Apple's Mac Pro to sport modified Power Mac enclosure - Page 2

Ditto on 3GHz here. No matter the cost Steve wants to meet that now ancient promise. At the other end of the specs they can't continue to have a 2GHz machine on the grid. That number stuck around throughout the lifetime of the G5, they want to distance themselves from it. Plus, for right or wrong, Apple tends to stick with "higher clock speed=better". For both reasons expect the MacPro to start above the speed of the iMac and MacBook.

The XServe is a whole different market. Apple has never put matching processors in the XServe and Mac tower and that isn't likely to change. Uptime and throughput trump fast processors every time.

While thousands of us ask for a modular Mac with a desktop processor and upgradable video card at the $1500 price point I'm suspicious that Apple doesn't want any more form factors. A relatively low end MacPro is probably the most I can hope for.

I am expecting this lineup, otherwise I will be disappointed by Apple ():

Same for all:

1 GB FB-DIMM
2X16 PCIe-slots
2X8 PCIe-slots
2X1 PCIe-slots
x1900XT (upgradeable x1900XTX or a Pro-card [FireGL/QuadroFX])
+x1900CF as upgrade
250 GB HDD with three more slots for hard drives

Top tier @ $3999:
2x Xeon 5160 (3,0 GHz)
Blu-ray burner as option
x1900XTX as standard
2 GB FB-DIMM

Middle tier @ $2899:

2x Xeon 5150 (2,67 GHz)

Bottom tier @ $2499 :

2x Xeon 5140 (2,33 GHz)

Me, high expectations, what?

As for two optical bays to eject - for some reason i thought it was an Option-Eject to open the other drawer. Just my two cents.

But I expect a little drama - so the case probably gets a bit more of a change than has been shown here.

Yes, two hard drive bays is disappointing.

Regarding dueling formats, I will wait until there is a drive capable of reading/writing all predominant formats.

Steve

this is a worthless story, and a worthless website, to publish 2 differing"stories" within days of each other.

"appleinsider has confirmed.../ [a few contradictions is ok] /....so its definately fact. our insiders are definately cartoon puppets. they work there and everything"

How so?

The previous story is the one which AI laid out its confirmation of the upcoming machines.

This story is appended with a rumour which has been circulated to other web sites and was published for the sake of interest.

If indeed there is some validity to these figures, I'm with Chucker on the lack of eSATA ports. Their utility likely will grow by the day, and Apple will be behind the curve by omitting them.

The current G5 enclosure is fine except for the handles being rather unergonomic. Remember the G5 cooling system is gigantic. Shrinking the height of the cooling system by 2 inches would allow for another external bay and two more 3.5" hard drive bays to reside in the same size enclosure.

This pretty much satisfies everyone's wish for 2 external optical bays and 4 internal hard drive bays using the same basic design.

The other big design change they should make is the El Capitan style door and maybe a new look on the outside.

I think Zandros makes a pretty good cut pricewise. We know that 6 PCIe slots is excessive for Apple. It'll likely be 4 PCIe slots: 1 PCIe x16 slot with x16 signaling, 1 PCI x16 slot with x8 or x4 signaling, and 2 x2 or x4 slots. The low end could also be a single 2.66 GHz Conroe system for $1999 to $2299 instead of a 2S 2.33 at $2499.

I like the idea of all quads, as Zandros outlines. Gotta put some pizzaz into the thing!

As for USB: USB 2: 3 on back, 1 on front. Add to that the two USB 1.1 ports on the KB and that's 6 total.

I don't think power supplies generate a lot of heat. CPUs and Graphics cards do. And hard drives.

Steve

Let's hope that they can put a better priced computer out there, your prices put the Mac Pro (aka PowerMac) at $1200 over it's lowest retail price for an entry model. The G5 is already about $400 over the average price for an entry level PowerMac, and Apple needs have computers to address this market segment if they are EVER going to increase market share, and don't tell me that it is filled by the iMac.

Most high-end PCs now come with Dual Gigabit.

Steve

Whereas all higher-end Macs don't. iMac? 2. MacBook? 2. 15-inch MacBook Pro? 2. 17-inch MacBook Pro? Woah, 3.

Apple must have some kind of USB port allergy.

Yah it looks like it's on the right side of the case so it will be BTX...

the specs don't match the pictures...

I'd like Apple to surprise us like they did with the Mac mini and iPod Shuffle.

