Max, I think one needs to distinguish between Apple and PNY in all this. Much as I have my issues with Apple, who otherwise make a fine product in so many respects, it's one thing if the misinformation is coming from PNY and another if it is coming from Apple, as it would be unfair to hold the latter accountable for the advertising of the former. But you mentioned several posts up that the Apple store is also advertising billions of colours. That of course is another matter deserving of attention in the monologue with Apple about facing the issue, if correct. I combed through Apple's on-line documentation and I couldn't find a statement supporting 10-bit display capability in OSX. If you can point me to something I may have missed, I would appreciate it.

All that said, one could I think fault them for not explicitly advising potential purchasers of limitations with respect to 10-bit colour rendition, insofar as they are equipping the computers with cards that can do it, but an OS which cannot.

No...I'm wrong! only European nVidia sites mention 30-bit color under Display Features of Quadro 4000 for MAC!

nVidia US site does not!

Oh my!

I too would love to have an answer to this question, but lots of luck trying to

get anything useful out of Apple on what they intend. Even if they did enable it

in 10.7, we would then encounter the issues of their wretched mini-DisplayPort

technology which doesn't play well, at least with the NEC PA271W.

Mark

HI Pete,

Yes I agree fully. Apple has been totally obtuse on this issue, as well as on

the related issues of mini-DisplayPort functionality with high-end 3rd party

displays. High-level pressure looks like the best way forward.

Mark

Chris,

This gets very complicated with Apple. There are two issues here: (1) the OS

doesn't accommodate 10-bit; (2) even if it did, only DisplayPort can convey the

data, not DVI. So there are AT LEAST these two necessary conditions. Even when

they satisfy (1), there is still (2) which they will not necessarily have dealt

with because the display providers are involved and Apple shields itself

magnificently from 3rd party exposure. Because Apple insists on supplying AMD

video cards with mini-DisplayPort instead of standard DisplayPort, one needs to

use converters or converter cables. Neither NEC not Apple will take

responsibility if one tries any of these hardware connections and they destroy

equipment, because they are all 3rd-party. This is seriously interfering with my

ability to work with NEC to solve this issue. I'm up for trying whatever,

provided I don't have to pay for the consequences of screw-ups which these guys

should have collaborated on avoiding from the get-go. But they don't collaborate

and none of their warranties save consumers harmless of the consequences from

trying stuff which they themselves suggest without having properly tested what

they are suggesting. Go figure. It is a circular mess.

Cheers,

Mark

Hi Chris,

As a person who switched from Windows to Mac last year in order the improve the

overall computing experience, needless to say I did know about these speed hits

and the performance tests I saw on the Mac side looked pretty impressive

compared to what I was using before this upgrade (Windows XP on a four year old

Dell). So I guess this kind of experience raises a question about practicality

and criticality. I think many of our decisions are based on compromises wherein

some things stand out for practicality and others are more or less critical as

the case may be. So reading what you are saying here, had I known this last year

would I have decided just to upgrade to Windows 7 instead of going Mac? Mac has

a lot going for it, so to answer that question I would have needed to know how

different these performance speeds really are between my 12/24 intel Mac and its

equivalent in Windows. I've been told in the past by other Photoshop engineers

that some things in Photoshop can't really benefit much from multi-core

technology while others can. As well, the most usual operations I perform in

Photoshop don't require using various filters that really do tax a machine

heavily. By the time I take an image into Photoshop, it's been Lightroomed

already, so much of the heavy lifting is done there, and in Photoshop I do

finishing touches - maybe some transforms, some layer masking, some contrast and

vibrancy adjustments, sharpening with Photokit Sharpeber and printing.

With that as background and getting down to brass tacks - would I really notice

much difference in performance speed between 12/24 Mac and Windows for stuff

like importing images to LR and building LR thumbnails, and doing the basic

image editing adjustments in LR 3 and PSCS5? Or does one need to do bench

testing to see that theoretical speed differences of little practical importance

do occur? Of course whatever the answer, it is disappointing that Apple is

losing it technologically, but this is a company making gazillions in iPhones,

iPads and iTunes, so if they're dropping the ball on their less remunerative

computer business it's not totally unexplainable.

Mark

It was a question, not something I'd necessarily do. Anyhow, reverting to your

answer - yes I know. BUT it runs as a virtual machine under Parallels - not

clear what kind of a performance hit that creates. Likewise for the less

flexible and more inconvenient option of using Bootcamp. Also, Adobe has not yet

seen fit to make Photoshop a cross-platform license, unlike what the same

company allows for Lightroom; don't ask me about the logic of that - it's nuts,

but that being the case, one would need to buy another copy of Photoshop IF one

wanted the flexibility to run it on both platforms. There are of course other

issues using Windows, why from an overall computing experience perspective it

may still be preferable to remain using a Mac as a Mac. That is why I reverted

to Chris about the real impact of the performance differences.

Mark

Yes Marian, I realize all that. There are also plugins and linkages with other

applications to consider. It's not simply a "which OS works faster" issue,

unfortunately. It may be worth test or two anyhow, but if Chris can share

further insight into the practical extent of these performances differences it

would help to decide whether the time and trouble experimenting could be

worthwhile.

The availability of cross-grades is fine, but in this day and age Photoshop's

licensing policy remains an industry anachronism.

Mark

The thread is drifting off-topic, but since I did not find a more suitable forum, I can't resist the temptation to dig deeper into matters of multi-thread and multi-core speedup. As I learned in what little computer science I studied, concurrent computing is where we should expect the most performance gains in the future (apart from quantum computers, if and when such machines become available) now that CPU clock speeds and transistor miniaturisation are fast approaching the physical limits of today's technology. So parallel/concurrent programming really is a key issue (Adobe might want to observe, or even participate in, research on the open-source Barrelfish operating system by ETH Zurich and Microsoft Research: http://www.barrelfish.org/).

While I still run Photoshop CS5 on a first generation Mac Pro with just two dual-core processors, I have not yet run across too much evidence of Photoshop heavily using multiple cores. When running an action on a batch of separate files, for instance, what I see in Activity Monitor suggests that the files are processed strictly sequentially, not concurrently on as many cores as are available. Is this correct? If so, then why is such a basic opportunity for an instant and massive speedup wasted? Pixel Bender shows a promising framework for flexibly using hardware resources including the GPU to boost performance. By contrast, Photoshop itself seems to rely much less on such techniques. I assume load balancing, memory management and I/O bottlenecks are far from trivial to solve, but wouldn't this be much more significant and useful than cramming applications with ever more (sometimes questionable) features/gimmicks and thus promoting Wirth's Law? It says “Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.”, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law.

Along with the paradigm change from sequential to concurrent, there is probably a need for companies that presently act rather independently to focus on much more intertwined systems that require a globally orchestrated approach in order to make any quantum leaps possible. Unfortunately, this is often diametrically opposed to predominant tactics in today's economy where market shares and monopolies seem to count more that the actual quality of and progress in the products that are developed and marketed. This is not to say anything against Adobe or other firms but for making efforts to go a step or two further and apply more long-term thinking. It is the vision and strategy that counts most in the long run.