Apple to fire up Penryn-based Mac Pros - Page 7

Yes. Pathetic. Shame. Magnificently designed chassis. Great industry leading CPUs...what's up with the rest of it? ...Hmmm. Dreams of an iMac. Y'know, I've been waiting 8 years to be included in Apple's market(s). My nose is big enough...why can't they hit me?

I may just get an iMac and wait for Nehalem. The iMac runs City of Heroes ok in native resolution...so...but with Macworld 08 is close......bah....

Lemon Bon Bon.

Power requirements and heat most likely. 7600gt is a cooler less power hungry card. They can only fit so big of a PS in that small ass case.

Good guess.


Ah, but you're missing the holistic viewpoint. The value is in the integration of the screen and the slim packaging. There is nothing else to compare the iMac to that is precisely comparable (well, perhaps this week Dell's new XPS all-in-one comes close) so they get away with nice margins.

The component numbers you're quoting sound suspicious to me. I think Apple probably gets the screen cheaper than you state, and the GPU and quad cores (including chipset & associated motherboard) cost more.


Never say never. I'm saying they will want to do it with a decidedly "Apple" spin on it. Or perhaps they won't put much spin on it, but will offer it like Dell does... only via their online BTO store.


I suppose this is where we disagree. They've been making profits on (almost) everything because they have been choosing their strategies carefully and acting from their strengths. If that's what Jobs brought to Apple we ought to be happy for it. If somebody put a compelling strategic plan for the mini-tower (or whatever) in front of him, he would do it.

Because there is a new "Pro Look" coming?

Don't be ridiculous. Apple kept OS9 computability for years and years and you think they will just dump 32 bit apps? No Way...

I'm skeptical as well. I'm not sure if it makes as much sense to dump 32 bit until maybe 2015.

Why dump 32 bit applications ever? 64 bits is not needed to execute CPU instructions, right? The benefit of 64 bits is to address a great deal of memory, both real and virtual. So not being 64 bit just means the application is limited in what it can do.

If what I'm saying is wrong, please give an explanation it detail. If I'm making a fool of myself, I'd like to learn something from it at least.

Nothing suspicious about them. Check yourself at Microdirect or any other vendor store. And there's nothing suspicious about the price comparison between Conroe and Xeons. Har.

The Quad intel cpu is dirt cheap. And Apple would get them cheaper. (*Prods.)

Just like they get their 24 inchers...cheaper*.

Just like they'd get their gpus cheaper...

GT? £150. Quad? £180?

24 inch monitor? My mate paid £350 for his.

Shrugs. Principle? If they're making a Mac Pro at £1500? It's incredulous that you can suggest that £1000-£1495 is a market they can't make money in.

I'm sure Programmer could have said the same thing of the mini before it arrived? Or the iMac? Before Apple had a computer under a grand...people said:'Apple don't do..blah...blah...cheap.' But the iMac by that definition is a nice kind of cheap... by long historical Apple comparisons.

Holostic? Shrugs. Apple had a quad grid. It's gone Programmer. You need to move on.

They now have 3 desktop products. 2 of which are laptops in disguise... Mini. iMac. And they broke it originally, with Cube. Said he.

They have 2 laptops. But I'm getting the feeling. What? A sub notebook before long?

iPhone. iPod.

Shrugs again. We have these?

Every piece of kit Apple makes money on.

The iMac is 'too cold'. The Mac Pro 'too hot' (re-too much, too big...just 'too.). Goldilocks and there are plenty of us want a desktop product is 'just right'. And I'd vouch there are more Goldilocks buyers than Mini or ATV or Mac Pro buyers.

Because the price/perf' buck would say: 'Yes. Here's my gran. Now hand over that Mid-tower.'

Lemon Bon Bon.

That's a legitimate question. I don't fully know, but if Apple feels that maintaining the 32 bit compatibility is costing them excess development time, then they might decide to let it go. It's more clear cut with Classic compatibility, making it run on Intel machines was probably not seen to be worthwhile, having done its job of making the transition to OS X easier. I think there's less in the way with respect to supporting 32 bit.

Already, I hear that Leopard's 64 bit frameworks have several of capabilities not available for 32 bit, the larger memory addressing notwithstanding. I'm not an Obj. C / Cocoa programmer, so I don't understand the details on why Obj. C 2 has special features for 64 bit.

