Despite new CPU options, Apple reportedly questioning future of Mac Pro - Page 5

It's the return of the Cube!

They're acting more like prima donnas, IMHO.

It looks like Apple will retire another obsolete piece of HW. After the floppy, CD/DVD, comes the tower case. The tower is a dinosaur! Long live the cube!

TBM

They need to keep acting like a small startup!

Of course it will. Just like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Oh, and non-removable batteries, discontinuation of the Macbook, the Xserves, removing DVD drives from the Mac mini, etc etc. According to messageboard commentators, every single one of these actions was supposed to be 'the undoing of Apple'. Thanks for your insight.

These things are not the same. DVD drives. Complete waste of space. I have not used one in the last 5 years. I'd much rather put an SSD/HDD in the valuable space that old rotating peace of plastic occupies.

I never complained about disruptive technology like iPhone, iPad. I'm not one of those PC guys not seeing the point. But of course neither do you, you are only parroting what you heard in forums over the years.

People like me who actually need Mac Pro class machine will look elsewhere if Apple stops making one. And that means those people will no longer be using OS X to do their work. And where the alpha geeks go, sheep follow in 5 - 10 years later.

well i dont know some people need to have big bulky equipment (or very expensive) to feel professionial. They might think the other stuff is toy equipment

What worries me is the phrase: "the consensus among sales executives". What makes Apple great is a focus on creating great products. A mess of external gear might offer the technology, but where is the elegance?

I would expect something insanely great like a wonderfully elegant stackable solution which is a modular Mac Pro at an affordable price. Or something like that. "Sales executives" are not going to come up with something wonderful like that. They just kill products based on what people do not want now, they don't invent what people are going to want tomorrow. Skating where the puck is now, that is.

Sales executives running Apple? That would quickly kill the soul of the machine.

BTW. Did anyone notice that Apple's VP line up has Scot Forstall as VP iOS, there is a hardware VP, but no OS X VP? Who is responsible for OS X these days? The janitor?

I haven't had a Mac tower since 2009, when I bought my current iMac. It took some time to get over my bias that the iMac was not a "pro-user" acceptable machine, but it truly is. It is hard for me to see returning to a tower--mainly due to cost and footprint.

Apple really hasn't had an affordable tower since the G4s. I had a graphite, quicksilver, and a wind tunnel (which I used for several years) and all of them were purchased new at the sub-$1500 mark. I think I held off with the G5 due to the price point and definitely did w/ the Mac Pro. When my wind tunnel's PMU started going bad, I decided to go with an iMac and haven't regretted it. With the increase in size and decrease in cost of hard drives, I found I didn't need to run 4 hard drives in a machine any longer.

Frankly, I thought the Cube was the best Power Mac produced and have always jonesed for one (and a NEXT cube as well). It was remarkable piece of engineering.

And, lastly, since getting and iPad last year and an iPad 2 this year, I use my iMac far less than I did. I use it only for business related stuff and do everythin else on the iPad.

I don't see 'the point'? So tell me, who will 'the sheep' follow next? HP? Compaq? Dell? Apple didn't become a mainstream success because of their MacPros. They did it because of the strength of their consumer computer line, starting with the iMac. They garnered more mindshare with an mp3 player, not a computer. And again with a phone. You're telling me the 'sheep' (nice to know thats how you define Apple users, quite original) will drop Apple contingent on what they do with their Mac Pro line? You're delusional.

I know. It looks like most people posting here and not caring don't actually do any work. They browse web pages (which can comfortably done on an iPad) and think this is all that can be done with a computer. If you are a software developer making software for various platforms, it it amazing how much more productive you can be if you have a powerful machine where you can quickly power up a VM with customer config, reproduce the problem and fix it, all from your workstation. Testing your software on supported platforms is so much easier when you can run 8 VMs with different OSes on your workstation, etc. Just to mention a few use case.

True all of this can be done on a PC, but some of us like having a great, usable OS and nice, well built hardware to do all this. I'll be really sad if Apple actually does this. This means end of Apple purchases for me really.

Apple, don't be stupid!!! You may not sell a lot of Mac Pros, but guess who's buying them:

>>> DEVELOPERS. And HIGH END USERS <<<<

Both of these groups are important to keep happy for the health and well-being of the Mac ecosystem. What are we supposed to build Mac apps on, iPhones?

