It's rather funny, the two options people do have in purchasing a Mac Pro.
There are two options:
You can invest the $3,500+ and by a really nice model. Then after 3 years, loose approximately $1,500 on eBay and get $2,000 back, that's after eBay and PayPal taxes and fees. After this you can buy a new Mac Pro (or whatever top notch computer specs you want) for $3,500 again, in effect only costing you $1,500 to buy that new Mac Pro-ish Machine. With this method you have the current best of the best, and your power level goes down year after year but is supercharged when you sell and re-up.
<or>
You can wait for a model drop in price over the years, like some do with the 2009. If you shop around you can probably get a 2009 for $1,500. So now you have a machine that is 3 years down the slope, but only costs you $1,500. After your 3 year period, the machine is (6 years old) probably worth selling on eBay for $500. In effect this rotation will cost you $1,000 every 3 years to get your "new" 3 year old machine.
So you have:
$3500 - $1500 loss = $2000 + $1500 spent = $3500 - $1500 = $2000, etc wash rinse repeat, you essentially invest $2000 to have current power (0-3 year old), and then $1500 to "supercharge" every 3 years.
<or>
$1500 - $1000 loss = $500 + $1000 spent = $1500 - $1000 = $500, etc wash rinse repeat, you invest $500 for always having 3-6 year old power, and then spend $1000 to "charge" every 3 years.
So yeah at some point you have to drop a $2000 investment, but you can always have the fastest and latest machine for $1500 every three years, or you can have something slower by a 3 year factor for $1000 every 3 years
I for one don't believe using a 3 year old machine, if you are using it for work, not investing that $2000 versus $500, so you can upgrade for almost the same as the 3 year old option is not wise. The speed over the course of 3 years pays for itself in the first cycle.
You just have to decide what you want to do and I guess can do. I have been doing the old wait for the Mac Pro (Tower), but buy Current MacBook Pro (Laptop), this way my Desktop and Laptop are around the same speed and I don't feel any sluggishness when working with either one. I am changing this motif tho, because of the making money aspect, and I am not selling my old Mac Pros.
Good Luck...
But I mean honestly, isn't Apple GIVING us ample time to save for the Mac Pro 2013? And why wouldn't you want to...
I hate to reply to my own message but after typing this out I just realized something that PC guys have been doing for years.
Most PC guys instead of dropping, the
$1000 for the Case and Dual Socket Motherboard
$1000 for the 1st Processor
$1000 for the 2nd Processor
$500 for the RAM, HD and misc
$300 for the Video Card
----------
$3800
They wait a year, and buy
$350 processor with the fastest GHz
$100 for the Motherboard
$50 for the Case
$200 for RAM, HD and misc
$100 for a Video Card (Year Old PC Version, but fastest)
----------
$800
and for that $800 they say to themselves they have the fast machine
But in all sincerity it's a "Year Old waited on parts to drop a little" machine, and not the Fastest, Latest, and Greatest, especially in a Cores conversation...
Then they sit back and say why would I spend all that money on a Mac when I can build a PC, blah... If they wanted to build the Latest Fast PC it would cost around the $500 less than a new Mac Pro at best, but that's it.
Older computers are only scary to computer illiterate folks.
You don't know what a computer has been through though. A computer could be water damaged but still work and then fail after a month of use. You could get a machine like a 2008 Macbook Pro with a defective GPU that has just been repaired and it fails after a couple of months. There is the potential to lose a lot of money on a used machine.
I noticed later in your post you argued that mobile graphics in the iMac are just fine? Whoa, that's some serious denial man. Having the option to upgrade a computer's video card can add years of life to it, or simply make using it more enjoyable. Even some Adobe Lightroom plugins are GPU accelerated.
The GPUs are still fast when you get them though. Here is a test between the lower-end mobile GPUs and the desktop ones:
The 650M is about 1/3 the speed of the 570/580 and the 680MX is about 3x faster than the 650M so it's in league with the desktop cards. You're right you can't upgrade the GPU easily as it's an MXM GPU and the screen is glued in but how often would you upgrade a GPU? Not likely before 3 years at which time it's perfectly ok to get a new iMac.
