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.
Ok what does Allen's Law have to do with a computer? Especially in this day and age when much of the power in a PC is released from a very small area. In fact the big challenge for decades now has been to figure out how to remove heat from a device a few mm thick and several mm square. Most tower designs are terrible when it comes to this issue of heat removal. The Mac Pro is better than most towers I will give you that, but it still stacks parts vertically resulting in heat rising from bottom to top and in the case of the Mac Pro, less than ideal disk cooling.
As to a cubish Mac Pro I've yet to hear a good argument against such a machine. The reality is such a machine can be engineered to actually solve some of the current Mac Pros issues. Done right a good cube design would minimize the wasted volume of the current design. This would allow much high density installations when that is needed. Further a cube, especially a much lighter one, allows for far more flexibility in placement in ones work space.
Ok what does Allen's Law have to do with a computer? Especially in this day and age when much of the power in a PC is released from a very small area. In fact the big challenge for decades now has been to figure out how to remove heat from a device a few mm thick and several mm square. Most tower designs are terrible when it comes to this issue of heat removal. The Mac Pro is better than most towers I will give you that, but it still stacks parts vertically resulting in heat rising from bottom to top and in the case of the Mac Pro, less than ideal disk cooling.
As to a cubish Mac Pro I've yet to hear a good argument against such a machine. The reality is such a machine can be engineered to actually solve some of the current Mac Pros issues. Done right a good cube design would minimize the wasted volume of the current design. This would allow much high density installations when that is needed. Further a cube, especially a much lighter one, allows for far more flexibility in placement in ones work space.
What doesn't it have to do with computing? My usage is relation to Apple using the metal case for conduction which helps alleviate the need for faster spinning fans, larger fans, etc, which helps reduce power needs. Not eliminate but help reduce.
But that is beside the point if you think that Allen's Rule does not exist in computing. Have you ever seen a heat sink? The entire design is to increase the surface area of the sink as much as possible so that more heat can be dissipated faster. That is Allen's Rule in a nutshell.
Cubes on and under a desk aren't likely as useful as you aren't likely to need more a certain amount of area to the front or back for ports and drives. You can't easily place it on or under a desk with room for a monitor or your feet and turning ti 90° may results in issues turned the other way. If a cube is 2x as wide as the current design but the internals are still about 1/2 that internal space how is that space being utilized properly when your 5" HDD drive is now sitting 12" deep in the chassis. It it opens up down the centerline then it's not a big deal but how would that be likely. If anyone could figure out how to make it work I think it's Apple but there is a reason this is not a common design and why Apple's Mac Pro is just wide enough to fit one HDD from side-to-side.
As to the smaller and lighter Mac Pro I agree totally, the massive chassis for no reason will die.
I still don't understand comments like this.
The current Mac Pro isn't massive 'for no reason' at all. If you have dual processors, a Superdrive, 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards - which is what the unit is built to accommodate - you need every inch of that chassis to ensure the components don't boil.
Apple can make a future unit much smaller by ditching the Superdrive, going with SSDs only and shifting PCI expansion to a breakout box.
But to say that the current Pro's size serves no purpose is just plain wrong.
Aha, someone who misses the DVD drive. Apple was early with dropping the floppy, too. Many people seemed to like that change. Just like many liked it when Apple was an early adopter to add USB to their Macs. Perhaps you need to let go of the old notion, and embrace the new?
I deal with several regulatory departments at both the local and federal level of government and with various contractors. They require electronic files to be delivered on CD/DVD.
So yes, I do use them, I need to use them and will continue to use them as long as the departments I deal with require them.
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 agree. That was dumb to say... but all I was pointing out it's 41.2 pounds heavy... and as others pointed, if a product weighs less and is smaller, it can be manufactured more, and shipped easier... It was nothing to do with Macbook Air's... but you have to take into consideration the impact making a 41.2 pound machine is doing to the earth. That's like buying a Hummer when you could buy a Honda Insight... even if the mileage on this metaphoric hummer was better than the Honda, people would still prefer the Honda over the Hummer because it's smaller and fits into places better. I mean look at this...
