Apple tells reseller new Mac Pro coming in spring 2013 - Page 5

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


You have to be pretty OCD to think an HDD and ODD are equal to what we see from that Dell above. Apple doesn't put ports on their iMac to make them look pretty. They serve a purpose and I'm quite happy that I can plug in something to USB, TB, ethernet without having a half-dozen requires cables getting in the way.


PS: An ODD and HDD are even less cluttery than the iMac shown above because the new iMacs ship with a wireless keyboard and mouse/trackpad thereby removing the need for any of the wires to come out in front of the display.

My Mac Pro doesn't have a rat's nest of cables anything like that Dell pictured.  If you added the number of HDDs, SSDs, and ODDs inside my Mac Pro to an iMac, you would have a LOT of cables not to mention of a lot of used up desk real estate.  I'd wager that my Mac Pro uses less desk space than a Mini with a comparable amount of storage.  I'm talking desk surface area, not volume.  

I don't think many here at AI understand this concept.  Not everyone is content to use an iMac as it was configured the day they purchased it.  A 1 TB fusion drive doesn't cut it for many professionals or even ethusiasts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

That's one box, two more cables.

 

The only silly thing is you thinking ODDs are needed.

Two SSDs

Five HDDs

One ODD, because I watch MOVIES on my Mac Pro.  Understand the concept of entertainment?  Streaming movies are worthless to me because I live in a rural area and pay by the gigabyte.  

That all fits in one box?  Are you delusional?

If they were purely functional then the iMac would have a few easily accessable ports for things like flash drives or transiently plugged in cables.  The Mac Pro is an example of ergonomic port placement.  The iMac is an abomination if you need to plug in a flash drive.  

Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg 
Two SSDs

Five HDDs

One ODD, because I watch MOVIES on my Mac Pro.  Understand the concept of entertainment?  Streaming movies are worthless to me because I live in a rural area and pay by the gigabyte.  

 

That all fits in one box?  Are you delusional?

Are you? 

Pro tip: They make 'em bigger than this, too. But you probably don't care since you didn't seem to know that cases which hold multiple hard drives existed in the first place.

So the Mac Pro is an abomination if you need to plug in optical audio, Ethernet, analog audio out, or anything involving any PCIe card. Got it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvin 


I don't see how it defies logic to assume that after making people wait nearly 3 years that they'd at least use the latest Xeon processors and not ones that everybody else shipped last May.

You aren't maintaining context with my statement. What I called FUD was the method of interpretation applied to the statement. Beyond that oem shipping dates haven't always been in line with intel's official launch dates. Sandy Bridge officially launched in Q1. It had a 3-4 month lag there. You may not see Ivy either this year or until very late in the current year. I previously thought you might see something around January for Sandy followed by Ivy a year later. Westmere shipped a number of months later than it became available. The first in line or early shipping on future Xeons seems to be a drift away from what is likely.

Note what I said about intel's official launch dates compared to when we see them ship. Even in my Westmere example they were announced in July and didn't ship until late August that year. The later it gets the more likely it is that they'd skip Sandy, although that doesn't really justify scrubbing PR statements for secondary information. They are obviously behind with that specific line at the moment. Even if it's aimed at Ivy, I wouldn't look for Apple to ship first. As for their cpu lineup, assuming they choose similar price points, Sandy would still start with a quad model. The graphic at that link doesn't really display the appropriate cpus in any case. E7/EX supports up to 4 sockets. E5 4600 is also not something you'll see. The two that basically align with their current setup and what others ship in every other workstation on the market would be specifically E5-16XX in single machines and E5-26XX in duals. Ivy Bridge will probably just be a v2 version. Hopefully they don't do a repeat on Westmere and only release a partial lineup. I kind of doubt they'll do that again, but it's always possible.

This basically means ignore anything that says E3, E5-14xx, E5-24xx, 26xxL, E5-46xx, and E7. Some are close enough to where it's easy to get mixed up. You noticed my own prior mistake regarding chipsets.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

Are you? 

