Yes there is a real need among Mac Pro users for magnetic storage to handle bulk needs. However that isn't everybody. Further it should be fairly easy to implement a rather large SSD in a Mac Pro given the pricing structure of the machine. Many Pro users would be very happy with a 512 GB or 1 TB SSD sitting on the PCI Express bus.
They could probably do this. I have no idea what Apple pays for ssds, but their pricing so far has been fairly aggressive. It's difficult for me to suggest any hypothetical situations where spending $3850 to include 4 x 512GB ssds makes financial sense when you could spec out an impressive hardware RAID for that amount of money. It seems even sillier when you consider the warranty limit is 3 years. Some of the Samsung drives carry 5 year warranties, although I'm not sure how the quality of warranty service compares between the two.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Why is it every single time we talk about a more cost effective replacement for the Mac Pro we get these idiotic posts???? Wake up and smell the coffee, the Mac Pro is on skid row, it sales have dropped like a rock. Why? Simple it offers no value what so ever at the low end as such the market can not sustain strong sales of the Mac Pro as a whole.
As to slots I agree 100%, however you don't need a box the size of the Mac Pro to support a few PCI Express cards. A good portion of the space in the current Mac Pro is totally wasted, so even if you deliver today capabilities you can go with a much smaller box. Refactor the machine a bit and the space the Mac Pro takes up can be trimmed even more.
Why? Why do you need a huge box for a workstation class machine. Nobody has come up with a rational response to this question. To put it simply you don't. A Mac Pro can get by find on a single socket these days when combined with a modern GPU card. Add a bit of super computing networking and you can have as many sockets as you could rationally want. A strong clustering technology would do far more for high end computing than the current Mac Pro, especially if Apple can get the nodes into the $1500 range.
I see this as more an issue of desire. They may have decided to push what they already offer at the $1000-200 realm. There's nothing in that box that inherently makes it that much more expensive to manufacture. Regarding the post you replied to, there should be an understanding that the mac pro encompasses a pretty wide range. Its base offering would need to carry the volume, and it's a significantly weaker value than that it has been in the past for a few reasons. One is that some things that used to require the fastest hardware run reasonably well on much lighter rigs without choking constantly. Some software has simply been softer in terms of gains in X86 based demands. I don't think they'd need to change anything to get the price lower if they wanted it there. If you look at what was retailed from 2006 until early 2009, the cpus used would have been $1400 (2 x $700) retail (as in off newegg) in 2006 and 2 x $800 in 2008 (although that one cost $2800). They dropped back to W3520s on the base model in 2009, so one $300 cpu with the backplane + daughterboard configuration so that parts could be reused across the dual models as well. They cut way back on costs, but the price stayed basically static, actually gaining $200 as they year before a single E5462 configuration was only $2300. I've mentioned this before as to evidence in terms of why I'm skeptical about a change in direction. In terms of the fully upgraded 12 core models, those are arguably different prospective buyers. My impression was that they wanted to drop the mac pro, so they've been positioning things this way for years.
As far as PCI cards are concerned, that's another thing. Many of those available for Mountain Lion either lack really stable supported drivers or they're extremely expensive. They've been relegated to mostly specialty hardware. The exception is that some of NVidia's line is supported directly by NVidia in ML where it wasn't before. This isn't so much a debate about the validity of PCI cards. I'm just saying that OSX at this point lacks a really healthy market in terms of third party addon hardware that works as intended. If we're talking about the super high end and RED Rocket or Kona cards, those actually work as intended. There is basically nothing available that is worth using $200. A popular one used to be eSATA. I remember you hate eSATA. If you were looking for a Roc or SAS HBA or something like that, you're back in the $700+ realm.
Anyway you are right that they could change their minds. I don't buy into Apple has never been cheap. They have always chased growth markets. Note personal computing, mp3 players, smartphones, consumer tablet devices, digital content distribution (they make more off itunes than they ever did through boxed software sales going by some of the posted pie charts).
We get it. I think Apple gets it. Understanding your wants doesn't entail compliance to satisfying those wants. Knowing there's a market doesn't mean the market is big enough to be worth chasing. They've chosen not to enter the "xMac" market. They've left that market roughly eight years ago, and market for tower desktops is diminishing.
I think the future demand for an xMac is questionable anyway, the available selection of add-in cards for Macs has always been pretty weak even going back 20 years, and generally painfully more expensive than equivalent cards for Windows boxes. A "tinkerer's" Mac doesn't sound like a big draw either, as MacOS really isn't a tinkerer's OS, there's Linux for that, and Windows is often a power tinkerer's choice OS too. Really, xMac isn't a consumer product but rather an enthusiast product. Kind of like how Alienware is now the Enthusiast's Dell computer. I don't think tinkerers and gamers are enough for Apple, especially as it easily cannibalizes their workstation line.
I think this pretty much reflects Apple's thinking.
And all the yacking on here won't change it.
I think the 'best hope' for an 'X-Mac' of any kind is a 'sanely' priced Mac Pro at £1495 with 680Mx as standard to push up unit sales again. Bundle in the SSD and you buy the monitor from Apple. They still get over 2k... For me, it's a BTO iMac spec minus the monitor.
Next up? 2K+ for the dual models.
I don't see any thing beyond that.
If you're Wizard? Wait until Mac Mini has the improved onboard Haswell gnu. I think that's as close as we're ever going to get to the 'Cube' reborn. (It sure will out perform one...or the base Mac Pro? :P )
I'm not tied to anyone form factor. I also realize that the steady march forward with respect to processor technology will make for a very interesting Mini in the future. That might be with Haswell or more likely whatever comes after Haswell. The problem is that even that future Mini will be a relatively low performance machine when put up against higher performance machines available at the same time. Workstation like computing power still requires and will continue to require more volume and power capacity than can be had in the Mini. That will be the case this year and in the year 2020.
Me, I could see myself being satisfied with a Haswell based Mini as long as Apple doesn't castrate it on purpose like it has with so many of the Minis in the past. That is also dependent upon Intel actually delivering the goods with respect to hardware and driver support. Driver support here means everything works, 3D is respectable and OpenCL is decent. Currently Intel sucks on all three counts so there is a bit of hopefulness in this desire to see a Haswell Mini.
Now if an XMac like machine came out I probably wouldn't even think about a Mini no matter what it had. The simple fact is that an XMac as described by various people in these forums would be a far better purchase if a decent model could be had for under $1500! It really doesn't matter if it is a cube, pizza box or something else all together. As long as it delivers a decent GPU, easy storage expansion/access and a slot or two I'd be very happy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.
I think this pretty much reflects Apple's thinking.
And all the yacking on here won't change it.
I think the 'best hope' for an 'X-Mac' of any kind is a 'sanely' priced Mac Pro at £1495 with 680Mx as standard to push up unit sales again. Bundle in the SSD and you buy the monitor from Apple. They still get over 2k... For me, it's a BTO iMac spec minus the monitor.
