The Mac Pro Is Way Down The List To Apple
WTF, as usual I look at every thread on the main page of "Future Hardware" and there is as usual not one dedicated to Mac Pro discussion.
I know a few years back Apple became obsessed with the laptop. I would assume they know their business and what they are doing for generating revenue but holy crap am I the only one doing video or audio that needs horsepower up the ying yang?
Obviously not but the interest here seems to be in everything but the Mac Pro. I guess it is what it is. I would think our community is a reflection on what's happening in the real world of computer buyers. MOST people don't give a shite about Mac Pro's. Sure there are still some but not enough for it to be one of Apple's TOP priorities. Again, maybe that is a good business decision on their part but as a power user it sucks.
Obviously an update will come at some point but in years past we were all over this stuff (upcoming towers I mean), talking about it all day long here.
If you are dying for a new Mac Pro and would be excited about this, please let me know you're alive and I am not the last man alone on Mars.
I know a few years back Apple became obsessed with the laptop. I would assume they know their business and what they are doing for generating revenue but holy crap am I the only one doing video or audio that needs horsepower up the ying yang?
Obviously not but the interest here seems to be in everything but the Mac Pro. I guess it is what it is. I would think our community is a reflection on what's happening in the real world of computer buyers. MOST people don't give a shite about Mac Pro's. Sure there are still some but not enough for it to be one of Apple's TOP priorities. Again, maybe that is a good business decision on their part but as a power user it sucks.
Obviously an update will come at some point but in years past we were all over this stuff (upcoming towers I mean), talking about it all day long here.
If you are dying for a new Mac Pro and would be excited about this, please let me know you're alive and I am not the last man alone on Mars.
Comments
People were making up rumors because there was no news whatsoever coming from either Apple or Motorola. Now with Intel processors, there's less need for speculation because Intel are very open about their road-map for CPUs.
According to the Mac Rumor's buying guide, the average days between updates for the Mac Pro is 217 days. Comparatively, for the consumer line iMac it's 211 days. That's not the huge delta some of the crazies are making it out to be.
Hell, Apple updates the iPod Nano less frequently than that!
Edit: Another major change worth mentioning is that the consumer line models have now become "good enough" for even pros to use. For example, Alex Lindsay of the Pixel Corps has stated on more than one occasion on Mac Break Weekly that they're using Intel iMacs for most of their video production work.
Edit: Another major change worth mentioning is that the consumer line models have now become "good enough" for even pros to use. For example, Alex Lindsay of the Pixel Corps has stated on more than one occasion on Mac Break Weekly that they're using Intel iMacs for most of their video production work.
Yup, with the screen size and processing power of the iMacs, a lot of companies are using the iMacs (we use them at my office, running Vectorworks, Adobe and AutoCAD via Parallels without a problem).They are fairly powerful, at least powerful enough for the average user, and the fact that you can use dual screens with them helps their usefulness in the "pro" arena.
Also, I think Apple has priced the Pros into irrelevance. You can't sniff a pro for less than $2500 now. I still have my G4 tower which I got for $1k less than that. I'm love a $1500 tower, and I'd be the first in line for it. The problem is that Apple doesn';t offer one, which has of course led to endless xMac discussions. The desire for this type of Mac proves two things: (1) the iMac and Mini don't offer the power and expandability that A LOT of people crave, and (2) the pro is too expensive or just too much (size, power, etc). This just looks like Apple forgetting a decent market. Its frustrating, because they have concentrated on converting the "switchers" and regular consumers with the Macbook and the iMac, while ignoring the types of people who kept the company afloat during the dark days.
Its all a shame, because the towers were usually the flagship computer. New technology always showed up there first. Now, if you buy a tower and display, you buy the same thing that you could of had a year ago, and while the rest of the apple line had become more streamlined, compact and powerful, the pro hasn't been updated in a while, and its freakin huge - larger than any other tower they've made. And on top of that, its disappeared from most marketing mention. Its not as hard to find as an Xserve, but how many Pro commercials/ads have you seen, and how far back in an Apple store do you have to go to find one?
