It's clear Apple needs an entry-level tower. People shouldn't have to build Hackintoshes just to fill that need, or to be able to switch to a more powerful graphics card a couple of years down the road.
People can do whatever they want and Apple or any other company for that matter is not binded to fill that every crazy need. This is not how business works.
With all the great applications available to professionals on the Mac, they should definitely have a Mac Pro beast available to purchase. Maybe Apple can sell the Mac Pro on their website as a build to order only. They could charge more so they keep their profits up and the user would have to wait longer to get it but at least the pro's can plan for it and get exactly what they want. I'm sure they could rent a warehouse somewhere, keep a small inventory and have a group of people putting them together when they receive orders. Also it should be rack mountable or be able to be on your desk or floor.
The facebook group is weak, but i have sent tcook@apple.com formal and polite letters twice in the last year, on my concerns of apples future commitment to pro users in general. As someone who needs a powerful tower both professionally and recreationally. an imac is not an option, certainly a macbook pro isn't one. sure this years imac may run this years stuff, but they are severely lacking in expansion and customability. as for their vid cards, they aren't the highest quality either, they are mid ranged mobility chips that get the job done, THIS year. But 1-2 years down the line and your imac isn't worth a crap. My 2008 mac pro is only JUST NOW starting to struggling with certain modern stuff, yet it still gets the job done, i'm do for an upgrade. It's kind of funny, my 2008 mac pro runs circles around even some 2011 and 2010 imacs with ease. Goes to show you something.
In any case, i see the facebook group as sort of a weak endevour. what they need is more organizing. a LOT more formal emails to tim cook maybe. More coverage on sites like this, ones that catch apple's media attention.
There are still a lot of tasks that are CPU intensive and lend themselves to parallel processing.
For example, video compression benefits from multi core systems. In 3D computer graphics rendering: raytracing, photo mapping, image processing, light mapping can also take a very long time to do on a computer without a lot of cores. I use both mac and pc, and its way easier to procure a pc workstation with a ton of cores and these tasks can run so much faster on them. The first mackintosh machines that I had seen were not able to utilize all of the cores in the OSX operating system so they ran faster with windows.
"With Apple's Mac Pro line growing long in the tooth after not having received an update for almost two years"
This is basically the same amount of time that we have not seen any update from HP and Dell for their workstations. HP just released their new workstations with the new Sandy Bridge Xeons a few weeks ago and Dell has announced their new line of workstations also based on Sandy bridge Xeons a few days ago but they are not shipping yet. For HP and Dell, the time between the new offering and the previous one has been long, in fact as long as for the Mac Pro. I have already said many times here, but it seems that the AppleInsider editorial is all about sensationalism. The reason is the delay Intel took before they could ship the new Xeons. Like everyone else, Intel is putting more priority to the mobile market and the Xeon development cycle has slowed down significantly. The Xeon is a more complex chip, Intel is clearly not driving the development of the chip faster than a new generation every one and a half or two years. On top of that, the Sandy Bridge Xeons had a bug which delayed their market introduction by half a year.
Now, Apple does not talk about unreleased products but I don't believe that Apple is about to kill the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is profitable, small profits but profitable. Apple recognizes the need of the Mac Pro for its pro users, Apple employees themselves need this sort of machine. I guess it is a matter of days before we get some news about all the renewal of the Macs including the iMacs which are also pending for new release.
"The Cupertino, Calif., company upset a number of professional video editors last year with the release of Final Cut Pro X. Power users complained that the new release more closely resembled iMovie, Apple's entry-level video editing software, than previous versions of Final Cut Pro. AppleInsiderexclusively reported in May 2010 that Apple was planning to make Final Cut more of a "prosumer" product, but the company promised at the time that its pro customers would "love" it."
I am sorry but your report was basically wrong. You can't argue that the new Final Cut was am iMovie like, this is just ridiculous. From the first release, it was already way more powerful. I don't believe that Apple intended to arm Final Cut users but the pain was necessary to transition from the old Final Cut that everyone in the market was asking to be replaced with something more modern. When Apple did, people cried scandal because some features were missing but this was necessary as Apple could not possibly introduce the product with just all previous features built-in somehow but it has to completely rethink the product by first introducing what they felt was new to the market. Since then, Apple has largely committed to satisfy pro users by pushing forward the product and they did it by bringing updates with powerful new features. And now, I don't think there is someone out there who can still argue that Final Cut Pro X is not for pro when in the same time the product offers multi cam editing up to 64 angles!!!!