Next up? 2K+ for the dual models.
I don't see any thing beyond that.
If you're Wizard? Wait until Mac Mini has the improved onboard Haswell gnu. I think that's as close as we're ever going to get to the 'Cube' reborn. (It sure will out perform one...or the base Mac Pro? :P )
Call me wrong if I'm wrong... but is it possible that a new G4 Cube could be the next Mac Pro?
I mean it happened with the Power Mac G4 at Macworld 2K and could happen again this year...
Except the name would be "G5 Cube", "Mac Cube","iCube" or whatever Apple wants to name it.
I'm just curious. Take a look at the G4 Cube and tell me if this is possible...
It's an 8 by 8 inches model computer with the power of the Power Mac G4 in the style of an iMac 2K.
Could a 12 Core Processor and 16 gb of ram go in such a small space? I mean they can if they can put 16gb of ram inside their Retina Macbook Pro's right?
Here's the Youtube Clip of the G4 Cube being introduced.
Call me wrong if I'm wrong... but is it possible that a new G4 Cube could be the next Mac Pro?
Marvin likes that idea, and I know a few others do. An aluminum 8x8x8 cube might be Apple's next step, but they'll alienate a grand number of old Mac Pro users in doing so, even if the device can be for them exactly what the Mac Pro was.
I like to say 7.7"x7.7"x7.7" makes sense, as that's the footprint of the Time Capsule and Apple likes matching up footprints, but that's cutting out a fair bit of room that I'd rather they not. A 12"x12"x12" cube would be very interesting, though that's considerably wider than the Mac Pro now (which is 8.1"). Since the current Mac Pro is 8" wide (the .1" comes from the thickness of the case), an 8x8x8 computer sounds physically possible, at least.
Not to mention also that on the Apple website it says that the Mac Pro weighs 41.2 Pounds! and that is a lot of weight for a computer compared to their Macbook Airs'.
Marvin likes that idea, and I know a few others do. An aluminum 8x8x8 cube might be Apple's next step, but they'll alienate a grand number of old Mac Pro users in doing so, even if the device can be for them exactly what the Mac Pro was.
I like to say 7.7"x7.7"x7.7" makes sense, as that's the footprint of the Time Capsule and Apple likes matching up footprints, but that's cutting out a fair bit of room that I'd rather they not. A 12"x12"x12" cube would be very interesting, though that's considerably wider than the Mac Pro now (which is 8.1"). Since the current Mac Pro is 8" wide (the .1" comes from the thickness of the case), an 8x8x8 computer sounds physically possible, at least.
I like the idea but I don't think it'll happen. I doubt they've considered that as an option in years. The Mac mini is the replacement for the Cube and it's far more successful than the Cube ever was.
I think the next Mac Pro will be smaller and lighter than the current design. Now, just like with the iMac, people will say that they don't care if the device is smaller and lighter and that is actually works against what is possible in the smaller volume case but they aren't looking it at from Apple's PoV. Reducing weight and volume reduces material and shipping costs from A to Z. This adds up and Apple clearly cares about that.
I would guess there will be no internal ODD in the next Mac Pro (or whatever it may be called). This reduces a good portion of the internal space. if you want to use an ODD you can get an external drive which professionals that need them will likely have anyway.
I would doubt they will use those SATA connections for additional HDDs but instead rearrange everything to make it more compact. I'd wager on a smaller PSU but with the same performance. I would expect two riser cards with 4 RAM slots each and 3 PCIe expansion slots as well being a dual CPU board with a single CPU option.
Finally, I think FW will go but at the same time this will upset many. I think it'll be worse than the ODD going away. My reasoning is that FW800 chassis holding a 3.5" @ 7200 RPM HDD aren't going to benefit from being replaced by expansive TB chassis and cables. They could use USB 3.0, which I think Apple will push but they'll still want their FW800 to work seamlessly. Perhaps Hopefully Apple will bend on that port being retained a little longer but they never moved to FW1600 or FW3200 and everything else has dropped it so I think it's toast.
I like the idea but I don't think it'll happen. I doubt they've considered that as an option in years. The Mac mini is the replacement for the Cube and it's far more successful than the Cube ever was.
I think the next Mac Pro will be smaller and lighter than the current design. Now, just like with the iMac, people will say that they don't care if the device is smaller and lighter and that is actually works against what is possible in the smaller volume case but they aren't looking it at from Apple's PoV. Reducing weight and volume reduces material and shipping costs from A to Z. This adds up and Apple clearly cares about that.
I would guess there will be no internal ODD in the next Mac Pro (or whatever it may be called). This reduces a good portion of the internal space. if you want to use an ODD you can get an external drive which professionals that need them will likely have anyway.
I would doubt they will use those SATA connections for additional HDDs but instead rearrange everything to make it more compact. I'd wager on a smaller PSU but with the same performance. I would expect two riser cards with 4 RAM slots each and 3 PCIe expansion slots as well being a dual CPU board with a single CPU option.
Finally, I think FW will go but at the same time this will upset many. I think it'll be worse than the ODD going away. My reasoning is that FW800 chassis holding a 3.5" @ 7200 RPM HDD aren't going to benefit from being replaced by expansive TB chassis and cables. They could use USB 3.0, which I think Apple will push but they'll still want their FW800 to work seamlessly. Perhaps Hopefully Apple will bend on that port being retained a little longer but they never moved to FW1600 or FW3200 and everything else has dropped it so I think it's toast.
Times have changed though... I never knew that a G4 Cube existed until two days ago and I found it extremely interesting... I even considered buying one just because it looked so awesome. And with SSD's taking over SATA, I think a lot of people would consider buying one, including myself. But who knows. As for the GPU/Card PCIe slots I think they can use laptop gpu's similar to those present in their Macbook's ( NvidiaGeforce GT 650's or something higher that supports their current or maybe even upcoming displays.
I can't imagine Apple designing the new Mac pro thinking about size, footprint, weight and all that. I believe they have always designed their computers for its functionality, even if they made colored eMacs and all that. Yes, they kept on redesigning the chin of the Macintosh, but it was there for a reason. The Mac Pro also has been designed for its use: the width comes from the ODD. They can put it in vertically, but I agree with [B]Solipsism[/B] and they'll drop it altogether.
Then the HDD's don't need to take up all the space the current width has to offer. They can make the trays shorter, or use 2.5" discs, creating a more narrow chassis, or possibly place them on a tray, like the current CPU/RAM tray. If there are going to be HDD's in there in the first place. Because of the vast amounts of data 'professionals' use the current 16TB max might be too small for some/many/most (I really don't know) anyway, they could have the MP simply run on a mirrored 128GB flash drive for the software and have people connect it to a 14 HDD (or whatever amount) chassis (19"?). Possibly connected over fiber. Users not needing all that storage can simply use an external HDD connected over TB/USB (again, I agree that they'll drop FW).
