"my parents are able to get much comfortable first time, at least, browsing through internet with iPad2. Previously, it is a bit difficult to do in computer, due to confusing steps and what buttons to click after button and what next-to-do."

Set, i had exactly the same experience with my parents. They wanted to use the internet and had some level of success, but it was confusing and they were hampered from exploring what else they could do. My step-dad was given an iPad for his 90th birthday and within minutes he was browsing, searching, downloading apps, and doing skype video chat with his son halfway around the planet. He didn't even feel like he was learning how to use the thing; it just worked and did whatever he wanted it to.

However, they would have had the same experience with an Android tablet. It wasn't anything special about the iPad, it was the whole tablet OS experience. In fact, when they look at my Galaxy Tab 2, except that i have different app icons on the screen, they can't see any difference between the two. Android and iOS are equally proficient at letting users simply tap what they want to do. And, i'll mention, i got the Galaxy for less than half the price of an iPad.

> Posted by: Rob Franks "Watch a few youtube videos on it. It appears very easy. The hardest part is probably all the software reinstalling."

That's the beauty of the Mac. There is nothing to reinstall. You can simply drag software from one Mac and drop it on another and it continues to run but it's even easier than that. I've replaced my older MacBook Pro's 320GB hard drive with a 500GB drive and all you do is install the new hard drive, the Mac will boot to a maintenance menu, you plug the old hard drive into a USB port, open the Disk Utility and select your new hard drive and press Restore and then select the old drive as the source. That's it! When you're done you reboot and you have a new drive with the contents of the old drive on it. Alternately you can copy your old drive to the new drive before installing it. Either way it's 5 minutes of setup and then just wait for the data to transfer.

In the link you gave me to the OWC Aura Pro + Envoy, the "Envoy" is an external USB enclosure for the original SSD so I can just copy the drive with Apple's Disk Utility to the new one. I think I'me going to buy that setup. Thanks again.

~jr

<<
That's the beauty of the Mac. There is nothing to reinstall. You can simply drag software from one Mac and drop it on another and it continues to run >>

As Chienworks said earlier, anyone who writes software for a living would avoid using the registry. All the Windows software I write can be dragged onto to the desktop and run from there, nothing new about that.

In any event JohnnyRoy, you are not likely to make any conversions here, rusted-on PC people like me will never give them up for a Mac, as we like the open architecture of the PC. I have the skills to design both hardware and write complex software for the PC, and I can't do that for the Mac.

>>> I just like Apple's licensing philosophy. You buy the tools you need and use them however you use them, where ever you use them.<<<,

Can I buy, Samplitude, Softimage, Fusion, Vegas, Flash, Photoshop from Apple?

If not, who cares about their licensing philosophy. It's easy to let people install apps on as many macs as they want when all of it is crap that they should pay you to use.

I too have run into plenty of Windows programs that do not use the registry and require no installation. Just run them from your USB drive on any PC. Definitely nothing unique to OSX just like this mac pro's design is absolutely, definitely not unique or new in any way. I've seen cylindrical cases with more advanced cooling 15 years ago. And I am talking about home PCs, not supercomputers.

I'm not an early adopter... but I probably WILL get one a few months post release, after I've read the good/bad reviews. My '08 Mac Pro still runs fairly well and makes money, but more recent software that I'd like to use will no longer run/react.

@JohnnyRoy >> all scream like a 747

Really? So you have not touched a PC since 2000 or so? My six core PC with an upgradable graphics card, is dead silent. No CPY fan noise, no PSU fan noise, no GPU fan noise. Obviously you can get a PC that acts as you describe above, but only if you REALLY want to, and only if you want to spend that money as an Apple fan-boi to try to prove PCs are bad.

Here is the problem with the Mac Pro. It isn't upgradable. At all. Current computer hardware (6 core, 12 core etc) hardware has a life span that is significantly longer than what used to be the case. If you bought a top of the line PC 5 years ago, it'll still be very, very good today. This is because base PC technology is improving at a much slower pace than once was the case, that is, compared to needs. You can upgrade your five year old PC with a new (even PCIe) SSD, you can throw more memory at it and you can upgrade the GPU to a significantly faster GPU.

