Part 3 of the speed tests, though this time against some PC GTX 680’s (which would take additional power to run in a MacPro or should), wish they had tested against my GTX 670 EVGA with 4GB of RAM.
Wired Magazine has 5 great ideas on how iTunes needs to be fixed, and I totally agree!
The new Search is horrible, and slow and buggy. It is needs to be fast and simple.
They should also add allowing you to default to song view instead of the useless album cover view! And yes a tiny helper app that lets other computers pull songs and work would be great. And even if they don’t pull video out (though a better app with Apple TV support and organization abilities would be awesome) better controls would be great.
Apple has announced the WWDC, or World Wide Developers Conference for June 10th-14th.
This would be a perfect place to announce a new MacPro as these are Developers, and this has been a venue in the past, though Tim Cook in his recent call said that they had new things for the fall.
Honestly if there is no MacPro announced at the WWDC, it is time to start thinking of moving to PC, as I just can’t trust in Apple anymore. And they have had years to work on a new MacPro and the current model currently can’t even be sold in Europe! They need a new model and it needs to be before the Fall (if it is even then, as all we know is that Tim Cooke said something about a new MacPro this year).
The only thing that gives me hope are the new video cards, the NVIDIA Quadro 5000k and the GTX 680 being released for Mac.
Netkas has posted that yes the incredible $1000 single CPU GeForce Titan does work in the MacPro with the updated NVIDIA drivers in OS X 10.8.4. How is the power draw though? Would it work without external power is the question? It is supposed to draw 250 watts vs the 670’s 170 watts, so I am assuming that is way too much.
Bare Feats has posted it’s second part of it’s Geforce GTX 680 Review and the results are mostly good. It does get beat in Cinema 4D and Motion 5 by the GTX 680MX in the top of the line iMac, but that is likely because of the older hardware and buss speed of the now ancient MacPro over the newer hardware in the iMac. Still it does win for DaVinci Resolve, After Effects, and Octane. Hopefully it would really whoop ass in a new MacPro if that ever happens.
Awesome to have the choice now and not have to get something off of ebay that is many generations old!
Barefeats has some speed tests and things are looking good for gaming, though I would like to see some Premiere Pro and After Effects Speed tests (especially with the Quadro 5000K in the tests).
Now if only Apple would allow more than 2GB of RAM (yes I know the QUADRO 5000K has 4GB of RAM, but you still have to hack your mac to get a PC NVIDIA card to run that has more than 2GB of RAM).
Electronista has a rumor that it may happen this month, though I am not holding my breath. I am betting on the WWDC, whenever that is. And I am also betting it won’t be as much as we want in a replacement.
Yes, I was a backer of the Pebble Smartwatch Kickstarter Campaign and got a black Pebble when it came out. And they can now be ordered for $150, though through Kickstarter I got it for less. It is a pretty impressive watch, with the ability to display notifications from your iPhone or Android, though it is still a little buggy, with me having to reset Notifications on my iPhone a few times a day.
Overall I enjoy it, and like that the SDK is now out so third parties will be able to write there own watch faces and applications.
Still it needs to get better. The RunKeeper application has not been included yet, even in Beta for iOS (though Android users have been able to try a BETA), and my biggest complaint is battery life.
Not only does having it on, and bluetooth in use drain my iPhone 4 very quickly (we are talking down to 20% by the end of the day), but the old school bluetooth in my iPhone 4 really drains the Pebble quickly. In fact while it has gotten better (it used to not last 24 hours), but now with the latest firmware 1.10 I would say it lasts more like 36 hours without a charge. Still not so good. And even worse is what happened last night. I connected my Pebble to it’s charger and left it. It was still connected to my phone, so vibrating, and somehow managed to unconnected the power. So today my watch is on it’s last legs, and not likely to even make it through half the day because it disconnected itself last night! Certainly not so good.
I am sure the battery life would be much better if I connected to my iPad 3, but since I don’t currently have cellular hooked up to it, that would only work when near a wifi connection, so not all that often. I am sure it would be better if I ever got an iPhone 5, or 5s when that comes out, but I find that unlikely right now!
Overall I really like the Pebble. I like being able to see my e-mails and preview them, so I know when I really need to check e-mail, as I am usually editing on other people’s computers, so I don’t have a dedicated e-mail program open and must stop and check to see if I got e-mail. Of course it can also get annoying, as some times my watch is buzzing allot, and it sucks that you can only see your latest message, especially when you get a bunch of messages at once!
I am looking forward to RunKeeper and other 3rd party applications, and better battery life would be great!
Mark Christiansen at the Pro Video Coalition has a good article on running a Hackintosh instead of a MacPro. Well worth the read, and I especially like the ending.
Let’s be clear: the situation with Apple and the Mac Pro right now is identical to what was going on with Final Cut Studio in the years between its final version and Final Cut X.
In other words, there’s no reason for Apple to be stealthy or mysterious with its plans, unless they are likely to upset a large set of Mac users
Or dislike it, but agree. If Apple really is going to release an amazing new MacPro that will please professionals, why not just talk about the damn thing. Sure they won’t sell any more MacPro’s, but the ancient machines can’t be selling too well as is, and has already been pulled from Europe.
It would be so nice to know if it is time to move to windows (ugh, I do really hate Windows 8) and be able to run inexpensive but powerful NVIDIA cards to propel Adobe programs to insane speeds.
Apple has better make the announcements at the WWDC rumored to be in June or it will be time to really think giving up on Mac all together, no matter how much I don’t want to!
Apple has Updated Final Cut Pro X to 10.0.8
They are continuing to update with unpaid updates, but I still don’t see FCP as a professional software even if it has professional underpinnings.