PCI cards will be requested from the pros, so they'll need to accommodate for that. I have no idea if the current amount of 4 is sufficient for the pro market, but if it isn't now, I presume businesses now simply buy another MP and therefore the number increase won't be needed in the new model.
Expandability has always been a key selling point, and I don't think they'll ever change that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they 'solder' the CPU's to the motherboard and have one huge riser card holding more RAM sticks than the current 8 (OSX will need to be updated for the current limitation of 96GB)
Sol makes a good case pointing out the weight of the Mac Pro, for Apple's benefit. Mainly. But I don't think they'll make it lighter because of shipping costs; I presume that's all calculated in its retail price. They don't make their shipping costs higher when adding HDD's, going from 1 to either 2, 3 or 4 while each disk weighs 650 grams / 1.4 pounds
Not to mention also that on the Apple website it says that the Mac Pro weighs 41.2 Pounds! and that is a lot of weight for a computer compared to their Macbook Airs'.
What has that got to do with anything? The PowerMac / Mac Pro has always been the heaviest one. Understandable, with a 950W PSU and all that.
Times have changed though... I never knew that a G4 Cube existed until two days ago and I found it extremely interesting...
It was inspired by its predecessor, the NeXT Cube:
Personally I think the NeXT Cube was way more usable than Apple's, but that's me. It was really underpowered while 'the Internet was designed' on the one from NeXT.
Not to mention also that on the Apple website it says that the Mac Pro weighs 41.2 Pounds! and that is a lot of weight for a computer compared to their Macbook Airs'.
You win the award for dumbest theorized juxtaposition of the year. It would make more sense if they were aimed at the same consumers. The price alone ensures that is not the case, and if anyone is debating macbook air or mac pro, they have a very poor understanding of their own needs. I could understand a bit more if it was a 1,1 that happened to be overkill at the time. Even then software almost always gains weight over time, so even with minimal growth catching up to current software revisions would probably mean at least a macbook pro. I say current software revisions because new Macs won't support older versions of OSX and older software often has critical bugs on newer versions of OSX. You have also chosen to ignore that the mac pro may not be the only thing anchoring them in place. Displays and other peripheral devices won't travel with you even if the Air does. For a lot of people the notebook as a desktop thing is just a matter of consolidation, and then there are others that trick themselves into believing that they will use it somewhere beyond a single fixed location.
if we stack a few minis on top of one another...you get 8 cores+ and more than enough room to put a 680mx if the back of my iMac is anything to go by.
Alu Cube annodised?
Sure. I could go for that...
8x8 bigger than the original Cube?
Plenty of room there to reinvent the 'workstation' (though I think the iMac and retina Macbook already have...) into a more compact 'box.'
Augmented by Thunderbolt. It's not like you need to keep everything in a tower anyhow. Ergo the 'nest' of cables.
I'm sitting in front of my iMac. It's an awesome workstation. And I guess more and more people than ever before are using an iMac for what they needed a 'Pro' for. The sales figures back that up. 1 million iMac desktops sold. The iMac sits on a desk with a small footprint. In the dark years, Apple never used to sell that many computers total. Now it's all laptops ofc. But the iMac is no sales slouch providing Apple can get them into customer's hands. I had to wait just over a month for mine.
Lightning fast to boot. Eats through web pages and Photoshop faster than towers of yesteryear. 3d? More than ample. Games? Yet to try it. But I'm sure the '10th fastest gpu' will cope.
But I'm definitely open to a 'pro' Cube. Just take off the monitor from the iMac BTO.
You have £1450 i7 680 Mx with 8 gigs of ram. I don't think that's too bad. Dual processor config at £1850 and up. While not revolutionary...it would get us back to sane pricing...and be in line with less materials and cheaper freighting.
If it was me? I'd have a mini tower picking up right where the Mini leaves off. £999. Include decent gpu, ram and i5. Then BTO i7 and gpu 680mx takes you to £1450 duals at nearer £1850+ Or an 8 core system starting at that...and a dual core at 2k plus.
If they can give billions to share holders...how about giving the customers a break. Who've seen price rises on Macs here in the UK since 2008. Triple dip recession...s....and all that.
If they want to sell more 'pro' towers? Democratise it. Simple. Like they did with iPod, iPhone, iMac. Mini (which is a much cheaper cube anyhow...)
It's an 8 by 8 inches model computer with the power of the Power Mac G4 in the style of an iMac 2K.
Could a 12 Core Processor and 16 gb of ram go in such a small space? I mean they can if they can put 16gb of ram inside their Retina Macbook Pro's right?
They'd be able to fit up to 12-cores and at least 64GB of RAM into an 8" Cube. There are some external designs here:
That design allows for up to 2 Fusion drives (2 x SSD blade + 2 x 3.5" HDD), 2-3x full-height, half length PCI cards, a single Ivy Bridge EP CPU (up to 12-core) and at least 64GB RAM. A GPU would sit in one of the PCI slots, which would be double-wide but would have to be specially made (just a new board design with the same processors).
The extra half-length slot would allow the addition of an expansion card or the connection of a beakout box at full x16 speed, which can hold as many as 16 PCI cards depending on the box. The use of the expansion box would be the exception.
A lot of the bulk and weight in the Mac Pro comes from the cooling equipment. The shipping weight for each heatsink is about 4lbs and the retail price of each is over $200. The cooler I mentioned in the above links can cost as little as $10 and weighs less than 0.5lbs. There's a long technical paper here describing it and its efficiency vs CPU coolers like the ones in the Mac Pro:
Even if they stuck with mostly the same parts they have now and dual CPUs, adding a new cooling system and removing the optical drives would massively reduce the size, weight and price of the machine. It would end up at the very least around the same weight as the 27" iMac and $300 cheaper back to its original $2199 entry price. If they could hit $1999 for a quad, even better and increase 2-cores every $500 up to $4000-4500 for a 10-12-core.
I'd like to see it transition to Thunderbolt or some other external PCI standard and get rid of the slots when they can provide a cumulative 50Gbps bandwidth. 4 individual TB ports at 10Gbps each is almost enough but at 20Gbps in 2014, it certainly will be. They'd just solder the GPU chip to the motherboard and share the memory in some way, possibly with a cache of fast memory and this works better for heterogenous computing.
People will have a reason to upgrade them simply to get a new GPU and this keeps the numbers high for Apple and the margins don't have to be so excessive. That kind of form factor will have a lasting appeal too.
I like to say 7.7"x7.7"x7.7" makes sense, as that's the footprint of the Time Capsule and Apple likes matching up footprints
I think 8 is symbolic as everything in computing is base-2 and 2 cubed is 8 but in practical terms you can't fit multiple 3.5" drives side by side in 7.7" as they are 4" wide.
