#3 "What's Up with the Mac Pro?"

Speaker 0 00:00 Workflow show episode three, what's going on with the Mac pro or as you put it earlier, what of the Mac pro? I actually like wither the Mac pro, but, um, what of the macro is exactly what we're talking about today? I'm Meryl Davis and I'm Nick gold. That's right. And whereas the peak systems we are with Chesapeake systems and, um, there's so much that has happened with the Mac pro line, but not exactly what we expected. There's so much of, not much, I guess, as a way of putting it, there's a drama and a saga associated to this product line, unlike any other it's like that movie Ishtar is it, I haven't actually seen as tar, but I understand it's really kind of long and dragging and trying to be kind of Epic, but just failing. I see. So let's, we're going to do the very abbreviated version of the last couple of years of the updates to the Mac pro quick recap. Speaker 0 00:57 Okay. Last major update to the Mac pro was summer of 2010, that was using Westmere class Xeon chips. We see an update just about a month ago on the Mac pro, uh, announced. And at the same time as the new retina MacBook pros, it wasn't even announced during the event, but there was a little new badge on the Mac pro icon, which was since removed by Apple because all they did was a very minor increase to the top clock speed of the two year old chips that Apple had been using all along. This was not the update. People were waiting. This was like, like a half update. No, it wasn't even a half update. I think it was kind of almost a tease. Yeah. I mean, they had to do something to the line and I'm glad that they did, but, but you know, there was really nothing of no new, no ramble princes, no, no, no real, um, hard drive differences, no, no differences to the available graphics cards. Speaker 0 01:58 And gosh, those things are starting to get long in the tooth. And again, the, the chips were really basically the same and weren't using the next generation chips that HP and some of the other workstation class computer vendors had started to implement a few months earlier in early 2012. So everyone is now wondering, gosh, it took you two years to update this thing. Although a lot of that two years was obviously waiting on Intel to release suitable chips, but well then you aren't really even going to use the new chips when they come available. You're not going to use new graphics cards. What's going on. A lot of people like, ah, yeah, I think, I think they were upset because it seemed like Apple wasn't paying attention to this particular subset of users. Well, and I think coupled with the changes that took place, you know, with final cut itself and now the Mac pro getting let's admit it long in the tooth, people are like, ah, Apple doesn't care about the pros. Now, something interesting actually happened during that very minor update. And Tim cook was actually, I think, by a journalist to directly, you know, to paraphrase what's going on with the Mac pro. And he actually commented, which was interesting. And he, he said we have a more significant update coming for the pros in 2013, we care about the pro users hold tight 2013 is your year baby. Speaker 1 03:25 He puts, she didn't use exactly. He didn't say baby, but he did lick his lips and wink. I don't know if he really that. No. So he did, he, um, he implied he did respond. I believe it was in an email. Somebody sent him a note. Yeah. So, okay. So, so he implied that something's coming, but it's like 2013 for just a, an update to the Mac pro what's what's going on with that. Do you think they care about the pros marrow? I do, but I think it's always been apples emo too. Not necessarily be a forthright with their, their direction. I think that's part of the, uh, the Apple mythos, if they keep their cards close to their chest and they, they there's even a level of misdirection, you know, they've, they've done that to be sure. Yeah. You know, so, um, but I do feel like they're, they, they would have to acknowledge how important the pro user base is and was to their entire longevity in livelihood. Quite honestly, even though they may not necessarily make up the, uh, the largest swath of their end users now with the popularity of the iPad and the iPhone, there are still all the people out there that love max for the very, very good reason that they are a stable video platform. Speaker 0 04:42 Well, and you know, you look at the, the rougher years that Apple had and you know, we're going back 10 plus years now, 12 plus years. But you know, really when, when we were stuck in <inaudible> land and the early days of OSTP tan, or heck even O S eight six, and those things, it was really the pro users that were keeping Apple going. Um, whether it was desktop publishing audio, some very early on kind of video related stuff. I got my first Mac because I wanted the copy a digital performer. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that was a lot of Apple's user base. And I, I think that pro community has always, really obviously appreciated Apple and, and having this kind of drag on, but, but them is saying there's something coming for the pros in 2013 is more clarity than I would reckon we probably would have gotten out of jobs. That's true. It was interesting that he spoke to it, Speaker 1 05:42 You know? W and, and, and that's, it really sort of begs the question. So what, what do you do in the meantime? I mean, there's still quite a large requirement for many organizations that have teams and pools of editors. Let's talk Speaker 0 05:58 About some ideas first that, you know, some ideas about maybe the direction they're going, and then let's talk about some other options that people have that, that, you know, we ourselves are representing as, as another path of possibility. So let's step into the realm of hypothetical's and this is hypothetical. We're not rumormongering, we have absolutely no inside information. Goodness knows. We get told absolutely nothing. And at times they're really good for that. I don't read that website. Yeah. It's never right. Except all the time, like most of the time, but there's definitely a couple of ways the Mac pro could go well, and here's the thing, right? 