[awcopus]

...a reasonable response to the pcpreffered (read "Dell ass kissing") part of Adobe's site.

http://digitalvideoediting.com/Htm/DVEditHomeSet1.htm

Adobe should have optimized their software for OS X. Instead, Adobe has done is ensure that mac video folks flock to FCP.

Hope the check from Dell was worth burning bridges with people who count on Adobe Premiere/After Effects for the Mac. Dumbasses.

[istallion]

I don't track adobe myself, but I have heard they're customer base on macintosh has been declining. I bet they've calculated a point where it would be more profitable to drop mac support, at least on the products where apple is competing with them. Maybe that benchmark comparison was published to try and sway enough people over to reach that point.

[awcopus]

It is certainly Adobe's prerogative to drop Mac support.

It is also their prerogative to create a false impression with this "pcpreferred" site. By indicating to people that a single processor 3.06 GHz Dell is significantly faster *intrinsically* than a dual 1.x Mac, Adobe is spreading a lie.

The reality is that their poorly designed software runs significantly slower on a dual Mac than similar software optimized for the Mac.

Dual processor PCs are more expensive than Apple's current high-end machine, so they should outperform it...and yet for some reason many professionals find that the performance gain is offset by the workflow interruptions caused by the poor overall integration of a Wintel config.

If Adobe is going to bother to produce video software for the Mac, they should optimize it for Mac hardware the way they do for PCs.

[istallion]

Even if a dual gig were 'intrinsically' as fast as 3 gig P4 on most apps(which it isn't), it's beside the point. In the real world, adobe has finite resources. Like all publicly traded companies, its primary responsibility is to turn a profit, not to ensure every platform gets equal attention. So adding features and optimizations goes to where it will make the most money.

[Amorph]

Originally posted by istallion:
Even if a dual gig were 'intrinsically' as fast as 3 gig P4 on most apps(which it isn't), it's beside the point. In the real world, adobe has finite resources. Like all publicly traded companies, its primary responsibility is to turn a profit, not to ensure every platform gets equal attention. So adding features and optimizations goes to where it will make the most money.

It's not quite that simple, because Intel throws lots of money, and lots of engineers, at Adobe. Apple doesn't.

So in this case, Intel has their thumb firmly on Adobe's scales. This has nothing to do with market (Mac users are 40% of Adobe's market, so they have every reason to pay attention to them), or with whether Adobe is publicly traded, or even whether Apple's platform is performance competitive with Intel's (for most of Adobe's market, it is).

[hmurchison2001]

Originally posted by istallion:
Even if a dual gig were 'intrinsically' as fast as 3 gig P4 on most apps(which it isn't), it's beside the point. In the real world, adobe has finite resources. Like all publicly traded companies, its primary responsibility is to turn a profit, not to ensure every platform gets equal attention. So adding features and optimizations goes to where it will make the most money.

Say what you want but it's an embarrasment to see After Effects and it's relative slowness compared to something like Combustion or FCP when coming to utilizing DP systems. Adobe is far too arrogant at this time and point.

[awcopus]

Hopefully NAB will further marginalize Adobe's video offerings.

[I WAS the One]

yeah, but let's get real here... they are after pc people money, they know everyone is saying that graphics is equal to macs, and they want to change that thought. If they think it is a great idea to dump macs clients... they'll be sorry. in fact, apple's apps are great, maybe apple will introduce graphics apps someday and pc people will envy us to eternity!

(time to take my pills...brb)

[cdrgonzo20]

Does anybody seriously believe that the fastest powermac is even remotely close in speed to the 3 ghz pentium?

[Superchicken]

Deppends on what you're doing and how you do it.

[cdrgonzo20]

Any processor intensive application. Video compression/rendering, 3d rendering, gaming, etc... It is a simple fact the latest G4's don't cut it. That's not to say they're bad machines, just saying there is no way they can compare in terms of raw speed.

[awcopus]

BOTTOMLINE: If you read the Performance Preferred article at digitalvideoediting.com, you come away with the clear impression that applications like FCP optimized for Apple's dual G4 configurations run approximately 50% faster than they run on single processor systems.

Adobe's software...the GUI is terrific...but clearly AE fails to take advantage of dual processor Macs.

Adobe is creating a false impression that Apple has let down their software, when in fact their video software has let down Mac users.

THAT is what Adobe can suck on.

