Tim Wilson: The Wisdom of the COW: Part 2: ProRes for HDV, with a splash of Color

A final note about Apple, ProRes and pre-Intel machines

A recurring query across a number of COW forums has been, how pure are Apple's motives? Some say that Apple's ProRes strategy is motivated by a desire to sell more computers. Absolutely understandable for people to think that. The evidence appears to bear it right out.

However, many others have pointed out that ProRes is indeed a highly processor intensive codec. It takes multi-core Intel processors to pull it off.

We thought it would be interesting to end with some observations from our very own Tim Wilson, a longtime Mac guy who’s also been among Apple’s harshest critics here at The COW, summarized from a couple of posts in different forums.

To someone who writes, "I can't help but wonder if ProRes could have been optimized to work well on a PowerPC chip," Tim replies

I'm going to guess that the answer is "no." Or maybe some combination of "not without pulling lots of people from other critical projects" and "not and ship this year" and similar concerns.

But I suspect probably "no." If Apple could have done everything they wanted to on PowerPC chips, they'd likely still be there...

Here's the thing. Every development effort aims to bring as many people as possible into the tent. More potential customers means more potential money.

Anybody here think Apple's into leaving money on the table?

But they have to be realistic about what's possible. They have to in fact be willing to leave money on the table to do the right thing for the product's long term growth.

BTW, we've seen Apple do this again and again, including killing off the MUCH higher-selling Apple II to enrich Mac's future. Killing off clones to ensure quality development. Cutting qual on OS support for older but otherwise capable hardware. So on. In the scheme of things, this one's pretty minor.

[The fact is that d]evelopers are always trying to push subsystems to the absolute limit. As processors, drives, graphics cards, etc. all get beefier, so do the things you can do with them.

So yeah, it's easy to say Apple just wants to sell computers, but I think having to buy a new computer is just a side effect. It comes from scientists who always want to do more today than they could yesterday.

Which is exactly what we WANT them do. :-)

The hottest features are always going to need the heaviest iron.

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