2013, everyone else released updates to their workstations pretty much almost as soon, like maybe within a month of Intel actually having the chips available that were kind of a suitable followup to the West mirrors. And the new chips are called the Sandy bridge. Speaker 0 06:58 Easy on, these are actually based on last year's Sandy bridge. They're not the newer Ivy bridge, but it's the Sandy bridge II workstation class server class chips that, that most of these folks use for these, these creative production workstations. And if the other guys who are not like the largest computer company on the planet, like Apple now is could, could release an update so quickly. Why, why would it take Apple until 2013 to just do an update? You know? And I think you're right. That's very astute. Um, they must be planning something that's very specific. So here's what I'm thinking. And I've, I've talked with a lot of folks who I think, you know, again, imagine that maybe Apple is going to do something differently than just a simple update to the Mac pro line. Um, we know that Apple is a company that's willing to kinda refactor, I think. Speaker 0 07:56 Yeah. Like, like just drag us out of a territory that we didn't realize we needed to be dragged out of and pull us into a whole new reality, a new way of doing things. I mean, think about all the other Apple lunch. We got a Mac book pro that has, has gone through several significant redesigns, no new, no optical drive, dramatic improvement in the display technology with the retina display the body, all solid state, you know, instead of hard drives, it's like no more hard drives on our laptops. You should be using solid state. They've, they've been pushing the boundaries dramatically, but if you sort of stood in a room and you saw a power Mac <inaudible> and the most recent, uh, Mac pro, the only difference on the front of the unit is that the Mac pros, the ones that have used Intel chips for years and years now have two CD drawers on the front. Speaker 0 08:44 Instead of one, they will look identical to instead of one, which no one even really uses it. You know, if you're, if you're that one poor guy that still has a <inaudible>, you can pretend like you have a Mac pro that's the one benefit you could draw a second CD drawer on the front with Charlie. Yeah. We don't condone that. So what could they be doing? Here's my thought, Marilyn, it's just a vision I have. Right. So Apple works post-apocalyptic well, those are some of my visions, but we're not going into that territory. See, this is more like a year out. The end of that is macro, not three years out. So Apple, we know has this new type of connector technology that they've implemented it's it was based on Intel's light, peak technology. That's now called Thunderbolt, which I think they just like got out of the facade and they were like, well, we want it to be like light peak, where you want another funny thing, right? Speaker 0 09:36 Like what the heck is a Thunderbolt? Isn't it a lightning bolt. But if you actually look it up, a Thunderbolt is a real word. And is apparently the same thing as a lightning bolt, even though thunder is auditory, enlightening is light and the bolt is the light. So why would it be a Thunderbolt? You know, they, they missed a really good, um, licensing opportunity with Hussein bolt, the Jamaican runner. Yeah. That's he's fast. He is so, but that's the thing about Thunderbolt, right? It's a wicked fast, as we would say, back in my home state of Massachusetts, wicked wicked fast, like 10 gigabits per channel, per direction. So it's like on a, on a typical Thunderbolt connector, you got a 20 gig connection into the machine. 20 good connection out. You can Daisy chain things much more reliably than some other connection technologies. It's a bit more like scuzzy. Speaker 0 10:27 It's faster than USB three to twice as fast. But here's the interesting thing about Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt really is basically PCI express plus display port for audio and video. So it's, it's got tons of bandwidth and Intel very much has plans to scale the, the, the, the speed and performance of Thunderbolt over the next few years, they've talked about it going from 10 gigs per channel in one direction, up to like a hundred gigs per channel. Imagine what you could do with that. And it's a lot different than USB two. Cause Thunderbolt is more, it's also PCI too. Also, whatever Ari, what is, it's like a PCI slot in your computer that got shrunk down to this teeny little connector that also happens to carry audio and video. So you can plug it into a display, honey. I shrunk the PCI. Yeah. And I believe, yes. Speaker 0 11:21 It's like Rick Maraniss is inside of the cable is really what it is. But also there's, there's some that sounds highly annoying. Well, you know, he doesn't act anymore. Thank God. Well, he got out of it. I think the only role I really enjoyed him