Rumor: Apple's new Mac Pro, Mac mini with Thunderbolt coming by August - Page 3

The 8800 GT was new enough when it came out. The 4870 was new when it came out.

So were the Westmere cards.

I fail to see the problem here.

One thing that can explain why Apple offers so few card options is simply a matter of scale. Apple may be doing billions of dollars of business, but not that much of it is in computers with discreet graphics cards. And as Apple like everyone else has to control costs they can't justify assigning a lot of human resources to write, test and deploy drivers for 20 to 30 different cards. Also, the Apple way is a somewhat minimal philosophy and they probably just don't see the need for certifying so many cards. As to not supporting the newest cards - same reason. If the card only offers small improvements over the existing certified card they are not going to bother "keeping up with the Jones"

This crops up a lot but it's not really the Xeons that make the difference, it just seems that way because of the BTO options. The price point of the Mac Pro is largely artificial. The CPUs it uses cost around $300. Only $800 of the $3500 Mac Pro is taken up by the CPUs.

HP sell a workstation with the same CPU as the current entry Mac Pro for $1250:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883147489

Even has a Quadro GPU and a mini-tower chassis. Apple sell their version at $2500, exactly twice the price. It's not hyperbole to suggest the price is artificial because they used to sell it $500 cheaper with the same price of processors and no change to the chassis.

I suspect it has something to do with sales volume and a redesign that allows people to use the same machine as a server or a workstation should help - they can add the two markets together. If they can at least drag it back down to $1999, that would improve sales.


It seems likely to be dual i5 but next year's Ivy Bridge will bring quad-cores to everything so just another year and our 4c/8t Mini will arrive with a 16EU IGP so it can finally drag its graphical ass up to the level of last year's 320M.

Of course if Huang would just get off the sun-bed once in a while, we might actually get a Thunderbolt GPU and we won't have to worry about it.

The AMD 5770 wasn't new when it was placed in Mac Pros last year, and it's very old now (came out at the end of 2009 in PC land). If a user wants a second 5770, it's another $250, whereas when I added a 2nd 5770 to my PC recently, it was about $75 (and the cheap price was the only reason I bought it). The 5770 is fairly mid-range, 1.5 year old gaming GPU, supplanted by the newer 6xxx and Nvidia 5xx series.

And the $5000 Mac Pro still comes with the 5770, not even a decent workstation GPU. The only thing the Mac Pro has going for it, are the fast Xeon's.

There was discussion on AI recently where it was pointed out that the low end MacPro are not a good value. This is the penalty you pay due to Apple having a single chassis in which to install motherboards. Interestingly the high end MacPros are priced identically to their competition from various vendors like HP and and Boxx.

They refuse to see the writing on the wall. The card in my Mac Pro is already well beyond 2yrs old, and my machine is fairly new. I hate it when it drops frames...... FOR WHATEVER REASON.

They don't need to keep up with the Joneses...... at least keep pace with smiths.... who are using last year's items.

Why Blu-Ray never?

Whether Microsoft and Apple, as powerful as they may be, like Blu-ray or not is irrelevant. Nobody cares what they think. The truth is that if a large number of Apple customers build up a decent library of blu-ray titles, there is going to be a need for Blu-ray playback eventually.

I have a 24" Cinema Display attached to my current Mini and would love to use it to display my blu-ray titles which are now rather numerous. I would imagine they'd look absolutely superb on such a high-grade monitor.

No doubt Apple would prefer we all just download our movies from Apple but I'm paying far less for Blu-ray HD versions of movies than it would cost me to buy the SD version off Apple, compressed at that. There are lots of folks with zero regard for quality who are getting their video via download but they're paying a premium for an inferior product. I can't believe everyone is that foolish and as such, the death of Blu-ray has been greatly exaggerated.

If we get to the point where a lot of people view Apple products as crippled because they are incapable of handling the most advanced video format in the market, Apple will be forced to update its equipment in response. To this point it hasn't been a big issue but Blu-ray is not merely a niche product that will eventually disappear. A lot of people, especially those who truly appreciate video quality, are buying significant numbers of Blu-rays and some of those people are going to own Apple products. They'll be wanting Blu-ray playback and they will, in time, get it. It's inevitable.

