (massive increase from 400:1)
* 14 ms response time (same as previous gen)

My thoughts - Seems to be aimed at consumers due to the lack of FireWire, relatively low resolution (the old 23" offered 1920x1200), glossy screen, Mini DVI connector and the fact that every single photograph shows a MacBook tethered to it. Looks nice for watching HD iTunes movies on though.

And it gets bonus points for a huge increase in contrast ratio. I wouldn't advise it for color-critical work though.

Read more...

MacBook
* One-piece aluminum cases (this is the "brick" everyone was referring to)
* The original white plastic MacBook remains but lowered to $999
* GeForce 9400M graphics chipset (256 MB shared memory) delivers a significant boost in graphics performance over the previous Intel on-board graphics
* Ultra-thin LED display
* All-glass multi-touch trackpad
* 5 hours of "wireless productivity"
* USB-only, NO Firewire

Low-end model ($1299):
* 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo
* 3MB L2 cache
* 2GB of RAM (expandable to 4 GB)
* 160GB HD (or upgrade to 320 GB HD or 128 GB SSD)
* 8x Superdrive
* 2x USB

High-end model ($1599):
* 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo
* 3MB L2 cache, 2GB of RAM (expandable to 4 GB)
* 250GB HD (or 320 GB HD or 128 GB SSD)
* 8x Superdrive
* 2x USB

My thoughts - The graphical upgrades are much-appreciated but there is no FireWire which makes it of limited professional use. Also, there is no indication as to whether or not these machines can boot into Target Disk Mode (which makes the machine behave like an external hard disk which is great for backing up data if the machine fails).

Read more...

MacBook Air
* Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics chipset
* Identical form factor to previous model
* SSD doubled in size from 64 to 128 GB
* Faster CPU

Low-end model ($1799):
* 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 6 MB L2 Cache
* 2 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 Memory
* 120 GB SATA hard drive

High-end model ($2499):
* 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 6 MB L2 Cache
* 2 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 Memory
* 128 GB solid state drive

My thoughts - Could be good if a lightweight machine is important. Speed is now less of an issue than with the previous model but still a significant factor. No FireWire so storage options are limited.

Read more...

MacBook Pro
All the features of the MacBook above, as well as:
* 256 MB GeForce 9600M GT graphics in addition to the GeForce 9400
* Only 15" models available

Low-end model ($1999):
* 15.4" LED-backlit display
* 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (3MB L2 cache)
* 2GB DDR3 RAM
* 250 GB 5400 RPM hard drive (or 250 GB 7200 RPM or 320GB 7200 RPM or 128GB solid-state drive)
* Slot-loading Super Drive
* FireWire 800 replaces FireWire 400

High-end model ($2400):
* 15.4" LED-backlit display
* 2.53 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (6MB of L2 cache) (with 2.8 GHz upgrade option)
* 4GB DDR3 RAM
* 320 GB 5400 RPM hard drive (or 250 GB 7200 RPM or 320GB 7200 RPM or 128GB solid-state drive)
* Slot-loading Super Drive

My thoughts - Out of all of the new products unveiled today, this is the only one geared at professional users. It's faster (2.8 up from 2.6) and has faster memory and front side bus. It also has a 128 GB solid-state disk as an option, which will give a further speed boost. It's not a must-buy for previous MacBook Pro owners as the main selling point is the visual redesign, but it's good if you're in the market for a new machine.

It's worth noting that this machine does not have FireWire 400 ports so you will need a FireWire 800 to 400 adapter in order to use FireWire 400 equipment with it.

Read more...

Conclusion
It is interesting to note how Apple seems to be separating its professional lines from its consumer lines. The new graphics chips in the MacBooks make them much better for Final Cut Studio but the lack of FireWire now cripples them in that regard. I think this is deliberate.

There's nothing here to make pro users sit up and take notice but if you're in the market for a new MacBook Pro, you'll benefit from the speed bump and the (hopefully) more rugged design due to the new one-piece construction of the base.

