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Pixar Switches to Mac OS X and G5s
fmorgan writes "No big surprise here: when Apple introduced the G5 at 2003 WWDC, it become more a question of 'when' Pixar will move to G5s, than 'if'). At the same conference, Apple showed a new codec for Mac OS X named 'Pixlet,' developed with Pixar. In last year O'Reilly's Mac OS X conference, there was a presentation on how Pixar moved their desktop/office environment to Mac OS X. Now it seems it's the main production work: 'Apple's Don Peebeles said that Pixar has used Linux and Intel-based architecture in 2003, but that Pixar was switching to Mac OS X and G5 workstations for its production work: Peebles went on to say that this switch was "a move that no doubt made common CEO Steve Jobs very happy."'"
I've been telling people for some time now to watch Pixar closely now that the G5 and OS X has matured. It was only a matter of time before they finally switched the SGI and Linux stations over. The rendar farm however still uses a mixture of SUNs and SGI but I've no doubt that G5 Xserves would probably fit in quite nicely... now if they can only start shipping the damn things.
apple can tout this bigtime with real effective results (pixar movie$)
it's not just a niche - pair this with WETA and you've got real ammo.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Peebles went on to say that this switch was "a move that no doubt made common CEO Steve Jobs very happy."
...a move that just has to be a wee bit influenced by the FUD of SCO's IP claims on Linux too.
was CEO of Disney and switched Disney to Windows (stricly on merits mind you), people would be screaming bloody murder.
Oh wait...
After all, with Jobs as CEO of both companies, why wouldn't Apple be used for Pixar's needs, especially if they're capable? An american kiritsu?
I don't see this as big news. It would be big news, if, say, they moved to a linux distribution (considering that Jobs is CEO of both Pixar and Apple, and linux could be seen as a competitor to Apple). This is nothing more than free publicity for apple, and probably an "at-cost" transaction for Pixar for new hardware and software.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
With Steve Jobs head honcho at both companies, you would have thought this would have happened a long time ago. Of course, the G5's entering the picture helps quite a bit I'm sure.
Will the rendering farm also be switching to the G5 in the future, ala Virginia Tech?
Will we now see Photorealistic Renderman come out for OSX and the G5? Hopefully?
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I'm running Gentoo, so I don't care if I have to specially compile. I just want a machine that's going to actually USE the MHz it comes with. (Without resorting to massive cache.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
G5 + OS X + Maya + Photoshop + Pixlet = one kickass production environment.
Really though do they need to change the Linux farm? I'd be surprised if they did, there's no real need...
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Does it really outperform a beowulf cluster of Athlon 64 FX-51 running linux?
I think it's fair to assume that Jobs gives a substantial discount on Apple stuff to Pixar, while AMD probably doesn't.
I also doubt that they would use Athlon 64 (FX) for this kind of work; Opterons, which can go up to 8-ways, would be the logical choice (but I'm no expert).
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
I'm sure this, in fact, does make Steve Jobs the happiest man in the world right now. Almost as happy as Bill Gates when Hotmail switched to WinServer and died for a few days.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
I seem to remember someone from Pixar saying that they were moving over to G5 work stations. As for the Render Farm I believe they just purchased a whole lot of 2.8Ghz Xeons (if I remember correctly) and so it would probably not make sense for them to go and buy a ton of Macs for that right at the moment. Besides Steve knows when Apple's upgrade schedule is. They will buy Dual 3Ghz or 4Ghz Xserves before they need to render the next Pixar release I bet.
Apple in the movie industry? I've never seen an Apple computer in a movie...
This isn't Jurassic Park.
Plus, they only had a 117 Sun workstations in the original Toy Story render farm.
Disney's "Toy Story" Uses More Than 100 Sun Workstations to Render Images for First All-Computer-Based Movi
I've heard of renderman and recall the pixar ppl have developers actively contributing to Linux.
Will this affect Linux development in any significant way?
I use a G5 at work but I don't use it for anything that might be affected by this. It's mostly a number cruncher/web browser.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114653,0 0.asp
The gossip is that Eisner was considering quicktime, but went with Windows after Jobs decided to take Pixar away from Disney.
I'll not post any findings, nor will I give you any numbers of my OWN personal experience.
Google for the default install size of WindowsXP versus OS X.
THEN tell me which one's bloatware.
You got it right with Linux...but blew it otherwise.
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
Apple hardware is tied to the OS when you buy it. It's the same reason why Apple will never port OS X to x86 - Apple's a hardware company first, using the software to help sell the hardware. Either way, I'm sure Apple's selling the systems to Pixar at-cost anyway, so it's not like it's going to add to the cost, and OS X is a worthy Unix system that happens to have a rather pretty interface on top. So the question is more why wouldn't they go with OS X?
If we're talking about open-source alternatives to Mac OS X, we could also talk about open-source stuff that's relatively compatible with Mac OS X at the non-GUI level, and runs on x86. :) Maybe they could keep all the Xeons in their render farm, and just install Darwin on them, then the back-end apps could run on both Xeon and Mac.
The great thing about OS X is that it's an industrial strength OS with a pretty and easy to use GUI. The GUI might not be your cup of tea, and some will argue about the ease of use, but the underlying OS is a multiuser *nix system.
