On the one hand, this cat knows how to screw up marketing hardware/software ( Be, Inc! ). On the other hand, he's literally talking nonsense about a compute platform that is targeted at studios.
Can we get some vfx or game studio heads in here commenting? From what I've experienced in my career is many studios are run at a very low margin. Doubling the price of the Mac Pro would most likely have an effect.
There is no software that is macOS-only used by VFX artists, and except for a few 2D tools (cough Photoshop cough), everything runs on Linux. (Typically Red Hat/CentOS with nVidia cards.)
The farm basically always just runs Linux. Many studios run Linux on the desktop, sometimes Windows, and sometimes macOS.
I thought that had more to do with the “seasonality” of a business closer to movies than enterprise software, i.e. once a project is over, everyone is fired.
The angst usually centers around management being paid enough to hold on to the laid off people so they can develop their skills and work on 20% type projects. As things are, they leave the industry after a few rounds of it.
It's shortsighted. They let many of the people responsible for that wealth float off to more stable industries so a few people can get rich far beyond their contribution.