Protools still uses PCIe cards. UAD still uses PCIe cards. They still need lots of storage, lots of option choices in one cabinet rather than a lot of external devices whenever possible.
When is the last time you have been in a Professional audio/video studio? a Quad Core chip isn't enough. They want multiple 6 or 8 core chips. Some of these places would take whatever you could give them in additional processing power. People working with 4K video? They need TONS of processing power.
Great post. Some people here are oblivious to the needs of anyone except themselves. I work in a small post-house with fifteen Macs, 5 of which are MacPros that are desperately in need of upgrading for running AE and DaVinci etc. FCS is struggling with HD, 2K and 4K files. We've already upgraded RAM and GPUs. This is a real need. However ineffectual a petition on FB may be, I can understand the concerns of those who started and 'signed' it.
Old farts you mean. Today a 16 year old kid can do stuff with an iMac and when shown you won't even be able to tell that 16 year old kid did it until someone tells you. That's how things are going to be now.
We have to draw a line between Avatar type Pro (huge films, many effects and so on) and editing some TV Show episode Pro which can be done using a MacBook Pro while on train to Utah.
You obviously have no idea of the hardware requirements of the professional design/production industry.
"With Apple's Mac Pro line growing long in the tooth after not having received an update for almost two years"
This is basically the same amount of time that we have not seen any update from HP and Dell for their workstations. HP just released their new workstations with the new Sandy Bridge Xeons a few weeks ago and Dell has announced their new line of workstations also based on Sandy bridge Xeons a few days ago but they are not shipping yet. For HP and Dell, the time between the new offering and the previous one has been long, in fact as long as for the Mac Pro. I have already said many times here, but it seems that the AppleInsider editorial is all about sensationalism. The reason is the delay Intel took before they could ship the new Xeons. Like everyone else, Intel is putting more priority to the mobile market and the Xeon development cycle has slowed down significantly. The Xeon is a more complex chip, Intel is clearly not driving the development of the chip faster than a new generation every one and a half or two years. On top of that, the Sandy Bridge Xeons had a bug which delayed their market introduction by half a year.
Now, Apple does not talk about unreleased products but I don't believe that Apple is about to kill the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is profitable, small profits but profitable. Apple recognizes the need of the Mac Pro for its pro users, Apple employees themselves need this sort of machine. I guess it is a matter of days before we get some news about all the renewal of the Macs including the iMacs which are also pending for new release.
"The Cupertino, Calif., company upset a number of professional video editors last year with the release of Final Cut Pro X. Power users complained that the new release more closely resembled iMovie, Apple's entry-level video editing software, than previous versions of Final Cut Pro. AppleInsiderexclusively reported in May 2010 that Apple was planning to make Final Cut more of a "prosumer" product, but the company promised at the time that its pro customers would "love" it."
I am sorry but your report was basically wrong. You can't argue that the new Final Cut was am iMovie like, this is just ridiculous. From the first release, it was already way more powerful. I don't believe that Apple intended to arm Final Cut users but the pain was necessary to transition from the old Final Cut that everyone in the market was asking to be replaced with something more modern. When Apple did, people cried scandal because some features were missing but this was necessary as Apple could not possibly introduce the product with just all previous features built-in somehow but it has to completely rethink the product by first introducing what they felt was new to the market. Since then, Apple has largely committed to satisfy pro users by pushing forward the product and they did it by bringing updates with powerful new features. And now, I don't think there is someone out there who can still argue that Final Cut Pro X is not for pro when in the same time the product offers multi cam editing up to 64 angles!!!!
Agreed. Apple isn't going to ditch the Mac Pro. I'm sure we will see an upgrade in the next month or so.
You obviously have no idea of the hardware requirements of the professional design/production industry.
You obviously haven't heard about professional bias have you? You are not as important as you might think you are. Current day so called professionals remind me of big city dwellers, when you put them in the wild they don't even know how to make fire. OMG where's my super duper crzy high tech laser fire maker.
If doesn't start my post with "I WORK FOR" or "I'VE BEEN WORKING" or "I HAD PRETTY MUCH EVERY MAC SINCE ..." doesn't mean i don't know anything. It however means that it's internet and no one gives a shit about what you do.
The 2nd generation MB, released in November 2006, received the option for the 6x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) drive. A month earlier the 3rd generation 15" MBP also received that same drive. Note that it still wasn't DVD±R DL with the 6x drives.