I remember explaining, like many others that Apple wouldn't release a cheap headless iMac because it would have cannibalized sales of the iMac.

I also remember seeing others arguing that Apple would release a $99 flash-based iPod because it would have eaten the sales of higher-end models. (As for me, I did believe it was a good idea to do a cheap iPod)

So when the Mac mini and iPod shuffle were first unveiled, the same day, many were pleasantly surprised to see Apple attack the lower-end market.

What I would like as a replacement for the PowerMacs from Apple at WWDC is plain and simple: Let's call them the TowerMac and TowerMac Pro.

TowerMac: essentially a monitor-less intel iMac, in a mini-tower form factor, and with 2 PCI slots, one being filled by the shipping video-card. It would start at around 1299$ the same price of the iMac or maybe even cheaper.

TowerMac Pro: High-end tower with plenty of space for internal expansion, and featuring all new powerful intel chips and tons of high-end features. Starting at $1699-$1999.

Would you be surprised if Apple did this? I guess I would Especially for the silly TowerMac name

That's not quite true. A number of Mac's had the power supply near the top. My old 950 had it there. It's close to the top in the B/W's, and G4's as well. Nothing new.

If this is true, I'm going to put off a purchase until I see whati's out in January. I've waited since the Quad came out, so I can wait a bit longer. Too bad. I just hope the article is wrong on some of this.

Power supplies generate a lot of heat which is why apple has opted on a few models to completely eliminate it from the machine case.

If those specs are guidelines for the Mac Pro then it will not sell well. The lower end model competes unfavorably with the high end iMac.

There's also the benefit of being able to swap out a faulty power supply without having to open up the case and fish around amongst all the guts. The downside is that the back of your desk quickly starts to have a mind of its own with all the cable clutter. The back of the G5s is bad enough without ANOTHER power brick adding to the mess.

If the power supply is placed in the top of the case as per the mock-up, Apple will not be able to put the optical drives at the top as well. If you look inside a G4 MDD, the expansion slots are located above the various optical and hard drives. To my mind, the G4 MDD is the best designed enclosure Apple has ever produced.

It would make more sense to position the motherboard on a hinged side door (like the G4 MDD) and have the power supply at the top of the enclosure, then the expansion slots and then the drives. Apple wasn't able do this with the G5 because the processor heatsink weights so much.

I think we'll see a 'Mac' and a 'Mac Pro'.

In the old days, DTP operators were most certainly 'Pro' users. They required the fastest machine available and added Adobe Certified graphics accelerators with crazy amounts of VRAM so that they could drive their massive 21" CRTs at millions of colours.

Today, most CS2 users needs are met by an iMac or an entry level uni-processor G5. The majority of studios I visit have a mixture of G4 MDDs and 1.6GHz G5s. The most up to date piece of kit I have seen to date was a DC 2GHz G5 with a 20" ACD and every single member of staff creamed themselves over it.

Most studios buy the basic 'Pro' machine and run it for three years without ever opening the case once.

So, I don't think that todays definition of 'Pro' includes CS2 users. Instead, 'Pro' includes those involved in video production, render meisters, scientific applications and clusters leveraging racks full of Xserves.

A basic headless 'Mac' that could drive the ACDs would satisfy a lot of users needs, whilst a 'Mac Pro' could focus on users that require multiple graphics cards running at full pelt, multiple optical drives, hardware RAID running on 3+ drive mechanisms, multiple ethernet ports, etc. etc.

A powerful little 'Mac' and a full-on 'Mac Pro' workstation would make an awesome combination that would keep everyone happy.

I think this actually makes a lot of sense, there's already the mac MINI so Apple should add two more headless macs: mac (BLANK) and mac PRO.....great idea!!!

No, it's a terrible idea. This "Mac" would not only be a hugely confusing brand name ("What do you have?" _"A Mac" _"Oh, you mean like, the platform? Or the model? Or?"); it would also severely eat into the iMac's sales, because it would inevitably be priced at the exact same levels. Apple's mid-range desktop is an all-in-one. Deal with it.

I would agree with most of what you say, but in my experience with ID2 a 20" monitor is not large enough for efficient DTP tasks with today's pallet heavy programs. While this does not eleminate the iMac from being used for these tasks like a 15" or 17" monitor did it does not make it an ideal computer for doing them either. I think that a good Quark user could still work comfortably on a 20" monitor, especially a wide screen one, but if you use ID a lot then a larger monitor is really needed or you spend too much time zooming in and out (That bieng said, I still use a 8+ year old 20" CRT at work). Also to fight Adobe's "Bloat" and guard against speed for the next 2+ years that the computer will be in service you really do need the fastest processor that you can afford.

