I think their current culture is toxic for both. Their hardware is polished but IMHO has prioritized form over function at an extreme level, and seems to be developed in complete isolation from the user base.
The Mac Pro is a beast - I am still running a first gen MacPro1,1 - it's got an IDE drive installed in the second optical bay, four 3.5 SATA drives in the main bays and 2 2.5 SATA drives connected to the extra SATA connectors hidden under the front fan. At various times it has a hardware RAID card, extra FW+USB card, extra video card, video capture card, etc. I'm just about to grab a pair of 4 core xeons, extra ram, a Radeon hd5770 and some SSD drives - flash it to a MacPro2,1 and I can run Mavericks on it, with a Geekbench of about 10k. US$400 for the upgrades not including the SSDs.
I think Apple has really dropped the ball with the new Mac Pro - it is like the Cube, it looks cool but the Mac Pro is not a machine that requires form over function - people buy them to upgrade them, swap things in and out, stick them in racks, etc. Thunderbolt is not a replacement for pro use expandability - it just means a lot more cost + a lot more (very expensive) cables + a performance hit.
A good excuse for Apple to discontinue the Pro line eventually though - "hey we made this great new machine, but nobody bought it, so sorry"
> I think Apple has really dropped the ball with the new Mac Pro
Guy English made some great points about potential for the new Mac Pro:
"The CPU is a front end to a couple of very capable massively parallel processors at the end of a relatively fast bus. One of those GPUs isn’t even hooked up to do graphics. I think that’s a serious tell. If you leverage your massively parallel GPU to run a computation that runs even one second and in that time you can’t update your screen, that’s a problem. Have one GPU dedicated to rendering and a second available for serious computation and you’ve got an architecture that’ll feel incredible to work with."
Guy says it's not about benchmarks but the innards seem to be entirely designed around generating a ridiculous Cinebench score for a keynote demo.
Right now it's trendy to criticize the new Mac Pro for boxes it doesn't check that the current version does; mainly a lack of enclosure space. That's something Apple can easily address with their in store setups. But when the thing releases all anyone will be able to talk about is how much Apple is charging for the high end version with the E5 2697 and 2 W9000 Firepro cards.
I think what he meant was that the current benchmarks are unable to quantify the benefit to users of having a GPU for computational power while the other is driving the displays. The new Pro configuration suggests you'll be working in real-time when doing graphically intensive tasks rather than waiting for something to render. Animators & video editors will benefit from this in ways that are difficult to slap a technical benchmark on.
These machines are probably aiming to scoop up some high-margin high-end workstation business, hence the demo by Pixar at the last WWDC.
The case design is really phenomenal. I've been inside mine (2009) a lot lately trying to fix a stability issue (the north bridge is possibly getting to 120˚C, the ATI Radeon 4870 was running very hot and disassembling showed 4 years worth of dust jamming it up). Swapping components with nary a screw and the general cleanliness (no SATA cables snaking around, air channels from front to back) is excellent.
I'd like for Apple to carry both lines going forward, but I guess that is unlikely. The issues I'm seeing now discourage me from dropping another 3-5k on the new ones knowing they are even further from being fixable.
I would recommend getting the hd5770 and trying the 10.8 upgrade before going all out on a build for Mavericks. My experiences with 10.8 on Mac Pro 1.1 (flashed to 2.1) have been hit or miss, and I'm honestly not sure about Mavericks. The 10.8 install did work (it booted), but the machine would lock up on me from time to time, and some stuff wouldn't work. It was also obvious that Apple did not want this to work, so maybe they'll put more effort into making sure Mavericks does not work. I concluded that it was not stable enough (for me personally) as a development environment, but maybe it will work out for others. If someone wants to do a Mac Pro build for Mavericks, I'd recommend they start with a 3.1 or 4.1 (something with the 64EFI)
The new Mac Pro 2013 is beautiful man. I'm not the target market, but I can see professional audio/video engineers getting excited about it. Editing 4K video in real time? Pretty badass. I was also impressed with the case engineering, but we'll have to see how it performs. I don't really see the design as form over function. It was designed to use a single fan for the entire machine.
