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      /  Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
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BigD 
Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 9:57:48
#1 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

I think we can now see Apple's strategy for overcoming the demand from gamers and Pro users for decent GPU performance. This is especially important considering that they still put mobile spec graphics cards in their iMacs which leaves them overpriced and under performing. The solution? $600 external GPU units from Sonnet:

Apple Developer GPU News

... and
... wait for it
.... drum roll

An upgrade to the Metal API to include support for VR and even advanced shader technology! Talk about being late to the party!

macOS High Sierra, Metal 2 and VR

While it isn't a promise to upgrade OpenGL (which would help the most in the interim) I suppose it is a third way to compete with DirectX and OpenGL. Whether games and application developers will be convinced is another story.

I think a 'old school' strategy of actually creating machines with the features you expect them to have is more sensible than simply creating under-performing base machines and charging the Earth for dongles all the time! Talk about ruining the aesthetics their supposed to be famed for!

Rather than 'Think Different' Apple's new tag line should be...

'Think DONGLES!'

More Apple dongle fun for all the family!

Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 09:59 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 09:58 AM.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 10:06:42
#2 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Thread

... sorry, they have actually produced a high powered 'Pro' machine


iMac Pro announced

Quote:
Inside, you’ll get Intel Xeon processors up to 18 cores, a Radeon Pro Vega GPU with up to 11 teraflops of single-precision compute power for real-time 3D rendering and high-quality VR. The iMac Pro also supports up to 4TB of SSD, up to 128GB of ECC memory, and 10Gbit/s ethernet. You’ll also get four Thunderbolt 3 ports so you can connect two high-performance RAID arrays and two 5K displays (44 million pixels for those keeping score) at the same time.


Wow! About time I hear you cry. Wait a second consider the price for their stupidly trendy form factor with fancy new dual thermal cooling cores before you get excited...

.... a snip at $5,000!

Expect that to translate to over $4,500 here in blighty

INSANE!!!

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WolfpackN64 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 10:57:51
#3 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Oct-2016
Posts: 300
From: Unknown

@BigD

Not that crazy when you consider the screen itself is about 2000$.
Also great to see Sonnet still being in on the game.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 11:03:46
#4 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@WolfpackN64

Quote:
Not that crazy when you consider the screen itself is about 2000$.


I meant in the sense of it being the ONLY real option for Pro users starting at $5,000! Do you want a casual grade device for £2,500 or an actual computer that is a good price/performance ratio at around £4,500?

Yes, they are premium products but they don't look so premium when you have to surround the lesser machines with an array of dongles and wires to get any decent performance out of them!

Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 11:06 AM.

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WolfpackN64 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 11:12:50
#5 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Oct-2016
Posts: 300
From: Unknown

@BigD

But you don't need a ton of dongles for the iMac Pro since it has a quit full featured IO. And people shouldn't be surprised that the Macbook Pro only has Thunderbolt ports. It's a pain yes, but that was probably also the case at first when Apple threw away the Floppy drive for a CD drive, the ADB ports for USB. It's to be expected from them.

They rightfully think Thunderbolt 3 is a superior port and everyone should get with the program (even though the Macbook, could really use 2 Thunderbolt ports instead of 1 USB-C 3.1 port).

As for GPU specs, these GPU's in the Macbook aren't the strongest (even though they're decent), but considering Apple's use of their graphics API to accelerate their own programs like Final Cut Pro this isn't really a problem.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 11:24:40
#6 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@WolfpackN64

Quote:
But you don't need a ton of dongles for the iMac Pro since it has a quit full featured IO.


Agreed, hence why I clarified in the 'lesser' machines.

Quote:
As for GPU specs, these GPU's in the Macbook aren't the strongest (even though they're decent), but considering Apple's use of their graphics API to accelerate their own programs like Final Cut Pro this isn't really a problem.