;n)
As far as your being unable to justify the price, please join me in a nice glass of kool aid, here under the pleasant shade of the RFD.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Virginia Tech's "Big Mac" has proved the G5 to be very powerful in a cluster.
umm.. the G5 isn't a consumer machine. It is a professional workstation. Apple's consumer machines are the iBook/eMac/iMac. Pretty much Anything with an X or Power infront of it are professional machines.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
Oh puhleez, that's so 1999! Have you priced out performance / price ratios for tier 1 manufacturers? G5's do smackingly well, especially against Dells and the like, often coming out much cheaper before considering things like support costs and reliability and resale. Pixar isn't going to build their own bargain bin beige boxes. Look at VirginiaTech's shopping research, they paid full price to Apple and it was still cheaper/faster than Dell.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Jobs buys 500 G5's for Pixar
The next week, Apple comes out and lowers all the prices $300 and doubles the RAM and HD space, and includes iPods with every purchase.
Now, is Pixar going to end every movie with a shitty gif of a spinning Apple logo that says "Made on a Mac" ?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
SGI hardware is expensive and not so far ahead these days, many have been replacing SGI boxes for Macs and Linux boxes.
Who cares... disk is so cheap. Memory is so cheap. Processing power is way beyond what the average person needs.
Look!. And here!.
IAALS.
Just as likely not, he may want to keep clean hands on this one for credibility. Remember that the high-profile VirginiaTech project had tons more marketroid benefits for Apple but the whole deal was basically retail. They wouldn't have to get discounts for this decision fo fly anyway, the price/performance&quality ratio is favourable.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Can I get a dual P4? No? We are talking about clustering dual CPU machines, not a bunch of cheap desktop boxes crammed into 1U units.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The most important question that hasn't been asked yet: Will Debian continue to use Pixar characters as the names of their releases?
I mean really.
c'mon.
Yeah...
What about this?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
Here's my dime...need my shipping address?
Except that Apple makes quite a lot of hardware. Microsoft doesn't make much hardware (keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc), while SCOG was a software company (as Caldera) but is now a litigation company.
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
Because for the applications Pixar has in mind, G5 Macs are neither slower nor more expensive. It's really that simple. G5s deliver the best bang for the buck in the video editing world, period.
I would really, really like to see the "Macs are more expensive" meme disappear from these arguments. They're not more expensive than PCs of comparable power and quality, and haven't been for years.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
One thing that hasn't been clear in the news releases is that Pixlet is a lossy codec. At first I thought it was lossless but on testing it is lossy (quite lossy actually). It is useful for previewing high-res animations, but not for rendering final elements.
I'm not really sure what the point of Pixlet is, since JPEG is "good enough" for most previewing needs. Perhaps somebody is using it for >8 bits per component?
They are probably waiting until they get to 100,000 UNIQUE stories
The Apple model is the sale of hardware. The proof of this was when Jobs killed the clones. Software freedom has meant: more apps for the Mac. I don't think Jobs is against that.
It's probably cost-effective for such huge consumers of computer power to swap out their equipment on roughly an annual basis. The difference between, say, a dual 2ghz and a dual 3ghz system would be huge for them.
Now that I'm doing more video production I'll probably be doing that too, and using my current dual G5 as a render farm for my new main machine. Based on the results I'm getting and the speeds I get, it would be well worth the money to do that.
Finally, I don't think Pixar's stockholders are in much of a mood to be cheap. Say it costs US$1 million a year to replace their equipment. Finding Nemo is a well over billion-dollar property. Do stockholders care about spending $1 million to make sure the (most likely pretty high paid) people over there get the best equipment?
Somehow I doubt it.
D
The default size of the install is not what defines bloatware. If Windows XP came with every game and every Application that was made for the PC, that wouldn't necessarily be bloatware.
Bloatware is when a product has so many _useless_ features that cause it to be large. (IE. Microsoft Office, Open Office)
Is linux bloated because you can install a good 4 CDs worth of stuff on your system install? No. You have options. And you have a wide variety of applications and tools at your disposal.
Pixar switched from Suns and SGIs.
I think you meant they "switched to a 1/2 - to 1/3-times as expensive per seat hardware/software platform".
G5's with optimized software being slower for production work is debatable. You haven't seen the next generation of hardware yet, they already have a 1GHz bus, and these production machines have enormous internal bandwidth requirements. Use one for video or 3D work sometimes, then come back here and complain about their speed.
more expensive platform
Since these are production machines, they need to be very reliable and plug-it-in and go. Make me a machine with the same level of reliability, quiet, power requirements, speed, connectivity, and production capabilities with equivalent warranty then let's compare pricing. Never mind, I just finished a committee-based 3-week shopping grind for similar production requirements and I already know the answer: apple hardware wins by about 5% on price alone, and still spec's out better for multimedia production. Oh, and ROI in terms of productivity, support, and longevity.
and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
RTFA. They aren't porting anything new since these are production machines, not render nodes. Maya, photoshop, shake, pixlet, backed by a top-notch interface and bsd, mmm... hey, you're not an artist, are you?