The argument in favor of the iMac always seems to boil down to "it's good enough". That's a fine argument for something like the Mini, but most people I know who drop $2000+ on a computer want something more than "good enough". That an upgraded 2009 Mac Pro can still smoke a current high end iMac only illustrates how great the Mac Pro is and how crippled the iMac is.
It doesn't smoke a high-end iMac, it's pretty much the same speed and it's not really a 2009 Mac Pro when you have a 2011 processor in it. All you've demonstrated is you can buy a 4 year old desktop, a 2 year old processor and pay roughly the same price to get around the same performance as an attractive AIO with a 27" IPS display and instead end up with a giant metal 40lb box with no warranty and a cheap Dell display attached.
It clearly is a setup you prefer, which is fine and I'm with you to a degree on the upgradability but you've shown it's not a route Apple should go down. It's great for you as a buyer but it made them zero profit. If they even sold a quad-i7 desktop tower with PCI slots for $1499, it would be an option for a few people but the volumes would be so low and they only make the margins on the parts in the box because people won't spend another $1000 on their display. If they do, they'd have been better off with the iMac as it's the same panel.
People (including me) always argue that Apple should do something that they want under the assumption that this want represents a large volume of people but you have to look at the sales data that is all over the place now. The volume in this market is so low now. Workstation shipments are 1 million per quarter worldwide. Consumer desktop growth is flat-lining and the biggest manufacturers want to jump ship and you say to Apple, hop on board. They've been at this a long time and they're going to do what they've always done and take the path that stretches out the furthest.
I think buyers of the 2012-13 Mac Pros will be the first Pro buyers to actually regret their purchase.
What, the new model, or the model on sale now?
It's the 2010 Mac Pro still now. If you haven't been regretting it for a while, you're not in the "regret this sort of thing" market in the first place.
I forgot to address this. There are some okay external solutions. Most of the good ones exist at much higher price points even without adding the hard drives. At the very least you need external backup devices, so you'll always be impacted by these things to some degree. I'd just avoid the lacies and g-raids of the world. Ideally you want something with decent airflow and some kind of drive monitoring. The internal bays are a better solution for budget configurations. The only good external solutions tend to be quite expensive.
Apple could get in on this market. They make an external optical drive but seem to rely on 3rd parties for external drives. They maybe don't want to step on their toes too much. I expect the prices of the Thunderbolt products to come down as the chips get cheaper. Lacie has managed to get it down to a $50 premium over USB 3.
"Today Intel made a sobering, but not entirely unexpected announcement: over the next 3 years Intel will be ramping down its own desktop motherboard business. We will see Haswell motherboards from the group, but that will be the last official hurrah. Most of the folks who worked in Intel's surprisingly small desktop motherboard division will move on to other groups within Intel that can use their talents. There's also the obvious motivation: the desktop PC business isn't exactly booming. Late last year word spread of Intel's plans for making Broadwell (14nm Core microprocessor in 2014) BGA-only. While we'll continue to see socketed CPUs beyond that, the cadence will be slower than what we're used to. The focus going forward will be on highly integrated designs, even for the desktop (think all-in-ones, thin mini-ITX, NUC, etc...). Couple that reality with low board margins and exiting the desktop motherboard business all of the sudden doesn't sound like a bad idea for Intel. In the long run, it does highlight the importance of having a business not completely tied to desktop PC motherboard sales."
USB3 can always be added later, but not having Thunderbolt on board really does make these machines kind of disposable.
Yes, because these days it's hard to find a peripheral that doesn't require Thunderbolt, LOL!
TB at this point is just Apple marketing. There are plenty of alternate solutions that are as good or better, and many that are as good are also cheaper. With USB 3.0 SuperSpeed or whatever it's called debuting, TB may well die a quick and painful death anyways.
"Today Intel made a sobering, but not entirely unexpected announcement: over the next 3 years Intel will be ramping down its own desktop motherboard business.
… Thunderbolt. But… what happens? How do they enforce its adoption? Enforce is the right word.