The Mac mini is the replacement for the Cube and it's far more successful than the Cube ever was.
In some respects it is but the Cube was intended to be the best of the Pro with the best of the iMac. The Mini has too low a power/thermal enevelope to hold the same computing power. It punches way above its size and price but it can never hold a 680MX like the iMac or a 6-core+ CPU like the Mac Pro and a Cube can do that.
It was inspired by its predecessor, the NeXT Cube:
Personally I think the NeXT Cube was way more usable than Apple's, but that's me. It was really underpowered while 'the Internet was designed' on the one from NeXT.
I always loved that design even though a less cube-less tower is more practical (Allen's Rule). If they added a cube I'd be all for it but I think that is the last thin to expect from Apple.
I always loved that design even though a less cu-less tower is more practical (Allen's Law). If they added a cube I'd be all for it but I think that is the last thin to expect from Apple.
I certainly hope the next MP won't be a cube. As cool as it looks, the 'regular' old school desktop design is not for nothing the mostly designed one. As much as a friend of mine would like it though; he has the one from NeXT and Apple.
You have £1450 i7 680 Mx with 8 gigs of ram. I don't think that's too bad. Dual processor config at £1850 and up. While not revolutionary...it would get us back to sane pricing...and be in line with less materials and cheaper freighting.
If it was me? I'd have a mini tower picking up right where the Mini leaves off. £999. Include decent gpu, ram and i5. Then BTO i7 and gpu 680mx takes you to £1450 duals at nearer £1850+ Or an 8 core system starting at that...and a dual core at 2k plus.
We have to be realistic when it comes to pricing though, we know roughly what their gross margins are and therefore what their costs are to build. Typically they've been working at 40%+ gross margins so the build cost of the original Mac Pro at $2199 had to be around at least 0.6 x 2199 = $1319 (£852 - no tax).
Assuming the same base costs, it looks like this has gone up to (2499-1319)/2499 = 47% gross.
The price you are suggesting for the same parts is perfectly achievable but Apple has to justify the price drop. The main reason would be for marketshare. The workstation market isn't large and Apple already has a sizeable chunk of it. At best they'd take some of HP's and Dell's sales away so they'd drop margins and increase volume but their net profit would probably end up the same so they are doing more work for the same profit.
If they price it into the desktop market range, there is a bigger chunk of desktop owners they might get over to the platform and I could see these people being attracted by a Cube form factor. It would however cannibalize the iMac to some extent and increase the sales of their competitor's displays.
I think they can safely start the Cube at $1999 (£1699 inc tax), same as the highest non-custom iMac and it would have a quad-core Xeon with 6GB RAM and the equivalent of a Radeon 8770 or Geforce, which can be upgraded to one higher model of both AMD and NVidia (3 cards total). FirePro and Quadro would be left to the manufacturers to build and support because they have so little market appeal.
It would effectively be a page with one Cube on it and you'd just spec out the options and have the Server software as BTO just like every other Mac and you'd pick the number of cores 4,6,8,10,12 and RAM from 6-64GB, one of 3 GPUs and it would start with a single 1TB and they'd offer up to dual 3-4TB Fusion with up to 2x768GB SSDs. The keyboard and mouse might have to be shipped separately so it might be best to make people buy them separately, which helps get the price down. If they get used in a server environment, you just end up with loads of peripherals that won't get used anyway.
If they can give billions to share holders...how about giving the customers a break.
I know, it's not like we ever complain about anything. Well, it's not like we sue them. Ok maybe some people take out class action lawsuits but we definitely don't make money off them like shareholders and so they should treat us better. We sacrifice for their benefit.
I always loved that design even though a less cube-less tower is more practical (Allen's Rule).
The majority of the heat in the machine wouldn't dissipate from the surface though like it does with humans, it gets blown out the back (humans blow hot air out the back for different reasons - analysts earn a living from it). Cold air is sucked in from the front like with the current one, the air travels quickly through the cold metal grating, it gets warmed up by the components, which have their heat spread into the airflow and it gets drawn out the back.
The smaller the internal volume, the less cold air there is to get in so it has to move faster (faster, louder fans) or the parts just have to generate less heat (lower power envelope). With a better cooler, they don't have to try nearly as hard to spread the heat into the airflow so the Cube design shouldn't even require faster fans.
The way heatsinks work now is to stick a piece of very conductive metal onto the chip with thermal paste to draw heat away from it by keeping the metal it's being drawn into very cold but getting that heat away from the heatsink as the above PDF describes is limited because all of the surfaces have a layer of dead air leaving it to move heat through molecular diffusion. The Sandia design fixes this dead air problem.
I figured one problem with the Sandia cooler might have been relying on it being upright to balance the air gap but in the Sandia paper, they gave the example of the hockey puck that relies on gravity to maintain the gap and said their cooler will work in any orientation. It will need some tight mechanical tolerances overall but I think for a company that puts atomic layers of anti-glare coatings in their displays and fits iPhone parts accurate to a few microns, it should be a stroll in the park.
The problem with the G4 cube was that it was simply not priced realistically. Maybe it cost a lot to make, I really don't know but it was rejected by many of us due to the price performance equation. In fact the cube and a few other Apple machines where responsible for me taking refuge in the Linux world for a long time.
As to the smaller and lighter Mac Pro I agree totally, the massive chassis for no reason will die. Further people can discount weight as an issue but they don't grasp the reality of the green movement. We in the USA can resist some of the nonsense but the reality is Apple is global and anything that leads to lower shipping weights and volumes will pay off big time in the future.
It makes sense to do in the optical but also the 3.5" format bays. For one any Mac Pro worth a damn ought to have its primary storage sitting on a PCI Express card and of course be solid state.. The actual form factor of that card can be just about anything but Apple should either set a standard or using an industry standard one. Well engineered printed circuit boards can be designed to minimize physical space while maximizing thermals. Supply the new Pro with four of these slots and you end up with a machine that will remain viable for a very long time.
I never really got into FireWire. It was never fast enough to consider for high performance systems and USB does fine for low end solutions. Frankly FireWire can die. I wouldn't be surprised that the same people that complain about he death of FireWire will be the same ones that complain about no optical. It is technology folks, you either keep up or stay in the past with your slow technologies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I like the idea but I don't think it'll happen. I doubt they've considered that as an option in years. The Mac mini is the replacement for the Cube and it's far more successful than the Cube ever was.
I think the next Mac Pro will be smaller and lighter than the current design. Now, just like with the iMac, people will say that they don't care if the device is smaller and lighter and that is actually works against what is possible in the smaller volume case but they aren't looking it at from Apple's PoV. Reducing weight and volume reduces material and shipping costs from A to Z. This adds up and Apple clearly cares about that.
