Despite new CPU options, Apple reportedly questioning future of Mac Pro - Page 11

Also, a BTW, Apple needs more profit? They're sitting on more cash than the US government.

Contrary to popular opinion Apple does respond to reasoned user input. That is one of the reasons why Apple has feedback sites, user forums and other communications vehicles. It is why Steve's E-Mail address was public.


All of that being said I'm absolutely convinced that Apple people, be they Engineers or managers do read this forum. I'm certain that evolution of the Mini was guided by a series of comments here and on other Apple related web sites. Early in the Mini that resulted in more USB ports being installed. Later we got the HDTV port. So in part forums like this do serve as a communications pipeline to Apple. It might not be the best one and maybe not weighted to heavily in the case of the Mac Pro but Apple does notice underlying themes.

No PCI slots? Are you nuts? Why do you think we need these computers in the first place? Higher frame rates on games?

You might want to read for content. The whole point in having a midrange performance Pro is to drive sales so that some of the development costs for the high end model get absorbed. I'm pretty much convinced that the Pro isn't profitable for Apple, to correct that they need a variant that appeals to a wider array of users.

Without profitability there will be no Pros for The Crazy Ones.

I have been watching this thread with interest / exasperation and while I can sympathize with the genuine concern of some people a number of the statements on here do no favors to the cause of keeping the mac pro line up and running. Comments such as where the alphas lead the sheep will follow and so called professionals insisting that they need 32 gig of ram to run a 32 bit app show deep arrogance and total misunderstanding respectively.

Lets face a few facts here:
1, The MP is designed in an era where expansion was a significant problem. The majority of content creators were running into problems with storage and ram.
2, Single chip computers coped with multithreaded professional applications poorly.
3, Hard drive speed was a serious bottleneck in access time / load time for large media hence Raid was popular.

1, These days in almost all situations we will see very little benefit from more than 8Gig of ram, from memory an iMac can take 16G. Current hard drive capacities compare well with the storage space in all but the most recent workstations raid arrays.
2, Single chip computers now run true multithreaded applications very well and the core architecture is extremely stable which reduces the need for Xeon processors, indeed it makes them pointless on the single processor version of the MP.
3, SSD offer a massive advantage to load times of large clips/ files. Couple a SSD with a large bulk storage drive and you have a pretty good compromise.

I agree apple should work to keep the power users but that doesn't mean that they need to keep building monoliths for an insignificant number of people (as far as revenue goes). Im sorry but also the MP doesn't give a significant 'halo effect' to the rest of the apple line up.

What would I like to see?
a, Apple putting their best brains into modular computing, something like distributed computing for people who don't want to learn the nitty gritty. Need to upgrade core horse power - add a module.
b, Incorporating Flash and traditional hard drives into all Macs and work on algorithms to make these work as well as possible as a sort of seamless hybrid drive (apart from special cases such as the Air)
c, Offer matt screens (I don't give a damn about them - I just want to stop hearing complaints from people).

To be brutally honest while a small number of users can make use of 4 drive bays, multiple card slots and 2 physical chips a significant number of users buy the MP simply because its got pro in the name and they like to pretend that they need the power so their work is not slowed down.

Guys lets get some perspective here, Apple is a computer manufacturer, if their stuff doesn't suit our needs and we are truly pro / power users then we move to a system that does. Yes I like the way OSX works but that shouldn't stop me choosing Windows / Linux if it makes me more productive. We are on this forum because we are generally passionate about apple products (or in some cases passionate about complaining about them) but I have yet to find one job that can't be done with either a Windows machine of Linux.

Sorry about the ramble.

Thunderbolt removes the need for them, really. It's not insane. Insane is thinking Apple would keep the Mac Pro the same.

I have 20GB of ram on my Mac Pro, and constantly hit a ceiling - even on a lowly 8-core machine - when running 64bit After Effects. Working in HD or 2K gobbles up Ram like you wouldn't believe when building complex vfx shots. My next machine - when they finally update the mac pro - will have at least 48GB, more likely 64GB. No iMac is likely to get near that (nor offer more than 4 cores) any time soon.