If I buy a top of the line PC today, for video editing, it will probably be very capable for at least five years, probably closer to ten. There is quite possibly going to be some nice improvements in graphics hardware, there might be some new fantabulous storage technologies etc. All of which I can upgrade to.

You get a Mac Pro today and you can forget about upgrading anything. Ever. If ATI goes under in three years or they just stop upgrading the crappy driver for their cards, you are toast. You can not upgrade to newer technologies, you can not even get a non-crappy driver for the card. Ever.

Limiting choice is not a good idea. Closed ecosystems are great for media consumption devices like the iPad etc, but for tools that are used for paid work, procuring closed, non-upgradable, non-fixable tools is just a bad idea. In ANY business. The Mac Pro simply doesn't fit the bill as a professional tool since it can not be fixed, upgraded or in any way improved when need arises, and down the line, need ALWAYS arises. Apple wants to close its entire ecosystem down so that all choices are made by Apple. That is, as I said, OK for cheap media consumption devices, but someone who buys professional tools designed in this way simply isn't making good, rational choices in his professional life.

Perhaps Apple one day will come back to developing professional products for the professional market (the fact that they have to launch a campaign to bring video editors back to Apple shows how badly they neglected the market. I am not sure they will be able to undo the damage, and the Mac Pro is not a product (IMnsHO) that should entice the professionals.

>> I haven't seen any other computer manufacturer change the form
>> factor of the personal computer like Apple has

Change for the sake of change. That's Apple. When change brings nothing new and no improvements, but significant disadvantages, change is bad. The cylindrical shape is cool, I love the design visually, but since it cripples the computer and makes it impossible to upgrade it, I'd steer away. I want my tools to be maintainable and upgradable. I don't want to edit video and images on an REALLY fast iPad, which is what the Mac Pro has become.

> Posted by: Terje "Here is the problem with the Mac Pro. It isn't upgradable."

I personally find "upgradability" to be highly overrated. In the past 30 years that I've owned and operated PC's, I have never, not once, upgraded a CPU without having to upgrade the motherboard too because the socket has changed. At that point it's a new computer. About the only two things you can upgrade are the memory, which the Mac Pro also allows, and the GPU which the Mac Pro does not allow. So I would have to agree with you that being able to upgrade the GPU on the Mac Pro would have been nice, but it's not a deal breaker for me because personally, I also find GPU's to be highly overrated for video editing but I'm confident that the new FCPX will take full advantage of the dual GPU's in the new Mac Pro.

> Posted by: Terje "Limiting choice is not a good idea."

It's an acceptable idea to me if it provides other benefits like greater stability and tighter hardware/software integration and eliminating the need for me to be the systems integrator. It might not be acceptable to you and that's OK. I'm am content with someone else doing that and just buying the result and using it to get my work done.

> Posted by: Terje "Change for the sake of change. That's Apple. When change brings nothing new and no improvements, but significant disadvantages, change is bad"

For me, getting the large tomb stone box off of my desktop is an improvement. Having a silent computer is an improvement. While my 6 core doesn't scream like a 747 as did older PC's (I had one with 7 fans once), I can still hear my Noctua NF-P12-1300 120mm CPU Cooler Fan blowing over my CORSAIR H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler and it bothers me because all of my other Apple computers and devices are silent.

When I bought my Mac Mini, I loved it. I said to myself, "I wish Apple would put a quad core in this thing and add a powerful GPU and it would be perfect for video editing!" That's exactly what Apple did with the Mac Pro. They built the computer that I wish they would.

I, for one, will welcome a smaller, more powerful yet silent computer that actually looks nice on my desktop.

~jr

>> I have never, not once, upgraded a CPU without

Neither have I. That's why I specifically didn't mention the CPU but pointed out that if you buy a top of the line PC today it will probably be a really, really good PC five years from now, or even more. HOWEVER, where CPU development is far less important than 10 years ago, what happens on the GPU side is still quite exiting, and what the video software vendors are doing is also quite exiting, so changing your graphics card is quite probably something you'd want to do in the future. That is, of course, unless you buy a Mac pro, then you are saying you have no such interest.