I would guess there will be no internal ODD in the next Mac Pro (or whatever it may be called). This reduces a good portion of the internal space. if you want to use an ODD you can get an external drive which professionals that need them will likely have anyway.
I would doubt they will use those SATA connections for additional HDDs but instead rearrange everything to make it more compact. I'd wager on a smaller PSU but with the same performance. I would expect two riser cards with 4 RAM slots each and 3 PCIe expansion slots as well being a dual CPU board with a single CPU option.
Finally, I think FW will go but at the same time this will upset many. I think it'll be worse than the ODD going away. My reasoning is that FW800 chassis holding a 3.5" @ 7200 RPM HDD aren't going to benefit from being replaced by expansive TB chassis and cables. They could use USB 3.0, which I think Apple will push but they'll still want their FW800 to work seamlessly. Perhaps Hopefully Apple will bend on that port being retained a little longer but they never moved to FW1600 or FW3200 and everything else has dropped it so I think it's toast.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Yes there is a real need among Mac Pro users for magnetic storage to handle bulk needs. However that isn't everybody. Further it should be fairly easy to implement a rather large SSD in a Mac Pro given the pricing structure of the machine. Many Pro users would be very happy with a 512 GB or 1 TB SSD sitting on the PCI Express bus.
They could probably do this. I have no idea what Apple pays for ssds, but their pricing so far has been fairly aggressive. It's difficult for me to suggest any hypothetical situations where spending $3850 to include 4 x 512GB ssds makes financial sense when you could spec out an impressive hardware RAID for that amount of money. It seems even sillier when you consider the warranty limit is 3 years. Some of the Samsung drives carry 5 year warranties, although I'm not sure how the quality of warranty service compares between the two.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Why is it every single time we talk about a more cost effective replacement for the Mac Pro we get these idiotic posts???? Wake up and smell the coffee, the Mac Pro is on skid row, it sales have dropped like a rock. Why? Simple it offers no value what so ever at the low end as such the market can not sustain strong sales of the Mac Pro as a whole.
As to slots I agree 100%, however you don't need a box the size of the Mac Pro to support a few PCI Express cards. A good portion of the space in the current Mac Pro is totally wasted, so even if you deliver today capabilities you can go with a much smaller box. Refactor the machine a bit and the space the Mac Pro takes up can be trimmed even more.
Why? Why do you need a huge box for a workstation class machine. Nobody has come up with a rational response to this question. To put it simply you don't. A Mac Pro can get by find on a single socket these days when combined with a modern GPU card. Add a bit of super computing networking and you can have as many sockets as you could rationally want. A strong clustering technology would do far more for high end computing than the current Mac Pro, especially if Apple can get the nodes into the $1500 range.
I see this as more an issue of desire. They may have decided to push what they already offer at the $1000-200 realm. There's nothing in that box that inherently makes it that much more expensive to manufacture. Regarding the post you replied to, there should be an understanding that the mac pro encompasses a pretty wide range. Its base offering would need to carry the volume, and it's a significantly weaker value than that it has been in the past for a few reasons. One is that some things that used to require the fastest hardware run reasonably well on much lighter rigs without choking constantly. Some software has simply been softer in terms of gains in X86 based demands. I don't think they'd need to change anything to get the price lower if they wanted it there. If you look at what was retailed from 2006 until early 2009, the cpus used would have been $1400 (2 x $700) retail (as in off newegg) in 2006 and 2 x $800 in 2008 (although that one cost $2800). They dropped back to W3520s on the base model in 2009, so one $300 cpu with the backplane + daughterboard configuration so that parts could be reused across the dual models as well. They cut way back on costs, but the price stayed basically static, actually gaining $200 as they year before a single E5462 configuration was only $2300. I've mentioned this before as to evidence in terms of why I'm skeptical about a change in direction. In terms of the fully upgraded 12 core models, those are arguably different prospective buyers. My impression was that they wanted to drop the mac pro, so they've been positioning things this way for years.
As far as PCI cards are concerned, that's another thing. Many of those available for Mountain Lion either lack really stable supported drivers or they're extremely expensive. They've been relegated to mostly specialty hardware. The exception is that some of NVidia's line is supported directly by NVidia in ML where it wasn't before. This isn't so much a debate about the validity of PCI cards. I'm just saying that OSX at this point lacks a really healthy market in terms of third party addon hardware that works as intended. If we're talking about the super high end and RED Rocket or Kona cards, those actually work as intended. There is basically nothing available that is worth using $200. A popular one used to be eSATA. I remember you hate eSATA. If you were looking for a Roc or SAS HBA or something like that, you're back in the $700+ realm.
Anyway you are right that they could change their minds. I don't buy into Apple has never been cheap. They have always chased growth markets. Note personal computing, mp3 players, smartphones, consumer tablet devices, digital content distribution (they make more off itunes than they ever did through boxed software sales going by some of the posted pie charts).
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
We get it. I think Apple gets it. Understanding your wants doesn't entail compliance to satisfying those wants. Knowing there's a market doesn't mean the market is big enough to be worth chasing. They've chosen not to enter the "xMac" market. They've left that market roughly eight years ago, and market for tower desktops is diminishing.
I think the future demand for an xMac is questionable anyway, the available selection of add-in cards for Macs has always been pretty weak even going back 20 years, and generally painfully more expensive than equivalent cards for Windows boxes. A "tinkerer's" Mac doesn't sound like a big draw either, as MacOS really isn't a tinkerer's OS, there's Linux for that, and Windows is often a power tinkerer's choice OS too. Really, xMac isn't a consumer product but rather an enthusiast product. Kind of like how Alienware is now the Enthusiast's Dell computer. I don't think tinkerers and gamers are enough for Apple, especially as it easily cannibalizes their workstation line.
I think this pretty much reflects Apple's thinking.
And all the yacking on here won't change it.
I think the 'best hope' for an 'X-Mac' of any kind is a 'sanely' priced Mac Pro at £1495 with 680Mx as standard to push up unit sales again. Bundle in the SSD and you buy the monitor from Apple. They still get over 2k... For me, it's a BTO iMac spec minus the monitor.
Next up? 2K+ for the dual models.
I don't see any thing beyond that.
If you're Wizard? Wait until Mac Mini has the improved onboard Haswell gnu. I think that's as close as we're ever going to get to the 'Cube' reborn. (It sure will out perform one...or the base Mac Pro? :P )
ie better than a kick up the back side.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I'm not tied to anyone form factor. I also realize that the steady march forward with respect to processor technology will make for a very interesting Mini in the future. That might be with Haswell or more likely whatever comes after Haswell. The problem is that even that future Mini will be a relatively low performance machine when put up against higher performance machines available at the same time. Workstation like computing power still requires and will continue to require more volume and power capacity than can be had in the Mini. That will be the case this year and in the year 2020.
