Apple tells reseller new Mac Pro coming in spring 2013 - Page 3

Well.....i did miss your point then! :-)

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Apple would do well to make sure that the new Pro is readily adaptable to rack installations.  

your right but i was just comparing to the iMac in the picture.......the Dell image is from about 5 years ago. i wasn't touting the Dell at all......

Do you think many people are going to use them as servers? There are much more economical and better server configurations available.

 

I see them mainly as video editing workstations which don't often involve rack mounting. I'm not against rack mountable design but I would prefer to use it as a tower as it has less footprint that way.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/152825/future-of-mac-pro/160#post_2266617

The HP z820 uses X79 for Sandy Bridge but anyway, the C600 series isn't any better - USB 2, PCIe 2, only 2 SATA 6G ports. If Apple wanted to add things like USB 3 themselves, why did they wait until Intel did it for the laptops/iMac?

I was about to write 1 year but decided to call it like it is. It doesn't matter when the Xeons arrived, the fact is the 32nm Sandy Bridge architecture was introduced in February 2011. It is now February 2013 and we've had 22nm Ivy bridge and we're moving onto 22nm Haswell. The 32nm Sandy Bridge architecture is 2 years old and Apple should skip it and go with Ivy Bridge so that it's just a 1 year old architecture.

HP announced them in March 2012:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/03/06/hp.z420.z620.z820.hint.plans.for.others/
Here's a review from late May 2012:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5846/hp-z420-workstation-review-competition-heats-up

It doesn't make sense that Intel would make HP wait 2 years for a new model. They sampled them late last year:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2204751/idf-bryant-says-intel-is-sampling-ivy-bridge-xeon-e5-and-e7-chips

Estimate was 10 months from September, which is July. If Apple releases a 32nm Sandy Bridge Xeon in March or so, HP will come out with 22nm Ivy Bridge Xeon 4 months later. That's a stupid thing to do and doesn't qualify as 'really great'.

I don't get why you'd prefer Sandy Bridge, wouldn't you rather have an Ivy Bridge Xeon? It's been 2.5 years, another 3-4 months surely wouldn't be a disaster to get the latest CPUs and potentially a new chipset.

 

Is no one else worried about what Apple are going to do with it?

Are we going to see the (pointlessly) smallest, thinnest Mac Pro ever with no ODD?

The reason for the Mac Pro isn't to have a big box but rather to have high performance.     A big box is not needed these days to bring high performance work stations to the user community.   However to effectively decrease the size of the Mac Pro they have to design it that way.  This should be pretty obvious, if you expect to shrink the Mac Pros case you need to design out those things that result in today's current big case.  

This idea that "professional grade" computers have to look a certain way has to die.   It is what has gotten  the current Mac Pro into so much trouble sales wise.  The idea that a professional machine needs to be a huge empty box really makes no sense at all.   Professional machines, whatever that means, need to be high performance machines first and foremost.  It would make far more sense for Apple to design a machine around that goal than to try to build a big box to satisfy those that need a big box to show off.  

This is nonsense, the Mac Pro is no more a pro grade machine than anything else Apple sells.  If a professional can put a Mini to good use then it is a pro grade machine.  

 

This whole idea that a Machine needs a certain appearance to be considered to be a pro machine is ridiculous.   

The reason it was designed as a big box was so that it could have big fans and if configured with multiple hard disks there was plenty of circulating air to cool them. Also the large aluminum case is a practical heat dissipation feature. You also need a big case for a heavy duty power supply. Take for example the old Xserve which was a small enclosure. The fans were high speed and very noisy. The Mac Pro was designed as a workstation and therefore needs to be quiet which is perfect for creative work environments. The big fans spin more slowly hence less noise. The Pro will last a long, long time because of the excellent cooling features.

 

The iMac isn't really a desktop machine as many would define it. IMac muddies the line up because people point to it as a midrange machine but that is only useful to a limited number of people seeking a desktop machine. For many of us the desktop is a platform upon which you configure the machine for specific uses, the iMac isn't suitable for such uses. Thus Apple has this gaping hole though which a lot of sales fall. The fact of the matter is the Mac Pro is way to expensive to do duty in place of normal desktop installations.

 

Well you are showing your colors here. Apparently the Mac Pro is all about snob appeal to you.

Mac Pros belong to what's commonly called "workstation class" machines: expensive, powerful. People who use their Macs for asset creation and need either the extra cores and/or expansion capabilities.

For these users, something like dual-link HD-SDI is probably a more important connector than, say, Thunderbolt.

