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Comment: Re:64 GB ECC 32 consumer, pcie vs. sata. compare H (Score 1) 804

by tk77 (#45795847) Attached to: What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro?

This is true if you go to an apple store, and perhaps if you call the regular support lines. Companies generally get their own sales reps who can put them in touch with higher level support people, sometimes even the developers.

A local school had some issues with afp (who doesn't? ;-) and it got to the point where the local rep, regional rep, a few developers and the head of the group that deals with afp actually showed up to trouble shoot and fix it.

Comment: Re:Gather 'round children ... (Score 1) 804

by tk77 (#45793785) Attached to: What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro?

That's not how depreciation works for taxation purposes in any sane jurisdiction. This includes USA where depreciation is set by IRS, not some company PHB.

I'm not an account but isn't that what this says?

Secondly, spending money for the sake of not having income, you may as well just give your employees a raise or bonus instead. They'll be just as happy with a "normal" $1k computer (provided it works for their job), but much happier with $2k bonus per year.

I'm pretty sure its spending money for a much more well equipped computer that would work best for their job. And is also portable, and makes sharing of high speed storage with other systems much easier.

Comment: Re:Fully Loaded? (Score 1) 804

by tk77 (#45793515) Attached to: What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro?

Yes, that software is out there. But it is for the big boys and girls who don't give a fig about the costs of a particular workstation since their overhead is mostly professional people and professional video and audio gear whose prices often start in the five figure range. The Apple tax is just chump change.

One word.

Autodesk Flame.

Comment: Re:More interested if he did $5k. (Score 0) 804

by tk77 (#45793451) Attached to: What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro?

When on location its nice to have a full editing rig. A small, powerful, 11 pound cylinder that uses less then 450w of power is much more portable then the 4x larger previous gen 40lb+ system (even if it does have handles). That along with the high speed external storage that can be easily moved from machine to machine really looking forward to getting mine, sometime in january.

Comment: Re:64 GB ECC 32 consumer, pcie vs. sata. compare H (Score 5, Insightful) 804

by tk77 (#45793287) Attached to: What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro?

The real comparison comes in how good the machine is at doing what you need it to do. If you're making a movie or doing serious sound editing, video editing, or modeling, this machine and the accompanying software is clearly top-tier, compared to trying to assemble a full workflow yourself that includes the hardware, software, and infrastructure integration. And the fact that you just order it off the shelf and it comes with everything and integrates with everything isn't really priced into this comparison.

This is exactly what people seem to not understand. Not to mention trying to get support when your custom built system starts to have issues (blue screening due to drivers, hardware incompatibilities, etc.. ). When you have a project due for a client and some key piece of software starts crashing, or crashing the machine, the last thing you want to have to deal with are the numerous vendors playing the blame game.

Granted, not all software will be fully tweaked off the bat with the new mac pro, but its a system that no doubt the big players (The Foundry, Autodesk, Maxon, Avid, Adobe, etc) will target for testing and make sure their software works and takes advantage of as much of the hardware as is possible. As opposed to testing on randomly built DIY solutions.

For the price, how can you really beat a high end system thats custom built (down to the pcb level), using mostly off the shelf stuff (just assembled in a way thats not convenient to the DIY/tinkerer), supported by a single company, and is / will be used in testing by the actual companies that write the software you want to run on it?

Comment: Re:Why proprietary chargers? (Score 1) 117

by tk77 (#44493277) Attached to: Apple Announces a Trade-in Program For Third-Party Chargers

what is so proprietary about Apple's chargers? Its a USB female connector coming out of the charger. The issue is UL vs non-UL certified knock-offs. You dont need to use an Apple charger, just buy any UL certified charge. No one is forcing you to buy an Apple charger.

Just because it has a UL logo on it, doesn't mean its real.

The following video was meant to be a teardown of a real vs fake charger and it turns out, they were both fake.


Comment: Re:So it's going to be irrelevant (Score 2) 403

by tk77 (#44141397) Attached to: You Will Get DirectX 11.2 Only With Windows 8.1

They could make games with all those features if they used OpenGL. But it seems most of them love being fully dependent on Microsoft so much that they just don't consider switching to open apis.

The last thing game developers want is to make it easier to create native variants of their games for OSX and Linux.. That would be silly.

Comment: Re:So No then (Score 4, Informative) 464

The system is targetted towards professional workstation use. Having rare expensive "external" devices is already common place. External enclosures for running multiple video cards for resolve systems, firewire / esata raid arrays, etc its all being done currently. Also makes it a lot easier to swap devices between systems.

While I would like to have at least an upgradable graphics system, having everything external (for meanyway) is already a standard thing. There's only so much storage you can fit inside the system as is, and most of my graphics needs are via additional cards for cuda/opencl processing.

Being able to swap drive arrays like I was using FW800 but with speeds greater then eSATA will be nice. Being able to just plug in an external enclosure and run cuda/opencl accelerated applications more accelerated.. and not having to worry about internal power, additional psu's, etc will be welcome.

I'd rather be led to hell than managed to heavan.