Despite new CPU options, Apple reportedly questioning future of Mac Pro - Page 14

Lets put some focus on the situation here...
iMacs are designed using mobile technology to provide tidy all in one home and SOHO client users, similarly laptops are for the man/woman in a suitcase transportable client use, and tablets have more recently come along to fulfil the anywhere viewer case sinario akin to large touchy smartphones, all supplying the end user with endless hours of App sapped engaged interaction with the online experience.

Imacs and even laptops can facilitate a considerable amount of daily professional use but when it comes to producing professional creative works they all have severe limitations by virtue of the level of technology employed inside them that even includes TB and no amount of fooling yourself is going to change that, they are what they are and however elegant only fulfil the purpose and limitation of their design as a client using the existing architectural infrastructure software available at the time and at the right price.
When it comes to Professional computers the requirements are driven forward by advancement in technology and programming to fulfil creative endeavour and this pushes the frontiers of advancement of which to date Apple had an elegant significant lead in.

However times change and even the great Intel dispite its latest offering the new high-end Sandy Bridge-E 3960X is now looking down the barrel of a shotgun simply because its inherited antiquated '86 beomoth of a dinosaur technology and is facing meltdown as it pushes closer to the increasing cost limitations of furthering its floored design and Ivy bridge may well be its nemesis.
Put simply its CISC architecture is too complicated to negotiate change and even AMD can't bulldoze its way out of that one.

Acorn RISC Machines (StrongARM) aka Advanced RISC Machines aka ARM have been designing processors for decades and licence 95% of the mobile phone and TV Video and settopbox industrtries now they are growing up and developing workstation class high efficiency quad hexa and octo core parralel computing RISC processors ARMv8 A15 64bit that will soon by 2012 start to challenge the whole '86 computer industry as they first move into the Laptop market and already the server market and now the traditionally Zeon held professional workstation market.
I personally think Intel would do well to reserect its Xscale ARM holding taking advantage its 3D-trigate production development technology and produce the next generation of 64bit multicore ARM RISC Processors thinking vertically rather than laterally..

Since Intel had a falling out with nVidea Apple made the mistake of following suit not one of the best of Steve Jobs decisions now nVidea have integrated Tegra3 multicore ARM SOC CPUs with their Quadro/Gforce GPUs to produce the next generation of advanced Maximus multicore powered 3D graphics workstations just announced.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/maximus.html
as you can see ARM multicore processors will way outstrip even Nahelem Ivybridge '86 processors and ontop of HP( the worlds biggest producer of computers) using ARM cores in their next generation server farms, these guys don't do stupid btw!

If Apple has visions of continuing their loss leader flagship MacPro workstation they must adopt muticore ARM processor scalability across their entire range because when Microsoft pull out their very nicely shaping up Windows8 scalable for up to 190 ARMcored computers from ARMSOCs for Phones to Tablets to desktop systems, right up to ARM/GPU workstations and the Server market then Apple will have lost the battle.
Perhaps Apple forsaw the ARM/ '86 war coming and decided to opt out, I wouldn't blame themit would mean developing a whole new pro machine design and re-writing MacOS for ARM and porting apps again, but I would have proffered them to have taken up the gauntlet and been a pioneer its not as if they couldn't afford it, maybe they might??? maybe they would have but Steve Jobbs isn't at the helm anymore.
next year 2012 will be the next computer industry generational shift year to watch.

btw, I am an independent engineer and don't work for these guys also had a soft spot for my studio MacPro for many years so would like to see a combined profesional iOS/MacOS succeed a while longer.

If you wonder what Professionals do with such workstations check this out http://www.nvidia.com/object/wetadigital_avatar.html

Just curious: how much use would Blu Ray get if it were on your computer?

HP not doing stupid?

That has to be the highlight of your misinformed post. Have you paid any attention at all to HP in the last several years?

