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Apple finally announces all-new Mac Pro


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Notice you're comparing the performance of the dual socket model to the single socket new model. So the new CPU is more than twice faster than the previous model. Not bad I say, but it would be really great if you could order a new MacPro with dual CPU and single GPU (it looks modular so it may be possible Apple will offer the alternative, who knows)

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Personally the design doesn't bother me - sure it looks a little bit like a trash can and it's black instead of the silver we all love, but I know tons of creative professionals who will be pleased at the space-saving design.

 

I think getting rid of the DVD drive is a mistake - not a HUGE one, but enough to inconvenience users. I thought I was done with DVDs until I started editing video more - though many professionals share work in the cloud now, most CLIENTS are still going to want a DVD copy of the work they pay for. I still get funny looks when I hand over wedding photos to clients on a USB drive, let alone video work. Now if Apple offers a CHEAP DVD add-on (hell, it should be free) that could sit under the new Mac Pro and fit seamlessly, that's a little bit different, but looking at the bottom of the new MP I think it would destabilize it some.

 

The hardware, on the other hand, seems to be aimed at maximizing profit over convenience. While this is in line with Apple's M.O., at least older MP have some level of user-based upgradeability.

 

In regards to the thunderbolt complaints, we should keep in mind that it's still a very new technology (using the term "new" to indicate level of implementation, not in temporal terms). Even USB 3.0 cables and peripherals were considerably more expensive than they are now - as more people switch over the price will drop. No, it's not fun for those wanting to make the switch to TB now, but it's not exactly a phenomenon that is unique to Apple.

 

Really it doesn't matter what I think - I'll be buying  one of these in 2018 when they are cheap on the used market. Until then, it's hackintosh parts in an old Mac Pro case for me!

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Computers (as any other hardware they sell) are regarded/designed (by Apple) as a home appliance (like washing machine or vacuum cleaner if you will), that is a fully functional device ready to be used out of the box. Therefore they make not only design/hardware (in a sense), but a purpose-build software for the device, for it to be fully functional and self contained.

 

Washing machines or vacuum cleaner are not meant to be upgradeable by user (fixed at best if a user is qualified enough). On the other hand, PC users consider computers as a user serviceable/upgradeable device and usually these are sold as such (desktops at least). OS there is a separate product.

 

Is the concept used by Apple wrong? IMO for some part it is, but since Apple computers are sold well enough, probably many people don't mind the concept at all.

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Computers (as any other hardware they sell) are regarded/designed (by Apple) as a home appliance (like washing machine or vacuum cleaner if you will), that is a fully functional device ready to be used out of the box. Therefore they make not only design/hardware (in a sense), but a purpose-build software for the device, for it to be fully functional and self contained.

 

Washing machines or vacuum cleaner are not meant to be upgradeable by user (fixed at best if a user is qualified enough). On the other hand, PC users consider computers as a user serviceable/upgradeable device and usually these are sold as such (desktops at least). OS there is a separate product.

 

Is the concept used by Apple wrong? IMO for some part it is, but since Apple computers are sold well enough, probably many people don't mind the concept at all.

I like the analogy, but I think a better comparison would be to a car. In fact, even Bill Gates has made that analogy before.

 

In that comparison, 95% of the people who buy a car will never, ever upgrade any component of that car. However, there are tons of stores (Checker, Advance, Autozone, Pep Boys, etc) dedicated to the 5% that will either buy an aftermarket replacement part or an aftermarket upgrade for their car. While the vast majority of car companies never see an interest in people wanting to do upgrades or customize their cars, the option is still there. Lets take the worlds fastest (and I think the most expensive) supercar - the Bugatti Veyron. Not much to customize there, but you can at least choose the color!

 

And with regard to the Light Peak... Thunderbolt complaints, I think that most people understand that the cost issue should be negated as time goes on - what wont be negated is that a device that I used to be able to install internally now must be external, necessitating an external box and an external cable. No way around that now.

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I'll continue car analogy :)

 

A person can buy a full packaged Porsche Panamera, get it upgraded heavily by a tuning company and get something very special for much less then Bugatti Veyron cost. Much more options for far lesser price.