Anyway, for the ROI alone, this is good for shareholders, especially if creativity flows better.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Um... I assume that you are referring to the myth that Macs are more expensive. I would point you in the direction of reality on two counts:
1. Take a look at price/performance on the dual G5's. Many other people have, and they have been pretty unanimous that the Apple's win. See University of Virginia. The client computers are also competing against mainly SGI boxes... You will have a better time in your comparison of the linux render farm, but then you start to have to look at boxes competing against the XServe, and you will find them also very price competitive against the other server farm boxes they are competing against.
2. In terms of the price of production the hardware is one of the smaller costs. The big price is the people, this is also the place where the difference between a failure and a success will happen. If someone blames hardware for a bad pixar movie, they are simply stupid.
Any lawyer who cannot convince a jury of both of these points is incompetent.
I think the biggest difference to me (being an MacOSX Fan) is that with G5's the most you can do currently is a DUAL configuration. I would REALLY like to see apple step up and offer larger options. 4 way or 8 way configurations should be an option. There is no comparison of an 8way ANYTHING to a Dual G5.
Are people that assume all Mac users are these mindless people that need one button mice.
I've been doing work on UNIX computers and other platforms for years and years. I bought a Mac because it has a great front end to make simple things simple, and the UNIX backend stuff to make hard things possible. I still use GnuEmacs and it works just fine on OS X.
Also, the licence you apparently are seeking is GPL - the whole POINT of the BSD licence is that companies can make use of the code in the way they are doing. The developers working on BSD chose to work on BSD over Linux or some other GPL system knowing exactly this. As a coder I would think you would be proud to have something you wrote in such widespread use, instead of being a greedy whiner who is upset someone else is making money by using your code. Write your own amazing thing to make money from the code you wrote. Heck, by Apple stock when they adopt your code if you believe in it strongly!! That would have turned out really well for anyone who bought Apple stock around the time when they released OS X at large. They took the risks and also reaped the rewards, which anyone could have shared in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please, don't mod up posts like this for "insightful." A while ago Apple helped bring a version of Linux to the Mac, they had an entire section on their website on the project.
Additionally, Darwin is Open Source, not GNU, but you can still get the code. Third, Apple is presenting at Linux shows. It's my opinion (and many others I'd assume ) that Apple wants Linux to thrive. Why? Any program written for Linux have the possibility of running on OSX, especially when KDE and GNOME are up and running. Hell, apple might even bundle KDE and GNOME eventually.
My 2 cents.
http://www.rustyrazorblade.com
Not knowing the details of what they're running, I'm guessing when I say the answer is AltiVec. The cheapest way to run Apache or Samba isn't necessarily the cheapest way to do heavy computation.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What linux distro do you use? How much software did the distrubutors "steal" for that distro? OS X uses its own kernel, own *nix variant (Darwin, which is open source), and almost every GUI app was made by Apple or NEXT...
As my first venture into Linux, recently installed Mandrake on my PC. It's very nice, but except from the various *drake installers and configurators, everything (as far as I could tell) is third-party.
This has been discussed quite enough. Apple wins when the cost/performance ratio is considered; that's why Virgina Tech bought all those G5's last summer! It's not a CEO mandate. It's a valid technical decision. And this isn't SCO we're talking about, so you can keep your "fudiciary" issues to your fudself.
For many years, Apple's core business at the high end has been driven by just this decision: give the artists the best machines on the desktop that they can handle. The annual upgrade cycle for design and graphics industry makes sense, since any second wasted is expensive, and faster machines mean better ROI. Upgrading is ultimately cheaper.
Damn those pesky terrorists
If there is anything you learn about SJ quickly, it is that he is the absolute definition of "hands-on".
If this wasn't run past Steve and fully approved by him at a minimum, I would be surprised. That he was likely asking hard questions and pushing his team to do it, wouldn't surprise me at all.
One of Apple's major customer segments is video prodution for television and movies. Apple for years has had an extremely strong niche in the Entertainment industry (why do you think you see Macs in almost every TV show and movie as the "computer of choice"?). Over the last 18 months they have spent a lot acquiring products to fill out their digital video, video effects, and audio editing and production product line. What we have hear is showing, by eating their own dog food, that they are serious and that you can do it all on the Mac.
Steve is the master salesman and technical visionary. His finger-prints are all over this move!
In the graphics and 3d business, time is money, so equipment upgrades tend to happen every couple of years. They are moving to macs less for the OSX side of things (but I am sure it helps) and more for the processing power and bus speeds allowed by the new G5s. Their workstation boxes were X86 with some SGI scattered about and if there were a couple of years old, they new G5s could render frames and refresh much faster than those older X86 machines. With Pixlet being a software renderer, it would make sense for them to be on the fastest boxes available because without the help of hardware, all that matters in decompressing those frames for viewing is the spped of the box. Remember, for a company like Pixar, it is not about the money, it is about time, and the G5 will save them time on the workstation side.
If Steve had ordered Pixar to switch to mac, they would have done it at 10.0. Apple earned that customer.
apt-get install sarcasm-1.1
Consider the XserveG5 -- uses less power than a similar Intel box and is cooler-running. What Pixar will save over the long run in electricity bills alone is probably worth the upgrade.
Doesn't make a difference if you're running 1 or 5 machines in your house, but it does make a signifigant difference if you're running 500 or machines.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The article says they're replacing their workstations, not their render nodes. Most of the work on a workstation is done by the graphics card. Where you really need cheap CPU power is the render nodes, and x86 still gives more bang for the buck than the PPC970 / G5.