While apple and other developers were figuring out the Obj-c 2.0 framework, they decided it would be beneficial for speed and ease of development to make some of the features 64bit only. I wish the movies they had on ADC was available to the general public. They explained it clearly at the leopard tech talk, but I didn't really care at the time as I was there for other purposes. It is still explained in the Objective-c 2.0 session talks. If you can get your hands on it... take a look.

Either way, yes 64bit can address more memory than 32bit. That isn't the only advantage. It can access more at a time, has larger registers to hold more data INSIDE the cpu. There are other speed advantages than just getting access to MORE ram.

Since the 64-bit Obj-C environment did not yet exist, Apple had the luxury of defining it and incorporating all the lessons learned from living with the existing 32-bit ObjC environment. These new "special features" are the result. They aren't especially earthshaking, and some of them are purely about performance... but amount to relatively small pieces of the overall performance picture. Still, every little bit helps.

In my testing on Intel Core 2 chips the performance difference in practice between 32-bit and 64-bit is about 10-20%... in favour of the 32-bit environment. This is primarily due to the increased size of memory addresses and the larger stack frame size to be saved on function calls and context switches. More memory puts more pressure on the machine's caches. Most code doesn't use (and therefore doesn't benefit) from 64-bit math, nor >4 GB of address space... code that does is likely to perform better in 64-bit mode.

I expect 32-bit mode to be around for a very long time.

That's what I'm getting at -- Apple probably gets a better price than your mate by a fair margin.

I knew that was true with most RISC systems, but I thought that doubling the registers was going to mostly counteract the memory issue for x86-64.

August 2006 ? Comon apple, i need a new mac pro, you are in the IT business, not in the antiques business, UPGRADE YOUR MAC PRO'S FASTER!!!

It no doubt does help counteract it a little, but in "typical" object-oriented code it doesn't seem to help significantly -- too many function calls, not enough in-register state. As I said, some pieces of code will benefit greatly, but overall it is a net loss of 10-20%. Unless you really need the huge amount of memory, you don't want to pay for the big pointers.

And Apple likewise with the aforementioned GPU and CPU. Talk about being blinded by yer own logic.

I hope to see you eating the Mid-Tower with Cranberry sauce if Apple ever releases one...

Lemon Bon Bon.

Except that Intel publishes a "price in quantity" list that gives us a pretty accurate idea of what these things cost.


Sorry, ain't going to happen. The eating, that is. If you bothered to read my series of replies you would see that I talking about why Apple hasn't released one, not predicting what they will do. All sorts of things could happen that change the picture and cause Apple to drop a machine into this market space that everyone seems to be craving. If I were to speculate, I'd expect that such a machine would have a unique Apple spin to it, or it would be BTO-only (i.e. the Dell model, as I've mentioned twice before). Hardly going out on a predictive limb.

What a crock of flip-floppin'.

It aint going to happen. But if it does...erh...it will be different. Ya don't say? (Yer...because Apple 'Thinks Different' TM. Right. Have you ever known them to release a 'normal' product in the last ten years? But the fact that you're saying why they aint going to release said model aint a prediction. *Nods head slow-ly.

Me? Read your replies? I thought I was arguing with myself...

And check the prices for yourself. The face that they're selling the iMac with a screen included tells you they're making profits in the very same 'mid-tower' price range you say they can't make a profit in if they made a mid-tower. (As a 'fantasy' Apple CEO, of course, you have no idea You're guessing. But I'm guessing they can.)

Going by your logic, Apple would never have released the iMac.

Lemon Bon Bon.

No, Programmer. Apple have left PPC behind. Remember? Now, in theory, we can have product differentiation...

We have laptop cpus in the iMac and server CPUs in the Tower. I'm sure you can explain that one...

What happened to Conroe that would allow much cheaper cpu prices for a Mid-tower range? Go and look at the suspicious pricing on Conroe. Good value for money, eh? And plenty of suspiciously priced GTs...I don't know which shops you go to. But the ones I look at seem reasonable.

I conclude we can have a reasonably priced Mid-Tower market. A very snug fitting Mid-tower....design?

Lemon Bon Bon.

I'm not one for predictions. I know what I'd like to see, though...