And yet people buy PC towers just as big or larger. The Mac Pro is classed as a minitower!
There are a handful of cases that are larger. The Mac Pro's size is really quite normal for a the heavier dual socket workstations, which I've had a few PC workstations in the past of a similar size. The G4 cube is hardly a fair comparison as it is only a single socket machine.
Most PC towers sold are smaller on each dimension, but they're not dual socket systems.
I deal with several regulatory departments at both the local and federal level of government and with various contractors. They require electronic files to be delivered on CD/DVD.
So yes, I do use them, I need to use them and will continue to use them as long as the departments I deal with require them.
And many people are in similar situations. A the office, I don't think a $79 external DVD drive will be a problem. But I understand that it's easier if it were still build in. That I get.
At wizard69 I see people already gave their opinion on the chassis issue, to which I agree.
It's entirely possible that this is the future of Apple's pro desktop. Hmm…
It's possible. Right now they share a lot of parts yet avoid the use of the really expensive parts in the single socket version. They use different cpus and mitigate board costs with the daugherboard design. If they stick to the current design, they probably would not reduce it to single only. Otherwise I still don't see them going outside of the EP chips, maybe just single versions.
It's entirely possible that this is the future of Apple's pro desktop. Hmm…
That seems odd to me. The iMac and mini have become so fast that in order to differentiate the MP I would presume they make it the fastest beast around. Quad socket, 6-core machine with 16x16GB memory sticks. No HDD, SSD only. Partnership with a company that makes a successor to the Xserve RAID
You miss my point completely, modern computer design has to deal with removing heat from very small point sources. The case has nothing to do with that.
CPU heat sink design has nothing to do with the case. Sure the heat sink has to have surface area but most electronics do not couple that heat sink to the case.
As for computers with cube like design you either make the design work for you or you don't. There is nothing inherently wrong with a cube design. In fact a cube has advantages over vertically oriented chassis due the fact that heat rises.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
What doesn't it have to do with computing? My usage is relation to Apple using the metal case for conduction which helps alleviate the need for faster spinning fans, larger fans, etc, which helps reduce power needs. Not eliminate but help reduce.
But that is beside the point if you think that Allen's Rule does not exist in computing. Have you ever seen a heat sink? The entire design is to increase the surface area of the sink as much as possible so that more heat can be dissipated faster. That is Allen's Rule in a nutshell.
Cubes on and under a desk aren't likely as useful as you aren't likely to need more a certain amount of area to the front or back for ports and drives. You can't easily place it on or under a desk with room for a monitor or your feet and turning ti 90° may results in issues turned the other way. If a cube is 2x as wide as the current design but the internals are still about 1/2 that internal space how is that space being utilized properly when your 5" HDD drive is now sitting 12" deep in the chassis. It it opens up down the centerline then it's not a big deal but how would that be likely. If anyone could figure out how to make it work I think it's Apple but there is a reason this is not a common design and why Apple's Mac Pro is just wide enough to fit one HDD from side-to-side.
Wake up! Seriously electronics have shrunken considerably since the Mac Pro chassis has come out.
As to the current Mac Pro it is a hang over from the days of PPC and massive coolers. At this point it is too large for no reason. Beyond that there is no need for super drives, disk arrays and other wasted space in a modern "PRO" computer. PCI expansion however can't go to external boxes with today's technology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
I still don't understand comments like this.
The current Mac Pro isn't massive 'for no reason' at all. If you have dual processors, a Superdrive, 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards - which is what the unit is built to accommodate - you need every inch of that chassis to ensure the components don't boil.
Apple can make a future unit much smaller by ditching the Superdrive, going with SSDs only and shifting PCI expansion to a breakout box.
But to say that the current Pro's size serves no purpose is just plain wrong.
This is regressive thinking or frankly looking to the distant past. Even recent Mac Pros suffer from excessive space that does nothing for the platform.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple go to single socket only Mac Pros.
