I also doubt we’ll see proprietary SSD drives from Apple in a new Mac Pro as it would be wasted R&D as SSD drives have pretty much peaked in terms of speed for the most part, and such a move would only further alienate any Pro user base as I assume any such proprietary drives would be rather expensive.

Apple had cut them at the knees with FCP for a couple grand, as miniaturization and storage were driving down costs for smaller home/project based editing.

Once iJOBS purloined the Creative MP player, and leap frogged into handset phones, the ones who brung em’ to the dance were relegated to become either loyal users, or chaff. (Editors, Recordists and Graphics)

Marketing cycles planned years in advance, have caught up now and the cloud is really all Apple concerns with these days.

The bell curve is peaking and some studious types, anticipate by 2015/16 that Samsung will be number one, and HTC, Apple etc. vying for runner up worldwide (in phones). Note the un-rally in stock prices down almost 3%, statistical but relevant just because some old school protegee passed gas which smelled like the map app.

This UNLESS something truly innovate takes place, which so far is not in the cycles ahead, outside of quad core phones, all announced last CES.

The computer hardware, as noted by many here is a casualty of Apple’s marketing success, and what goes up must come down.

No doubt there will be adherents, successful ones, who navigate well in FCPX but as noted in another forum by a video guy, most major releases are cut on AVID, excepting Act of Valor which Adobe helped build.

Me, well, ATARI was my sequencer because Apple cost twice as much, it still works but I do not use it, along with the first Pro-Mix 01 sold in LA and (2) synched DR4D’s…yadda.

The next step was building my own PC (again because of costs) and yes, I’ve had my share, even now of derision from Apple users/pals some who are even stock holders but my next rig will either be a dual hex processor array, with CUDA and steroid ram which I will build, or I’ll plunk down a goodly sum on the ADK 9000 series due out this month, simply for portability.

ADK who stopped selling iJOBS platforms last year, is a vendor that test drives all of the software under load, which sets set them apart from Sager and the others.

I’d say, under rhetorical license that the GPU/CPU mastery of MAC has been eclipsed for some time now by Intel/Nvidia, and as PCB makers figure out the traces for Lightning, unless the monastics in Cupertino decide to enliven the 5% of loyal users who are solid users, (they could if they wanted to) then as noted in the OP, things will get worse, and that is the new better.

MY $.02 cents.

I told my friend I wanted a fairly powerful computer for editing video and huge batches of RAW stills. When my friend asked what my budget was, I said nervously, “$2500?” He just laughed. I said, “Can I get anything for that?” He said, “You can get almost *anything* with that.” Well, you can certainly outspend that, BUT you can put together one heck of a smash up system for well under $2k. Oh, that’s with SSD boot disk and 6 processors, 32GB RAM, five HDD bays internal and a bevvy of connections on the front and options for way more on the back. (today, comparable system well over $4k at Apple). What will I do with a spare $2000? Dunno, but I can think of something!

What will Apple do? Dunno. But I’m out of the waiting line. I’m sure it will be something very nice when they do launch. I’ve used Apple since 1984. Still have more than a few of their machines. I encourage you to do a little homework. Maybe I’ll regret it and come crawling back with $4500 for a shiny aluminum case. Or not.

Hold on, does this mean there isn’t going to be an FCP 8?

Thunderbolt, along with some genuinely more robust Xeon class chips (not just polished up a bit and clocked a little faster) is absolutely “the thing” that would make the next Mac tower and you’re right, until the Spring there won’t be much anyone can do about it. Apple engineers their own boards, but they can’t put processors and bridges on them if nobody makes those.

I think there’s a relatively small cross-section of film folks who both 1) like the Mac platform in the first place and simultaneously 2) have a deep understanding of how enterprise class hardware is different than gamer hardware, and thus we end up with a lot of well-intentioned but ultimately incomplete analysis.

For the time being, my aging Mac remains the most solid machine I’ve ever messed with that wasn’t installed in a rack. Just like everyone else though, I grow impatient and always look for opportunities to save money. We shall see.