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Apple moves from Intel to ARM and from macOS X to macOS 11


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It's a pity they outlawed running MacOS on an intel PC. Even for paid versions :(

There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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It's a pity they outlawed running MacOS on an intel PC. Even for paid versions :(

Understandable. They make great software, but they are a hardware company. I'd like to be able to use the Nord libraries on a Casio too. ;)

 

But the EUA hasn't stopped people from doing it anyway.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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Yeah I get that EJF, but I am talking about actually buying it, not trying to scam a copy ;) Surely there is an untapped market there for them??

There is no luck - luck is simply the confluence of circumstance and co-incidence...

 

Time is the final arbiter for all things

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As mentioned, I'm not too worried about it. My main app on Apple is Logic Pro--and frankly I have enough 3rd-party plugins now to make a move to another DAW not that big a deal. I don't use Alchemy as much as I thought I would, though I do think Logic's stock plugins are pretty good and are a very good deal if you don't have any.

 

I don't like where they've been going ergonomically, I call them the "Cult of Slim". Everything's got to be razor thin and light. The keyboard is pathetic (though I haven't tried the latest.) I don't give two shits about that, leave that for the Air users, mine doesn't move in my studio. Make power machines for power users ideally (I expect that is not where the money is!)

 

I have to say my Windows 10 machine is very nice to use and as long as latency isn't a factor I'd be fine running a DAW on Windows. Drivers don't seem to be the headache they used to be in XP. I used to run sequencer programs on Dos and Windows 3.1 (Voyetra and Cakewalk) and they have come a LOOOOONG way! :)

 

I think perhaps the #1 reason people build hackintoshes (other than hobbyists) is because people love MacOS and the Pro Apps but Apple refuses to provide content creators (artists, videographers, composers) a user configurable and upgradeable design based on more affordable processors than the Xeon. Not to mention the ability to dual boot them with other OSes, Windows, Linux, etc.

 

I believe it. For me, an OS just has to be able to work without crashing, not have driver woes (XP), and have a way to launch the programs I use. Having a decent search is nice, which OSX has had, and win 10 seems to now have. Other than that it's just up to the software. I like Logic Pro but if forced to switch I expect I'd get used to something else. I've used a lot of sequencers and daws going back to Opcode's Vision, just have to climb that learning curve mountain each time!

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The multi processing facilities built into the eventual desktop processing chip of the future RISC based apple CPU's are going to be essential to the power of the system. RAM bandwidth, clock, number of (fast) threads, cache size and such are comparable, but certainly not the same as number crunching Intel CPU's (or AMD's, which I didin't study much). The number of fast threads on the A12Z as is is 4, at sub 3GHz clock. Compared to 12 Complex Instruction Set CPU threads at 4.5Ghz that's probably not great for number crunching, just as there is no spec known to me about how many floating point pipelines there are on this (Acorn ?) Reduced Instruction Set Central processing unit, or how much SSE and other accelerators (including out of order execution heat), at which sustained throughput.

 

Software can be compiled on another processor and Operating System, that's completely normal for running Linux applications on various technology. I do wonder if the removal of "X" means that the compatibility of the Mac windowing system with the very long existing (Originally Unix based) "X windows" windowing software running on most Linux-es is lost with the advent of Wayland...

 

T.V.

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The question on all our minds is, will ARM-based Macs be able to handle professional workloads such as DAW projects with lots of tracks and VIs or 4k video post-production. The WWDC keynote video tried to reassure us somewhat, by showing demos of Final Cut Pro and Maya running on their development platform, which uses a seemingly puny (for a desktop computer) A12Z Bionic CPU with 16GB of RAM. There is also this statement from the official press release:

 

"This will give the Mac industry-leading performance per watt and higher performance GPUs â enabling app developers to write even more powerful pro apps and high-end games."