No Mac users, nor anyone working at Apple, underestimates that the PowerMacs have reached a new low in overall performance compared with PC counterparts. We've got industrial design and os x on our side, Wintel is the performance king...in general.

But in the video editing arena, the Mac is still a more stable platform and FCP has earned many devotees. Apple knows that it needs to come up with a dynamite, quantum leap forward in performance. They will release it as soon as they come up with it, and when they do they won't be able to keep up with demand.

I just hope they come up with something before the PC's speed allure becomes irresistible. I'd say this is a huge year. Incremental upgrades simply won't do. Apple's Pro line sales are languishing because the new machines do not offer the leap forward in performance that would justify the investment.

C'mon Cupertino! WOW US!

[CubeBoy]

Of course, even if Adobe makes a well threaded After Effects, it will not change the outlook of things by much. A hyperthreaded P4 3.06 ghz takes advantage of a well threaded application nearly as much as a Dual Processor Powermac. My advice, ditch After Effects to the PCs and move to Final Cut Pro which does take advantage dual processors. That way, hyperthreaded P4s and dual Xeons are bottlenecked by the likes of After Effects whereas Dual Processor Power macs with well threaded apps like Final Cut Pro stay competitive with PCs.

[awcopus]

FCP rocks. It's what I use. For some reason, the pcpreferred thing just struck me as so bogus and ill-conceived that I wanted to tell Adobe to suck on something.

FCP is already great....hopefully the version upgrade released at NAB is even better.

[gururafiki]

I don't know about the the other adobe programs, but I thought photoshop took advantage of altivec & DP systems

[hmurchison2001]

Originally posted by CubeBoy:
Of course, even if Adobe makes a well threaded After Effects, it will not change the outlook of things by much. A hyperthreaded P4 3.06 ghz takes advantage of a well threaded application nearly as much as a Dual Processor Powermac. My advice, ditch After Effects to the PCs and move to Final Cut Pro which does take advantage dual processors. That way, hyperthreaded P4s and dual Xeons are bottlenecked by the likes of After Effects whereas Dual Processor Power macs with well threaded apps like Final Cut Pro stay competitive with PCs.

BZZZZZZZZZT Wrong

Anandtechs Conclusion on Hyperthreading

Dual Processors from a performance standpoint will be, for the foreseeable future, preferrable to Multithreading. Of course Multithreading the processor would be cheaper but I really hesitate to come out with statements like you have above. You will not find any data to back up your statements. Even IBM suggests that their Simultaneous Multithreading in the POWER5 could possibly run at up to %80 efficiency. But that's best case scenario.

AMD has come a very long way indeed. If the higher-end Sledge Hammer CPUs do end up featuring two cores it will promise much higher performance than Hyper-Threading can offer because of the fact that there will be double the execution units thus avoiding some of the problems we have addressed today. Again, the biggest downside being the manufacturing of such a chip; we have explained in the past the perils of producing complicated CPUs.

This sums up SMT/Hyperthreading very nicely.

[drmcnutt]

Originally posted by awcopus:
FCP rocks. It's what I use. For some reason, the pcpreferred thing just struck me as so bogus and ill-conceived that I wanted to tell Adobe to suck on something.

FCP is already great....hopefully the version upgrade released at NAB is even better.

So Adobe says their software works better on PCs (which it does). Macs go Dual Processor in an attempt (lame?) to try close the processor performance gap (real or simply percieved depending on who you ask). Perhaps Macs should innovate, since dual processor have already been implemented better by others and go triple-processors.

Any way you slice it Apple's the reason Adobe software is slow. Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator (software I use) work perceptually better in Windows and OS9 (is this the reason OS9 is being swept away simply to stop these performance comparisons?) and sometimes dog out in OSX. It is amusing to see Apple place blame everywhere else. If this was true then there's a lot of software companies with 'splaining to do in Apple's case. If OSX is the perfect flower of a platform for software to run it sure is an everchanging OS with the many point updates since Jaguar.

Do you truly think Apple works hand in hand with Adobe to optimize the competitions software (at least in video editing since they make the superior FCP)? You have to read in between the lines of this grandstanding the companies like to do.

DRM

[awcopus]

Apple's hardware is the major holdup. PCs have fewer CPU bandwidth bottlenecks, whereas Apple has implemented RAM that it's BUS can't feed fast enough.