You are ALSO saying that you trust AMD to upgrade their drivers for old graphics cards in a timely and professional manner. Given that AMD in the past have shown no such inclination, your trust is wildly misplaced. So, when Sony or Adobe, three years from now, say they can not fully support your graphics card because of poor AMD driver support you are toast.

>> It's an acceptable idea to me if it provides other benefits like
>> greater stability and tighter hardware/software integration

I have a bunch of PCs, and if I stay away from cheap, crappy hardware, they are all rock solid. I haven't had a PC crash for years. The last PC where I had Windows crash was an XP PC, and if you are still on XP today you need a hardware upgrade between your ears. I got Vista 64 bit SP1 once it was out, and I have never had a crash since.

I have had some software crash, but not a PC. The myth that PCs crash often is just that, a myth. That is, unless you have an el-cheapo PC with el-cheapo RAM and a graphics card from El Cheapo Inc. Remember, the absolute highest load on all of the Apple infrastructure is running solidly on Microsoft Windows. The entire iCloud is on Windows Azure, which is Windows Server 2008. Windows Server 2008 is the same core as Windows 7.

"It's an acceptable idea to me if it provides other benefits like greater stability and tighter hardware/software integration and eliminating the need for me to be the systems integrator."

This statement I find a little silly. There is no proof whatsoever that fewer choices offers greater stability. My iphone offers fewer choices than my Galaxy but I find my iphone to be far less stable overall. This is merely an assumption or opinion which for some reason Apple lovers throw around as fact.

Now one could say that fewer choices would better limit your ability to screw up, but then that's the operator and not the machine itself.

> Posted by: Rob Franks "There is no proof whatsoever that fewer choices offers greater stability."

I'll tell you what... tell the Sony Vegas Pro development team that they only have to support ONE graphics card and then stand back and watch how stable GPU support becomes in Vegas Pro!

~jr

"I'll tell you what... tell the Sony Vegas Pro development team that they only have to support ONE graphics card and then stand back and watch how stable GPU support becomes in Vegas Pro!"

That seems like a very good point!

"I'll tell you what... tell the Sony Vegas Pro development team that they only have to support ONE graphics card and then stand back and watch how stable GPU support becomes in Vegas Pro!"

You're simply stating what already exists. Apple operates in a closed atmosphere with limited choices, but there is still instability and crashing. My iphone although slightly anecdotal is an example which you have ignored. Agin no form of proof.... but I'm always stunned at the number of hits you get when you google "mac crashing" If even 1/2 of those are authentic then what does that say about your closed and restricted atmosphere being stable???

This isn't limited to Apple though. Avid operates on a somewhat closed scale as well.. but still there is crashing and instability

Once again, there is no proof whatsoever that limiting choices increases stability. This is you and your somewhat (nonobjective) opinion.

"Once again, there is no proof whatsoever that limiting choices increases stability. This is you and your somewhat (nonobjective) opinion."

The following is my (subjective) opinion:

Since an informed declaration concerning the existence or non-existence of a relationship between hardware "openness" and stability requires more than merely anecdotal data, which I conclude none of us here possess, it is apparent that each of the following statements is simultaneously equally supported and unsupported by our collective personal and unshared anecdotal data:
a. There is no proof whatsoever that limiting choices increases stability;
b. There is no proof whatsoever that limiting choices decreases stability;
c. There is no proof whatsoever that increasing choices increases stability;
d. There is no proof whatsoever that increasing choices decreases stability.
In the absence of detailed objective data any statement on the subject is merely opinion. Every opinion is subjective. Any opinion on the objectivity of others' opinions is subjective. Perhaps our efforts would be better invested in accepting for evaluation others' opinions for what they are, rather than scolding others for what their opinions are not.

>"there is no proof whatsoever that limiting choices increases stability"
This reminds me to an article I read 2 years ago, about one High-end RAW capture-capability camera being NOT stable in the field and stop working..., and finally he is not comfortable anymore on using that camera...
Assuming the hardware of this camera is specially designed and very close design, and it is installed with special operating system (and no choice for other OS) to run that camera, why their camera still get failed in the field ?
Hint to what this camera is
*I hope this camera is now more stable after this incident happened...