 

Pro tip: They make 'em bigger than this, too. But you probably don't care since you didn't seem to know that cases which hold multiple hard drives existed in the first place.

 

So the Mac Pro is an abomination if you need to plug in optical audio, Ethernet, analog audio out, or anything involving any PCIe card. Got it.

One of the annoying things is finding a NAS that is well supported on OSX.

The fact is they owe you nothing based on purchases a decade ago.   Apple is a dramatically different company these days as it is.  

The only thing Apple owes customers is the support they expect for their hardware as defined in warranties given.  Apple does really well here and often goes above expectations to make things right for customers.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg 

 

This attitude has served American business so well in recent decades!  

Originally Posted by hmm 
One of the annoying things is finding a NAS that is well supported on OSX.

Tell me about it. The one I linked? Says it's supported. Total lies. And no help whatsoever when you call! The management utility is in Flash, if that tells you anything, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvin 


There's no evidence so far to suggest that Ivy Bridge will have the same delays Sandy Bridge did (VT-d bug) so assuming that, which would you prefer: Sandy Bridge in March or Ivy Bridge in June/July?
Also, what reason would Apple have for waiting for a Sandy Bridge update when the CPUs have been available for over 9 months?
How well do you think people would receive 9 month old hardware in it after this long a wait?

For an IB update, it would likely use E5-2600v2 as you say. They won't use dual 10-core as they cost too much so at best it'll be a 16-core. Still no evidence they'll have USB 3, SATA 6G or PCIe 3 yet either. Imagine how disappointing it would be to have an entry quad-core Sandy Bridge at $2500 with USB 2, SATA 3G and PCIe 2 after all this time.

I'm not sure about SATA and PCIe 3. USB 3 was added by the oems I checked (Dell, HP, Lenovo).

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tech-specs/workstation/d30/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5769/dell-precision-t3600-review-dells-new-enterprise

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/12454-12454-296719-307907-4231338-5225033.html?dnr=1

I see no reason Apple couldn't implement it aside from refusal to allocate a small number of extra engineering hours. They probably wish to include at least 1 usb3 when they update the thunderbolt display, which would necessitate testing third party chipsets anyway. Do you disagree? Yeah including 10 core options would be a complete departure from their past trends. I suspect we could see one more round of quad versions at $2500, which is pretty weak, but I'm not totally sure. I don't see a price drop as likely, but they could go a little more aggressive in the base configuration and just ship the hex core. It would leave a bigger gap in price points, but you'd immediately hit the 12 core machines after that. $2500 for a quad core was never a good value, and yet people assigned a lot of reasons to it with a poor understNew Postsanding (must be Xeons, must be due to the need to support dual configurations, more fud). I'm still impressed you remembered my screwup on the X79 quote. That was pretty awesome.

Regarding the wait, I suspect they don't have even a couple engineers dedicated specifically to the mac pro. It may have been up for cancellation or an extremely low priority. They could have been uncertain about intel schedule. I know about the SATA problems that caused the Sandy Bridge recall early on and subsequent problems, but I'm still hesitant to believe that intel will have anything in the hands of oems in the June/July timeframe. Intel officially launched Sandy Bridge EP around February or March. Workstations weren't shipping in quantity until roughly early July. Early shipments seem to have been earmarked for supercomputer vendors. If Ivy is in fact available in sufficient quantities by July, I suspect they'd tack on an announcement for the mac pros when they refresh the notebooks, possibly with extended shipping dates. Apple may have a far better outlook of intel's schedule than me, so I suspect it factors into their decisions.

I wonder just a bit if a continuation of the mac pro also influenced the imac and what they felt needed to be included there. They must be counting on further adoption of the imac in work environments as a portion of its sales. I don't think consumer sales alone would keep it healthy. Most of the people who own computer desks for personal use are those that have a number of other peripheral devices. Otherwise in my opinion they're unlikely to assign dedicated space to their computing devices.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

Tell me about it. The one I linked? Says it's supported. Total lies. And no help whatsoever when you call! The management utility is in Flash, if that tells you anything, too.