 

Emphasis mine, because that's a telling phrase. To me it prefigures that Apple marketing will try to decouple any meaningful idea of heavy lifting â such as number of VIs or video streams a machine can handle smoothly â from gearhead specs we all like to watch, such as clock speed and number of CPU cores. For those old enough to remember the "Megahertz Myth" campaign, this is eerily familiar. Apple tried to argue that since their G3 and G4 processors ran more efficiently than the Intel Pentiums of the era, that comparisons based on clock speed were meaningless for professional work. Said Pentiums were boasting roughly twice the clock speed at similar price points, and Apple had to address this. In retrospect, they are now seen as not having fully delivered on that promise. The Mac won on stability, not hardware performance, because Windows at the time was problematic for creatives. That's not the case any more. I have a Windows 10 PC that was top of the line in 2013 (Dell T5600, 16-core Xeon E5-2680, 64GB RAM, eSATA SSD drives) running next to my late 2012 i7 iMac and MacBook Pro, and though Windows lacks some conveniences I've come to rely on in macOS (namely AirDrop, Preview, and device aggregation), if I am living primarily in an app ecosystem such as Adobe or Avid or DaVinci, it does not get in my way. At all.

 

Not to derail this thread into OS evangelism. I bought my first Mac around 1990 and have mainly been a Mac user ever since, and I'm eager to see what Apple does here. For the pro market it will come down to whether they can muster "Apple Silicon" to deliver on the promise of the Megahertz Myth days. Otherwise, if I were their competition, my marketing slogan would be, "Don't trust your mission-critical work to a phone CPU."

 

The fact remains that, upcoming Intel-based Macs or not, Intel is now a lame duck in the Apple pond. Several tech websites have picked up on at least one reason why: that Apple got fed up with the QC of Intel's Skylake (6th-generation) CPUs between 2015 and 2017.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/25/buggy-skylake-chips-hastened-apple-silicon/

 

If this story is credible, I have to wonder if Apple ever considered switching to AMD, whose graphics hardware they use. Even assuming today's Intel Core and Xeon chips are 100 percent reliable, AMD's 3rd-generation Ryzen 9 and Threadripper CPUs are roundly spanking them â and for way less money. If I'm content with Windows (or enough of a DIY geek for Linux) I can build a $3,000 AMD machine that will out-VI and out-render any iMac Pro you can configure in the Apple store. I can build a $5,000 computer that will smoke any 7,1 (current) Mac Pro. If you're strictly into music production and don't need high-end visual performance for video or gaming, a $1,500 build could give you years worth of overkill. I can only speculate that at the time Apple decided to fish or cut bait, the AMD advantage was not so dramatic as it is today.

 

That's all just a thought experiment, of course. My $0.02 at this time is that if Apple is to retain the creative market and justify their ever-higher pricing relative to PCs, they need a specific marketing message. What message? Continuity of hardware and UX between Mac, iPhone, and iPad is all well and good for the vast majority of consumers, but that misses the point for a lot of creatives. No, they also need to be talking about how their higher-end ARM desktop Macs are next-level compared to any PC. Of course, their engineers need to actually make this happen, but as to marketing, the message should be this: RISC is better. RISC is for the real pros. This message has a successful precedent from the 1980s and '90s: RISC workstations such as the DEC Alpha series and some machines from Silicon Graphics (though SGI later switched to Pentium processors). If you did 3D modeling, video, or data visualization in that era, having something like an Alpha was perceived as positively ballin' compared to any x86 PC available. If you rolled RISC, you were Mr. Spock compared to a nameless redshirt.

 

At least I hope they try to communicate with pros in this way, perhaps through a targeted marketing sub-team, and not merely give us "megahertz myth 2.0" and "ooh shiny" about their internal vertical integration.

 

How did I get off on this rant? I have an SSL SiX mixer to review ...

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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I've been using MacBookPro's for 15 years. My latest is a 2015 with 16GB and 1TB SSD. I had been buying one every 5 years. Before I retired a couple years ago I bought a 2017 iMac I7, 16GB. Earlier this week I made a hard decision. Logged onto Costco and ordered a Dell notebook. 15.6" HD touch screen, 10th generation i7, 16GB, 500 GB SSD. $800. I just could not justify the cost of an equivalent MacBookPro on a retiree salary. It was a hard decision, but I used the money I saved to buy a DJI Mavic Mini AND a DJI Mavic Air 2. Here's hoping that my iMac last a long, long time.

 

On the other hand, some people are now using the new iPad Pro as their laptop. Better connectivity, a decent but expensive keyboard cover, and Bluetooth connectivity for mouse or touchpad. I think I may do that in another year. In October the iPhone 12 should be released and I plan to buy the version with the better camera. It is getting to a point that I hardly use my good cameras any more.

This post edited for speling.

