All-new Mac Pro with modular design, Apple-branded pro displays coming in 2018

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  • Reply 181 of 198
    anomeanome Posts: 1,533member
    Marvin said:

    The truth is the high value workstation market was dead just like the XServe. If it wasn't dead in 2012 when they still sold the expandable towers, they wouldn't have redesigned it. The redesign and marketing was to try and boost the sales again and get marketshare back from Dell and HP. We know it was dead because they practically stopped selling the tower model and it made zero difference to their balance sheet so revenue would likely have been under $0.5b.

    That's an interesting point. So no-one was buying the "cheese-graters" either, before the "trash-can" was released. Looking at the timing of updates to the cheese-grater at the time the trash-can was released, they look to have been regularly somewhere in the 1-2 year range, which might be expected of a low volume product. (And yet, I recall complaints then that the Pro hadn't been updated in forever. At least part of that was a dig at how the design hadn't changed since the G5, and yet now everyone wants that design back.)
    xzu
  • Reply 182 of 198
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    I clearly see no one in here is deeply invested in the history of backplane technologies from DEC and NeXT moving foward. PCI-E is the bus to rule all bus. It will need to become modular in design for Apple's vision; and it will need to jetison Intel's anchor, Thunderbolt, to get it done.

    The backplane design will be key and how the power distribution is across a modular PCI-E bus design will make it possible.
    Could we see an Optical version of the PCI bus to help simplify the connections between modules?

    I guess the optic data bus would need to carry 8 or 16 lanes of PCIe data in one connection to make it worthwhile otherwise you could just have a more robust thunderbolt 3 connection for internal use.
  • Reply 183 of 198
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    macxpress said:
    linkman said:
    linkman said:
    If this refresh/update comes out in 2018, then it's what, only three years late?
    Never good enough for some people. How miserable.
    It was released on December 19, 2013. The next update of ANY kind was April 4, 2017. In the computer world, that's a long time. Waiting until *maybe* 2018 or later for a significant upgrade to what is supposed to be the professional workstation model with huge amounts of processing power is simply asking for some dissatisfied customers.
    I'm sorry but there's simply nothing that Apple could do that would have sirisfied some of the people who post on the blogs and rumor sites. Nothing. Also, the fact that Apple didn't just drop the Mac Pro when they said in the DF piece that it accounts for a single digit percentage of PRO users, (not overall users, not Mac users, but people who use a pro level app daily or at least once a week) is a very very good sign that all the whining about the doom of Apple and Tim Cook, yadda yadda, was a lot of wasted breath, typing, and energy.
    These people simply refused to see that there weren't any real upgrades to be had until recently. And to be frank, most of them wouldn't even have bought a new one. They would have found something else to complain about, because that's all they do. 
    Yes, I've been saying this all along. In some ways, its not 100% Apple's fault. Yes, they could have done what they did today a while ago but that still wouldn't have made people happy. Little minuscule updates don't really do much in the end. Its just updating to say they've updated their product. It still pisses people off and they're still bitch and whine about it. 

    I will add that I think its safe to say the MacPro is a very niche product for Apple. Apple knows it, they pretty much admitted it. So it makes absolutely ZERO sense to put a ton of effort into something that about 1 or 2% of Mac customers buy. Like I think it was Phil who said a lot of "Pros" just get high end iMacs and I think Apple sees this and will design a new iMac to accommodate this customer base. 

    When this new MacPro appears people will be bitching up a storm about its design, specs, price, availability, etc. It doesn't matter what Apple does, there's always a small group of people that are never happy. Its always been this way and always will. I've participated in forums for well over 10yrs and its the same song and dance every time Apple releases something new (or just updates something). 
    And this niche product thing is a problem. Apple shouldn't just concentrate on mass selling goods. That's a mistake. If they sell an average of 200,000 well supported Mac Pros a year, not a large number, and the average price is, say, $5,000, sans monitor, then that's a $billion a year. While that may seem like not much for Apple, that's still a lot of money.

    if they really don't want to do this, then they should make a deal with BOXX, and let them do it. They would be, to use a phrase from Tim, "thrilled".
  • Reply 184 of 198
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    macxpress said:

    IMO, the operative word in the announcement is modular.