It wasn't for 1.5 years after the 15" MBP was first introduced, in June 2007, that they finally were able to add an 8x SuperDrive with DVD±DL like what had been available in the PowerBooks.
I'd say it's because of thinness of the new casings but the 17" MBPs started with the 8x Slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) right away and it was also 1" thick so there is clearly at least one other factor I haven't considered.
If I remember correctly, this was exactly the reason why they had to put a slower drive in the MBP to start out with. They were able to get the laptop so much thinner with the cooler chips they didn't have a superdrive that was thin enough to fit at the 8x speed.
As far as the MacPro goes...well Apple will release one when they're ready to release it. To be honest, they really haven't any much to work with up until now. I don't see the current line up as a stale product. I hope they keep the MacPro as well. I think its a viable product and while it may not be a big seller to them, I think its an important one. iMacs, while they do offer Core i7 processors, may be to fine for Photoshop and things like that are dogs when it comes to professional video editing. I'm no video editing expert, but I do know that this does require a tremendous amount of processing power to get anything done in a timely fashion, or at all. When you have 3D and 4K video, these requirements only get higher and higher.
I just want to comment on another typical usage of the Mac Pro besides video production, 3D production or CAD oriented workflow. I am talking about science and engineering.
For for those who believe that there is no need of a Mac Pro, I should give them an example of a real workflow:
- I work on geophysics, dealing with high performance computing involving the simulation of complex problems.
- Method used: finite element
- Language: C, Objective C , OpenCL and Fortran,
- Platform:
- Several Mac Pros with dual Xeons, 12 cores total.
- Memory on board: 64 GB of memory
- Storage on board: 4 TB
- Workflow: The simulations are run with a custom finite element code written in Fortran (a next generation code base written in Objective C/C is currently under development). The parallelization of the code is done with OpenMPI (as it allows to dispatch work on all machines on the network) so EVERY SINGLE core is being used. The simulation itself eat up above 50 GB of RAM. Yes, only one simulation!!!
- The post processing of the data are done with a custom code written in C and OpenCL which takes advantage of the Radeon HD 5870 to speed up the calculation. So by definition we need to have access to better and more powerful GPUs than what is available on iMacs and are only available on a Mac Pro.
- One simulation generates hundred of gigabytes of data. As a result terabytes of data are produced by successive simulations, data which are stored in large disks connected via firewire 800 to the Mac Pros for backing up the data if the results are acceptable.
Here you have it, this is my workflow. And as we keep studying bigger and more complex problems, we need again and again more powerful Mac Pros with higher processing power and better technology. This allows us to do things that would only be possible with much more expensive hardware, typically a supercomputer of a small size.
Now, Apple does not talk about unreleased products but I don't believe that Apple is about to kill the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is profitable, small profits but profitable. Apple recognizes the need of the Mac Pro for its pro users, Apple employees themselves need this sort of machine. I guess it is a matter of days before we get some news about all the renewal of the Macs including the iMacs which are also pending for new release.
The problem with "small profits" is companies won't really miss them if they decide to kill off the product.
Are there pros who need thie extra power and capabilities of a MacPro? Absolutely. However, sales of Mac Pros are smaller than a rounding error in comparison to Apple's main products.
I just want to comment on another typical usage of the Mac Pro besides video production, 3D production or CAD oriented workflow. I am talking about science and engineering.
For for those who believe that there is no need of a Mac Pro, I should give them an example of a real workflow:
- I work on geophycics, dealing with high performance computing involving the simulation of complex problems.
- Method used: finite element
- Language: C, Objective C , OpenCL and Fortran,
- Platform:
- Several Mac Pros with dual Xeons, 12 cores total.
- Memory on board: 64 GB of memory
- Storage on board: 4 TB
- Workflow: The simulations are run with a custom finite element code written in Fortran (a next generation code base written in Objective C/C is currently under development). The parallelization of the code is done with OpenMPI (as it allows to dispatch work on all machines on the network) so EVERY SINGLE core is being used. The simulation itself east up above 50 GB of RAM. Yes, only one simulation!!!
- The post processing of the data are done with a custom code written in C and OpenCL which takes advantage of the Radeon HD 5870 to speed up the calculation. So by definition we need to have access to better and more powerful GPUs than what is available on iMacs and are only available on a Mac Pro.
