BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

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Marc Wielage

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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostThu Aug 18, 2022 9:52 am

Matt White wrote:Used exclusively Macs for almost 20 years, until Apple burned us badly with "Mac Pros."
Now entirely on Windows. It is likely that BM knows their user base. It is likely that developing for Mac is much easier.

Ehhhhh... the Mac Pros for the last 3 years have been spectacular. Just not cheap. And the current Mac Studios are a good mid-priced choice. (I speak as a user who was hit by the shrapnel of the old Trashcan Mac on a regular basis.)
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostThu Aug 18, 2022 12:17 pm

Windows / Linux / Mac OS's. I use all of them for my work.

But always on customized PC hardware.
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Matt White

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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 12:32 am

Marc Wielage wrote:Ehhhhh... the Mac Pros for the last 3 years have been spectacular. Just not cheap. And the current Mac Studios are a good mid-priced choice. (I speak as a user who was hit by the shrapnel of the old Trashcan Mac on a regular basis.)


We were on that same battlefield. The hardware problems were one thing, and something we could get past. Years of experience with bleeding edge tech teaches patience. What we cannot accept is how Apple dealt with us, and this after many years of helping them sell a lot of Macs. The attention they once gave pros is gone. If you are at a big studio things might be different.

I don't care what brand of hammer I use to put in a nail, and I dont care about Mac or PC. I just want to do my job.

The timing of this conversation is interesting; our Apple issue was their bad GPUs and heat issues. We fought with them for months about it, through every channel; it was exhausting and cost us a fortune in lost time. They really burned us, and did not care; even though they eventually admitted it and replaced our machines, they did not apologize or try to earn our business back.

Last week, we had a minor GPU issue with our PC. Puget had a replacement card sent right out, we swapped it and kept working. No lost time, no lost money, no waiting in line with iPhone users.

The new Macs might be great, but there is more to it than specs.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 12:57 am

2 x Mac (1 laptop & 1 desktop).

I used to build my own Windows computers, and imho it's perfectly possible to put together a reliable and stable system (there are vendors that do so), but by the time you do that you're paying close to what Apple hardware would cost. The thing with Apple is that they don't generally sell budget systems, because they know it will result in a poor user experience.

I think that the level of hardware/OS integration also allows Apple to optimize in a way that is impossible with Windows due to the huge number of possible combinations. That flexibility is also a strength for those Windows users wiling to build and maintain their own systems.

My experience has also been that OS X upgrades have tended to improve performance of existing hardware, extending the life of the product and lowering the overall TCO, whereas with Windows it was often the case previously that a new major OS release meant getting a new computer to be able to run it effectively. Probably not as much of an issue anymore with the progress that has been made in CPU's, memory bandwidth and hardware in general.

There's also the issue (imho) of the lack of security with Windows, but that's a discussion for another time.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 5:02 am

Appreciate all of the responses. I found it informative as it at the very least confirmed my suspicion that those who are active on this forum are predominately Windows users.

By my quick count, it was roughly 67 Windows to 31 Macs.

I would be willing to bet that if one is including the free version installs of Davinci Resolve that Windows is also dominant overall.

Paid Studio version installs might be what BMD is referring to with its use of "majority". Or it might be a "majority" they are referring to in the high-end post-production "creative" world.

I agree with posters who referred to a recent dearth of code updates from BMD for Windows hardware users. But, truthfully, that can hardly be blamed on BMD it seems since the PC hardware crowd hasn't been raising the bar with their innovations over the last few years.

Thanks again,

Erik
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 6:54 am

Windows here.
I'd say what they really mean, is the majority of users with our hardware use a mac, but I'd say in the forum and general use it's more 50:50 for paid and maybe 60:40 Windows overall licences.

Doing a quick keyword search of just this DR forum itself.

1459 microsoft
35183 windows
22733 mac
8064 apple

So
36,642 microsoft related
30,797 apple related
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 10:55 am

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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 11:02 am

I use windows from win32 to dos, I approach macOS from I’d 90 like nextStep Os,
I work with both,but when I want a stable Os I install MacOS or Linux.
Windows from 8 to up is totally unstable on hardware where Linux and MacOS work fine. I’m an old geek that build his computer and in the last years I saw ever and ever worst work of win10 and stability of user.