The page talks about all of the things Apple has stolen from the open source community while still remaining closed source. If OS X is committed to the open source model then point me to the download for OS X source code, or the x86 port of OS X. Perhaps I missed the part in the OS X Eula where it gave me permission to download, install, modify and redistribute OS X free of charge. Apple takes a lot from OSS without giving a lot in return. If OS X was open source Microsoft would have been out of business a long time ago. Apple, just like Microsoft wants to be the evil monopolistic overlord of choice.
Good luck convincing a jury that you switched to a 2- to 3-times as expensive per seat
Uh, right. Apple's G5 systems (both tower and rackmount) are very compeditive. If you are talking about a corporate desktop environment where you don't need a G5, a single virus outbreak can make short work of the money you "saved" by going with PC's. Not only do you lose money fixing the latest Windows virus, you also lose money because you can't get your work done.
How do I know that? I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you, ie. I've seen the servers myself :)
Posted anonymously to protect the innocent.
Why is the parent modded up? RTFA, they're desktop workstations. Maybe it's so they can run photoshop, maya, shake, renderman and pixlet, and still open excel files, without any config time.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Inside Apple, there is a significant number of people who think that Linux is as big a threat as Microsoft. Many many people here subscribe to the notion that the GPL is anti-business and that if Linux becomes really successful, Apple will be forced to open source everything and go out of business. When that news item came out talking about Linux desktop marketshare passing Apple, there was a huge flurry of anti-Linux postings in the internal forums, and a photoshopped image of Richard Stallman dressed up as a sickle-carrying goat eating a large american-flag draped Apple logo made its way around in our internal iChat.
IIRC, the G5 can outperform a comparable x86 processor in one area - floating point operations.
For rendering, floating point operations are probably the most important thing for a rendering farm.
(disclaimer: i did say IIRC)
I don't know what % Jobs personally owns, but insiders own 57% of the company. Jobs stands to gain a lot more money by doing something to help Pixar than by doing something to help Apple that hurts Pixar.
Here you go dumbass.
They contribute back to GCC, BSD, etc. They don't however give their GUI Cocoa/Carbon away for free to OSS. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you don't want people using free software to enhance their products, don't release it as OSS.
I hate when people bitch about someone following the license software is released under. BTW, did you build BSD? Didn't think so.
It will be a glorious, shiny Apple logo rotating though Calabi-Yau space, and the mere act of watching it will give you inner peace, deep insight, and three orgasms.
--- Ban humanity.
Pixar will switch to whatever is currently going to suit their needs the best... in their business, they aren't going to sit around and use "legacy" stuff just because of previous investment.. you will see them re-tool much more often than a traditional business.
I'm sitting here looking at my great linux box on the left, thinking "Uh, oh; a major linux user is switching over to OSX." Then I look at the very nice Powerbook on my right, and think "Hey, great; a major linux user is switching to OSX."
I'm so confused. Which side am i supposed to root for?
I wonder if I could get a 17" Powerbook with linux and drivers for everything? With the translucent apple on the cover replaced with a translucent Tux? It'd be fun to compare them side by side. And tell the partisans of both what they could be doing better.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The page talks about all of the things Apple has stolen from the open source community while still remaining closed source. If OS X is committed to the open source model then point me to the download for OS X source code, or the x86 port of OS X. Perhaps I missed the part in the OS X Eula where it gave me permission to download, install, modify and redistribute OS X free of charge.
Looking for this?
Apple takes a lot from OSS without giving a lot in return.
As does anyone who runs Linux and doesn't contribute back. It's called a free ride. I'm guilty of it as much as anyone else, I actually haven't contributed anything directly back to Linux or FreeBSD but I use both operating systems daily. That being said, if you haven't contributed directly to Linux or FreeBSD (and maybe you have, I really can't say) you can't really cast any stones towards Apple, since they have contributed back.
If OS X was open source Microsoft would have been out of business a long time ago.
And if that were true Linux or some other free OS would already have all the marketshare, wouldn't it? I can't even begin to see the connection. MS has dominance because of historical overwhelming marketshare, and the resistance of the average consumer to change.
-- The unsig...
Personally, I cheer any victory for Apple, the company (among many) that got shortchanged thanks to the dominance and abuse of the Microsoft monopoly that spread across all the IBM clones in the early 90s.
Pixar switching to Macs? Apple commercials before movies showing everyone a *real* operating system as opposed to their XP boxes at home? Hell, yeah.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Also for math (especially floating point) calculations, the G5 (PPC970) is much superior to the Intel IA-32 (not really a big thing if all you do is run Word, of course).
According to a talk by "Dr. BigMac" (from VA Tech) the only other high-volume CPU approaching it was the Intel Itanium, and here (quite an irony) Intel was under-clocked! (The G5, last year, was shipping at 2Gh, the Itanium less than that).
As for price, you can't compare a Dual G5 with a $200 walmart pc; but check the prices of any dual Dell Xeon system.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
It's not slower or more expensive, and the cost of porting in-house software would be nearly zilch considering OS X is a POSIX-based BSD-like system.