Again, its all a shame because the tower is what Apple was for a long time. Apple has clearly decided it wants to be a consumer electronics company and not a computer company anymore, and I'm left thinking that I need to buy a Psystar.
We could talk about the possibility of a lower cost entry-point by using the Core 2 Quad but it likely won't happen, we could talk about the radical new enclosure it could have but it hasn't changed since the G5 so that's unlikely too and it's not entirely necessary.
Thus, the whole Mac Pro discussion is a bit pointless for the time being I'd say. The Mini and iMac look like they are coming first in just over 2 weeks. After that, the Mac Pro discussion will probably heat up a bit.
The news I'd love to hear is that they scrapped the entire desktop lineup and replaced everything with a Core i7 quad cube with a 9800GT. Sure it's a chip that draws a lot of power and probably generates too much heat for a quiet cube but it would be nice. Shuttle seem to be on the ball with this:
http://www.jgadgets.com/2008/12/05/s...em-at-ces-2009
http://us.shuttle.com/News.aspx
Although it's just a quad, the GPU computing in Snow Leopard should make up for it a lot vs the older 8-core Mac Pro. 2 drive bays inside a machine should be enough and you can get an external RAID if you need more.
I think GPU computing should make a huge improvement to video processing. No matter if you get 8 Core i7 processors, I doubt it will hold up to 240 cores in a GTX 280. A quad Core i7 + 112 cores in the 9800GT will be very fast indeed.
I'm never going to own a Mac Pro, but I'm still very interested in Apple's top machine. Desktop computers and workstations are such mundane things, I guess I just like seeing what a company that puts effort into industrial design can do with one. Especially with the challenge of cooling two very hot processors silently.
Ah, then you've never even seen a Mac Pro in action. A Mac Pro is anything but silent.
It's for people that know they're going to end up with a 3-4 thousand dollar system.
Nothing has changed.
I've sold Mac since
The IIFX (up to 12 grand back in the day)
The 9100
The 9150
The 9500
The 9600
The top G3
The top G4
etc.
I'd love to "need" to own a Mac Pro someday. It means whatever you're doing is important enough to pour some nice resources into this computer.
The people that buy Mac Pros know they need the power and if they are keen on what's happening in the industry they know Apple's going to wait for the XEON version of the Nehalem procs.
Ah, then you've never even seen a Mac Pro in action. A Mac Pro is anything but silent.
It is if you've sat at a desk with any other machine in its class.
Ah, then you've never even seen a Mac Pro in action. A Mac Pro is anything but silent.
I'm sitting right beside one right now (3Ghz x8), and I absolutely hear nothing. My UPS power supply makes more noise.
It is if you've sat at a desk with any other machine in its class.
Dear Friends
I have a dual 3GHz quad-core Mac Pro (Spring 2007) with 9GB of RAM and two hard disks running 10.5.6, and it's very quiet--much quieter than my old 733MHz G4.
I use Adobe's Creative Suite 4 (editing three to six images in 16-bit mode simultaneously), Office 2008, iTunes, Safari, and other programs at the same time, and I hear a secondary fan running only when when encoding slideshows in Fotomagico.
I appreciate the performance and expandability of the Mac Pro, as well as being able to choose both the number and model of displays, and I hate to see it become a niche machine. I hope Apple doesn't abandon its ultimate-power-loving customers.
By the way, in the poll above there should be an option for those of us who have a relatively new Mac Pro and won't be in the market for a new one for at least another two years.
--Jaddie
I'm sitting right beside one right now (3Ghz x8), and I absolutely hear nothing. My UPS power supply makes more noise.
My last PowerMac G5 quad was very noise, the latest MacPro's octo is very silent in comparison.
I am pretty happy with the noise aspect. I can barely hear anything.
As for updates for MacPro, I am pretty sure at MWSF we will see it. maybe with new enclosure design or just a processor and other inner things upgrade.
It seems that Apple now update it once year. So it is not so bad.