They probably will force it on their mobile line and that's really where the bulk of the sales are. They'll probably just expect that desktop manufacturers will opt for it for compatibility.
I'm wondering if they'll eventually ramp down desktop chip production altogether. They keep lowering the TDPs and eventually the maximum will be low enough to go in a laptop so they don't need to make both desktop and laptop chips. They can still allow the chips to scale in TDP for larger form factors. I think Intel makes too many chip variations.
But the situation will be much different in two years. And a Mac Pro is supposed to last for at least four years.
It may be different, but TB cable costs will be a huge adoption barrier. Even if production advances cut cable costs in half (not likely), consumers will be faced with deciding between expensive TB peripherals and cables, and cheaper USB 3.0 "super speed" that is nearly as fast. For 95% of all consumer uses, the USB solution will be just as good.
Apple's TB display is a desperate attempt to push TB on users and will very likely fail. It offers few advantages over a Mini DisplayPort display with a USB 3.0 hub, and for the cost of a single TB cable people can buy an external USB 3.0 HDD enclosure (cables included). As a hub station for a laptop it's a good idea, but a $1000 laptop hub is not going to take computing markets by storm. Apple should have offered a more practical stand alone TB hub for users who prefer to use it with a cheaper display or to simply use their laptop display while connecting a MacBook to the hub for greater connectivity options.
Will TB completely disappear? Probably not, but it will remain a speciality item much like Firewire 800 was, but with less market penetration.
As for a Mac Pro with internal PCIe expansion slots, there's little need for TB. Apple could skip it and pro content creators wouldn't miss it at all. It's not even a good solution for external RAID volumes fast enough to support 4K editing.
As for a Mac Pro with internal PCIe expansion slots, there's little need for TB. Apple could skip it and pro content creators wouldn't miss it at all. It's not even a good solution for external RAID volumes fast enough to support 4K editing.
Thunderbolt is fast enough for 4K, you'll have to push your artificial barrier a bit higher. If you manage to get RAID 0 SSD topping 1GB per second, you'd be able to handle at least 10x 4K streams. They can skip it in the Mac Pro though. I'd rather they went with multiple 20Gbps ports but if they can't do it yet, a PCI slot will work. Either route is good IMO, it'll end up as something like Thunderbolt regardless.
Thunderbolt is fast enough for 4K, you'll have to push your artificial barrier a bit higher. If you manage to get RAID 0 SSD topping 1GB per second, you'd be able to handle at least 10x 4K streams. They can skip it in the Mac Pro though. I'd rather they went with multiple 20Gbps ports but if they can't do it yet, a PCI slot will work. Either route is good IMO, it'll end up as something like Thunderbolt regardless.
Part of the issue there is to gain certification it has to be hot pluggable and meet certain criteria. People keep predicting things like eGPUs where I don't expect them unless driven by shifts from Windows. I'm not entirely sure how the discrete graphics market will shake out. You'll eventually see integrated on pretty much everything, but discrete graphics could still be included on higher end systems. I just don't see a big market for it on Macs when I draw out a matrix of possible configurations between models, look at what is currently included compared to a mid range solution in some kind of breakout box. I say midrange as there's no way you'd get a 200W card into such a thing without it becoming cost prohibitive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacTac
I would gladly pay $1500 for an iMac inside a case with some expansion that did not include a built in monitor.
I'm willing to pay more for OSX and Apple.
Just the same I am not going to buy something from Apple if it doesn't meet my needs and wants.
Right now I'm not buying.
I'm with you on this, but desktops in general are pretty weak at the moment. Contrary to the site's belief, workstations are in better health than the consumer desktop. Their numbers are reasonably stable, where the consumer desktop has been turning into a relic. Gaming was one of its last strong points, and a lot of games don't put out the same demands today. They're often tuned to run okay on notebooks and console ports.
I'm with you on this, but desktops in general are pretty weak at the moment. Contrary to the site's belief, workstations are in better health than the consumer desktop. Their numbers are reasonably stable, where the consumer desktop has been turning into a relic. Gaming was one of its last strong points, and a lot of games don't put out the same demands today. They're often tuned to run okay on notebooks and console ports.
