Slashdot Mirror
Apple Announces New Pro Software
yroJJory writes "Apparently, Apple has just announced new pro software today. First off is the new app Motion, which is a new motion graphics program with real-time previews, procedural behavior animation and Final Cut Pro HD integration. Second, is Final Cut Pro HD, boasting the beauty of HD with the simplicity of DV. Capture DVCPRO HD over FireWire, edit using camera-native footage and output over FireWire with no generational quality loss. RT Extreme, now for HD, can deliver multiple HD streams, effects, filters and transitions in real-time to an attached Apple Cinema Display. Last, but most important to me, is DVD Studio Pro 3, which has slick new transitions, superb HD to MPEG-2 encoding, Graphical View, support for all professional audio formats -- including DTS -- (FINALLY!!), and integration with Final Cut Pro HD and Motion. Motion will be available this summer for $299. The Final Cut Pro HD update is available now for FCP 4 users. DVD Studio Pro 3 is expected to ship in mid-May." Reader green pizza writes "Apple today introduced Xsan, a clustered filesystem for Mac OS X systems."
Maybe it's just my ignorance of film editing/making, but I was under the impression that motion capture was something done by pro animation studios or 3d modelers. Is it really easy enough now to be done with consumer hardware and software?
Karma: Contrapositive
The most impressive thing about the Mac world is that Apple puts so much effort into building a complete software environment for their customers. With (compared to the Windows world) 3rd party software houses effectively shunning Apple because of the lack of users (again comparatively speaking), Apple would no doubt be dead if not for Apple's heavy investment in writing these pro-level tools that have become absolutely essential to the media cartels.
However, I wonder how long Apple can continue with such heavy investment in this excellent software. The return on investment of this kind of thing can't be that great considering the low low price of the software. Granted, it moves Mac G5 boxes, but I wonder if the markup on the Apple hardware can compensate for the loss leading of the Apple software.
I have been pwned because my
The XSan just sounds like network mount points. Like I can mount NFS mounts at /usr, another at /usr/local, and make it behavie like it all one system. To do it, it would just require renaming /usr, and then modify the startup scripts to use the new paths. Is XSan different or is it basically a GUI to mount points ?
This signature was left intentionally blank.
Simply, they are the trend setters. Best computer company period!
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
People don't write software for MacOS because Apple will compete with them.
Why do you think the likes of Adobe are scaling down their Mac product line? Apple are trying to have their lunch. Why bother writing software to bolster your enemy?
Xsan is a typical SAN filesystem, not just "network mount points". It allows storage to be pooled and aggregated, and for multiple machines to concurrently mount the same filesystem(s) simultaneously. The keys in a SAN are things like storage monitoring, management, centralization, and performance.
Just look at Apple's Xsan home page and Xsan press release.
Has to be the XSan .. this combined with the XServe and XServe RAID really does have to worry companies like Sun and SGI a little.
Funtage Factor: Purple
I'm not even a big video user but this is amazing stuff. From start to finish they've got everything almost anyone could want to make high end productions and the cost and hardware is stupidly cheap. Real time HD over FireWire on a $3000 computer? Just to get that to work is amazing, but to have a purpose built SAN to handle all the files, and it all works together with amazing fit and finish. I can't see anyone in the industry not going for this. Apple's been saying that having the hardware and the software let's them do all sorts of unique things, but this is the first time it's going to completely change a whole industry. Linux companies take note and make sure you've got a hardware side to your operations.
that's been rumored every week for months :-) although I wouldn't surprised at an update, these software updates make hardware updates LESS likely, in my opinion. Seems apple is announcing these to stir the stagnant waters a bit.
Apple also introduced Shake 3.5 for Mac OS X, Linux, and IRIX...
How do they plan to run 1080i HDTV (1Gbps if its YUV, 1.5Gbps if its RGB) over 800Mbps IEEE1394? Are they going to require users to buy a optical IEEE1394 (1600Mbps/3200Mbps) card? How many devices out there support IEEE1394 over an optical medium?
As the original poster mentioned, DSP 3 finally supports muxing DTS audio streams.
This has been a requested feature since 1.0. Noce to see they finally got DTS support into the product.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Apple putting out complete and all-encompassing software packages like this make me want to invest in Apple hardware, but I'm lacking enough funds to make the switch...
To me, Apple seems a much better development house than Microsoft (not really necessary to state), and their products seem much more reliable/functional than Microsoft's efforts. Maybe it's the extra time spent in development, maybe it's the extra attention spent on details, or perhaps it's just the hardware.
Even though I don't currently use Apple hardware, I still appreciate what they are doing for the computing community in general with products like these that show what great design teams are really capable of.
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
Of all of these updates, XSan is really at the top of them all. Products like Shake that are meant for using massive render farms, and Final Cut which, on a large enough project, would involve many many editors, will be wonderfully served by giving the users a nice way of accessing a production house's gigantic RAID.
XSan should receive more noteriety for this.
That is not something Apple does much if at all for its products. While silence until shipping is a good move (I would say) in the consumer space. It's bad for the Enterprise space. Apple has been criticized and justifiably so for not pre-announcing key technology so developers and enterprises can plan accordingly.
Now I agree that it's probably better to err on the side of less pre-announcement, but Apple took this to too much of an extreme.
I think this is an indication that Apple is 'getting it' more and more regarding Enterprise/Pro markets.
You have to ask yourself: is Apple chasing away developers because of their great software? Or is Apple filling a gaping whole that windows-centric developers are leaving open.
It is true that Adobe is scaling back some of their Mac operations. But apps like Premier and FrameMaker have been seriously neglected (four or more year w/o and update). So if these are the applications Apple risks losing because of their great software then so be it.
Avid/ProTools treats the Mac like a second class citizen so thankfully Apple has helped give them some competition. If it hadn't been for Apple who would have provide quality compositing, audio, video editing, DVD-authoring and now motion graphics software? Was Apple supposed to wait and hope that someone would come to the plate?
If anything, Apple is capable of producing great software. They will always be reliant on third parties with limited resources (or interest) for supporting great Mac hardware. Their strength is their software. It'd be great if Apple could get out their hardware sinkig ship and concentrate on bring great softare to different platforms.
It does not require optical. It works over normal FireWire. It supports Panasonic's 100 Mbps DV-HD (DVCPRO HD) codec.