in little shop of horrors. Oh no. Okay. So there's a few there's little shop of horrors there's Parenthood, which he's pretty funny. And I, yeah, Parenthood's good. And then of course, dark helmet. Oh really? You're not even going to say anything about Ghostbusters. Oh yeah. Okay. So like there's lots of good movies him. And then he went away is what happened, but it's like, he got shrunk to the point of disappearing. That's correct. Inside of our Thunderbolt cables. Well, the thing about the Thunderbolt cables, there's this, there's also intelligence on it. There's, you know, there's a, there's a microchip on the Thunderbolt cable. Speaker 0 12:05 Yeah. They're active cables, which is why they're quite a bit more expensive than your typical just copper USB cable. And they're coming out with optical versions that don't require a separate type of Thunderbolt port. They will actually have the little optical transceiver modules built into the cables. They won't carry power, probably like, like a copper Thunderbolt cable currently does, but you'll be able to run Thunderbolt peripherals probably for many, many meters. And that's, that's something new. And, and here's the thing, right? None of this, the performance, the, the active cables, you know, all of this, this stuff that the coming out with optical versions of it, none of this stuff sounds like it's for consumers, Thunderbolt itself. Really. It sounds like an enterprise level thing, you know, and it's, it's totally like audio video, professional oriented. You've got very nice now Thunderbolt, you know, audio, video interfaces from folks like Aja and black magic. Speaker 0 13:01 And I think probably some other folks are coming out with those. You've got very high performance, thunderbolts storage devices that are coming out. What does that mean for, for the Mac pro though? So here's the thing, right? Thunderbolt has been trapped on all of these laptops in the IMAX and there's no new Mac pro new, no new Mac pro with Thunderbolt connectors, no new Mac pro with high performance processor. Here's my guest, Marilyn. It is a guess. But if you, if you're telling the tea leaves, I don't know. I think it's at least plausible. What if do do what, what if Apple came out with this little silver box, right. Okay. I'm with you. Maybe they call it like the thunder box. That sounds slightly dirty, but I'm with you. Okay. So the thunder box comes up and what exactly is the Thunderbolt? It's just a little box. Speaker 0 13:50 Little, it's not as big as a Mac pro that's for sure. It's a little box you plug in to your laptop or to your iMac heck or your, even your Mac mini via Thunderbolt cable. No. And in this like nice sealed, just pristine looking silver box, maybe it has like one glowing light on the front. It's just jam packed with processing power, maybe a bunch of CPU, a bunch of GPS. Here's a neat thing. Neat fact for you, Intel is actually coming close to releasing versions of their chips that literally have dozens of processor cores on a single chip. So you're saying this is a piece of hardware that is, is, is a dummy without interfacing with something else. It doesn't have a screen. It's not a computer. What is it? It's a hyper mega accelerator that turns your Mac laptop, a hyper mega that's patented that I see that's true. Speaker 0 14:54 The Japanese Apple labs named that it's registered super happy, fun time, hyper mega accelerator, Apple box. That's what it is. It's got a nice little Apple logo and a glowing beckoning led and you plug it into your iMac or your laptop with a Thunderbolt cable. And suddenly it transforms suddenly it transforms your computer into something way more powerful than the mattress ever was angle. So this, and you would have what tiers of this little thunder box. Maybe you can Daisy chain them. Oh, that's interesting. The more power you want, the more super mega hyper accelerator thunder boxes you buy and you just Daisy chain them with Thunderbolt cables that would literally do away with the traditional sense of a desktop. Well, here's, what's cool. Right? I come in to work. I'm going into my edit suite. I'm carrying my nice new slick MacBook pro with retina display. Speaker 0 15:49 I plop it down in the edit suite. I plug in one cable and now I have all this other stuff that's maybe on the desk or maybe in an equipment room connected with this Thunderbolt cable. And now I've connected to my monitors, my audio video interfaces, and one or more of these accelerator boxes that suddenly giving me way more processing power. Maybe it's a bunch of typical desktop, Sandy bridge, each chips, maybe it's GPU, maybe it's these newer Intel chips with dozens of cores. And now my consumer or prosumer machine has turned into a super full fledged professional workstation. It's a city, right? That is, you know, aggressive view of this. You know, the only people I would think wouldn't like, something like that, or are large organizations that don't want their half of their edit station to walk well. And the thing is, I mean, no, one's saying you have to be able to walk around with your machine. Speaker 0 16:46 Maybe you're plugging in an iMac. Here's the thing, right? Apple really likes making products that appeal to a huge number of people. And if they were to do something like this, right, they could sell these accelerator boxes just to the pros, but be selling the pros pretty much the same line of computers that they're selling to consumers. So they, again, don't have to have so many different products that they're getting a game genie for your super