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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."
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
Click the links first, functionality of the software is explained there. Motion capture needs points of reference on the target. Its also usually done in a high contrast environment (similar to blue/greenscreen but not as fancy) and the reference points have to be highly visible on the target (i.e. white tufts on all movement points, black suit underneath). Most ppl wouldnt want to bother with this even if they had hardware/software capable of doing it....
It's a SAN clustering program. You run Xsan on each of your 4 Xserves, you plug a 3T Xserve RAID into each of them, and the whole backend appears to your G5 (and every other G5 on the network) as a single 12T volume that's faster than any single hardware unit, since Xsan also does load balancing.
People don't write software for MacOS because Apple will compete with them.
Apple only seems to be stepping in where a competitor's product is languishing on the Mac platform. Two examples:
Internet Explorer for the Mac was left to rot by Microsoft, so Apple came up with Safari.
Adobe Premiere for the Mac was a neglected piece of shit, so Apple came up with Final Cut Pro.
This is a very clear message to software makers: "Shitty, infrequently-updated Mac software will not be tolerated. If you're going to make it, make it right or we'll take your marketshare with a kick-ass app that shows off what the Mac can do."
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?
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.
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 wouldn't need to write software if the developers would actualy, you know, develop, as opposed to letting products die *cough* premeire *cough*. If no one is going to write software for Apple, Apple will write the software themselves.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
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.
Technically, FCP does support uncompressed HD. It's just not for free over FireWire (it'll take a Kona capture card and a storage system of the Xserve RAID's calibre).
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.
They make it sound like realtime HD over firewire is some big deal until you realize it's just 19Mbps HDV video
Wrong. HD over FireWire is 100 Mbps. It's only after the program content has been sent to the transmitter that HD gets squeezed all the way down to 19 Mbps. In production, the bit rates are 50-100 times higher than that.
(Real men deal with uncompressed SMPTE-292, of course. Gigabit and a half per second, thank you very much.)
You shouldn't comment on what you don't know.
Right back atcha.
I write in my journal
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.
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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
Um...could they complain that this new software only requires a one-button mouse?
If so...Those bastards!
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
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.
Apple doesn't HAVE to "compete" on hardware. This is ridiculous. It's like saying that that the Four Seasons will have to match prices with McDonalds, or get out of food.
Apple has made a decision to use a non-standard platform as the vector for their OS. In a lot of ways, that has simplified the task of creating a reliable operating system. So WHAT if they're doomed to charge more than HP for an entry level system...they aren't trying to create a monopoly. So long as enough people buy their computers, devices and software to turn a profit every quarter, they're far better off than the hundreds of other PC manufacturers who can't see past the concept of hardware as a commodity.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I'm saying their hardware isn't profitable.
Their recent earnings report says otherwise.
But you're right. They should go commodity. Cause, y'know. Dell. See. Money. They have some. A lot. Commodity. That's where the big bucks are. All those companies raking it in, hand over fist. Like Dell. And... Dell. Oh, and Gatew... wait, no. Compa... no, they got absorbed. HP!! Yes! HP! They make their dime on commodity boxes, don't they! Oh, no, they don't. It's their servers.
I'm sure I'll think of some other company that has billions in revenue and millions and millions in profits from white boxes.
You just hang on. I'm sure I'll be back soon.
Watson was based on specs that Apple sent out to many of its developers about Shelock.
They projected well into the future what it could and couldn't do and suggested that folks could even build sherlock plugins based on this. Someone took these specs and made another software and released it before Apple released their much more refined version.
Moded +4 Insightful at the moment. Maybe these people don't know the true story. Or maybe you are the developer of Watson and pissed off Apple didn't buy you off like a few others had been paid off when they had done this isame thing in the past.
We just bought a Dual G5 Xserve. I set it up last weekend. In about 4 hours. From my house. In my PJs. All done via Apple's Remote Desktop and Admin tools over my cable modem. Designers came in Monday morning and all their stuff was there and working as if it had always been there.
I know most hard core geeks who regularly SSH into their servers and various boxen won't be impressed by that, but please understand that I work for a decently sized (14 designers) graphic design company. I admin all the G5s and our web server, FTP, mail, etc., in addition to my normal duties as a production artist. I am a "geek" who regularly reads slashdot, but UNIX is not really my forte. I drop into the Terminal occasionally and sudo, but it's not really my main gig. I know enough to be dangerous, basically.
The G5 server is freaking amazing. Open Directory is very nice as well. Say what you want about overpriced hardware (though the G5 server and the X-RAID are pretty reasonable for what you are buying), but Apple does do things pretty well. You get what you pay for in my opinion. Could I have built or ordered a similar machine with Linux or Win2K3 and spent a little less? Probably. We spent about $5K and got 750 gig of storage and a gig of RAM. But the difference in the cost of my time (and headache trying to get it all running) is far outweighed by the simplicity of the Xserve. And the really nice thing is that there is a TON of usabilty built into the Xserve for those who need/want to delve deeper. PHP. MySQL. Open Directory (Apple's LDAP stuff). VPN. It's all there and easily configured or tweaked from the Admin Tools or from the CLI.
It wouldn't surprise me one bit to see more and more Xserves sneaking into data centers. They really do rock.