1080i HD content can be moved between a Panasonic HD VTR and a computer via FireWire with no generation loss:
"With Panasonic's new, compact AJ-HD1200A DVCPRO HD VTR, 24fps or 60fps progressive scan material shot by Panasonic's AJ-HDC27 VariCam HD Cinema camera or 1080i studio / sports truck footage recorded by DVCPRO HD VTRs can be transferred via the VTR's IEEE 1394 interface directly into Final Cut Pro HD without generation loss. Once transferred, the material is instantly available for real-time editing operations. All footage maintains its camera-original quality, because the IEEE 1394 FireWire interface transfers the native DV-HD high definition files, as originally recorded on tape in the VTR or Varicam, directly to the Power Mac G4 or Power Mac G5 host computer's internal hard drive."
Read the joint Apple/Panasonic press release
Uh, this is awesome and all, but what are you going to view it on? As far as I know there is no DVD that supports HD, and by the origional poster, it sounds like you can only watch it on attached displays at full resolution.
This also brings up something with the Panisonic HD DV camcorder simply because it is the only major minidv HD camcorder being pushed.
Good job apple.
Apple seems to have remade itself into a premium software developer. I used to think of Apple as the cool hardware manufacturer but now they are bringing that same innovation, simplicity, and style to software. No wonder Adobe has been wary recently. They must be wondering when Apple will be competing with them across their entire product line.
I heard it still needs some better integration among its parts. Some rate it neck and neck with CuBase. Been contemplating it, but not if a new logic is coming.
-I am an elective eunuch.
down to the wording "simplicity of dv with beauty of hd"... :)
Both Xsan and CXFS are cross-platform: you can attach heterogenous (Windows, Linux, Irix, Solaris, Mac OS X, possibly others) systems to the one filesystem, and have it all work. The interesting part is that CXFS needs an SGI Irix box at the centre to deal with the metadata updates (as I understand it). Xsan also needs a metadata server, but it's unclear whether it needs to be an OS X box, or if it'll work with other operating systems at its core. If the former, it's understandable. If the latter, it'll be a good chance to make it into the enterprise in a big way.
Either way, it looks like Apple is making some serious, steady steps towards the enterprise market. They're very much the underdogs; people looking at this sort of thing like to see a track record before buying; but still... interesting times, indeed.
The Linux world is a bazaar. The Windows world is a cathedral, albeit an incompetently-run one. It's disingenuous at best to talk about "The PC World" without making this distinction. Not to mention that the Apple cathedral has a pretty good relationship with the Linux bazaar these days.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I'm glad Apple has taken the lead in giving what would have been 3rd party apps (they bought the foundations of the iTunes music app, FinalCut, etc. all from other companies) and polishing them up to get new customers. When companies start going cross-platform (ie, from a pure-mac stance to a Mac/PC one), it's almost inevitable that one of them (the Mac side) gets short-changed. Some manager or number cruncher decides that there's more money on the Windows side, the Windows side eats up more than it's share of the allocated programmer budget, Mac programmers leave and are replaced, not by Mac programmers, but by Windows programmers, they decide to unify the code base but end up with all of the Windows bugs on the Mac side because their compiler tools are all Windows-based now, etc.
The other advantage in having Apple take these types of software under their wing is that they can strategically coordinate releases of both software and hardware. Looking at the Xserves, the XSAN, the software tools, OS X, etc., you can clearly see that they're targeting high-end, corporate users of media software (ie, entertainment). The scientific community is already sold on the Unix underlayer of OS X - X11 make is possible to port a lot of apps.
It'd be great if Apple could get out their hardware sinkig ship and concentrate on bring great softare to different platforms. I hope they don't get out of the "sinking ship". I, for one, like my computer to be a little better quality than a cardboard box and if Apple stops making computers that's all I'll have left to choose from.
Unlike MicroSoft, which decided to take the hard and painful route by attempting to turn a single-user, game-playing OS (Windows) into a multi-user, enterprise class OS, Apple tossed their legacy OS and embraced Unix/Darwin/OS X. It's one of the smartest things they've ever done. If not the smartest.
MS will continue trying to turn their little, historic, cute OS into something it was never designed to be while Apple will continue to do things right.
For example, look at the super-computing Mac cluster at Virginia Tech. There wasn't an Apple system on the top 500 list during the OS 9 days, but a mere two years after they release OS X, they're among the top 5 fastest systems in the world... talk about doing it right. Will MS ever learn?
look; gawk; talk; date; wine; unzip; strip; touch; finger; head; mount; fsck; more; yes; shake; spray; umount; sleep; leave
"Hardware sinking ship?" I have to disagree with you there. With the release of the G5 bringing the Mac hardware platform on par with, if not ahead of its PC counterparts, Apple is by no means hurting. This is without counting the 64-bit capabilities of the processor that are, as yet, still largely under-utilized. They also have a good price point for their workstation systems, that easily compete with what the other guys have to offer.
Apple is far better off than it was a year ago, or even five years ago, when things were really ugly.
There's a strange (and, IMHO, unrealistic) trend of opinion lately that says that Apple should stop making great hardware and concentrate on making great software that only runs on that great hardware. If you think the software is that damn great, then buy a Mac. That's what Apple's trying to get you to do, but people seem to be missing the point.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Things like these tools are something that's really missing from Linux. Is there a project similar to WINE that reimplements the OS X API under Linux?
DAldredge! I would really like to know how that engagement ring set you bought on ebay has worked? Are you now engaged or something? I just can't stop thinking about it!
I updated to FCP HD today (which is a free upgrade). So far looks the same. I don't have an HD camera so I can't try that out. No problems with the update so far. We're looking at Xsan at work. We are implementing a huge multi-XServe LDAP system and have a multi-terrabyte XServe RAID to back it up. Originally we would have had to partition the XServe RAID, but Xsan would solve that problem. Motion has caused the biggest stir among my creative-type friends,
I hate and don't use Windows also, but Windows XP is not Windows 3.x/9x and at least in theory qualifies as an "enterprise OS." At least, it is intended to be.
Motion is a sorceforge project, for detecting motion in a security system.
Windows is what you look through to see outside, it's not really a OS, you can tell by how many restarts you have to do in a day.