Still, don't shoot me for this one.

On the Leopard opening night...I was told by a developer who had Leopard for over half a year before release.

He says, if you're in the market for a Mac Tower, wait. He said that Apple are working on a stunning mid-tower design.

His words: 'Wait'. Whether that is true or if it is a shrunken Mac Pro?

Who knows. Only Steve. And Johnny, I guess.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Right, exactly my point.


There is a difference between haven't and going to. Things change, new opportunities arise, new technologies become feasible.


Not true at all, and by saying that you're not understanding what I've said. The iMac is a good machine for Apple because it is different. By being different it doesn't have to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the PC makers. You can't just stand there with a feature list and do a quick scorecard tally and say "this one is better" because there is this wildcard factor of the iMac's form factor that throws off the tally. To a lot of Apple's customers that factor alone makes all the other features irrelevant.


Ah, there... see that? You do get it: "in theory". All I've been saying is that if Apple were to simply and blindly apply this theory (by coming out with just another mini-tower like every other PC in the market), then they would compromise their position. Doing that would mean a level playing field and pricing pressure on this machine, causing "industry standard" margins in order to compete. And such a machine would cannibalize iMac and MacPro sales.

Because of this level playing field these machines would also continually price/feature compared to other PC vendors, and be expected to continually upgrade to the absolutely latest components. These things aren't good for a company that has inventory in stores. Dell pulls it off because they've traditionally been online a BTO online store with absolutely minimal inventory, and once you're on their website they try to convert the bargain hunters into buying what Dell wants them to buy. This model has been working reasonably well for Dell for years, which is why I mention it might work for Apple... although I expect that Apple will instead try to put a machine into this market space that somehow un-levels the playing field. How they do that is anybody's guess. Perhaps they'll just bank on the cachet of it being a Mac and leverage their current rosy market position, and just suffer the whiners here complaining that it doesn't have the precise CPU and GPU models they want, or that it costs 10% more than Dell's equivalent, or whatever. But as you said, Apple hasn't done anything "normal" in about ten years.

I have been debating this hypothesis for several years, and have several hundred pages of TextEdit drafts on the topic. I could start doing cut and paste in this thread.

The essential question is whether Apple would be forced to compete with very low margins for a Mid Range tower. You appear to say yes; I say no. This is the essences of the whole discussion. Because, if Apple must cut profits on a Mid Tower, any loss of iMac or Mac Pro sales to the Mid Tower would hurt. Yet if Apple makes a good profit on the Mid Tower, who would care which Mac the customer buys?

I've come to the conclusion that a certain Apple executive doesn't want to diminish sales of the iMac, so no Mac product will ever compete with it.

Lemon, I don't think Programmer is flip-flopping. Even if he were, the highest distinction in that regard goes to Flip Flop Dick:

You didn't feel it might have been interesting to mention this before? Did he actually say about a smaller size and was there a distinction between it as a separate product or did he mean that the Mac Pro lineup as a whole would get smaller?

Also half a year before the Leopard release was before the 8 core update - didn't he mention that? If he didn't then it might suggest he knows less about what's being designed than he says and what he did say could have been his own speculation.

If what he said was true then the redesign has to come at MW.

Yeah, its hardly a new topic.


Certainly its the core issue alright. My reason for saying yes is that the majority of the people looking for a machine in this market segment are highly features-per-dollar oriented. Specs rule. Apple (for the past 10 years) hasn't been focused on delivering the best spec sheet per dollar, instead they deliver on qualities that are harder to quantify.


I don't think SJ is hung up on selling iMacs, I think he is hung up on selling product that embody things he places great value in. I happen to like his sense of value, at least most of the time... and so do a lot of other people, it seems. When Apple figures out what this looks like in the mini-tower market so that they can sell something into that space with their usual decent margins, I think they will do so.



And Lemon, sometimes I flip-flop on things but I haven't done so in this thread thus far. Any variability in my position must therefore be in the perception of the reader.

Just a thought. Hear comes a GPU for a laptop that embarrasses the Mac Pro gpus...

Blush.*


Weeeeellll. Given the reputation for pitch forks and angry mobs on this board?

But hey, that's what he said. Mid-Tower. Stunning. Wait. That's what he told me. A separate line.