Me, I could see myself being satisfied with a Haswell based Mini as long as Apple doesn't castrate it on purpose like it has with so many of the Minis in the past. That is also dependent upon Intel actually delivering the goods with respect to hardware and driver support. Driver support here means everything works, 3D is respectable and OpenCL is decent. Currently Intel sucks on all three counts so there is a bit of hopefulness in this desire to see a Haswell Mini.
Now if an XMac like machine came out I probably wouldn't even think about a Mini no matter what it had. The simple fact is that an XMac as described by various people in these forums would be a far better purchase if a decent model could be had for under $1500! It really doesn't matter if it is a cube, pizza box or something else all together. As long as it delivers a decent GPU, easy storage expansion/access and a slot or two I'd be very happy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.
I think this pretty much reflects Apple's thinking.
And all the yacking on here won't change it.
I think the 'best hope' for an 'X-Mac' of any kind is a 'sanely' priced Mac Pro at £1495 with 680Mx as standard to push up unit sales again. Bundle in the SSD and you buy the monitor from Apple. They still get over 2k... For me, it's a BTO iMac spec minus the monitor.
Next up? 2K+ for the dual models.
I don't see any thing beyond that.
If you're Wizard? Wait until Mac Mini has the improved onboard Haswell gnu. I think that's as close as we're ever going to get to the 'Cube' reborn. (It sure will out perform one...or the base Mac Pro? :P )
ie better than a kick up the back side.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Call me wrong if I'm wrong... but is it possible that a new G4 Cube could be the next Mac Pro?
I mean it happened with the Power Mac G4 at Macworld 2K and could happen again this year...
Except the name would be "G5 Cube", "Mac Cube","iCube" or whatever Apple wants to name it.
I'm just curious. Take a look at the G4 Cube and tell me if this is possible...
It's an 8 by 8 inches model computer with the power of the Power Mac G4 in the style of an iMac 2K.
Could a 12 Core Processor and 16 gb of ram go in such a small space? I mean they can if they can put 16gb of ram inside their Retina Macbook Pro's right?
Here's the Youtube Clip of the G4 Cube being introduced.
Originally Posted by darkdefender
Call me wrong if I'm wrong... but is it possible that a new G4 Cube could be the next Mac Pro?
Marvin likes that idea, and I know a few others do. An aluminum 8x8x8 cube might be Apple's next step, but they'll alienate a grand number of old Mac Pro users in doing so, even if the device can be for them exactly what the Mac Pro was.
I like to say 7.7"x7.7"x7.7" makes sense, as that's the footprint of the Time Capsule and Apple likes matching up footprints, but that's cutting out a fair bit of room that I'd rather they not. A 12"x12"x12" cube would be very interesting, though that's considerably wider than the Mac Pro now (which is 8.1"). Since the current Mac Pro is 8" wide (the .1" comes from the thickness of the case), an 8x8x8 computer sounds physically possible, at least.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IQatEdo
I'll be watching... Mathematica powerhouse.
Try it on Linux, it runs great and you can build a more powerful machine then the Mac Pro for a 3rd of the cost.
Not to mention also that on the Apple website it says that the Mac Pro weighs 41.2 Pounds! and that is a lot of weight for a computer compared to their Macbook Airs'.
I like the idea but I don't think it'll happen. I doubt they've considered that as an option in years. The Mac mini is the replacement for the Cube and it's far more successful than the Cube ever was.
I think the next Mac Pro will be smaller and lighter than the current design. Now, just like with the iMac, people will say that they don't care if the device is smaller and lighter and that is actually works against what is possible in the smaller volume case but they aren't looking it at from Apple's PoV. Reducing weight and volume reduces material and shipping costs from A to Z. This adds up and Apple clearly cares about that.
I would guess there will be no internal ODD in the next Mac Pro (or whatever it may be called). This reduces a good portion of the internal space. if you want to use an ODD you can get an external drive which professionals that need them will likely have anyway.
I would doubt they will use those SATA connections for additional HDDs but instead rearrange everything to make it more compact. I'd wager on a smaller PSU but with the same performance. I would expect two riser cards with 4 RAM slots each and 3 PCIe expansion slots as well being a dual CPU board with a single CPU option.
Finally, I think FW will go but at the same time this will upset many. I think it'll be worse than the ODD going away. My reasoning is that FW800 chassis holding a 3.5" @ 7200 RPM HDD aren't going to benefit from being replaced by expansive TB chassis and cables. They could use USB 3.0, which I think Apple will push but they'll still want their FW800 to work seamlessly. Perhaps
HopefullyApple will bend on that port being retained a little longer but they never moved to FW1600 or FW3200 and everything else has dropped it so I think it's toast.Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I like the idea but I don't think it'll happen. I doubt they've considered that as an option in years. The Mac mini is the replacement for the Cube and it's far more successful than the Cube ever was.
I think the next Mac Pro will be smaller and lighter than the current design. Now, just like with the iMac, people will say that they don't care if the device is smaller and lighter and that is actually works against what is possible in the smaller volume case but they aren't looking it at from Apple's PoV. Reducing weight and volume reduces material and shipping costs from A to Z. This adds up and Apple clearly cares about that.
I would guess there will be no internal ODD in the next Mac Pro (or whatever it may be called). This reduces a good portion of the internal space. if you want to use an ODD you can get an external drive which professionals that need them will likely have anyway.
I would doubt they will use those SATA connections for additional HDDs but instead rearrange everything to make it more compact. I'd wager on a smaller PSU but with the same performance. I would expect two riser cards with 4 RAM slots each and 3 PCIe expansion slots as well being a dual CPU board with a single CPU option.
Finally, I think FW will go but at the same time this will upset many. I think it'll be worse than the ODD going away. My reasoning is that FW800 chassis holding a 3.5" @ 7200 RPM HDD aren't going to benefit from being replaced by expansive TB chassis and cables. They could use USB 3.0, which I think Apple will push but they'll still want their FW800 to work seamlessly. Perhaps Hopefully Apple will bend on that port being retained a little longer but they never moved to FW1600 or FW3200 and everything else has dropped it so I think it's toast.
Times have changed though... I never knew that a G4 Cube existed until two days ago and I found it extremely interesting... I even considered buying one just because it looked so awesome. And with SSD's taking over SATA, I think a lot of people would consider buying one, including myself. But who knows. As for the GPU/Card PCIe slots I think they can use laptop gpu's similar to those present in their Macbook's ( Nvidia Geforce GT 650's or something higher that supports their current or maybe even upcoming displays.
Then the HDD's don't need to take up all the space the current width has to offer. They can make the trays shorter, or use 2.5" discs, creating a more narrow chassis, or possibly place them on a tray, like the current CPU/RAM tray. If there are going to be HDD's in there in the first place. Because of the vast amounts of data 'professionals' use the current 16TB max might be too small for some/many/most (I really don't know) anyway, they could have the MP simply run on a mirrored 128GB flash drive for the software and have people connect it to a 14 HDD (or whatever amount) chassis (19"?). Possibly connected over fiber. Users not needing all that storage can simply use an external HDD connected over TB/USB (again, I agree that they'll drop FW).
