The Mac Pro is Dead - Page 5

I had thought that I was contributing to an intelligent conversation here about the future of the Macpro, obviously I have offended mjteix in some way but surely you need to also contribute your own ideas rather than scoring points by merely criticizing others for the gainsake of contradiction rather than appreciating the development concept in context.

I am an Electronics r&d engineer in the professional sound industry and have been for 36 years, I expect the job of "rolling cables" is one of fitters derogatory as it was intended I'm sure.
good luck with your forum.

Which is exactly why the Mac Pro is out of consideration and there is demand for for something midway between the Mini and the Mac Pro. This should be easy for Apple to do.

So some do. However many professionals never bother to do the Math. Here I'm talking professionals that actually use the power in the Pro.

those are pretty poor examples as they would not perform well up against a real PCI Express solution.

A lot of words to say nothing.

I more or less agree with this except for one thing. Studios need a mix of internal and external storage systems, one isn't superior to another. Rather they each have there tasks to perform.

I remember back in the day before the iPhone, iPod and iPad...when the Mac Pros would get updated first with the latest and greatest technology. When Apple catered to all the graphic design firms and artists first. Now it seems the regular consumer comes first. Although the line is blurring between the two now. Many pros are using matchbooks and iMacs these days.

I remember back in the day it was Apple Computer. Steve tactfully slipped the change in during the iPhone Keynote in aught seven so that no one would notice through the "RDF high" from the iPhone.

I'm just adding my two cents here :

I was a Mac Pro user until last year, winter 2010. I wanted the most powerfull machines Apple could sell and they weren't powerfull enough for my needs. Now, this time has ended. I'm now an happy Mac mini and MacBook Pro 13" user and still can do everything that I was doing before, even better and faster !

So yes, in my case, the Mac Pro is totally and definitely dead. I'll never buy that old, costly, fat, clunky and noisy concept again.

"Mac Pros" as in professionl Mac users? The actual Mac Pro machine was the slowest to be released, slowest to be updated.


That's true, but graphic design users don't need a tower machine nearly as much anymore.


If he intended to slip "below the radar" on that one, then I would suggest he failed. But even if it were still Apple Computer, it would still fit because most of Apple's product line are computers in one degree or another.

Noisy? You're remembering the G5s, not the Mac Pro. I can't even hear my Mac Pro's fans over the hideous grinding of my hard drives. Thing's dead silent when not writing to/from them. Need me some multi-terabyte SSDs, I do.

I think you mean the G4. The G5 was an oasis of quiet compared to the "vacuum cleaner" G4.

BTW, are we expecting an eminent update to Mac Pros anytime soon? With the demise of Sony's tape factory in Japan we are facing a lot more tapeless workflow which means lots of compressing and uploading. The worn out Dual G5 system in our machine room won't cut it. We will be buying a new 12 core Mac Pro soon, but I might be able to delay a little if there is something good waiting in the wings.

deleted



sorry

Hmmm, Google Translate tells me it detected English but didn't help decode it. I think it is supposed to read:

Sell your stock now, sell your first born.

Are you using an Android phone to write this?


I don't think a major update anyway. Intel brought out Sandy Bridge Xeons but they cost too much. A 10-core chip is coming:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/21999...irst_half.html

but Apple don't use the 8-core chips it replaces anyway. They use Intel's power efficient and cheaper Xeons, the 5500/5600 series. Intel's roadmap pdf is here:

http://download.intel.com/products/roadmap/roadmap.pdf

It says the Sandy Bridge-EP models replace those in Q3/Q4 2011 with up to 8-cores per chip vs 6-cores. Because Apple's unit shipments are so low, especially for the Pro, Intel could offer chips to them early - this happened at least once before and they got the chips way before anyone else.

Intel confirmed the official launch to be about 5 months from now:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel...n-187568.shtml

It does push the update cycle out by quite a long way and would probably be far longer than any update so it would actually make sense to have a minor update in time for NAB with Thunderbolt and a new Final Cut that supports Thunderbolt audio/video capture cards. Avid are going to have Thunderbolt technology. There's actually not that much reason for them to compete any more tbh, that race is really done.

While it may seem odd to expect people to buy a new Mac Pro now vs wait 5 months, the update in 5 months probably won't be worth waiting for and will likely have quad-cores on the entry level due to cost.