I don't know how they can get away with calling it motion
In light of the Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox/Fire--- browser, and the mobilix.org forced name changes
it should be noted that "Motion" is a well known motion detection software.
http://motion.sourceforge.net/
Apple releases some great looking new software, and it's inexpensive for what it is. I wonder what particular anti-Apple axe the slashdotters will have to grind today. Surely this can't be good news!
It seems worth mentioning that apple also updated Final Cut Express to a new patch. The patch corrects several severe issues with the program, specifically the 'blank frame' issue which has plagued virtually every user of the program. It also corrects problems with dropped frames and timecode breaks.
Now that these problems are fixed, I can safely say that Final Cut Express is the perfect entry-level video editing solution. At $299, it's a steal compared to the competition (Final Cut Pro is already a steal!). Plus, if you decide to upgrade to pro, Apple only charges the difference in the price, meaning you lose no money.
Talk about a company that's nice to their customers. Apple definitely sees the pro market as an area to capitalize - it has always been their strong point in the past. You can tell that apple's trying to capitalize on their strong points as they attempt to regain the Education market with the $799 1.25ghz eMac. The pro markets are faithful to apple, and can easily afford their hardware and software - compared to the 'real' pro-level stuff, Apple's a bargin (SGI workstations used to cost upward of $10k without software)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Apple didn't buy a company that developed FCP, but rather bought an unfinished product called Key Grip from Macromedia. Here is a brief history of how the product came to be.
p os tid=108142367318278&forumid=126
;o)
==========
http://www.creativecow.net/forum/read_post.php?
Kathlyn and I remember when FCP was being developed on WindowsNT (at Macromedia and was known as Key Grip) and Media 100 had signed on with the Key Grip team to make it their front-end of choice for M100's soon-to-be Windows system. (It was Q3-1996 at the time.) At the Macromedia World Developers Conference in September 1996, we were guests of John Molinari (founder of Media 100) and he introduced us to Bud Colligan of Macromedia, Lauren Herr of Truevision (later Pinnacle), Peter Hoddie of the Quicktime team and many members of the Key Grip team.
Later on in October of 1996, I was asked to appear on a TV show as one of the panelists discussing digital video. The other panelists were Randy Ubillos (lead engineer of both Premiere and Key Grip (FCP)), Steve Whitney (then of M100 but later of Puffin Designs and then Pinnacle), and one of the key people from MicroNet (who then were key drive manufacturers in this marketspace).
I also quite well remember when Apple bought Key Grip and later rechristened it Final Cut Pro. I remember the chagrin it gave Avid and how that also intensified when Apple announced that they were dropping the six-slot PCI architecture of the old 9500/9600 design base.
I worked for Avid for 18 months under contract as a consultant to help reposition the marketing message of Avid after they made the ill-fated "We're going to be PC-only" at NAB and set their predominantly Mac-only user base on fire.
Apple did NOT develop FCP as an answer to Avid's announcement -- it was quite the opposite, really. Avid saw the writing on the wall and determined that they stood a better chance on the Windows-side of the aisle -- a move that would later prove a lapse in judgment and would require "a repositioning of the reposition."
Just to set the record straight,
Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net
Gee, none of this has ever been done before... I'm CERTAIN Apple didn't bump this announcement early to deflate the rumored debut of Vegas 5 tomorrow. What have they to fear? {/sarcasm}
If you are looking to buy a notebook, looks like Apple is going to introduce some updated models tomorrow.
m l
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/aprillaptops.ht
This is kind of odd, they usually announce new products on Tuesdays.
I know I will get Karma-nuked for saying this, but Apple hardware has seriously gone down hill from years past. I have a half-dozen of the more recent blueberry iMacs in my school that have crashed hard drives and fried network cards...and eMacs? A neighboring school district had a 50% failure rate on video cards for awhile. Sure, this may have been a wire problem blah blah blah...but this would NOT have happened a few years ago. Apple's hardware is rapidly turning into the same glitzy plasicky crap that Dell and HP have been shoving out the door for years. I have switched to plain-brown-wrapper computers for my school...the Apples and Dells of the world offer no advantages in reliability, and I have the machines to prove it.
MOD PARENT UP!
Sony Pictures Digital (formerly Sonic Foundry) has been producing some of the most amazing audio/video software for years. The poster simply points out that Apple is obviously aware of Sony's ever-encroaching presence in their territory, and you punish them for it. It's clear now there are three video giants... FCP, Avid, and Vegas. But this is Slashdot... Only here can you be punished for pointing out the obvious.
From the xsan page at apple:
"You may also use Xsan in a cross-platform environment alongside Windows-, UNIX- and Linux-based systems, using the ADIC StorNext File System, which is 100% interoperable with Xsan"..."Simply install Xsan on a supported machine to add it to your SAN as metadata controller or file system client."
Sorry but the best filesystem for high I/O by far IMHO is XFS on SGI Irix. When you run I/O via the distributed filesystem on a san where 40 machines mount to the same filesystem at once.
The thru put is only limited by the speed of your Fibre channel switches and storage arrays. Which is about 2GB/sec in today's standard.
Unfortunately no one has this stuff at home. And quite frankly SGI need to do some major catching up on software anyways.
Slashdot headlines aren't known for being "layman-oriented" in nature, but I think this one sets a new standard with its incredible density of TLA's, product/company names, and industry terms. All I can say is, way to go Slashdot. This is the kind of standard setting (and breaking!) I've come to expect from the premier "geek news" site on the Internet.
And it's good to see a standard set that Slashdot can be proud of, after holding previous records so long for "duplicate submissions" and "spelling mistakes in submissions".
Point the blame squarely on Adobe for not getting off its ass and investing in some in-house Cocoa Developers. Now that Apple DOESN'T NEED ADOBE and Adobe never forsaw that happening. So now they are bowing out because they realize it would take 18 months of in-house revamping (time well spent) to offer Cocoa-ized/Objective-C versions of their Apps.
Adobe has had SEVEN YEARS to build an in-house Cocoa Team, along-side their Carbon Team(s).
Tough Titty to all companies in the OS X space who don't get off their asses and learn Cocoa/Objective-C.
Hell it has been pointed out several times already that Cocoa doesn't have to be written just in Objective-C. You can mix your C/ObjC++/Python, etc... There are no technical hurdles to be had. It is all B.S.
Any company that doesn't reinvest in technical skillsets for their staff deserve to go Bankrupt.