Blu-ray unfortunately wasn't a feature in these new machines but then again, OS X 10.5.6 wasn't released either and there's no way they could introduce Blu-ray drives without OS support. But it does complicate the issue because if Apple were to, for example, release OS X 10.5.6 in two weeks with Blu-ray support in the OS, their laptop line would probably not be updated for another 3-4 months, whereas they could have just waited if Blu-ray support was just around the corner. I'm sure Apple must be working on this somewhere in their facility but when it will materialize remains to be seen. The next big event is Macworld in January so fingers crossed it will appear then.

Edit: One thing I didn't realize at first is that Apple is ONLY offering the MacBook Pro in a glossy screen configuration - the matte option previously offered is no longer present. The thing about glossy screens is that when calibrated properly, they are fully capable of reproducing accurate colors in a perfect environment. The gloss on the screen tends to reflect the environment which makes it virtually useless for professional work in most environments. I'm sure a third-party will create a matte screen cover for the MacBook Pro but for a machine supposedly targeted at professionals, they really shouldn't have to. This is disappointing.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Tuesday October 14 2008 3:27 PM to Apple, Hardware
1 comment Posted Permalink

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After Effects CS4 to drop PowerPC support

There's a post on the Keyframes blog (the official Adobe blog of the AE product manager, Michael Coleman) stating that due to limited time and resources, they have decided to drop PowerPC support in After Effects CS4 in favor of adding new features for Intel users.



So After Effects CS3 is the last Universal Binary version so if you still have a PPC Mac, you'll have to buy it before the new one goes on sale (which is a bit tricky because a release date hasn't been announced). It should be noted that this only applies to After Effects and not Photoshop or the other apps but it's obvious that they will all go that way eventually.

I don't see this as a major issue as the number of Intel users is currently very large and will get even larger by the time CS4 is released. It's a shame for people with old PPC machines still kicking around (me) though, and it's reducing the resale value of the older machines. Universal Binaries were such a great idea but to companies who also develop for Windows and have very large codebases, it unfortunately makes more sense to make Intel-only versions.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sunday August 17 2008 2:10 AM to Hardware, Software, Visual Effects
1 comment Posted Permalink

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Third party Mac Pro Blu-ray drives

MCE Technologies has announced the availability of an internal 6x Blu-ray drive for the Mac Pro that seamlessly fits into one of the existing bays inside the machine.



The drive alone is $499 but there is also a version bundled with Roxio Toast 9 for $599. An external version is available for $749. It requires OS X 10.5.2 or higher but no device drivers are needed.

Currently the only Mac applications capable of burning Blu-ray movies are Roxio Toast 9 and Adobe Encore CS3, however there are quite a few more available for Windows if you have a Boot Camp partition available.

[via TUAW]

Posted by Jon Chappell on Tuesday July 1 2008 11:55 PM to Apple, Hardware, DVD
0 comments Posted Permalink

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Mac Pro and Xserve overclocking tool

This has been going around the internet for the past couple of days. The German division of ZDNet has released an overclocking tool for Mac Pro and Xserve machines running Leopard.

Overclocking is the process of artificially increasing the clock speed of your processor and memory in order to make it operate at a faster rate. For example, you could make a 2.8 GHz processor operate at 3.0 GHz without the expense of purchasing a faster CPU. This is very popular in the Windows world, particularly with hardcore video gamers, who have managed to push CPUs beyond 4 GHz.

However, increasing the clock rate also increases the power consumption and heat output of the CPU. Upgrading the power supply and increasing the CPU cooling may be necessary - areas that may be tricky with tightly-designed Apple products.

I wouldn't advise doing this on a machine that you depend upon every day but it might be useful for a render farm machine where speed is important and the task will be taken up by another machine if there are any crashes or failures.

Another final thing to note is that your system performance will only be as fast as the slowest link in the chain. If you overclock your CPU but have a really slow hard disk or not very much RAM, the performance increase will be limited.

All in all though, this is a very useful tool for Mac users as long as they are aware of the dangers and potential issues. It could also encourage more video gamers to switch to the Mac.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sunday June 29 2008 3:07 PM to Apple, Hardware, Software
0 comments Posted Permalink

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