"In the absence of detailed objective data any statement on the subject is merely opinion."
No. It is FACT.

There is no proof whatsoever that limiting choices increases stability. This is not an opinion, but pure fact. It also stands to reason that if there is no proof that limiting choices increases stability then also no proof exists to the opposite. In other words one would prove the other either way.

That all being the case, I have to ask... what exactly was the point in your post?

> Posted by: Rob Franks "There is no proof whatsoever that limiting choices increases stability."

Rob, Your statement is correct. Limiting choices all by itself does not guarantee increased stability, it simply increases the chances for better stability. Programmers can, and do, write buggy code for closed systems. But my statement is based on the combinatorial math problem: Given X motherboards and Y GPU's there are Z combinations where Z = X * Y results in a large number.

Stated another way, supporting a large number of configurations will always be harder and more error prone than supporting one configuration. But to your point, there are no guarantees where human programmers are involved. ;-)

~jr

@jr. - "But to your point, there are no guarantees where human programmers are involved. ;-)"

NOW you tell me!

Oh well, that's another illusion shattered.....

G

"Stated another way, supporting a large number of configurations will always be harder and more error prone than supporting one configuration."

And that's a really empty statement. What you're basically saying here is that you like the choice restriction because there is a CHANCE, or a possibility, a likelihood, a maybe, a potential, a prospect, a glimmer of hope, a leap of faith that there is added stability. You have restricted yourself over a wild assumption.

Let me ask you this... bearing in mind Apple is not a dumb hick outfit and that they are very good at marketing, does it not make sense that if they could prove that restriction = stability, then they would have done it and used it as a marketing tool long ago?

Well, as long as we're suddenly flying on assumptions likelihoods, please allow me to add mine;
Apple restricts for one main reason... MONEY. It's cheaper and more profitable to avoid choice. Is choice more expensive to present? Sure it is, and of course part of that expense is the increased possibility of error and combat of that error. Now let's be clear on this, it doesn't mean there IS increased error, only the increased possibility of error, which means there must be an equal increase of error proofing, and that costs money. Apple can also take massive advantage with this restriction as well. What happens if you buy the smaller iphone and find you keep running out of memory?

Now, this restriction of choice has never really bothered Apple before because they have never really had to worry about competition. Competition between mac an pc has never really existed since Jobs freely admitted long ago that pc has won the battle. But I do find it quite interesting how Apple choice is all of a sudden beginning to expand in areas where Apple is now being forced to compete in. Case in point, the iphone 5c and the ipad mini. Apple has clearly recognized that when competition enters the arena, choice MUST follow.

And I think it is worth pointing out that the Mac, through Apple, does have a marketing and promotions division. Since IBM left the game, the PC has none.

> Posted by: Rob Franks "And that's a really empty statement. What you're basically saying here is that you like the choice restriction because there is a CHANCE, or a possibility, a likelihood, a maybe, a potential, a prospect, a glimmer of hope, a leap of faith that there is added stability. You have restricted yourself over a wild assumption."

Nope. That's from my personal observation. Vegas Pro still has problems with the GPU requiring people to turn it off sometimes to get their renders to work properly (myself included). FCP X has no such problems and simply works as expected all day, every day, on my MacBook Pro. (I have, and use, both so this is MY personal observation) Does Apple have better programmers than Sony? or do those Apple programmers have a lot less hardware combinations to worry about?

Vegas Pro users have been pleading with Sony for years and years to just tell them what hardware they test on so that they can buy the same hardware and get their Vegas Pro to work without problems but Sony has remained silent. Apple customers have no such problem. The programmers are developing on exactly the same hardware that their customers are using. The result is software that works on your Mac the same way it did on the developer's Mac because it is the same Mac! Why do you think that companies like AVID certify hardware and if you're not using certified hardware they won't support you? Try telling AVID that their limit to certified hardware is "a silly empty statement" and see how far you get with support.

