Apple to fire up Penryn-based Mac Pros - Page 8

Heh. Well, it hasn't made Vista much better, heh, competing with 'X' an' all...

Lemon Bon Bon.

With Apple's OS market share so low, I don't see the Mac OS as being any competition for Windows over the last decade or so. I think the only reason Gates put in a 150 million dollars into Apple was to keep at least one competing OS alive so that the Federal government would perhaps go easier on Microsoft.


When, but perhaps never, Apples' OS world wide market share reaches 25 percent, then perhaps that share might be considered some competition. The number of computers running OS X (world wide) is perhaps 5 percent? Anybody got the figures?

Well, it's currently 8.1 %?

US?

ANd if they give us that blamed Mid_tower we can pass the 10% mark quicker...

Lemon Bon Bon.

Don't let the flack stop you from letting the rest of us in on what you hear. What's the fun of these forums without a little hearsay?

I think they'll have to start pushing soon:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/...aster_than_amd

It's quad vs dual but still, AMD don't have the products out to compete and that's what matters.

Wouldn't it be awesome if Apple were the first to use 8 x 4GHz+ chips in their machines. From Toms hardware, it looks like 4GHz might be the limit though so they'll probably step it back to ensure the chips last long enough. It would be terrible if the chips failed within Apple's Mac Pro update cycle.


I sometimes consider if it would be worth just getting an iMac but I know people who have them and I simply don't like them. I'd get the old one anyway due to being able to get a matte screen and they are a decent price:

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObje...LID?nplm=FA589

But I can't get round the fact that the screen is stuck to the machine. This actually puts me off laptops too. However, I can accept it in a laptop because the screen has to be portable with the machine.

I'd feel the same way if Apple suddenly welded a cinema display to the side of a Mac Pro. It would only offer disadvantages to me to do this.

For me it's a small tower or a cheaper Mac Pro. Penryn Mac Pros have got to bring prices down one way or another but I won't buy a Mac Pro without a warranty so it'll have to be a refurb.

I can't help myself, but I actually like the new iMacs. I know all the slams, but every time I am in an Apple Store and I play with them, they really are very good computers.

If there is no new Mac Pro at MWSF, then I will order an iMac I guess. I can't wait any longer than that and for the graphics work I do, it will be OK. I have to keep external hard drives around for back-ups anyway, so a few more to augment the storage requirements won't kill me.

Still, I would very much prefer the Mac Pro.

We have been measuring OS X against Windows. That's one computer against many Windows machines. Has anyone figured Mac against individual PC's. Mac vs. Dell; Mac vs. HP; Mac vs. Gateway; etc?

I'm sure that figure would be higher than 8.1% . Does anyone have any figures on 1 to 1 comparison?

Dell's already beat Apple to the punch:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/27/d...-workstations/

Snipping from Engadget too:

When a regular consumer desktop just won't serve your demanding computing needs, it's time to go workstation, and Dell's got a pair of new quad-core-packin' models that are spec'ed to be some of the fastest on the planet. Both the Precision T7400 and T5400 are available with either one or two of Intel's newest 45-nanometer Xeon Processors (up to a 3.20GHz X5482 on the 7400), as many as two 1.5GB nVIDIA Quadro FX5600 graphics cards (capable of driving four 30-inch monitors), up to 4GB of RAM (with a whopping 128GB promised using a memory riser card chassis when 8GB DIMMs become available) and either three (5400) or five (7400) hard drives for up to 3TB of storage -- all topped off with a little Blu-ray action. Available immediately, the new rigs start at just $1,600 and $1,850, but for a configuration that meets your ridiculous specifications, expect to shell out well north of ten grand.

And here is the info page from Dell:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/t...=us&l=en&s=gen

Up to 8 cores for the new workstations as well.

/sigh

Guess we'll have to wait till Jan :-/

has a date been set in jan?

But the question was about OS X giving competition to Windows. If one is going to buy a Windows machine (excluding the current Mac Intels), is there a great deal of difference between the a Dell, HP, Gateway, etc PC? Isn't it all about the OS X experience versus the Windows experience? Would you buy a Mac Pro if it would only run Windows?

Maybe emig thinks that an update might be announced at Mac World San Francisco. Usually pro hardware updates are announced around pro expos, MWSF is a consumer one, but I think one PMG5 update was announced at an MWSF event.

I think that has been disproved by numerous posts showing introductions of pro related hardware at MWSF.

Check out:

http://www.apple-history.com/

What? I did not say "always". I said usually. Usually is correct, and you made no worthwhile case otherwise. Maybe 20% of pro machines updates coincide with MWSF.


That link is not that useful for making your case. It's almost worthless unless I want to check every entry of every model, it's more work than necessary.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

Check the "Mac Pro" entry. One out of nine entries was MWSF. MacBook Pro entry shows three out of ten update entries that coincided with a MWSF. The rest of the dates are mostly around NAB, WWDC and a couple around photo shows.