Nintendo. Yeah. Kinda. But, so, so I'm gonna play devil's advocate here for a second. Um, cause I kind of wish us the way it was going, but something tells me that we're two clicks away from that. Well here's so here, but here's the clue, right? Why would it take Apple until 2013 to release just another little update to the Mac pro that timing indicates to me that there may be a more, there's a more significant engineering thing going on right now at Apple. That's making it take this long to do whatever they plan for pros that Tim cook was alluding to in 2013. And maybe it's the under box. Yes. I don't know. Probably not going to happen, but I have dreams about that kind of stuff. Wake up with a smile Speaker 1 18:03 Or likely, well, this is what I think this is of more, more conservative and a judicious sort of approach to what probably will happen. I'm thinking maybe we'll see a redesign and outside redesign a consolidated redesign of the desktop platform, like making it tinier. Yeah. I think, I think it's about time that the Mac pro chassis was a little bit smaller and I know Speaker 0 18:30 Going to have PCI slots if, if Thunderbolt is now available Speaker 1 18:34 Well, that's the thing. If they make a, a Thunderbolt enabled machine, then the thing that's modular can be those, you know, if you've got to break it out and do PCI slots, I mean, uh, color, color artists and, and, uh, video editors do that. Now they have only X amount of PCIE slots anyway. Right. So the, probably the more, um, reliable approach would be to shrink it down. I mean, like, look at, I'll give you an example, look at like a PlayStation three or an Xbox, right? And they come out with the first iteration. Um, they get better processors. They, they develop better fans. They develop a firmware that, that, you know, um, changes over time. And then they rerelease the, uh, the next thinner slimmer, you know, the PS three slim or the Xbox three 60 tiny or whatever they call it. So I feel like that is a proven method that, that Apple may take, which is to consolidate and then modularly sell out the other essential components that would be perfect for the pro video editor market, but not necessarily something that needed. Speaker 0 19:37 Well, I guess, I guess what we're saying is we're expecting something fairly significant to happen. And it's probably not just the same looking box that we've had for like a decade now and suffice it to say, it's going to have Thunderbolt, whatever it is in whatever seems like it. I mean, again, it's made for pros, why wouldn't the pro system that Apple has have it, I guess it's just an issue of how extreme are they going to push us into this new way of doing things? Is it just a slimmed down desktop system? You know, there's, there were some talk awhile ago that the new Mac pro was going to come out and you'd actually be able to fairly easily turn it on its side and Mount it in an equipment rack. So if you're using these as servers or in the audio video station, I don't think so. I don't think Apple really wants to be in the rack. They don't sell raids anymore. They don't sell actual rack mountable servers anymore. I don't see them going back into that space. Speaker 1 20:33 You know, I'm going to, I'm going to add a third point of view here, which is an Apple typically in the way they design things. It's usually, it's very sleek. It's very clean and it's usually one component. So the idea that something is modular, it seems to go against historically what Apple has done. Uh, you know, just to play, play devil's advocate here. I think it's got to be absolutely mind blowing and, and your ideas super happy, fun time, mega super thunder box raid, not the word accelerator accelerator. Um, I don't know why I said raid, but, um, that is potentially totally like a life changing. Nick's yelling at me. He's like, turn off your phones, unplug everything. His, uh, his other laptops reinstalling O S 10 onto a machine that I'm trying to get rid of man, just here. Um, but yeah, so I think in typical Apple fashion, we're probably going to see something that is in between my idea and Nick's idea. You were making fun of me for saying whether, and you're going to bust out in between. Don't bust my chops whilst I do a record. Speaker 1 21:46 Uh, yeah. Well, I'm feeling British because of the Olympics, NBC man, that's another podcast. Um, but we do business with NBC. Uh, not yet. We continue this. Well, you know, I, I think we've the folks over at NBC universal. We, we, we, uh, we've worked with them maybe. I mean, I just, the whole delay thing is like, cause you can't escape. I've had it ruined Nixon escape. Well, no I've been messing with you about ruining it. I've been like Merrill Merrill, you know, who won the gold medal today? Kill Dumbledore. So don't say that stuff, man. Someone didn't know that Rosebud is a sled. Oh dude. Now you're just getting green is people. Yeah. Well I think we all know that. Oh yeah. Kevin Spacey's Keyser Soze. EY. Okay. That's just wrong, Luke. He is your father. Yeah. If you didn't know that one really, you know, I know people like in their like mid twenties who haven't seen star Wars at all, that's I just want to hit them. Yeah. Well, uh, here's the thing to reel it back. Yeah, no. Um, don't you can't we spoil a couple more movies. Um, uh, Bruce Willis is dead. Speaker 1 23:04 Oh, you're talking about the one good movie <inaudible> ever made. Yeah. Yeah. God, what a just disastrous career plan. Really? We didn't see avatar the last Airbender. I mean, I would cry. Oh my goodness. Your cartoon shall