Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

1 Feb 2002

 

Pro Mac Survey: 3D Mac users overwhelmingly want Quad Macs

Architosh has been running two parallel and related surveys: RenderMan on OS X Petition Survey and a 3D Pro Mac Hardware Request survey. The result of the latter are reported here today.

Quad Processor Mac are what 3D Pros Want

Based on the large data set which we have so far collected, more than half of all survey respondents are looking for Apple to provide 4 processor-based Power Mac G4/G5 computers as their ideal 3D workstation. Question 4 in the survey asked: If performance would relate and respond to more processors, how many processors would you like your "3D workstation Mac" to have? This assumes you would purchase the machine at the price point shown.

Despite the high price of $4,999 US the large majority of survey respondents said they they are dreaming of such machines. And related to this (but not presented here today) is question 5 about Apple-produced compute/renderfarm technologies. A very large number of users expressed interest in such technologies as well and would spend significant amounts of money to adopt such technology if flexible and proven.

Quads Wanted: Who's Asking for Them

The first question in the survey asks for identity of user by industry. Related to question 4 about number of processors, a table below illustrates that of those in favor of buying Quad Power Macs, the largest group of user (at 30%) is the Professional 3D specialists who work in film, broadcast and visual effects studios, in addition to those working in advertising agencies who perform the same role.

Quite a lot, at 16 percent, were from the so called Sci/Tech market, which includes medical 3D (doctors, medical technologists, researchers, bio-tech, etc.) This is a strong and growing sector for Apple's UNIX-based Power Mac machines...and strong research funds and grants often pay for highend hardware with larger gross margins.

There is little doubt that Apple's growing SCI/Tech and 3D pro user-base is in hot demand for multiprocessor hardware options on the Mac OS X platform. Only 11 percent of those in the survey preferred to buy single processor machine running at the fastest clock rates. Such visualization pros on the Mac platform are looking to spend upwards of $2400 to $5000 for dream workstations with 2-4 processors.

Other industries wanting lots of Mac processing power include architects and 3D hobbyist. The latter is a surprise in our results. However, with the architecture group, the industry as a whole is slowing migrating towards a 3D-model-centric CAD paradigm wherein working constantly in interactive 3D mode will become the eventual norm. It should be noted that in the US the architectural market is over 60,000 professionals, and this number doesn't count the up and downstream users in the industry (such as building product manufactures who all will be eventually producing 3D content of their products for incorporation into document files of architects).

Lastly, while Apple has shown much interest in Hollywood, despite its smaller size compared to the architecture market, the architecture market is already much more interested in Apple products, with industry estimates of Mac marketshare approaching 30% in some areas around the world and in some cities in the US and Canada (Boston, San Francisco, Vancouver).

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Pro Mac Survey: Apple's Users Demand More

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