I know from experience how many things are supported in name only. That detail about the management utility is extremely funny.

SSDs are 2.5" aren't they?

Do you guys think there's any chance that Apple will declare that regular disk drives are obsolete, and allow multiple SSDs to be plugged in as desired and reconfigured Drobo-style as a single Fusion Drive?

Just thinking outside the box here. It's Apple with a new form factor, they've got to obsolete something.

He might be talking about Drobos new portable storage solution that makes use of notebook drives to store datammmm the cool thing here is that the "drives" plug into the front of the unit.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Drobo is an external RAIDed NAS. You can use SSDs if you want. There are 3.5" SSDs just as there are PCIe SSDs and the SSD cards that Apple uses in most of their systems.

I do think Apple (and everyone else) will stop using spinning drives but that time isn't now. If you want a good deal of storage you still have to use an HDD. This is where Fusion Drive comes into play. It pairs at least one SSD with at least one HDD and knows which is the SSD and move files to the faster drive if it's used often or can benefit from the increased performance.

I full expect the new Mac Pro to have 3.5" slots for HDDs but I also expect it to have an SSD card viz Fusion Drive, at least as an option.

If they don't have a high speed SSD solution I can only think that Apple has lost it.  In fact SSDs should be the preferred and primary storage solution for a 2013 Mac Pro.  

Originally Posted by PhilBoogie 
You can buy a MP now and configure it with SSD's. Up to 4, and they're placed in an 'adapter' so they go into the 3.5" bays. OWC sells them:

Somewhere else sells dual-drive single bays. It's a drive carrier that looks just like Apple's existing ones, but you can put two SSDs into each. I'll try to find it.

Ah, they must have taken it down. They still have this option, though:

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


T Desktops are designed to be used at a desk or some station and have battery or built-in accessories that allow them to be portable.

And as such a desktop computer does not need to be pencil thin and exclude things that people need and use just so that some designer can brag how thin it is, in a dimension that doesn't really matter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvin 


They use Pericom PCI to USB bridges for the current displays and they have USB 3 support now so that's an option:

http://www.pericom.com/protocols/usb-technology/

Once the supply problems are dealt with in the iMacs, they'll probably update the Cinema Displays.

Once we're inside of 6 months or so, it probably doesn't make financial sense. Logic boards and things are unlikely to really change between the two, and AMD 7xxx drivers have shown up multiple times in ML builds, so it may not be a huge amount of extra effort. My initial presumption was that if they stated 2013 and wished to use Sandy, it would have shown up by now even if no one was allocated to the mac pro previously. Assuming they intended to carry the prior design forward, I do not really think it would take years to bring a new model to market. The current case has a significant amount of extra room and some of the recent NVidia GTX gpus have a minimal level of preexisting support in OSX. It's difficult for me to picture this as an overwhelming project for a small team.

It could have just been a screwup. Perhaps they were initially going to cancel it and really had nothing to ship? They may have a large engineering staff, but if they're all allocated to other projects, that means very little. Given the potential to reuse parts over two generations with Sandy to Ivy, it's hard to speculate that it would have made complete financial sense to skip one. What they offer right now is pretty terrible. It starts at $2500 for sort of low end specs in terms of a Xeon workstation. The drop in specs from prior years must have had some influence on how long buyers held onto their old ones. Old software catching up on core scaling was likely another hit for the higher end models. I assume they've had quite a slump. The reason I disagree with some of the others here that they'll reverse the pricing strategy is that it conflicts with their other actions. Even in the 2012 reshuffling, pricing still went up on the base dual model. It went from 8 core westmere to 12 core westmere with a $300 price increase. Those cpus still retail for less than those used in the mac pro 1,1, which was priced $1300 lower. It's not coming from the base gpu option. I just see it as a pricing strategy rather than driven by cost to manufacture. If people will pay it, they can continue to charge it. Otherwise they're more likely to cut the line.

