Any Hope for Vegas on the Mac

[Roger Shealy]

Anybody know if Sony has any plans to create a Mac version? Seems Premiere Pro is cleaning up right now by supporting both platforms, in addition to having great software in a great suite. Vegas on the Mac would do well.

[Edward Troxel]

Vegas runs fine on a Mac - as long as you're using Windows. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a Mac specific version.

[David Jimerson]

Vegas leverages too much of Windows for there to be a Mac OS version.

[Steve Game]

Why should Sony almost double the development and support costs just to include a minority platform?

Steve

[Brian Drysdale]

One thought could be a higher percentage of the creative types using mac compared to the overall general market. Although, if it's cost effective to develop a mac version so may be another question. I guess if you want a Vegas type NLE on the mac you'll currently have to go for FCP X.

[Steve Game]

Despite a large part of the mac's market lying with the creative media user, I doubt whether that fits in with Sony's corporate strategy including that for Vaio products. They have a track record of supporting one market from another product range, e.g. PS3 giving Blu-Ray the winning edge.
Adobe on the other hand is after all just a software provider with their main market in the professional graphics business and publishing.
Other than avoiding the need to buy a PC to run it on, I can't see what the mac as a hardware platform would do to benefit video editing in Vegas.

Steve

[Brian Drysdale]

Yes, Sony is in the PC manufacturing camp, so I guess that makes it as likely they'll make a mac version of Vegas as for Apple to make a window version of FCP.

I guess you could always boot into windows on your mac. Some people are doing that with Lightworks beta pending the mac version becoming available.

[Roger Shealy]

The purpose for this post was more to see what you guys thought of Vegas going dual platform. Do you see the emergence of the Mac as a threat or opportunity for Vegas - which I see as perhaps the best editor available for many levels of users.

I'm watching my friends and colleagues switch to Mac in droves. At work Mac will probably garner well over 50% 0f 1,200 employees as we update computers over the next 12 months. I'll be getting my first Mac in April at work having used PC's exclusively since 1984. I'll likely try bootcamp or parallel with Vegas on the Mac, but still have a PC at home.

To answer the question why Sony would add complexity by supporting two platforms; it seems two things are happening:

1. We're in a two platform world and the Mac is winning market share. Companies like Adobe have much to gain by supporting both platforms. FCP, Vegas, and other single platform NLE's/graphics have much to lose if sharing is difficult or impossible.
2. Mac has made the integration of phone, iPad, to iMac/Air... incredibly fluid, painless, and productive. It just seems to "work".
3. Fewer and fewer of us are willing to be IT technicians setting up hardware, networks, and troubleshooting. My Apple friends just seem to have less problems and their systems work longer.
4. Computers are becoming so capable that ultimate horespower isn't as important as it used to be. Perhaps editing is one of the last bastions valuing elite hardware. but even we are on the steep curve of diminishing value returns.

My 2010 i7-950 and GTX 470 is plenty capable and now easily bested by newer hardware. In my next system I will place more value on stability, ease of ntegration, and longevity over processing speed. I'll dip my toe into Mac waters and I'm sure I'll be the wiser to its warts and limitations.

[David Jimerson]

I don't see where the Mac is particularly more "emergent" these days as compared to how it's always been, particularly in the video editing field (i.e., ~9-11% of the overall computer market, and probably a majority of the "prosumer"-level editing world; it's been pretty consistent all along). I don't see where it affects Vegas either way any more than it always did.

But in any case, as I said above, Vegas leverages Windows for a lot of its internal functions, so porting over to Mac OS would probably result in a very different program. There is no reason to think there's any plan to do this.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Roger Shealy

The purpose for this post was more to see what you guys thought of Mac going dual platform. Do you see the emergence of the Mac as a threat or opportunity for what Vegas - which I see as perhaps the best editor available for many levels of users.

I'm watching my friends and colleagues switch to Mac in droves. At work Mac will probably garner well over 50% 0f 1,200 employees as we update computers over the next 12 months. I'll be getting my first Mac in April at work having used PC's exclusively since 1984. I'll likely try bootcamp or parallel with Vegas on the Mac, but still have a PC at home.