Thunderbolt will eventually remove the need for them. Too many legacy products still around. It's not like a floppy drive.

Now if you're building from scratch...

No, it's like USB. For which there were virtually no peripherals. Just like Thunderbolt.

And if you remove all legacy ports and only have Thunderbolt, history progresses just as it did before. Everyone stops using USB, FireWire, Ethernet, and whatever else and uses Thunderbolt.

Apple could sell the Pro at a loss and not even feel it. There are many of us who would pay what is necessary to ensure they don't have to. It is essential to our businesses.

Sorry, dude, you don't know what you're talking about. If anything, I would say that the 32-bit version of AE is more RAM hungry than its 64-bit counterpart. You are correct than individual instances of 32-bit apps cannot take advantage of 32 gigs of RAM, but that's irrelevant.

For example, in order to get around this very problem, 32-bit After Effects launches a separate instance of its background rendering app *for every core* on the machine running it (provided enough RAM is available). And while you can technically open an AE background rendering instance with as little as half a gig of RAM, it's pointless, because rendering usually slows to a crawl with anything less than 2 gigs per core.

So you do the math 2 gigs per core for the 12 core equals 24 *minimum*, and that's *just* for After Effects; all your other apps need RAM too, so 32 gigs at the very least is actually pretty reasonable.

You know I kind of agree with you on some of this stuff, but Apple likes to ditch old technology before newer standards and concepts stabilize. On OSX the vast majority of popular professional applications have switched over to 64 bit including Adobe's creative suite, pretty much anything from Autodesk, FCPX, etc. If you aren't having pageout issues or massive scratch data files, more ram ends up being pointless, but some people do have these issues. When they were 32 bit applications, it was totally different and yeah unless you had raided drives you could could have long pauses at times waiting on the drive. Today many of these applications can just hold that data in ram, so why not do so?




PCIe 3.0 is on the way. PCI standards will still be used for something, but the way they're used may change. If you look at the macbook air, it's a prime example. Apple went to PCI based solid state storage there as it lacks some of the bandwidth limitations of sata. The days of cards set up at the back of a machine may be numbered, but pci express is still a better standard for high bandwidth items than SATA.

Thunderbolt needs to have some way of at least accommodating breakout box versions of some of the higher bandwidth cards today to really displace the need for slots. Right now it matches an 4x PCIe 2.0 standard. It works for quite a lot. It just doesn't work for everything, and intel needs to do a better job of pushing thunderbolt to developers.


I'm just going to add if you take away things before a new solution is in place, you're going to take a major hit on sales in the short term on affected product lines as people wait on other vendors. This supports my "intel needs to push sdks and really get behind thunderbolt".

You could pay attention to recent moves by Apple and Intel which show that they haven't declared usb eol yet. The thunderbolt display has usb ports. Intel is integrating usb3 on their chipsets next year but not thunderbolt. My guess is they're not pushing it due to cost issues. The chip complexity seems to contribute to manufacturing cost. Until that changes, there is little incentive for manufacturers to really get behind it outside of higher end machines. With Apple every machine carries a strong margin. This isn't the case with all oems.

I think there is a halo effect from the Mac Pro. In advertising oriented video post production almost everyone uses Mac Pros. Most all of the editors, agency producers, agency creatives, facility producers and operations managers like me use Macs. In my experience it is rare to see any PCs at a post house. Part of this preponderance of Macs is due to the fact that most all of the cutting is done on Macs. Naturally the people operating these edit systems want Mac laptops for their own use. The agency people just tend to prefer macs, but they also need to have seamless file and app compatibility with their editors. And PCs don't always provide that. One agency we work with installed Final Cut on all of the laptops issued to creatives. Funny thing, none of those laptops were PCs.

So the Mac Pro is an important part of the video post Mac puzzle. If people are forced to start using PCs that Mac preponderance will gradually decrease. Apple needs to decide if killing the Mac Pro is worth the risk of such a great disturbance in the Mac force. And is doing so would create brand damage in the industry that has done a lot to build the brand.