 

I guess it's what we discuss here in the forum :)

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I'll continue car analogy :)

 

A person can buy a full packaged Porsche Panamera, get it upgraded heavily by a tuning company and get something very special for much less then Bugatti Veyron cost. Much more options for far lesser price.

 

I guess it's what we discuss here in the forum :)

 

Very well said, Mr 3.14r2 :) .

 

So now the question is: will there be a juicy market for TB peripherals / upgrades / coffee machines / whatever, or is it already a doomed braindead zombie condemned to haunt the cemetery of computer hardware failures history ? :ph34r:

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 is it already a doomed braindead zombie condemned to haunt the cemetery of computer hardware failures history ? :ph34r:

 

Exactly. Who is going to buy it? Professionals? I think not. Maybe a few Apple zealots who would blindly buy absolutely everything from Apple.

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So now the question is: will there be a juicy market for TB peripherals / upgrades / coffee machines / whatever, or is it already a doomed braindead zombie condemned to haunt the cemetery of computer hardware failures history ? :ph34r:

If Apple's marketing department is still in the same shape it has been in S. Jobs era, there will definitely be TB upgrade market. Look how good iPad/iPhone/iPod accessories market blossom. Especially with Apple making previously bought accessories unusable with every new generation of devices. :)

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Yes, but in this case we aren't talking about gadgets like the iPad/iPhone/iPod. We are talking about a computer meant for professionals who must do real work. I doubt if many of them want to buy a computer that is so different than anything they know, something that looks more like a proof of concept.

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Yes, but in this case we aren't talking about gadgets like the iPad/iPhone/iPod. We are talking about a computer meant for professionals who must do real work. I doubt if many of them want to buy a computer that is so different than anything they know, something that looks more like a proof of concept.

 

Explaining this seems to be a lost cause because non professional users will never see how the new Mac Pro is such a disappointment to the professional mac community. Tried explaining and people just don't get it because they do use there Mac's for professional work... Frustrating

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm still SHOCKED that this machine gets ONLY 23,000+ for GeekBench scores. I was sure that this was going to run circles around my Hackinbeast... I was thinkin' that this new Trashcan Pro was going to least get 35,000 - 40,000+ for a GB score... I guess not. So for anyone that has an EVGA SR-2 Mobo system setup is going not only hold the record for being the best mobo for the last 3+ years, but it looks like it will hold it for another 2 to 3 years. Now THAT IS A GOOD INVESTMENT !!! Maybe I'm wrong here and the final release of the new Trashcan Pro will perform well beyond our imagination... but I doubt it... I hope I'm proven wrong...

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Don't know what about you guys, but I can hardly resist the intention of labelling trash bins I see when walking the city streets, with Apple's logo. It's getting harder and harder to resist. :)

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2! Thunderbolt 2! I honestly doubt any pro will need to upgrade graphics for a long time due to the huge stock offering from Apple - unlike old MacPros, which had pretty weak options from factory - and then thunderbolt 2 will be way more than need to handle any expansion (high-end PCI audio cards, storage, etc). In fact, it will offer the possibility of much faster peripherals than ever before and, stress this, faster than any competition. And given the huge amount of devices that can be daisy-chained in the dual TB2 ports - up to 36! - alone make it indeed more expandable than ever before, and than any competitor, despite not being as upgradable and user-serviceable (the latter, i dare to say, is more a prosumer/enthusiast desire than really a high-profile professional - the target niche - need).

 

After analyzing this for a while, i think folks are being a little out of tune on this, mixing apples and oranges in the criticism, and complaining of the lack of a thing Apple was never really prone to offer, at least in this century. C'mon, guys! It's a heck of a machine, will probably be the best workstation around (not the fastest, but speed is not everything, albeit important) for a few years and will fulfill and deliver exactly what is expected from a Macintosh workstation.

 

All the best!