For one thing I expect a much higher performance GPU card or even a GPU soldered on the motherboard. Either way they have to find a way to connect TB to it. Putting the GPU on the motherboard would result in a well defined system for software developers and go farther to encouraging the use of OpenCL. At some point (but not with today's GPUs) they will need to support heterogeneous computing and unified access to memory. This isn't far off and Apple knows it is coming so designing a computer that looks forward to the coming architectures is just smart on their part.
As to EP processors I still have this feeling that Apple and Intel are working on something more useful for workstation type computers. I just find it interesting that I can't find references to certain things that Intel alluded to a couple of years ago before Xeon Phi was branded.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmm
It's possible. Right now they share a lot of parts yet avoid the use of the really expensive parts in the single socket version. They use different cpus and mitigate board costs with the daugherboard design. If they stick to the current design, they probably would not reduce it to single only. Otherwise I still don't see them going outside of the EP chips, maybe just single versions.
You miss my point completely, modern computer design has to deal with removing heat from very small point sources. The case has nothing to do with that.
Say what? The whole Power Mac chassis was designed with heat dissipate in mind. Don't you remember Steve on stage saying: "What Apple? Nine fans? That thing will make a lot of noise!"
You miss my point completely, modern computer design has to deal with removing heat from very small point sources. The case has nothing to do with that.
CPU heat sink design has nothing to do with the case. Sure the heat sink has to have surface area but most electronics do not couple that heat sink to the case.
As for computers with cube like design you either make the design work for you or you don't. There is nothing inherently wrong with a cube design. In fact a cube has advantages over vertically oriented chassis due the fact that heat rises.
Your original query asked what Allen's Rule had to do with a computer, not a case, hence my comment. We also see Apple use the case for cooling in every machine they make except perhaps the Mac Pro. The current Mac Pro can't be ruled out unless we can conclude that a non-conductive material for the case would not affect the internal temperature.
I addressed how a cube could work but stated that a 12" cube would not be practical because of the placement of components. I think a cube that is say 7" would be more practical from an organization standpoint but would it have enough volume at (under) 343" cubed to work as a modern dual-socket workstation? If they get rid of the internal ODDs, reduce the PSU considerably, shrink the board to fit any one side of the case, but still use 4 HDDs, 3 PCIe slot, and allow for 8 sticks of desktop/server RAM could it al fit and still have enough room for cooling and other components? I don't think so..
I'd think that about 14" would be the minimum but then making it an actual cube wouldn't be practical so you're back to having it as some 14" x 14" x 7" to make accessing the internal component practical and you'd still get a substantial gain on internal volume. It would be (under) 1372" cubed. The current Mac Pro looks to be about 16" x 18" x 8" for the case minus the "handles" or close to double the volume of my concept but about 7x more volume than a 7" cube.
edit: Here is how you access the internal components of the NeXT cube and the Mac Pro. If you have an idea how to make a cube design as functional and convenient as the Mac Pro is I'd love to hear it. From that image of the Mac Pro what I'd think is most likely for them to do to reduce the size but maintain the needed functionality and convenience is to remove the HDDs then stand them up on their sides at the front or stack them one on top of each other after removing the ODDs. This allows for the PSU and top of the case to drop. If you shrink the PSU and board you can further shrink the case down and/or in. I think that's about it outside of other minor changes that won't result in too many changes with the internal volume. I think the shape will be about the same with airflow from front to back
That seems odd to me. The iMac and mini have become so fast that in order to differentiate the MP I would presume they make it the fastest beast around. Quad socket, 6-core machine with 16x16GB memory sticks. No HDD, SSD only.
Q… QUAD-socket? As in the… crap, what were they called… I'll find it.
The ones that start at $1,000 per chip. You really want Apple to use those?! The board has to be huge, too…
Originally Posted by wizard69
As to the current Mac Pro it is a hang over from the days of PPC and massive coolers. At this point it is too large for no reason. Beyond that there is no need for super drives, disk arrays and other wasted space in a modern "PRO" computer.
I agree with everything but drives, UNLESS Apple starts making an XServe RAID equivalent again. I like the Mac Pro because of its ludicrously simple and Apple-approved expansion.
