From: "Stephen W. Ramsden" <sramsden@natca.net>

Date: June 12, 2012 1:31:20 PM MDT

To: <Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com>

Subject: RE: [Astro_IIDC] Re: VT and USB 3


What!  They cant take my Quicktime! 

 

From: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Milton Aupperle
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 2:59 PM
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: VT and USB 3

 

 

Hi Ralph;

Not to belabor things - but no one knows what Apple is doing as far as
product line goes.

The dumped the XServe with no warning and did minor refresher updates
right up until they killed it off. As you pointed out, the 17" is
dead - same reasoning - not enough numbers.

Case in point. Apple introduced OpenGL when they had QD3D and a Dev
team devoted to QD3D. I had already invested about $100 k to QD3D
development for my Mac GIS Business - so I was worried. I was told by
an Apple manager that OpenGL was complementary to QD3D and that QD3D
was in no danger of going away. Three months later Apple laid off and
partially re-absorbed the entire QD3D team and left me, my customers
and tonnes of developers out to dry. The key feature with QD3D was
retained mode with a real file format and player technology to play
the models in a simple viewer that still doesn't exist today.

Same thing with QuickTime - it's dead - unsupported and will go away
with no replacement technology anywhere that can do a fraction of what
it does today (no extensibility, no codecs, no plugins, nothing to
extend AV Foundation - except as Apple has defined it). You can't even
build an App that uses QuickTime on a 64 bit system - and QTKit is
unusable for most low level movie access.

So I have zero faith or clue in where Apple will be in 3 years with
Mac development. But I expect once they have the XCode dev system
running on Tablets - they will not need Macs which are now a minor
part of their business anyhow.

TTYL..

Milton J. Aupperle

On 12-Jun-12, at 12:37 PM, rmegna54 wrote:

> To clarify:
>
> First, basically the 17-inch MacBook Pro is dead. There was no
> refresh and Apple has made it clear that it does not intend to
> continue a model that represents 1% or less (real stats) of its
> laptop sales. Also, its chief value - being able to support HD video
> editing - has been supplanted by the new Retina MacBook Pro, which
> can display 1280P HD, pixel for pixel, with a huge amount of screen
> space to spare.
>
> Second, the "standard" 13-inch and 15-inch MBPs were refreshed with
> USB 3 and newer processors; the rest of their specs are essentially
> the same as before - still have Firewire, still have optical drives.
>
> Third, the Retina MBP doesn't have Firewire, but either of its two
> Thunderbolt ports will take a $30 adapter from Apple and give you
> FW800. Some may complain about the need/cost of the adapter, but
> honestly, if you have just paid at least $2200 for the new MBP,
> another $30 is pretty trivial.
>
> And finally, the "reports" of the "death" of the Mac Pro appear to
> be greatly exaggerated. NY Times writer David Pogue - usually a VERY
> reliable source for Apple products - says this: "Many Apple
> observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are
> dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An
> executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs
> are under way, probably for release in 2013." In other words, the
> quiet Mac Pro refresh yesterday was just that - a refresh - to
> extend the life of the product until a new one can be introduced.
>
> Ralph Megna
> Riverside, CA