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I guess I'm in the minority here but I have big concerns about the announcement, as expected as it was. I still rely on Windows because there are some tools you just can't get in MacOS, and for the past ~10 years, I've been able to run Windows (XP, then 7, now 10) in a VMWare virtual machine. It works amazingly well and really is the best of both worlds. Even though there's an ARM flavor of Win10, that isn't that case, and may never be the case, for some Windows apps. I guess we'll see when we get there. I'd hate to have to go back to having a dedicated Windows machine.

 

This is even worse news for anyone who recently dropped $50k for a fully-loaded Mac Pro.

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The question on all our minds is, will ARM-based Macs be able to handle professional workloads such as DAW projects with lots of tracks and VIs or 4k video post-production.

 

This is a valid question - the answer is, yes. There are already ARM based designs with up to 80 cores meant to compete with Intel"s Xeon which Apple uses in their Mac Pro and iMac Pro lines.

 

Just so everyone is clear, Apple has been running iOS/MacOS side by side on Atom and Intel since 2008. iOS and MacOS are the same OS there"s no distinction between the 2. The only difference is the UI framework they put on the top. For developers, Apple"s compiler is already supporting both hardware. they are already doing the recompiling on the app store for different iphones so it only downloads the code that is relevant to the hardware. This plan has been almost a decade in the making.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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I'm glad to be within the traditional curve, such that I can easily wait out the transition. I'm not terribly concerned, as I learned to future-proof most of my data a while back & my few softsynth companies have almost always been onboard at a fair pace. I got lucky in taking up Alchemy early on, so Apple's purchase of the company was great news. I suppose it helps that I made a command decision to avoid heavy streaming plugs early on, but just as much that I'm not doing 75 tracks with a 6-piece band. A lot of people use Logic like an entire orchestra at all times. I'm a bit closer to "They're So Incredible" from "The Revenge of the Nerds." :blush::popcorn:

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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I'm an IT Director for a medium sized corporation. I just recently removed all Macs from the enterprise. Things like this make it easy for IT groups to dislike Apple. Macs are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, and expensive to support.

 

 

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I'm an IT Director for a medium sized corporation. I just recently removed all Macs from the enterprise. Things like this make it easy for IT groups to dislike Apple. Macs are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, and expensive to support.

 

I get the expensive to buy bit, but why more expensive to maintain or support (if you had an all-Mac enterprise vs an all-PC enterprise)? I don't know better, just interested.

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I'm an IT Director for a medium sized corporation. I just recently removed all Macs from the enterprise. Things like this make it easy for IT groups to dislike Apple...

If I were a corporate IT director, I'd definitely agree with this. Why would you want to change if you've been coasting along with the PC since the beginning? As the famous quote goes, "Nobody ever got fired for going with IBM" :)

 

I used to be a huge thorn in the side of IT guys with my attitude of challenging them to stop being the "High Sparrow" of compute authority.

 

Fortunately there are plenty of companies that keep the technology moving.

J a z z  P i a n o 8 8

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Yamaha C7D

Montage8 | CP300 | CP4 | SK1-73 | OB6 | Seven

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I'm an IT Director for a medium sized corporation. I just recently removed all Macs from the enterprise. Things like this make it easy for IT groups to dislike Apple. Macs are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, and expensive to support.

 

I get the expensive to buy bit, but why more expensive to maintain or support (if you had an all-Mac enterprise vs an all-PC enterprise)? I don't know better, just interested.

Those last two puzzled me as well. I'm going to guess it has to do with Macs being less backward compatible, causing more upgrades to remain current.

 

Otherwise, I'm at a loss. In 30 years of being a Mac user, I've only had one bad Apple (pun intended)âmy G5 that died just after three years of ownership.

 

Edit: Actually, I just thought of two more possible reasons. I'm guessing that Mac parts are more expensive and that repairs are more difficult given their all-in-one design.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

My Blue Someday appears on Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon

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I'm an IT Director for a medium sized corporation. I just recently removed all Macs from the enterprise. Things like this make it easy for IT groups to dislike Apple. Macs are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, and expensive to support.

 

I get the expensive to buy bit, but why more expensive to maintain or support (if you had an all-Mac enterprise vs an all-PC enterprise)? I don't know better, just interested.

Those last two puzzled me as well. I'm going to guess it has to do with Macs being less backward compatible, causing more upgrades to remain current.

 

Otherwise, I'm at a loss. In 30 years of being a Mac user, I've only had one bad Apple (pun intended)âmy G5 that died just after three years of ownership.