Device drivers are the biggest reason for system instability. One badly written driver can take down a whole operating system. Microsoft has to write and test drivers for an almost infinite number of hardware combinations. Apple engineers have a very limited set of drivers to write. This is part of why they'll never allow their OS to run on generic machines. If they did, I'm certain that Apple customers would have many of the same complaints about Mac OS as they do about Windows. By tying the hardware and software so closely together, Apple can control all of the variables and maximize hardware exploitation while minimizing instability.

Here is a quote from an interview with Valve Software founder Gabe Newell and developer Jason Mitchell about them porting their Steam game platform to the Mac:

--------------------------
Beyond raw performance, however, Mitchell noted that the Mac has other advantages. For instance, with just a model and OS version, programmers can more easily recreate bugs and profile hardware performance on the Mac. Windows users benefit from faster driver updates while Mac users might have to wait for Apple to roll out a point release, but
--------------------------

Those are not my words. Those are the words of respected software developers who support both PC and Mac. If you don't believe the combinatorial math problem that supporting infinite hardware variations poses then I can't help you understand. Software developers from companies like AVID and Valve understand this very well. This is not conjecture or a "wild assumption" I assure you.

~jr

"FCP X has no such problems and simply works as expected all day, every day, on my MacBook Pro. (I have, and use, both so this is MY personal observation) Does Apple have better programmers than Sony? or do those Apple programmers have a lot less hardware combinations to worry about? '

Then I would suggest you to be as lucky with fcpX as I am with Vegas because if you search for "problems" or "crashing"on both products you will find a large swath of hits on both ends.... So your comment says what exactly?

"The programmers are developing on exactly the same hardware that their customers are using. The result is software that works on your Mac the same way it did on the developer's Mac because it is the same Mac! "
Which is exactly why I'm stunned to see so many hits every time I do a search on "mac crashing".



Can you explain that? Why am I getting over 7 million hits on "mac crashing" if this closed system of yours uses the exact same hardware all the time? (And that's a pretty conservative number too because when I change the search statement slightly to "mac crash" I get 53 million)

Don't get me wrong JR... I'm not calling you a liar in the least. I believe you and I don't think you can relate to those high hit numbers... just as I don't really understand what all the "vegas crashing" is all about in this forum. I have been an extremely satisfied Vegas user for a great many years. Like you with your fcpx, I can probably count the number of times on one hand where Vegas has caused me serious problems. Now, are we just lucky? I haven't a clue, I just know that Vegas works for me reliably all day and all night.

Still, one has to wonder why so many hits on a system if restriction of choice = stability?? Couple that with Apple's notion that macs are simple to operate and that "macs just work", one would expect next to nothing in the way of mac issues. Clearly this is not the case, so who's lying here (or at least exaggerating to the Nth degree)?

"Device drivers are the biggest reason for system instability. "
Is this your opinion again?

"the proliferation of possible hardware-software configurations makes it much more difficult to pin down problems"
But I don't debate this at all!?!? I have stated so much in my previous post. But this dos not for one second mean those problems are not found and corrected. What it means is that you have to spend more money on problem solving... which is EXACTLY why apple restricts in the first place.

I didn't say that Macs don't crash. I don't use FCP X as much as I use Vegas Pro 12.0 (Vegas Pro is still my main editor and the only reason I still have a 6 core PC workstation on my desktop) so perhaps I haven't used FCP X enough to uncover any problems. I'm still learning it and I just started using it at version 10.0.9 so I'm sure I would have had a much different experience had I used version 10.0.0, 10.0.1, etc.

All I know is that my MacBook Pro gives me a lot less trouble than my old Windows laptop did. Maybe it's all in my head. ;-)

BTW, Googling "windows crash" yields 169 million hits. That's a few more than 7 million but is an equally invalid number. Hit's mean nothing. You can make hits say anything you want by changing the words you search for. When a developer from a major software manufacturer does scientific measurements on how many minutes his customers use his product without crashing, and determines that Mac's crash 5 times less... that's scientific evidence. How much that can be attributed to it having less hardware configurations to support is still someone's opinion I guess.

~jr