Where I work we have 10 Designer's, 1 Color Correction Specialist, and 30-40 Production Artists on site with another 3 Designers and more Production Artists (not sure of the number) at satelite offices. We tend to upgrade computers in a 3-4 year cycle. For the most part at our office we tend to get 3 high end PowerMacs for the Design department, one going to the Color Correction Specialist, and the others going to the two Designers that are most knowlagable in Photoshop and tend to work on the largetst sized files. The Production Department gets a few high-end PM's for creating PDF's (2-4). The other 26-36 computers are typically the low end models, with maybe a few mid range thrown in. These could possibly be iMacs, but again a 20" monitor becomes small really quickly with a pallet heavy program such as ID CS2 which means that for efficiency you really want a larger monitor.

What I would hope to see in the coming months:[list=1][*]Mac Mini: $499 entry model CoreDuo at 1.86 Ghz[*]iMac: starting price $999 or $1099, slight speed boost with a second generation chip.[*]Mac (Mac Tower, Cube2, whatever): $1299-1699, higher end chip than the iMac but comperable speeds, 2 expansion slots, 4-8 RAM slots.[*]Mac Pro: $1999-4000 (or even more) A real Heavy Hitter with all the bells and wistles in 3 configurations + lots of BTO options.[/list=1]
What I would really hate to see Apple do is to ignore the $1000-2000 Headless market and relying on the iMac to fit everyone's needs who would purchase a computer in this range. I think that this should be more powerfull but at similar price points to an iMac so that it is a fairly easy comparison, for $1299 you can get eiter:[list=a][*]2 Ghz iMac 17" (hopefully better, jut samples here) with built in monitor....OR[*]Mac miniTower 2.33 Ghz[/list=a]

You do realize that the iMac Core Duo allows for external monitors, including spanning, via DVI, i.e. with no quality loss? It's not enough for a 30-inch display because it's not dual-link, but seriously, 1680x1050 plus another 1920x1200 ought to be enough for even the most complex of page layouts.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by hmurchison
...I wonder if they were able to squeeze in another drive bay. I'd love to see at least 3 (minimum for RAID-5)


RAID-5 would be nice, and would be the primary sensible argument for three drive bays. RAID 0 or RAID 1 with the two drive bays now is okay, RAID-5 support in Mac OS X would be good. OS X would have to support rebuilding data in the event of a failure and have some intelligent reporting of which drive went down, so you'd replace it, then OS X would rebuild. It would also need to report if you lost any data...?

Anything more and you're definitely looking at external storage, which you'd have to do for backups anyway.

The thing is though, let's say you run RAID 0 with 2 drive bays only, then just SuperDuper the hard disk to fast FW400 external drives. In the event of a failure, just reformat your RAID 0, and restore a pristine backup.

Running RAID 5 or other fault-tolerant stuff on the PowerMac/ Mac Pro, I'm not sure about the quality of the RAID solution in rebuilding the data.

Creative pros are usually obsessive, so a clean dump back of the latest complete system would be a confident restoration of data on the Mac Pro should one or two of your hard disks go.

Come to think of it, for a desktop solution, I'm not sure 3 or more drive bays make sense.

I'm sorry but this is a BS argument, the idea is to attract new consumers to your platform, and to do this Apple will have to make computes that meet more people's needs and desires. A Mac sale is a Mac sale, it doesn't matter whether it is an AIO or a headless, what matters is that it is a Mac and not a Dell. Apple may have to adjust their inventory on certain models throughout the life cycle but they have to do this anyway. As long as the profit margin on a similarly priced headless and AIO are the same then Apple makes the same amount of money on both models so it shouldn't matter to them which one sells as long as the new choices help to grow their market share, thus increasing their profitability.

To reinforce my statement, going for 4 hard drive bays is just not going to happen. Sure you can run some interesting fault-tolerant RAID assuming OS X supports it.

Firstly though, RAID handling would need to be shifted off the OS to hardware for the more complex RAID types for maximum performance, AFAIK.

Secondly, how fast and how big your storage in the Mac Pro is not going to be the most important thing in a "workstation-class" computer. You also need to consider how you get data off your machine onto the network/ external storage for backups. And how you get your data back on restore. Given FW800 not that popular, calls for eSATA since it performs better than FW400 are very valid.