 

Edit: Actually, I just thought of two more possible reasons. I'm guessing that Mac parts are more expensive and that repairs are more difficult given their all-in-one design.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

 

most IT people don"t train or have experience with OSX so they need to hire someone who does and that right there is a yearly salary added to budget. Typically this person services the art department of a big company specifically and they have their own little network in their area separate from the rest of the place.

 

It"s not Apple"s market and while they can be on the network, OSX does not run the same software or versions of software solutions that might be required. It really depends on the business and what they are being used for.

 

Parts wise, since Apple went to Intel there"s been really no difference in parts between a Mac and a PC which is why Bootcamp works, dual boot machines, hackintoshes etc are possible. But most current Apple designs are not intended to be worked on by the owner or an IT department. You send them out to Apple certified service center. They"re not like an HP workstation where you take out 3 screws and replace a NIC card, or a hard drive, or RAM.

 

Apple"s niche is in mobile, education, artists doing digital content creation, small creative businesses with basic networking needs who don"t have a need or budget for an IT department.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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Actually good questions. A key metric for me for any system or application is TCO - Total Cost of Ownership. Apple products (Mac, IPhones, IPads) are just simply far more expensive to own and maintain in an enterprise than their counterparts (Windows based PCs and Android)

 

First, Macs on a price/performance standpoint are actually about 70% higher to purchase. But the true costs come after purchase.

 

For example, our enterprise standardizes on Dell computers with Windows 10, just as most enterprises do (can substitute Dell for HP, Lenovo, whatever - they are all the same). On a large support contract, Dell will charge X dollars per computer per year for maintenance and support - AppleCare will be at least 1.5x to 2X.

 

Replacing bad board, hard drive, or other component in standard PCs is fairly easy and inexpensive. Not so in a Mac.

 

The Mac OS is simply not designed to operate well in an enterprise network; for example, it does not support key technologies like Group Policy. Patch management requires expensive third party solutions, instead of free Microsoft solutions like WSUS. They don't operate well at all on Windows domains (which are important in business).

 

Last year, I did an analysis of our help desk hours. On average, a PC based help desk ticket was 32 minutes. A help desk ticket for a Mac was 76 minutes. That is substantial.

 

In our enterprise, the Mac users were predominately in the graphics and marketing departments, and primarily used the Adobe Suite. Obviously, I was the devil incarnate with the Mac users when I took them away. We even had two employees leave over it (which, I imagine now that they regret that decision). I followed up with those users after a few months on a new platform - to a person, I received the same feedback. "Once I'm in Photoshop (or Illustrator, or whatever their primary application), I can't tell any difference."

 

 

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Actually good questions. A key metric for me for any system or application is TCO - Total Cost of Ownership. Apple products (Mac, IPhones, IPads) are just simply far more expensive to own and maintain in an enterprise than their counterparts (Windows based PCs and Android)

 

First, Macs on a price/performance standpoint around are actually about 70% higher to purchase. But the true costs come after purchase.

 

For example, our enterprise standardizes on Dell computers with Windows 10, just as most enterprises do (can substitute Dell for HP, Lenovo, whatever - they are all the same). On a large support contract, Dell will charge X dollars per computer per year for maintenance and support - AppleCare will be at least 1.5x to 2X.

 

Replacing bad board, hard drive, or other component in standard PCs is fairly easy and inexpensive. Not so in a Mac.

 

The Mac OS is simply not designed to operate well in an enterprise network; for example, it does not support key technologies like Group Policy. Patch management requires expensive third party solutions, instead of free Microsoft solutions like WSUS. They don't operate well at all on Windows domains (which are important in business).

 

Last year, I did an analysis of our help desk hours. On average, a PC based help desk ticket was 32 minutes. A help desk ticket for a Mac was 76 minutes. That is substantial.

 

In our enterprise, the Mac users were predominately in the graphics and marketing departments, and primarily used the Adobe Suite. Obviously, I was the devil incarnate with the Mac users when I took them away. We even had some two employees leave over it (which, I imagine now that they regret that decision). I followed up with those users after a few months on a new platform - to a person, I received the same feedback. "Once I'm in Photoshop (or Illustrator, or whatever their primary application), I can't tell any difference."

 

I used both Mac and PC regularly when I worked in graphics/printing industries.