ARM has no serious part in a Mac Pro discussion. Any decent engineer should realize that you can't compare chips specialized for different niches (High end workstation and Phones) and draw a meaningful comparison on power usage.

If you started to building ARM chips for high performance, you would need new powerful FPUs, longer and more complex pipelines, hefty caches, hefty IO, robust memory interfaces. They would end up just as power hungry and large. Because the instruction set is the smallest part of what is going on in the difference in power usage.

So many people are spouting off "ARM = Magic" nonsense without thinking, that is getting annoying.

Much the same as now. Maybe a coouple usese/month. My current PC has Blu Ray and I have it on a desk in my living room and it is also used as an HTPC connected to my TV.

It is the only Blu-Ray/DVD player that I have for watching physical disks.

Apple needs a 'balls to the wall' product that sets the standard for what a no-compromise system should be. They can afford it, they should do it, they would be foolish to not define the status quo.  If it wasn't for the release of Final Cut Pro and the Mac Pro then Apple's computers would still be considered toys.  I love my monster truck Mac Pro, please don't make me go PC.

Edited by connector - 4/30/12 at 10:03pm

Apple is unlikely to ever become the norm there. I actually cannot think of a single advantage to OSX in that area or a single application that runs better than it does on Windows. I still don't actually like Windows, but I haven't spent that much time on it in about a decade.

There's been a lot of talk about how Thunderbolt allows users to buy a Mac and hook up tons of high speed storage. That's true and for those who don't need a lot of processing power or RAM it might be a good choice, but it doesn't really do much for Apple. Instead of selling a $2500 computer they sell a $1500 computer or maybe just an $800 computer and a $50 cable. Worst case scenario they lose the sale completely.

We attribute the "no visible wires" thing to Steve Jobs, but might be a Jonathan Ive thing as much as a Steve thing. Nothing goes against that aesthetic like a big external drive unit sitting there with a bunch of wires sticking out of it. The Mac Pro allows users to hide multiple drives inside the computer itself.

I cannot see any point in the future when high end users will stop demanding more CPU, GPU and RAM than fits in an iMac. Obviously Apple is free to stop selling computers to them, but slapping a new motherboard into a case every time Intel revs its server offerings seems like a low cost way of keeping those people using OS X and buying Apple software.

Exactly. It's a simple proposition and easily accomplished. Apple would be foolish to let this small but significant area of the business slide, for the many reasons mentioned in this thread.

If Apple isn't going to put in the effort to innovate then what is the point. Apple has shown that there is more to computer design than Intels latest CPU with the laptops. The desktop seems to be missing the pull out the stops design efforts seen in the laptops. Maybe it wasn't on purpose but the desktop hardware has regressed to the point of looking pretty pathetic.

So in reality the slide as already happened now Apple needs to get out of the ditch and back on the road.

That is complete nonsense. Who makes nicer desktop hardware?

The Mini is about it for a modern design from Apple. That model is so castrated that many can't even consider it for mainstream usage. This is especially the case when most of Apples laptops out perform the Mini.

So Apple has one marginal computer for the desk top. The competition has a whole array of products that users can choose from. Thus my statement; Apples desktop line up is pathetic.

I only read the first 3 pages and the last page so maybe someone mentioned it somewhere in the middle... what about an iMac Pro? add a "pro" category to the iMac line... one that incorporates some desktop/workstation hardware in place of mobile/laptop cpu architecture. it would solve the issue of wanting more than an iMac. Hardest issue is the idea of an expansion slot. How could you put that in an iMac case without enlarging it (depth) significantly and cooling with a true video card and hotter CPU might then become an issue. But it could be done, give then proper R&D @ Cupertino.

To incorporate what you are suggesting, they would have to essentially rethink the whole design. It's not all laptop hardware. It uses a laptop gpu which is actually constructed from underclocked desktop parts. Basically it's a gpu designed for laptops that is too power hungry to get any kind of reasonable battery life. The cpus are desktop cpus that stop just before the extreme units on the 27" model. Expansion slot is too much design work. It would have to be something like mini PCI so it wouldn't take the cards people would want to use anyway and there's no guarantee of quick manufacturer support.