Here is what I just sent Apple

"I read on "Apple Insider" that there is a rumor that Apple plans to kill off the MacPro. Please don't do this. A lot of people depend on these machines to make their workflow more efficient. I have had my MacPro for about a year now and I LOVE IT. No more bottle necks. I run Pro Tools, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Safari (streaming videos) simultaneously and this machine just takes it. Yeah the MacPro is pricey (I've invested close to $10,000 on my Pro, software, and peripheral audio gear) but you get what you pay for. I try to crash my Pro but it refuses to. I occasionally will get a program crash but that's it; the OS is solid. BTW, I've owned a Mac Classic, Power Computing Clone, a blue G4, a graphite G5, 2006 Macbook Pro (that I use to DJ with now), and now my crown jewel the MacPro. Hopefully my rant doesn't fall upon def ears. Lastly, don't forget about us "pros" that helped Apple get through the dark ages of the late 90's. Thank you for your time."

I did say most people don't need the MP and from memory After Effects allows rendering on more than one computer hence even in your situation the monolith of a current MP isn't required. Even in your case where you are probably one of the few people who is maxing out your MP wouldn't you prefer the option to be able to upgrade by adding a module containing a single chip, enough ram and a fast local storage to speed up your work rather than needing to buy another 4k+ tower taking a huge amount of space?

With regard to the halo effect, I really think some of us inflate the importance of our choices to apples bottom line. Apples marketing department is not stupid and if they could see a benefit in it they would promote the Mac Pro. I can't remember the last time they used a MP on a TV ad and their own FCP site shows it running on a laptop and an iMac.

As someone said earlier 'for a few no amount of power will be enough' but that doesn't mean to say that the power needs to be in a single huge box that can only be utilized by a single user.

Fair point with the ram but that still doesn't justify a modern Mac needing 4 internal 3 1/2drive bays and 2 optical drives. I would assume that if the MP was killed other / replacement macs would be given the ability to hold more ram for users who need it.\\

Sorry this is in relation to hmm's comment about holding data in ram - too early here, my brains hasn't woken up yet.

People buy the Mac Pro for anything computationally intensive. CAD, video editing, simulations, etc. A tiny subset ever needed the PCI slots and nearly all of them can now be accommodated by Thunderbolt.

Apple knows the market, and any wise company will know how to think whole to part. A small part of the market (developers that create content for the other devises Apple makes) is too important to abandon high end production machines without a viable alternative. Just because you have low sales does not make the machines unimportant or irrelevant... this is just more low level bait reporting...by linking the end of the Xserve with the Mac Pro situation.

"people familiar with the matter said" Who... come on... tell... if not then stop this! Who! Who! Yes, who makes a difference in the quality of reporting. Scant rumors and innuendo, Poor work Kasper.

Mac Pro re-design YES, possible, needed...

Elimination of high end computer for content development? No... Unrealistic, possible? Yes, anything
is possible. AppleInsider should stop posting from the anything possible position and not list sources... to many "they say" statements to be credible.... I think AppleInsider is going away because of poor reporting...

A better question would be what do you think Apple would introduce to replace the Mac Pro for high end content developers that the current line of machines outside of Mac Pros do not serve?

Please stop saying idiotic shit like that and expect to be taken seriously. Here at work I got JBoss application server hosting our application, which is itself a a really complex server with millions of lines of code, Oracle database server, MS SQL Server, DB2 server, I'm running Eclipse, dozens of shells, hundreds of utilities all at the same time. I have 32 GB of RAM and I could use 64 GB easily.

People like you don't actually do anything with the computer. You guys could apparently all just get an iPad or at most Air and continue happily without noticing anything.

People who actually do things on their machine can never have enough CPU cores, fast enough cores, enough RAM.

By the way RAID was never about increasing storage capacity, it was always about increasing fault tolerance and increasing throughput.

Please, if you are not the target audience for Mac Pro class workstation refrain from chiming in with idiotic comments.

I completely understand why people want workstations in the Mac world and I don't think the MP will die here. If it does, it will be replaced by something else, they are not just going to put a giant hole in their lineup. I also don't think putting forth the question of if all these new accounts are real or people stuffing the ballot box a bit is wrong either. This happens on many other threads at AI, you should know that well as long as you've been here.