 

That has been a while and certainly things will have changed. So I have a couple of questions or points that may or may not still be relevant. It would be fun to know the answers since I am currently running a small home studio on a Mac and am considering a Windows system for using the internet as this setup will eventually be left behind by updated browser requirements.

 

Are Windows updates now compiled (one install cycle) instead of consecutive? I'll never forget the day that I had hard deadlines for some trade show products and my Windows computer crashed. Our "IT Department" was one guy who was reasonably astute at maintaining Windows, we didn't have Macs there. He started "fixing" my computer and initiated a consecutive stream of updates that literally went on for hours. One would complete and the next one would start, all consecutive updates. Drove me bonkers. Mac updates have been compiled for a long time - one install and done - I hope Windows is now doing that as well. And yes, we'd use our computers as long as they worked, there was no scheduled updating. I get that you could run them all at night and nobody would notice.

 

The virus wars? Have they been won? What is that current situation? This one will date me but I will never forget being in a Mac-based art department for a 1,200 employee manufacturer. The "I Love You" virus hit and took out over 150 computers in the office area. IT disconnected our Macs from the network and we continued to work. Everybody else went home or cleaned up their cubicles etc. It took IT almost 60 hours to clean up that mess and a week later when somebody came back from vacation they triggered it again. Luckily, IT was on top of running backups every night so nothing important was lost.

 

I've preferred using Macs at home but I can use either and not really worry about it much. Pretty easy to get around on either, just a little different. Cheers, Kuru

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Thanks Husker for the insights, interesting! In a mixed PC / Mac environment I never doubted that Macs would be comparatively more expensive but the AppleCare issue is a great point as well.
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The number of fast threads on the A12Z as is is 4, at sub 3GHz clock. Compared to 12 Complex Instruction Set CPU threads at 4.5Ghz that's probably not great for number crunching, just as there is no spec known to me about how many floating point pipelines there are on this (Acorn ?) Reduced Instruction Set Central processing unit, or how much SSE and other accelerators (including out of order execution heat), at which sustained throughput.

 

Comparing architectures on paper is always risky. You need to deeply understand the subject or you're much better off simply looking at benchmarks which measure actual real-world throughput. Here's a comparison of the most recent 8-core i9-based 16" MacBook Pro to the iPad Pro that uses the A12Z. Spoiler: single core performance on the A12Z was actually better than the Intel part, and multi-core performance of the iPad was around 70% of the Intel part across a range of tasks.

 

Considering the iPad is designed to run without a fan, entirely passively cooled so the CPU has to draw dramatically less power? That's pretty remarkable.

 

More importantly, the A12Z-based kit Apple is sending to developers is not what they're proposing to sell. It was just a way to repurpose an existing part to let developers hit the ground running. According to the rumor mill, the parts being designed for products coming by the end of the year have twice as many of the high-performance cores. They may well also run at a higher clock speed, and have other architectural improvements from the A14 silicon design and the underlying 5nm fabrication process Apple is using. I won't be the least bit surprised if they're 2-3x faster than the A12Z for multi-threaded tasks.

 

... but I know you're also interested in the raw technology. A few things to mull over:

  • the Arm v8 instruction set does indeed offer SIMD instructions along the lines of Intel's SSE/AVX extensions, and I expect there will be wider versions coming on any hardware intended to compete at the high end.
  • It's easy to discount the "efficient" cores and focus solely on the performance cores in Apple's designs, but there are very real advantages to being able to run low-priority background tasks on highly efficient cores that don't interrupt your heavy workloads, and don't heat the system up for doing work that isn't time-sensitive.
  • While an Intel 8-core design is described as a 16-thread CPU, it's not actually executing code for 16 threads at the same time. There are just eight sets of execution units that do work. So-called "simultaneous multithreading" is just a way to ensure that when work on a core is blocked it can quickly switch to a secondary workload. The operating system may see them as 16 virtual cores, but that's an illusion. The technique is not without value, but it's more about improving typical utilization rather than actually increasing peak workload capacity. It will be interesting to see if Apple adopts something similar in their own designs down the road given how many security issues have shown up that have their roots in SMT behaviors.

Acoustic: Shigeru Kawai SK-7 ~ Breedlove C2/R

MIDI: Kurzweil Forte ~ Sequential Prophet X ~ Yamaha CP88 ~ Expressive E Osmose

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The question on all our minds is, will ARM-based Macs be able to handle professional workloads such as DAW projects with lots of tracks and VIs or 4k video post-production.