As an FCP fan, today was exhausting. FCP HD is nice. But Motion for only $300 got me purring, then Xsan played with my geeky side too. When I imagined the possibilities of Xgrid as well, touching all together soft and gentle with Xsan and FCP and Motion, loads WERE in fact blown. All over my unregretable 20" Cinema Display.
Clean up, relax, watch The Simpsons, then more cinetech pr0n...
I suggest you take a look at the latest machines, they are far from "glitzy plasicky [sic] crap". The G5 tower is a work of art and the current iMac is an ergonomic success.
"I forgot my mantra."
Premiere (note spelling!) just had an update last year.
I'd hardly call FCP at $999 a steal compared to its competition.
What, then, is the comparable competition?
Find me another suite -- at any price -- that comes with the functionality of FCP. Remember, you're getting a multitrack editor and 4.6GB of samples [Soundtrack], a titling and title-effects package [LiveType], and a compression package [Compressor], all in the same box as your offline video editor.
Oh, troll-feeding aside, it costs $300 for educational customers. DEFINITELY a steal.
Not being a creative type, this article is almost entirely Greek to me. Like that Farside cartoon about dogs (or was it cats?)...
What slashdot wrote: (see above)
What I hear:
Apparently, Apple has just announced new pro software today. First off is the new app Motion, which is blah blah blah blah blah. Second, is Final Cut Pro HD, boasting blah blah blah. Capture blah blah over FireWire, edit blah blah blah. Blah blah, now for blah, can deliver blah blah blah to an attached Apple Cinema Display. Last, but most important to me, is DVD Studio Pro 3, which has slick new transitions, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and integration with Final Cut Pro HD and Motion. Motion will be available this summer for $299. The Final Cut Pro HD update is available now for FCP 4 users. DVD Studio Pro 3 is expected to ship in mid-May.
Apple today introduced Xsan, a blah blah for Mac OS X systems.
Apple simply can't compete on PC hardware. Not at the volume they deliver. They have two long term options: 1, increase their volume. 2, get out of hardware.
Now I'm not saying that their current hardware isn't competitive, nor am I saying that their future hardware won't be competitive. I'm saying their hardware isn't profitable.
Apple has some great consumer and professional applications. They have the potential to deliver more. They have a world class operating system (that is very portable) and they have the best GUI/OS and store for portable music players. They also have a cash hoard that could fund a move away from hardware.
Let's put things into perspective. Adobe and Apple are about the same size in market capilization. Apple employs three time as many people and has 5 times the revenue that Adobe does. Yet Adobe is more than twice as profitable.
Who would you rather be, Adobe or Apple. Adobe isn't competing against every PC manufacturer for market share. In fact their business is healthy regardless of who wins the PC war. Apple could easily be in the same enviable position as Adobe with one significant differnece: Apple has two great operating systems too.
You're missing the whole point of SAN...
Yes, Xsan lets several Macs and Xserves share files, but it does so through Fibrechannel, not through a LAN. Several machines can share files and/or cluster their storage together without having to rely on a fileserver. Each machine has direct access to the storage via the fibrechannel switch. No filesharing or networking protocols to get in the way of good perforamnce. Now without some sort of controls in place, this could quickly become a huge mess, that's where the Xsan software comes in. It handles things like connect/disconnect and access privleges.
$999 per machine sounds steep, until you compare that to similar software offered by Veritas and SGI (SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS). Apple's is a bargain.
Odd that you'd list FCP, Avid and Vegas. I think there are more players than that (including the volume leader).
I've successfully loaded, edited, and finished HDV work in Vegas 4 without any additional software. The experience could be better, but what's all the fuss? Cineform makes and inexpensive addon for it as well.
Hopefully version 5 will improve some of the areas of immaturity that Vegas currently suffers from. It's very nice in many ways and a little irritating in others. Multiple timelines in PPro is something I'm quite fond of.
Apple's basically replacing the now-defunct SGI Workstations.
And doing it very well.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Other companies offer SAN control software as well, such as SGI and their CXFS filesystem, part of their InfiniteStorage suite. CXFS supports many different platforms as well as many different models of fibrechannel cards and swtiches. The only catch is that the metadata server must be an SGI Origin 300 or Origin 350. Veritas also makes SAN software and is popular on Solaris and Windows.
If you do the math, Apple's hardware RAID setups and per-seat SAN software prices are the lowest in the industry for now. BUT, the others have much longer feature lists and have many years of market experience. Basiclly, I wouldn't want to be the first one to trust my data to a new Apple SAN. Remeber, on a SAN each machine has direct access to the data via fibrechannel. There is no fileserver involved, just the SAN "traffic cop" management software. When things go bad on a SAN, very bad things can happen.
They haven't sold the original-style iMacs for at least 3 years. I'd say 3 years on a hard drive is pretty good - most HD manufacturers don't have warranties beyond 1 year. Fried network cards, i can't account for, other than the general statement that computers in schools are abused severely, and often under-maintained. And if they aren't in a well ventilated room, iMacs have overheating troubles - they're fanless.
As far as the eMacs, i don't know what to say. Might have been a bad batch.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
" I suggest you take a look at the latest machines, they are far from "glitzy plasicky [sic] crap"."
More than balanced out by the iPod battery fiasco which necessitates Apple Care or over two thirds of the purchase price for a replacement and the mini's crappy headphone connector. Add to that logic and faulty components problems surfacing months ago and the parent is right about Apple hardware quality going down. Also there are rumours now surfacing about possible problems with capacitors on the G5's so don't count them as safe just yet. On the other hand the leading edge features and polish are great, and most of us hope that the quality will match up real soon now.
Ok, I didn't bother to read enough of TFA...
Xsan is an Apple-branded, Mac OS X version of Vertias' CVFS SAN filesystem. This is one of the oldest and most respected SAN setups out there.
Kudos to Apple for going with something proven and not trying to reinvent the wheel for something this simple but crucial.
I've seen a lot of messages saying, is Apple killing the market for apps b/c they create them, themselves? To answer that I quote Hillel "If not now when? If not me who?" Apple answers to itself quite nicely.
Obviously they do.
Aside from some commonly overengineered parts like power supplies, fans, and ram, all common PC hardware has roughly the same reliability, regardless of vendor or price. What, you think Apple and Dell get better cards from ATI just because they have a higher price point?