What's the problem here? It's a UNIX-like system with the most intuitive and productive interface there is. Of course Pixar would go for it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Either way, I'm sure Apple's selling the systems to Pixar at-cost anyway
This is about the third time I've read this remark, in +5 comments no less. Why on earth would anyone assume this to be true? If you own a grocery store would you just walk in and take anything you wanted without paying for it? Maybe. But more likely you would pay just like everyone else, and the profits would flow back to you. For the same reason, I would not assume Pixar was getting any special deals just because Jobs is CEO of both companies. Sure, he's the CEO of both companies, but all Apple employees are not also Pixar employees.
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Actually Pixar is the exception to the rule. Most big companies (ILM, Weta, DD, Imageworks, R+H, Tippett, etc.) are a combination of Linux, SGI and PCs. Small studios are mainly PC/Win based. A few other exceptions, I think Tweak Films is also OS X, and ESC mainly using Win2000 in the Matrix sequels. Other companies have been pushing multimedia Linux, from ILM's OpenEXR, Rhythm and Hues contributions to CinePaint, DD's Nuke, even Pixar with PRMan and the tools. Most big CG software vendors haqve Linux versions (Maya, Softimage, Houdini, mental ray, PRMan, etc.).
It's not the University of Virginia, but rather Virginia Tech, that built the G5-based supercomputer. They're fiercely competitive universities, not the same thing. :-)
I've always wondered....what types of people work at Pixar? I mean in "computer" terms like skillsets, knowledge, degrees, etc. I've never seen any discussions or articles that talk about this.
Who actually works with and on these machines? - and what do they do with them?
No, neither one is going to help you there.
1. The power consumpution is about the same. Intel are the heat freaks at the moment. IBM & AMD share process technology after all.
2. The system bus is the same for both systems, 800MHz HT channels.
As I see it, the Opteron is the x86 equiv of for the PPC 970. They are very similar!
Um... I assume that you are referring to the myth that Macs are more expensive.
Anybody who wants to quote the "Macs are more expensive" line of FUD has never taken a look at the price of Sun or especially SGI hardware.
Hell, SGI doesn't list the prices of things on their page, they tell you to call and ask. That's the computer equvalent of "market price."
OS X:*nix for the real world.
The fastest Apple G5 has a 1 GHz bus. The slowest Opteron has a 1.4 GHz bus, and the fastest has a 2.2 GHz bus.
Yeah, I'll bet the archair CEO's are anxious to go after Steve for doing such a thing. I mean, it might be different if Pixar's last quarterly financial results were record-setting, or if they made over 50% profit.
Oh wait, Pixar did all those things.
Never mind. Maybe he's not such a bad leader after all.
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You gotta remember that they just switched to Linux a little over a year ago, right? At the time, everyone was amazed that Steve would let that happen. Obviously, Linux was a better choice then, and it now is not.
Steve makes most of his money from Pixar. He's not going to risk that!
If you are truly stupid enough to change your decision about your next computer purchase because of an anonymous Slashdot post, you are truly a moron. Buy whatever suits your actual needs and not what someone's agenda (ANYONE's agenda) tells you, especially when you don't know whether the information is true or not.
production machines do not have to be plug-in-and-go. this is where it-pros get on stage. They deploy clients and servers following a specific design and demand.
Home Users need computers to plug-in-and-go. If you'd had followed former developments at pixar, you would know that they put _lots_ of IT and coding skill into the equipment they're using.
Don't get me wrong, i think osx is a great platform. Of course it is worse for a linux hacker to use windows than a mac, but after a while it gets damn close.
So mac has definitively it's place in the market and on the desktop. But i don't wan't to be the one customizing thoses systems to such a complex enviroment.
It's not even close to reasonable to assume that Jobs (as CEO of one public company) would give a break to another company of which he is a substantial stockholder. That would open him up to all sorts of lawsuits, especially in today's legal environment. I would be willing to bet that he stayed as far away from this deal as he could, other than approving someone else's recommendation (as Pixar CEO). Jobs may be a lot of things, but he's not stupid.
If SCO pulled a magic rabbit out of there but and somehow proved they had IP rights to all of Linux and killed it off would the world grind to a stop? Would Slashdot go with it? Would people who participate in Slashdot die from grief? I don't think so. To imagine that Linux will be around forever and that encouraging that at ALL costs is foolish. I work in the real world where companies have to make money and protect their IP. To me GPL goes against this. If given a choice of a GPL license or a BSD license I opt for BSD every time.
People who take the holeyer than though view of Open Source are definitely walking the high road. It's a narrow-mindedness that I can't believe I'm hearing when coming from someone that I would normally consider to be highly intelligent. To me an example of the true spirit of Open Source is Apple. They took BSD and created Darwin and then release regularly the modifications to that operating system. That is truly honorable considering that with the freedom of BSD they do not HAVE to do so.
Plus, I don't think Steve Jobs would care if his xservers were running Linux or better yet BSD (pref Darwin) without OSX. Apple makes their money selling hardware. I really don't consider Microsoft to be a competitor of Apple. I think the real competitors are Dell, HP, etc..
Anyways, please step down from your Open Source soapbox and take a breath of air with the rest of us down here in the real world.