If you're saying apple is going to wait until NAB or "photo shows" I highly disagree. The next event after MWSF is usually in March or April. Apple can't go that long without releasing. Apple has updated these machines on normal days in the passed, but I don't see any reason for apple to release these machines between now and MWSF... and I can't imagine they go much passed MWSF.

I am beginning to think new Mac Pros will be announced after Macworld, but sooner than NAB or WWDC. I assume they will be in new enclosures at that time.

Steve will probably spend half of the keynote on Leopard (how many they've sold, update today, etc.), new Mac stores, revenue, another look at iLife, iTunes with a new update. Then if they introduce some new product, a consumer/prosumer device, that will eat up the rest of the time. Then a close with an up and coming musician. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing new Pro macs at MacWorld.

After macworld would be insanity... The mac pro specs haven't been touched since August 2006... Why wouldn't they announce it at MacWorld if it's ready? It's free Press.

It's already insanity going this long. But if they have lots of consumer announcements, don't hold your breath. Sorry, I choose to be pessimistic at this point.

Don't gotta apologize. It's all speculation. Apple could announce any day, any time they want. They have done it many many times in the past.

You're right, it is insanity they have gone this long. I personally don't get it. They HAVE the cpus. What else is there to wait for? Graphics cards? Motherboards? If dell has the motherboards I'm sure apple does too. All I can think of is graphics.

I used to go to keynotes and had my hopes dashed many a time where pro stuff is concerned, so I don't always go to MacWorld anymore either. They are pretty much consumer events, and consumer products are what generate buzz in the news, and gets Steve the CNN interviews. The pro stuff just doesn't get that interest. Look at other new pro PCs--they rarely make it beyond the trade media outlets. The only way, is if it is some revolutionary new technology not appearing in any of the other consumer lines debuts (in the same way as the multi-touch technology for the iPhone). Also, they did release the MacBook Pro there last year, but it got the new Intel chips for the first time, and featured drop sensors and MagSafe for the powercord--that all fits the 'innovative new technology' paradigm.

Good question. Maybe they're waiting for enough high-end chips from Intel? They know there will be a mad rush as soon as they are released, and they don't want people waiting months for new systems.

At the keynote, they'll also have an announcement of more iPod integration, like in airplanes or with AppleTV--they've already done cars+iPods, so that won't be mentioned. Maybe some new partnerships, much like the recent one with Starbucks for wifiTunes.

Here are past announcements, so you can see the trend...

http://macs.about.com/b/2004/01/06/n...world-2004.htm

iPod mini
GarageBand
XServe G5
iLife '04
Final Cut Express 2
XServe RAID

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2005/01/mwsf

iPod shuffle
Mac mini
iWork ’05
Keynote
Pages
Final Cut Express HD
iLife ’05
iPhoto
iMovie HD
iDVD
GarageBand
iTunes

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/01/mwsf

MacBook Pro
iMac
iWork ’06
Keynote 3
Pages 2
iPod Radio Remote
iLife ’06
iPhoto 6
iWeb
iMovie 6
iDVD 6
GarageBand 3

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2007/01/mwsf

iPhone
Apple TV
AirPort Extreme

MWSF has been "mostly" consumer centric in the past few years. But I agree that if there is a enclosure redesign and new ACDs, MWSF seems to be the right place to announce it because of the time frame.
Unless Apple has under it's sleeve a bunch of announcements already in place for MWSF, I can't see the MacPro without being upgrade pass middle of January 08.

Out of curiosity, I spec'd out a Dell T7400 with dual 3.2GHz Penryns (without fancy graphics or optical drive options) and saw what Dell is calling a "preliminary ship date" of January 7, 2008. While Dell has them on their website, it doesn't look like anyone can even get one right now. Maybe Apple is waiting to have actual volume of Penryn Xeons on-hand before they announce a new Mac Pro?

Very interesting, I guess I just assumed they were shipping. What about the lower model? Same thing?

I do like the alu iMac. I would love to have Penryns and the new AMD/Ati GPUs in them though...

It would pack a bit more gpu punch that way. Quad core isn't essential for most apps.

But 3D and Final Cut may get the extra core quad boost. Quad core isn't quite mainstream yet. So...maybe by the time it is...the iMac may go quad corelaptop cpu by mid 2008. Just in time. Because I can see alot of PC consumer towers being quad core by then!!!

I just think with Apple's marketshare of Macs at 2million per quarter and rising...another laptop and desktop move may be imminent to round off their offerings. There isn't quite enough choice of desktops at the moment. It's worth noting that Apple has a greater range of iPods than they do Mac desktops.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Well, Dell are just doing what Apple used to do. 'Announce'...and wait months before shipping! ')

Which...is kind of annoying. It grabs headlines...but it's no better than Apple keeping its cards close to its vest/chest...