I think we could see a lowering of the entry cost, but I'm not sure that we will ever see a Pro selling for $1200. While there would be people happy to be able to buy a desktop, you would also have people questioning how having the same chip that they stuck in the new iMac makes for a "professional" desktop.


Of course, Apple could have been inundated w/feedback by people and they never read jack shit here. People should certainly post here for discussion, but they shouldn't rely on this forum for their voice to be heard directly by Apple.

[QUOTE=themind;1981195]

Lets face a few facts here:
1, The MP is designed in an era where expansion was a significant problem. The majority of content creators were running into problems with storage and ram.
2, Single chip computers coped with multithreaded professional applications poorly.
3, Hard drive speed was a serious bottleneck in access time / load time for large media hence Raid was popular.

1, These days in almost all situations we will see very little benefit from more than 8Gig of ram, from memory an iMac can take 16G. Current hard drive capacities compare well with the storage space in all but the most recent workstations raid arrays.
2, Single chip computers now run true multithreaded applications very well and the core architecture is extremely stable which reduces the need for Xeon processors, indeed it makes them pointless on the single processor version of the MP.

You need to walk a mile in my shoes -- working with images that often trigger the Photoshop warning that saving a file bigger than 2 GB may be a problem for some other programs ---- 44x68 inch images at 16 bits -- and you think that 8 GB of RAM is enough? Go get a sandwich just to rotate the image 90 degrees? I use all 4 of my built-in 2 GB hard drives - and 15 more in 3 bays run by a big PCI expansion card - plus a coupe of monitors. and you think that a 21 inch iMac is enough ???
Apple cannot just dump the Mac Pros ..... Period.
And, they won't. Just hang in there and keep the cc ready.

haven't they got CASH to f^^n just do it?
I have been a mac user since 1994 and until last year when I had to leave my powermac to relatives while I went overseas.
I wanted to buy the new mac pro and I will f^^n buy the next generation, when it comes.
I have no other needs from apple but the mac pro, which I intend to keep for another 10 years (upgrades, guys, upgrades).
but if they "put it on ice", not a single dollar on apple, never.
there are way cheaper competitors in pc market and better OS in mobile space.
I had an iphone 3g for 18 months and I did not miss it when they stole it.
my wife has iphone 4 and I am not envy, I like my HP pre3 and Touchpad more that jOSs gear (better screen on touchpad, better OS interaction/experience)
incredible...
this is not the apple I used to love.

Do WHAT?


No, there aren't. We covered that.


Enjoy your nonexistent support, zero apps, and zero software updates.

--------------------------------------
That MIGHT work IF

MacMini had TWO Thunderbolt Ports
1st - for Mini to Mini interconnect
2nd - for External Device or 2nd ( Mini to Mini ) interconnect

AND if CPU's could cooperate efficiently
-------------------------------------

-----------------------------
YES - But I would NOT want to rely on the 'compatibility' of such a device

Especially since the whole point would be to run extra Cards etc
Would OSX really support this combination ?
Would I still be able to keep OSX up to date ?

Too many unknowns for comfort

More likely I would be forced to switch to Windows UUCK
to get a "Tower" type configuration

iMacs with external Card Boxes do not thrill me
A: More Expensive then an internal solution
B: Much more prone to theft of expensive add-on cards
-- Would need to 'secure' any add on boxes
C: The 'external Box' solution seems messy

No I really want the MacPro range to continue

Once again I seem to have discovered the arrogant streak in someone here. Read the post and you will see that I say most users and have said so repeatedly. In addition since this is about the MP please enlighten me as to why your talking about Microsoft SQL server? Are you running windows server on your mac? If you are then please tell me why you are running server on a workstation without hot swap or redundant power supplies. Or are you, as I suspect, dropping rather silly comments that have absolutely nothing to do with the Mac Pro?

Its a computer, the world and yes even apple will not come to an end if it stops being made.