The difference is, with a Dell or an Apple you get a year warranty. With most of your whitelabel PCs, you get 90 days. With a year between budget outlays, I'll take the larger up front warranty, thanks.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Some of these machines are right at 3 years old...you're right...but I've had a slow trickle of hard drive failures from the minute we got them. Various plain-box PC's I bought in the same time frame had none of these problems. These computers are not abused, severely or otherwise...and maintenance? Well, how do you maintain an integrated network card? We vacuum them on a regular basis, but other than that, how do you "maintain" a solid-state device? They are in a very well-ventilated, air-conditioned/heated room and have plenty of area on every side...they are in the same room that, again, my PC's have been flawless in. I am not dumping on Apple for no reason; I am saying that in years past, they were held up as the Gold Standard of Hardware, and none of these problems would be happening. Saying that it was a bad batch would be stretching it a bit... Here's a link The fact is that they were poorly designed, and failed at terrifying rate.
The difference is that FCP HD supports DVPro50 input over firewire, which is HD quality. This is something Apple is working with Panasonic on and is not part of Vegas. Final Cut Pro could already handle HD video, but it was not as well supported.
I have a half-dozen of the more recent blueberry iMacs...
Oops. Stop right there. There's your problem. You've only recently awakened, Rip VanWinkle-like, from 1999.
I'll try to get you up-to-date. OSX!!! OMFG! Flat-panel iMacs! OMFG! G5s! OMFG! iLife! OMFG!
OK. Just giving you a hard time. But bitching about 5 year old hardware failures just makes you look silly.
I have a half-dozen of the more recent blueberry iMacs in my school that have crashed hard drives and fried network cards
WTF ? The blueberry iMacs are hardly 'new' machines. They were made a few years ago, which completely unravels your whole argument.
I have switched to plain-brown-wrapper computers for my school.
Good for you. I wish you all the best with the viruses, spyware, OS troubles, security updates etc etc.
the Apples and Dells of the world offer no advantages in reliability, and I have the machines to prove it.
As always. You != the rest of the world. The problems you are facing are not endemic of a wider quality control issue. It may be. It may be not. But you need a bigger sample size than just your piddly experience.
Funtage Factor: Purple
I (and, I suspect, most thinking people) will GLADLY pay an extra 10, 20, even 50% over competitors' offerings for a product that does what it claims, easily, reliably, and elegantly.
That is what the "new" (i.e. Jobs II) Apple has been producing since 1997.
If enterprise customers do not see how using Apple's products will result in greater performance at a lower overall cost, then I have no sympanty for them. UNIX + Usability = The Holy Grail, even if it isn't "Free".
There's two issues; firewire support and codecs. Not having a sample of the 100Mbps stream, I don't know what PC codecs may support it if any, but the MPEG_TS streams of HDV are supported by many MPEG codecs already. In the case of the JVC camera, a bundled app provides the firewire support and it works fine with PC's (no mac version). Not all editing applications have integrated tape loading facilities and I personally like it that way.
I can't say, then, that that camera isn't supportable by Vegas but I wouldn't automatically assume it wasn't as you have. I'm aware that FCP users were already editing HD using toolkits that people have put together. In any event, DVCPRO-HD may be HD quality but HDV is, by definition, HD quality as well. I hope you aren't suggesting that only FCP HD is capable of editing HD in "HD quality".
On the PC side, interested parties should look at what Cineform offers for Premiere. Realtime effects and transitions with multiple HD streams on relatively modest hardware. Don't know the new FCP compares to this, but AspectHD's been available for a while now.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
How can you say that your machines are 3 years old in this post, yet say that the new hardware is not as good as the ones in past years?
Sure, this may have been a wire problem blah blah blah...but this would NOT have happened a few years ago. Apple's hardware is rapidly turning into the same glitzy plasicky crap that Dell and HP have been shoving out the door for year
So, are you saying that the three year old hardware is bad, or are you contradicting your previous statement, or are you just being negative against macs?
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
If you looked at their earnings reports from last quarter (or indeed most of the previous quarters from the past years) you'll see that Apple's hardware offerings haven't been profitable at all. Most of the quarters that Apple reported profits were because of their portfolio (sale of ARM stock for instance).
46 million of profit on 1.9 billion isn't too good (2.35 percent). In fact were it not for the AMAZING sales of the iPod I don't think Apple would have reported a profit. If Apple hadn't been deversifying away from computer sales they'd be in big trouble right now. I find it odd that a computer hardware company is relying on a music player to make them profitable. It would be one thing if Apple were profitable on Mac sales and the iPod was icing, but for Apple to be dependent on the iPod is a little frightning.
For comparison, Adobe also had a good quarter. They generated a profit of 123 million on revenues of 423 million (29 percent)
This post is obviously, OBVIOUSLY, supposed to be rated at funny. It wasn't a direct attack at the Linux operating system, for Christ's sake.
May you all get metamoderated to shit.
First, thanks for ripping this off from Eric Raymond: But, second while I think your description is interesting, it is immediately obvious what your opinion is, so thanks for feigning even-handedness. However, I can see your point about the Macintosh world, even though I can also say that the 'church' of the Mac also cares about the user experience and makes high-aims towards that end-result even if it is inside a closed proprietary loop. But, I think you missed some sections in the PC world, or the Bazaar. The PC world is a bazaar in Turkey during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. Although at the lowest levels there is intense competition and a ever-changing structure, there is still a singular oligarch at the top, and a rising, but still marginal oligarchical structure just below that. (If you haven't figured it out by now, Windows and Linux) These two overall oligarchys will control the user experience, the rather important relationship between the user and computer. This is the part that is the most central part of the computer, the frission between user and system, the technology is the fulcrum for that, but not the central reason for existing. Ultimately, for all its variences, the PC world is defined by only a few pertinent structures, the oligarchy that controls and taxes the numerous and heady bazaars below. I like the Mac better for lots of reasons, but I can understand and appreciate the differences. Neither reigns supreme.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
Sorry to post again, but Gestures for motion? How cool is that for our graphics-centric counterparts?