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2! Thunderbolt 2! I honestly doubt any pro will need to upgrade graphics for a long time due to the huge stock offering from Apple - unlike old MacPros, which had pretty weak options from factory - and then thunderbolt 2 will be way more than need to handle any expansion (high-end PCI audio cards, storage, etc). In fact, it will offer the possibility of much faster peripherals than ever before and, stress this, faster than any competition. And given the huge amount of devices that can be daisy-chained in the dual TB2 ports - up to 36! - it's indeed more expandable than ever before, and than any competitor, despite not being as upgradable and user-serviceable (the latter, i dare to say, is more a prosumer/enthusiast desire than really a high-profile professional - the target niche - need).

 

After analyzing this for a while, i think folks are being a little out of tune on this, mixing apples and oranges in the criticism, and complaining of the lack of a thing Apple was never really prone to offer, at least in this century. C'mon, guys! It's a heck of a machine, will probably be the best workstation around (not the fastest, but speed is not everything, albeit important) for a few years and will fulfill and deliver exactly what is expected from a Macintosh workstation.

 

All the best!

 

CUDA CUDA CUDA.  With no CUDA rendering support many people who use this will be left out in the cold. 

 

TB is a lot slower the full PCIe 3.0 x16 lanes and at the rate intel is going will stay this way for a long time. 

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No other peripherals except for graphics needs 16x PCI-e speed, Rampage, and my point is, you won't need to upgrade graphics at all, since - repeating myself - the huge stock offering. Adobe already starting moving towards OpenCL (where AMD cards beat all the competition: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQwMDI) since the keynote (source: http://www.dslrfilmnoob.com/2013/07/09/adobe-cc-official-opencl-support-update/), no doubt others will follow, and you can be quite certain all Apple pro apps (which are the best software aimed at the target niche, including the already vastly improved latest iteration of FCP X) will rely heavily on OpenCL. The CUDA support will be no issue by the time the new MacPro is out, so this is a straw man, sorry to say.

 

All the best!

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No other peripherals except for graphics needs 16x PCI-e speed, Rampage, and my point is, you won't need to upgrade graphics at all, since - repeating myself - the huge stock offering. Adobe already starting moving towards OpenCL (where AMD cards beat all the competition: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQwMDI) since the keynote (source: http://www.dslrfilmnoob.com/2013/07/09/adobe-cc-official-opencl-support-update/), no doubt others will follow, and you can be quite certain all Apple pro apps (which are the best software aimed at the target niche, including the already vastly improved latest iteration of FCP X) will rely heavily on OpenCL. The CUDA support will be no issue by the time the new MacPro is out, so this is a straw man, sorry to say.

 

All the best!

 

HAHAHA If you only knew what pro users need CUDA for... OpenCL can not compute a lot of different formats and the Mac Pro fails in other areas as well. Its called plugs which use CUDA to stay off the CPU and OpenCL does not support this type of plugin which puts more on the CPU and Ram and not on the fastest processing power on the system. 

 

The new Mac Pro is for Apple fans and not real Pros. 

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Would you care to elaborate, Rampage? I work (meaning i make a living doing that) with multimedia content (yeah, audio and video) creation and production - mostly music/audio, i confess, but also graphic design and video producing - so i'm what's called a "pro", i suppose - but it's never too late to learn and so it is: what's exactly the formats that won't work under OpenCL (and that are essential to my work) and what plug-ins that could not be replaced by other OpenCL compatible ones that will do the same job for me?

 

Remember we're talking about an Apple-only environment here, so these plug-ins will have to work under FCP-X/Motion and Logic Pro/SoundtrackPro/Compressor. I also use the CS6 suite a lot, specially for outdoor ads creation, mostly Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, so you could list stuff related to it (i use a GTX460 on the studio, CUDA always turned on, had to enable it using a trick btw).

 

Not that the current circumstances matter that much, just to say: as i said - with a link supporting it, but i can provide plenty - industry leaders are moving towards OpenCL. And even if Apple did it alone - since its software is still among the leaders of the market (okay, it suffered a huge blow with the first iteration of FCPX, but it's gaining traction again, partly because of constant updating and improvement, partly thanks to Adobe's stupidest decision to move to the cloud) - it would be more than enough for its audience. They don't care about enthusiasts and don't need to, and they don't care about Premiere/AfterEffects/Windows pro users and don't need to, since many leaders of the industry are and want to stay with Apple software/hardware combo - and Adobe is moving to OpenCL anyway (see sources posted).