not. I watch cartoons regularly, but I've heard from people that cartoon is, is a, is well executed a children's show that has a very significant story arc that's much in line with like Japanese animation, but for this thing, I mean, it was just terrible. And, and it also came up against the release of another avatar movie. Funny enough, it did a little bit better tall blue people. That's Smurfs, 3d tall Smurfs. Yeah. And like, okay, well we've gone enough on that. So, so that's the possible future of the memorandum ideas about what Apple may be up to and, and a lot of random talk about movie spoilers. Speaker 1 24:01 Sure. Okay. So what we're pro to do, what's a pro to do marrow. Uh, well, I know what I would do personally. What's that? Well, I kinda like the idea of a desktop platform and in edit station. So you mean like more traditional works and because I, I, you want a machine to open up, make you feel like a real geek? Well, I want an a, I want a workstation. I want an edit suite. I want something that is, is always a part of the installation. And I go there to use this machine to do my work. It projects raw sheer professionalism. You know, like there was a time when I had an edit machine and then a work machine and my edit machine always was not, it wasn't connected to the internet except for driver updates because, you know, I want to be hyper-focused and I think intellectually doing that, uh, set up loud me to think and go, okay, well I'm disconnected now. It's time to do work. Well. That's why it's called a workstation. Right. Is, is plugging your laptop into a little box that makes it way faster the same. But you got your email, Twitter, Facebook, all of this stuff on. So although a lot of our editors these days, that's just kinda what they do well. Yeah. I mean, and that's fine. They're Facebook and not editing. Okay. Well, we sound like my grandmother and they're Facebooking Facebook's no, but, um, you know, when I went to school at Facebook actually was something that was printed. Speaker 1 25:32 You're giving away your age. I'm a lot older than I look, people I'm actually in my fifties. Um, yup. You know, we looked up Ooma, Thurman, cause I went to school that she went to, we, I didn't do me and my friends <inaudible> drug drugs. We looked, we looked in the old Facebooks and we found Ooma when she was in high school. And she was, she was funny. I seen that I would have desks that had like Ooma, like scratched in it. And I was like, man, I'm sharing a desk with Ooma that's you went to Huma Thurman's high school. I actually went to both of her high schools. So, um, I'm not stalking the ghost, the ghost she's alive. She's not dead. The metaphysical shadow. Are you astral projecting to a T Ooma Thurman? Like she's sitting in her kitchen and like, she just gets a chill in the back of her neck because she feels like Nicole is watching her no aspect didn't sound creepy. Alrighty. Um, anyway, um, so, so work, work perspective. That's my perspective. I think that, you know, um, it allows Speaker 0 26:44 Me to do some separation of, of, of work. And I like the idea of something that's big to put it in there. And I know a lot of, a lot of traditional broadcast guys and editors in the broadcast space, uh, share that point of view, which is not going to disagree with you. I'm not going to say that there ain't something good about kind of sticking to a model that's worked well. However, my perspective, my grandma always told me Facebook, no patience is a virtue. Patience is a virtue. It is. She said that so many times and I'm not really a very patient person. However, I will say this with Tim cook beckoning, that something is coming for pros. And a lot of our users who have been very comfortable Mac users for many years, just not sure. Should I get this minorly updated Mac pro, should I switch platforms really the first time of in decisiveness as a, as a, as a Mac purchaser, like I've never seen that level of in decisiveness with a, with a product line. Speaker 0 27:43 Oh, and I've got some of our clients telling me you can't pry Mac from me from my cold dead hands. But here's what I say. He said, something is coming 2013 is, you know, not that far off, we've waited this long already. My personal inclination would be if you need another machine now and you don't want to switch platforms completely get another Mac pro that's available today, get us three Oh six or whatever, 12 core even that might be overkill. I don't know, get, get the machine that's available today. That'll probably do what you want it to do. If you need extra processing power throw in an Nvidia Quadro 4,000 card, they're pretty cheap throw in a bunch of Ram. And if you really want more processing power, go back to last week's episode where we talk about how you can actually switch your software to something like premier pro or Adobe media composer, and you know, a 64 bit application that uses a GPU. Speaker 0 28:40 That's, multi-core aware all of these good things, you know, I would be patient. My inclination is to be patient to see what's coming. But if I need a machine now and I want to kind of stick with a similar platform and I don't want to go windows, or I don't want to do something like that, get a Mac pro that's available today. But I don't know, I am, I'm not a terribly patient person, but I'm a really curious person. And, you know, with some of these clues and some of what Apple may be could do that to me would be really cool. I'd love it. If I could plug my laptop into a slick little silver box and suddenly it's like way more powerful