By the way, as long as the Mini gets inferior graphics muscle, it's going to be a significant flaw. The Intel HD 3000 is not an improvement on the current graphics solution and in some ways a downgrade. It's surprising that Apple is willing to do a long overdue update on a machine and weaken the specs. If the current Mini form factor can't handle a discrete GPU, why is Apple OK with that. Customers are stuck. It's not like there's much of a choice if what you want is a monitor-less computer that doesn't cost in excess of $2,400. But Apple does have options.

DRM at OS level.


Not really.


So rip them to your iTunes library like I did with my HD DVDs.

Thanks for your suggestions. I've solved the problem. My Mac Pro is back to being a beast again.

1. Blu-Ray would requie that Apple add DRM to the OS that really shouldn't be there. DRM that only creates problems for the maintenance and reliability of the OS.
2. Blu-Ray DRM is also very unfriendly for the consumer.
3. There are fewer and fewer palces everyday to even buy a DVD much less a Blu-Ray disk.
4. Rentals are for the most part DVD's.
5. When it comes right down to it the disks aren't that reliable.
6. Blu-ray is grossly over priced. Especialy if you watch a movie at most a couple of times.
7. If Sony was serious about Blu-Ray they would have licensed it openly or simply put the standard into the public domain.
8. As can be seen with Sony's behaviour with repsect to Playstation they are very vindictative and hostile to owners and their rights. That hostility extends to just about everything Sony sells. So the big question, for the consummer is why do business with a comapy that has so little repsect for the customers they are suppose to serve?

Actually optical media is becoming irrelevant and Blu-Ray never was. One just needs to look round town to see the whole industry going down the tubes. It won't happen as fast as it did with the music industry but it will happen.

They most likely would look great. The quality of a Blu-Ray movie isn't really the issue here.

It isn't an exaggeration at all, all one needs to do is look at what is happening. As to Apple downloads some aren't the best from the standpoint of economics, but then again some aren't bad at all.

You are out of touch with reality. I don't see new stores opening up to sell optical media in any format. Instead I see stores closing down. It is pretty much the same process, though slower, that we saw with digital distribution of records.

Well this I would agree with 100%. That is one of the reasons I would love to see an AMD Fusion processor in the Mini. The new Fusion is almost ideal for he Mini and seems to reflect the same sort of thinking that Apple has put into their OS. That is support for OpenCL with the eventual move to heterogeneous computing.

It is a small form factor machine. In that regards it is a fine little machine. I'm not at all happy with the prospects of going backwards so I'm hoping Apple does address the HD3000 regression in the Mini.

Again I'm 100% in agreement here, Apple has a huge ocean sitting between their two desktop computers. I also agree that Apple has a lot of options they can pursue but seem hell bent on ignoring the desktop market. Sad!

Even with all of those concerns the Mini could see one of the largest bumps in performance in some time if we exclude the GPU in the evaluation. So it depends upon what you want out of the Mini. If the desire is hot CPU performance with little regard to the GPU a SB Mini might be just the nuts. If you want a better balance towards the GPU end then an AMD Fusion would do. Either of these solutions though do not address the need for a midrange desktop.

Your confusion stems from mixing up renting movies and buying them outright. The death of physical media as a source of rentals is a reality. People generally don't go out and pick up physical media when they're renting and rental locales are dying off. But it's entirely another matter when talking physical media and buying a movie outright. What we're seeing and are likely to see for the foreseeable future are several different approaches to distributing permanently purchased copies of movies. Downloads and physical media like Blu-ray and DVD do and will continue to co-exist.

I don't think you grasp just how much more expensive it is to buy a movie from a download service like Apple's vs. picking up that same title in Blu-ray on sale. Take The Fighter, for example. I'm going to buy it in a few days here in Canada for $10. The Apple Store's price in Canada for The Fighter is currently $24.99 for a 720P version and $19.99 for the SD version. Um, decisions, decisions. Do I spend $10 for a 1080P version of the movie burned onto stable media that will likely last for many years or spend more than twice that amount for a 720P version that I will not have a physical copy of.

As for your claim that no one sells Blu-rays any more, really? My question to you is, what currently operating major retailers who would sell such items are not selling Blu-rays?

Hard though this might be to believe, every single consumer is not a 25-year-old male who refuses to do anything but download movies or music. There is a fragmentation taking place that is causing the pie to be cut into pieces rather than one format all but dominating. That's not a bad thing.

