[Music]
all right we're finally doing it we're
reviewing the max pro in the pro xtr
display the Mac Pro is Apple's new
high-performance
modular mac tower for pros pro pros
actual professionals this isn't air pods
pro fancier and more expensive this is
pro we're gonna use this thing for
making TV shows producing music building
apps stuff where you need all the power
you can get and the back story is that
Apple basically forgot about this market
for a long time in 2013 announced the
previous Mac Pro the round computer that
we affectionately called the trashcan it
didn't update it forever and then after
a lot of consternation on the future of
the Mac Apple admitted in 2017 that it
had gotten the thermal design wrong and
was gonna start over then we waited for
another two years and now we've got this
mac pro big dog most powerful Mac ever
made and it's basically what people were
asking for it's a big tower it's modular
you can spec it with a variety of
processors and graphic cards it's got a
bunch of slots a headphone jack you can
basically do anything with it and let's
be honest the Mac Pro has actually been
out for a little while and a lot of our
friends up there on YouTube have been
testing it and all those videos are
great but that means to add to the
conversation we've got to do something a
little bit different and then there's
the problem which is that the Mac Pro is
endlessly configurable you can buy the
base model for six thousand dollars or
you can spec it all the way out to 54
thousand dollars with a 28 core
processor in two dual GPUs so just
picking a macro to review as a challenge
there's no way to pick a single
configuration that's best for everyone
but we have an advantage the verge is
part of Vox media and we know a lot of
people here who work on fancy media
projects just a couple floors below us
there's an entire team of people making
Netflix and Hulu shows we've got huge
daily podcasts that come out people here
work on print magazine design and of
course the Verge's own art and video
teams make illustrations and motion
graphics for our site and YouTube all
day long so we called everyone and asked
them to use the mat Pro and the protists
play XDR to do their jobs hi my name is
Marilla Silva I'm the director of
post-production technology here Vox
hi I missed ELQ as well I'm a senior
video producer at voxcom and CB Remsburg
and I'm an art director at New York
Magazine
my name is Grayson Blackmon I'm senior
motion designer at the verge my name is
no I'm Hassenfeld
I'm a reporter producer for today
explained which is box's daily podcast
I've been building and maintaining
post-production facilities for about 16
years before I was here box I was at the
facility that did all the color work for
Game of Thrones I've worked on the
Netflix explain series but you probably
know me from my music series earworm on
Fox's YouTube channel is the most feared
song and jazz explained by box there's a
time where if you watch TV you probably
saw a commercial I worked on all right
step one we still have to configure a
MacPro
we wanted a machine that we will
realistically use in our day-to-day
specs are only half the story here
because like most people we also have to
stay within a price range that makes
sense for a business which in this case
was about $17,000 we felt 16 cores at
3.2 gigahertz it was a sweet spot in
terms of price performance for Adobe
Premiere and After Effects and of course
that dual Radeon Pro Vega 2 video cards
to help crunch those GPU effects at the
price point we select that we should be
able to handle heavy editing workflows
raw footage in real time and pretty
decent color work and resolve we kept
the RAM pretty modest but did invest in
an afterburner card which we probably
won't use very much we really wanted to
see high performs so that's our Mac Pro
spoiler alert we also bought a thread
Ripper PC to compare it to one two three
we'll get back to that so how does this
thing perform this is not faster than it
would take me to do I'm a computer just
FYI I use the 2019 iMac I'm a heavy user
of InDesign Photoshop and illustrator
and I dabble in After Effects if I'm
attempting to make a gif it didn't feel
faster at all I was working off a server
via VPN so it's possible that was
slowing things down but I got the
spinning ball often I mostly just worked
in InDesign and Photoshop as I normally
would but honestly my current setup
works fine for what I do
I rarely experience any issues of
slowness currently I used a 2019 iMac
and I mostly work in Premiere Pro and
After Effects though sometimes I dip
into logic and
Photoshop in after-effects previewing
comps with just a handful of effects can
be laggy so typically I preview comps in
a half or a quarter quality when I'm
trying to work super fast I was hoping
that when I tested out the Mac Pro I
wouldn't have that issue but I ran into
the same problems that I do on my iMac
at home like if I move a shape
all of a sudden the picture will go from
super clear to like incredibly pixelated
and the only way to get rid of that is
to render the scene and play it and the
fact that it happened on this computer
is pretty crazy I use a 20-17 MacBook
Pro afterward pretty fast on today
explain sometimes I only get a couple
hours to turn around a project but I
don't think the Mac Pro would help me do
my job
any better than I currently do it all
the programs that I use run just as fast
on my current computer as they do on the
Mac Pro so there's really no point in
getting a Mac Pro from me at my current
job but if I were working on a much more
intensive maybe lush project with a
hundred two hundred tracks I think the
Mac Pro could make a difference at the