    That opens up many possibilities... Spanning all Apple products/services -- both current and future...

    GPU, GPU, Who's got the GPU???

    I would like to see Apple start offering both AMD and NVIDIA options. I've always liked NVIDIA, but I think its best to have both offered and let the customer choose what's best for their use. And it doesn't have to be just workstation class graphics. There's nothing wrong with offering something like the NVIDIA GeForce1080 (or whatever is out when the new MacPro is released). Not everyone needs workstation class graphics.
    I think one reason they don't is because while ATI, now AMD of course, has enthusiastically supported Apple's standards, that Apple gave out, such as Open CL, Nvidia has been reluctant to do so, rather supporting its own CUDA instead.
  • Reply 185 of 198
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    tmay said:
    macxpress said:
    linkman said:
    linkman said:
    If this refresh/update comes out in 2018, then it's what, only three years late?
    Never good enough for some people. How miserable.
    It was released on December 19, 2013. The next update of ANY kind was April 4, 2017. In the computer world, that's a long time. Waiting until *maybe* 2018 or later for a significant upgrade to what is supposed to be the professional workstation model with huge amounts of processing power is simply asking for some dissatisfied customers.
    I'm sorry but there's simply nothing that Apple could do that would have sirisfied some of the people who post on the blogs and rumor sites. Nothing. Also, the fact that Apple didn't just drop the Mac Pro when they said in the DF piece that it accounts for a single digit percentage of PRO users, (not overall users, not Mac users, but people who use a pro level app daily or at least once a week) is a very very good sign that all the whining about the doom of Apple and Tim Cook, yadda yadda, was a lot of wasted breath, typing, and energy.
    These people simply refused to see that there weren't any real upgrades to be had until recently. And to be frank, most of them wouldn't even have bought a new one. They would have found something else to complain about, because that's all they do. 
    Yes, I've been saying this all along. In some ways, its not 100% Apple's fault. Yes, they could have done what they did today a while ago but that still wouldn't have made people happy. Little minuscule updates don't really do much in the end. Its just updating to say they've updated their product. It still pisses people off and they're still bitch and whine about it. 

    I will add that I think its safe to say the MacPro is a very niche product for Apple. Apple knows it, they pretty much admitted it. So it makes absolutely ZERO sense to put a ton of effort into something that about 1 or 2% of Mac customers buy. Like I think it was Phil who said a lot of "Pros" just get high end iMacs and I think Apple sees this and will design a new iMac to accommodate this customer base. 

    When this new MacPro appears people will be bitching up a storm about its design, specs, price, availability, etc. It doesn't matter what Apple does, there's always a small group of people that are never happy. Its always been this way and always will. I've participated in forums for well over 10yrs and its the same song and dance every time Apple releases something new (or just updates something). 
    I'm complaining early.

    I want a tower with no more than two spinning disks, and those can be 2 1/2 inch SATA drives there just to backup the system and applications that reside on solid state memory. Everything else should be devoted to DDR5, solid state memory modules, and PCIe slots. Plus, of course, six TB3 / type C connectors; two front, four in the back. For this model, a single Core I7 would be fine. I"m guessing people would want a BD or DVD drive, and an SD slot, so that would have to fit in somewhere, but keep the package small enough, and quiet enough, for a desktop. I'm thinking of a large toaster sized device.

    A more traditional workstation would give you five or seven SATA slots for 3 1/2 inch drives, dual Xeon processors, and lots of PCIe slots. Maybe that's what the market want's, but it seems out of step with all but a small fraction of the potential users.
    I truly hope that Apple does not move to an i7. This is a workstation, not a nose in the air enthusiast machine. Apple uses ecc RAM because a lot of their customers have been in research, where that's important. I don't want to see some watered down crap offered as a Mac Pro.

    while it sound nice to say DDR 5, DDR 4 is just managing to get started. It's not likely that we'll even see 5 before late 2019. And as this is a pro machine, I want to see 3.5 drive slots. You may not like it, but that's you.

    a real workstation is what we want. Yes, with dual Xeons! Lots of RAM too. Serious video editing demands lots of cores. Lots and lots of cores. What you want is a mishmash.
  • Reply 186 of 198
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Don't adjust your TV set.  Apple refuses do something as simple as watch LinusTechTips on Youtube, among many others like Snazzy Labs, to see that 15-year-old boys and girls can build or modify Mac Pro's 3 times faster at 30% of the price.  It's true.  