I realize that this comment might catch me some heat but Jesus I can't listen to this self centered propaganda any more.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Does windows come with visual studio, dns server, proxy, etc?
OSX comes with gcc, java, perl, python, even with X11 and Xcode
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Mac OS X comes with all Macs. You only pay for major OS upgrades or for Mac OS X Server.
Gabriel Ricard
Apple bad for Linux? Here's where you can find the most beautiful Linux box you could ever have hoped for. Cluster them if it makes you happy---it's supported. But you say Unix based operating systems are more scalable for clusters and render farms. What do you think Mac OS X/Darwin is? Do you want to look at the source? Try starting here.
What propaganda are you talking about, anyway? Are you a troll or could you really just be this stupid? The Virginia Tech cluster was not made at the prompting of Apple, but some researcher did his homework and decided to use it. They came up with something that worked better than anything for the money and also landed third place in the Top 500 honestly. That's not just marketing spiel. A third party decided to use Macs for their cluster, and a third party that ranks these things honestly gave the cluster a well deserved third place. Do you honestly think Apple has no right to use this fact to promote their product?
As for the media thing, I don't know how anyone could honestly argue that Linux is easier to use for photography and movies than the Mac with its native software. What FUD has Apple spread about Linux with respect to media? Why would they have to? In this area, they don't even need to so much as acknowledge the existence of Linux because the people using Linux for media would use it anyway and no one else would bother using Linux for that. Life's too short.
When large companies such as Pixar decide to make a large decision like this, they will determine the price/performance ratios of all the available systems. The overall price includes the cost of all the systems including discounts, support/maintenance and the cost of changing over. Performance is measured using benchmark related to the required task. For PIXAR, this is the RenderMark(*). Ultimately, each system will be reduced down to X dollars per RenderMark. The vendor with the most Rendermarks per dollar will be the winner.
At present, Apple has the most powerful systems. That isn't to say SGI, Sun or anyone else won't make an effort to catch up. From: Sun Microsystems
Evaluating Rendering Performance Pixar has developed a benchmark standard to produce a single metric that characterizes a computing system's rendering power. The larger the RenderMark, the greater the system's rendering capacity. The RenderMark is derived from the elapsed time of a set of four jobs that stress important aspects of rendering: Ball. A ball with shading, nubs, and motion blur Pixar. The Pixar logo that includes complex geometry and typesetting designed by Pixar's Typestry software Magic. A RenderMan marketing poster depicting magician's hats and wands, including lots of texture-mapping Bike Shop. A bicycle shop scene from Pixar's Red's Dream, where one of the biggest challenges is the number of spokes to render
From Computer Graphics World A 1000 RenderMark CPU computes the same frame twice as fast as a 500 RenderMark CPU.) The first Toy Story (1995) used 50,000 RenderMarks for rendering; A Bug's Life (1998) needed 700,000 RenderMarks; and Toy Story 2 (1999) took 1.1 million. Monsters, Inc. re quired 2.5 million Render Marks, more than the first three films combined.
The biggest effect it would have would be that Apple would indeed have the baddest, slickest 64 bit personal computer around. There was a time when being "wicked fast" belonged to Apple and no one else. I'd like to see them do it again, instead of just being back to par with the PC world.
Apple should not only be on par, they should stomp the PC world into dust in the speed game. They can do it now, it's just a question of do they have the balls?
Dude, maybe they could do better, maybe not. Please note that they *have* given cool shit back to the community, like the way Konqueror has significantly benefited from Apple's heavy investment in enhancing their core. Being OS-oriented does not mean everything they do has to be OS.
all the BSD developers who freely allowed us to steal^H^H^H^H^Huse your code
If I give you a beer, you didn't steal it from me.
You know, it's rather bizarre... the Linux/GPL fanatics will scream endlessly in the war against SCO about how licensing lets the copyright-holder do whatever they please with their code, and if the copyright-holder wishes to give it out for free with a license like the GPL which says it has to always remain open-source then that's their god-given right by law. Isn't that the counter to SCO's claim that the GPL is illegal?
So listen: you can't have it both ways. If licensing lets the copyright-holder come up with whatever terms s/he wishes, then that includes the BSD license which the copyright-holder VOLUNTARILY used. The people who wrote FreeBSD gave it to the community under the terms of the BSD licenses so that things like what Apple did could SPECIFICALLY happen. In essence, FreeBSD freely gave itself to Apple.
How is that stealing? FreeBSD said "Feel free to use our code to make money however you want". Apple did just that. Give it a rest.
Thank Apple for FreeBSD
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I imagine that on a large enough scale operation, the cost to upgrade anually is decently offset by the power savings from not running the machines as long for the same output. I'm sure the remaining cost is easily made up for in the value of earlier release. Or along the route of higher quality frames, the same amount of power cost plus more in depth graphics is valuable to be seen as the pioneers in the field, plus having more visually appealing movies.
It is probable also very much what you're saying that hardware is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount they're making.
If not now, when?
I'll not post any findings, nor will I give you any numbers of my OWN personal experience.
...,nor support my position with anything else, not even a google search:
Your search - "default install size" XP os x - did not match any documents.
and
Your search - "default install size" XP osx - did not match any documents.