3 /w ww.apple.com/motion/images/advancedgestures0414200 4.gif
http://a772.g.akamai.net/7/772/51/46878e5d9f0de
"Gestures
Keep your eyes up by controlling Motion using gestures, instead of the keyboard and mouse. Using a pen and tablet, you can control Motion with one hand tied behind your back. For example, a rightward swipe moves Motion ahead 10 frames; a greater-than arrow plays the timeline. Forty unique gestures will help your sessions sail along."
Unix is a smart and straightforward platform. The APIs Apple builds on top of Unix are also very well thought-out, refined to a huge degree during their evolution on NeXT. And Apple has an advantage over Microsoft because they have far fewer legacy issues. They have learned that rebuilding everything with a whole new foundation is what you often have to do to remain streamlined.
-- thinkyhead software and media
The truth needs to be heard! Mod parent up!
they would be accused of abusing monopoly,
:
for example
Windows is deliverd by standard with IE
Safari is now standard with OSX
WMP is standard with windows
Quicktime is standard with Mac OS ( and that is part of the OS )
(Note that a cased is filed against microsoft for abusing monopolistic position by delivering WMP in windows by Real)
Emulation layer for older OS is standard with OSX
will microsoft deliver Virtual PC in standard with windows ??? ( and wouldn't that seriousy make microsoft using its monopoly position against VMware ??)
My point is that if microsoft start deliver powerful software for windows they will be accused of abusing from a monopolistic position ( ok they abuse of it )
Why are volumes limited to 16TB? I'm disappointed in that since otherwise it looks nice for the app I run on. For comparison, SGI claims cxfs has support for files up to 9 million TB and filesystems up to 18 million TB (does anyone have experience actually scaling even to the hundreds of TB stage with any particular file system?)
aww damn...apple offers a 3 year warranty plan on their iPod...well I guess I will go with Dell or Archos who have a 1 year warranty and no battery replacement plan.
I mean, they use the same internal Li-Ion battery system that has the exact same "short comings"
curse apple for offering protection for my electronics.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
This post is obviously OBVIOUSLY a troll. Yeah, it's a tiny bit humorous, but you don't come to a site like slashdot to talk about the virtues of Microsoft or why BSD is better/worse than GPL. Look up the definition of "troll" and "flamebait".
Is the xsan a true san? I admit I am no expert but I thought san's have the capability to use virtulazations of drive space to assign to specific servers and had no need for a server controller. In xsans case it seems like it is a network attached storage (with simultaneous read write capabilities) rather then a true san since it makes no mention of virtulazations or being able to function without the server controller . It is possible I am totally ignorant of its true capabilities as the description is a bit vague on all the capabilities of xsan so if someone could enlighten me I would be grateful.
...as far has I know, the HDCAM standard isn't more than 150-200 Mbit, which is what the top level cameras use. After decompression, you may be talking gigabit and a half. But if storing to disk it doesn't really matter, and if you're storing back to HDCAM tape I assume you'd have to compress it again first. But if you want to psas the uncompressed stream around without quality loss, knock yourself out. And maybe if there's such a beast that'll record HD uncompressed, but not that I know of. Even 100k$+ cams use HDCAM.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Talking 'bout lacking hardware...
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Look on Ebay for an iMac from 2000 or 2001. You can probably buy a iMac DV SE with a 400 or 500 MHz G3 processor for under $400. Load Panther up on that and you'll be pleasantly surprised. Most people can save up that kind of scratch in a few months.
I think the real reason why Apple isn't selling lots of new computers is this:
1) Their stuff is built to last. Except for one bad hard-drive on a iBook (My bad, I dropped it), I haven't had a hardware glitch on any of the 9 macs I've had since 1988 (that is not a typo).
2) Mac OS X is acceptably fast on legacy hardware (aka old sh*t). The apps take a hit on slower machines (I don't even bother using iMovie anymore and games? fuggedaboudit) But it's still plenty fast for what I do at home: surf, email, iTunes, hack python code.
My father is a blogger.
Hello there. I hope you don't take offense that I've added you to my foes list--which is a rather silly thing anyway, isn't it? It's just that I've noticed your venomous, but completely irrational, hatred of Apple elsewhere (8890182, 8888827, and especially 8888863), and I wanted to keep tabs on you so that I may easily locate your future posts and derive amusement from your tiny rage.
From whence stems this resentment of yours, I wonder? Is it jealousy? Bitterness? Did Jonathan Ive and his buddies used to beat you up in high school? Or perhaps you just can't stand that other people have good taste and class where you have none?
I would you humor my curiosity, if it's not too much trouble. In any case, keep up the good work!
QuickTime is to Apple what PostScript is to Adobe, who is about to experience how it feels to be the Paint Shop Pro of the video.
-Steve Jobs
Seriously!
:D
Microsoft--grungy Seattle, gray overcast days all the time, endless rain, boring and monotonous. And so we get Windows 95 and its ugly, drab gray, it's squares and lines, it's awful linear mindset to doing things. All the way up until Windows XP, and they just make everything blue and green, which looks like an attempt to be the pretty thing that OS X is without really "getting it."
Apple--beautiful, sunny Cupertino. Pleasant weather, lovely parks, lots of color. And so we get iMacs, OS X, pleasant colors with curves and sleek designs...seriously, who else makes hardware that you could actually describe as "sexy" with a straight face? I admit it, I see a PowerBook or a desktop G5 and I think, "Man, that's enough to make me drool!" And their usability factor is through the roof. OS X is a breath of fresh air when all you've used is Windows (and KDE/GNOME).
Just a theory on these two ways of thinking!
NT was always multi-user. Apple replaced its legacy OS with a new core, and Microsoft did just the same with Windows XP by introducing the NT line to the masses. Although I definitely think OS X is the better replacement! It's based on a Mach kernel with some BSD libraries and a userland environment in place.
DOS is a forgotten relic of the past--99% of the people I ask don't even know what DOS is or was.
This is the same place made up of people who browse with an integrated file/net browser, taskbar, start menu, and tons of apps that come with the distro.
Then they bitch at "M$" for doing the exact same thing.
I have been married for multiple years so what are you talking about?
8890182 - POS is Point of Sale, not Piece of Shit.
8888827 - Apple does have a history of using the DMCA against things they do not like. You may not like it, but facts are facts.
8888863 - In context it isn't a troll.
Well, how do you maintain an integrated network card?