 

But all the FUD about the MacPro is indeed scaring people, and it's a shame because it's quite clear it's indeed FUD: despite you having a point here and i concede that, about CUDA (and even this is debatable), the statements about the new MacPro killing expandability are false (the opposite is true!), and the complaints about user-serviceability and upgradability, falsely raised as expandability issues, are absurd, since Apple offers in those fields were always crippled at best, and most high-profile professionals (the individuals and companies that earn big money, not myself) do not really care about them.

 

All the best!

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I have been following this discussion somewhat, and I would just like to point out my own personal opinion. I don't think the issue Rampage Dev is bringing up really has much to do with CUDA in a broader sense; moreover, the issue is simply with the potential of the new Mac Pro in regard to expandability, internal or external. Nearly all fairly recent desktop PCs and, it's true, all the old Mac Pros have the potential to use a PCI Express 2.0 GPU (or anything else that might happen to call for a theoretical maximum of 8 GBps bandwidth), whereas the new Mac Pro has no such potential. Suppose I buy the new Mac Pro for goodness-knows-what-price (Let's just say it's a significant investment) "later this year." Now suppose I have used this system happily for four years, it's a bit outdated, but the only components that are really limiting me are the GPUs. Suppose there's a GPU, perfectly content to use a PCI Express 2.0 slot, available that would be just the upgrade that would bring my Mac Pro back to life. However, the very best my Mac Pro can do for expansion is via its Thunderbolt port, 2.5 GBps, and suppose that speed would horribly cripple this hypothetical GPU. Now isn't that a sad picture? I could have invested all that money into a Hackintosh or, heck, even one of the older Mac Pros, and it would still be more expandable than this fancy black cylinder, and, most importantly, it would still fit my needs for a few more years at least.

 

Notwithstanding all that, I much prefer having a big box that holds all my GPUs, HDDs, and any other expansion cards than having a small black cylinder, a mess of external HDDs, another box to hold expansion cards, and so on and so forth.

 

Just so y'all know, I've never owned an Apple product and don't intend to for the foreseeable future, so I'm just stating what I think about the new Mac Pro's usability as a computer in general. Specifically, and in conclusion, the new Mac Pro does not really meet my standards for use as a desktop computer, whereas everything I've seen and heard about the "old" Mac Pro makes it look like a machine with which I'd be happy if it weren't for the price.

 

There's my two cents; sorry if it looks more like ten. And after saying all that, really, if the new Mac Pro is just the machine for you, who am I to say otherwise?

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and it would still be more expandable than this fancy black cylinder

 

There's my two cents

 

No, it wouldn't be more expandable, just more upgradable and user-serviceable. Saying otherwise is not "just your opinion", it's objectively false outright. Simple as that. Precisely this kind of incorrect statement, mixing apples and oranges as if they were the same, is what's helping to spread the FUD. The new mac pro, thanks to the TB2 ports, is more expandable (again, not upgradable or user-serviceable) than any other past Macintosh computer and, more importantly, more expandable than any of the professional workstations it is set to compete

 

My point is, the industry leading multimedia professionals - who are the target audience (not "Apple fanboys") and who mostly already use Apple hardware and in many cases, software - don't really care about user-serviceability and won't feel the need to upgrade graphics, since they'll have the best, maxed out configuration, for the Apple software they already use (i already posted sources about how AMD crush nVidia in OpenCL) and even the Adobe ocasional user (since Adobe's cleverly improving OpenCL support).

 

Enthusiasts and prosumers and professionals with smaller budgets (such as me) might as well need an user-serviceable and upgradable machine so to fix it ourselves and make it better step by step, when we can afford to. This is not true on the high profile professional level! This kind of individual/company wants a solution that offers out of the box the best performance for the tools they use (and the net MacPro will offer it), compatible with the newest standards of the industry they work (and this, only the new MacPro will offer) and, more importantly then all, with the best support possible (and no company beats Apple Care support, would you disagree?). This high-end professional is their audience, not us.

 

All the best!

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