PCI cards will be requested from the pros, so they'll need to accommodate for that. I have no idea if the current amount of 4 is sufficient for the pro market, but if it isn't now, I presume businesses now simply buy another MP and therefore the number increase won't be needed in the new model.
Expandability has always been a key selling point, and I don't think they'll ever change that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they 'solder' the CPU's to the motherboard and have one huge riser card holding more RAM sticks than the current 8 (OSX will need to be updated for the current limitation of 96GB)
Sol makes a good case pointing out the weight of the Mac Pro, for Apple's benefit. Mainly. But I don't think they'll make it lighter because of shipping costs; I presume that's all calculated in its retail price. They don't make their shipping costs higher when adding HDD's, going from 1 to either 2, 3 or 4 while each disk weighs 650 grams / 1.4 pounds
What has that got to do with anything? The PowerMac / Mac Pro has always been the heaviest one. Understandable, with a 950W PSU and all that.
It was inspired by its predecessor, the NeXT Cube:
Personally I think the NeXT Cube was way more usable than Apple's, but that's me. It was really underpowered while 'the Internet was designed' on the one from NeXT.
Quote:
Originally Posted by darkdefender
Not to mention also that on the Apple website it says that the Mac Pro weighs 41.2 Pounds! and that is a lot of weight for a computer compared to their Macbook Airs'.
You win the award for dumbest theorized juxtaposition of the year. It would make more sense if they were aimed at the same consumers. The price alone ensures that is not the case, and if anyone is debating macbook air or mac pro, they have a very poor understanding of their own needs. I could understand a bit more if it was a 1,1 that happened to be overkill at the time. Even then software almost always gains weight over time, so even with minimal growth catching up to current software revisions would probably mean at least a macbook pro. I say current software revisions because new Macs won't support older versions of OSX and older software often has critical bugs on newer versions of OSX. You have also chosen to ignore that the mac pro may not be the only thing anchoring them in place. Displays and other peripheral devices won't travel with you even if the Air does. For a lot of people the notebook as a desktop thing is just a matter of consolidation, and then there are others that trick themselves into believing that they will use it somewhere beyond a single fixed location.
I'd be on a 8x8 Pro.
It's up to Apple really.
Unlike the 1st Cube,
if we stack a few minis on top of one another...you get 8 cores+ and more than enough room to put a 680mx if the back of my iMac is anything to go by.
Alu Cube annodised?
Sure. I could go for that...
8x8 bigger than the original Cube?
Plenty of room there to reinvent the 'workstation' (though I think the iMac and retina Macbook already have...) into a more compact 'box.'
Augmented by Thunderbolt. It's not like you need to keep everything in a tower anyhow. Ergo the 'nest' of cables.
I'm sitting in front of my iMac. It's an awesome workstation. And I guess more and more people than ever before are using an iMac for what they needed a 'Pro' for. The sales figures back that up. 1 million iMac desktops sold. The iMac sits on a desk with a small footprint. In the dark years, Apple never used to sell that many computers total. Now it's all laptops ofc. But the iMac is no sales slouch providing Apple can get them into customer's hands. I had to wait just over a month for mine.
Lightning fast to boot. Eats through web pages and Photoshop faster than towers of yesteryear. 3d? More than ample. Games? Yet to try it. But I'm sure the '10th fastest gpu' will cope.
But I'm definitely open to a 'pro' Cube. Just take off the monitor from the iMac BTO.
You have £1450 i7 680 Mx with 8 gigs of ram. I don't think that's too bad. Dual processor config at £1850 and up. While not revolutionary...it would get us back to sane pricing...and be in line with less materials and cheaper freighting.
If it was me? I'd have a mini tower picking up right where the Mini leaves off. £999. Include decent gpu, ram and i5. Then BTO i7 and gpu 680mx takes you to £1450 duals at nearer £1850+ Or an 8 core system starting at that...and a dual core at 2k plus.
If they can give billions to share holders...how about giving the customers a break. Who've seen price rises on Macs here in the UK since 2008. Triple dip recession...s....and all that.
If they want to sell more 'pro' towers? Democratise it. Simple. Like they did with iPod, iPhone, iMac. Mini (which is a much cheaper cube anyhow...)
It's up to Apple.
Lemon Bon Bon.
They'd be able to fit up to 12-cores and at least 64GB of RAM into an 8" Cube. There are some external designs here:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/152825/future-of-mac-pro/120
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/154628/os-x-10-8-3-beta-supports-amd-radeon-7000-drivers-hinting-at-apples-new-mac-pro/80
and internal design here:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/154628/os-x-10-8-3-beta-supports-amd-radeon-7000-drivers-hinting-at-apples-new-mac-pro/160
That design allows for up to 2 Fusion drives (2 x SSD blade + 2 x 3.5" HDD), 2-3x full-height, half length PCI cards, a single Ivy Bridge EP CPU (up to 12-core) and at least 64GB RAM. A GPU would sit in one of the PCI slots, which would be double-wide but would have to be specially made (just a new board design with the same processors).
The extra half-length slot would allow the addition of an expansion card or the connection of a beakout box at full x16 speed, which can hold as many as 16 PCI cards depending on the box. The use of the expansion box would be the exception.
A lot of the bulk and weight in the Mac Pro comes from the cooling equipment. The shipping weight for each heatsink is about 4lbs and the retail price of each is over $200. The cooler I mentioned in the above links can cost as little as $10 and weighs less than 0.5lbs. There's a long technical paper here describing it and its efficiency vs CPU coolers like the ones in the Mac Pro:
https://ip.sandia.gov/techpdfs/Fundamentally New Approach.pdf
Even if they stuck with mostly the same parts they have now and dual CPUs, adding a new cooling system and removing the optical drives would massively reduce the size, weight and price of the machine. It would end up at the very least around the same weight as the 27" iMac and $300 cheaper back to its original $2199 entry price. If they could hit $1999 for a quad, even better and increase 2-cores every $500 up to $4000-4500 for a 10-12-core.
I'd like to see it transition to Thunderbolt or some other external PCI standard and get rid of the slots when they can provide a cumulative 50Gbps bandwidth. 4 individual TB ports at 10Gbps each is almost enough but at 20Gbps in 2014, it certainly will be. They'd just solder the GPU chip to the motherboard and share the memory in some way, possibly with a cache of fast memory and this works better for heterogenous computing.
People will have a reason to upgrade them simply to get a new GPU and this keeps the numbers high for Apple and the margins don't have to be so excessive. That kind of form factor will have a lasting appeal too.