- The simulations generates hundred of gigabytes of data. As a result terabytes of data are produced by successive simulations, data which are stored in large disks connected via firewire 800 to the Mac Pros for backing up the data if the results are acceptable.
Here you have it, this is my workflow. And as we keep studying bigger and more complex problems, we need again and again more powerful Mac Pros with higher processing power and better technology. This allows us to do things that would only be possible with much more expensive hardware, typically a supercomputer of a small size.
Anyone still saying that no one needs a Mac Pro?
No one is saying there is no need for such machine, some however are saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines as well if you really think about it.
No one is saying there is no need for such machine, some however are saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines as well if you really think about it.
Oh yes, I have seen not only in AppleInsider forums but somewhere else like in MacWorld, people arguing that the Mac Pro is not needed anymore therefore implying that no one needs it anymore.
And when it comes to people saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines, I am sorry but usually people don't really understand what is the matter here, referring to "many of the tasks" as a dummy argument rather than a real argument. Simply because they have no idea on what tasks really is the Mac Pro used for.
And I hope you agree with me that I can think about it as well as I can, I can't avoid but to conclude that there is no way I can do my daily work on another machine than the Mac Pro. No way, Right?
I just want to comment on another typical usage of the Mac Pro besides video production, 3D production or CAD oriented workflow. I am talking about science and engineering.
For for those who believe that there is no need of a Mac Pro, I should give them an example of a real workflow:
- I work on geophycics, dealing with high performance computing involving the simulation of complex problems.
- Method used: finite element
- Language: C, Objective C , OpenCL and Fortran,
- Platform:
- Several Mac Pros with dual Xeons, 12 cores total.
- Memory on board: 64 GB of memory
- Storage on board: 4 TB
- Workflow: The simulations are run with a custom finite element code written in Fortran (a next generation code base written in Objective C/C is currently under development). The parallelization of the code is done with OpenMPI (as it allows to dispatch work on all machines on the network) so EVERY SINGLE core is being used. The simulation itself east up above 50 GB of RAM. Yes, only one simulation!!!
- The post processing of the data are done with a custom code written in C and OpenCL which takes advantage of the Radeon HD 5870 to speed up the calculation. So by definition we need to have access to better and more powerful GPUs than what is available on iMacs and are only available on a Mac Pro.
- The simulations generates hundred of gigabytes of data. As a result terabytes of data are produced by successive simulations, data which are stored in large disks connected via firewire 800 to the Mac Pros for backing up the data if the results are acceptable.
Here you have it, this is my workflow. And as we keep studying bigger and more complex problems, we need again and again more powerful Mac Pros with higher processing power and better technology. This allows us to do things that would only be possible with much more expensive hardware, typically a supercomputer of a small size.
Anyone still saying that no one needs a Mac Pro?
I agree. We use Mac clusters for problems of comparable complexity, especially 1D, 2D and the occasional 3D simulation. Quicker and cheaper than running on the massively parallel machines if we don't have to. I'd be sorry to lose that option.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Goldenclaw
It's clear Apple needs an entry-level tower. People shouldn't have to build Hackintoshes just to fill that need, or to be able to switch to a more powerful graphics card a couple of years down the road.
People can do whatever they want and Apple or any other company for that matter is not binded to fill that every crazy need. This is not how business works.
With all the great applications available to professionals on the Mac, they should definitely have a Mac Pro beast available to purchase. Maybe Apple can sell the Mac Pro on their website as a build to order only. They could charge more so they keep their profits up and the user would have to wait longer to get it but at least the pro's can plan for it and get exactly what they want. I'm sure they could rent a warehouse somewhere, keep a small inventory and have a group of people putting them together when they receive orders. Also it should be rack mountable or be able to be on your desk or floor.
The facebook group is weak, but i have sent tcook@apple.com formal and polite letters twice in the last year, on my concerns of apples future commitment to pro users in general. As someone who needs a powerful tower both professionally and recreationally. an imac is not an option, certainly a macbook pro isn't one. sure this years imac may run this years stuff, but they are severely lacking in expansion and customability. as for their vid cards, they aren't the highest quality either, they are mid ranged mobility chips that get the job done, THIS year. But 1-2 years down the line and your imac isn't worth a crap. My 2008 mac pro is only JUST NOW starting to struggling with certain modern stuff, yet it still gets the job done, i'm do for an upgrade. It's kind of funny, my 2008 mac pro runs circles around even some 2011 and 2010 imacs with ease. Goes to show you something.