That line is designed around aesthetics and limited storage needs. When you start having to add drive enclosures and a bunch of different peripherals to it just to obtain the functionality of another model, the minimalist design concept is rendered pointless anyway.

Many of us would like an xMac, but just because it doesn't exist, doesn't mean you need to overreact and disparage the whole lineup.

The Mini isn't the whole desktop line. There are iMacs and Pro... Plenty of performance there.

Price performance isn't great, but they are all pretty much the best looking, best built desktops. Calling them pathetic is just a tad hyperbolic.

The mac pro is frustrating. The case internals are quite nice but I still wish we could better hard drive cooling. The cooling system in general is an area where they could have put in further work. People buy these machines for power and stability. If you routinely run the laptops, mini, or imac at high loads they all run quite hot. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with the mac pro line. I really really need to update.

If the line up is pathetic, saying so isn't over reacting. The desktop line is seen as a joke in comparison to the laptop lineup.

I don't even consider the iMac to be part of the desktop line up. More importantly many will not even consider an all in one. As to the Pro, I've said before it is a fine machine for those that need it but it is a stretch to call that big box a desktop machine. More importantly the Pro will not sell to people simply looking for an expandable Mac that is midrange in performance.

In my view the desktop line up is the Mini. Not a bad machine but by no means a line up.

Sure if you only see the mini, that would be a pretty weak lineup. But reality doesn't conform to your narrow view.

The iMacs are clearly desktop machines, what else would they be? They are probably the most quintessential desktop on the planet. Since they have built in screens, they pretty much have to be on your desktop.

I also don't see where the Mac Pro is that large. It is within about a quarter inch of my Antec Solo Mini Tower.
http://www.amazon.com/Antec-LifeStyl.../dp/B000FTTNIQ

So in your definition a Desktop machine is only some kind of box without a screen, but smaller than a Mini-tower?? How narrow can you be?

It isn't that terrible in size. Part of it is the juxtaposition provided by the alternatives available at the Apple store. Quite a number of things have hurt sales, and the price tag has probably made a number of users question how much they actually need. Beyond the users that can fit everything they need on a single laptop hard drive, the Apple minimalist design concept starts to falter via an exponential increase in accessories and peripherals required. In my opinion at such a high starting price point, the single socket machine needs better specs to really differentiate it from the imac. Seeing it come with less stock ram than the imacs or macbook pros is just a sign of negligence that feeds the rumors of Apple killing the line.

By the way Corsair > Antec

I still have an old G5 around. If I did build my own custom PC, I'd be tempted to use the case. There are probably better cases, but they would cost more than the selling price of an old G5.

I am not saying Apple is free of criticism. I think I was clear that I would like a much less expensive Pro and I really don't like AiO computers and the Mini is like a laptop without batteries. But I do think it is extreme to call them pathetic, or to claim that the iMac/Pro don't even count as desktops.

I still think Apples have the best looking, best built desktops and like Apple I prefer quiet to absolute cooling performance.

On cases, I didn't even know Corsair made cases 4 years ago when I built mine. Did they?

But reading reviews recently of Solo II Corsair came up as better in some respects, but Antec was still a quieter case and that was my goal. I have zero regrets on the Solo.
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/chassi...olo-ii/?page=4

In fact I find the Corsairs on the gaudy side with windows and stuff. If choosing today I would likely get another Solo or a Cooler Master Silencio, none of the Corsairs appeal. I prefer simple, clean and quiet.

I was just having a little fun with the Corsair thing. They probably do nowhere near the volume of Antec, but they try to make nice products. Doesn't apple still use Corsair power supplies?