Q… QUAD-socket? As in the… crap, what were they called… I'll find it.
The ones that start at $1,000 per chip. You really want Apple to use those?! The board has to be huge, too…
Yes. I wouldn't mind if the MP became more expensive. I don't think anyone would mind; you buy what you need, the cost is irrelevant. Well, that not something you'd hear in Business School, but you catch my drift. Besides, aren't the current CPU's something like $800 a piece already.
I agree with everything but drives, UNLESS Apple starts making an XServe RAID equivalent again. I like the Mac Pro because of its ludicrously simple and Apple-approved expansion.
If they keep HDD's in the new MP, they could put them perpendicular, possibly creating room for 12 old school 3.5" ones. However, I don't know what kind of heat that will create, and how they'll deal with that.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
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.
Ok what does Allen's Law have to do with a computer? Especially in this day and age when much of the power in a PC is released from a very small area. In fact the big challenge for decades now has been to figure out how to remove heat from a device a few mm thick and several mm square. Most tower designs are terrible when it comes to this issue of heat removal. The Mac Pro is better than most towers I will give you that, but it still stacks parts vertically resulting in heat rising from bottom to top and in the case of the Mac Pro, less than ideal disk cooling.
As to a cubish Mac Pro I've yet to hear a good argument against such a machine. The reality is such a machine can be engineered to actually solve some of the current Mac Pros issues. Done right a good cube design would minimize the wasted volume of the current design. This would allow much high density installations when that is needed. Further a cube, especially a much lighter one, allows for far more flexibility in placement in ones work space.
What doesn't it have to do with computing? My usage is relation to Apple using the metal case for conduction which helps alleviate the need for faster spinning fans, larger fans, etc, which helps reduce power needs. Not eliminate but help reduce.
But that is beside the point if you think that Allen's Rule does not exist in computing. Have you ever seen a heat sink? The entire design is to increase the surface area of the sink as much as possible so that more heat can be dissipated faster. That is Allen's Rule in a nutshell.
Cubes on and under a desk aren't likely as useful as you aren't likely to need more a certain amount of area to the front or back for ports and drives. You can't easily place it on or under a desk with room for a monitor or your feet and turning ti 90° may results in issues turned the other way. If a cube is 2x as wide as the current design but the internals are still about 1/2 that internal space how is that space being utilized properly when your 5" HDD drive is now sitting 12" deep in the chassis. It it opens up down the centerline then it's not a big deal but how would that be likely. If anyone could figure out how to make it work I think it's Apple but there is a reason this is not a common design and why Apple's Mac Pro is just wide enough to fit one HDD from side-to-side.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
As to the smaller and lighter Mac Pro I agree totally, the massive chassis for no reason will die.
I still don't understand comments like this.
The current Mac Pro isn't massive 'for no reason' at all. If you have dual processors, a Superdrive, 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards - which is what the unit is built to accommodate - you need every inch of that chassis to ensure the components don't boil.
Apple can make a future unit much smaller by ditching the Superdrive, going with SSDs only and shifting PCI expansion to a breakout box.
But to say that the current Pro's size serves no purpose is just plain wrong.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
Aha, someone who misses the DVD drive. Apple was early with dropping the floppy, too. Many people seemed to like that change. Just like many liked it when Apple was an early adopter to add USB to their Macs. Perhaps you need to let go of the old notion, and embrace the new?
I deal with several regulatory departments at both the local and federal level of government and with various contractors. They require electronic files to be delivered on CD/DVD.
So yes, I do use them, I need to use them and will continue to use them as long as the departments I deal with require them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmm
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 agree. That was dumb to say... but all I was pointing out it's 41.2 pounds heavy... and as others pointed, if a product weighs less and is smaller, it can be manufactured more, and shipped easier... It was nothing to do with Macbook Air's... but you have to take into consideration the impact making a 41.2 pound machine is doing to the earth. That's like buying a Hummer when you could buy a Honda Insight... even if the mileage on this metaphoric hummer was better than the Honda, people would still prefer the Honda over the Hummer because it's smaller and fits into places better. I mean look at this...