Actually, It might outperform a beowulf cluster in some sense. With the Beowulf cluster, you have to set up nodes for processing and typically aren't user nodes. The scheduler will queue up tasks to the nodes as they are requested. However, Apple still has their XGrid technology lurking around Pixar I'm sure. With XGrid, all the machines act as a cluster where Mac's with free processes to spare can work on computations for other nodes. Also, the G5's altivec provides a definite performance boost since most of the work is render work which is probably easill parallelized/verctorized. Just from checking the Apple website (yeah, I'm sure it is biased) for the HPC LINPACK benchmarks, the XServe Dual 2GHz G5 is 9GFlops where as the DUAL 2GHz opteron is 5.91 GFlops. Just my $0.02
all the BSD developers who freely allowed us to steal^H^H^H^H^Huse your code so that we could make millions of dollars selling hardware that we couldn't even make our selves without IBM's help.
OS X uses the XNU kernel, which is based mostly on Mach--not BSD as is commonly thought around these parts. The BSD subsystem is one of many in the kernel. Click here.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Actually they would be porting stuff. I'm a 3d animator myself. Pixar runs their own set of tools for animation. Maya may be on MAC... but Pixar's own software is not. Well it probably is, or will be very shortly. But rest assured that if ALL of pixar's workstations for animators are being converted to MACs... then Pixar WILL be porting over their entire animation suite of tools that are and have been developed by Pixar for over 15 years now.
I'm not just talking about renderman. Pixar has their own animation tools and 3d control environments for scripting, rigging, animating, shader editing etc.
Pixar only uses Maya for modelling mostly. Infact i know a few Maya drivers at Pixar.
Zilla, which foreshadowed Xgrid, shipped on all the NeXT computer. and let any next user donate their clock cycles. see here
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm curious where you folks are getting those ownership numbers .... For some reason, I can't see Steve listed in the insider list (Yahoo Finance) for either PIXR or AAPL
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
It's really not much of an endorsement, considering how closely married the companies are. Pixar certainly doesn't have to worry about being shaken down for expensive licenses and somehow I doubt they're paying retail price for the G5s.
This is not, incidentally, a knock against either OS X or the G5, both of which are fine products. I'm just noting that this is a bit like MSN using Windows XP on x86 hardware. Big deal.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Colors only need to be matched between two different images displayed on the same screen. This is quite possible even if the screen is adjusted completely wonky.
Obviously you've been paying attention to the villains.
;)
They usually have some crappy Dell...
What's the advantage to Pixar??? WTF!
The teams at Pixar are at the pinnacle of their industry. They do not take software and hardware choice lightly. They have not and would not till this day switch to using Apple solutions unless they proved superior. They have no use for hardware and software politics.
The evolution has been going on for some time at Apple.
Jobs has remade Apple software and hardware Pro Lines specifically for Hollywood, the CGI industries and this.
XServe, Xserve Raids, OpenGL direct rendering, xCode Tools for Rapid Development and distributive computing, XServe licensing and OS X licensing all are extremely cost effective. linux and Unix software has been ported OS X. G5 optimized Render-man, Shake, and the necessary tools are there.
This is the future and Apple is very much a part of it, deservedly so. A lot of extremely talented people have been working their asses of pursuing this dream for years and years now. This is just the first picking of an abundant and fruitful harvest for these folks.
More power to them!!!!!
.
Good luck convincing a jury that you switched to a 2- to 3-times as expensive per seat hardware/software platform and it had nothing to do with the fact that the same guy is CEO at both companies.
from apple's shake page
Shake 3 For Mac OS X $4,950.00
Shake 3 is also available for Linux for a suggested retail price of $9,900 (US) with an annual maintenance of $1485 (US). Render-only versions of Shake 3 are free on Mac OS X and are available for Linux for a suggested retail price of $3,900 (US) with an annual maintenance of $585 (US).
even after buying a loaded dual g5 (composite workstation) or a xserve (rendering) facilities are saving money by switching to apple. Shake is also more stable on Mac than Linux.
(yes, i realize pixar deals mostly in 3d and not compositing, however, most VFX facilities do both)
Check the latest NASDAQ composite.
I don't care where you buy your eye-of-newt from, fortunetelling is still fortunetelling. Predicting tomorrow is a dangerous game in stocks.
Doesn't look that good way below S&P 500
Gee, let's look at the chart in recent history!!!
I can't believe you tried the same lie twice in a row.
September 2000
Whoa! Who's doing the Monday morning quarterbacking now?
Well, I decided to pick the date *you* pulled from thin air actually. Remember, the supposed launch of OS X? If I picked my dates and the real current price the numbers are much better.
Uh. Where's the transaction costs? You know,
the brokerage commission?
Actually, I did forget to factor that in - my bad.
Hey. Have some fun. Plug in any other date.
The picture gets worse.
Unless you use my original dates and the price today. Then it's still pretty respectible. And who pays $10 a transaction? Increase the investment to $500 and the trade to $7 or so and it's not that big a deal.
Again, to get back to my orignal point if you believe in your code you should invest in it as well. Apple has not been as bad an investment as you make it out to be, especially after the launch of OS X. I can understand you not wanting to face reality but you need to get a better handle on your figures.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Pixar certainly doesn't have to worry about being shaken down for expensive licenses
You have a point in general, but Mac OS X only costs $130, and every machine comes with a copy. The lack of expensive licenses has nothing to do with them being Pixar.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Insightful?