I'm probably a bit irritable with Apple lately, but they do an excellent job of predicting what will appeal to the largest possible number of users. The problem is if your needs fall even just a bit outside of the Apple design paradigm, you're confronted with a mess of cables, adapters, dongles, additional hardware, etc. to make something really simple work, when it wouldn't have been a big deal in the past. You can't use something like eSATA on a macbook pro given the lack of an express slot these days, but thunderbolt has a limited range of products (and the Promise enclosure is noisy). That's just one example. It may get superior speed, but it's more expensive, and it does mean buying and testing new peripherals.

Totally agree. I have never had a Mac. But I admire the physical design, the HW/SW integration and OSX, but Apple doesn't make a Mac for me.

I really don't like AiOs and it doesn't help that they have glossy screens which I despise.

I am not a Thunderbolt fan if it is used to replace other ports either. I have two esata drives I use for backup on my PC. I don't want to have to buy an expensive specialty enclosure and use $50 dollar cables.

If Apple never builds an xMac I will probably wait until the mini has some future 14nm 6 core with, by then, integrated Intel graphics that have surpassed my current 8800GT.

But if the want to sell me a machine before 2016, the really should have have something in the mini-Pro gap.

^referencing above post rather than quoting all of it....


I'm truly undecided what the next machine will be for me right now. The easiest thing to determine is that it won't be the mac pro that is available today. If they refresh it, I'll probably buy one. There would actually be a few advantages for me in running a Windows system (including getting away from the antiquated file system used by OSX). It would just be a very annoying migration.

The thunderbolt enclosure is quite noisy which goes away from the Apple mentality of all equipment must be silent. All in ones just have a number of issues when it comes to heavy use. I only really suggest one over the baseline mac pro, but for the most part I suggest waiting at this point. With the mini it's kind of another thing where they went a bit extreme for me. I want to see a stationary machine maintain better speed and reliability than a laptop. It's essentially manufactured for situations where mobility doesn't matter and makes the assumption that most present day hardware is fast enough. The mini actually took a long time to gain popularity. For a while there was a rumor that Apple would kill that line.

I wish someone with a high enough position at Apple could read this forums.
The advent of the xMac would make more people switch from Windows PCs to Macs. A machine like the xMac requires much less effort on a engineering point of view than any other Mac to develop and update on a regular basis.

I'm also after a replacement for my desktop PC and I want a Mac this time. I usually keep a desktop machine for 5 years with a small upgrade during that time (usually a new graphics card, more memory and a hard disk). The iMac doesn't let me do that as far as upgrading the GPU is concerned. The Mac Pro is performance overkill and wallet overkill for me. The Mac mini is out fo question. The xMac would be the sweet spot. It also would give a push for graphics card makers to put out some more models for the Mac. I guess everyone would be winning with this: more sales to Apple, more happy Mac users and more sales for 3rd party hardware makers. I really think Apple should release such machine.

As for the Mac Pro itself. It should keep existing. There are many people relying on these machines and it would be unfair to pull the rug from them.

Just my two cents...

You are not alone!

Like it or not I consider all in ones something different than a desktop PC. They are more like an appliance than anything else.

I also find TB unacceptable for many uses. There are some good uses though, hooking up to Apples display and getting a number of new ports is one good use. In the end though rational use of TB won't be to replace low end ports.

Waiting forever means you mis out performance wise in the interim.

This whole statement perplexes me. Frankly you support my opinion that the desktop line up is pathetic. I suspect we are in agreement more than you want to admit.

I am not waiting. I will just keep buying Windows PC's until Apple builds something I like.

We are mostly in agreement in what we would like to get from Apple (some kind of xMac).

But we differ in attitude about the lineup. Just because I don't like AiO computers, doesn't mean I need to denigrate them. I consider iMacs great desktop PCs for people who like AiOs. I think iMacs are the best AiO computers out there.

Don't feel bad. I've been using Macs for 18 years. Apple isn't making a Mac for me either.


I agree. What good is a great looking Apple product if all that hard work making it look great is hidden behind all the non matching third party external devices you have to buy and hook up to it in order to have a complete system that meets your needs?