The Mini has been improved vastly over the years as processor performance has increased however it is hardly the expandable machine people are looking for.     For one access to the disk drives suck.    It is Internal expansion of secondary storage that many see as a significant shortcoming of the Mac Mini.   Before you try to trot out TB, I know all about TB and as such can say without hesitation it is no place for your secondary storage.    Backup and TIme Machine drives can hang off TB fine but it is less than in deal for working storage.  

Agreed about the Xeons. It is a small market compared to mobile CPUs, so there's no price break for volume. As for the Core i7, its a fast chip, but I need the extra cores for global illumination algorithms. There's research into doing Monte Carlo on GPUs, but currently, radiosity software uses CPU cores, lots of them. And four ain't enough. The more the better!

The baloney is rather deep these days.  

 

If the Mac Pro was the machines of excellence that you imply we wouldn't be dealing with the declining sales that the platform is seeing. In reality the current Mac Pro is a dinosaur.

Some people do rackmount workstations. Dell, Lenovo, and HP towers are all rackable. They're not as rack friendly as in 1-3U, but they aren't hostile to the implementation. I don't think anyone expects a 1U pizza box.

 

Hehe I do get mixed up myself at times. I was actually checking on that. Part of it is the range of cpus Apple uses in a given machine. Recall the backplane design where they mixed in EP chips? My impression was that those would not be compliant with X79. Intel usually keeps things very consistent on the workstation end. Also Xeons often come later, although that has been reversed in the past. My impression was that they'll continue to use Xeons. X79 Sandy Bridge E i7s only afford them a couple cpu options, and they still likely wouldn't make the proposed shipping date. Next is Ivy possibly shipping late this year. Well that will be approaching a year and a half old at that point. If you went Haswell, that means using the same cpu types as the imac line. I was going by the parts they've used in the past. Unless they change direction on that, it is realistic. Apple will get things 3 months prior to everyone else is just dreaming. There's really no reason to suspect that, as ARM lacks a real contender in that space that could ship in the current year. The usb3 thing is largely immaterial. As I mentioned they need to test third party chipsets anyway, and engineering in thunderbolt shouldn't be a terrible problem if it's seen as a priority, but it would likely fall on Apple. Intel hasn't shown any signs of pushing it in E/EP/EN (by the way I've also mixed up EN and E3, which is equally silly).

 

 

 

They're always pushing things back, and if you recall the Sandy Bridge E rollout, their official launch date was when they started shipping to supercomputer vendors. Some Sandy Bridge E cpus officially launched October 2011. Workstations appeared 8 months later. I am simply not confident in intel's release cycle estimates. I think it'll go later and we won't see shipping ivy machines in that space until early next year. I also disagree on a newer chipset, especially if Intel is trying to get something out the door. They are unlikely to introduce a further potential for hiccups. Note that this happened with 2010 mac pros. It was just a firmware tweak.

They are really only one generation behind. The chips in the Ivy Bridge iMacs came out early last year but Intel had supply issues so recommended pushing models back and the Ivy Bridge iMacs just came out in December. So Ivy Bridge Xeon in July would be roughly a year after the i7 line, although it's 1.5 years after the initial processors arrived. Sandy Bridge Xeons were available in March-May last year so it makes sense that Ivy Bridge Xeon would be available in July this year. That way the next Mac Pro won't seem so bad because it means the Ivy Bridge Mac Pro is just 7 months behind the Ivy Bridge iMacs.

 

The idea isn't to build a rack mount machine per say but to make sure the new Mac Pro is easily adaptable to rack mounting. That means heights that fall in "U" increments and widths that can be easily shelved in an equipment rack. With a modest amount of thought this should be easy to accommodate in a Mac Pro replacement.

 

That is true but again a smaller enclosure doesn't mean that you have to have high speed fans. Especially in the case of the Mac Pro where so much space is wasted these days. Also don't forget the XServe was a 1U computer, nobody here wants a Mac Pro replacement that is that thin. The idea expressed that the current Mac Pros case is some how the ultimate in thermal design is of no value at all. Apple has very talented engineers I'm sure they an come up with a smaller platform that is equally quiet and thermally efficient.

Why? Because I have a couple racks full of servers. As a workstation I see little advantage to rack mounting the computer especially if it is the only piece of equipment being used at that station. I could see it rack mount if you had other rack mounted equipment to go along with it such as audio amplifiers or audio input boards but in a typical video editing booth you really don't have a need for rack mounting in my opinion. As I said, I not opposed to the capability of rack mounting it, just that I don't see a lot of people doing that.

 

From the way you carry on about rack mounting and smaller enclosure it sounds like you are still pissed that they discontinued the XServe. Do you even own a Mac Pro? The only two reasons that I see for declining sales of the Pro are price and lack of CPU updates. I believe most people who currently work on a Mac Pro on a daily basis as I do have no complaints about the case design, just lack of TB and CPU/GPU/USB3 updates. The case size, and lack of rackable design are the least of my concerns.