than the Mac pro ever was with one little cable being plugged in. You know what? They do have a little, you know, no, I think about it with airplay and with the integration with Apple TV and all the, uh, uh, the laptop lines. Um, you know, that's not entirely far off when you think about that style of in little boxes that have specialized purposes that either wirelessly or with connections, you know, plug into one another. Yeah. And, um, make able to do cool Speaker 1 29:42 Stuff. So I would, I would wait if I didn't really need a new machine now I would not give into the fear. Well, and also not to go alone ever give into fear. Don't give into fear if, if you give into fear, the terrorist win, something like that. Yeah. But, um, here's the other thing the truth, truth be told. I mean, like depending on the, the, the, the level of, uh, of work you're doing and whether it's, if you're doing like an Eng style, reality docu kind of thing, and you got three layers of video at most, I mean, I've edited the last three style projects like that on a Mac pro laptop. Uh, there is increasingly a lot of flexibility on the laptop, so it might even be like, I've got a 2011 Mac, a Mac book pro and it is, I've got, I've got a mid, I've got an early 2012 MacBook pro with retina does, he's got a retina display and he's special. Speaker 1 30:34 But, uh, actually it is, it is awesome. And I want one, I want one now, but it's so, so beautiful. But the cool thing about, um, you know, fast doing that work, I think I edited three different projects and a total of six different locations. Uh, I was traveling with the FireWire drives and, um, I had to get it done in a manner that, uh, that didn't allow me to sit down at a workstation laptops. Lots of our clients have been doing that. Yeah. You know, especially work, especially if you're in the sort of documentary television, uh, run and gun Eng style stuff, because you're adjusting not a crazy idea to make a higher end laptop your, your primary system these days for some folks. I mean, there are people who are strictly field editors, uh, and their entire profession relies on having a robust laptop. Speaker 1 31:24 So, so what we're saying is either get the system that's out today that meets your needs, whether it's a Mac pro, whether it's a laptop or be patient, if there's nothing really pressing you, but what, what about the other options? Because we don't want to necessarily just swayed people at all. Sure. Looking at other avenues completely. Well, certainly both premier pro six and avid media composer six, um, are Annalise that allow you to operate largely within the confines of the program itself. So they're not like with the FCP seven and before where you really had to, as Nick mentioned in last week's podcast, you really got to navigate the operating system as well. And that's not necessarily the case for avid or premiere. Now you can live inside the apps for the most part. The reality is the operating system that you're running is not super relevant. If, if this is indeed your work station and you're living inside of your NLE, or you're living inside of your, your graphics or compositing program, you don't really need to give that much of a concern to the fact that you're running windows. I mean, yeah, it is different. And some folks just aren't going to want to do it, but, and there are some Speaker 0 32:40 Benefits for sort of additional programs that may be only for Mac or may only be for, for, there's always some of that. But a lot of it is multi-platform these days. And certainly there's, there's things that only live on PC and, you know, truth be told you get a, you get a, um, an Adobe licensed download. Uh, you have an install for both of your Mac and, you know, that's, if you do the Adobe licensing, which we highly encourage, this is when you, you get like a certificate from us and then you download directly to download it. You can buy immediate installer kit. If you still want to use those shiny silver disks, what are those called? There's no, uh, uh, CDs, DVD. I thought they were called laser disks. Yes. It's a silver record. Yes, it is not as good as a gold record. Speaker 0 33:26 No, no. Nothing's as good as gold record. Oh. Except for platinum, which is better. Yeah. That is true. That's absolutely true. But yeah. So, um, so I guess the point that Nick and I are getting here is there are robust PC options. We prefer, uh, one of our partners, a company by the name of rain, computers, that's rain like the S the water that falls out of the sky, not like rain, like my evil rain over this measly planet set. So anyway, rain, R E I N, computers rank computers.com is, is, are kind of go to PC workstation partner. We've been very impressed with them, and they are 100% devoted as a company to creating workstation class windows, PCs for creative professionals, whether they're video, audio, graphics, 3d, it is totally what their company is, is oriented around. They kind of remind me of a young Apple actually, listen, it's no secret that I think they've deliberately tried to model some of Apple's successes over the years in the, in this space. Speaker 0 34:33 So like, if you can figure a workstation from another manufacturer that we are also aligned with, who's got two initials as their name and it rhymes with <inaudible> plea, plea plea. Yes. And, and, you know, they give you like a million options and it can be really confusing to figure out what build to order configuration makes you choose which heat sink you want to pair with the CPU. And it's like, most of our clients do