Thanks - well I can still use all the performance bumps from the add-ons even if I stay in 10.7, but I'll let you know how it goes with 10.8 to start with.
> a lot more cost + a lot more (very expensive) cables + a performance hit
I think that the jury is still out on if there will be a significant performance hit. Thunderbolt is like having a direct connection to the PCIe bus, isn't it? Now, you're right about the extra cost, but I think that they will still be sufficiently upgradeable, albeit with more cost and fewer choices.
Fiercely debated by whom? I routinely set up machines with multiple 10GigE cards, each requiring 8x PCIe to function properly. 4K uncompressed RGB 10 bits video is 1,3 GB/s (2D, 24 fps; 3D and 48 FPS would demand 5 GB/s), this just doesn't go smoothly through a 10Gb/s link. I think this is quite typical of professional workstation work (vs something you could work on a laptop).
Obviously not you... I don't think that having multiple 10GigE cards is quite the norm though, at least for the market Apple is targeting. (Unless you are doing this on a Mac Pro, in which case, I don't know what I'm talking about).
We have only chosen not to work with non-indie labels. We are all about independent music only. We've approached and been approached by indie labels too, however most of them demand a minimum upfront payment, which isn't the best thing to do for us. So as of now 90% of the music has been procured directly from the artists (not necessarily unsigned but signed with non-exclusive deal).
You are incorrect - a music "track" consists of two separate copyright - one is the copyright in the sound recording (the audio that you hear), the other is the copyright in the underlying composition embodied in the sound recording (in other words the lyrics, the arrangement, the composition of the music).
There is no compulsory license for sound recordings in any territory for downloads or interactive streaming. You have to explicit permission from the copyright owner to make the recording available for download or interactive streaming, i.e. you can choose when to listen to it.
There is a compulsory license in most territories for the composition side, under certain specific conditions, in which an entity like Grooveshark would obtain a mechanical license for the composition from the copyright holder of the composition (usually music publishers) in advance of its public availability, and then account and pay royalties for its use. This requires Grooveshark to know the songwriters, publishers, and splits of each work, which is not something that comes from the user uploads. It may be the case that their terms of use pass this responsibility to the uploader.
In short, however, you need sets of permission (sound recording and composition) to legally distribute music for download or interactive streaming.
Here's a suggestion to help artists - for every track downloaded which is not directly assigned to a copyright holder, put an amount equal to the industry average for US DPDs, say 70 cents, into escrow, along with 9.1 cents for the US mechanical license, and hold it there for three years or until the copyright holders come calling for it. In addition, supply the copyright holders with the specific details of the uploader. That would help artists.
What does 'directly assigned' mean? If the uploader sets it then it's going to be set on all the pirate files and your clause never triggers. If Grooveshark sets it then they're going to have to manually inspect every upload. Neither of these helps any artist. Nobody is going to get paid for an $8-per-hour radio. Grooveshark would go out of business and help noone.
By "directly assigned" I mean the case where Grooveshark and a third party rightsholder (record label, artist, etc.) have a deal in place covering the respective track.
70 cents * # of downloads is how lots of artists make money nowadays.
I don't think many people are going to sign a legal agreement and then purposely claim other people's songs. The legal and financial liability from that is huge and much more direct.
Okay, I guess I haven't made myself clear. If Grooveshark costs eight dollars and hour it's going to be out of business in a day. That doesn't help artists. I only see two scenarios, either the 70 cent tax is avoided in which case no artists are helped, or it's paid on almost every song in which case Grooveshark collapses and no artists are helped.
You might be curious to know that the Burger King in Half Way Tree (a major crossroads in Kingston for those who don't know) had something like the largest grossing grand opening of any BK in the world when they opened on New Year's Eve in 1988. Funny place Jamaica - Pepsi, Blackberry and Burger King instead of Coke, iPhone and McDonalds.
Wow, didn't know that! Last time I was there, I brought a flask of J Wray with me. You should have seen the looks on everybody's face when I uncorked it and started pouring it into the orange juice...I offered some whoever wanted, but no one took me up on the offer....fun times :)
Oh, and you're perfectly right: "Pepsi, Blackberry and Burger King instead of Coke, iPhone and McDonalds."
