An Incredible Mac Pro Demo: Takes Breath Away

MacObserver ^ | June 25th, 2009 | by John Martellaro

[Swordmaker]

Some benchmarks have numbers and tables. Some have bar graphs. They're all very nice, but I just revisited a demo that I used to do at Apple, and the results on a Mac Pro will take your breath away. Buckle up, because you may not have seen this amazing visual demo ever before.

Back in the 2000-2005 time, I was involved with lots of professional conferences with Apple. In some cases, Apple ran the both, like SuperComputing and FOSE. In the case of smaller shows, like the American Astronomical Society (AAS), I would manage the booth along with another sales exec or system engineer. A typical booth would have several different kinds of Macs, big displays, and scientific or engineering software to demo.

One of the things that I noticed in those big shows, held in convention centers, with thousands of attendees, was that it was vital to catch the eye of the passerby. If the Mac was running a static display, even if it was the coolest scientific app ever, the passerby's eyes would quickly move on. So I devised a very visual demo that was sure to catch the passerby's eye and lure them into the both. Then we could move on to other things.

It always worked. And here's the secret I used.

I would download a lot of movie trailers from Apple. In those days, they were standard definition. But movie trailers are unique in that they have fast moving action, quickly changing scenes, explosions, pretty women, and so on. I would load up six or seven of these trailers in QuickTime, lay them out on a 23-inch display in a grid, and set them all running in an endless loop.

Once a passerby saw this, he (typically) would go into a trance and start wandering towards my station at the booth. The thing was, you couldn't do that with a PC. Well, I tried it once and the best I could do with Windows was two videos. If I started a third, they'd all start stuttering.

One measure of the Mac is how many trailers it can play at once without any one of them stuttering. When I was using a dual processor 800 MHz Mac Pro G4, the best I could do was about seven or maybe eight simultaneous trailers. It's been awhile since I did that demo, so I decided to revisit with a Mac Pro, Nehalem (March 2009), quad core, with 3GB of RAM, standard video card (NVIDIA GT120) and two displays attached.

Here's the video, taken with an iPhone 3GS. Note that the audio comes only from the frontmost copy of QuickTime. (The Bourne Supremacy)

[See the demo video on the YouTube site]

If you'd rather not count, there are 21 standard definition videos running at the same time. Why not high-def? I wanted to retain a baseline to compare against what the Mac Pro G4 was doing in 2003. Note that none of the trailers are stuttering.

Also, take a look at the main screen where I have the Activity Monitor app running. None of the eight virtual cores* appears to be working very hard. I'll propose that if I had many more screens attached, I could have run 50 or more of these QuickTime trailers.

Of course, this isn't a quantitative benchmark. What it does do, however, is visually express the power of the new Mac Pro. The next time you have a friend over who's thinking about switching to a Mac, show him/her this demo. After her/his eyes finish glazing over, you can accompany your stunned friend to the local Apple retail store.

[Swordmaker]

Mac Pro demonstration idea that should work on all Macs to some degree. PING!

With Video.

Mac Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[eclecticEel]

Mac Pro G4

Say wha?

[Southack]

The PC stutters with multiple videos because Windows depends upon each program to have coded into it releases of the CPU.

Programmers are awful at programming in such releases because they impact performance and take longer to write...so that leaves Windows guessing at the right time to swap which ap gets the CPU’s attention.

Very poor architecture.

[snarks_when_bored]

I generally just watch one video at a time...on my old PC.

[skr]

Same here, but it’s conceivable that videos might need to be compared for some reason.

[grey_whiskers]

I beg to differ, think of streaming video for sports junkies (five or six NFL games at the same time).

If they make the user API simple enough for Joe Sixpack (or his kids)...who knows how far it could go.

Cheers!

[safisoft]

Means nothing. And as for the “claim” that you “can’t do that on Windows” - what nonsense. This person knows nothing about 96% of the world-wide computer population; because like all Apple religionists, he is living in a fantasy world of superiority. Man, we thought moonies were bad...

[dennisw]

OK a Mac can stream six videos at once. This particular power and ability ....What practical tasks can it do better?

[SlowBoat407]

The biggest application of this particular feature is in video editing, specifically, editing multiple streams down into one in real time, just like switching a live show.

[dennisw]

How about something besides video?
Is there a scientific application that runs better on Mac for EXACTLY the same reason that it can stream 7 videos simultaneously?

[Wyatt's Torch]

I have a Mac Pro early 2008......AWESOME machine.

[SlowBoat407]

Simulations require an enormous amount of processing capacity to develop scenarios with multiple parameters in constant flux. This applies to everything from microbiology to medicine to cosmology. Mass General Hospital has a Mac-only program that does 3D visualization of MRI data that is currently being used to track nerve impulses in the search for answers to migraines, for one example.

[antiRepublicrat]

And as for the “claim” that you “can’t do that on Windows” - what nonsense.

Nope, true. The architecture of the OS is very important. I remember seeing BeOS in the mid 90s runnung four video streams and some audio on a dual-processor PPC box without a hiccup. Windows 95 and Windows NT couldn't do it. Mac OS on the same hardware couldn't even do it.

[dennisw]

So such simulations would be harnessing the same computing power that enables a Mac to stream 7 videos at a time. And that a Mac will do these simulations better than Windows machine.

BTW do you have any idea if any “Global Warming” simulations are done on Macs

[SlowBoat407]

BTW do you have any idea if any “Global Warming” simulations are done on Macs

And the same technology that enables Free Republic is used for numerous liberal causes as well.

Your point?

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"What practical tasks can it do better?"

How about this: http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/01/30/folder-actions-for-os-x-explained-with-real-world-examples/ Very cool and useful.

[dennisw]

That was a totally neutral question. Was not intended to make Apple look like a bunch of liberals

[dennisw]

Thanks..... I’m looking at it

[CodeToad]

“The PC stutters with multiple videos because Windows depends upon each program to have coded into it releases of the CPU.”

Really? You seriously need to update your superficial knowledge of Windows as Windows NT through Vista has always been preemptive multitasking. Only Windows 3.11 through 98 didn’t.