Given that Apple is on 30% growth and sales at 2.16 million? Er...and product expansion (no, not Performa Amelio level breadth...just another desktop worthy of the name...and maybe a sub note book...let's not get crazy and suggest another 20 lines...afterall...we don't Apple accused of giving us choice...)

Is it that much of a leap? The Cube was a mid-tower.

Except, Apple sales weren't that hot when it was released. And it was ill conceived in crucial ways. Well, in the ways that effect buyers and not Steve Jobs.

Except Apple couldn't figure that pricing it against a more expandable and powerful 'Workstation/Tower' range was bound to fail? And the bits that could be expanded came with trademarked difficulty... It's not such a leap (for me) that Apple does a mid-tower.

And 'Apple will do one if they can figure out how to do one...' and 'if they can make a profit on it' are trademark flip flops of a flip flop wearer. TM.

Yeah. So I'll agree with that one. Yes. I agree that Apple 'if' it can make a mid-tower...er...which it 'could'. And...knowing that Apple likes to make obscene profits on hardware that it sells...(eh...yeah. I can agree on that bit too...) will make a profit on it. I suppose they 'could' make a profit on anything they release...including iPod socks...don't think they'd sell socks at a loss. Guess they just had to figure out how to enter the market and make a profit. Hey, they can design a Cube...but it took them years to figure out how to sell, design/profit from selling socks for an MP3 player... Hey, sure...it will be done in the Apple style...because socks aint for feet, right? They're just for iPods. Hey, we know Apple 'Thinks Different'. Because the 'Bee' TM, told me so.

Going by how long Apple took to enter the sock market, I guess we can wait even longer for them to enter the mid-tower market. Who knows, maybe they'll sell a re-born Cube with tea cosy cover. In five fruity flavours. Sure, the rest of the PC market have figured out how to make profitable mid-towers...yes...and that includes non-big vendors in their hundreds. Thousands even. All of them running at a loss? I guess Apple will 'figure' it out one day... It must be a tough one...

Lemon Bon Bon.

Agreed.


Clear example of a prediction.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Heh. With Programmer running him a close second...



Lemon Bon Bon.

Erm. This was '1st Contact'. I didn't get chance to get his inside leg measurement... :I

Never met him before. But he seemed sane enough. He noted that he and his army of Mac friends at his company have been screaming for a mid-tower solution for years. He was highly bemused Apple hadn't done one yet. That makes two of us.

Again, of note, was the request for a 2 HD/GPU upgradable slotted quad-mini-tower that many (to put it bluntly...) on these boards are calling for. So, I guess it's not just me. Heh. He just said it would be the answer to a long wished prayers. A mid-tower. A stunning Ives special. And without the Mac Pro overkill. Jan-March timeframe. Jan'? That could mean a Mac Pro. March? Possibly an expansion of the desktop line if sales keep going higher. This could equally mean a redesigned Mac Pro. But, *Shrugs. I'll believe it when I see it.

I'll take it with a pinch of salt. But if it comes to light? I'll smile inwardly that I got a rare crumb of insider info'. Generally, I'd say I'd have more chance of being hit by a meteor. (No jokes, please...)

Lemon Bon Bon.

Yes. No. Ok. That's fairly distilled. But if they can make a profit on something they sell at £399-£1395 the 'desktop tower' price range...using the same components....as other PC vendors...and, I may add, on the iMac...they're STILL making a profit using laptop priced components in a 'desktop'...then how does anyone (mentioning no flipflopper in particular...) figure they can't make a profit using 'normal' heh, heh, desktop components...eg Conroe? Quad cpu. GPUs..?

Basically, folks. Here's the Apple mid-tower: Apple finally caves in. Gives us a Conroe Cube-esque tower or slim line Pro sawn in half. So you get a fancy box...and...can finally pick from a choice of, erm...let's push the boat out...two gpus...a GTS/GT and some Ati catch up card. And a conroe choice of 2.4 or 2.6 Gig...and....scratches head...* That's right...it won't be complete without an astronomical price to go with it. Oh, and an 18 month contract that leave you without food, warmth and light for the next...well, 18 months...

...and if they do? I'll have to buy the extreme 3 gig quad edition with side dish of cranberry sauce...

Lemon Bon Bon.