I think 8 is symbolic as everything in computing is base-2 and 2 cubed is 8 but in practical terms you can't fit multiple 3.5" drives side by side in 7.7" as they are 4" wide.
In some respects it is but the Cube was intended to be the best of the Pro with the best of the iMac. The Mini has too low a power/thermal enevelope to hold the same computing power. It punches way above its size and price but it can never hold a 680MX like the iMac or a 6-core+ CPU like the Mac Pro and a Cube can do that.
I always loved that design even though a less cube-less tower is more practical (Allen's Rule). If they added a cube I'd be all for it but I think that is the last thin to expect from Apple.
edit: typos and uh-ohs
I certainly hope the next MP won't be a cube. As cool as it looks, the 'regular' old school desktop design is not for nothing the mostly designed one. As much as a friend of mine would like it though; he has the one from NeXT and Apple.
Thanks for Allen's Law forgot what it was called.
We have to be realistic when it comes to pricing though, we know roughly what their gross margins are and therefore what their costs are to build. Typically they've been working at 40%+ gross margins so the build cost of the original Mac Pro at $2199 had to be around at least 0.6 x 2199 = $1319 (£852 - no tax).
Assuming the same base costs, it looks like this has gone up to (2499-1319)/2499 = 47% gross.
The price you are suggesting for the same parts is perfectly achievable but Apple has to justify the price drop. The main reason would be for marketshare. The workstation market isn't large and Apple already has a sizeable chunk of it. At best they'd take some of HP's and Dell's sales away so they'd drop margins and increase volume but their net profit would probably end up the same so they are doing more work for the same profit.
If they price it into the desktop market range, there is a bigger chunk of desktop owners they might get over to the platform and I could see these people being attracted by a Cube form factor. It would however cannibalize the iMac to some extent and increase the sales of their competitor's displays.
I think they can safely start the Cube at $1999 (£1699 inc tax), same as the highest non-custom iMac and it would have a quad-core Xeon with 6GB RAM and the equivalent of a Radeon 8770 or Geforce, which can be upgraded to one higher model of both AMD and NVidia (3 cards total). FirePro and Quadro would be left to the manufacturers to build and support because they have so little market appeal.
It would effectively be a page with one Cube on it and you'd just spec out the options and have the Server software as BTO just like every other Mac and you'd pick the number of cores 4,6,8,10,12 and RAM from 6-64GB, one of 3 GPUs and it would start with a single 1TB and they'd offer up to dual 3-4TB Fusion with up to 2x768GB SSDs. The keyboard and mouse might have to be shipped separately so it might be best to make people buy them separately, which helps get the price down. If they get used in a server environment, you just end up with loads of peripherals that won't get used anyway.
I know, it's not like we ever complain about anything. Well, it's not like we sue them. Ok maybe some people take out class action lawsuits but we definitely don't make money off them like shareholders and so they should treat us better. We sacrifice for their benefit.
The majority of the heat in the machine wouldn't dissipate from the surface though like it does with humans, it gets blown out the back (humans blow hot air out the back for different reasons - analysts earn a living from it). Cold air is sucked in from the front like with the current one, the air travels quickly through the cold metal grating, it gets warmed up by the components, which have their heat spread into the airflow and it gets drawn out the back.
The smaller the internal volume, the less cold air there is to get in so it has to move faster (faster, louder fans) or the parts just have to generate less heat (lower power envelope). With a better cooler, they don't have to try nearly as hard to spread the heat into the airflow so the Cube design shouldn't even require faster fans.
The way heatsinks work now is to stick a piece of very conductive metal onto the chip with thermal paste to draw heat away from it by keeping the metal it's being drawn into very cold but getting that heat away from the heatsink as the above PDF describes is limited because all of the surfaces have a layer of dead air leaving it to move heat through molecular diffusion. The Sandia design fixes this dead air problem.
I figured one problem with the Sandia cooler might have been relying on it being upright to balance the air gap but in the Sandia paper, they gave the example of the hockey puck that relies on gravity to maintain the gap and said their cooler will work in any orientation. It will need some tight mechanical tolerances overall but I think for a company that puts atomic layers of anti-glare coatings in their displays and fits iPhone parts accurate to a few microns, it should be a stroll in the park.
LOL!
The problem with the G4 cube was that it was simply not priced realistically. Maybe it cost a lot to make, I really don't know but it was rejected by many of us due to the price performance equation. In fact the cube and a few other Apple machines where responsible for me taking refuge in the Linux world for a long time.
As to the smaller and lighter Mac Pro I agree totally, the massive chassis for no reason will die. Further people can discount weight as an issue but they don't grasp the reality of the green movement. We in the USA can resist some of the nonsense but the reality is Apple is global and anything that leads to lower shipping weights and volumes will pay off big time in the future.
It makes sense to do in the optical but also the 3.5" format bays. For one any Mac Pro worth a damn ought to have its primary storage sitting on a PCI Express card and of course be solid state.. The actual form factor of that card can be just about anything but Apple should either set a standard or using an industry standard one. Well engineered printed circuit boards can be designed to minimize physical space while maximizing thermals. Supply the new Pro with four of these slots and you end up with a machine that will remain viable for a very long time.
I never really got into FireWire. It was never fast enough to consider for high performance systems and USB does fine for low end solutions. Frankly FireWire can die. I wouldn't be surprised that the same people that complain about he death of FireWire will be the same ones that complain about no optical. It is technology folks, you either keep up or stay in the past with your slow technologies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I like the idea but I don't think it'll happen. I doubt they've considered that as an option in years. The Mac mini is the replacement for the Cube and it's far more successful than the Cube ever was.
I think the next Mac Pro will be smaller and lighter than the current design. Now, just like with the iMac, people will say that they don't care if the device is smaller and lighter and that is actually works against what is possible in the smaller volume case but they aren't looking it at from Apple's PoV. Reducing weight and volume reduces material and shipping costs from A to Z. This adds up and Apple clearly cares about that.
I would guess there will be no internal ODD in the next Mac Pro (or whatever it may be called). This reduces a good portion of the internal space. if you want to use an ODD you can get an external drive which professionals that need them will likely have anyway.
I would doubt they will use those SATA connections for additional HDDs but instead rearrange everything to make it more compact. I'd wager on a smaller PSU but with the same performance. I would expect two riser cards with 4 RAM slots each and 3 PCIe expansion slots as well being a dual CPU board with a single CPU option.
Finally, I think FW will go but at the same time this will upset many. I think it'll be worse than the ODD going away. My reasoning is that FW800 chassis holding a 3.5" @ 7200 RPM HDD aren't going to benefit from being replaced by expansive TB chassis and cables. They could use USB 3.0, which I think Apple will push but they'll still want their FW800 to work seamlessly. Perhaps Hopefully Apple will bend on that port being retained a little longer but they never moved to FW1600 or FW3200 and everything else has dropped it so I think it's toast.