If Apple was to releases a Mac Pro without consideration for solid sate storage I will have lost all faith in them.   All one has to do is look towards Apples laptops to see the benefits of solid state storage.  The trick with the Mac Pro is to make that storage large enough that it is viable as some users only storage for more demanding users the SSD can be used in conjunction with fusion drive.  Pro users though need a far bigger SSD than the 256Gb sizes.  

The other way to look at this is this: does it make sense to introduce a new desktop platform without support for solid state secondary storage?   I'd say it is suicide to not consider solid state tech for any new desktop platform, especially a platform that is suppose to be a high performance workstation.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


So you think that the default build will come with an SSD? I'm thinking that could happen but with an SSD card. Any bays will have the option for HDDs. I would like them to include sleds that allow 2.5" drives in their Mac Pros so that you can use SSDs if you wish. I assume they don't offer any such thing now.

Obviously the Pro needs a way to support magnetic technology for those that need it.   That would be internally though I don't see the machine having disk array technology in 2013.   apple needs to find the right mix of technologies to support the Mac Pro for the next decade.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69 

If Apple was to releases a Mac Pro without consideration for solid sate storage I will have lost all faith in them.   All one has to do is look towards Apples laptops to see the benefits of solid state storage.  The trick with the Mac Pro is to make that storage large enough that it is viable as some users only storage for more demanding users the SSD can be used in conjunction with fusion drive.  Pro users though need a far bigger SSD than the 256Gb sizes.  

I would agree with that, but if we're talking about large storage volumes, HDDs still make sense. A frequent problem under OSX is finding stable well supported raid hardware, unless your budget is fairly elastic. I've been through the Apple Store's reviews on the Promise RAID. I know Promise makes a fair amount of enterprise grade hardware, but the Apple Store has a number of complaints regarding doa drives with that unit. Buying bulk drives off newegg I might expect that, but it worries me me with something like a pre-configured raid. These things should show up and work. SSDs are still extremely expensive at Apple's markups. Right now if you spec the mac pro with 512GB ssds, the first is $850 and the rest are $1000 each. Hard drives are trivial to install in a mac pro, and I have received flaky hard drives in new Macs on two occasions (one was also extremely noisy), so I don't particularly value the extra QA there. Amazon has Samsung 840 512GB ssds for $500 or less depending on model. That is a third party vendor as I couldn't get it to link correctly, but you can see Amazon as one of the buying options listed on the right. Pricing is the same. Apple really does apply a high markup there, which is harder to do on machines that aren't sealed off black boxes.

I completely agree with that. Large storage volumes are likely to remain raid dependent, especially when many terabytes are needed. In some cases I'd say still tape dependent, although I don't personally use it as a backup solution.

Apple has never been a cheap solution, if you want cheap it's white box or hackintosh. Apple has said many times they are not about making cheap things. Honestly my one concern is they will state oh Thunder Bolt will address all our concerns with break out boxes. Where that is somewhat true you do not get full bandwidth 16x or what ever the top PCIE speed is via Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt goes a long way but for cards I'd rather just have the native slots, too much crap that can cause issues in environments that require stability and silence above all else.

It would be nice to have a desktop, but that would probably mean the Mac Pro Workstation will cease to exist. For my customers running server and heavily loads that would be a lost. 

Yes there is a real need among Mac Pro users for magnetic storage to handle bulk needs.    However that isn't everybody.   Further it should be fairly easy to implement a rather large SSD in a Mac Pro given the pricing structure of the machine.   Many Pro users would be very happy with a 512 GB or 1 TB SSD sitting on the PCI Express bus.  

Now some have most likely thrown up their hands in disgust saying Apple could never do that, they like to charge far to much for SSD's.    This isn't really the case though, you look at the AIRs at introduction and you will have seen a very interestingly priced machine.     If Apple builds in the flash it can be very competitive.   