In any case, i see the facebook group as sort of a weak endevour. what they need is more organizing. a LOT more formal emails to tim cook maybe. More coverage on sites like this, ones that catch apple's media attention.
There are still a lot of tasks that are CPU intensive and lend themselves to parallel processing.
For example, video compression benefits from multi core systems. In 3D computer graphics rendering: raytracing, photo mapping, image processing, light mapping can also take a very long time to do on a computer without a lot of cores. I use both mac and pc, and its way easier to procure a pc workstation with a ton of cores and these tasks can run so much faster on them. The first mackintosh machines that I had seen were not able to utilize all of the cores in the OSX operating system so they ran faster with windows.
"With Apple's Mac Pro line growing long in the tooth after not having received an update for almost two years"
This is basically the same amount of time that we have not seen any update from HP and Dell for their workstations. HP just released their new workstations with the new Sandy Bridge Xeons a few weeks ago and Dell has announced their new line of workstations also based on Sandy bridge Xeons a few days ago but they are not shipping yet. For HP and Dell, the time between the new offering and the previous one has been long, in fact as long as for the Mac Pro. I have already said many times here, but it seems that the AppleInsider editorial is all about sensationalism. The reason is the delay Intel took before they could ship the new Xeons. Like everyone else, Intel is putting more priority to the mobile market and the Xeon development cycle has slowed down significantly. The Xeon is a more complex chip, Intel is clearly not driving the development of the chip faster than a new generation every one and a half or two years. On top of that, the Sandy Bridge Xeons had a bug which delayed their market introduction by half a year.
Now, Apple does not talk about unreleased products but I don't believe that Apple is about to kill the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is profitable, small profits but profitable. Apple recognizes the need of the Mac Pro for its pro users, Apple employees themselves need this sort of machine. I guess it is a matter of days before we get some news about all the renewal of the Macs including the iMacs which are also pending for new release.
"The Cupertino, Calif., company upset a number of professional video editors last year with the release of Final Cut Pro X. Power users complained that the new release more closely resembled iMovie, Apple's entry-level video editing software, than previous versions of Final Cut Pro. AppleInsider exclusively reported in May 2010 that Apple was planning to make Final Cut more of a "prosumer" product, but the company promised at the time that its pro customers would "love" it."
I am sorry but your report was basically wrong. You can't argue that the new Final Cut was am iMovie like, this is just ridiculous. From the first release, it was already way more powerful. I don't believe that Apple intended to arm Final Cut users but the pain was necessary to transition from the old Final Cut that everyone in the market was asking to be replaced with something more modern. When Apple did, people cried scandal because some features were missing but this was necessary as Apple could not possibly introduce the product with just all previous features built-in somehow but it has to completely rethink the product by first introducing what they felt was new to the market. Since then, Apple has largely committed to satisfy pro users by pushing forward the product and they did it by bringing updates with powerful new features. And now, I don't think there is someone out there who can still argue that Final Cut Pro X is not for pro when in the same time the product offers multi cam editing up to 64 angles!!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by drblank
Protools still uses PCIe cards. UAD still uses PCIe cards. They still need lots of storage, lots of option choices in one cabinet rather than a lot of external devices whenever possible.
When is the last time you have been in a Professional audio/video studio? a Quad Core chip isn't enough. They want multiple 6 or 8 core chips. Some of these places would take whatever you could give them in additional processing power. People working with 4K video? They need TONS of processing power.
Great post. Some people here are oblivious to the needs of anyone except themselves. I work in a small post-house with fifteen Macs, 5 of which are MacPros that are desperately in need of upgrading for running AE and DaVinci etc. FCS is struggling with HD, 2K and 4K files. We've already upgraded RAM and GPUs. This is a real need. However ineffectual a petition on FB may be, I can understand the concerns of those who started and 'signed' it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Povilas
Old farts you mean. Today a 16 year old kid can do stuff with an iMac and when shown you won't even be able to tell that 16 year old kid did it until someone tells you. That's how things are going to be now.
We have to draw a line between Avatar type Pro (huge films, many effects and so on) and editing some TV Show episode Pro which can be done using a MacBook Pro while on train to Utah.