The longer updates take to the pro line, the more expensive it is, the more that hardware becomes externalised and the faster, cheaper, smaller everything else gets, it just nudges the Mac Pro ever closer to the grave. The Mac Pro mainly just offers expansion and Thunderbolt will kill that need.

If you get a 6-core i7 iMac with a 256GB internal SSD, a decent GPU, connected to a fast RAID and capture device and multiple displays with one cable what does a Mac Pro offer? Sure you get the option for 12-core but you'd be cheaper buying two iMacs.

roflmao

<OT>Speaking of FCP/FCS for NAB - I'll be happy if they've finally got around to rewriting it for 64 bit.
It's been quite a revelation for me playing around with the new versions of AE and C4D way, way faster than on 32<OT>

[QUOTE

The longer updates take to the pro line, the more expensive it is, the more that hardware becomes externalised and the faster, cheaper, smaller everything else gets, it just nudges the Mac Pro ever closer to the grave. The Mac Pro mainly just offers expansion and Thunderbolt will kill that need.

If you get a 6-core i7 iMac with a 256GB internal SSD, a decent GPU, connected to a fast RAID and capture device and multiple displays with one cable what does a Mac Pro offer? Sure you get the option for 12-core but you'd be cheaper buying two iMacs.[/QUOTE]

That's what I'm thinking.

Cheaper buying two iMacs than one twelve core Mac Pro and you get two gorgeous 27 inch displays into the bargain. With Thunderbolt expansion that takes care of the rest.

It's not even a competition.

How long before we get a 6 core iMac...hmm...drools.

Lemon Bon Bon.

[/quote]
It offers internal drive storage and multiple slots. Slots that by the way run far faster than a TB link.

The big issue with TB is the rather limited bandwidth to external devices that you have with only one TB port. I'd be the first to suggest though that new desktop Macs will likely have multiple TB ports. Even so I don't think you will see a rapid adoption of TB I/O by professionals.

This can only be weighed on an individual basis. The reality is there is a huge difference between x number o CPUs in one box and the same number divided over two or more boxes. Honestly I see the utility of massively parallel machines only growing. More and more work flows will leverage all those cores.

Sooner or later hardware catches up with a users needs.

Go with AMD hardware and we could have one this year. Maybe those cores won't set any bench mark fires but it is possible. What is very interesting is that 32 mm and smaller means future cores will be very capable of much higher clock rates. An iMac with a SB chip running at twice the clock rate of the new MBPs will be impressive.

One just needs to realize that the Mac Pro will soon see a new generation of hardware too.

Apple's implementation is apparently two-channel full 10Gbps each channel bidirectional. So you won't be sharing display bandwidth with data over the same cable.

Also, while you're right about the Mac Pro having faster slots, you only get two x16 ports (64Gbps) and two x4 slots (16Gbps) and you can only use 300W maximum across all slots so you're not going to be running multiple high-end graphics cards in there.

It's a fair point to say that you get more ports but when do you need to use that bandwidth at the same time? Even if you have a capture card and a RAID array, you're limited by the read speed of the drive. Even a very fast SSD in a camera will give at most 500MB/s speeds. TB gives you 1.2GB/s each way.

Dual/triple displays on the same cable doesn't affect it as it goes over the other channel. An external GPU would suck up all the bandwidth but again, it might use the display channel and you aren't likely to need capture + RAID + all the bandwidth a GPU requires at the same time.


I think the tapeless HD video crowd will go crazy over this. When they get FW800 adaptors, it will spell the end to those ports.

"you're limited by the read speed of the drive" in both situations, it's not because TB "runs" at up to 1.2GB/s that anything you put on TB will "run" at 1.2GB/s. Best case scenario with TB, using RAID for multiple 500MB/s drives is up to 4x PCIe speed. With a RAID PCIe controller card you can reach up to 8x PCIe speeds (you will need many many drives, but still).

You can't use more that 2 displays on each TB port. And yes, the more devices you put on a single port the less total bandwidth will be available for each device. With just 2 displays (up to 8.64Gb/s), you can saturate one channel one way (from the computer to the devices), than means that on that channel only the other way is available, while the other channel if still free. As some devices work both ways (read/write storage, real-time DSP devices input/output, even audio interfaces input/ouput), depending on the devices on the chain, you could saturate a single TB port with just 4 devices that work at up to 1x speed both ways.

Some setups can be active all the time, for example: an audio interface in recording/playback mode, real-time DSP processing, storage units in recording/playback mode, displays. I'm pretty sure that when available some people will try something like how many UAD-2 QUAD can i use on a single TB port, with/without display, with/without an Apogee symphony,...? If users can do something real quick is learning how to saturate any technology.