How did you do that, if you don't mind my asking.

AnyDVD HD, I believe. Then TXMuxer-somethingorother. Handbrake after that to get it into iTunes. Been a while since I needed to rip a movie, so that could be wrong...

And how did you read the HD-DVD on the Mac in the first place?

I'm not saying physical media will go away overnight like it did with Music, it will take longer. Eventually it will happen though. It is a question of economics.

As to the desire to have physical media I honestly understand that, especially for backups. It is just that the physical media no longer has to be an optical disk. It can be a hard disk, a disk array, an SD card, or optical. Even then it looks like Apples goal is to do away with the need to even have a physical backup with iCloud.

Actually I grasp the situation rather well. I do use iTunes when it makes sense and buy DVd's when that makes sense. I just add the DVDs to my iTunes library to make them readily available. At times Apples pricing is a little excessive but not all the time. As for the arguments about 720P or 1080P it might make a difference if I had a large screen or a burning desire to get one but I don't.

It is about the future of stores selling optical media in general. I don't know where you live but they have been closing up right and left where I live even some big chains.

This may be hard to believe also but I'm +50 and have seen many things come and go over the years. Do you Remember laser disks and some of the other formats of the past? What you have been offering up here is frankly the same thoughts that the laser disk owners had. Blu-Ray is not the last word in the distribution of movies and honestly is a very poor way to treat consumers. It will go away like many other abusive attempts to coerce consumers into surrendering to corporate initiatives.

Yeah like I said I've heard this all before. Now that doesn't mean that Sony won't wake up and smell the roses with Blu Ray and do more to make it a universal standard, but as it is now Blu-ray is a pathetic failure. Any one with any sense would stay away from the whole mess that is Blu-Ray.

By putting it in. Same with the single Blu-ray disc I have (Serenity). You don't need OS-level support to read from the discs, just to get around the draconian DRM on them.

All versions of OS X since at least Tiger can see mounted HD DVD discs, and probably Blu-ray.

Heck, you can even PLAY BLU-RAY AND HD DVD discs in OS X. No Windows needed.

Put it in, open a program called MakeMKV, and push the disc stream out to VLC. It'll play in VLC.

Not simple, not very Apple-like, but playback from the disc itself WORKS.

I work in retail and my company sells Blu-rays. In the power centre we're located at, there are two other retailers who have an extensive selection of BDs. There are numerous other retailers in my city who sell them. I can also go on-line and purchase them from numerous sites.

Being as you don't have an interest in HD, I can certainly see why you have no use for BDs.

I realize that some simply despise Sony but this is bigger than Sony. Fact is, there are folks who want to collect movies and they want that collection to be something you can see and touch. Putting movies on a hard drive just isn't the same. I believe that such people number in the millions worldwide, as evidenced by quite a few websites dedicated to reviewing BDs.

It isn't important for BDs to be the dominant means by which movies are distributed. What matters is that enough people want their movie collection in BD form to justify maintaining that form factor. Being as there are already millions of Blu-ray machines out there and that inevitably anyone who owns a Blu-ray player is going to buy the occasional BD, the economies of scale will be there. Hence, where are BDs going to go? If a distributor releases a BD of a particular movie and ends up selling enough copies to make a decent profit, why would that distributor stop selling such BDs? Heck, there are still folks out there who swear by turntables.

Granted, Apple can afford to ignore Blu-ray if it becomes a rather limited niche product but as much as BDs are not going to dominate like DVDs did, I still expect that for years to come millions will buy them on a regular basis. If we come to the point where millions have Blu-ray collections they'd like to watch on their Macs, I think Apple needs to at least support the format, if only to facilitate playback. It's about making a better Mac and I can't see Apple being against doing that. The pressure also increases if other computing platforms allow BDs to work on them.

The decision on Blu-ray isn't one that Apple will make for the consumer. Rather, it's the other way around.

I assume at the expense of image quality which defeats the purpose.

Hmm. Nope...

Yes, you can do this, but you need the Blu-Ray hardware first. A DVD drive cannot read a Blu-Ray Disc. You need a BRD player. You can get an external one for less than a hundred bucks, but that's still something you need.