There's a shed load of conroe and Xeon cpu options...and it seems silly not expand the Mac Pro product range to cover them...especially when some of the Conroe quads are dirt cheap.

Why force us to pay for Xeon chips when Conroe chips would give us most of the bang for a much, much cheaper price?

Lemon Bon Bon.

Well how about this as well...

The new Dell's use the same 667mhz ECC FB-Dimms... unless you get the fastest cpu which upgrades the ram to 800mhz. I don't understand why intel forces these chipsets to use ECC ram. Expensive, Slow, ECC ram. Desktop ram is DDR3 and approaching 1800mhz (granted a cas latency of 6 and 7 but who needs a fast latency when you have that fast of a bandwidth?). So in essence the ram Mac Pros use haven't changed since 2006... maybe Nehalem is where everything will change. I'm so tired of looking to the next technology. Seems things don't change as fast as they used to.

The Dell T5400 w/the quad-core E5405's aren't available until December 19th... same thing for the higher-end X5460's... so while they're selling them, they're not shipping any... so at least we have a little less to grumble about with the delay on new Mac Pros!

Workstations generally need the ECC for better data integrity. Buffered memory is necessary to support more memory chips per channel. It just goes with the market, on the up side, workstations are usually incredibly stable, at least in my experience. I gave up consumer desktops for workstations in '97 and really hadn't looked back since.

It may well be that 1.8GHz memory is just a gimmick, I don't know.

I'm just saying that MWSF is usually unlikely. Apple did go until a week or two before NAB to release the Octos, even though they could have done many months earlier, just not with the high-watt 3.0 chips.

I think Apple has updated the pro units away from any event though.

Is there nothing in December? I don't keep track of some of those shows.

I just found that NAMM'08 and MWSF'08 overlap in mid-January, so in a way, I guess I do agree now, you might see a January announcement. Given that Dell can't ship their machines until Jan, that may be the time. Apple doesn't seem to announce or ship until there is actual supply available to them. I think some pro hardware updates were done in conjunction with at least one NAMM, that's also when Apple tends to update Logic.

Up until a few years ago that statement was completely false. They were known for pre-announcing products much like dell did yesterday. G4's, G5's, XServes etc. Now you'll always catch steve saying "these are shipping today"... because apple had such a poor history of shipping WAY later (months) after the announcement. I wish they would bring back MWNY and schedule it around Sept / Oct. So then you'd have... MWSF in Jan, WWDC in May / June, MWNY in Sept. Only problem with that is MWParis is around Sept usually.

That's true emig647,

When I ordered my Quad G5 it took almost 2 months to get the machine. I am glad they are waiting to announce it now because the past shipping nightmares.

MacPro come soon, Please!!!!!!!!!!

At the time i type this the French Apple store does not deliver MacPro's in CTO with Mac os X server ... Delay estimates jump from 5 days to 3 weeks so we can expect changes in Software as well as hardware wise (not that mac os x Server Leopard is ready for prime time deployment). So i would expect another major relase of 10.5. Server revision and a New Macpro (These machines allways have been SCREAMING fast with 10.5 Server regarding 10.5 Client) .

What can we expect from apple at MacWorld in terms of new Macpros would be around this line .

4 Core and 8 Core MacPros.

Why 4 Core being kept ?

1) Not all Applications can thread. (4D , Filemaker).
2) Apple neeeds a cheap entry point for desktop servers. 4 cores is more than enough to run mac os X server , though this may be wrong. but basicly you dont need every desktop in a company to be a full blown server rig.

What we can expect on the coming months as far as the MacPro might be concerned.

1) Faster FSB.

2) Better Memory bandwith , better EEC should do the trick in my humble opinion.

(EEC ram is slow but its is a Server centered machine , reliability matters heavily here DDR3 has its faults and when it fails you face a hardware crash AND it is mainly dual channel to support 8 Cores you would need Quad Channel and suprisingly well no one is proposing such rams , they sure propose quad channel DDR2 and nothing comes to mind in 64bit addressing with those things) . I am sorry for gamers out there but DDR3 bearing MacPros are relatively unlikely , bear as well in mind that MacPros can take up to 32GB of ram , that HAS to fit your needs NO ? )


3) New chipsets from intel. SLI support may be delaying here so i am wondering if we will see SLI support on the MacPro.

4) More PCie lanes than we currently have. (Sporting a smalltree ethernet card a Quadro and a 4GB fibre channel card outspaces the Pcie lanes you have to chose to take one card below its par capabilities).

5) New Cinema Displays (34 inch would be nice in something around 3k by 2k).