Make sure they are well protected from lightning, huge school networks aren't always the best engineered. I've seen cable run on the outside of the building because it was going to be temporary, and then left there for 4 years. Did you have multiple ethernet cards fry in your macs without a single failure in any of your PCs?
The eMac certainly had some horrible problems with it's display when it was released. The issues seem to have been worked out, but I still don't like it's design. It's probably not a good idea to buy a first revision of any computer, much less a lab of them.
btw, I did eat my share by buying an iPod so, stop throwing!
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Word-for-word what i saying to a colleague earlier today!
That's the difference. MS claims Windows won't work without Explorer installed. By way of contrast, drag Safari to the trash and delete it and use whatever other browser you want.
Hi, it's me again. I didn't originally intend to follow up, but I'm actually having fun with this, so why quit?
"8890182 - POS is Point of Sale, not Piece of Shit."
I know that. Doesn't change the fact that yours was a stupid comment. I mean, so stupid I actually caught myself rolling my eyes at the screen.
"8888827 - Apple does have a history of using the DMCA against things they do not like. You may not like it, but facts are facts."
I've seen other people correct your misconceptions and point out your strange biases before, all to no avail. I'm pretty certain the problem isn't that you're misinformed or malicious--if one of these were the case, you'd either have been chastened and made an effort to educate yourself by now, or you'd have gotten tired and gone away. No, I think the problem is simply that you're stupid. There's nothing I can say to change that, so I'm not going to bother responding to your rant about Apple's history with the DMCA.
"8888863 - In context it isn't a troll."
Did I say your comment was a troll? No. I just said it was stupid, and your lack of a meaningful response only serves to confirm. Sorry, pal.
you do not need to pay a licensing fee for each node
At purchase, you get Mac OS X Server on each node. BUT, if you want to upgrade, you *must* buy an OS license for each node. There is an OS upgrade option that will get you free upgrades for three years, for a fee.
Many people think incorrectly that you can buy only one copy of the OS and then load it on each and every node. The confusion may come from the fact that there is an unlimited amount of clients allowed with the full-price Mac OS X Server. However, a new Xserve node is not another client!
Speaking from experience: waiting for my X serve G5 cluster...
http://www4.discreet.com/smoke/smoke.php?id=174
Adobe products.... forget about it.
I will be upgrading from FC express to this HD version when I get the money... and after I've save of for a capture card as well... this is going to hurt!
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Oh thank god for a moment I thought you meant Dr Watson --- M$ peice of shit debugger, freeze your computer for 5mins, app. Glad to be wrong.
> Well, how do you maintain an integrated network card?
> We vacuum them on a regular basis, but other than that, how do you "maintain" a solid-state device?
Compressed air, maybe? You should know that vacuuming hardware is a very bad idea. Static electricity kills semiconductors, such as integrated network chips!
Sure, no problem: MOL (Mac On Linux)
Goddammit, I mean hardware from 5-10 years ago, that was top notch, not this shitty new hardware
It is well protected from lightning. Every computer has an Intermatic surge protector, and there are surge protectors upstream too. Yes, over the span of one year, I have had multiple ethernet cards fry in the Macs, which are on the same network switch as the PC's. Everybody seems to be just dying to mod me down and call me a troll, when I have done NOTHING different to the PC's...and they are holding up fine. This is in TWO different school districts, with a total of probably 500 of these machines, and the problems are the same all over the place.
It would be really nice to buy new flashy flat-screen iMacs....but we can't afford them. We have to make do...and 6 years is considered an "average" hardware cycle in education. This is not 5 year old hardware, these were machines bought in 2001-2002... Here's a nice link showing iMacs being EOL'ed in March 2003... So these are 2-3 year old machines. Dear GOD what putrid old hardware! We deserve to have hardware failures! I'm just irritated at all of you people that seem to think that Apple hardware is so wonderful, but when it fails, come up with some easy excuse.
Here's a nice link showing iMacs being EOL'ed in March 2003... We bought these in 2001-2002 I believe...which hardly makes them old. I can say that I have proper controls in place, and have no problems WHATSOEVER with "viruses, spyware, OS troubles, or security updates", as you put it. You are making too many assumptions about problems with PC's...when it is probably YOUR "piddly" experience that is leading you to believe that. I have a sample size of over 500 machines, well, I don't run the IT department of some fictional Fortune 500 company that is all Mac, so I guess I don't have a 100,000-machine sample. All I know is that Apple hardware today is no better than the cheap PC's I buy, and the difference in price makes it worth it to me to buy the latter.
Other than the metadata server whats the difference? I mean AFS has clients for all the major OS's. mount a cell and your ready to go. Plus you can mount many other cells (CMU,MIT,IBM ) lots of good stuff out there.
12.1" iBook G4 @ 1.0GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo Drive. $1099
14.1" iBook G4 @ 1.0GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo Drive. $1299
14.1" iBook G4 @ 1.2GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo Drive. $1499
12.1" PowerBook G4 @ 1.33GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo drive. $1599
12.1" PowerBook G4 @ 1.33GHz, 256MB RAM, SuperDrive. $1799
15.2" PowerBook G4 @ 1.33GHz, 256MB RAM, Combo Drive. $1999
15.2" PowerBook G4 @ 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM, SuperDrive. $2499
17" PowerBook G4 @ 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM, SuperDrive. $2799
ibook press release
powerbook press release
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Yes, Apple makes good products -- I just bought an iBook as my new laptop and would buy one again. It's a good machine. The hardware is well designed if expensive, the software good, if not the best of breed. But Apple is a bunch cut-throat-DMCA-loving-money-grabbing capitalists like Microsoft, just without the monopoly, and Steve Jobs eats his chocolate one bite at a time, just like everyone else.
Good software? Yes. Great software? No. Mac OS X doesn't play well with others, it drops those pissy little .DS_Store files in every single folder of a network it can find. iMovie can't deal with letterbox DV (like even Kino can). Mail doesn't know TLS (which even the Beta of Mozilla Thunderbird can do). iTunes can't natively play Ogg Vorbis. Listing the ways that DVD Player is inferior to VLC would take pages, and don't get me started on all the hacks that have been installed to cripple the iBook to make the PowerBook look better (starting with the stupid Spanning Block that is supposed to make sure that only what you see on the screen can be sent to a second monitor or TV). Good, yes. Great, no.
