The market of VFX, which without an Mac Pro, might end up going back to Windows or custom built Linux desktops, like many Hollywood studios did when migrating away from SGI, and Pro wasn't still an option.
Windows is already in many studios due to VR or Virtual Production work, since Unreal Engine kind of sucks on anything that isn’t Windows, and the same goes for VR.
However there are a few areas that Macs are used heavily and where I don’t think Apple need to be worried:
- artists that need to use Adobe products or anything non Linux. Macs offer better Linux like workflows for pipelines since it’s Unix like, so is favoured for pipeline integration and macOS has much better colour handling than windows. So you’ll see in house concept artists, matte painters and the like on macs. VFX editors tend to be on macs for the same reason. Those are the folks that a Mac Pro would be handy for.
- dailies review boxes. Macs again are better for playback and the arm macs are so quiet they’re perfect for a review room. More RAM is always welcome here.
- coordinators and producers are almost always on Mac laptops. They’re unparalleled for battery life in a compact body. Plus since macs need to be supported for the above two use cases, it makes sense to use them as well.
- conform machines to handle media conversions often are macs. Though this depends greatly on what formats are being used
If you stick to apps that are specifically colour managed, and manage your own screen profiles, it’s fine, but compare it to the Mac where:
* you get much better EDR/HDR support at the OS level, so it tries to handle perceptual EDR ranges when apps switch to EDR.
* the OS itself has better management for colour profiles for the screen (also better refresh rate management when it comes to common film rates)
* Macs come with P3 colour handling for their first party displays https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT210435 , and while you can colour manage a windows/Linux machine post facto, it’s nice to have a system come with a good baseline that reflects their screen properties. For example, coordinators don’t need colour accuracy BUT it does help when their laptops present it well. Most desktop users would use an Eizo instead.
* safari does a better job than chrome/Firefox at handling embedded image colour metadata , and also managing EDR colour.
* similarly Preview, QuickTime and Finder are better at respecting embedded colour profiles and EDR where applicable than Windows Media Viewer and Explorer.
Most of this can of course be replicated on Windows, but you have to go out of your way to do so. Plus you’d still lack the macs EDR handling that is great for review sessions etc…
macOS doesn’t cover everything of course. Images with custom LUTs still need their own viewer apps, but I can’t emphasize how nice it is to have much more trust in what you’re seeing and reducing the mental friction while doing a lot of your ancillary work outside specific apps. It’s not perfect, but so much better then Windows where it’s a crapshoot what colour you’re going to see depending on how you view it.
I don't see how they can solve this either.
I’m not sure I agree that a TBDR is bad for high poly counts. There’s nothing inherent to the architecture that I can think of that would limit it for pure polygon work. Usually the biggest hold up is full screen effects that need to work on the entire buffer but those are rare for VFX.