Bang on the nail, hmm ! A very concise summation of the workstation at the moment.
My concern is that I can see Apple dropping the MacPro for those very reasons - just not enough potential. But I want them to stick with it so the OS will still support the higher end configurations. If they drop the MP, what else would drop out of the OS over time ?
As I see it Apple has to offer something decent for the desktop as it adds credibility and shows a commitment to Macs and Mac OS as ongoing products. The problem is that neither the Mini nor the Mac Pro are configured well to serve a market where desktops are in less demand. Poor sales of the Mini and the Pro really has little to do with the general decline in "PC" sales, it has far more to do with the poor value the machines represent even when measured against Apples other products.
Bang on the nail, hmm ! A very concise summation of the workstation at the moment.
My concern is that I can see Apple dropping the MacPro for those very reasons - just not enough potential.
As the Pro is currently designed this is certainly the case. The Pro has only really been a valid machine for those that can justify the higher end versions and the performance those machines offered for the price. Effectively this put a big gap in Apples desktop lineup with the Mini very far behind capability wise. Apple really needs to make a desktop machine that is affordable and justifiable to a far wider array of customers. So while I don't dismiss market factors in the Pros decline, I see a far bigger issue with how it is marketed and placed in Apples lineup. In a nut shell the Pro costs too damn much for what most customers want or need in a desktop machine.
But I want them to stick with it so the OS will still support the higher end configurations. If they drop the MP, what else would drop out of the OS over time ?
This is a huge issue but frankly doesn't require a "Pro" sized machine to accomplish these days. Apple needs a much smaller chassis that can be marketed competitively at $1500 as a midrange machine and at whatever $$$$ for a high performance machine. The Pro has inflated in price to the point that it simply can't be justified for what many users need out of a desktop.
Comments
It's rather funny, the two options people do have in purchasing a Mac Pro.
There are two options:
You can invest the $3,500+ and by a really nice model. Then after 3 years, loose approximately $1,500 on eBay and get $2,000 back, that's after eBay and PayPal taxes and fees. After this you can buy a new Mac Pro (or whatever top notch computer specs you want) for $3,500 again, in effect only costing you $1,500 to buy that new Mac Pro-ish Machine. With this method you have the current best of the best, and your power level goes down year after year but is supercharged when you sell and re-up.
<or>
You can wait for a model drop in price over the years, like some do with the 2009. If you shop around you can probably get a 2009 for $1,500. So now you have a machine that is 3 years down the slope, but only costs you $1,500. After your 3 year period, the machine is (6 years old) probably worth selling on eBay for $500. In effect this rotation will cost you $1,000 every 3 years to get your "new" 3 year old machine.
So you have:
$3500 - $1500 loss = $2000 + $1500 spent = $3500 - $1500 = $2000, etc wash rinse repeat, you essentially invest $2000 to have current power (0-3 year old), and then $1500 to "supercharge" every 3 years.
<or>
$1500 - $1000 loss = $500 + $1000 spent = $1500 - $1000 = $500, etc wash rinse repeat, you invest $500 for always having 3-6 year old power, and then spend $1000 to "charge" every 3 years.
So yeah at some point you have to drop a $2000 investment, but you can always have the fastest and latest machine for $1500 every three years, or you can have something slower by a 3 year factor for $1000 every 3 years
http://imageshack.us/a/img69/7706/macprocosts.png
I for one don't believe using a 3 year old machine, if you are using it for work, not investing that $2000 versus $500, so you can upgrade for almost the same as the 3 year old option is not wise. The speed over the course of 3 years pays for itself in the first cycle.
You just have to decide what you want to do and I guess can do. I have been doing the old wait for the Mac Pro (Tower), but buy Current MacBook Pro (Laptop), this way my Desktop and Laptop are around the same speed and I don't feel any sluggishness when working with either one. I am changing this motif tho, because of the making money aspect, and I am not selling my old Mac Pros.
Good Luck...
But I mean honestly, isn't Apple GIVING us ample time to save for the Mac Pro 2013? And why wouldn't you want to...
I hate to reply to my own message but after typing this out I just realized something that PC guys have been doing for years.