Sure but the people who want a small tower far outweigh the 2 or 3 people who don't want those people to get one. Plus they are only taking that stance because there's little evidence Apple will actually do it not because there's no reason for them to do it. Rumors of it actually coming to pass ease the pain that it hasn't already.


That's where all the secrets are kept. That's the first thing you should do.


I think that's about as long as I'm willing to wait. If the quad mobile computers are cheap enough maybe or if I can find a used/refurb Mac Pro with a warranty then I'll be able to upgrade my home computer. Otherwise I'll just have to try and make do with whatever sub-£1000 quad core desktop I can find.

Also if Phenomenon turns out to be a piece of crap, I'm done with Apple. That will just be one step too far. Hopefully that will be around the same timeframe.

Have there been any Penryn desktops released on the PC side already? If so what price ranges/spec are they coming in at?

Just found this:

http://forums.tweaktown.com/showthread.php?t=25544

Penryn seems to handle over-clocking pretty well.

He probably means that ANYONE who says he "heard" something from Apple will get jumped on by a bunch of AI members who'll come down on him like a pack of wolves, call him a liar and shove his face in the mud. That happened to me when I was a newbie.
You can believe I'll never tell what I hear again. I've been around Apple reps and have heard stuff I'll never repeat. You guys have cured me of that.

If I selectively choose words out of your messages without context, I can make you say whatever I want too. In the meantime, I've got better things to do.

I wonder if Vista will lag on the highest specced MacPro? Haha, here is a convo I made.

XPS User : "Hey, is your Vista laggy?"
MacPro User : "Erm no? why would it be?"
XPS : "Well, my Vista sucks to the max, it eats my whole memory and I cant run many applications due to Vista
use too much of memory"
MacPro : "Oh I see, how much memory are you running on your XPS?"
XPS : "Well im running 2GB of RAM, how bout u?"
MacPro : "16GB"
XPS : "Wut, how is that possible, I dont know any PC that can run that much RAM, r u bs me?"
MacPro : "Erm no, Im using a MacPro"
XPS : "Interesting, how much did it costs?"
Mac Pro : "13k USD"
XPS : " .........No comments"
Mac Pro : "Well I will be using it for 5 years plus, and Im sure by that time, you would have upgraded or bought a new XPS
and it will still wont outperform my MacPro, so I guess its a well spend money"

I hope you guys enjoyed it although it might not make any sense. Anyway image how great a game will look with the highest specced MacPro although it would be nicer if Apple would allow users to upgrade to 8 series instead of 7. Guess this proves that the MacPro is getting a update next year

It seems to be pretty muddled, I don't know what that price tag covers, maybe it's a very old price now. Also, it's now possible to put 16GB in a Mac Pro for under $750. If you're looking to max it out at all costs, 32GB can be had for $3200.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory

This seller is pretty reputable.

I don't know what that clown is on paying 13k for a computer. Is this the mac Pro that Jack bought with the money he got from his beanstalk beans?

I'm just guessing but I think 13k was a fictitious price point dusted with some exaggeration to get the point across.

:OOOOOO

That's incredible. Intel must be sandbagging on the Penryn. If AMD get anywhere near 3 gig? I suspect Intel will release 3.2-3.6 giggers. I get the feeling Intel could go all the way up to 4 gig without too much difficulty with Penryn. 45nm? Shouldn't we really be at 4 gig by now anyhow? The design of the cpu is much better and the process is much smaller and efficient...

...so how come speed grades which are essentially the same as the last generation?

I'm holding out until Macworld. San Fran. If Apple don't give me what I want by then...I guess I can always go with the iMac until Nehalem. The iMac is far from a disaster. We would have pulled our teeth for an iMac with dual 2.8 gigs back in the day... And the gpu seems to run CoX and Eve ok. I'd much prefer a Mid-tower. But it's getting ridiculous. Once the gravitational pull of the waiting game sucks you in... I just want a Mac to get some work done...

Lemon Bon Bon.

I don't delight in AMD's difficulties. Same with ATI. Competition is good. Keeps better products coming down the track. I hope AMD and ATI push their respective competition harder in 2008.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Now you're talking! Competition is the driving force behind improved products and lower prices. Where would Vista be today if Microsoft had had some real competition over the years? (<<--rhetorical question)