As a side note, like you I've had my share of hard drive issues.   In this regard I don't think it would hurt Apple one bit to introduce some new technology to make high capacity flash on the Mac Pro a reality.   They have the technology of Anobit, PA Semi and a bunch of other silicon companies to build the custom hardware to pull this off and control costs. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by hmm 

I would agree with that, but if we're talking about large storage volumes, HDDs still make sense. A frequent problem under OSX is finding stable well supported raid hardware, unless your budget is fairly elastic. I've been through the Apple Store's reviews on the Promise RAID. I know Promise makes a fair amount of enterprise grade hardware, but the Apple Store has a number of complaints regarding doa drives with that unit. Buying bulk drives off newegg I might expect that, but it worries me me with something like a pre-configured raid. These things should show up and work. SSDs are still extremely expensive at Apple's markups. Right now if you spec the mac pro with 512GB ssds, the first is $850 and the rest are $1000 each. Hard drives are trivial to install in a mac pro, and I have received flaky hard drives in new Macs on two occasions (one was also extremely noisy), so I don't particularly value the extra QA there. Amazon has Samsung 840 512GB ssds for $500 or less depending on model. That is a third party vendor as I couldn't get it to link correctly, but you can see Amazon as one of the buying options listed on the right. Pricing is the same. Apple really does apply a high markup there, which is harder to do on machines that aren't sealed off black boxes.

 

I completely agree with that. Large storage volumes are likely to remain raid dependent, especially when many terabytes are needed. In some cases I'd say still tape dependent, although I don't personally use it as a backup solution.

My interest is to see Apple introduce a powerful but yet competitively priced machine.     I believe the way to success is putting value into things outside of bulk storage which is better solved with an external box.  So the goal should be fast secondary storage, strong OpenCL support and any other new tech they can dream up to make the Pro an attractive machine again.     

Why is it every single time we talk about a more cost effective replacement for the Mac Pro we get these idiotic posts????       Wake up and smell the coffee, the Mac Pro is on skid row, it sales have dropped like a rock.   Why?   Simple it offers no value what so ever at the low end as such the market can not sustain strong sales of the Mac Pro as a whole.   

As to slots I agree 100%, however you don't need a box the size of the Mac Pro to support a few PCI Express cards.  A good portion of the space in the current Mac Pro is totally wasted, so even if you deliver today capabilities you can go with a much smaller box.   Refactor the machine a bit and the space the Mac Pro takes up can be trimmed even more.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elderloc 

Apple has never been a cheap solution, if you want cheap it's white box or hackintosh. Apple has said many times they are not about making cheap things. Honestly my one concern is they will state oh Thunder Bolt will address all our concerns with break out boxes. Where that is somewhat true you do not get full bandwidth 16x or what ever the top PCIE speed is via Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt goes a long way but for cards I'd rather just have the native slots, too much crap that can cause issues in environments that require stability and silence above all else.

 

It would be nice to have a desktop, but that would probably mean the Mac Pro Workstation will cease to exist. For my customers running server and heavily loads that would be a lost. 

Why?    Why do you need a huge box for a workstation class machine.   Nobody has come up with a rational response to this question.    To put it simply you don't.   A Mac Pro can get by find on a single socket these days when combined with a modern GPU card.   Add a bit of super computing networking and you can have as many sockets as you could rationally want.  A strong clustering technology would do far more for high end computing than the current Mac Pro, especially if Apple can get the nodes into the $1500 range.   

It is time for Apple to think different when it comes to what a Pro computer should be.  I'm not sure why people can't grasp that the current solution is dead in the water.    No amount of updating will address the primary issue which is that there simply isn't enough demand at the lower end to keep the Mac Pro viable.     Boys, sales are in the gutter, throwing a new chip in the same old Mac Pro box and slapping a fat sticker on it will not spur sales one bit.   Like it or not Apple needs a refactored machine that totally re-imagines  what a Pro desktop machine should be.  It has to be a machine that can cover development costs and shore up declining sales.  Plugging a new motherboard in the Mac Pro won't do the job at the current prices.  