Personally, I'd be fine with a less-nice case. I just want expandability and lots of fast CPUs. Or, let us boot Mac OS on generic PC hardware. That would be fine. Maybe you could re-start the licensing program, but only allow hardware to be made that doesn't overlap with Apple's offerings. This could be really great: more Mac options for users, and Apple could unload models that weren't profitable.

When all the drive bays and PCI Express slots in a Mac Pro are running at full speed, how much total bandwidth are we dealing with? Is a single 10 gigabit Thunderbolt connection enough to support all that bandwidth at once?

Also, the fans in the Mac Pro run very quiet even under heavy CPU load. You can't say the same for a Mac Mini or MacBook Pro.

I also find it contradictory that the same people who praise the iMac for being an all in one computer with little cable clutter are also the ones advocating stringing together a bunch of external devices rather than have a single expandable tower.

The developers at Pixelmator say they primarily use the iMac and Mac Book Pro as their development machines.



Meet The Developers: Saulius Dailide of Pixelmator

I make my living by developing software. I develop software for OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX and currently I can do all that from single Mac Pro. I can test it all on VMs, 8 in parallel in fact deployed on single Mac Pro. I actually need 30'' screen (which Apple by the way doesn't make any more and I still can't get over that either). If Apple stops making a machine of this class (which by the way is a lower end workstation, as far as workstations go), I will have to look elsewhere and that means I will no longer be OS X user either. If more people like me who are avid technical advocates of the platform, who know what we are talking about stop supporting and advocating the platform to our friends and family and anyone online who asks for an advice, and start telling a different story about Apple, then people who need more from their computer will actually think twice about what they buy. And you know price is always going to be against Apple.

There are plenty of choices in the PC world for machines made for doing actual work. I used to build my own and may have to resort to doing that again.

Hey apple, ditch the Xeon! some core 17 chips can run in 2 socket MOBOs, and can use non ECC ram and for Gods sake, just let your BIOS/EFI work with over teh counter Windows GPU cards...the best GPU in Macs is still at least on average 12-18 months behind windows workstations.

Then with the one chip model they could easily get the price down to $1000-1200

Nope. I do not want to throw away a perfectly working display every three years. Protect the Earth!

Which is why you keep it and keep using it as a display alone

This is apple you are talking about! Try changing the battery in your iphone or macbook!

Apple: Think Different; fuck the earth!

How silly not to take the current weak economy as a factor affecting weak sales numbers for these high-end workstation? My 1st-gen Intel tower at work is still running flawlessly after 4-yrs. This is with minimal IT support, what a workhorse! I see more problems with co-workers newer iMacs. In the last 4-yrs, we spent more money upgrading Adobe CS suites than the original price of this tower!

I will say this, IF they lower their prices, settle for less profit margin and smaller form factor. There is no reason to think why this product line can not sustain itself with enough demands.

The battery can be changed in the iPhone or MacBook.

I think you over state your own importance to Apple. I doubt they mind letting Dell or HP have your business.

Given the tdp ranges that have shown up in articles, I'm not 100% sure they could fit it along with discreet graphics. It's kind of borderline as the ranges in terms of wattage didn't shift at each processor tier. There are several ways they could do this. They could accept intel integrated graphics which will still suck but will be barely within spec due to OpenCL support meaning you'll be able to run FCPX. The other option is they might be able to underclock it slightly.

The specs for ivy bridge seem to be shaping up below what might have been expected from the previous hype. I'll end up buying one anyway due to just how overdue I am on replacing aging hardware. If we start to see some nice options on quality thunderbolt drive enclosures, then I'll buy. I like the ability to use off the shelf drives even though I don't use cheap ones (I use western digital caviar black drives).



The drive bays can handle up to a theoretical 3Gb/s each. Thunderbolt can match a 4 lane PCIe 2.0 slot and provide a moderate amount of power (I can't remember how much). This means it's not appropriate for gpus. The pegasus enclosure was pulling around 650 MB/s according to barefeats. It'll be enough for the majority of people. I'm kind of over it as Apple's support on their higher end machines has been terrible anyway.

Agree. I think Apple knows pretty much precisely what the most profitable sector of desktop buyers "wants and needs".

Even better, they understand exactly what they can sell to these folks, in good numbers and very, very profitably.

The niche markets like film production served Apple well in a bygone era, but with their incredible success in teh consumer markets, I think that serving niche markets is something Apple is going to have to stop. We've seen it already.