Likewise with HD-DVD. You can't read one by "putting it in". You need an HD-DVD drive. Judging by your response that says this is what you did, I don't think you really did it, unless it was a hybrid disc, in which case you're ripping the DVD portion of the disc, not the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray portion. And yes, that means it would be at the expense of image quality.

I did try running an HD-DVD drive off an X-Box via USB and while the computer did recognize the drive, I couldn't achieve HD-DVD playback.

I'm not proficient in the finer points of running my computer. I get by but am not really a tinkerer. Certainly if I could figure out how to run HD-DVD at full quality through my Mini to the Cinema Display, I couldn't car less about ripping, copying, etc. Watching would be just fine, thank you.

If this is possible, and I do mean while retaining all of the quality inherent in the HD-DVD file, that would be great. I'm skeptical though. Retaining quality is crucial because of the quality of the Cinema Display. I really wonder if perhaps a combo disc flipped over to the DVD side is at the root of the possible misconception that OSX can handle HD-DVD with ease. On the other hand, as I said, I'm no expert and would be pleased if it turns out I could use the X-Box drive to watch HD movies on the Mac.

When Apple adds Blu-Ray playback to its systems, I for one will be thrilled by that addition. Not going to happen this time around but I do think eventually it will.

Yeah... that's... the point. You have to buy your own drive, either internal or external. Apple even acknowledges that. I don't understand why this reply exists.


No, it was a hybrid drive. It does both Blu-ray and HD DVD. It's in my second SuperDrive slot, below the stock one that came with my Mac Pro.

Geez, why would you think I don't know what I'm talking about? This stuff is way easier to do than people make it out to be. Ripping the movie to iTunes isn't a huge deal, and even playback from the disc isn't hard.

My drive only reads HD DVDs but can read and burn Blu-ray, so in the new About This Mac screen, you can't tell it does HD DVD at all... so I put one in.

I gave up on buying DVDs long ago, much easier to rent from Redbox and rip it to the RAID array… For television shows, if I cannot get it streamed for free from an online source (Hulu, Netflix or the originating network), I just wait it out and put the disc on my queue in Netflix…

The only thing I purchase these days from iTunes is music & the occasional iPhone/iPad app… If the price of books will ever become reasonable, I might consider more digital book purchases…

Still on the fence regarding digital comics, as I like having the physical item…

That there? That's theft.

I can't help but think that with all the converting going on, quality has to suffer. This is why I'm looking forward to a time when Apple will see fit to incorporate Blu-ray playback into its systems. If I want something that is a weaker version of a Blu-ray file, upconverted DVD does that well enough. Taking a Blu-ray file and tinkering with it to play through in an inferior form strikes me as being a monumental waste of time.

However I have to wonder how many people actually watch a movie more than once or twice? How much wisdom is there in keeping large collections of video. If you have young kids that is easy to answer as they will watch the same movie over and over again, but adults are another thing. sure there are those movies that have a certain appeal that get viewed more than twice and for those people should pony up the cash for the video. On the other hand why keep around movies you will likely never watch again?

You don't have teenage daughters do you? It is amazing how many times they will watch movies over and over.

Why are you still on this? You want to know about suffering, consider a dual-layer Blu-ray disc in your Mac portable on a plane trying to get through a movie. Not only will you have noise and vibration from the drive on your setback tray you'll also get a very poor battery life. Hopefully you can watch the whole movie before your system dies or you're lucky enough to be on a flight/seating class with plugs.

But you don't mean Macs notebooks, you mean Mac desktops? As Schiller showed not two weeks ago 3/4 Macs sold are Mac notebooks. Then factor in the number that are Mac Minis, their cheapest Mac. Now consider that the drives for all those machines didn't exist in the market 2 years ago and a 9.5mm ultra-slim slot-loading Blu-ray drive is still going for around $500 from other vendors last time I checked.

So tell me why Blu-ray in a Mac notebook at a $500+ price or Blu-ray in one of the lesser selling Macs Apple sells is so damn important?! Blu-ray is great for a HOME THEATER. I bet everyone of those guys on stage last week at WWDC, including Jobs, have Blu-ray players in their homes but they have them on their big ass HDTVs, not pointless in their Macs computers, right where they belong.

The airplane trip is a limited example. While I would rather rip the movie to the HD, if someone is pressed for time, or wants to watch a movie once they get to their destination, I could see a benefit.