Dear astroturfers, on the long run you'll help Apple more by giving a balanced, fair view of what is offered instead of this mindless drooling cheerleading. These machines are, so to speak, merely human, not gods, and even at 10.3, OS X has lots of room for improvement.
The blueberry iMacs were replaced in the summer of 2000 with the indigo line of iMacs, that came in Indigo (obviously), Ruby, Sage, Snow, and Graphite.
I can't see your link about being EOL'd one year ago, but here's a link that it was discontinued in July of 2000.
Maybe you got them from some surplus or refurb shop.
Clearly, you do not code, or at least have no clue about AE.
6 pr o040205.htm>
Newsflash: some tasks (writing frames to disk, et cetera) are not processor bound. Also, address space limitations come into play when you have a kajillion DLLs, a.k.a. plug-ins, loaded.
If you look at the After Effects API (free SDK on their website), you'll also notice that AE puts handrails and helmets around effect plug-ins that aren't necessarily threadsafe, just so mouth breathers who THINK they know something about multithreading can write crap and STILL ship a useful Directional Glow effect, or whatever the flavor of the month is.
Also, if they're paralleling is so bad, how does this work?
<http://www.creativemac.com/2004/02_feb/news/ae
(iTunes to sell iPods, FCP to sell Macs, what's next?)
I'm hoping Apple will MacOffice next.
We recently upgraded to Dual 1.25 GHz G4s at our radio station. Previously, we had PowerMac 7300s with Powerlogix G3/250 MHz upgrade cards. I bought them (used) in 2001 for $120 each for the machines and $150 for the CPUs - and the PowerMacs were discontinued in 1997. They worked reasonably for the 3 years of continuous use we had them. Were things falling apart? Yes - but they were 7 years old. Show me a commodity computer (Dell, HP, etc.) that is still usable in a professional production installation 7 years after being discontinued.
-T
My bad, they're all Indigos not blueberries. It's difficult to keep all of these colors straight...but they are Indigos, bought 2001-2002. So 2-3 years old, for the sake of those keeping track.
Well, at my old employer, we had an ancient "Gateway 2000" that was a 486/33 I believe...that has been in continuous, daily use since 1990...and is still in use today. Is is covered with cigarette butts, banana peels, coffee stains, and god knows what else...it has not been off more than a few hours since it was turned on, and has never had a single problem. It is in continuous, professional use all day long (architectural office, they do their specs on it) and, right now, is 14 years old. It is a commodity machine. I think I'll keep buying commodity machines.
Blah XSan just sounds like blah blah blah. Like I can mount blah blah at blah, another at blah/blah, and make it behavie like it all one system. To do it, it would just require renaming blah, and then blah blah the blah blah to use the new blah. Is XSan blah blah or is it basically a GUI to blah blah ?
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Correct. The only reason that this is news for FCP is that they don't have Mac support for capture.
Vegas already supports MPEG2_TS footage from JVC's camera. Just use the bundled software to capture and go wild.
What it was doing in my PJs, I'll never know.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
1. I have upgraded to Panther 10.3.3, and from what I have heard, this is not a bug, but considered a feature.
2. My consumer-lever Sony video camera has letterbox, and the open-source amateur video program Kino has letterbox. Apple cannot go around pretending that this is a professional feature if they want to charge that amout of money for iLife.
3. I don't have to do "jiggery-pokery" with any of my free Linux players to get Ogg support, and I don't see why I should have to for something I paid money for.
One interesting thing I have found about Apple users is that most have no experience with a modern Linux/BSD interface like KDE 3.2 -- figures, actually, because they are probably very happy with Mac OS X. As a consequence, they don't seem to realize that OS X, as flashy as it is, is going to have to get a lot better very quickly if they don't want to be run down by the Open Source crew.
Anybody who doubts this should ask themself this question: When is Apple going to be able to double the number of its developers again? With Linux and Co, this is just a question of time. As clever as Apple's developers might be, sooner or later, those numbers are going to catch up with them.
hmm, I've seen the same problems here, we have probably 25 old G3 imacs in service and maybe 12 eMacs. The eMacs were a mistake, don't buy any first revision of Apple's Hardware, we saw the same display issues, they haven't needed fixed in awhile now. The iMacs have all been exceptional machines, 2 ethernet cards have died, one was replaced under warranty, the other was auctioned off. However sadly it's not uncommon for ethernet cards to die here(PC or Mac), it's nice to have PCI slots. Most of our Macs are PowerMacs.
Yeah I know it is but I still thought it was funny
I don't know that Apple's ever really been w/o their share of Quality Control issues. I work at a store whose infrastructure was entirely comprised of performas several years back. Though this was before my time, I hear nothing but horror stories about the Performas. (ironically, we've since "upgraded" to WYSE 60 terminals from HP. Server runs a HP UNIX variant, I believe. Hmm. Maybe that is an upgrade :-)) But given that we actually see an almost even spread of Macs in the shop, spanning nearly 10 years of models, with just about every model evenly represented, I'd have to wager you got a bad batch. Apple now uses, as others have posted, whichever HD Maxtor or WD can bid the lowest on, and this has its drawbacks. I think it's still a wiser choice than NuBus and SCSI for all though.
*addendum: I do think shaving a little off their margin and going with seagate exclusively, or a comparable vendor, might not be a bad idea, but what do I know?
"pro-level tools that have become absolutely essential to the media cartels"? I don't know what planet you're from, but what's making these tools popular is that they cost a damn sight less than the pro stuff big shops spend on. harumph.
You can't, after all, judge Apple on their most recent Macs, because those Macs are going to work initially even if they're complete crap.
The real test is long term. Five years is reasonable.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I was at NAB (just got back) and spent about 30 minutes messing with Motion at the counter and I have to say I am very impressed. While not quite THE After Effects killer, it will probably handle about 95% of my 2d motion and compositing work when I get it this summer. Awesome performance on the G5. The demo machine had 2 gigs of ram and a killer video card but the real time effects barely slowed Motion down. A large set of filters, ability to import PS layers and audio, the gesture driven interface, all of that added up to one amazing v1 application. I was blown away at how well Apple developed this application and am excited to be able to use my tablet for controlling the interface. It was very very cool.
Looks like they took a bit of Keynote, LiveType, Photoshop, AE and Ink and mixed it all up into one crazy off the hook app.
Very sweet indeed.
codec3