During this year’s SIGGRAPH 2019 in Los Angeles, the hush-hush word at the show about Apple’s new monster Mac Pro wasn’t necessarily good. Don’t misunderstand, many folks are gushing over the new fastest Mac on Earth, which doesn’t ship until later this year. But the word at SIGGRAPH was that while desirable to have what the new 2019 Mac Pro is missing is an NVIDIA option.
Specifically, Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro doesn’t at this time indicate the ability to deploy NVIDIA GPUs directly inside the machine. NVIDIA may actually want to be inside the new Mac Pro but Apple must first approve and provide for the necessary drivers. This is very unlikely. What was heard at SIGGRAPH 2019 is that while the 2019 Mac Pro is a beast of a machine, without NVIDIA’s RTX-based GPUs its role in production pipelines for real-time raytracing is clearly limited.
Apple may have big plans for the 2019 Mac Pro in the Media & Entertainment software industry, and recent job posts suggest this is so. Regardless, the lack of NVIDIA RTX support puts a damper on things for many pros who would like to engage this machine. (image: Apple / Architosh. All rights reserved.)
As we noted in our SIGGRAPH 2019 reports, 35 plus professional creative applications now support NVIDIA RTX to bring real-time raytracing and AI to millions of artists.
Apple Has Plans for Media & Entertainment Industry
Still, Apple has plans for the Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry with the 2019 Mac Pro and its new job posts further indicate this commitment.
During SIGGRAPH, senior associate editor, Akiko Ashley, found this job post. (see image below) Back on 29 July 2019, Apple was looking for a Senior FX Artist / Technical Director to “join a small team or senior content creation workflow experts and system architects.” The post likely has been filled and is no longer listed.
The job post read, “Help shape the future of the Mac in the Media & Entertainment industry.” (click on image)
Apple job posts indicate the company is serious about its position within the M&E industry. This is one of a few other FX related job posts at Apple.
The new director position (above) was a role that would help Apple set its “overall direction with FX.” The role meant as a senior FX artist they would work with Mac system architects to make the process of content creation better on Macs. That’s great news for Mac-based 3D software pros looking to continue using the Mac as their platform of choice.
This is definitely a promising little find. The position indicates that Apple aims to be gearing up for success in the M&E industry and with the new 2019 Mac Pro, despite the lack of NVIDIA at the moment, the company has a new warhorse to go battle in the market with.