In the end it comes down to this: if you want a Pro machine from Apple you need to let the current Mac Pro die.   Let Apple refactor the machine into a more cost effective device that will generate the sales to pay for itself.   If you don't let it go we may end up with nothing or a machine nobody wants. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69 

Yes there is a real need among Mac Pro users for magnetic storage to handle bulk needs.    However that isn't everybody.   Further it should be fairly easy to implement a rather large SSD in a Mac Pro given the pricing structure of the machine.   Many Pro users would be very happy with a 512 GB or 1 TB SSD sitting on the PCI Express bus.  

 

They could probably do this. I have no idea what Apple pays for ssds, but their pricing so far has been fairly aggressive. It's difficult for me to suggest any hypothetical situations where spending $3850 to include 4 x 512GB ssds makes financial sense when you could spec out an impressive hardware RAID for that amount of money. It seems even sillier when you consider the warranty limit is 3 years. Some of the Samsung drives carry 5 year warranties, although I'm not sure how the quality of warranty service compares between the two.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wizard69 

Why is it every single time we talk about a more cost effective replacement for the Mac Pro we get these idiotic posts????       Wake up and smell the coffee, the Mac Pro is on skid row, it sales have dropped like a rock.   Why?   Simple it offers no value what so ever at the low end as such the market can not sustain strong sales of the Mac Pro as a whole.   

 

As to slots I agree 100%, however you don't need a box the size of the Mac Pro to support a few PCI Express cards.  A good portion of the space in the current Mac Pro is totally wasted, so even if you deliver today capabilities you can go with a much smaller box.   Refactor the machine a bit and the space the Mac Pro takes up can be trimmed even more.  

Why?    Why do you need a huge box for a workstation class machine.   Nobody has come up with a rational response to this question.    To put it simply you don't.   A Mac Pro can get by find on a single socket these days when combined with a modern GPU card.   Add a bit of super computing networking and you can have as many sockets as you could rationally want.  A strong clustering technology would do far more for high end computing than the current Mac Pro, especially if Apple can get the nodes into the $1500 range.   

I see this as more an issue of desire. They may have decided to push what they already offer at the $1000-200 realm. There's nothing in that box that inherently makes it that much more expensive to manufacture. Regarding the post you replied to, there should be an understanding that the mac pro encompasses a pretty wide range. Its base offering would need to carry the volume, and it's a significantly weaker value than that it has been in the past for a few reasons. One is that some things that used to require the fastest hardware run reasonably well on much lighter rigs without choking constantly. Some software has simply been softer in terms of gains in X86 based demands. I don't think they'd need to change anything to get the price lower if they wanted it there. If you look at what was retailed from 2006 until early 2009, the cpus used would have been $1400 (2 x $700) retail (as in off newegg) in 2006 and 2 x $800  in 2008 (although that one cost $2800). They dropped back to W3520s on the base model in 2009, so one $300 cpu with the backplane + daughterboard configuration so that parts could be reused across the dual models as well. They cut way back on costs, but the price stayed basically static, actually gaining $200 as they year before a single E5462 configuration was only $2300. I've mentioned this before as to evidence in terms of why I'm skeptical about a change in direction. In terms of the fully upgraded 12 core models, those are arguably different prospective buyers. My impression was that they wanted to drop the mac pro, so they've been positioning things this way for years.

As far as PCI cards are concerned, that's another thing. Many of those available for Mountain Lion either lack really stable supported drivers or they're extremely expensive. They've been relegated to mostly specialty hardware. The exception is that some of NVidia's line is supported directly by NVidia in ML where it wasn't before. This isn't so much a debate about the validity of PCI cards. I'm just saying that OSX at this point lacks a really healthy market in terms of third party addon hardware that works as intended. If we're talking about the super high end and RED Rocket or Kona cards,  those actually work as intended. There is basically nothing available that is worth using $200. A popular one used to be eSATA. I remember you hate eSATA. If you were looking for a Roc or SAS HBA or something like that, you're back in the $700+ realm.