Some sort of mid range mid size no built in monitor desktop Mac is needed.

If a significant percentage of desktop users preferred an all-in-one computer like the iMac, or a tiny thing like the Mac Mini, most companies making Windows based computers would be offering such products, but they do not. They are not dumb, but rather, are producing pretty much what buyers want.

I suspect Apple has refrained from making an xMac because it would hurt, or possibly devastate, the sales of iMacs. So in effect, Apple is sacrificing higher desktop sales in order to protect an iconic product. They would be far better off building a desktop with much higher sales potential, witness what is selling in the world of Windows, and letting iMac sales fall as they may. Apple could afford to carry a low selling iMac in their product line, if it came to that.

What can we do in the present situation? For those like myself, with moderate performance needs, we can buy a used Mac Pro. Sure it's big, but I have the space and it looks good. I prefer that solution to switching to Windows. Beside the xMac, however, Apple still needs a Mac Pro at the high performance end, for professionals. It could be a little less beautiful and have a lower price tag.

I really don't think iMac sales would fall very much. I think instead Apple would gain back some of the people that left Apple because there is no xMac type product. Apple would also get long time users like me buying something from Apple. Right now Apple isn't getting any of my money. And lots of others are buying used Mac Pros instead of new Macs so Apple isn't making money from that either.

And with the market splitting Apple is just as likely to lose iMac sales due to the iPhone and iPad as they would be from offering a mid range desktop.

Apple tends to hate segmentation and anything from a third party that is not sold through the Apple store. They do like to try to push everything through their own channels, regardless of whether they hold the best option on the market. I don't see it as being about what they can afford to carry. Investors have come to expect enormous margins from Apple. At this point expectations always seem to be set at an unrealistic level especially by analysts so they're always under a lot of pressure to turn out a high ROI on any dollars spent.

Apple has suggested laptops will ultimately be trending toward thinner designs as we see in the air today. I suspect the imacs are actually in for a big downturn regardless. Wait until Macbook Air - like devices have less restrictive storage, 15" display options, and 500GB or so hard drives. That will really hit the imac hard as it will lose a lot of appeal among consumers, and it will be left with predominantly an awkwardly leveraged prosumer market. By this I mean the people who came from G5 and mac pro towers.


They might not. Apple could gain some market share with this, but ultimately it would still be unpopular in corporate markets given difficulty of integration and lack of on site servicing. That is still a very significant market for the desktop models from other oems. Apple has only gotten into those places with things like the iphone and ipad, where it displaced RIM in one, and has no real competition in the other. The other tablets to hit the market have for the most part lacked real support or a long term business strategy. I have no idea why some of these companies just rushed products to market.

Same here. I am certain an xMac would be nice net gain. I figure most people who buy iMacs like AiOs and very few would switch.

But they would gain people who don't like AiOs, people who don't like glossy monitors (this is actually the majority from what I have seen on monitor forums).

The xMac has been one of the most wanted products I have seen in Apple forums for years.

Since this is about the Mac Pro, how limited would a xMac have to be, to not further marginalize the Pro?

If it is just a smaller mini-tower with several card slots and a fast i7 for something like half the price of the Pro, it seems like it would push the Pro into a tiny (unsustainable) niche.

Apple hates anything they see as a niche or shrinking market. They seem to put a lot of energy into bringing very few designs to market. For any company there are a ton of designs that don't work out for each one that is actually manufactured and sold. For Apple I imagine the culling rate is much higher. The iphone is always defined by minor variations on a single design with each generation. While the ipad line will probably expand at some point, it's again a single design shipped in enormous volume. Shipping huge workstation class machines still isn't going to be a huge growth market for them. An xmac might bring in additional sales, but I think if they do bring out any kind of mini tower configuration, it would ultimately end up as a successor to a machine like the mac pro, rather than a complement to it.

I mostly agree.