    The company doesn't even support the Kaby Lake CPU — what's that, 9 months beyond its Aug 2016 release?  But tech journalists are so enamored with Apple's integration they can't take their eyes off the shiny objects & accessories to see that it is not - even with this announcement - a priority.  Anytime it humbles itself to the Apple community, loyal users swoon.  Just remember, it's a tool, it's a device.  What are your needs?  I like my MacBook Pro for traveling, teaching.  But it is NOT a 4-wheel drive in the matters of 3D rendering and Video Editing. Games.  Adobe apps, it all has an economy of scale.

    Look for yourself.  You can still have a Mac and not have to be bound to Johnny Ive's Wheelchair With Touchbar. 




    If you built a base machine today, using a Ryzen 1800 by AMD with 8 cores, 64gb of 3200 RAM, an M2 (mini ssd that delivers sequential Read/Write speeds up to 3,200 MB/s) to hold the OS and a GTX 1070 -- at $1350, you will score almost 20,000 on the Geekbench logs. (Compare to Apple's $8,000 8-core MacPro at a score of 24,000)  It is not a Mac and does not have to be.  It's an example of where technology is and where Apple's commitment is not.  The Youtube videos are proof you can make wicked fast Macs -- and they are stable.

    What Apple has done with this patronizing announcement is make a campaign promise years late. Reason? Hi-end users are not a big part of its revenue.  Don't buy into lip service like Rural America did last fall.  Question the Answer.  I'm sure even I am only scratching the surface. 
    I'm of the opinion that Apple needs to get back to the old days, when they updated their machines as fast as new CPUs and GPUs came out. In the days of the Powermac, the beige machines, Apple updates as often as 4 times a year! That was a bit much, but I don't see why they can do it once a year, with regularity, as long as Intel updates its chips. 

    Apple waits, these days, for new chips that do specific things for them. That's a problem. With the 2013 Mac Pro, they could have updated once a year, even if they thought people were hesitating to buy. By not doing so, people definitely didn't buy. I retired in summer of 2004, when we sold our company. I decided to get out early. Came 2009, I bought a new Mac Pro. I figured I'd get another in 4 years, not the 2 I had been doing previously. So 2o13 comes along, and I see the new machine.

    well, it sure was different. But I thought I'd get it anyway, in 2014, when they did their second model upgrade, which is usually a much better option. Of course, it never happened. Well, now, with the news about a new model,mwhich will likely be late 2018, I bought a 2012 model with 2Xeon 6 core chips, running at 3.46GHz, with 64GB RAM. I figure that will hold me over, as mine doesn't go to 10.12.

    i wouldn't want a CPU from AMD though. I just don't trust them. Their latest, and best is still lagging behind. I don't trust their delivery. It's always been poor.
  • Reply 187 of 198
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    melgross said:
    i wouldn't want a CPU from AMD though. I just don't trust them. Their latest, and best is still lagging behind. I don't trust their delivery. It's always been poor.
    Never mind the power draw. And my Mac Pro’s 4780 is the only card I’ve ever had that fried itself.
  • Reply 188 of 198
    DESIGNSDESIGNS Posts: 1unconfirmed, member
    FINALLY.... VERY EXCITING..!!!! Readying my wallet NOW
    MacPro
  • Reply 189 of 198
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    darkvader said:
    I didn't know that online forums were comprised of only the 1%.

    Funny that the Mac Pro is an extremely small seller, yet everyone and their dog seems to be using one (and therefore, have the "right" to complain incessantly about it).

    Sounds kind of similar to the people who always preface their $hit posts with "I own several Apple products but...."
    It wasn't a small seller until the trash can came out.