If you follow Ms dev channel you see every week patch to fight user folder corruption (or if you prefer more popular referents see toms hardware website).
My notebook Asus rogue suffer of user corruption twelve times in three years, I had only win10, adobe suite license for premiere after Photoshop and capture one. Jasper sky like antivirus. It was used for teaching these software, never connected to external lan, never connected external drive or usb pen, only hdmi out and power.
Win 10 do all itself.
I will test win 11 when I would waste a bit of my time, but today my good experience with ms os is only on virtual machine, no more I would think to install windows on a computer to work
i not want to start a fight mac vs pc, i install MacOs on pc hardware to have the hardware that i want, and it's more stable than win on same computer, it's faster than windows, also a simple copy from external to internal disk (same disk, same support, same software Resolve to copy).
Is not a matter of less hardware, is a matter of better optimization of MacOs, it use better the resource of computer.

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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 12:57 pm

6 x Mac
(4 x intel + 2 x M1)
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 2:23 pm

meh, window at home and scores of linux at work... (for all teh locations we have). There are few macs though....
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 3:00 pm

I have been a Windows user until I bought a Studio Max a few months ago so now have both. I still prefer Windows PC. The household is all Windows or Android so no Apple products at all until the Studio Max. I have made my own PC's for many years so that I get exactly the components I want. I have no stability issues that I can recall. The annoying thing with Win10 is the updates ( which I do manually auto turned off ) Usually when this happens it takes a few updates to get everything to see everything on the network again !! Annoying but not a stability or performance issue. I moved to the Studio Max to be able to edit my GH6 5.7K 60P h265 files native and at the time there was no way to get a GPU upgrade for my PC anyway. Current AMD and NVIDIA do not have 10bit h265 decode anyway so for me would mean a new Intel PC with iGPU etc. For 8 bit h264 there is little difference between them with maybe the PC a little faster. Will look at the Intel GPU's when they come out for an upgrade to my PC. With Resolve it is easy to go between Mac and PC anyway. The Studio Max just has Resolve Studio on it but of course the PC has lots of software.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 3:46 pm

tlegvold wrote:it's perfectly possible to put together a reliable and stable [Windows] system but by the time you do that you're paying close to what Apple hardware would cost.
I would say such a builder isn't very good as his job.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 4:35 pm

GuyMannerings wrote:I see a lot of Blackmagic marketing saying how well Resolve works on M1s, and it makes me wonder if Windows + Nvidia works as well with those features, because it doesn't get mentioned.


M1 is a completely different architecture core (Arm64/Aarch64) which adds some special hardware for video processing (ProRes), Machine Learning (16bit floating point matrix computation hardware), and an Apple produced GPU (probably derived from PowerVR in the beginning).

You need a lot of dedicated work to make this run well, and I'm quite sure Apple is interested in helping out with this proposition as much as they possibly can (support, expertise, money, ...). You need to explicitly target all of this hardware, and it's heterogenous in the sense that you need to tap into the hardware specifically to get its benefit.

This is probably why it's important to stress it works well on the M1 hardware. Apple has done architecture changes before with PowerPC -> x86-64, and these changes often require the programs to be adapted.
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BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostFri Aug 19, 2022 4:48 pm

Jim Simon wrote:
tlegvold wrote:it's perfectly possible to put together a reliable and stable [Windows] system but by the time you do that you're paying close to what Apple hardware would cost.
I would say such a builder isn't very good as his job.
Most of builder don’t know how to configure and build a workstation for 3d and postproduction, or when they think to know what to do, they only add muscle to a computer but not build a good stable build.
Try to ask to build a pc with good four gpu, I never find a builder that do research, choose right case (where gpu are horizontal and not vertical stacked) right cooling and correct motherboard.
I have builded ones rig for 3d rendering that work fine with macOS and linux but never with windows10. And work fine from 2019.
Most of builder are skilled for gaming but not for video, and if they build a 5000$ computer they should think is a beast but often had too much bottleneck to work really well. Our work (3d animation, editing, postproduction) is a small fraction of service for builder and often are not interest to do research to do better, use the knowhow of gaming and go…


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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 5:29 am

Jim Simon wrote:
tlegvold wrote:it's perfectly possible to put together a reliable and stable [Windows] system but by the time you do that you're paying close to what Apple hardware would cost.
I would say such a builder isn't very good as his job.