Yeah but the Haswell release has been delayed with the current projection being for June. Won't the push back the IB Xeons? If so, we're looking at a late july or even august release for them. How long can Apple wait for these, especially given that Intel's projections keep slipping?

Smaller rackable design means to me that it would be 19" by at least 3U, probably 4U which is not significantly smaller than the current design. If you are asking for a 2U box, that would necessitate it being either flat on the desk or racked because a 2U box will not work as a tower. Even a 3U case would probably not work as a tower due to being unstable and prone to falling over.

Maybe they are working on something else?  

 

I agree that XEON has fallen behind but that just reflect the minuscule market such chips support.   There is another possibility though and that may be that Apple and Intel are working on something different.   

 

What would that be?   How about a workstation technical computing specific chip?   Here is what I'm thinking, Intel has already introduced it XEON Phi co processor chips to the technical computing market, however there was talk some time ago that there was more to the Phi family than the coprocessors.   Specifically there is a XEON being worked on that is optimized for technical computing with a built in supercomputing networking interface.  

 

References to such a chip seem to be hard to come by suddenly which leads me to speculate that the XEON approach that we are familiar with in the Mac Pro is dead.   I'm still thinking we will get a modular Mac Pro that can be easily linked together to realize the computing machine you need.  

Actually as described above that wouldn't be a bad machine.   Core i7 would certainly be fine for me.    However I'd like to think Apple is trying to move things ahead like I've described above.   That is give us a true new generation machine.  

 

You're on the right track here, but look at Intel's official shipping date on Sandy Bridge EP compared to when HP and Dell were shipping workstations. I get a bit mixed up at times as sometimes I'll read E5-16XX reported as E, when I think it should fall under EP. Anyway you should look at EP for reference unless you think Apple is going to limit it to 6 core workstations. The i7s really don't do much for costs anyway. The main thing is their shipping schedules are often a bit more aggressive. All signs point to Apple having axed the prior configuration without a replacement plan.

 

 

http://ark.intel.com/products/64621

http://ark.intel.com/products/64593

 

Those two are in reasonably close alignment with what Apple uses in their current baseline machines at the single and dual level. Anything else would be a change of direction, and I really don't see them going with something like an EN unit. They aren't designed for this space.  Marvin suggested Ivy Bridge E. That would grant them these two options as the third is +$400 for .1 ghz. Apple would typically and justifiably skip that. He and I disagree on whether they are likely to drastically change directions. I am trying to determine a suitable wager.

 

http://ark.intel.com/products/63698

 

http://ark.intel.com/products/63697

There are many things they could improve in its design. My guess is that they didn't devote any engineers to it before as it may have been up for cancellation. Having to release a redesigned imac and macbook pro line likely made reallocation of engineers to the mac pro a lower priority. It's possible that we'll see design improvements if they wish to have another go at it, but I think many of the predictions are a little unrealistic.

See I still see that as unrealistic in the current year. I think if they were going to try that, they would have done so while they could still capture customers who used the old Xgrid. Those people have either moved on or can accomplish their workloads on a much smaller array of hardware at this point assuming stagnant computational requirements.

 

While I agree that those updates and improvements suggested above are important I see no reason for avoiding a design that can be easily rack mounted. Note I didn't say the design is a rack mount machine, just that it can be easily rack mounted when required. I think it Is silly for Apple to not consider this in the design. Frankly it is done in the electronics industry. All the time where a desktop instrument can be easily adapted for rack use with a kit.

I agree we should be looking at the EPs but the problem is they are made on the same 22nm fabrication process aren't they? Again, if so, it wouldn't surprise me to see Haswell get priority given the relatively larger demand for those. To me that suggests that everything else gets pushed back a little bit.

We're over due a new Mac Pro.  Especially at a sane price and without a crap gpu.

 

Cube it.  Put a consumer processor in it.  Have two models.  1 single.  1 dual.  SSD.  Decent gpu.  Sales should fly.

 

Give us a consumer tower with the top end iMac's innards.  Sell it minus the £800 display.  You have an awesome consumer tower.

 

Next model up?  Dual it.  Add several hundred to price.  Two models.  Nice and simple.

 

Only Apple are making this difficult.  Consumer tower more Pro sales to justify having the tower.  Dual Processor model keeps the rump of what's left of Apple's tower base happy.

 

Price.  £1200 Consumer.  £1595 Pro.  (Add an Apple Monitor and it's more than an iMac.)