So what could a Viable xMac, Pro lineup look like?

xMac: Pizza Box style (similar to a big Mini) with just one slot and two 3.5" internal bays starting around $999 with an i5.

Pro: Slightly cost reduced to start at $1999.

I think Falcons lineup shows what is possible for MacPro today, and they are not as slow of the mark to market, infact this is quite a tasty machine and just shows what a MacPro is up against...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nvidia/...8175/lightbox/

click on the photo for details, again I have nothing to do with them just sharing what is possible out there. don't AI allow pics on the forum then?

Yeah, they do allow photos but you have to 1) use the button to markup the link to the photo (which you did), but you also have to use a link to the photo, not the page the photo is on.

This is essentially just a custom PC assembler. This is the same thing the DiY market has been doing for decades and about as far away from Apple as possible.

Even so, falcon are aimed almost completely at gamers. They don't seem to even have options for server CPU/Chipset/ECC Ram.

You get even more choice if you just go to any local computer shop, they will get any component on the market for you. Since the early 90's (when I retired my Amiga) I have specified every component in all my PCs.

It is a given that Apple isn't going to compete with the DiY/custom market.

There is no basis for the above statement. Frankly the machine is probably a better fit for many markets than the Mac Pro.

The whole point of this thread is that most professional users don't need server grade hardware. They especially don't need server grade hardware in an overpriced box.

Of course not. However Apple doesn't currently compete in the desktop market. in a way though the Mac Pro is in a sense similar to a custom machine. It simply isn't a high volume machine and is tailored for a certain class of user.

gotcha thanks solipsism.


Snowdog65
gamer machines use much the same parts as pro workstations, the MacPro is/was an in-between design taking advantage of duel Zeon processors of the server elk and GPUs of the gaming market feature which gave them the advantage albeit at a price over the equivalent PC workstations, but todays i7-3960X CPU is an 8 core single processor restricted to 6core presently (with rumers of 16 / 20 cores to come...) and coupled with a suitable graphics PCIe GPU I like the GTX590 custom designed cab with maybe miniPCIe 2.5" card HDs or SSDs would make a perfect next generation MacX to fill the void in the apple lineup that so many seem to crave for.


Perhaps the Hackintosh is the way of the future for the MacOS pro market if their is going to be one, looking at the capability of the new Falcon Mack5 and indeed the new impressive nVidea Maximus GPU parallel processing graphics workstation (laugh at my suggestion as you may! I'd check it out first though.) but these machines coupled with future 4K 3D editing creative film/animation and sound recording like software is going to be a benchmark that any design of MacPro is going to have to match to stay desirable let alone be competitive.

And will there be any Professional market left with any faith in MacOS by then?.

What desktop market? Desktop sales pale in comparison to notebook sales, and that's without even considering Apple's notebook dominance. They'd probably make more money bringing the iPod Classic back than trying to profit from a budget or gaming xMac. Like it or not towers are not what the typical customer wants or needs.

Huh? I see lots of basis.

Are you saying they aren't a custom builder?
I am on their page and the page heading is:
"The Best Custom Built Computers for Gaming and Business"
So it is clear that they are custom builders.

You don't think DiY market has been doing this for decades? I think it obvious that DiY market HAS been doing this for decades.

You don't think Apple is the furthest thing form the DiY market? That would be news to me.

Exactly how was there no basis for my statement? It is exactly the reality. Apple is never going to compete in the DiY market.


I didn't see where that was the whole point. I originally thought you might be able to save cash by dropping server parts for low end users, but the more I look into, the more I think anyone who is doing computation intensive work in a business environment, ECC memory should be standard. The cost is minimal and the improvement in memory reliability is dramatic. On a serious work machine this should at least be an option.

I am not even sure what you are saying here. i7-3960X/GTX590 from Falcon is $4500, certainly not the starting point for a MacX.

Even most professional users don't have any use for GTX590 unless they have some ultra specialized CUDA number crunching.

A Mac X, would be more like a basic Intel i5, with a Radeon 6770.