    I'm typing this on a Mac Pro right now.  It's not a cylinder.  I've only installed or worked on a few trash cans, I can almost count the number of them I've touched on fingers and toes.  The cheesegrater?  No idea.  High hundreds?  Low thousands?  I'm not sure.  Personally?  I only own three.  Now that's nothing like MacBook Pros, I've got five within my current line of sight, but when I complain about something Apple has done wrong, I know a little something about it.  That little pic beside my username, with the Apple ][, couple Disk ][ drives, and Monitor II?  Yeah, I have one of those, it still works, I've been doing this for a while.

    The last trash can Pro I installed was last year.  It was a compromised install from the start, I'd much rather have used a 2016 XServe, but that doesn't exactly exist.  It's in a rack, it replaced a dying 2008 cheesegrater that was there because the old location where it was originally installed didn't have a rack, this one does.

    Look, there are pretty much two groups of people who post on these boards, the "Apple can do no wrong" types, and those of us who actually have work to do and need the appropriate hardware to do it.  The trash can Pro is designed to be pretty.  Whether it is or not is a matter of opinion.  But what isn't a matter of opinion is that it's an inherently compromised design.  It's unarguable that a small cylinder form factor picked looks over capabilities, it has one SSD slot vs the 6 internal drive bays of the cheesegrater (2 optical, 4 HDD bays).  It has one CPU socket, vs the two in the cheesegrater.  And it has two graphics boards, but they aren't upgradeable, for most of my purposes I only need one, and I could put four in a cheesegrater if I did need to.  I don't need a bunch of external drive boxes cluttering up my desk, I don't need a bunch more cables making the rack even more complicated.  It's compromise, and for most of us, it was the wrong one.

    Yeah, sometimes we're not happy with what Apple does.  Yeah, macOS is still FAR better than anything out of MicroSloth, so we still use hardware that isn't ideal for the purpose.  And yes, we want Apple to get on the ball and ship better stuff.

    Thin isn't what everybody needs in a laptop.  And cylindrical is not what almost anybody needs or wants in a powerhouse workstation or server.

    That's why we complain.  We know Apple is capable of better.  They've done better before.
    Speak for yourself on not liking the Mac Pro as is.  I've handled thousands of Macs too, dating back to 1984  (and prior to that Apple ][s, ///s, Lisas too 1978-1984) as the owner of several a major dealerships and a Mac software company.  I've personally owned most of them on the side and also ran a TV production company producing weekly shows for ESPN and ESPN2.  These last few years I loved my own personal Mac Pro cylindrical model and haven't missed the many cheese graters I've owned over the years one bit, especially the weight.  I especially love how my Mac Pro runs both macOS and Windows 10 Anniversary so well.  Such a versatile machine that I can unhook in seconds and take with me (in one hand), it's so light it's almost like owning another ultra powerful MBP minus a monitor.  I have tons of peripherals and lots of TB HD RAID zero drives, USB3 and TB SSDs of course too.  It's quite literally the most versatile Mac I've ever owned.  Now perhaps Apple need to rethink to go to the next level but these last few years I've had zero complaints.  Obviously I look forward to the next Mac Pro with the latest I/O technology.  My credit card is waiting. :)
    edited April 2017 williamlondon
  • Reply 190 of 198
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    melgross said:
    i wouldn't want a CPU from AMD though. I just don't trust them. Their latest, and best is still lagging behind. I don't trust their delivery. It's always been poor.
    Never mind the power draw. And my Mac Pro’s 4780 is the only card I’ve ever had that fried itself.
    And ..  Nvidia were responsible for many MBP's deaths back in the day.  Bring on Apple's own GPUs!  Third party GPUs; AMD & Nvidia, have been Apple's number one Achilles' heal for a long time IMHO.  Not to mention they never update drivers for Bootcamp but I guess that's another story.  I'm just grateful to bootcampdrivers.com.  Then again, would an Apple GPU even support Windows :(  
    tallest skil
  • Reply 191 of 198
    Xiao.ZiXiao.Zi Posts: 1unconfirmed, member
    What I wanted and needed and still want and need is a rackable or mini rack with slots for compute cards, graphic cards and expansion slots with a high speed bus. Give pro users that or we will continue to stack macMinis (or continue migrating to Windows) of necessity not love.