This. A billion times this. In fact they should make the GPU optional, since any standard GPU card will work. They could easily price them somewhere around $1500 and still make a healthy profit on them.

Doubtful.

Apple has always been decisive about killing off its weaker children.

Making only a few key products is an unusual business strategy, but dang, so far, so good.

I posted the following this afternoon to the Apple Mac Pro Forum. The post was removed within one minute:


"Today on Apple Insider there is an article which flatly states that Apple is seriously considering dropping the Mac Pro from their product lineup. I have no idea whether this rumor is true or not, but I did want to urge those of you who feel as I do that the Mac Pro is unique in the lineup of Apple computers to submit feedback to Apple (http://www.apple.com/feedback/macpro.html) as I have done urging them not to discontinue the Mac Pro and, indeed to release a long overdue upgrade to the Mac Pro.

I am a video editor who purchased a Mac Pro 3.1 (Early 2008 model) in January 2008. I have filled all of the internal hard drive bays with SATA hard drives, I have numerous firewire 400 and 800 hard drives attached as well as film and flatbed scanners. I have added two PCI cards to the Mac Pro (an eSATA card to which I have a SATA Raid 5 array connected) and a Matrox Mini card for analog video capture and output. My 3.1 Mac Pro has been well cared for and has served me faihtfully with virtually no trouble for nearly four years. I had planned to upgrade my Mac Pro mainly to obtain a video card with a more powerful GPU than my present nVidia GTX285 and more powerful processors than the 2.8 GHz processors in my current 3.1 Mac Pro upon the next release of the next Mac Pro.

Some would argue that the Thunderbolt connector obviates the need for a Mac Pro. I would strongly disagree. No other computer in Apple's current lineup affords 8 or more processing cores, nor is this likely to be achievable in a laptop due to heat considerations alone. Further, the expandability of the Mac Pro via its PCI slots and other connections is unmatched in other Apple computers. In short, I feel that the Mac Pro offers a unique combination of expandability and raw cpu power that is not available anywhere else in Apple's product line.

The Mac Pro and associated Apple software (Final Cut Pro 7 and FCP X, Aperture, etc.) are what initially attracted me to Apple. I was so pleased with the Mac Pro that I not only purchased considerable Apple stock several years ago, but over the last four years I have added two iPads, four iPhones, three iPods, two Apple TV's, an iMac, and a Macbook Pro.

I understand that the Mac Pro probably accounts for only a small amount of Apple total sales, but its symbolic significance is far beyond its sales numbers. The Mac Pro has always shown that Apple is serious about professional computing needs and that it supports its professional software with a truly professional computer. The end of the Mac Pro line at Apple would signal to me the end of Apple's interest in professional products, would cause me to sell all of my Apple stock, and to revert back to PC's from which I came. I don't want to do any of those things, but that is how strongly I feel about this.

If you feel similarly, please let Apple know via the feedback link I gave above. I am still hopeful that Apple listens to their customers and that what we say will matter to the company."

Tom

If I may jump in, I upgraded my 2009 Mac Pro with a hardware RAID card driving via a pair of mini-SAS cables to a 8 drive RAID 6 enclosure. For 10x throughput compared to a single drive at a time and greater safety. My previous Mac was a 2x2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 and this 8 core 2.66 GHz machine was 10x faster CPU. As fine as the iMacs are now, there really is only a poor substitute in external Thunderbolt arrays. I also upgraded the stock video card, something you can never do in a iMac, thus extending the usable life of the computer. I can also put in a SATA blu-ray burner for HD video projects, but there are external FireWire solutions for a iMac. With no xServe and a limited future for Mac Pro, the Mac based office with a Mac server for hundreds of users like at many universities and graphics departments and whole businesses with Macs, will be a bit of history and so goes the Mac in general as Apple abandons the personal computer for iOS devices. I make a living supporting Macs. Apple is driving me out of business. DTP users are going to have to switch to Windows. Marginalized by the home team. Very bad. No high performance work group is going to use a Mac mini and a Thunderbolt array. The mini can't keep up, not enough RAM.

So your saying fuck the people and businesses who have spent years and untold amounts of money buying into Apple's platform with computers, peripherals, software, infrastructure, work flows, education, servicing, IT departments, vendor relations, etc...

The 'so-called pros' your so eager to throw under the bus ARE the people who saved Apple. Not Steve Jobs and not any investors who hang around here.
Sticking a knife in the back of the loyal people and businesses who stuck with Apple is cutting off their nose to spite their own face.