And just because you can put up to two 16x cards in the MP, it offers already different usages than TB ports alone: in a single 16x port you can use graphics cards with up to 6 outputs (Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity Edition only 188W), 8x RAID cards that offer more bandwidth than any planned TB device, and two more cards that can be as powerful as a single TB chain. It really depends on your usage, but in any case case you'll need more than a single TB port to threaten the MP in terms of I/O expansion. And we're not even adding SB Xeons to the mix that could offer up to six 16x PCIe 2.0 slots with two E5-2400 cpus (more with E5-2600 cpus, even more with E5-4600 cpus).

While TB is a high-end I/O interface, it will shine on small computers (notebooks, AIOs, mini desktops) offering PCIe-like capabilities to designs that don't offer PCIe slots. Most designs will only offer one or two TB controllers/ports since very few PCIe lanes are available on mainstream cpus/chipsets (16x on the cpu, and a few on the chipset that already takes care of other tasks) as soon as you add dedicated graphics, and each TB controller/port needs 4x PCIe 2.0 lanes and at least one DP output to be fully compliant...

I don't know what you mean by FW800 adaptors, but TB probably means the end of FW in less than a year (provided enough TB devices are available at a reasonable price). A future MBP could get two TB ports, up to three USB3 ports and no FW800 port.

Usually not in any practical sense though. Like some people try to use SLI/Crossfire in a Mac Pro by adding an extra power supply and it's not really worth doing.


Yes, this is one area where TB won't work but they can have a single 5870 in a single x16 slot with 6 MDP/TB ports if it was in a Mac Pro. In an iMac, we'd have to wait for a future iteration of TB.


Just a newer iteration.


I don't think we'll see more than 4 slots in the MP and due to the power limit, there's no point in going to x16.

Sorry marvin something odd happened
sometimes i mis spell bout my mac chooses its own words ..

>>>>>
My point marvin is that their are 3 streets to walk down if you buy laptops .
First, stay far away from apple .. we leave these people alone forever..

SecoundYou can change you mac ever 2 yrs or so and you can buy what you buy .But i feel that its a dumb extreme waste on our world too.

THIRD >>> You can buy a laptop that will for your needs and your families legacies needs do what you think you may need . But marvin in truth almost any MBP is so way over powered for most peoples needs that unless your playing COD /BORDERLINE /CRYSIS and shifting around 300 g of media every 2 days you would be thriledl with an entry level MBA ..

OR NOT

Because if you want to buy a laptop and use it for 5 yrs then do the math.
15" highest end $2800 VS "low end $1800.


The low end should be one dollar a day or so for 5 yrs
THE HIGH END should be $1.75 a day .

So even if you don't play games who knows what will happen in 3 yrs ?? Who knows what new thing comes along and leaves you and your cheap-o MBP useless ????

3D ??

No matter what does happen you >>if you buy the fastest most powerful model will get the highest resale or you can send this power house machine to your kid if need be .

and if you want to do one day get into or some one you love wants to get into Garage band and Aperture or Final cut pro and play games . IF IF IF
Then a high end MBP BOUGHT WITH A 4 OR 5 YR ownership plan is the only real choice ..

I waited 4 yrs for apple to get a fast laptop for games and movie making , i bought cheap models during those 4 yrs .

>>>>>>>>>

Marvin my other comments s were making fun of the doom and gloom crowd here . i am sorry for being so unclear


9


If

I feel unless your doing very large number crunching OR RUNNING A major network studio >> a 1/2 dozen mini's should fit any and all other needs /. ergo

THE APPLE desk top is dead . AND apple feels that way TOO.



9


I feel that
APPLE will bring forth a boutique line of extremely high priced and very very powerful Desk tops . Apple won't make much money but Apple will bring to the market new and great things .

I don't think you understand what Thunderbolt is whatsoever. A combo card like you described would need 40x PCIe 2.0 lanes to be fully functional.

TB supporting up to 7 devices and all the bandwidth available being 4x, there will be instances when a few TB devices will saturate the port. With two-way devices close to 1x speed (DSP processing would be an example), people will have to determine if 4 devices are fully supported with or without a display on a single port even if the port itself can handle up to 7 devices.

