According to sources of ours who have actually seen the unit, Apple has been quietly developing a powerful new graphics card which will finally rectify one of the chief complaints of highend video and 3D pros who say it keeps them off the Macintosh platform, despite the fact that they want to be there.

Why Apple is Doing This

While Mac and PC users both have much to say about Apple's shortcomings in the 3D and special effects worlds, it has been clearly indentified for more than two years now that Apple's two chief performance concerns amount to: one, the lack of 'workstation level' graphics card options and, two, low bandwidth on the motherboard.The G4, itself, is not necessarily complained about. In fact, the G4 architecture has always been cited for its strong floating point performance and AltiVec processing unit.

With this project Apple is apparently serious in making up for lost time and lost marketshare in the Hollywood studio market.

Studio Summit

In a special invitation only event (no press allowed) Apple held a 'Studio Summit' back in the early part of this year. Inviting all of the major Hollywood studios and effects houses, Apple made its best business case for Mac OS X and asked for critical feedback.

At this special event Jobs candidly asked the question: what will it take for all of you to move over to Mac OS X? Apple was specifically looking for constructive information from which to make future plans. In a note from sources familiar with the private event, Jobs apparently said Apple was prepared to do whatever was necessary to satisfy the needs of this elite user-base.

Chief 'wants' among the studios is for more powerful hardware. Specifically, they want 'best of breed' graphics performance and options there. They also want a 1U or 2U industry standard, rack-mountable Power Mac for render farm building and servers. And they want only duals and quads -- single processor Macs are not desired except at the portable level.

In-line with Video Industry

The special effects and 3D industry are typical key components of the movie-making business and Jobs' stature (via Pixar) in this market is instrumental. Moreover, Apple's continued thrust into the advanced professional video market indexes the company's larger future plans. In recent months the company's acquisitions began to signal to the media that Jobs & Co. were up to something but our sources say the full extent of this is likely larger than what it appears.

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