To answer the question why Sony would add complexity by supporting two platforms; it seems two things are happening:

1. We're in a two platform world and the Mac is winning market share. Companies like Adobe have much to gain by supporting both platforms. FCP, Vegas, and other single platform NLE's/graphics have much to lose if sharing is difficult or impossible.
2. Mac has made the integration of phone, iPad, to iMac/Air... incredibly fluid, painless, and productive. It just seems to "work".
3. Fewer and fewer of us are willing to be IT technicians setting up hardware, networks, and troubleshooting. My Apple friends just seem to have less problems and their systems work longer.
4. Computers are becoming so capable that ultimate horespower isn't as important as it used to be. Perhaps editing is one of the last bastions valuing elite hardware. but even we are on the steep curve of diminishing value returns.

My 2010 i7-950 and GTX 470 is plenty capable and now easily bested by newer hardware. In my next system I will place more value on stability, ease of ntegration, and longevity over processing speed. I'll dip my toe into Mac waters and I'm sure I'll be the wiser to its warts and limitations.

Here is the problem with your logic:

1) Most of the Apples sold these days are those all-in-one machines that cannot be upgraded at all (or have their internal components permanently sealed from user accessability) - and their performance is only on a par with a good laptop PC at best. They do not support more than one single hard drive internally (video editing requires a minimum of two fast hard drives - but most currently available consumer external hard drive kits are too slow for use for anything besides backups), and they come with laptop-class GPUs (no desktop-class GPUs) and often low-power, lower-performance CPUs (this is to minimise or even avoid the risk of overheating in such cramped systems when they are stressed by such taxing video editing programs - and again, at the serious expense of performance).

2) The only Apples that are IMHO any good for video editing are the super-expensive (and internally user-upgradable) Mac Pros - but those machines have not been updated at all since the current iteration of the line debuted in September 2010. And their internal components are clearly previous-generation, which means that the future of that line is uncertain. Worst of all, Apple has not reduced the price of the systems at all - and they continue to charge exhorbitant prices for any available hardware upgrades (as much as seven times what those exact same parts sell for elsewhere). That pricing is another reason for the uncertain future of the line.

3) Increasing video resolutions (in the future) will only demand even more processing speed. There is absolutely no way at all whatsoever around this fact.

So in other words, Apple is shooting itself in the foot as far as the Mac platform is concerned. On the one hand, they are investing in newer-generation hardware - but then, they are resticting the use of such newer hardware to their lower-end all-in-ones where performance expectations are relatively low to begin with. One step up, two steps back.

By the way, my current main editing rig, powered by an i7-2600K, is clearly being held back by the GTX 470, which does not perform all that much faster than a non-Ti GTX 560 or an even older-gen GTX 285.

[David Jimerson]

More than that, I suspect the Mac may be on the way out entirely, as more and more of Apple is devoted to consumer electronics and music downloads.

[Adam Stanislav]

With Steve Jobs dead, does anyone seriously expect Apple to continue coming up with new and revolutionary products?

[Roger Shealy]

Thanks for your input. This computer's main purpose is for office work and travel, although I sometimes edit single camera pieces from a point-and-shoot camera or a t2i for business presentation purposes. If the MacAir can't handle that, I have editing PC's at the office and at home loaded with Vegas Pro & Adobe.

On a side note, the firms we hire at work for high end graphics and video work overwhelmingly use Macs. I'll be watching carefully to see if they switch platforms given the disappointment of FCPX and the comments on this and other threads about Apple steering towards the average consumer and away from the high end user. Adobe CS appears to be positioned beautifully in the market right now.

[Brian Drysdale]

They mightn't need to change, since AVID and Premiere, the main NLE programs that people seem to being considering for replacing FCP7, can be used on either PC or Mac.

[Ken Matson]

Originally Posted by Roger Shealy

On a side note, the firms we hire at work for high end graphics and video work overwhelmingly use Macs. I'll be watching carefully to see if they switch platforms given the disappointment of FCPX and the comments on this and other threads about Apple steering towards the average consumer and away from the high end user. Adobe CS appears to be positioned beautifully in the market right now.

But this is not new .. that has always been the Mac wheelhouse ... creative types. If anything, from my viewpoint, it's PCs that have crept more and more into Mac territory in that arena. It used to be that you could hardly find any kind of graphics, design, etc. software being used by pros on a PC - it was all mac --- now you see a lot of PC, not only for video, but graphics as well.