Apple News 2012: more for the user, less for the professional

Apple held one of its long-awaited and mythologized product presentations last night at its San Francisco app developer conference. Tim Cook, CEO of the company, made public some of those news that make Apple devotees experience convulsive jolts of pleasure. If you are among them, you will surely enjoy watching the keynote that Applefera provides us.

But as we are all very short of time, I’ll give you a summary (subjective of course) of yesterday’s panorama:

Apple software news. As far as the Apple we know since the arrival of the Ipad is concerned, there are a few new features: new operating system for Iphone, Ipad and I? OS 6 with its own maps application (who do they want to compete with?) and Siri voice assistant in Spanish with the possibility of being used EVEN IN NON APPLE APPLICATIONS LIKE MICROSOFT WORD (more than one will have a heart attack with this news and will call them traitors to their own religion). Also the new version of desktop OS Mountain Lion (go, lynx for those of the peninsula) was officially presented in the way of union of both operating systems. In addition, agreements were announced for Siri to have its own button in the hands of Audi, BMW, Mercedes and hopefully Seat as well. Siri will also be able to be used to voice activate Facebook (I still don’t know how I have been able to live without it) and more new applications were announced for use on mobile devices.

Apple hardware news. Let’s go to what matters to us: the vile metal (no, in this case it is not the dough but the iron, the gadgets) I finish before saying the good things and then move on to the bad. New 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro, with Nvidia graphics again (thank you, I had to buy just the only generation on ATI) yes, up to 1GB of video memory as before, and 2K retina displays (2880×1800). USB 3 has been added to these laptops (and nobody said that Apple was going to implement it, but the truth is that it is a good decision) and i7 processors (as before, of course). In addition to this, an improved Macbook Air was also presented for executives.

End of the improvements, let’s go now with the hard stuff. The 17″ MacBook Pro (I recognize that I don’t like big laptops for everyday use but for video work in the field obviously the bigger the screen the better) and with it the expresscard input that it had, making it impossible to directly ingest Sony SxS cards for XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, Arri Alexa, etc.

It is true that at least they have not left the laptops only with the expansion through Thunderbolt (as fast as expensive) and Firewire 800, but they have opened to the USB 3 standard, but the cancellation of the mentioned port will be a pity for some DIT (¿¿¿¿ who has put that advertising link there???).

There have been no new developments in the Imac but I am sure there will be soon in the same line as the MacBook Pro (retina displays with better resolutions and such things).

And what about our beloved and forgotten MacPro? Well, Apple wanted to disguise as news a simple re-grouping of models. It washes the face of the desktops by changing their basic configurations and price lists. That is to say, if before you made an extended configuration of the fattest you got two 6-core processors Intel Xeon X5670 (12 cores in total) at 2.93GHz, and now with the fat base configuration you have 12 cores at 3.06 Intel Xeon X5675 (of course then the price is not the 3000 and some euros that comes on the page but 6000 and some).

Here you have a new table of the performance of the machines with applications as powerful as FCP X or Civilitation V (which seems to go like a shot, hey… of course, you have to spend 6000 bucks to hit the controller, I don’t know).

NO Thunderbolt is added (let alone USB 3) NO graphics are changed to Nvidia (ATI Radeon HD 5770 and 5870) and nothing is really improved. You may think that Apple wants to give some hope to professional users with this “update” or that they simply want to get rid of stock until finally the MacPro disappears before the Imac Pro, that depends on each of you. Although the outlook out there does not speak very well

For my part after this presentation I still think the same as before (I am also stubborn) Apple has seen what Sony did years ago: it is better to sell millions of expensive but “low cost” devices (comparing an iphone with a macpro) to the posh public (eye, I also include myself) than hundreds of desktop computers to a few professionals. The professional wants to amortize the machine and not buy another one in several years. The posh user buys every new iphone that comes out. The professional does not stop asking for development for the new cameras, support for the latest versions of the programs, update and extension to new graphics, etc. The user doesn’t ask for anything, he buys en masse like the Chinese en masse surrounding the Apple store the first day the iphone 4S goes on sale (what a coincidence that Siri will also support Chinese and Korean) The difference is that Sony has made it clear that it wants to be the new Kodak, and Apple doesn’t seem to care that it has lost Hollywood with the discontinuation of FCP 7.

I’m not particularly Apple professional friendly (I think the iphone is awesome, all said), I use it as a work tool. The day I buy the next computer (in years I hope) I will look at what programs I have to use that only work on the apple and decide if it’s worth the investment, but the way things are going I’m not so sure that the audiovisual industry will not turn to the PC.

I hope the news filtered by my humble opinions have been useful, as always if I’ve made a mistake or you want to add more data or your opinion just comment below 🙂