Anyway you are right that they could change their minds. I don't buy into Apple has never been cheap. They have always chased growth markets. Note personal computing, mp3 players, smartphones, consumer tablet devices, digital content distribution (they make more off itunes than they ever did through boxed software sales going by some of the posted pie charts).

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffDM 


We get it. I think Apple gets it. Understanding your wants doesn't entail compliance to satisfying those wants. Knowing there's a market doesn't mean the market is big enough to be worth chasing. They've chosen not to enter the "xMac" market. They've left that market roughly eight years ago, and market for tower desktops is diminishing.

I think the future demand for an xMac is questionable anyway, the available selection of add-in cards for Macs has always been pretty weak even going back 20 years, and generally painfully more expensive than equivalent cards for Windows boxes. A "tinkerer's" Mac doesn't sound like a big draw either, as MacOS really isn't a tinkerer's OS, there's Linux for that, and Windows is often a power tinkerer's choice OS too. Really, xMac isn't a consumer product but rather an enthusiast product. Kind of like how Alienware is now the Enthusiast's Dell computer. I don't think tinkerers and gamers are enough for Apple, especially as it easily cannibalizes their workstation line.

I think this pretty much reflects Apple's thinking.

And all the yacking on here won't change it.

I think the 'best hope' for an 'X-Mac' of any kind is a 'sanely' priced Mac Pro at £1495 with 680Mx as standard to push up unit sales again.  Bundle in the SSD and you buy the monitor from Apple.  They still get over 2k...  For me, it's a BTO iMac spec minus the monitor.

Next up?  2K+ for the dual models.

I don't see any thing beyond that.

If you're Wizard?  Wait until Mac Mini has the improved onboard Haswell gnu.  I think that's as close as we're ever going to get to the 'Cube' reborn.  (It sure will out perform one...or the base Mac Pro? :P )

ie better than a kick up the back side.

Lemon Bon Bon.

I'm not tied to anyone form factor.   I also realize that the steady march forward with respect to processor technology will make for a very interesting Mini in the future.   That might be with Haswell or more likely whatever comes after Haswell.    The problem is that even that future Mini will be a relatively low performance machine when put up against higher performance machines available at the same time.   Workstation like computing power still requires and will continue to require more volume and power capacity than can be had in the Mini.   That will be the case this year and in the year 2020.   

Me, I could see myself being satisfied with a Haswell based Mini as long as Apple doesn't castrate it on purpose like it has with so many of the Minis in the past.   That is also dependent upon Intel actually delivering the goods with respect to hardware and driver support.   Driver support here means everything works, 3D is respectable and OpenCL is decent.   Currently Intel sucks on all three counts so there is a bit of hopefulness in this desire to see a Haswell Mini.

Now if an XMac like machine came out I probably wouldn't even think about a Mini no matter what it had.   The simple fact is that an XMac as described by various people in these forums would be a far better purchase if a decent model could be had for under $1500!   It really doesn't matter if it is a cube, pizza box or something else all together.    As long as it delivers a decent GPU, easy storage expansion/access and a slot or two I'd be very happy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon. 

 

I think this pretty much reflects Apple's thinking.

 

And all the yacking on here won't change it.

 

I think the 'best hope' for an 'X-Mac' of any kind is a 'sanely' priced Mac Pro at £1495 with 680Mx as standard to push up unit sales again.  Bundle in the SSD and you buy the monitor from Apple.  They still get over 2k...  For me, it's a BTO iMac spec minus the monitor.

 

Next up?  2K+ for the dual models.

 

I don't see any thing beyond that.