The Mini is a perfect size for an HTPC (even has an HDMI port, which are pointless on computers that aren't used as HTPC's IMO).

However, Apple choose design over all, so it would be hard for them to squeeze a drive in it, and they rather push iTunes, which benefits them, but in that aspect, I think an ATV is better.

BR's quality is just superior to upscaled DVD, Netflix, Vudu, iTunes, etc., bigger discs offer less compression, and with how the ISP's are going, bandwidth caps will be getting smaller. My only beef with BR, is that I already have a large DVD collection and the discs are still relatively expensive, but if it was a movie I really wanted, I still rather have it on BR, or even DVD, than a digital download that is highly compressed, and I would still have to burn it to a disc. There are just some things I want a tangible product that I can hold and store.

Went to a Thunderbolt seminar today and there were some interesting comments made by the Apple rep and other presenters.

I won't go out on a limb and predict that the Mac Pro is dead, but it definitely appears headed that way, at least in it's current form.

To sum it up, the Apple rep kept inferring that PCI-E is basically a dead end.

Apple is requiring that all official Thunderbolt device be able to pass through the video signal.

That would require the design of a Thunderbolt video card for the Mac Pro which, according to one of the other presenters, is not impossible, but very difficult. If a third party vendor decided to come out with a data only Thunderbolt card, it would be without Apple's blessing.

The Apple rep kept talking about PCI-E breakout boxes becoming available to allow people to be able to use their legacy PCI-E cards with a laptop or iMac.

Dave

Tekstud is that you?

I would prefer the "complication" of a USB port to plug USB devices into. You know, like a freaking iPhone. Ever heard of it?

That's the point; you rent a disc you'll watch once, you buy a title you'll watch more than once.

What sort of fool would bring optical disc to watch a movie on a plane ride?

On the other hand, if you're at home and using your laptop as a desktop replacement, clearly watching a Blu-ray would be viable. More importantly, it's rather bizarre logic to suggest that a company turn its back on a group of consumers who are being offered a product. By that I mean, either you do desktops right or you don't do them at all. It is absurd to argue that only one's top-selling product should be given engineering consideration and that any technology that is not best suited to your top-selling form factor should be ignored.

Look, there is no question that the vast majority of us will buy blu-rays with the intention of using them with a home-theatre set-up. This is what one would expect. Yet, once you have purchased said blu-ray, is it some outrageous crime to want to be able to use that blu-ray in a device attached to a high-dev monitor capable of properly displaying the data on the disc?

I get the impression that some are offended by those who want to use their equipment in any manner differently from what they intend. You don't want to play back blu-rays on a Mac. Great. Don't. Others would like to have that capability under certain circumstances and with equipment that you evidently have no interest in, namely a desktop system.

It is not up to you, me, or even Mr. Jobs to dictate to others how they will employ technology. It is the place of a company like Apple to determine what its customers, all of its customers, not just you alone, would like to have and accommodate as many as the company reasonably can. No one can force Apple to do so but to be truly successful. Apple needs to provide products that fit into the lifestyle of the most people possible.

Some want nothing to do with blu-rays but millions of consumers are turning to the technology and naturally being a high-quality standard, it's a fit within an Apple environment. I don't blame Apple for not embracing this technology to this point. On the other hand, when the time is right, and I believe that time is coming, it is natural that Apple would incorporate blu-ray playback into its equipment.

To argue against blu-ray because you apparently only use Macs when travelling by plane is rather a weak argument. Macs come in many forms and are employed in assorted environments by a wide variety of folks with differing needs.

Naturallly no one would be OK with the price of a Mac going up by $500 to accommodate blu-ray. Initially, no doubt, blu-ray would be optional and by the time it became standard the price drop would be dramatic. There was a time when DVD cost insane amounts. I remember paying in excess of $700 for my first DVD burner and that wasn't even at the very beginning of when that technology was brought to market. Now for that price I get a computer to go with the burner and with a form factor about the same size as that burner.

It's not a case of my making any predictions about the timing of blu-ray coming to the Mac. What I am saying is that those who think that blu-ray will never come to the Mac are being extraordinarily narrow-minded. I get it. Sony is evil incarnate. DRM bothers a generation of consumers offended by having to pay for any entertainment (Granted DRM as implemented with blu-ray is a pain in the derriere but that's another matter).