Final Cut Pro is dead in the water a this point having been completely replaced by Adobe Premier in all creative industries. iMovie is enough for most casual home users so I predict Final Cut Pro will be put out to pasture.

Metal 2 isn't the solution most third party software developers want. They are used to OpenGL and are going to be reluctant to switch to Metal. Apple will have to court these developers and show them that machines like the iMac Pro will sell leading to a market for the third party software. If this strategy fails there will be both a drop in 'Pro' machine sales and serious software as professional companies switch to high end PCs running Premiere and the Adobe suite.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 11:29:43
#7 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Thread

To me it feels like an expensive knee jerk solution/option to attempt to plug the hole left by the badly designed (for powerful single GPU board use) Mac Pro. A more customisable Pro machine in an old style tower 'should' have been the solution, but Apple are so 'anal' about aesthetics even though they expect their users to then screw them up with dongles and wires unless they buy a $5,000 'Pro' machine!!!

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WolfpackN64 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 11:50:26
#8 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Oct-2016
Posts: 300
From: Unknown

@BigD

What? Final Cut is still widely used since it's much more optimized then Adobe Premiere. It's one of the major reasons people buy Mac's. DaVinci Resolve will even support Metal now, which will not be a good sign for Premiere. Final Cut isn't going anywhere.

Metal is used by some big developers already and Apple will use it through their own UI to accelerate it.

No professional video editor will switch to Premiere on PC. There is absolutely NO reason to swap Final Cut Pro for Premiere.

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SHADES 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 12:23:03
#9 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 13-Nov-2003
Posts: 865
From: Melbourne

@BigD

Awesome!!

Finally a power Mac offereing after all these years!

Peple have been waiting for this for so long, regardless of the price tag.

I'll finally have that new Protools studio humming along.

Where do all those expansion periferals plug in to??

oh

ROFLMAO

Get stuffed Apple.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 15:01:29
#10 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@WolfpackN64

Quote:
Final Cut is still widely used since it's much more optimized then Adobe Premiere.


The work flow is more important than optimisation and Apple messed that up with the redesign of Final Cut Pro X! I've heard reports of it being buggy, crashing and delaying work. Premiere has won over the 'majority' of Pro users and they're not coming back.

Q. Would you recommend a newbie learn Final Cut Pro?
Ans: No. You'd be a fool not to recommend Premiere.

Additional Q. When will Mac users be able to play Elite Dangerous Horizons?
Ans: No time soon as OpenGL 4.4 support is expected by ALL current Mac game software houses not 7 years out of date version 4.1! Metal support will take years to build up if ever! Apple 1st party software is not what it was in the Final Cut Pro 7, iDVD & iMovie days. Heck Audacity gets far more use than Garage Band on my machine because not everyone is a session guitarist!

There is no reason for 'most' people to buy a Mac anymore other than they look good (with nothing actually plugged into it hence just a glorified web browser ), and will get you looks in Costa Coffee

Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 03:04 PM.

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WolfpackN64 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 15:20:24
#11 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Oct-2016
Posts: 300
From: Unknown

@BigD

There really is no substantial proof that Apple is losing any costumers with Final Cut Pro. It's widely used, it's also an industry standard and it's going to stay that way for a long time.

Premiere has it's fair share of problems and suggesting Premiere is hands down the better option over Final Cut Pro is misleading, certainly considering the performance benefit Final Cut has over Premiere.

macOS is still a vastly superior OS over Windows 10 (so are most Linux distributions) as as long as Microsoft keeps sinking their own ship, it's going to stay that way.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 15:44:09
#12 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@WolfpackN64

Arrogance will only get Apple so far. They no longer 'lead' the industry post-Jobs and a lot of their decision are questionable. A $5,000 Mac Pro is not enough to turn the tide. Where are the MacBook Pros with 32GB of RAM? Where is the quad core, discrete graphics version of the Mac Mini? Where is the new user expandable Mac Pro tower?