 

If you're Wizard?  Wait until Mac Mini has the improved onboard Haswell gnu.  I think that's as close as we're ever going to get to the 'Cube' reborn.  (It sure will out perform one...or the base Mac Pro? :P )

 

ie better than a kick up the back side.

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

Call me wrong if I'm wrong... but is it possible that a new G4 Cube could be the next Mac Pro?

I mean it happened with the Power Mac G4 at Macworld 2K and could happen again this year...

Except the name would be "G5 Cube", "Mac Cube","iCube" or whatever Apple wants to name it.

I'm just curious. Take a look at the G4 Cube and tell me if this is possible...

It's an 8 by 8 inches model computer with the power of the Power Mac G4 in the style of an iMac 2K.

Could a 12 Core Processor and 16 gb of ram go in such a small space? I mean they can if they can put 16gb of ram inside their Retina Macbook Pro's right?

Here's the Youtube Clip of the G4 Cube being introduced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0NbGbZBPL0

Originally Posted by darkdefender 
Call me wrong if I'm wrong... but is it possible that a new G4 Cube could be the next Mac Pro?

Marvin likes that idea, and I know a few others do. An aluminum 8x8x8 cube might be Apple's next step, but they'll alienate a grand number of old Mac Pro users in doing so, even if the device can be for them exactly what the Mac Pro was. 

I like to say 7.7"x7.7"x7.7" makes sense, as that's the footprint of the Time Capsule and Apple likes matching up footprints, but that's cutting out a fair bit of room that I'd rather they not. A 12"x12"x12" cube would be very interesting, though that's considerably wider than the Mac Pro now (which is 8.1"). Since the current Mac Pro is 8" wide (the .1" comes from the thickness of the case), an 8x8x8 computer sounds physically possible, at least.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IQatEdo 

I'll be watching... Mathematica powerhouse. 

Try it on Linux, it runs great and you can build a more powerful machine then the Mac Pro for a 3rd of the cost.

Not to mention also that on the Apple website it says that the Mac Pro weighs 41.2 Pounds! and that is a lot of weight for a computer compared to their Macbook Airs'.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


I like the idea but I don't think it'll happen. I doubt they've considered that as an option in years. The Mac mini is the replacement for the Cube and it's far more successful than the Cube ever was.

I think the next Mac Pro will be smaller and lighter than the current design. Now, just like with the iMac, people will say that they don't care if the device is smaller and lighter and that is actually works against what is possible in the smaller volume case but they aren't looking it at from Apple's PoV. Reducing weight and volume reduces material and shipping costs from A to Z. This adds up and Apple clearly cares about that.

I would guess there will be no internal ODD in the next Mac Pro (or whatever it may be called). This reduces a good portion of the internal space. if you want to use an ODD you can get an external drive which professionals that need them will likely have anyway.

I would doubt they will use those SATA connections for additional HDDs but instead rearrange everything to make it more compact. I'd wager on a smaller PSU but with the same performance. I would expect two riser cards with 4 RAM slots each and 3 PCIe expansion slots as well being a dual CPU board with a single CPU option.

Finally, I think FW will go but at the same time this will upset many. I think it'll be worse than the ODD going away. My reasoning is that FW800 chassis holding a 3.5" @ 7200 RPM HDD aren't going to benefit from being replaced by expansive TB chassis and cables. They could use USB 3.0, which I think Apple will push but they'll still want their FW800 to work seamlessly. Perhaps Hopefully Apple will bend on that port being retained a little longer but they never moved to FW1600 or FW3200 and everything else has dropped it so I think it's toast.

Times have changed though... I never knew that a G4 Cube existed until two days ago and I found it extremely interesting... I even considered buying one just because it looked so awesome. And with SSD's taking over SATA, I think a lot of people would consider buying one, including myself. But who knows. As for the GPU/Card PCIe slots I think they can use laptop gpu's similar to those present in their Macbook's ( Nvidia Geforce GT 650's or something higher that supports their current or maybe even upcoming displays.