Never said that the MP will get more than 4 slots. I said that two E5-2400 cpus will offer six 8x PCIe 3.0 lanes that translates to six 16x PCIe 2.0 slots. In a MP, if the design is unchanged, that could mean two 16x PCIe 3.0 slots and two 8x PCIe 3.0 slots.

There are plenty of reasons to go 16x and the speed of 16x slots has nothing to do with the power requirements of the device: there are 20W 16x graphics cards (FirePro 2460 Multi-View), and there are plenty of other cards under 25W, RAID, SSD, DSP processing, audio/video,...

Don't get me wrong, TB is bound for greatness, no question. But to say that it's enough to kill the MP (and other computers with PCIe slots) is just wrong. And if you don't understand where TB comes from, you can't accuratly predict what the "next iteration" will be and how it will compete or not with PCIe slots. The other thing is that depending on the design chosen you can have TB ports as well as PCIe slots on the same computer...

------------

Still, it's funny that one can write in the same post that "THE APPLE desk top is dead" and a few words later "APPLE will bring ... very very powerful Desk tops... to the market..."

Hey Guys!

I am looking to purchase a Mac Pro. While I don't have a project currently lined up that demands the highest performance, I want to have it to be safe. I have a very large sample library collection(Music Composition) that I use to create my music. To save time, just know that I'm set on purchasing a Mac Pro and that I feel that I could use the upgrade, okay?

However, after seeing various posts on this topic, I have decided to hold off on the immediate purchase that I had planned in December 2010 to await the release of the MP line with the new Sandy Bridge processors. Since I'm going to spend this much money, I want to have the latest greatest thing, if only for a little while (couldn't this argument make me purchase now, though? lol).

In your opinion, do you think it's better to wait for the new architecture of the Sandy Bridge? Or, will performance level be on my side to purchase now?

I've read that when the new SB processors are incorporated into the line, it may only be offered with the highest core count of 4 (quad). Just nonsense or what?

Basically... Is it very that a high core count current 2010 model (8 or 12 core) will have a greater performance over the 2011 (or whenever) new version?

I won't claim myself to be very technologically savvy. Just looking for some help. Please feel free to ask me questions to clarify my situation. Thanks, people!

If you can wait, you don't need a Mac Pro; you're not in the target market.

And he admits that he doesn't really need it. But that doesn't mean he doesn't want it. Perhaps he is looking for a Mac that is easy to open and offers internal expandability. The Mac Pro is the only Mac that offers those two things.

Apple has created a secondary market for the Mac Pro beyond those that really need it by not offering an easy to open mid range Mac.

If someone has the bucks to spend on the Mac Pro why not buy it?

Excuse me, but if I want a Mac Pro and I feel I have legitimate reasons to obtain one... doesn't that automatically put me in the target market? I'm in the target market, if I say I'm in the target market.

ANYWAY ... I was hoping to avoid these types of comments ... Please, carefully read my original post before you just offer opinions on whether or not you feel I need a Mac Pro or if you don't think I deserve one or anything of the like. It's not what I'm after.

I didn't feel it was necessary to share this, but I'm a Music Composition major, slowly working my way into the film scoring industry. I work on occasional projects when I have time. I have a large collection of samples and libraries. I have many that just plain rip through my current RAM (8GB) on my iMac (21.5", Late 2009). While an update in memory would do well enough, I need more processing power, too, as well as storage (1x1 TB internal; 3x1TB external, current). Everything just needs upscaled and I think Mac Pro can do that for me. I'm a happy and loyal Mac customer, and I plan to stick with them. Right or wrong, that's my choice and my burden to bear.

The fellow above me is correct in that I would also like to take advantage of the easy upgrade abilities of a Mac Pro.

Having said all of this... was anything not clear in my first Post that I could address to help the willing people provide answers to my questions.

*I'm not trying to get mean on the anti- Mac Pro people, but just stating that Mac Pro is dead or that you don't think I need one does not help my case. Try to restrain yourself with those thoughts. I'd still love to hear any thoughts that take my case into consideration from you!

Personally, I would wait. The Sandybridge processors are significantly faster than their predecessor. Just as an example, I just got a new MacBook Pro and I have a 8-core Xeon MacPro from 2008. On the geekbench benchmark the MacBook Pro is only about 10% slower than the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro has 16GB of RAM and the MBP 8GB. To have a laptop that's nearly as powerful as my tower is pretty amazing. To me it suggests that the new MacPros will be that much faster.