not want to think about that stuff. Yeah. They, they, we can do it on your behalf, but frankly, I don't want to think about that stuff a day in heat sink, hell is not a place where I want to be. Do you want a water cooled thing? Do you want to just a big chunky heat sink? You know, gosh, just let someone else make those the same manufacturer would design a configuration on their website. Speaker 0 35:27 And all you had to choose was like the speed of your processor, the heart rate, kind of like how Apple used to do it or does do it. Yeah, that's true. So that's what rain is doing and it's great. It's great. Cause you know, that they've thought about all this stuff. They've got a great case. They have the right heat sink for the CPS you're choosing and a, you know, we're relatively new working with them, but we've been very impressed with just the focus that they apply. And here's the other thing, right? A lot of people have these associations with windows as being unstable and which drivers do I want? And am I choosing the correct combination of motherboard and CPU that is going to work well with this version of windows? So my pro audio or video software doesn't drop frames, or give me weird, you know, jitter artifacts when recording, they've done all that thinking for us and for the end users. Speaker 0 36:17 And we can rely on their stuff being properly engineered as an end to end system. And so if you're looking at maybe making the hop to premiere pro or media composer from final cut, or you've been using those all along or you're, you're, you're just an after effects person and you're okay with it being on a PC, we would definitely talk to you about rain and whether that might be a viable option, that's just kind of adhering to the more traditional desktop workstation system model, but in a way that is going to be reliable, despite the fact that it's running windows, which let's be honest, folks, windows has evolved quite a lot since like windows 95. It's a lot better than that. Remember windows, M E I was just about to ask you that that's so funny. Cause it's like, no one does windows Emmy, the 2000 millennium edition. They weren't, they were just trying to ride the white Speaker 1 37:14 Goodness, what a disaster. But you know, the thing about, um, rain, computers, I wanna, I wanna, you know, just say a couple of things I like about them. Um, number one, they're based in New Jersey. That's kind of cool. Pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, like, I don't think I've ever said that about any company ever being based in New Jersey, but I think, I think it's cool these guys, you know, uh they're uh, Mid-Atlantic based. Um, and, uh, w the other thing is they, they are solely targeted as, uh, Nick alluded to earlier to the audio and video markets. They in fact, have the product lines broken down in such a manner that you can look at the audio machines and then the video machines they have, uh, uh, on the video side, what I would call the Mac pro equivalent, the element V2 is a very robust tower Speaker 0 38:03 That you can get now with the brand new Intel chips, the Sandy bridge ease that we were talking about. So if you launch home with free Ginsu knife, do they, they cut, they cut the can, right in midair. I just felt like we were starting to get kind of salesy. Speaker 1 38:17 Well, yeah. Well, here's the thing though. Uh, the element Speaker 0 38:21 We are sales guys, by the way, that's true, but well, but you know, creative, Speaker 1 38:25 I guess the point I'm trying to make here, I said, if you know that you want Mac pro quality, but you don't necessarily want to invest in a Mac pro at this time, this is the reasonable alternative Speaker 0 38:36 That I can conjure. Yeah. And I should say too. And I think we said, you know, we'd also can sell HP systems. A lot of people just really like <inaudible> police are good ones, too. Some people just are very oriented around the 800 series. I think they're called <inaudible>. Now again, we can outfit those with current best of class graphics cards, CPU, the Sandy bridge, ease gobs and gobs of Ram. And that too is an option. Although again, we would, we typically kind of would lead with rain just cause we love their overall build quality and the simplicity of dealing with them, plus the support they put behind their products that is so aimed at the pro user, but it was options. Those are options. It is. And, you know, I think good option. I think this is most like flavorful set of options that we've had in quite some time though. Speaker 0 39:27 There used to be, you know, well, it wasn't even the granted, there were always credit professionals who stayed on windows and PC, but you'd have to get like an alien where you'd have to get like a gaming rig and then build it out, you know, the HP Z eight hundreds or whatever Alienware was purchased by Dell lettuce. Well, you know, I mean, there were ways of pulling it off, but that's kind of what it was like, right? Like you were kind of pulling it off by the, by the skinny or TAFE. Yeah. And I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that have edited on the windows platform that have their own anecdotal, uh, stories as to how it worked for them. And we don't doubt that. I think it ultimately comes down to a preference because the technology is available everywhere. It's just a matter of what your preference is, what your comfort level is. Speaker 0 40:11 And, you know, um, whether or not you're a macro PC guy really at the end of the day, because you know, the capabilities the they're using