My view on this is simply that blu-ray discs are being bought by millions of people and some of those are going to own Macs. At some point the number of BDs out in the wild will reach critical mass and Apple will respond accordingly. To expect otherwise is narrow-minded, short-sighted, naive, take your pick. Probably the upcoming Mini and Mac Pro updates will not incorporate blu-ray support. That doesn't mean, however, that blu-ray will never be a part of the Mac landscape.

The discs aren't expensive any more, if you keep an eye on deals. For example, I bought a combo package with blu-ray and DVD of The Fighter yesterday for $10. Heavy discounting on discs is certainly common in the Canadian market. I am assuming the same is true in other markets but I could be wrong.

When you can buy a recent-vintage Oscar-nominated movie for the price of a theatre ticket, I don't think price is any longer a barrier.

Likely the fools who put Blu-ray drives in their laptops and the fools who buy the laptops with Blu-ray drives in them.

That's not just mirroring your comment, that's how I genuinely feel about these people. You're not going to get anywhere near decent battery life doing that. Your best bet is to rip the movie from the disc to iTunes if you really want an HD movie to watch on your laptop. Then you'd get the H.264 hardware decoding and somewhat better performance.


Not at all. So buy a Mac, a Blu-ray drive, and play the movies back from directly on the disc.




Apple got along darn fine selling millions of Core 2 Duo, DVD±RW laptops when the entire industry had already moved to the first run of Nehalem chips and Blu-ray drives.


By that time, bandwidth (and deals with the stupid labels...) will have advanced to allow 1080p iTunes purchases.


Agreed.


I don't agree with you about this, but neither of us can really say anything definitive about it. We'll have to see what becomes of iTunes movie purchases and the next Apple TV.

I think the movie distributors need to be more accommodating to modern needs. They are too precious about their movie content. One of them said they hated the idea that someone might be watching their film on a small computer screen while multi-tasking.

I understand that to some extent but they are telling story, it shouldn't matter if it's on a phone or a 100" TV, they should make the experience as good as they can regardless of the device people choose.

Blu-Ray players could be fitted with a feature that detects a computer with direct wifi and copies over a 2-3GB version with a key that only works on the target machine based on the hardware ID. This makes it legal to do and fast.


I suspect they will be reaching their own conclusions here much like we do but interesting nonetheless.

I personally feel it's the way to go forward because it opens up the PCI device market to a much larger audience. There will be complaints about being limited to 1.25GBps but data has to come in from somewhere and storage drives just aren't that fast. The obvious issue is on the GPU side but again, I think MXM is the way forward here. I know they aren't quite as powerful as you can get from a big, standard card but who really cares? It's just posturing to be able to max out games. As long as a card can churn through the data needed then it's fine.

Think of the situation if the Mac Pro was slimmed down with an MXM card slot, the iMac has an MXM slot and the Mini gets GPUs via a Thunderbolt MXM card slot. You can get SLI/Crossfire between cards. You can have separate cards for compute. You can get inexpensive Quadro cards for CAD/3D.

I'm still amazed that people think TB will be viable for keyboards anytime soon. USB does very well as a low speed serial link, it makes no sense at all to try to replace it with TB.

They said the same thing about PS/2 and serial. It's all about what's cheaper.

Yes and some people need to understand technology.



Now consider how stale and useless the desktop line up is. I have no doubts that Apples desktop line is suffering sales wise. One only needs to look at what is offered up to realize people have been a sleep at the wheel for far to long.

Pointless! There are some rational arguments for Blu-Ray. The problem is optical is dying rather quickly as a distribution method.

One of the reasons I've expressed interest in an optical free MBP is simply that I can better use that space for other things. That is me but I do acknowledge that others ave a legitimate need for Blu-Ray. I just don't think a lot of the people promoting Blu-Ray on this forum have a clue. Optical as a media distribution method, in this case movies, won't be around much longer. What is surprising is that so many dont see it coming.

There are many reasons but one is the greatly reduced development effort. If not RS232 then the interface is often Ethernet. Cheaper is certainly part of the equation and that is one reason why I don't see TB displacing USB anytime soon. Especially considering Apple is placing demands on suppliers that will make it difficult to trim costs.