Thank you! That's the kind of stuff that I'm looking for.

So, even if I purchased a 12-core 2010 model, do you think the next gen is likely to trump it's performance even with fewer cores?

The next generation of Xeon cpus will have more cores not fewer. And they will be faster and more power efficient, I really think they will offer a significant upgrade. For the MP, Apple will probably use 4-core, 6-core and 8-core cpus, that up to 16 cores for the dual-cpus models. The MP is certainly a weapon of choice for what you do. I would wait too.

Depending on your budget (whether you're planning on buying a single cpu model or a dual-cpu model, for example), and since the future MP may only be released late this year (or early next year), in the meantime I would check the upcoming iMacs that should get a nice cpu speedbump, and probably a Thunderbolt port, for which some devices will be released this summer, fast storage and audio/video equipment, that may be useful/interesting in your line of work.

It's not like people will daisy-chain 7 devices off each port if they have 6 ports - who even daisy chains 2 devices? If you have 32Gbps/6 = 5Gbps per port, you can easily have say 3 x 30" displays, a capture card and a RAID array connected. If people go overboard with it, the devices just won't have enough bandwidth but it's their own fault and they just unplug something. Also, it can be hooked into a PCI 3.0 slot.


I think it will be the end for multiple internal expansion slots, especially when it hits 100Gbps (or when you get multiple ports from a 100Gbps+ source). Computer technology just has to match usage scenarios and examples saturating 100Gbps are going to be pretty flakey.


Models that are only a generation apart usually don't see more than a 50% bump in CPU. The chips that would go in it aren't out until Q4 2011:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel...d-183372.shtml

I'd wait until after NAB 2011 (April 9-14) though because Thunderbolt is going to be important for film work and I just don't think Apple will leave it out of the Mac Pro for 7 months. I expect a minor change to the spec but worth getting. I wouldn't wait until the end of the year for it nor would I jump to a 12-core. Your iMac would be a Core 2 Duo, even a 6-core Mac Pro would be 4x faster than this. Instead of spending so much on the extra cores, invest in a 256 SSD boot drive. Intel's G3 drives just came out 30% cheaper than before and this will give you much better IO for loading audio tracks.

People won't have 6 TB ports in the near future. What can be hooked to what PCIe 3.0 slot? So now it's TB ports and PCIe slots on the same computer? So the MP isn't dead yet?

Wow. Still not getting it. Let's talk about today or this year or even early next year, Thunderbolt at 10Gb/s, because you won't see 100Gb/s Light Peak before 2020 (that's Intel's own forecast), and you don't know when TB will move to v2 either. Those bi-directional 10Gb/s channels don't appear for thin air, but from the PCIe lanes available on the cpu/chipset of the computer.

For the next few months we will see only one Thunderbolt port on computers, two on very few designs.
Why?
- Because each TB port uses 4x PCIe 2.0 lanes.
How many PCIe 2.0 lanes found on mainstream cpus?
- 16
What about if I want a dedicated gpu connected to the cpu?
1- no Thunderbolt.
2- TB on the chipset that already uses some PCIe lanes for other tasks and a slower link to the cpu, performance will be poor.
3- use 8x for the gpu and up to 8x for TB controller(s), that's what Apple did for the 15/17" MBPs

So, for the next few months people will only have one TB port to play with, they will daisy chain a lot. A typical setup in audio will be:
MacBook Pro - Storage - audio interface - DSP processing - display (optional, but nice to have)
That's what you will see in most digital audio workstations like the MP, but internally. Typically, you'll have multiple drives, the gpu, one i/o card and up to 2 DSP cards (Apogee + UAD-2, for example), or up to three combo i/o-DSP cards (Pro Tools HD).

And that's already something you can often see with FW: multiple storage units + audio interface, even sometimes a FW DSP unit (there are few of them, but they exist).

I don't except the iMac to get more than one TB port either, it has the same limitations as the MBP. The only design that could receive two TB controllers/ports is the Mac mini server (integrated graphics, two display outputs and HDMI useless, 16x unused PCIe lanes on the cpu to play with). So daisy-chaining will be very common.

Just try to realize that 6 TB ports mean 24x PCIe 2.0 lanes used (just for data, not including PCIe lanes for the gpus). Only Xeon and very high-end desktop cpus offer that many lanes. For you that means that only workstations/servers/very high-end desktop will be able to offer that many TB ports. So they compete with themselves?