the same processors they're using mostly the same, you know, uh, programs. So there's not a whole lot difference here other than preference. And then maybe a couple of just hardware differences, but the software man pretty different, especially with the windows eight, that's coming out soon. And this whole new formerly known as Metro user interface, I have to say they just changed it. It's no longer called Metro folks. They got some legal threat from a German company, German Metro, it's now the windows eight styled UI, which I read on daring fireball today. That's a great website by the way, and associated audio podcast. I see it may meander more than we do. Uh, is that a good thing? Absolutely. Okay. Uh, no, I mean, that's true. I think the only X factor really is the stability of windows. I think windows seven is, is a stable platform to do, um, uh, a certain level of editing and post production work. There's no question about, especially if you tune it, right, like a company like rain does before they shipped out your machine. That's true. That's true. So, you know, that's an interesting landscape. We have basically laptops that can, can double Speaker 1 41:34 As desktops, which is a long time coming and really has, has really come into its own. I'd say the last six to seven years, really legitimately and with the, with the brand new ones, Speaker 0 41:44 States that Apple just released that are very powerful machines, which again, the retina MacBook pro with, between it screen resolution, the SSD drive, the high end processors, Speaker 1 41:54 It's fast as sin. We know color correctors who are using the MacBook pro with retina display as their primary infield, the color correction, because it has a resolution that is high enough and then color the color gamut is great on the screen. It's, it's a nice, you know, it may not be as, uh, as accurate as going and setting up in a studio, but it's certainly, um, more, um, flexible than anything anyone has had in the field before. Yeah. So that it's an option. Yeah. PSE is an option. An iMac is actually a viable option. They're pretty powerful. They're using Ivy bridge chips now, or are they no, I think there may be still Sandy bridge, but the, you know, there's a, there's a really a level of, um, uh, depending on the level of work that you're doing and how much processing power is required. That might also dictate. I mean, like you could get an iMac if you're, if you're doing, you know, a local basketball tournament's, but, uh, if you're, if you're, uh, dealing heavy and after effects, you probably want a 12 core Mac pro Speaker 0 42:58 The fact that that sonnet is now shipping the Thunderbolt enclosures for PCI cards. So you can take a PCI card, Kona or black magic, slap it in this box, plug it into a Thunderbolt port and use it as like an external device with an iMac or a laptop that certainly opens up options that were never on the table before we haven't field tested all of these setups yet. But, um, it's certainly coming into being a viable option. So you don't even have to sacrifice all of your legacy cards. If you know, you still want to use them on a mobile setup or using an iMac. So that's all good. I mean, again, the, the rain computers are windows based PC option for a more traditional workstation approach. If you're able to make that, that O S switch, certainly a viable option. And again, patience is a virtue. It is, patience is a virtue. Yep. Patience is a virtue. It's Speaker 1 43:56 Very true. Well, that's all I have. As far as we've lined up the Speaker 0 44:03 Options. There's a lot of them, it's actually a good time. You don't have to be worried. I think something good is coming, but there's plenty of good stuff out Speaker 1 44:11 The calm before the storm. And there's plenty of options. Yeah. That's good stuff. So next time, what's next time archive. Uh, I guess we could talk about archive. There's plenty, you know, are we going to do archive and backup or are we going to do archive then back? Speaker 0 44:24 You know what, maybe we should do an episode next week that is archive and backup so we can differentiate that some things do, do you know the difference between archive and backup? Do you use those terms interchangeably? You shouldn't, and we'll tell you why shouldn't definitely bad, bad and archive such a pressing need right now. Indeed. It is. So we'll talk to you next time. I've been Nick gold for Chesapeake systems. Remember, you can email us work flow [email protected]. Um, www.chessa.com is obviously our website. And you can go to the pro video section or one of the other sections to learn more about us. And I've been Meryl Davis at least for the day. And, uh, you should definitely check out our first two episodes if you haven't had a chance, um, because we're going to be doing this quite often, these will be syndicated through iTunes. Speaker 0 45:15 So you'll be able to use that nice new skew, morphic Lee designed podcasting app that they released for the iPhone. Do you know what skeuomorphic means? I believe that changes the skews. Now <inaudible> user interface. The user interface is designed to look like something old school. Like it actually looks like a reel to reel tape deck. Oh, I see. I like how the new calendar app kind of look like a desk calendar, even though they're a piece of software. So why the heck are they going to release a, a calculator app? That looks like an Abacus. Oh my God. That's such a good idea. I Abacus. Yeah. Okay. Enough of all that. We'll talk to you next week, guys. All right. See you guys later. Bye.