The company in no way embraces the Pro community any more. They let the Mac Pro languish on the same dual GPU set up for 4 YEARS!!! Final Cut Pro X HAS lost them users and the company is arrogant thinking we're all going to buy DONGLES and follow their wafer thin machines with no power (other than the iMac Pro), at crazily inflated prices and with an OS that can't (or refuses to) support shaders on OpenGL and only cares about aping iOS! Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of macOS, although Tiger was faster (with useful Classic environment) and El Capitan, although it has a tabbed Finder and some polish does nothing that Mavericks didn't. Plus the flat non-aqua boring grey aluminium style desktop is DULL! Not trendy, not sleek, it's just boring!

Where are the built in Blu-Ray drives (for those that need them)? Where is the support for standard peripherals? Where is the killer app software? What exactly justifies the ever increasing price of Mac hardware with ever reducing number of ports, relative specs of the standard models, ability for users to upgrade their own machines and an ever increasing corporate arrogance which is evident in Apple Stores and in their WWDC and Keynote addresses. They have no heart, no vision and the best recent release that was Apple related was the Jobs film. Jobs was callous, abrupt and personally unlikable but he had multiple times the vision, drive, ambition and courage that the current Tim Cook entourage has!

Spotify, Google, Tesla, Amazon; these are the technological innovators of today. Apple is playing catch up. Even Nintendo make Apple look slow, cumbersome and definitely missing Steve Jobs. Jonathan Ive has too much influence. How about deciding on a specification FIRST (stuff the form factor at first - design that around the REQUIREMENT) eg. AMD Vega GPU, 12 core Xeon CPU etc like the iMac Pro and make it with quality parts in a simple cost effective (but high end) solution? No one cares HOW the case gets cooled or if it's 1 mm thinner this year or has fancy function keys they just want a powerful machine at a fair price with good software.

Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 04:04 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 04:03 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 03:55 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 03:54 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 03:52 PM.

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WolfpackN64 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 16:15:40
#13 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Oct-2016
Posts: 300
From: Unknown

@BigD

All I see is you rambling for Apple just being Apple. They're doing what they've always been doing. Jobs just pushed them harder, but they're in essence continuing in the same line.

Apple doesn't commit to a product if they think they don't need to. Apple decides what is industry standard, it doesn't get decided for them. Apple decides what they consider to be the forefront of industrial design.

Apple has innovated in one big way, one thing no other company succeeded in: Convergence. They made one OS for TV, Phone, Smartwatches, Tablets en Computers. They control the software stacks in multiple ways.

All you do is ramble how Final Cut Pro is losing users, while there is no evidence that that is happening (one could make the argument the Final Cut Pro X userbase has been growing even). And you obsession with Premiere is strange seeing how they've only been receiving stronger competition from suites like DaVinci Resolve.

Spotify is an innovator? Maybe for the hip young or technological crowd, but it's just a subscription service. It's never going to be something that's used on a mainstream basis. Google has been doing what? Maintaining Android, growing big data. Hardly revolutionizing. Amazon has pioneered modern day slavery, I'll give you that. Tesla is quite innovative in pushing electrical vehicles, but they're not in the same sector as Apple.

I know Apple has it's faults, and you're very much justified in choosing another product, but you're faulting them for basically being the same company and for the fact Steve Jobs is dead. The man won't come back, and frankly, not that much has changed or would have changed if he still was there.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 16:27:53
#14 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@WolfpackN64

Mac Pro G4 / G5 / Intel Mk1 were awesome machines. You could swap out hard drives, ram and even graphics boards. Old Macbooks could have their batteries replaced easily. Magsafe was useful and stopped you breaking your laptop. Having optical media built in was neat, as was memory card slots, HDMI, Mini-Display slot etc. Nothing in Apple's recent decisions are in the benefit of users who are not dragging their machine to trendy coffee bars. All they do now is shave a little bit of aluminium off each yearly update, make OS X more like iOS primarily to increase battery life while not caring about performance for gaming, pro apps or ease of use of peripherals etc.