Let's keep things under perspective. Despite all the legitimate complains from the professional users demanding the highest performance in a workstation, it is a very small market. In fact there wasn't enough money in this market to sustain SGI, SUN and all the other major workstation makers catering to this market. And the market using Apple workstations is probably even smaller since it seems its mostly graphics/video users, since lots of scientific/engineering software simply doesn't run in OSX.

In my area of work, all scientific simulation software that used to run exclusively on unix and required a very expensive branded workstation, was eventually ported to windows for desktop use, and linux to run in clusters for big jobs that a workstation simply cannot handle. OSX will never be supported, since it doesn't offer anything superior above linux for this purpose.

This situation is not new. so I doubt Apple is going to simply discontinue the MP now when they would have done so long ago when it was clear it had extremely limited commercial appeal. It seems they are content to have it available despite the low sales. In fact, HP Dell etc offerings are in the same price range, so I don't understand why people are complaining that they are a rip off.

You have made some interesting points, especially in respect of SGI and Sun. A colleague and I however, ported a LINUX only scientific package to OS X with very little effort. The advantage? To be fair, this applies in my case if not in general but it relieved me of the need to run that awful OS, especially the great pretender Ubuntu. Honestly, to me, this was a great relief and gave me a complete processing chain under the one OS (the one to rule them all lol)! Others would disagree.

It's nice to see 8 instances of the application running in 8 cores, each one fully taxed.

All the best.

I simply have to jump in here.

I am an amateur photographer, and I will consistently take 8GB+ of 16MP RAW NEF photos. On my quad-core PC overclocked to ~4GHz with 8GB of ram (the whole thing cost me under $1000 to build), it barely takes any time to process the images in Photoshop.

I have used Aperture, and it seems on par with photoshop as far as processing efficiency.

So I guess what I am getting at is that I think many (but certainly not all) of you think you need a $5,000 Mac Pro to process images, etc. HD video, obviously, requires serious horsepower. But all of the photographers on here clamoring about how they need 12 cores to process their pictures, are, I suspect, simply trying to justify their own purchase of a Mac Pro.

Why didn't you just stop at "amateur" -- and move on to a different forum ???

I'm running all kinds of stuff on my Mac. I'm not running anything in production on it. I use it for development. Because our application works on OS X, Linux, Windows, AIX, HPUX, Solaris, AS400 and it works with Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, DB2/AS400 and bunch of embedded DBs (just for demo purposes). Honestly, even the people who use our software on OS X don't host the server on OS X, they usually do it on Linux. Solaris/Oracle is our preferred (recommended platform), but OS X being what it is, makes for a really attractive development platform. OF course if there is no longer a decent workstation computer from Apple, I will be forced to develop on Linux.

They need to address these rumours NOW
Tell us a new MacPro is coming in the future or not ?

It's the unknown, that's a problem

We need to know what's happening, especially for the kinds of work we use MacPros for

This is not really an area that Apple need to be secret about
If they don't sell that many

But we need to know if we can continue to rely on Apple for high end hardware

I did once wonder if Apple would purchase SGI but that never happened
and SGI died a death
There hardware was too expensive for most of the people who wanted to use it
We bought Macs instead

Now our 60 Mac Pros are getting old, and will need replacing soon
we bought 10 new ones this summer

All of them have extra cards in them, All have 2 or 3 monitors attached
We were planning to buy new MacPros when they finally arrived

We are keen to see what the Roadmap is for the MacPro

Of course, SGI isn't actually deceased.


With those numbers, can understand your concern. Have you sought clarification with Apple?

No.


No. That's not how a successful business is run.


Never bothered you before. For the last two decades, you've been fine with it. You buy what is available exactly when you need it. You can't afford to wait. If you can, you're not in Apple's target market.


Intel has it. Go to Intel's site.

I just want a sweet rackmountable Mac Pro for using in the living room as a HTPC/WoW rig… ;^p

Expecting roadmaps from Apple, the most secretive computer company on the planet, is a pipedream. If people jump ship from a rumor, that's their fault. Apple will address the issue when they either have new systems to release (which means waiting on Intel) or by announcing they are canceling the lineup. New systems would mean either new MPs or a new and different line name to replace it, the way the Mac Pro replaced the Power Mac.