Also, I do hope they will upgrade the ACD line and have the matte option for sure. No glossy please!
It does sadden me somewhat that since Apple switched to Intel the Mac towers are just not as "sexy" as Apple's laptop machines. I think the Mac Pro just has left a lot of their users behind with its price point.
The only thing I am worried about is that Blu-Ray support won't be added to the DVD Player until Snow Leopard. So that might mean that it will be another 6-8 months before the Mac Pro is significantly updated with a Blu-Ray Drive. Final Cut Studio 3 also needs to add Blu-Ray authoring to DVD Studio. When that update comes is anyone's guess.
The Mac Pro is long overdue for a case redesign. The current Mac Pro looks nearly identical on the outside as the PowerMac G5 that came out 5+ years ago. The addition of a Blu-Ray drive is also a must.
The only thing I am worried about is that Blu-Ray support won't be added to the DVD Player until Snow Leopard. So that might mean that it will be another 6-8 months before the Mac Pro is significantly updated with a Blu-Ray Drive. Final Cut Studio 3 also needs to add Blu-Ray authoring to DVD Studio. When that update comes is anyone's guess.
Blu-ray is a bag of hurt.
Sure there will always be users who need every bit of functionality that the Mac Pro provides but when the iMac goes quad, hopefully in less than a month, a bunch of users who felt that they needed the power of the Mac Pro will probably be satisfied by a quad core iMac. Sure there will be some who dislike the iMac monitor but performance wise the iMac will start to fulfill the needs of more and more 'pro' users.
In one year or so, we should start seeing quad core iMacs with Nehalem chips and hyperthreading. Eventually the cpu won't be what drives users to Mac Pros it'll be multiple HDDs, multiple graphics cards, the desire for a different monitor ect. But that group of users will get smaller and smaller.
Seems like a read at Annad or Ars that at above 16 cores the bandwith can't keep up and it's not possible to keep the cores fed with current technology. We're getting pretty close to the ceiling.
The Mac Pro is long overdue for a case redesign.
Yes.
And a decent latest GPU.
AND an i7 chipset...
AHHHHHHHH-ND a price cut...
ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND a bundled monitor... Ok. I was kidding on the last one?
Lemon Bon BOn.
The people that buy Mac Pros know they need the power and if they are keen on what's happening in the industry they know Apple's going to wait for the XEON version of the Nehalem procs.
This is the truth summed up in one tidy comment. The only people who would seriosly whine about a Mac Pro update are those people who have no idea what the machine is for nor do they know what is happening in the industry with respect to Intel. Simply put the Mac Pro will get a significant update when Apple can realize a payoff in capability. That and implement what ever new tech they can.
The problem is excessive updates to a machine like this just arent cost effective. The Mac Pro just doesn't have the volume required to pay for such updates. The other thing is that these workstations go to companies that like consistency in the platform. Once you get beyound managing a few of these workstations, it becomes a problem to have to keep track of the little differences in the machines.
As to the whine about the age of the case, that is BS also. Like above there is a big advantage to keeping the platform stable. This means avoiding dramatic changes in the case and the internal provisions. Again the software vendors and the companies using such hardware benefit big time when they know that each Mac Pro has a common set of features. That includes the number of slots the machine supports and even their location in the machines overall foot print.
The simplest way to digest the Mac Pro case issue is that it is capital equipment and not at all consumer oriented. The Mac Pro isn't even a desktop corporate computer as most people wouldn't be able to justify it. Capital equipment needs to be stable and consitent.
In a nut shell the new Mac Pro is coming and will arrive on Apples own terms. Just don't expect dramatic external changes.
Dave
Seems like a read at Annad or Ars that at above 16 cores the bandwith can't keep up and it's not possible to keep the cores fed with current technology. We're getting pretty close to the ceiling.
Don't read too much into that pronouncement. The article and paper were based on an analysis of a couple of specific scientific algorithms, and it doesn't generalize. Many algorithms don't have such large data sets, and many algorithms can be designed to have much higher computation/bandwidth ratios thus benefiting from increased core counts.