Most PC guys instead of dropping, the
$1000 for the Case and Dual Socket Motherboard
$1000 for the 1st Processor
$1000 for the 2nd Processor
$500 for the RAM, HD and misc
$300 for the Video Card
----------
$3800
They wait a year, and buy
$350 processor with the fastest GHz
$100 for the Motherboard
$50 for the Case
$200 for RAM, HD and misc
$100 for a Video Card (Year Old PC Version, but fastest)
----------
$800
and for that $800 they say to themselves they have the fast machine
But in all sincerity it's a "Year Old waited on parts to drop a little" machine, and not the Fastest, Latest, and Greatest, especially in a Cores conversation...
Then they sit back and say why would I spend all that money on a Mac when I can build a PC, blah... If they wanted to build the Latest Fast PC it would cost around the $500 less than a new Mac Pro at best, but that's it.
But this is a different topic.
Laters...
You don't know what a computer has been through though. A computer could be water damaged but still work and then fail after a month of use. You could get a machine like a 2008 Macbook Pro with a defective GPU that has just been repaired and it fails after a couple of months. There is the potential to lose a lot of money on a used machine.
The GPUs are still fast when you get them though. Here is a test between the lower-end mobile GPUs and the desktop ones:
http://www.barefeats.com/aecs6.html
The 650M is about 1/3 the speed of the 570/580 and the 680MX is about 3x faster than the 650M so it's in league with the desktop cards. You're right you can't upgrade the GPU easily as it's an MXM GPU and the screen is glued in but how often would you upgrade a GPU? Not likely before 3 years at which time it's perfectly ok to get a new iMac.
It doesn't smoke a high-end iMac, it's pretty much the same speed and it's not really a 2009 Mac Pro when you have a 2011 processor in it. All you've demonstrated is you can buy a 4 year old desktop, a 2 year old processor and pay roughly the same price to get around the same performance as an attractive AIO with a 27" IPS display and instead end up with a giant metal 40lb box with no warranty and a cheap Dell display attached.
It clearly is a setup you prefer, which is fine and I'm with you to a degree on the upgradability but you've shown it's not a route Apple should go down. It's great for you as a buyer but it made them zero profit. If they even sold a quad-i7 desktop tower with PCI slots for $1499, it would be an option for a few people but the volumes would be so low and they only make the margins on the parts in the box because people won't spend another $1000 on their display. If they do, they'd have been better off with the iMac as it's the same panel.
People (including me) always argue that Apple should do something that they want under the assumption that this want represents a large volume of people but you have to look at the sales data that is all over the place now. The volume in this market is so low now. Workstation shipments are 1 million per quarter worldwide. Consumer desktop growth is flat-lining and the biggest manufacturers want to jump ship and you say to Apple, hop on board. They've been at this a long time and they're going to do what they've always done and take the path that stretches out the furthest.
Just looked at the Apple Store. It is difficult to fathom that Apple could allow sales of the current Pro for the next 6-9 months.
USB3 can always be added later, but not having Thunderbolt on board really does make these machines kind of disposable.
If Cook knew the upgrade was going to take a year or more, why didn't they just drop first-gen Thunderbolt in last fall?
I think buyers of the 2012-13 Mac Pros will be the first Pro buyers to actually regret their purchase.
Originally Posted by Frank777
I think buyers of the 2012-13 Mac Pros will be the first Pro buyers to actually regret their purchase.
What, the new model, or the model on sale now?
It's the 2010 Mac Pro still now. If you haven't been regretting it for a while, you're not in the "regret this sort of thing" market in the first place.
I mean the model that's on sale now. For those that buy it this year without knowing.
While we're plugged in to the news, I'm sure there are a small number of converts from windows that will buy it.
Originally Posted by Frank777
For those that buy it this year without knowing.
If you don't know, you don't care, and you're getting a machine that you'll be happy with anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
So you want an iMac without the display, not a Mac Pro.