    Apple blew it last time. Last chance guys. And 2018 should be a hard deadline for a great new box, I'm afraid Tim is on the wrong channel with the time no object thing.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 192 of 198
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Xiao.Zi said:
    What I wanted and needed and still want and need is a rackable or mini rack with slots for compute cards, graphic cards and expansion slots with a high speed bus. Give pro users that or we will continue to stack macMinis (or continue migrating to Windows) of necessity not love.
    What can’t Mac Minis (and a separate rack for said expansion cards) do in this configuration that you’d want?

  • Reply 193 of 198
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    Xiao.Zi said:
    What I wanted and needed and still want and need is a rackable or mini rack with slots for compute cards, graphic cards and expansion slots with a high speed bus. Give pro users that or we will continue to stack macMinis (or continue migrating to Windows) of necessity not love.
    What can’t Mac Minis (and a separate rack for said expansion cards) do in this configuration that you’d want?

    I guess 1RU is a tight fit given the damage to the finish.
  • Reply 194 of 198
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    mattinoz said:
    I guess 1RU is a tight fit given the damage to the finish.
    Oh, that's tape.
  • Reply 195 of 198
    jblongzjblongz Posts: 165member
    I hope this doesn't mean that Thunderbolt 3 is already half-way out the door.
  • Reply 196 of 198
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    Xiao.Zi said:
    What I wanted and needed and still want and need is a rackable or mini rack with slots for compute cards, graphic cards and expansion slots with a high speed bus. Give pro users that or we will continue to stack macMinis (or continue migrating to Windows) of necessity not love.

    Apple blew it last time. Last chance guys. And 2018 should be a hard deadline for a great new box, I'm afraid Tim is on the wrong channel with the time no object thing.
    Pretty sure you aren't getting what you want.
  • Reply 197 of 198
    welshdogwelshdog Posts: 1,897member
    sog35 said:
    welshdog said:
    Apple has lost thousands of customers over the last 6-7 years to Windows.  The cheese graters got too old and the trash can was inadequate for many so they started looking at Windows machines and they liked what they saw (sort of).  The new Final Cut added to the exodus and really pissed off a lot of long time Mac users.  They moved over to Premiere or Avid, first on Macs and then later on Windows machines.  After Effects users did the same thing.  The end result is a ton of people who now won't even consider Apple hardware or software for editing or effects work for video post.  The serious 3D people left a long time ago because of the hardware limitations.

    While I applaud the Apple announcement today, I will have to wait and see what they bring to market.  They talked about one big heavy duty GPU - okay that's fine, but they should consider adding the ability to support a card cage filled with GPUs and maybe CPUs.  People in video and film have software that can use (even require) that sort of power.  DaVinci Resolve is one such system. Connect a AppleCage via USB C and fill it with GPUs or whatever - easy and peasy.  The long lost power users also liked the abiity to put four drives inside the old cheese graters.  It was often used as temporary storage for processing or loading etc.  Primary storage was usually a high speed RAID.  I know that sort of feature makes for a physically large computer, but these people don't care they want features that add versatility.  The old cheese graters had that in spades.  Need Fiber Channel, we got a card for that.  Need some new form of SCSI, got a card.  Need more GPU power, slap in a card.  Need some extra terabytes for a big job, slam in some drives.  This isn't hard to understand and doing it won't hurt the Apple brand.  It could help the brand if old users were to come home because this new comuter is insanely great.  We will see.
    Actually if you look at FACTS:

    1. Mac unit sales are up the last 5 years
    2. Windows unit sales are down sharply the last 5 years

    So you are pretty much wrong about everything.
    Your reading comprehension is abysmal. I said nothing about sales.  I clearly was speaking of users, specifically pro video users.
    fastasleep
  • Reply 198 of 198
    SynickelSynickel Posts: 11member
    They say that all the majority of pros are using the MacBook Pro or iMac, which is probably true. I use the MacBook, but like me, it's probably because the price is so high for the desktop system anymore. I'd rather have it, but can't afford it.
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