That said, you seem to be missing the point, drmcnutt. Adobe is a software manufacturer. They are supposed to optimize their software to run on the hardware platforms they support. Adobe has clearly dropped the ball with AE and OS X and current dual processor machines. Their loss.

Today, Apple has announced an extremely promising revamp of DVDSP and an exciting update to FCP. On the day that Apple's hardware catches up with the extremely cool software it makes...from OS X to FCP...that will truly be a celebratory occasion.

[CubeBoy]

Originally posted by hmurchison2001:
BZZZZZZZZZT Wrong

Anandtechs Conclusion on Hyperthreading

Dual Processors from a performance standpoint will be, for the foreseeable future, preferrable to Multithreading. Of course Multithreading the processor would be cheaper but I really hesitate to come out with statements like you have above. You will not find any data to back up your statements. Even IBM suggests that their Simultaneous Multithreading in the POWER5 could possibly run at up to %80 efficiency. But that's best case scenario.

This sums up SMT/Hyperthreading very nicely.

Care to put your money where your mouth is?

This was taken from digital video editing. The benchmark used was AfterEffects. The scores in the first column was done with hyperthreading, the score on the second column was without it, the third column displays how much faster hyperthreading increases the task being done. All the tests were done on a P4 3.06 ghz system.

Simple Animation--|007 secs|008 secs| 11% increase
Video Comp--------|054 secs|058 secs| 07% increase
Data Project--------|125 secs|152 secs| 21% increase
Gambler------------|058 secs|058 secs| 00% increase
Source Shapes-----|254 secs|299 secs| 17% increase
Virtual Set----------|324 secs|349 secs| 07% increase
Average Performance: 10.5%

Now according to CreativeMac, a dual processor 1 ghz powermac recieves a 11% performance gain from AfterEffects to the equivalent single processor variant. So either Creative Mac underscored how much AfterEffects benefited dual processors, which would really defeat the whole point of the debate, or a hyperthreaded P4 has nearly as much to gain from a well threaded programs as a dual processor G4. Which do you think is true?

[Mac Zealot]

Even if macs are currently not faster, they will be again soon, and for the majority of the time, you must admit, they have been faster, up till 4 years ago.

The 970's, while not faster in GHZ, have the potential to be exactly that, and a 970 mhz per mhz is almost 50% faster than a similarly clocked g4.

So the 970 will blow any x86 craptel away.

[I WAS the One]

you know what?

If you put in front of me a powermac and a pc, and both are running a digital video editor app, I dont care if the PC is faster or not... I will always buy the powermac, believe me, 85% of mac users, are like me, they simply choose a mac on top of a pc, because we care. we believe. we love to own a mac. period. Adobe? well, Adobe knows mac better than pc, knows the industry, at the end, they are gonna knock on apple's door saying "I'm sorry"...

L O N G _ L I V E _ T H E _ M A C

[drmcnutt]

Originally posted by awcopus:
Apple's hardware is the major holdup. PCs have fewer CPU bandwidth bottlenecks, whereas Apple has implemented RAM that it's BUS can't feed fast enough.

That said, you seem to be missing the point, drmcnutt. Adobe is a software manufacturer. They are supposed to optimize their software to run on the hardware platforms they support. Adobe has clearly dropped the ball with AE and OS X and current dual processor machines. Their loss.

Today, Apple has announced an extremely promising revamp of DVDSP and an exciting update to FCP. On the day that Apple's hardware catches up with the extremely cool software it makes...from OS X to FCP...that will truly be a celebratory occasion.

Right my point was that Apple would help Adobe optimize their competing product on their OS...not. I'm glad you're excited about FCP I'm sure Apple wants every Adobe/Avid film editor to use FCP in the end. It only makes sense to their bottom line. Switch the name from Apple to Microsoft and then everyone would say monopoly as far as good video editors on OSX which apparently Apple is the only manufacturer with a brass ring. Apple plays both sides of the fence in this one.

DRM

[Amorph]

Originally posted by CubeBoy:
Care to put your money where your mouth is?

This was taken from digital video editing. The benchmark used was AfterEffects. The scores in the first column was done with hyperthreading, the score on the second column was without it, the third column displays how much faster hyperthreading increases the task being done. All the tests were done on a P4 3.06 ghz system.