verge I work on a late 2015 iMac wah wah
I work primarily in Photoshop
Illustrator After Effects and cinema 4d
deadlines are one of the biggest factors
for me rendering can take a really long
time especially when working in 3d I
didn't notice any playback slowdown so
in that regard I guess it's much faster
than my normal workstation we created an
animated illustration using cinema 48
that we would have otherwise been unable
to make having 32 threads meant that
rendering using the CPU was much faster
than my old iMac the biggest thing was
that individual apps themselves would be
slow in Photoshop I tried to save a PNG
and it took forever illustrator was also
slow finding a use case that really
pushed the GPUs was a challenge
especially because at the time I was
using the computer
none of Adobe's software was optimized
to use them did you catch that none of
Adobe's software was optimized to use
the GPUs that's it that's the big story
with the Mac Pro the hardware is way way
ahead of the software support those GPUs
are really fast if you can light them up
the afterburner card seems really fast
if you work in pro res and Final Cut Pro
otherwise you do get the benefit of
having so many more CPU cores but for a
lot of people it just didn't feel that
much faster because the software we use
just isn't ready
I mean look we try to edit the review
that you're watching right now on our
mac pro using full res 4k video files
and premiere instead of lower res
proxies and that dropped frames I wasn't
asked to do B for a timeline and they
basically told me they don't have one
yet
that's me true for a lot of software not
just Creative Cloud Apple hasn't had pro
machines of this class for a long time
and people haven't built software form
so if you live in Apple's Pro Apps and
use their formats it'll be faster but
that's not the case for everything else
hopefully that will change but it's
gonna take a while the other problem is
that the Mac Pro runs Mac OS Catalina
which is a little messy it also killed
support for a bunch of older 32-bit
software and required upgrades for
basically everything else if you got a
bunch of legacy Photoshop plugins or
some weird little app that makes your
workflow go
they might just never work that's not a
big deal if you're a single creator or
you run a small shop and you can be
flexible but for a bigger production
house like ours it gets complicated
pretty fast we have to make sure that
everything still works together we have
to make sure we can move projects
between people and machines we general
have to pick stability and reliability
over having the latest thing a lot of
things stopped when something breaks
around here now I don't want to over
emphasize this software updates are just
like a fact of life I just wanna point
out that the Mac Pro is not drop it in
and go faster
it was more like drop it in update the
apps see what broke fix that stuff
upgrade some other stuff and then maybe
go faster I think most places are gonna
buy one or two first as a test to see
how things go and then they'll decide to
place a big order that's effectively
what we're doing just on camera and I
think it's gonna take us a while to be
honest it's kind of what I expected what
I wasn't expecting is that not everyone
loved the display Apple made a huge deal
out of announcing the Pro display XDR
the company's new 32 inch 6k LCD that
can at 1600 nits at peak brightness it's
a local dimming LCD so the backlight is
composed of 576 blue LEDs that can be
individually dimmed or even turned off
that allows Apple to claim a million to
1 contrast ratio using certain industry
standard test patterns and make a bunch
of comparison to vastly more expensive
old reference displays all of that is to
say the pro display XDR is very big very
beautiful
very bright and cost $5,000 we also have
the optional $1,000 stand which is very
confusing because it does this thousand
dollar monitor stand shouldn't do that
but whatever you can just buy a
different stand the important thing is
that Apple more-or-less promise that
this display would be perfect it's not
the xcr display is one of the best I've
ever worked on but that comes with the
law caveats the fall-off and brightness
on the edges even when you're on axis
with the monitor is very noticeable to
me no matter what application I'm
working in viewing full screen video
content is less jarring but it's still
there the 6k res monitor is sharp sharp
sharp it's not one of those improvements
where you have to make an effort to
notice it it's very obvious when you lay
eyes on it that this is a really dense
display
sadly my biggest first impression it was
the off angle viewing and the display
was just incredibly inaccurate even at
this lightest angle it's so dramatic
than when you're standing right in front
of it it looks there's like there's a
vignette effect over the whole thing
having worked a lot with the sony x 300
is Apple compared to this place too when
they announced them it was especially
jarring to see how the Apple displace
stepped up to the Sony in real life this
is not a display that I would ever buy
as a reference monitor for serious color
work it's the bed it's a really pretty
display but the viewing angle color is
just cool neatly off now I am an
admitted fan of Apple's displays across
the board and at the launch event I was
really impressed with the display and
the people I met who worked on it and
I've really enjoyed looking at our
review unit but we're definitely not the
only people who've noticed these issues
so I went back and talked to Apple a few
times and they told me that the off-axis
color shift and luminance drop is normal
I think it's way better than a
