We always expect some exciting news coming from Apple around the time of their annual developers conference, and for this go-round they certainly did not disappoint. Last week at WWDC 2019, Apple announced two new products at the upper end of their of professional-grade hardware that really have us stoked. Apple introduced a significantly redesigned Mac Pro desktop workstation with an impressive array of new features and performance specifications. Complementing this new top-tier workstation is a top-of-the-line display, the Pro Display XDR, a 32-inch 6K beauty which boasts next-generation HDR capabilities to produce unbelievable image quality. You can read their full press release here.
The new Mac Pro is both modular and highly customizable. Driving this workstation are Xeon-class processors with up to 28 cores, and supporting this processing power is the highest memory capacity ever introduced in an Apple workstation, with the ability to max out the workstation with up to 1.5 TB of memory via 12 physical DIMM slots. Top it all off with a powerful new graphics architecture that includes Apple Afterburner, a programmable accelerator card, and you’ve got a workstation ready to take video editing and 3D animation where it’s never been before. The workstation’s new aesthetics, with an aluminum and stainless steel tower chassis, are simply icing on this delicious cake.
At OpenDrives, we’re always excited when new hardware like this hits the market with the potential to revolutionize post-production and 8K video support. Apple makes specific mention in the press release of the ways in which this new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR will dramatically change 8K workflows, including support for native formats directly from the camera. According to Apple, the new Mac Pro can decode up to 3 streams of 8K ProRes RAW and 12 streams of 4K ProRes RAW video, all in real-time. All this, they claim, will eliminate proxy workflows. By the way, we believe them! We’ve been accelerating media and entertainment workflows on Macs since our earliest days, so this is the type of pro-grade performance we’ve come to expect from Apple.
As post-production outfits begin to make major investments into upgrading to the new Mac Pro, we want to put a spotlight on the other aspect of facilitating high-performance workflows: the storage solution supporting all these screaming-fast workstations. To maximize those capital expenditures moving your creatives to this new platform, you’re going to need a storage solution capable of the highest level of speed and throughput. Why go to the trouble of upgrading your race car’s engine if you’re not going to match it with an upgraded transmission? To tap into all that workstation horsepower that the Mac Pro promises, you’re going to need performance like that of our Apex storage solution. OpenDrives’ Apex does 29 streams of 8K ProRes Raw and 112 streams of 4K ProRes Raw with our OmniDrive technology we can greatly reduce project load times.
Contact us today and schedule a demo and let us impress you!