You obviously have no idea of the hardware requirements of the professional design/production industry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hakime
"With Apple's Mac Pro line growing long in the tooth after not having received an update for almost two years"
This is basically the same amount of time that we have not seen any update from HP and Dell for their workstations. HP just released their new workstations with the new Sandy Bridge Xeons a few weeks ago and Dell has announced their new line of workstations also based on Sandy bridge Xeons a few days ago but they are not shipping yet. For HP and Dell, the time between the new offering and the previous one has been long, in fact as long as for the Mac Pro. I have already said many times here, but it seems that the AppleInsider editorial is all about sensationalism. The reason is the delay Intel took before they could ship the new Xeons. Like everyone else, Intel is putting more priority to the mobile market and the Xeon development cycle has slowed down significantly. The Xeon is a more complex chip, Intel is clearly not driving the development of the chip faster than a new generation every one and a half or two years. On top of that, the Sandy Bridge Xeons had a bug which delayed their market introduction by half a year.
Now, Apple does not talk about unreleased products but I don't believe that Apple is about to kill the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is profitable, small profits but profitable. Apple recognizes the need of the Mac Pro for its pro users, Apple employees themselves need this sort of machine. I guess it is a matter of days before we get some news about all the renewal of the Macs including the iMacs which are also pending for new release.
"The Cupertino, Calif., company upset a number of professional video editors last year with the release of Final Cut Pro X. Power users complained that the new release more closely resembled iMovie, Apple's entry-level video editing software, than previous versions of Final Cut Pro. AppleInsider exclusively reported in May 2010 that Apple was planning to make Final Cut more of a "prosumer" product, but the company promised at the time that its pro customers would "love" it."
I am sorry but your report was basically wrong. You can't argue that the new Final Cut was am iMovie like, this is just ridiculous. From the first release, it was already way more powerful. I don't believe that Apple intended to arm Final Cut users but the pain was necessary to transition from the old Final Cut that everyone in the market was asking to be replaced with something more modern. When Apple did, people cried scandal because some features were missing but this was necessary as Apple could not possibly introduce the product with just all previous features built-in somehow but it has to completely rethink the product by first introducing what they felt was new to the market. Since then, Apple has largely committed to satisfy pro users by pushing forward the product and they did it by bringing updates with powerful new features. And now, I don't think there is someone out there who can still argue that Final Cut Pro X is not for pro when in the same time the product offers multi cam editing up to 64 angles!!!!
Agreed. Apple isn't going to ditch the Mac Pro. I'm sure we will see an upgrade in the next month or so.
43 will do this, 36 will do that 197 will twiddle thumbs....
These are not numbers significant enough to register on the Appleometer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sennen
You obviously have no idea of the hardware requirements of the professional design/production industry.
You obviously haven't heard about professional bias have you? You are not as important as you might think you are. Current day so called professionals remind me of big city dwellers, when you put them in the wild they don't even know how to make fire. OMG where's my super duper crzy high tech laser fire maker.
If doesn't start my post with "I WORK FOR" or "I'VE BEEN WORKING" or "I HAD PRETTY MUCH EVERY MAC SINCE ..." doesn't mean i don't know anything. It however means that it's internet and no one gives a shit about what you do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
The 2nd generation MB, released in November 2006, received the option for the 6x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) drive. A month earlier the 3rd generation 15" MBP also received that same drive. Note that it still wasn't DVD±R DL with the 6x drives.
It wasn't for 1.5 years after the 15" MBP was first introduced, in June 2007, that they finally were able to add an 8x SuperDrive with DVD±DL like what had been available in the PowerBooks.
I'd say it's because of thinness of the new casings but the 17" MBPs started with the 8x Slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) right away and it was also 1" thick so there is clearly at least one other factor I haven't considered.
If I remember correctly, this was exactly the reason why they had to put a slower drive in the MBP to start out with. They were able to get the laptop so much thinner with the cooler chips they didn't have a superdrive that was thin enough to fit at the 8x speed.
As far as the MacPro goes...well Apple will release one when they're ready to release it. To be honest, they really haven't any much to work with up until now. I don't see the current line up as a stale product. I hope they keep the MacPro as well. I think its a viable product and while it may not be a big seller to them, I think its an important one. iMacs, while they do offer Core i7 processors, may be to fine for Photoshop and things like that are dogs when it comes to professional video editing. I'm no video editing expert, but I do know that this does require a tremendous amount of processing power to get anything done in a timely fashion, or at all. When you have 3D and 4K video, these requirements only get higher and higher.
I just want to comment on another typical usage of the Mac Pro besides video production, 3D production or CAD oriented workflow. I am talking about science and engineering.