Consumers are fickle and always looking for the next best thing. If a new company or someone pops up and blows the iPhone and iPad out of the water with a way better gadget OS - and Apple has told its stronghold (professionals) to go fuck themselves - where do you think that leaves Apple?
I imagine they would never be trusted again. Relegating Apple to Sony 2.0

FCP X is still not a mature editing program, and FCP 7 is 32 bit, and nearing obsoletion. Making Premiere Pro CS5(.5) the ideal choice for many past FCP 7 editors, with the Nvidia Quadro 4000 graphics card, so that it can utilize graphics acceleration.

Until graphics cards support external thunderbolt, I think it's wise for Apple to keep a tower config. Who cares if it's made of server parts, make a tower with high end tower parts, it doesn't have to be Xeons. Just add top of the line i7 instead.

If I'm forced to the Microsoft platform for editing... well I'd prefer not to think about it.

I don't think that at all. It was clear for at least 4 years now that Apple doesn't really care about the pro market so much at all. And the message was even clearer when XServe was discontinued.

I've been a professional user of Macs for over seventeen years. I've personally owned two G4 towers and used God knows how many others in various workplaces. I'm typing this post on a Xeon tower now.

However to be honest, I can't wait for the day when these ridiculous looking monoliths from the dark ages of computing, finally sink into the peat bog of technological history. The professional market has to be the most conservative and resistant to change of any market segment. Time and technology marches on but the chorus of whining from a vanishingly small minority over glossy screens, mini towers and other esoterica, that matters to virtually nobody anymore, is eternal.

First they screw Pro's by releasing FCPX. Read more on my blog for how lame this product was! And don't get me wrong, I have been a long time Apple Loyalist. I have been on an Apple since 91, and have used FCP for years.

Now they are going to kill the machine that all Pros rely on! Great. Way to go Apple! No, it is not as profitable as the iMac, or any other iThing, but c'mon, you will be forcing all the Pro's to go the way of the PC. An excruciating concept! Show a little support and loyalism to the ones that stuck with you through the not so profitable years!

%$#@! I am pissed off at this news!

Agreed.
But we aren't going to go down without kicking and screaming.

Glossy displays and FCX are a way of weening professionals off their platform so they can peddle gadgets to the fickle consumer market.
They may be winning right now, but I think their current position and monies have gone straight to their head.

Apple thinks they can buy the next great thinkers and innovators.
The problem is, anyone who's brilliant enough to be a great innovator - is going to start their own enterprise.
This is only going to repeat the same cronyism we saw from Microsoft.

and the world turns...

No, the sheep don't follow the alpha geeks. This has to be one of the more arrogant statements I've heard in a while from an IT "professional" Computing is changing, rapidly and the old cutting edge technology is very different then what it used to be. iPad is a good indication of where computing is going and it has nothing to do with the traditional power users.

+1 and very creative prose I might add.


As much as I don't want the Mac Pro go away I realize the possibility exists. A well specc'd iMac 27 has more than enough horsepower for all but say 5% of Professionals. It can run two additional monitors and RAID storage at incredible speeds.

At some point it's just going to make sense to kill the Mac Pro.

But what about the Server market?

Focus more on Grid computing and a fast fabric that can tie a bunch of Mac mini together delivering more speed and flexibility than a megawatt behemoth.

Companies are already doing this with Intel Atom and ARM processors.

"Apple would never do that!"

Some of you may say that but look at what Apple snuck into OS X Lion. Core Storage a volume manager

http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/06/06/...c-os-107-lion/

http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/...rage-commands/

Thunderbolt allows EVERYTHING to be external. Storage, GPU, Networking. Why stuff it all in a huge and expensive box?

A shameless attempt to goose sales prior to release of new model. Deck clearing at it's finest.

A lot of people here seem to be stuck on form factor. People lamenting the presumed demise of Mac Pro here don't care about the 45 lb tower. In fact, I'd be really really happy if Apple found a way to stuff Mac Pro class power into iPhone sized device that I can carry with me everywhere. It's the computing power, data throughput, shear storage, external device connectivity and overall computing speed we are lamenting not the form factor.

I second this motion.

And from an environmental standpoint repurposeable trumps “highly recyclable” any day of the year.

Think a iMac is going to punch up enough power for the pro market, especially when it comes to video, 3D and high-end imaging? How are those fans working out cooling a tight space even when you first boot up?

And how's that glossy screen working out for you?