You can get 6TB eSATA for $485 add it to the 1-3TB Fusion drive inside:
http://www.amazon.com/G-Technology-G-RAID-Dual-External-Drive/dp/B004E9SGWM
This is probably a better example as you don't need a TB-eSATA or USB3-eSATA adaptor:
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10598
I forgot to address this. There are some okay external solutions. Most of the good ones exist at much higher price points even without adding the hard drives. At the very least you need external backup devices, so you'll always be impacted by these things to some degree. I'd just avoid the lacies and g-raids of the world. Ideally you want something with decent airflow and some kind of drive monitoring. The internal bays are a better solution for budget configurations. The only good external solutions tend to be quite expensive.
They tend to have decent enough airflow and you'd backup the data.
There's also the WD drives:
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Thunderbolt-External-Dual-Drive-Storage/dp/B006W3ZXJC
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Thunderbolt-External-Dual-Drive-Storage/dp/B008S94HX6
and cheap USB 3 enclosures:
http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-Dual-Single-Enclosure-HUR1-SU3S2/dp/B004L637P4
http://www.amazon.com/Sans-Digital-TowerRAID-TR4UT-Hardware/dp/B004WNLPGE
Apple could get in on this market. They make an external optical drive but seem to rely on 3rd parties for external drives. They maybe don't want to step on their toes too much. I expect the prices of the Thunderbolt products to come down as the chips get cheaper. Lacie has managed to get it down to a $50 premium over USB 3.
We will see Haswell motherboards from the group, but that will be the last official hurrah.
Most of the folks who worked in Intel's surprisingly small desktop motherboard division will move on to other groups within Intel that can use their talents.
There's also the obvious motivation: the desktop PC business isn't exactly booming. Late last year word spread of Intel's plans for making Broadwell (14nm Core microprocessor in 2014) BGA-only. While we'll continue to see socketed CPUs beyond that, the cadence will be slower than what we're used to. The focus going forward will be on highly integrated designs, even for the desktop (think all-in-ones, thin mini-ITX, NUC, etc...). Couple that reality with low board margins and exiting the desktop motherboard business all of the sudden doesn't sound like a bad idea for Intel.
In the long run, it does highlight the importance of having a business not completely tied to desktop PC motherboard sales."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6685/the-end-of-an-era-intels-desktop-motherboard-business-to-ramp-down-over-next-3-years
It won't directly affect Apple as the Mac Pro motherboard will be custom built too but it's a sign of the times.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
USB3 can always be added later, but not having Thunderbolt on board really does make these machines kind of disposable.
Yes, because these days it's hard to find a peripheral that doesn't require Thunderbolt, LOL!
TB at this point is just Apple marketing. There are plenty of alternate solutions that are as good or better, and many that are as good are also cheaper. With USB 3.0 SuperSpeed or whatever it's called debuting, TB may well die a quick and painful death anyways.
Originally Posted by Marvin
"Today Intel made a sobering, but not entirely unexpected announcement: over the next 3 years Intel will be ramping down its own desktop motherboard business.
… Thunderbolt. But… what happens? How do they enforce its adoption? Enforce is the right word.
It doesn't look like they will in all cases - even their NUC will have models with and without Thunderbolt:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6444/intels-next-unit-of-computing-hands-on
They probably will force it on their mobile line and that's really where the bulk of the sales are. They'll probably just expect that desktop manufacturers will opt for it for compatibility.
I'm wondering if they'll eventually ramp down desktop chip production altogether. They keep lowering the TDPs and eventually the maximum will be low enough to go in a laptop so they don't need to make both desktop and laptop chips. They can still allow the chips to scale in TDP for larger form factors. I think Intel makes too many chip variations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg
Yes, because these days it's hard to find a peripheral that doesn't require Thunderbolt, LOL!
But the situation will be much different in two years. And a Mac Pro is supposed to last for at least four years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
But the situation will be much different in two years. And a Mac Pro is supposed to last for at least four years.
It may be different, but TB cable costs will be a huge adoption barrier. Even if production advances cut cable costs in half (not likely), consumers will be faced with deciding between expensive TB peripherals and cables, and cheaper USB 3.0 "super speed" that is nearly as fast. For 95% of all consumer uses, the USB solution will be just as good.