Compared to the Monster that is the Mac Pro
Originally Posted by darkdefender
And yet people buy PC towers just as big or larger. The Mac Pro is classed as a minitower!
There are a handful of cases that are larger. The Mac Pro's size is really quite normal for a the heavier dual socket workstations, which I've had a few PC workstations in the past of a similar size. The G4 cube is hardly a fair comparison as it is only a single socket machine.
Most PC towers sold are smaller on each dimension, but they're not dual socket systems.
Originally Posted by JeffDM
…it is only a single socket machine.
It's entirely possible that this is the future of Apple's pro desktop. Hmm…
And many people are in similar situations. A the office, I don't think a $79 external DVD drive will be a problem. But I understand that it's easier if it were still build in. That I get.
At wizard69 I see people already gave their opinion on the chassis issue, to which I agree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
It's entirely possible that this is the future of Apple's pro desktop. Hmm…
It's possible. Right now they share a lot of parts yet avoid the use of the really expensive parts in the single socket version. They use different cpus and mitigate board costs with the daugherboard design. If they stick to the current design, they probably would not reduce it to single only. Otherwise I still don't see them going outside of the EP chips, maybe just single versions.
That seems odd to me. The iMac and mini have become so fast that in order to differentiate the MP I would presume they make it the fastest beast around. Quad socket, 6-core machine with 16x16GB memory sticks. No HDD, SSD only. Partnership with a company that makes a successor to the Xserve RAID
First 1100 go to project System Y.
Is this your Mac system pictured here?
I think darkdefender has a light computer, not one weighing 41 pounds.
You miss my point completely, modern computer design has to deal with removing heat from very small point sources. The case has nothing to do with that.
CPU heat sink design has nothing to do with the case. Sure the heat sink has to have surface area but most electronics do not couple that heat sink to the case.
As for computers with cube like design you either make the design work for you or you don't. There is nothing inherently wrong with a cube design. In fact a cube has advantages over vertically oriented chassis due the fact that heat rises.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
What doesn't it have to do with computing? My usage is relation to Apple using the metal case for conduction which helps alleviate the need for faster spinning fans, larger fans, etc, which helps reduce power needs. Not eliminate but help reduce.
But that is beside the point if you think that Allen's Rule does not exist in computing. Have you ever seen a heat sink? The entire design is to increase the surface area of the sink as much as possible so that more heat can be dissipated faster. That is Allen's Rule in a nutshell.
Cubes on and under a desk aren't likely as useful as you aren't likely to need more a certain amount of area to the front or back for ports and drives. You can't easily place it on or under a desk with room for a monitor or your feet and turning ti 90° may results in issues turned the other way. If a cube is 2x as wide as the current design but the internals are still about 1/2 that internal space how is that space being utilized properly when your 5" HDD drive is now sitting 12" deep in the chassis. It it opens up down the centerline then it's not a big deal but how would that be likely. If anyone could figure out how to make it work I think it's Apple but there is a reason this is not a common design and why Apple's Mac Pro is just wide enough to fit one HDD from side-to-side.
Wake up! Seriously electronics have shrunken considerably since the Mac Pro chassis has come out.
As to the current Mac Pro it is a hang over from the days of PPC and massive coolers. At this point it is too large for no reason. Beyond that there is no need for super drives, disk arrays and other wasted space in a modern "PRO" computer. PCI expansion however can't go to external boxes with today's technology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
I still don't understand comments like this.
The current Mac Pro isn't massive 'for no reason' at all. If you have dual processors, a Superdrive, 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards - which is what the unit is built to accommodate - you need every inch of that chassis to ensure the components don't boil.
Apple can make a future unit much smaller by ditching the Superdrive, going with SSDs only and shifting PCI expansion to a breakout box.
But to say that the current Pro's size serves no purpose is just plain wrong.
This is regressive thinking or frankly looking to the distant past. Even recent Mac Pros suffer from excessive space that does nothing for the platform.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple go to single socket only Mac Pros.