So, run a fast RAID0 with two hard disks on your main Mac Pro, and then eSATA out for backups. Three or four hard disks within the case itself is overkill, and unnecessary expense of heat, power, cost.

You want more "workstation-class" storage? Go XServeRAID with a PCIExpress fibrechannel card.

Yea, but that is also an additional expense and another product you need to get approval to purchase, more desktop realestate taken up, and additional time getting used to using a dual monitor set-up if you are not used to it.

For home, for the first time since it's release, I would not consider anything other than an iMac for my next computer purchase. Sure I would like to see the "chin" go away for esthetic reasons, but it offers everything I want in a home computer. I think that the 17" wide screen is great for most tasks, and I could use it to do work at home on. It may not be ideal for page layout, but it would work for limited use. If I can afford it I will get a 20" model.

However, for efficiency at work, in my experience a 20" monitor is not big enough to keep all the pallets open that your regularly use in InDesign without some of them getting in the way of the document that you are working on which leads to opening and closing pallets, hunting for them, more zooming and panning to do the work. This is not time that is easily calculated but it does increase the time spent doing the work by a second here, a few there, and so one which adds up through out the day and week to a good amount of lost productivity. This is just my opinion, but most people I know who use InDesign on a regular basis agree with me that a 20" monitor is too small to effectivly use the program.

Apple is in for revenues (duh), and AIO provides for higher revenues. How, you ask?

Well, for one, they can sell the entire thing (the iMac) at a higher prices than they could a headless, because there's less competition in that segment, so consumers will have less comparison, so they'll have less of a chance of pointing out (and/or choosing) an alternative product that's more affordable _there likely isn't any. (In fact, the same is the case for the Mac mini. The only halfway serious Mac mini competitor is the creatively named MiniPC, which is actually more expensive and has lower specs.)

But more importantly, an AIO provides for higher revenues because it is purchased more frequently. Hard drive, screen, optical drive or CPU not good enough for the customer any more? Rather than upgrade one or multiple components, they're more likely to simply get a complete new computer.

How is that different from buying a headless Mac plus an external monitor?


True.

NOT GOOD..... do not copy pee sea designs.

And furthermore they need a new case design the current g5 case is to damn big!!!!!!!!!!!!! 0.2 and one half cents cha ching.

Just read the illustrations are mockups done by audiopollution.
It shows the more common old-style power receptacle with the lower two corners beveled,
whereas my Quad G5 has the newer-style with all square corners.

Isn't there already a software RAID-5 system in BSD-land? Adjust the code, add a preference item, a notifier and it should be good. Linux and Windows both have software RAID-5 options, I don't see why Apple should leave it out, but I do see that storage needs are increasing.

There is a reporter for S.M.A.R.T. for OS X, I don't think it would be hard to use the idea for notification.


It's a workstation, not a desktop. Name me another workstation (or desktop, if you must) that is as large as the Powermac G5 but only has two drive slots.


That's not a complete solution, and it nearly triples the cost of the system (several thousand for XSR vs. sub-$1k for several drives). XServeRAID is enterprise-class, not workstation-class, leaving a major cost and storage gap in between two drives and seven.

You misread the story. The story says four USB 2.0 ports, three on the back, one on the front.


Desktop hard drives only consume about 15W max. CPUs and grahic cards do consume a lot of power.

Power supplies do generate a lot of heat, about 1/3rd of the entire system draw. Assuming a 70% conversion efficiency, and assuming what's inside the rest of the system is consuming 500W, the power supply has to consume 215W to supply that 500W.


Let's drop the Tower. There are already trademark filings for Mac Pro, and none of them we've seen include "Tower" in the name. It's an unnecessary addendum to a name that works fine without it.

Welcome to the 2000s, where the line between the two has become so blurred as to become meaningless.

It's a desktop.

One doesn't put Xeons in a "desktop". Same goes for multiple processor sockets. The I/O capabilities of the PowerMac line are also in the range of workstations (PCI-X vs. just PCI, several PCIe slots with more than 1 lane). The none of the conventional desktops I've seen accept ECC memory, I've tried.

Er...doesn't the current Powermac?

What's next, "One doesn't put multi-core CPUs in a laptop"? Oh wait, been done. How is this different, again?


What about them? The lack of eSATA? The lack of SCSI? The lack of SAS? Or of FiberChannel?