When/If, one day, there are enough Thunderbolt devices (in a wide price range) to make FW really obsolete, then we will probably get 2 TB ports on MBPs, iMacs,... But it will take some time.

When, one day, TB reaches v2 (20Gb/s), it will also need 2 times the number of lanes (or lanes twice as fast), so the problem will be similar (how many lanes on the cpu, how many for the gpu,...). Intel will offer PCIe 3.0 on Xeons later this year, and will start offering it on some mainstream cpus in 2012, so maybe Intel will launch TB v2 in 2013.

But on a mac pro how will TB tie into a ati / nvidia card?

Custom ATI / nvidia cards? + custom card + custom slot? moded pci-e slot or pci-e slot + add on slot in the back of it?

voodoo 1 loop back / loop though like cable?

severs boards / workstations broad tend to NOT have on board video then have on board PCI based video not chip set based.

TB ports with out video?

The Mac Pro is probably the only computer that doesn't need Thunderbolt as it already has PCIe slots, and most of what will be released (at first) as Thunderbolt devices will be based on existing PCIe devices or can be achieve internally (storage).

Like I've already mentionned I don't think that we will see lots of gpu+TB cards, since TB requires at least 4x PCIe lanes, and gpus like 16x lanes. With only 16x PCIe 2.0 lanes per slot, you end up "limiting" the number of lanes to the gpu. With 16x PCIe 3.0 slots (if/when released), you would be able to offer enough bandwith to the gpu (8x PCIe 3.0 = 16x PCIe 2.0) and up to four 10Gb/s TB ports (8x PCIe 3.0 = 4x4 PCIe 2.0).

There are indeed servers/workstations with on-board dedicated graphics or even integrated graphics. Workstation doesn't always mean graphics workstation.

Video is part of Thunderbolt specs, I don't think Intel will allow designs without a link to video, as they already stated that there will be no PCIe Thunderbolt "upgrade" cards for existing computers. But that doesn't mean you have to connect a display to a Thunderbolt port, you can use "data" devices only.

I don't know Apple's plans for the MP. But I already stated that the design and the architecture may change if not this year, later next year, to take advantage of the latest technologies, including Thunderbolt. IMO and even for the current design that also plays the role of the late XServe, I would offer basic on-board graphics with 2 Thunderbolt ports that would be located with the bunch of usual ports, this way no PCIe slot would be used, and no need for more custom slots/cards. And if one needs better graphics, he can add "standard" AMD/ATI or nvidia Quadro cards, and the Thunderbolt ports would still be available as "data" ports. Another benefit is that if your added graphics card fails, you still have the on-board graphics for your displays. I don't think the added cost of on-board graphics+Thunderbolt will be that much of a burden, as it could be based on the gpu used in the low-end iMac, for example.

You said earlier that the reason Thunderbolt can't replace internal PCI slots is because it can't match the bandwidth when PCIe 3.0 arrives. So I suggest using a PCIe 3.0 slot and now you say, sure it can take 4 TB ports but that's *if/when* we get PCIe 3.0.

There's no reason for you to want it to fail to replace internal expansion this much.

Intel themselves have said that if you plug a device into a Thunderbolt port, it appears to the operating system just like a PCI express device and it's been designed with the intent of bringing specialist PCI devices to everyone:

"With Thunderbolt technology, workstation-level performance feature expansion can be packaged as standalone accessories, and is only a cable away. And by leveraging the inherently tight timing synchronization (within 8ns across 7 hops downstream from a host) and low latencies of Thunderbolt technology, broadcast-quality media can be produced using Thunderbolt products."

This also means it's trivial to support things like FW800 because it's no different from adding a PCIe FW800 card.

The theoretical use cases don't matter. If this development brings a Radeon 5870 to a Mac Mini and an inexpensive Apogee card to everyone, why complain about it? 70-80% of people are using laptops and a fraction of the remainder will want to buy compatible PCI cards and install them. By making them plug and play for anyone, it means a huge market boost for peripheral manufacturers.


Ok sure, someone with that setup on the MBP may have 4 devices in a chain but if you had multiple ports, you wouldn't daisy chain and it's not like these scenarios are going to be common. The vast majority of people will be hooking up a single monitor or storage device.

As far as the Mac Pro is concerned, having these things external is better anyway. You can use very high powered devices with their own PSU, you don't have to bend down to the back of the tower to plug/unplug anything, you can share a single device with multiple machines e.g buy one apogee/RED/Blackmagic/AJA adaptor and use the same one with the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro with plug/play, no shutting down to install/remove cards. If you need to upgrade or change devices, you have a much bigger market for resale.

