Today's presentation bought new products and upgrades, but the ones we are interested in are the new iMac and iPad Pros. All powered by the M1 chip.
Ok, let's get the first bit of pre-presentation speculation out of the way. Did we see Final Cut Pro running on the new M1 powered iPad Pros? No, but Lumafusion did feature more than once.
Now on to the new iMac.
Since the debut of custom silicon, Apple said that it would progress through the Mac range to move away from Intel. Today was the next step as the new iMac is powered by the M1 chip, the same silicon we see in the MacBook Air, 13" MacBook Pro and Mac mini. I think we were expecting a more powerful chip, but maybe that might debut at WWDC.
The new range of coloured 11.5 millimetre thick iMacs (green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver) all feature a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display with 11.3 million pixels at 500 nits of brightness. There are two models, one with a seven core GPU and one with an eight core GPU, both have 8GB of unified memory.
At last we have a higher resolution camera that runs at 1080p! There's also studio-quality mics and a six-speaker sound system. Apple say that the new machine runs at under 10 dB for noise, that's 50% lower than the previous model. Connectivity is two Thunderbolt ports on the 7 GPU model and an extra two USB3 ports on the 8 GPU version. You get a power switch on the back and a headphone socket on the front, no card slots.
We are big user of Touch ID, so it's great to see this added to the custom keyboards. It's encrypted too between the keyboard and the Mac. The in-line power brick not only keeps the machine thinner, but also tidies up the desktop by having an ethernet port that transmits the data up the power cable to a magnetic connection on the machine. Very clever.
“M1 is a gigantic leap forward for the Mac, and today we’re excited to introduce the all-new iMac, the first Mac designed around the breakthrough M1 chip,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With its striking design in seven stunning colours, its immersive 4.5K Retina display, the best camera, mics, and speakers ever in a Mac, and Touch ID, combined with the amazing performance of M1 and the power of macOS Big Sur, the new iMac takes everything people love about iMac to an entirely new level.”
- Up to 85 percent faster CPU performance, so users can export their favourite video project in iMovie faster than ever, easily work with massive 100-megapixel photos in Lightroom, and compile new apps in Xcode in a fraction of the time.
- Up to 2x faster GPU performance for certain apps like Affinity Photo and Photoshop, and up to 50 percent faster than the most powerful discrete graphics in the fastest 21.5-inch iMac, allowing users to render edits in real time or add complex filters to their photos in a snap.
- The ability to edit up to five streams of 4K footage, or one stream of 8K footage, without dropping a frame in Final Cut Pro.
- Up to 3x faster machine learning in apps that leverage the 16-core Neural Engine in M1.6
The new iMac is available to order beginning Friday April 30th. Prices start at $1,299.
And for those that scrutinise every pixel in Apple's presentations looking for extra buttons on app GUIs, here's a grab from today of the new iMac running Final Cut Pro.
For more information on the new iMacs, visit the Apple webpage.
iPad Pro 11 and 12.9 Inch
We fully expected to see new iPads in the presentation and we were not disappointed. The new 11-inch and 12.9 inch iPad Pros both feature the M1 chip. The larger model also has a Liquid Retina XDR display, which gives similar performance to the Pro Display XDR. Liquid Retina XDR gives 1000 nits of full-screen brightness, 1600 nits of peak brightness, and a 1 million-to-1 contrast ratio.
The new models also feature Thunderbolt which opens up a whole new range of fast accessories, including the ability to use the Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution.
As we mentioned at the top, no FCP, but LumaFusion was featured more than once in the presentation.
Will we be able to use the new iPad Pro as an HDR monitor when running Final Cut Pro? We don't don't know, but it certainly does look impressive outputting to a Pro Display XDR.
The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799 (US) for the Wi-Fi model and $999 (US) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model, and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,099 (US) for the Wi-Fi model and $1,299 (US) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model.
For more information on the new iPad Pro, visit the Apple webpage.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