 

I answered a similar question for myself when they released the trash-can Mac, which was clearly not for audio people. At the time I was on a cheesegrater Mac Pro (8c/64GB). First I switched from Logic to Cubase - on OS X. Then I built a PC and moved to Cubase on Windows. I've never looked back. The main rig is now l cores (16 w/HT) @ 4.8Ghz with 64GB of RAM. The clock speed really helps audio work. I edit 4k video without stuttering. Getting a "new" PC only involves a motherboard, CPU and RAM. Everything else is reusable. The stumbling of Intel, the ascendancy of AMD are all easy to take advantage of if I want to on the main rig.

 

Like everyone, I've run through the Apple configurator several times since the release of the new Mac Pro. I get a $9-12K Mac Pro. I can build something more powerful in a custom rack mount case for under $4k. I can't justify the pretty, shiny case, even though it is very pretty and very shiny. Those who are locked into Logic and are earning $$ from it will feel differently. In fairness, my cheesegrater tower is still used as a VEP sample server - 10 years later, so the hardware does last a long time. I'm sure the new Mac Pro is very well made. It is not out of line when compared with HP or Dell workstations. But I can't see buying one of those either (and they definitely don't look good, or engineered in any superior way).

 

I have had a Mac laptop continuously since around 2001. I've always bought a fully loaded top of the line MacBook Pro - about every 4-6 years. They have been rock-solid and reliable. Last year I bought a MSFT Surface to use StaffPad. The hardware is so nice - the touchscreen and Pen are wonderful - way better than anything Apple offers for a laptop. It isn't a media creation tool - but for "consumer" use, I'd rather have a Surface than an iPad Pro. The Surface runs a real OS, not a phone OS.

 

What has worked for me is that some audio utilities are PC, some are OS X, some are IOS - I haven't had to care - I've got one of everything.

 

I would love for Apple to love creatives. And I'd pay some tax to be in the club. But they are a consumer company, and it very much shows. The Mac Pro is priced for Hollywood post-houses who are going to stuff 3-6 HDX cards in there and connect to a $100K S6 controller to mix blockbuster films. Very few music producers need the horsepower in the new Mac Pro.

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The Mac OS is simply not designed to operate well in an enterprise network; for example, it does not support key technologies like Group Policy. Patch management requires expensive third party solutions, instead of free Microsoft solutions like WSUS. They don't operate well at all on Windows domains (which are important in business).

 

To add to this, IME Mac OS is just not designed with multiple users in mind. As long as you stick to one Apple ID per computer, you're good. But back in the day I wanted to set up two user accounts with two different Apple ID's on the same machine; in the end I gave up. There's no reason why this shouldn't be possible in 2020, it's really some outdated thinking on their part (DRM, etc.)

 

I have not heard that this has been changed.

 

 

Acorn
+1 on the Acorn reference. I don't know how many other forumites will clock that and understand it.

 

Cheers, Mike.

 

The A in ARM, right?

 

Like everyone, I've run through the Apple configurator several times since the release of the new Mac Pro. I get a $9-12K Mac Pro. I can build something more powerful in a custom rack mount case for under $4k.

 

Yeh, I keep coming back to this, and trying to get used to the idea that my next workstation will not be a Mac.

 

I'll keep a Macbook/iPad/iPhone/AppleTV setup around for general purpose stuff, but at the high performance levels it stops making sense. My buddy does Houdini VFX and built a beast PC for just shy of $6K, 18-core i9 with Nvidia RTX 2080Ti, 64GB RAM, 2x2TB SSD. To get similar performance on the MacPro you're looking at $15K.

 

Mac Pros were always pricey, but at least they were good value at the beginning of their life cycle. It's kind of hard to make that case now.

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To add to this, IME Mac OS is just not designed with multiple users in mind. As long as you stick to one Apple ID per computer, you're good. But back in the day I wanted to set up two user accounts with two different Apple ID's on the same machine; in the end I gave up. There's no reason why this shouldn't be possible in 2020, it's really some outdated thinking on their part (DRM, etc.)

 

I have not heard that this has been changed.

 

Hi, no this is inaccurate. You can have multiple users, multiple Apple IDs on any Mac, and you can switch from one to the other without having to log out of them. These IDs also link via iCloud to all your Apple devices, iphone, iPad, etc. Bookmarks, notes, docs, calendars, etc. etc. are available and update to all). You can also choose which devices your iMessages and FaceTime, etc. route to.