I seriously doubt that power consumption is in the minds of anyone over at Pixar. Compared to the costs of administration, personell, and the hardware itself, power isn't even close to the top of the list.
Pixar will use whatever systems they need to make production time resonable. If that means an extra few thousand bucks a month because of the extra 30 servers, who cares.. drop in the bucket.
There's other (more rational) reasons for reducing the number of servers, and the lower electric bill is simply a bonus.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
True enough... I was referring to the portion of the comment that claimed "Processing power is way beyond what the average person needs.". OS bloat (as in, size of installation) isn't a problem in that regard. OS bloat as in overhead is, though.
Cheers.
Others have already addressed the point that for this application Macs are neither slower nor more expensive.
I'd point out that there are a couple of very good strategic reasons to go with Apple. First off they are in a niche that Apple is intent on dominating and is on the way to succeeding in this desire. Apple produces (or has bought) a lot of technology that is important to the broad category of film/video production that Pixar is part of. Beyond just Apple the other software vendors in this niche support the platform, a few don't support the *other* platforms.
Secondly, of course, is that Steve Jobs - the CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar is also the CEO of Apple. For obvious reasons Pixar is in a good position to get great service and consideration from this particular vendor. The "CEO mandate" dynamic you worry about on behalf of Pixar's shareholders (who are for the most part Mr. Jobs himself) works both ways. Apple which is already focussed on dominating the film/video market can act almost as a HUGE auxiliary R&D department for Pixar. They've already developed a new codec at Pixar's specific request. Apple has a huge amount of relevant technology it has already developed and/or bought. One might also notice that the XServe from the very beginning was configured as much for the video production market as it was for the server market - how many other servers have a FireWire port on the *front*?
but costly to Pixar's shareholders. One wonders what sorts of fudiciary issues such a maneuver might raise.
Since Jobs is himself the majority shareholder at Pixar with 55.4% of the shares not many. I would worry a great deal more about Jobs abusing his position at Apple to benefit Pixar's shareholders (i.e. himself) than vice versa.
You clearly don't use your computer for serious media work. While I agree that, in theory, there's nothing stopping Linux from being viable, the reality is there is so much you cannot do. I use Final Cut Pro, After Effects and Pro Tools/Logic. Nothing on Linux compares. Eventually, I'm sure Linux will catch up with Open Source solutions AS THEY ARE TODAY. But even iMovie trumps any Linux video editor I've encountered. Audacity is fine for basic mixes but offers no where near the amount of prescision and ease of use that commercial software provides. Fine for basic demos and turning records to MP3s but not good enough for consistent, heavy production. I understand your concerns and can truly say, yes, Apple's offerings are superior to their Windows or Linux equivalents. Try it out!
harmonious design
BeOS is the closest I've seen to instantaneous reaction to user input. The 'bloat' difference between OS X and XP is that I can uninstall most anything on the mac, whereas Bill's gotta make it 'integrated'. :(
Actually, back in the day, they used to have an equation for how they would decide on what hardware to buy for their renderfarm. Power consumption factored heavily into it. Although this was back in the day when they were rendering on sun systems. (I can't even remember when Suns had decent floating point specs).
1. Depends what you mean by make. Apple design their own hardware, their mother boards are all in-house designs that use a fair few custom chips that they also created. They outsource the manufacturing though like almost all the PC makers. Very few PC makers do any hardware design at all and that includes case design.
:P
2. Mac OS X 10.3 is not entirely 64bit. It does support 64 bit addressing so it can access more than 4GB of RAM. It also has 64bit optmisted math libraries. Since 32 bit code runs on the G5 with no performance penalty this will do for a while. People with G5 machines will get the main benefits of the 64bit-ness and the programs will still run on older 32bit systems.
3. 64bit Windows is still in beta. Linux is available on Apple hardware too.
4. I suppect not. It's more likely that Pixar paid the going rate for those machines. Apple has spent the past few years persuing the movie content creation market. The advantage Pixar had was an existing link with Apple to communicate their needs. Apple choose to fulfill those and so obviously they become the preferred platform.
Pixar will use the best tools for the job available at the time. Remember Steve Jobs take stage at an Intel conference when Pixar bought a shed load of Xeons for their render farm in 2003?
5. Don't go out and spec "okay" systems and then compare price. Spec comparable systems and compare price. That means keeping the differences between the two systems to a minimum.
Hell my old iMac was much cheaper than that Dual processor Xeon, I used that iMac for years and it was an okay system...
Fact is that the fastest available PC is slower in many respects than the fastest Mac available and the PC costs more. Blame the PC chip manufacturers for putting such a high premium on their newest chips for the price difference.
If you are willing to sacrifice a few MHz on your box the dual proc PC price will drop below that of the Mac. But it will also be slower still.
And remember if you are inclined to run a non-free OS on the PC especially as a server then the Mac costs much less.
Don't blame me - this
Somehow I don't think Jobs is in this game for the money. Ego maybe. But money no.
Mac OS X 10.3 only supports a 32 bit virtual address space per process although it can address more than 4GB RAM in total.
Don't blame me - this