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

I don't know about the design predictions.   I look at it this way the chassis is old and is simply bigger than it needs to be.   Given that and the introduction of a new architecture they might as well design a new case.  The question then becomes how big and what does that case look like.   I'm leaning towards a lower profile cube type machine.   

 

Your mention of XGrid is interesting because I was thinking about that while writing one of the other responses.   The thing is Apples handling of XGrid is a bit of a mystery.   I'm not convinced that it is completely dead and as such could come back to us in a slightly different form.  

 

You also mention workloads which ties in with XGrid.  Frankly most people's workloads don't require top end Mac Pros anymore.   However there is a core group of Mac Pro users that will never have enough and these are often the same users that could justify XGrid if it was refactored into a new platform.    In other words the people that most honestly need a high performance workstation are the same ones that may be able to leverage a new take on XGrid.  

Well said, especially the part about Apple making it more difficult than need be.  

Price is the big barrier.  We're worlds away from the G3 tower in pricing.

 

Having said that.  The Apple tower never sold as many units as an iMac.

 

The current Pro is a dinosaur priced into oblivion with each successive upgrade...over priced with crap gpus.

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

If you just 'doubled' the mini.

 

You'd have a £1000 entry tower.  That gets people in the game.  Include a consumer gpu and we're off and running.

 

Want a better model?  £1250.

 

Want a 'pro' dual?  £1500.  Or just include the forthcoming cpu with 8-10 cores in it.  F*ck dual.

 

Want an uber (low sales model?)  £2000+ for dual 8-10 core.

 

I have a beautiful top end iMac.  But I still yearn for a 'rational' cube/tower model from Apple.  

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

I'm no expert in CPUs or chip sets but is it even possible to have dual i7s on a board?

Don't we have a consumer 6 core from Intel?

 

Why not that in a consumer tower?

 

Don't we have Haswell cpus with more cores coming?

 

Put those in a higher end model.

 

*shrugs.

 

Billions to shareholders in dividends...  Would it even cost a billion to put out a new Pro?

 

Lemon Bon Bon.

Yeah I'm not sure. If they're serious about it they'll likely make some kind of design improvements. I'm not bothered by case size. Its just the form factor was designed with different hardware in mind. The Xeons are still a bit hot. 130-150W must be considered. The gpus and hard drive airflow are certainly points I wish they'd consider unless they intend to move toward the imac gpu strategy. Other workstation vendors tend to use workstation gpus, which aren't clocked so high. The 5870 runs pretty damn hot, but what matters is what they intend to use going forward. I'd be surprised if XGrid came back. Those still running the old hardware were referred to other solutions. It's hard for me to imagine these things returning. I have a similar opinion with the Xeon Phi in the current year. Apple tends to be a bit conservative on changes in the Mac lineup. They were much less conservative last year, so I suppose that could change. I typically examine their past trends. If we see a redesign it's likely that it could be driven by the current lack of an updated product. I mean that they basically signaled nothing was on the way for a while. I'd be a little shocked if they couldn't come up with a basic refresh by now.

No it isn't. Sandy Bridge E i7s won't work in dual socket boards. You can't use E5-16XX cpus in dual configurations either. They're either the same or similar in design.

 

   Quote:

So far they've only offered it in the "enthusiast" options. Sandy Bridge E has a hex model. It uses the same socket type as the Xeons. The pricing is the same. I guess it's just a different chipset, ECC ram compliance, and whatever else. I could do more reading in that area.

So is this there main spring release?

 

Agreed, Apple wouldn't tell one random reseller and no one else. 

 

This is a ploy to get attention.

There are many of us still using the Better Light system for fine art reproductions.  Nothing else even comes close to capturing the details and the colors of a 40x60 inch painting.  We also have 36 megapixel Nikons - and Hasselblads - but the Better Light system captures "pure" RGB without a Bayer filter.  We use it with huge 900 watt North Lights - It is a very specialized setup and our artists appreciate the difference ... "Cumbersome" is not the word I would use --- it takes time and some skill to get the best possible results, but it's worth the effort. We do large-format Giclee reproductions and we also use the system to digitize damaged work that needs restoration.

 

The NEC Spectraview stopped working for most of us with OS 10.8 .. and I've updated the graphics cards in the MacPros trying to get a working profile.  NEC and Apple blame each other ... I reverted to my X-Rite i1 system but I preferred the NEC approach.

 

My fingers are crossed that a newer MacPro will solve some problems and speed things up.

According to Tim Cook this is indeed the year that you'll be getting a 2013 Mac Pro.

It looked like they were the first with a consumer/professional desktop PC with 64-bit computing when the G5 launched, back in 2003. Staggered, small steps at a time. This AI article links to many more.



No. This is coming from an Apple Reseller. In American courthouses, hearsay, therefore inadmissible.