For for those who believe that there is no need of a Mac Pro, I should give them an example of a real workflow:
- I work on geophysics, dealing with high performance computing involving the simulation of complex problems.
- Method used: finite element
- Language: C, Objective C , OpenCL and Fortran,
- Platform:
- Several Mac Pros with dual Xeons, 12 cores total.
- Memory on board: 64 GB of memory
- Storage on board: 4 TB
- Workflow: The simulations are run with a custom finite element code written in Fortran (a next generation code base written in Objective C/C is currently under development). The parallelization of the code is done with OpenMPI (as it allows to dispatch work on all machines on the network) so EVERY SINGLE core is being used. The simulation itself eat up above 50 GB of RAM. Yes, only one simulation!!!
- The post processing of the data are done with a custom code written in C and OpenCL which takes advantage of the Radeon HD 5870 to speed up the calculation. So by definition we need to have access to better and more powerful GPUs than what is available on iMacs and are only available on a Mac Pro.
- One simulation generates hundred of gigabytes of data. As a result terabytes of data are produced by successive simulations, data which are stored in large disks connected via firewire 800 to the Mac Pros for backing up the data if the results are acceptable.
Here you have it, this is my workflow. And as we keep studying bigger and more complex problems, we need again and again more powerful Mac Pros with higher processing power and better technology. This allows us to do things that would only be possible with much more expensive hardware, typically a supercomputer of a small size.
Anyone still saying that no one needs a Mac Pro?
The problem with "small profits" is companies won't really miss them if they decide to kill off the product.
Are there pros who need thie extra power and capabilities of a MacPro? Absolutely. However, sales of Mac Pros are smaller than a rounding error in comparison to Apple's main products.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Orlando
The problem with "small profits" is companies won't really miss them if they decide to kill off the product.
This is somewhat true but in the same time they take the risk of killing a complete ecosystem of pro apps that do make significant profits.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hakime
I just want to comment on another typical usage of the Mac Pro besides video production, 3D production or CAD oriented workflow. I am talking about science and engineering.
For for those who believe that there is no need of a Mac Pro, I should give them an example of a real workflow:
- I work on geophycics, dealing with high performance computing involving the simulation of complex problems.
- Method used: finite element
- Language: C, Objective C , OpenCL and Fortran,
- Platform:
- Several Mac Pros with dual Xeons, 12 cores total.
- Memory on board: 64 GB of memory
- Storage on board: 4 TB
- Workflow: The simulations are run with a custom finite element code written in Fortran (a next generation code base written in Objective C/C is currently under development). The parallelization of the code is done with OpenMPI (as it allows to dispatch work on all machines on the network) so EVERY SINGLE core is being used. The simulation itself east up above 50 GB of RAM. Yes, only one simulation!!!
- The post processing of the data are done with a custom code written in C and OpenCL which takes advantage of the Radeon HD 5870 to speed up the calculation. So by definition we need to have access to better and more powerful GPUs than what is available on iMacs and are only available on a Mac Pro.
- The simulations generates hundred of gigabytes of data. As a result terabytes of data are produced by successive simulations, data which are stored in large disks connected via firewire 800 to the Mac Pros for backing up the data if the results are acceptable.
Here you have it, this is my workflow. And as we keep studying bigger and more complex problems, we need again and again more powerful Mac Pros with higher processing power and better technology. This allows us to do things that would only be possible with much more expensive hardware, typically a supercomputer of a small size.
Anyone still saying that no one needs a Mac Pro?
No one is saying there is no need for such machine, some however are saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines as well if you really think about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Povilas
No one is saying there is no need for such machine, some however are saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines as well if you really think about it.
Oh yes, I have seen not only in AppleInsider forums but somewhere else like in MacWorld, people arguing that the Mac Pro is not needed anymore therefore implying that no one needs it anymore.
And when it comes to people saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines, I am sorry but usually people don't really understand what is the matter here, referring to "many of the tasks" as a dummy argument rather than a real argument. Simply because they have no idea on what tasks really is the Mac Pro used for.
Dumbest post in the world....
And I hope you agree with me that I can think about it as well as I can, I can't avoid but to conclude that there is no way I can do my daily work on another machine than the Mac Pro. No way, Right?
I agree. We use Mac clusters for problems of comparable complexity, especially 1D, 2D and the occasional 3D simulation. Quicker and cheaper than running on the massively parallel machines if we don't have to. I'd be sorry to lose that option.
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