 

I think by this time in our lives most of us have been through a significant amount of personal computers from all variety of vendors, crossed a few OS"s, used a few DAWs. As long as the machine is stable, runs the software you want to use and has enough juice to make your ideas a reality - it just doesn"t matter what you use.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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You can have multiple users, multiple Apple IDs on any Mac, and you can switch from one to the other without having to log out of them. These IDs also link via iCloud to all your Apple devices, iphone, iPad, etc. Bookmarks, notes, docs, calendars, etc. etc. are available and update to all). You can also choose which devices your iMessages and FaceTime, etc. route to.

 

OK, great. When did that change? I tried this around seven years ago, must have been around Mountain Lion or Mavericks, couldn't make it work.

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App£ could make a custom OS for Logic and EXS that would be so much better than iO$ or Micro$oft.

 

ASIO limitations are basically limitations of the OS which is why composer and orchestral instrument library users need VEPro or 16 Core Space Heaters.

 

Years ago @ AES I saw Merging Technologies bypass Windows and the process only allows stealing a single core of an i7, but that single core was dedicated to their app called Pyramix.

Plug ins on 64 stereo channels, tons of VST"s {proprietary}, but still it demonstrated to others and myself how useless these one size fits all OS"s are.

 

I use an XITE-1 which allows a few lines of code to operate so my mixing and use of soft synths is twice the amount if I used a DAW instead of Scope/Bidule.

 

So I am anxiously looking for something more customized before I make a move.

 

Always wanted to use ESX, the best software sampler out there IMHO.

 

App£ ARM CPUs would be great if a custom OS was used.

Magnus C350 + FMR RNP + Realistic Unisphere Mic
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Cutting-edge performance always moves down into consumer PCs, so to me, Apple is skating to where the puck is going to be - and that place is where off-the-shelf consumer hardware performance is so powerful it rules the market. I'd even argue that it's mostly true today, where US$1,000-2000 PCs are already overkill for most "pro" and "power" audio users. Those few who -truly- need cutting-edge performance of a Mac Pro or similar PC Workstation will become 1% or less of the market.
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Acorn
+1 on the Acorn reference. I don't know how many other forumites will clock that and understand it.

 

Cheers, Mike.

 

+1

 

I remember reading a review in a British magazine (nineties, I think) of a recently introduced personal computer by Acorn (it was the first time I heard of that company), with a new 32-bits processor developed by them, with architecture based on Mostec's 6502 they used in their previous PCs. They called the procesor ARM, which stood for Acorn Risc Machine. The review compared it with an Intel 386 and it outperformed the Intel at that time running similar applications even though the ARM ran at a much lower clock rate. At that point, the Intel based PC architecture with Microsoft Windows was becoming the de-facto standard platform for home and office so other platforms started seeing the writing in the wall. At some point, the "A" became "Advanced", so Advanced Risc Machine.

 

That is at least how I recall it.

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... today, where US$1,000-2000 PCs are already overkill for most "pro" and "power" audio users. Those few who -truly- need cutting-edge performance of a Mac Pro or similar PC Workstation will become 1% or less of the market.

 

^^^^^^^^^

THIS

 

A.C.

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You can have multiple users, multiple Apple IDs on any Mac, and you can switch from one to the other without having to log out of them. These IDs also link via iCloud to all your Apple devices, iphone, iPad, etc. Bookmarks, notes, docs, calendars, etc. etc. are available and update to all). You can also choose which devices your iMessages and FaceTime, etc. route to.

 

OK, great. When did that change? I tried this around seven years ago, must have been around Mountain Lion or Mavericks, couldn't make it work.

I don't understand the problem, and maybe we're talking about two different things, but I've set up Macs for multiple user accounts since Mac OS X came out (and IIRC, technically before that under Mac OS 9, but I don't recall how well that really worked).

 

My wife and I share Macs, and we each have our own accounts set up on each computer, and we each have our own Apple ID logged in our respective user account. That way she doesn't move around my stuff. :D I like my windows where I like them, and she puts stuff wherever works. Her method is probably more reasonable, but I never said I was reasonable. OCD and all that.

 

Anyway, under System Preferences, you can create users under Users and Groups. Or are you talking about something else?

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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