6) New graphics cards (though i am very happy with my Nvidia 4500). I tied it to a 30inch screen and voila perfect graphics and a good fast card for 3D of course not really gaming.

7) New Xraids (4Gbit Connects here we come).The Apple Fibre Channel Card shipping these days support 4Gb/s links but Xraid stays still at 2Gb/s

8) Mac os X server 10.5.2 with support for the new machines , straight out of the box usability and deployment capability rolled into one.


Relatively wacky things list.

1) Blu-Ray // DVD-HD (though i am perfectly happy with DVD double layers nowadays) , and the DRM schemes on both new standards are UGLY.

2) New Xraids (4Gbit Connects here we come).

3) SSD inclusion capability for scratch disk users , bootcaches have been introduced with 10.5 so i would expect things to heat up rapidly in this department).

4) AppleRaid onboard integration (Well for hardware raid i keep preferring external drives , call me parnaoid).

5) Digital Audio on the portables.

6) Touchscreen Macbook ?

7) Isight update , Isight integration in screen all across the board?

Unlikely things (NOT LIKELY):

1) Bios support for video cards (too many vendors , insecure and let us face it 99.999999 percent of mac users dont want EVER to see that BIOS screen again).

2) Windows becoming secure.

3) DirectX support on mac os X.

4) Steve Balmer wearing a turtleneck. see picture what that would do to the turtleneck ... (soaky).
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/9050/

5) Zune becoming popular (i have to get generic to point how unlikely previous events are).

Add your own.

Some of these are not prioritized at all but if the MacPro is to evolve some of this might be worth considering.

This post just appeared over at MacRumors yesterday morning. Makes a lot of sense and I am inclined to believe it:

I've got my hopes up this is a rumor that will come true. Everything about it is believable and logical except for the Xserve "Ultra" Itanium 2 processors part. That part is quickly refuted by experts at MacRumors.

Most of us believe that the mobile Penryn won't be shipping in sufficient quantity for the whole mobile & iMac line to be refreshed in January. And it looks like the sub-compact MacBook Pro will be the mobile star. So that leaves our beloved All 8 Core Mac Pro to steal the show among those who seek maximum power in 2008.

Looks like we're down to the last 40 days now folks.

That does seem pretty dumb. Is it a gullibility test? There is always some chance of something odd like that happening, I'd just peg it as extremely unlikely, unless maybe Intel just pays the entire cost of developing it.

Now, that's what you call a beating, my friend.

Lemon Bon Bon.

And...I posted it to Apple's Mac Pro feedback section.

Stinging criticism indeed. I just wish I could take credit for this excellent Macrumors forum post...

Lemon Bon Bon.

The high rate demo was no doubt a hand-picked chip, and it hasn't been running all that long. At 45nm and below issues of longevity are going to become serious, and running at high power/heat levels will impact chip lifetime in a major way. I expect that Intel is getting some small yield of chips that run crazy fast, and they are probably sandbagging a bit because they want to maximize their yields (and thus profits). That will leave them in a position 6-12 months from now to ramp the clock rates, as long as they are confident that their next generation processors won't force them to drop back down again.

The high rate demo was no doubt a hand-picked chip, and it hasn't been running all that long. At 45nm and below issues of longevity are going to become serious, and running at high power/heat levels will impact chip lifetime in a major way. I expect that Intel is getting some small yield of chips that run crazy fast, and they are probably sandbagging a bit because they want to maximize their yields (and thus profits). That will leave them in a position 6-12 months from now to ramp the clock rates, as long as they are confident that their next generation processors won't force them to drop back down again. Doing this lets them introduce "Super ultra extreme extreme" versions at stupidly high prices (and margins).



Woops, sorry about the double post -- don't even know how it happened.

Hmm. Well, AMD are in no position to push them. The race to 1 gig days are over for AMD at the moment? Also, there is RND to claw back. But...I can't see Intel getting to 3.4-4.0 gig on Penryn when Nehalem is imminent? Why not just push those speeds when Nehalem launches.

I suppose if Nehalem is launching late 2008...then there's room for a Penryn bump to 3.4/3.6/3.8 half term 2008.

Nehalem sounds like the more exciting chip because of the memory controller stuff.

I'll leave it to the sage-like Programmer to speculate on what kind of performance improvements we'll get over Penryn. But for the most part, Penryn, outside of SS4 instructions is a mere improvement over the current stuff. Cooler, I suppose.

I'm not sure if I can wait. If Apple are going all Octo for the Penryn bump and you can get a 9900 card from Nv. What's Nehalem going to offer worth waiting a year for?

I hear rumours of an 8 core version of Nehalem? Which means a dual octo? 16 core render beast? Will we REALLY see that inside 2008?

Lemon Bon Bon.

Seeing as it is your 1st time, we'll let you off...

Lemon Bon Bon.