I would say they are good, and that they know that and can charge for their experience and expertise. They won't just charge you for the parts and a few hours labor.

Just my experience, I'm happy on OS X and have no need to go back to Windows.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 7:08 am

windows11 x 2, Linux x 1, OsX x 1
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 11:36 am

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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 1:20 pm

X13 windows
X3 Mac (two are just prores render station’s)




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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 2:09 pm

I've been a PC (DOS) user since 1989. First Windows machine was back in 92. First Mac was bought back in March 2022. Have DR Studio loaded on both PC (main system) and Mac. I used to be on Linux for a few years back in 1994 to present but is more for creating data servers and custom routers than using it as a desktop system.

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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 4:09 pm

tlegvold wrote:They won't just charge you for the parts and a few hours labor.
A fair point.

I was coming at it from the angle of one building one's own workstation, so parts are the only cost.

Such a builder (and I would argue that in today's world, having those skills is nigh on a necessity) can build better Windows for less than a Mac.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 4:11 pm

My personal setup:

(1) Linux PopOS / Docker - 3060RTX Desktop
(1) Mac - MBP 14" (M1)
(2) Windows 11 - 2060RTX laptop / 3060RTX desktop

I acknowledge it is probably a huge PITA for BMD to maintain all these platforms however not only do I personally appreciate it, I think it makes the product overall better. I believe the core system they have developed is more stable because they target all these different configurations. It is kind of nutty that they have developed this awesome x-platform piece of software YET they were able to support the M1 specific features even before Apple or Adobe were able to.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 5:39 pm

It certainly seems from this thread the vast majority are not on Mac. Mac predominates in the US and Australia, that may be what they mean. Whereas in the rest of the world, and very likely Europe and almost certainly the UK, the industry is by far and away PC based. I used to find it annoying at times that manufacturers (Atomos for example) assume otherwise but that's just because of the foregoing. As I say 95% of the UK film and TV post is PC and mainly HP.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 5:42 pm

It is an interesting conundrum. It certainly shapes the software. I bet the UI is harder - especially the keyboard focus stuff - because it’s going through Qt (I think!) which adds a level of indirection between the user and the UI.

But it sure is wonderful that it’s cross platform.


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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 5:48 pm

Joe Shapiro wrote:But it sure is wonderful that it’s cross platform.


I am platform agnostic Joe, Avid and Resolve function the same on both, for all intents and purposes. But I have not personally, as a Broadcast online/offline editor, seen a Mac, in any major facility, in the UK, for over 20 years. Whereas I imagine the reverse may be true in the states.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 7:57 pm

For what it's worth, I'm PC - all of them on Windows 10 Pro (not moving to 11 any time yet).

My main work PC is high spec and ultra-reliable. I use it for many many different areas of work, and I simply wouldn't have the flexibility with a Mac.

As they say in the auto business, everyone's mileage will vary.
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSat Aug 20, 2022 11:46 pm

2 x macs here...
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSun Aug 21, 2022 4:45 am

IsraEliteMedia wrote:I ran across this quote in the BMD Davinci Resolve 18 user manual.

"Since the majority of DaVinci Resolve users currently appear to be on macOS, "

I would like to have an informal survey of the users on this group to see what the proportion is for Windows/Mac users.


Windows+2

... this article can go some way to explaining the BMD preference for mac https://www.afr.com/rich-list/from-housing-commission-kid-to-showbiz-technology-star-20210405-p57gnt
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Re: BMD believes majority of users are on Mac?

PostSun Aug 21, 2022 9:04 am

Windows at home (on the desktop) and Mac (on the laptop), mainly Windows at work with some strange behaviour of corrupted clips on Macs after upgrading at DR18.
Funny enough: on a couple of Hackintosh those clips are fine, only on Apple Macs are corrupted.
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