Simple Animation--|007 secs|008 secs| 11% increase
Video Comp--------|054 secs|058 secs| 07% increase
Data Project--------|125 secs|152 secs| 21% increase
Gambler------------|058 secs|058 secs| 00% increase
Source Shapes-----|254 secs|299 secs| 17% increase
Virtual Set----------|324 secs|349 secs| 07% increase
Average Performance: 10.5%

Now according to CreativeMac, a dual processor 1 ghz powermac recieves a 11% performance gain from AfterEffects to the equivalent single processor variant. So either Creative Mac underscored how much AfterEffects benefited dual processors, which would really defeat the whole point of the debate, or a hyperthreaded P4 has nearly as much to gain from a well threaded programs as a dual processor G4. Which do you think is true?

Since when is After Effects "well threaded?" The whole point of this thread is that it isn't.

If AE was well threaded, it would see an average 50%-80% performance increase on a dual-processor system, even accounting for the G4's constrained system bus. You can see this just by looking at the performance of Mac applications that are well-threaded. The fact that it can't get a better increase from a dual processor system than it can from a HT single processor system simply means that it doesn't take MP into account in a more than notional way, if at all.

[CubeBoy]

Originally posted by Amorph:
Since when is After Effects "well threaded?" The whole point of this thread is that it isn't.

If AE was well threaded, it would see an average 50%-80% performance increase on a dual-processor system, even accounting for the G4's constrained system bus. You can see this just by looking at the performance of Mac applications that are well-threaded. The fact that it can't get a better increase from a dual processor system than it can from a HT single processor system simply means that it doesn't take MP into account in a more than notional way, if at all.

Read all my posts again, I never said AE was well threaded, I did suggest that we ditch AE to the PCs and I did point out that if Creative Mac's graph was true, than a hyperthreaded Pentium 4 would benefit almost as much from threaded programs such as AE as a dual proc Powermac. The thing is, the only way you can improve the
performance for either of these is to make a program better threaded, in other words, you can't increase the benefits of hyperthreading without at the same time increasing the benefits of dual processors.

[hmurchison2001]

Read all my posts again, I never said AE was well threaded, I did suggest that we ditch AE to the PCs and I did point out that if Creative Mac's graph was true, than a hyperthreaded Pentium 4 would benefit almost as much from threaded programs such as AE as a dual proc Powermac. The thing is, the only way you can improve the
performance for either of these is to make a program better threaded, in other words, you can't increase the benefits of hyperthreading without at the same time increasing the benefits of dual processors.

Thanks for that clarification. David Nagels rebuttal clearly points out the deficieny in AE's code. You last sentence hits the bullseye. If Adobe revamps AE for multithreading then performance on BOTH platforms will improve. However Apple had better close the speed gap by that time so that they are more competitive.

BTW no more than ever your advice to move to FCP is spot on. I'm amazed at that apps capabilites for a Grand. If it's stable they Apple has a definite winner.

[bousozoku]

It's taken way too long for Adobe's people to ramp up to changes in Carbon that have been around since Mac OS 8.6. Had they started to get moving then, to migrate their tools to Carbon, they wouldn't be in their current mess and looking like fools.

Matter of fact, that explains a lot of the dearth of Mac OS X-compatible software.

[osxman]

Looks like there is a way to double the rendering speed in After Effects on dual processor Macs.
http://www.creativemac.com/2003/04_a...nder030408.htm

[beb]

Considering everything that FCP 4 does, I really don't need after effects anymore. -With the exception of a few plugins and a really good FCP manual.

[awcopus]

FCP4 is slobberworthy. Just looks so terrific, SO well-thought out. Can not wait.

After Effects will be essentially unnecessary...unessential.

Adobe. 'em right in the ear.

[Mohammed Al-Sabah]

i think that apple is not perfect BUT getting there slowly ... first of all you cant compare apple computers with window based compters

1) only apple makes apple
2) fewer ppl use apple
3) the more users the more money so yes SW companies would say screw the mac world and stay with windows.


so what i think is apple will get there just give it time and spent alot of money

[Un-Inferior]

Originally posted by I WAS the One:
you know what?

If you put in front of me a powermac and a pc, and both are running a digital video editor app, I dont care if the PC is faster or not... I will always buy the powermac, believe me, 85% of mac users, are like me, they simply choose a mac on top of a pc, because we care. we believe. we love to own a mac. period. Adobe? well, Adobe knows mac better than pc, knows the industry, at the end, they are gonna knock on apple's door saying "I'm sorry"...

L O N G _ L I V E _ T H E _ M A C

lol.