Kind of interesting to me that Apple left Motorola b/c they couldn't boost the G5 fast enough for Apple's taste, never got to 3GHz and didn't suit for battery life in portables. Now here we are, Intel has been doing great ever since switching to the Core 2 setup and now their TDP is coming down significantly in portables while still maintaining high productivity output. Of course, now the MP is stuck in limbo b/c of the decision Intel made to only allow their Xeon processors to be multi-proc setups and their Xeon line has been extremely slow. Of course, what other option does Apple have? Ridiculous pile of cores of ARM to replace Intel? Going AMD when Bulldozer is showing benchmark results behind most regular Intel desktop procs, let alone the Xeons? I think not.

Once again Apple is stuck waiting and not being able to satisfy customers (in a particular group) b/c their chip supplier has a schedule that is very long for the specific chips in question.

Sure people wil stuff the ballot box at times. However you can't dismiss that people have real concerns about work station class hardware from Apple. Nor can you dismiss that Apple has neglected the desktop resulting in poor sales there.

There are many ways to classify pro machines. It isn't always about CPU power.

To that I have to say you are completely wrong. People at Apple do read and act on postings here. I'm completely convinced of that based upon how things like the Mini and the AIR have evolved over time.

My posts get way too long too easily. i'll just say the one optical drive standard doesn't budge the price at all. They chose the price point. A $25 part means very little here, and a redesign of the case with that space removed or converted might cost more than continuing to ship them as they are today.

Ram like I said is just an issue of old paradigms. 64 bit builds helped immensely with that bottleneck even if you don't see the performance increase every second you spend within an application. It's just nice not to have long pauses or periods of slowdown when it's low on addressable ram.

I don't see the all in one form factor truly holding out a lot longer without heavy innovation. It needs something to keep it from becoming like a laptop with a larger display. As high resolution displays really start to infiltrate mobile products, the 27" display on the imac is going to look way more lackluster. It's not easy to leverage the technology upward. You pick up a lot of engineering issues with going to a larger display format as there are so many potential points of failure (remember dead pixel policies a few years ago?). Typically the desktop panel technology trickles down from what is used in dicom and broadcast quality displays.

If anything desktops may look a lot more like the mini in a few years. It's just the technology to do this isn't here today so people need something they can use today.

Seriously??

What I posted was relevant and representative of my personal experience. Why don't you move on to a different forum.

Also, everyone, don't forget that just because Apple discontinues the MP, doesn't mean they are out of the workstation market for good. The MP's design, while elegant and extremely well engineered, is very dated.

I agree that even if building and selling MP's is a net loss for Apple, it is important, at the very least, to maintain professional/workstation Operating System market share.

And, as much as I hesitate to EVER suggest that Apple would allow 3P hardware manufacturers again, I can see a possibility that Apple may partner with another producer of High End workstations (i.e. HP, etc.) to make the machines. They may even call it an apple and sell it on the Apple store. This would probably alleviate many of the operating losses caused by the MP.

Doing something like this for the iMac or the Mac Mini would be unthinkable, given the tight engineering specs and proprietary designs used in both. BUt the Mac Pro is pretty much just a shiny PC built with a really well designed case. There's no particular reason they couldn't license the case to HP, and HP couldn't obtain the same components through its sources and build an identical computer that would come preinstalled with OSX.

Again, I hesitate to suggest that Apple would ever again experiment with 3P hardware licenses. BUt if they were going to, the Mac Pro seems a logical place to do it.

A great deal of that computationally intensive processing takes place on the internal PCIe cards, such as NVidia Cuda graphics cards for Adobe, etc, etc.. Video I/O is on these cards. Where are there 16x Thunderbolt expansion options? The cruel fact is that most of that work will move to PC's. Heaven forbid! It will just be easier than Thunderbolt kludges connected to underpowered laptops and consumer level desktops. There is a halo effect from the high end creative work done on Mac Pros. I just hope Apple's new management realizes that. Not to mention that many people's livelihoods depend on them.