competition but it's there and it's
basically inherent to how LCDs work
Apple also told me it's not really
trying to replace that $43,000 Sony
oullette reference monitor that's the
standard that they're happy to be
compared to but their goal was to hit a
more accessible price point so more
people could use a display of this
caliber now that feels like a little bit
of a change in tone to me like Apple's
trying to manage some expectations but
it's also true that this display exists
in a category of
one think about this way out of the box
the protists play XDR comes set to a
mode that Apple says is suitable for
home and office use but isn't perfectly
color accurate if you want to use it for
reference Co at work you have to switch
it to a mode that limits brightness to a
thousand nits and is only recommended
for use in a controlled lighting
environment there just isn't another
display out there with that range that
can be used for Excel all day in one
setting and calibrated HDR color work in
another but that puts Apple in a hard
spot it has to convince the people who
are just fine with their cheap work
monitors the $5,000 price tag is worth
it and convinced the people who are
picky enough to spend forty three
thousand dollars on a reference OLED
display that the drop in quality isn't
that noticeable to be honest with you I
haven't no idea how that's gonna go it
seems like this display is going to be
more controversial than I ever expected
what I do know is that you should go
look at the Pro display xtr for yourself
and make a decision because either way
you might be surprised about how do you
feel all right I've made you wait long
enough let's race this thing against a
PC tell me about this PC so I specked
out a PC that if you came to me right
now I said I need to buy a powerful
machine for the kind of working with you
here Vox this is what I would get it's
got a thread ripper 39 70 X which is
fairly new we're on the first people to
get it which is exciting
it's 128 gigs of ram and a dual r-tx 20
atti
and it's got fans cuz I mean I can hear
those fans from here it does offense
it's a little warm so that's our PC
workstation it is very much a get what
you pay for situation we spent several
thousand dollars less than our Mac Pro
for a faster processor with more cores
but this thing is one of the ugliest pcs
I've ever seen inside and out and it's
super loud the Mac Pro is a virtually
silent no matter how hard you're pushing
it but our PC sounds like a vacuum
cleaner from the instigator and on
but in terms of bang for the buck the PC
came in cheaper and faster which well
that went exactly how you'd expect we're
gonna be running a bunch of benchmarks
we're gonna be doing some generic GPU
and CPU benchmarks a lot of premier
benchmarks and resolve benchmarks and
then the most fun one in my opinion is a
Cinebench yeah which is just a really
nice visual race over a who can render
cinema 4d 3d scene with pretty realistic
lighting de festus alright a classic Mac
versus PC bake-off on three ready ready
one two three
let's go PC jumps out to an early lead
oh there you go
look at this 100% threads there we go
the Mac's it 100% but that has twice as
many cores yeah the PCs done Mac's
coming right along behind
all right the Mac is done we had a score
of 68 49 points and the PC is more than
double the sizethis manticores pretty
new processor a application that uses
multi-threading to its maximum this is
something that Adobe Creative Cloud
probably won't do and we'll find out in
our testing in Geekbench the PC also won
and that was for both CUDA versus metal
and OpenCL versus OpenCL for premier
benchmarking we use PJ and the results
were mixed the PC was better for most
things but the Mac didn't have an
advantage on a few of the categories we
couldn't run After Effects benchmarks on
the Mac burrow because we kept getting
errors so at the end of the day the PC
kind of destroyed the Mac in every
category except premier applications
that weren't really utilizing the full
power of the thread Ripper
so what have we learned here well first
Adobe Adobe go faster second it's great
that there's a Mac of this caliber again
it's exciting to see Apple back in the
game talking about performance it's cool
to see the company trying big ideas like
that afterburner card and it's amazing
to hear people like Grayson say the
extra power means they're trying to make
things they wouldn't have attempted on
slower machines that's all great but
make no mistake Apple is definitely
playing catch-up it's left the pro
market so ignored for so long that this
machine is kind of a reset of the entire
ecosystem so all the hardware is there
the software just isn't yet if you're
working in one of the handful of apps
and workflows this machine is designed
for it'll scream but if you're not it'll
take a minute for developers to unlock
its potential and that'll be awesome
what I'm worried about is that well
that's what we said about the last Mac
Pro the trash can of course it's early
and Apple includes two GPUs on every Mac
Pro for a reason so that developers will
take advantage but until they do the
overall speed advantage of the Mac Pro
over the last generation or even a
high-end iMac isn't all that obvious
yeah that didn't go so well but this new
Mac Pro is more expandable more modular
and seems way more in tune with reality
it's definitely less risky now we just
have to wait hey everybody I wanted to
hit some of the most important stuff
about the Mac Pro and XDR display in
this video but there are a ton of little
things we weren't able to fit in that's
all in our written review on the verge
comm so hit the link in the description
and check it out