Apple's TB display is a desperate attempt to push TB on users and will very likely fail. It offers few advantages over a Mini DisplayPort display with a USB 3.0 hub, and for the cost of a single TB cable people can buy an external USB 3.0 HDD enclosure (cables included). As a hub station for a laptop it's a good idea, but a $1000 laptop hub is not going to take computing markets by storm. Apple should have offered a more practical stand alone TB hub for users who prefer to use it with a cheaper display or to simply use their laptop display while connecting a MacBook to the hub for greater connectivity options.
Will TB completely disappear? Probably not, but it will remain a speciality item much like Firewire 800 was, but with less market penetration.
As for a Mac Pro with internal PCIe expansion slots, there's little need for TB. Apple could skip it and pro content creators wouldn't miss it at all. It's not even a good solution for external RAID volumes fast enough to support 4K editing.
Thunderbolt is fast enough for 4K, you'll have to push your artificial barrier a bit higher. If you manage to get RAID 0 SSD topping 1GB per second, you'd be able to handle at least 10x 4K streams. They can skip it in the Mac Pro though. I'd rather they went with multiple 20Gbps ports but if they can't do it yet, a PCI slot will work. Either route is good IMO, it'll end up as something like Thunderbolt regardless.
I would gladly pay $1500 for an iMac inside a case with some expansion that did not include a built in monitor.
I'm willing to pay more for OSX and Apple.
Just the same I am not going to buy something from Apple if it doesn't meet my needs and wants.
Right now I'm not buying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Thunderbolt is fast enough for 4K, you'll have to push your artificial barrier a bit higher. If you manage to get RAID 0 SSD topping 1GB per second, you'd be able to handle at least 10x 4K streams. They can skip it in the Mac Pro though. I'd rather they went with multiple 20Gbps ports but if they can't do it yet, a PCI slot will work. Either route is good IMO, it'll end up as something like Thunderbolt regardless.
Part of the issue there is to gain certification it has to be hot pluggable and meet certain criteria. People keep predicting things like eGPUs where I don't expect them unless driven by shifts from Windows. I'm not entirely sure how the discrete graphics market will shake out. You'll eventually see integrated on pretty much everything, but discrete graphics could still be included on higher end systems. I just don't see a big market for it on Macs when I draw out a matrix of possible configurations between models, look at what is currently included compared to a mid range solution in some kind of breakout box. I say midrange as there's no way you'd get a 200W card into such a thing without it becoming cost prohibitive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacTac
I would gladly pay $1500 for an iMac inside a case with some expansion that did not include a built in monitor.
I'm willing to pay more for OSX and Apple.
Just the same I am not going to buy something from Apple if it doesn't meet my needs and wants.
Right now I'm not buying.
I'm with you on this, but desktops in general are pretty weak at the moment. Contrary to the site's belief, workstations are in better health than the consumer desktop. Their numbers are reasonably stable, where the consumer desktop has been turning into a relic. Gaming was one of its last strong points, and a lot of games don't put out the same demands today. They're often tuned to run okay on notebooks and console ports.
Bang on the nail, hmm ! A very concise summation of the workstation at the moment.
My concern is that I can see Apple dropping the MacPro for those very reasons - just not enough potential. But I want them to stick with it so the OS will still support the higher end configurations. If they drop the MP, what else would drop out of the OS over time ?
As the Pro is currently designed this is certainly the case. The Pro has only really been a valid machine for those that can justify the higher end versions and the performance those machines offered for the price. Effectively this put a big gap in Apples desktop lineup with the Mini very far behind capability wise. Apple really needs to make a desktop machine that is affordable and justifiable to a far wider array of customers. So while I don't dismiss market factors in the Pros decline, I see a far bigger issue with how it is marketed and placed in Apples lineup. In a nut shell the Pro costs too damn much for what most customers want or need in a desktop machine.
This is a huge issue but frankly doesn't require a "Pro" sized machine to accomplish these days. Apple needs a much smaller chassis that can be marketed competitively at $1500 as a midrange machine and at whatever $$$$ for a high performance machine. The Pro has inflated in price to the point that it simply can't be justified for what many users need out of a desktop.