OpenGL support is a necessity. They can't drag the whole gaming and graphics industry with them on a proprietary API Metal because people will just release their casual software on iOS and leave the Mac out in the cold or just develop for the PC if it's high end.

The Mac did have limited support for modern games! Now they just have Blizzard crowing about Metal but few others. Apple did have a killer app in Final Cut Pro but now the industry uses Premiere. Apple did have a valuable computer operating system in OS X now it's just iOS in all but name delayed for 6 months while they update Mac drivers.

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WolfpackN64 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 16:53:40
#15 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Oct-2016
Posts: 300
From: Unknown

@BigD

I agree the Mac Pro's are awesome devices (the last one being an exception). Magsafe I'm not so fond of, mainly because it's a proprietary interface, there are nearly no third party charges and Apple's chargers are of terrible quality (this is my third charger for my 5 year old Macbook Pro).

Apple has put considerable effort in macing macOS more modern with the new file system and graphics API. macOS has not been evolving towards iOS, but it's normal the two are alike since they basically ARE the same OS, configured differently.

I know many people want newer OpenGL versions, but Apple is pushing Metal and there is still the possibility of running Vulkan applications on Mac through third party software. It doesn't seem like Feral Interactive minds for their ports.

Apple still has a killer app in Final Cut Pro X, which is as much an industry standard as Premiere and DV Resolve, stop beating a dead horse.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 16:58:21
#16 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@WolfpackN64

Quote:
Apple still has a killer app in Final Cut Pro X, which is as much an industry standard as Premiere and DV Resolve, stop beating a dead horse.


Don't delude yourself that every design house put the time in to retrain the staff when Final Cut Pro X was released. The workflow on Premiere was more similar to Final Cut Pro 7 so a lot of people switched to that in my experience. Companies want to keep the workflow the same and are not interested in reinventing the wheel

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WolfpackN64 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 17:03:15
#17 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Oct-2016
Posts: 300
From: Unknown

@BigD

"in my experience" is a dangerous sentence. Was there some discontent when Final Cut Pro X first launched? Yes. Did some people switch out of discontent? Probably yes. But at the same time, Final Cut Pro X has been lauded numerous times for it's stability and in recent years has had a growing userbase.

It's like Gnome 2 to Gnome Shell. Was their discomfort? Yes. Was there an exodus? No, in fact, it's probably THE best GUI in existence.

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tlosm 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 18:16:17
#18 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 28-Jul-2012
Posts: 2746
From: Amiga land

new apples super expensive standard computers full of hardware bugs and more OS bugs than before... i will never buy a new apple ... never
and after 5 years ... no more upgrade , for apple your computer is too old for do normal things ...

Last edited by tlosm on 06-Jun-2017 at 06:17 PM.

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BigD 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 21:47:48
#19 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@WolfpackN64

Apple was okay when they pretended to pander to the 'Pro' user for a while in the early OS X years. They even released the very reasonable and well made PowerBook and iBook laptops. Now they are a computer maker for the classes with seemingly NO new ideas and are busy getting rid of their best ones i.e. Magsafe connectors.

They are only interested in the bottom line and I will not be investing in any more of their hardware unless I can pick up a iMac Pro out of a marketing company's skip in 5 years time or find one for £1,000 on Gumtree. Oh yeah, they'd also have to release OpenGL 4.4 since we've only been waiting 7 years for an upgrade and almost 2 years for Elite Dangerous: Horizons

Last edited by BigD on 06-Jun-2017 at 09:59 PM.

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kolla 
Re: Apple Developer Conference: GPU / Pro User problem addressed
Posted on 6-Jun-2017 22:42:54
#20 ]
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Joined: 20-Aug-2003
Posts: 2859
From: Trondheim, Norway

@tlosm

5 years? Oh dear, I have a 2011 mini here that is still supported.

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