For one thing I expect a much higher performance GPU card or even a GPU soldered on the motherboard. Either way they have to find a way to connect TB to it. Putting the GPU on the motherboard would result in a well defined system for software developers and go farther to encouraging the use of OpenCL. At some point (but not with today's GPUs) they will need to support heterogeneous computing and unified access to memory. This isn't far off and Apple knows it is coming so designing a computer that looks forward to the coming architectures is just smart on their part.
As to EP processors I still have this feeling that Apple and Intel are working on something more useful for workstation type computers. I just find it interesting that I can't find references to certain things that Intel alluded to a couple of years ago before Xeon Phi was branded.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmm
It's possible. Right now they share a lot of parts yet avoid the use of the really expensive parts in the single socket version. They use different cpus and mitigate board costs with the daugherboard design. If they stick to the current design, they probably would not reduce it to single only. Otherwise I still don't see them going outside of the EP chips, maybe just single versions.
Say what? The whole Power Mac chassis was designed with heat dissipate in mind. Don't you remember Steve on stage saying: "What Apple? Nine fans? That thing will make a lot of noise!"
The case is the main case!
Your original query asked what Allen's Rule had to do with a computer, not a case, hence my comment. We also see Apple use the case for cooling in every machine they make except perhaps the Mac Pro. The current Mac Pro can't be ruled out unless we can conclude that a non-conductive material for the case would not affect the internal temperature.
I addressed how a cube could work but stated that a 12" cube would not be practical because of the placement of components. I think a cube that is say 7" would be more practical from an organization standpoint but would it have enough volume at (under) 343" cubed to work as a modern dual-socket workstation? If they get rid of the internal ODDs, reduce the PSU considerably, shrink the board to fit any one side of the case, but still use 4 HDDs, 3 PCIe slot, and allow for 8 sticks of desktop/server RAM could it al fit and still have enough room for cooling and other components? I don't think so..
I'd think that about 14" would be the minimum but then making it an actual cube wouldn't be practical so you're back to having it as some 14" x 14" x 7" to make accessing the internal component practical and you'd still get a substantial gain on internal volume. It would be (under) 1372" cubed. The current Mac Pro looks to be about 16" x 18" x 8" for the case minus the "handles" or close to double the volume of my concept but about 7x more volume than a 7" cube.
edit: Here is how you access the internal components of the NeXT cube and the Mac Pro. If you have an idea how to make a cube design as functional and convenient as the Mac Pro is I'd love to hear it. From that image of the Mac Pro what I'd think is most likely for them to do to reduce the size but maintain the needed functionality and convenience is to remove the HDDs then stand them up on their sides at the front or stack them one on top of each other after removing the ODDs. This allows for the PSU and top of the case to drop. If you shrink the PSU and board you can further shrink the case down and/or in. I think that's about it outside of other minor changes that won't result in too many changes with the internal volume. I think the shape will be about the same with airflow from front to back
Originally Posted by PhilBoogie
That seems odd to me. The iMac and mini have become so fast that in order to differentiate the MP I would presume they make it the fastest beast around. Quad socket, 6-core machine with 16x16GB memory sticks. No HDD, SSD only.
Q… QUAD-socket? As in the… crap, what were they called… I'll find it.
The ones that start at $1,000 per chip. You really want Apple to use those?! The board has to be huge, too…
Originally Posted by wizard69
As to the current Mac Pro it is a hang over from the days of PPC and massive coolers. At this point it is too large for no reason. Beyond that there is no need for super drives, disk arrays and other wasted space in a modern "PRO" computer.
I agree with everything but drives, UNLESS Apple starts making an XServe RAID equivalent again. I like the Mac Pro because of its ludicrously simple and Apple-approved expansion.
Yes. I wouldn't mind if the MP became more expensive. I don't think anyone would mind; you buy what you need, the cost is irrelevant. Well, that not something you'd hear in Business School, but you catch my drift. Besides, aren't the current CPU's something like $800 a piece already.
If they keep HDD's in the new MP, they could put them perpendicular, possibly creating room for 12 old school 3.5" ones. However, I don't know what kind of heat that will create, and how they'll deal with that.