Externalised high performance IO benefits everyone and I think it will mean an end to internal expansion slots - you can almost cut motherboards in half doing that. I don't think that alone determines the end to the Mac Pro but it is yet another contributing factor among the following:

- people don't like large, bulky workstations
- sales volumes are getting ever lower for workstations and prices creeping higher
- Intel take much longer to come out with improvements (Jan '11 for mobile, Dec '11 for Xeon)
- storage will move to very small SSD
- optical drives are dead in the water
- fast external IO means no need for internal expansion
- combined CPU/GPU means no need for large internal GPU and external IO can allow faster ones

There will be kinks along the way and people proclaiming that consumer setup A offers nowhere near the capability of professional setup B and the professionals will never stand for the change but the transition is going to happen all the same and in the end, nobody's going to give a damn about it because it will just work.

SO instead of large bulky workstations you offer the solution of lots of external devices all over the place and a bunch of extra cables lying every which way. And yes I purposely wrote it to describe a messy looking desk. Why? Because external devices aren't the same size or shape and lots of them don't stack well. I'd even be willing to bet that the owner's manuals for lots of external devices tell you not to stack because of cooling concerns.

I'll take internal expansion over clutter any day.

A Mac Pro has 3 slots free so you're talking about 3 devices externally in the worst case to match the Mac Pro expansion. You cut the height of the Mac Pro down by at least 1/3 in the process.

So you have 3 boxes sitting around, big deal. If you are in the market for expansion, it's unlikely you'd care enough about this kind of space usage. For the vast majority who don't, they just saved a lot of space. If they redesign the motherboard, that Mac Pro can shrink to a much smaller size for use in server racks and have a smaller desktop footprint.

I'd say that the biggest threat to the Mac Pro at the moment, is that a lot of the software hasn't be re-written to take advantage of multiple cores.

If the software that you use does benefit from multiple cores that the Mac Pro can often be a no-brainer. But if your software hasn't be re-written, then you're probably better saving yourself a chunk of money and going for the 27" iMac i3.

Must be frustrating for Apple.

Actually, this is the very same issue with all of their products... most now have multi-core CPUs.

One very big use for multiple CPUs is video. Late las6t year I opted for the 3.3 GHz 6 core MP... to me that is THE sweet spot in the MP line. It runs really cool and I love seeing all 12 cores (single CPU so we're talking real and virtual) thumping away when running Handbrake.

To which I have to say you don't understand the market! Seriously the machines are being sold to people that make use of those cores. They either use specifically written software or write their own.

But highly threaded software is only one way to leverage these machines. Perhaps the more common approach is to do multiple things at once. You know multitasking something that has been around for years. Multiple core processors with lots of disk I/O means that you can have many long running processes going all at once with little if any slow down.

Which by the way is one reason why a Mini with Thunderbolt will never replace the Mac Pro. In simple terms the pipe is too thin. That is you can't push enough data through it.

The purchase of an i3 anything is stupidity.

Even if you have very little demanding multithreaded software on your Mac you still have many apps that benefit from threading. Has everyone forgotten what Snow Leopard and GCD did for apps?

Beyond that how many people, even novices, do only one thing at a time on their PCs? Seriously people these days have more tasks running than ever before. Multiple cores just means that all of that happens in a smoother glitch free manner.

The only thing I see frustrating for Apple is posts like this! The suggestion that the i3 is a good deal probably has people all over the net laughing their a$$ off but Apple must be especially disappointed. IMac isn't a bargain basement computer but that isn't the point, the point is Apple wants customers going away satisfied. Telling people to go cheap doesn't lead to long term satisfaction.

Specifically, what software out there takes full advantage of multi-threading? To my (admittedly limited) knowledge there is very little out there that has been optimized for this. Other than Apple's own software (Logic Pro) I really do not know of any.

And let us not forget that the MP is the only machine one can add a fairly burly video cared to AND the only one (absent the Mini) one can have a reasonable monitor for... without it doubling as a make-up mirror/torch mode example while you're trying to get work done.

BTW, did y'all notice that all the images of the iPad2 on their website definitely show glare WILL be an issue? I bet that was dictated by legal... hard for someone to create a class action claim one can't really read much on the screen in daylight!

Guess you didn't read my post about Handbrake...