It's had its day. I have an original Mac Pro. I'll probably give it an SSD and that's the last of it.
I think the latest update rendered most rational screen complaints moot, they finally made the screen surface to a degree of glare reduction that I wished they offered years ago. Most of the remaining screen complaints now aren't rational, or they haven't actually looked at the new screen in person.
I used to be very slot-oriented, but I haven't made a slot upgrade in years.
Not to the degree you think I did.
Jeff is calling it as it is. The Pro has about had its day. It will be lucky to see one more update.
And JeffDM is spot on re: the screen and the glare reduction. This beats the snot out of my last iMac's screen.
A million iMacs vs 50k units of the Mac Pro per quarter?
A 27 inch, 680 MX, quad core i7, 8 gigs of ram, fusion drive iMac vs the entry Mac Pro. No competition.
Even if Apple completely owns the workstation market, that's one million computers a year. That's a drop in the bucket for Apple, who sold 59M iPads last year. And I really doubt Apple can pull an upset in the engineering market.
Apple is high end consumer. Their professional users have been a sideline for years.
Frankly, a low end Apple workstation would just be a hail mary pass. The demand for that kind of machine just doesn't seem to be there, I've switched to an iMac with a Windows partition for my engineering tasks, the iMac replaced a dual socket Xeon computer.
*nods.
Rational. True. ...and the way the wind's blowin'.
Oh, something with an even smaller target market. WINNING COMBINATION!
Heh. I don't see how Apple are going to bring an X-Mac to the table with potential sales of what? An extra couple of hundred k? 200K? Especially at mid-tower prices Apple would charge. Even IF Apple brought back the blue and white G3 tower value performance proposition, it wouldn't jettison sales into the million, half a million or even 1/4 million mark to justify them getting out of bed.
I think X-Mac devotees are ignoring where Apple desktop sales are going...and what they're selling most of (iMACS!!!) and what they're selling even more of (DESKTOP REPLACEMENTS - ie LAPTOPS!) They're lucky if they get 250 sales now of the mini and pro combined?
The X-Mac's best chance is a more compact and cheaper Pro to get sales going again and/or a Mini with Haswell's gpu on board. That's your lot. There are worse fates.
Meanwhile, the new iMac is Apple's 'mid tower' with a screen. Slender. Powerful. And you can upgrade the ram. Add optical. Add external RAID. Add another screen. It's looking more like the future now and going forward than the Pro'.
Apple make volume items now. Most of them 'AIOs.' ie with screen built in. 4 million laptops. tens of millions of iPads. Tens of millions iPhones. 1 million iMacs.
Compare those numbers to the sales of a Mac Pro or a Mini. Tiny products with a yearning chasm inbetween updates. *(Still waiting on the 'Pro.')
Apple moved beyond the latter designs over ten years ago. They are no longer 'Apple Computer'... How come they didn't make an X-Mac when sales of the Mac have moved from sub 1 million when they had an affordable blue and white tower to where they're at now selling about 4-5 million Macs?
Look at the original Mac. That's who they are. And you can see that in the iMac, the laptop line and the iPad/iPhone. You don't see that in the 'pro' or the Mini.
Jeff is calling it as it is. The Pro has about had its day. It will be lucky to see one more update.
I don't think anybody disagrees with this. There is no rational reason for its price or positioning.
And JeffDM is spot on re: the screen and the glare reduction. This beats the snot out of my last iMac's screen.
Which only means something if you want that screen in the first place.
A million iMacs vs 50k units of the Mac Pro per quarter?
If sales where in the 50k range I don't think the rumors about the machine being dropped would exist. I'd be surprised if they move 5k a quarter right now.
A 27 inch, 680 MX, quad core i7, 8 gigs of ram, fusion drive iMac vs the entry Mac Pro. No competition.
Heh. I don't see how Apple are going to bring an X-Mac to the table with potential sales of what? An extra couple of hundred k? 200K? Especially at mid-tower prices Apple would charge. Even IF Apple brought back the blue and white G3 tower value performance proposition, it wouldn't jettison sales into the million, half a million or even 1/4 million mark to justify them getting out of bed.
I don't know what the ultimate sales numbers would be but the right machine at the right price could easily pick up Mini, iMac and laptop sales. The reason is pretty simple, people buy those machines due to no real alternative.
I think X-Mac devotees are ignoring where Apple desktop sales are going...and what they're selling most of (iMACS!!!) and what they're selling even more of (DESKTOP REPLACEMENTS - ie LAPTOPS!) They're lucky if they get 250 sales now of the mini and pro combined?
Look at this way why do the majority of desktop sales go to the iMac? It isn't because of price. It is rather because it is the only desktop machine that Apple puts any effort into. Look at the Mini and how stagnate that platform has become while the Laptops and iMac gets loads of new technology thrown at them. The Mac Pro is in the same boat really.
The X-Mac's best chance is a more compact and cheaper Pro to get sales going again and/or a Mini with Haswell's gpu on board. That's your lot. There are worse fates.
XMac to me isn't about any one box or technology it is about a machine that services the market far better than the Mac Pro. Yes that means far less expensive and a smaller box which is what I've been advocating for a very long time now.
Meanwhile, the new iMac is Apple's 'mid tower' with a screen. Slender. Powerful. And you can upgrade the ram. Add optical. Add external RAID. Add another screen. It's looking more like the future now and going forward than the Pro'.
Not at all, not even close really.
Apple make volume items now. Most of them 'AIOs.' ie with screen built in. 4 million laptops. tens of millions of iPads. Tens of millions iPhones. 1 million iMacs.
Or not so high volume items like iPod Classic, XCode, Mini and Mac Pro. The thing is the lower volume products shouldn't be damned because they are low volume. The key here is to ship enough product so that you don't loose money on them.
Compare those numbers to the sales of a Mac Pro or a Mini. Tiny products with a yearning chasm inbetween updates. *(Still waiting on the 'Pro.')
What about that Mini? It certainly has enough sales to earn a little developmental respect. Yet it doesn't get the innovation that even the AIRs get.
Apple moved beyond the latter designs over ten years ago. They are no longer 'Apple Computer'... How come they didn't make an X-Mac when sales of the Mac have moved from sub 1 million when they had an affordable blue and white tower to where they're at now selling about 4-5 million Macs?
Most of those Macs are laptops and frankly some of the most innovative and reliable laptops in the industry. Apple sells a lot of laptops because it is recognized that they have some of the best offering in the industry. Even the iMac gets fairly positive recognition in the industry for all in ones. Apples desktops are however a joke in the industry.
Look at the original Mac. That's who they are. And you can see that in the iMac, the laptop line and the iPad/iPhone. You don't see that in the 'pro' or the Mini.
They're 'Apple.'
Lemon Bon Bon.
Interesting that you should mention the original Mac because my first Mac was a Mac Plus! This machine started my love / hate relationship with Apple. Their screwing around with crap hardware and getting no where with the OS after that machine, caused me to leave the fold. OS/X got me interested in Apple again and after the Intel transition I started to think seriously about buying in. I did so in 2008 with a laptop because even back then the laptops where the best value to be had if iMac rubbed you the wrong way. The reality is nothing has really changed since the Mac Plus era hardware wise, Apples desktop machines are terrible values. Even now this reality will likely have me replacing that MBP with another laptop if I stay in the Apple fold. The frustration is made worst by the suspicion that the hardware line up is designed to "encourage" customers to buy laptops even if that isn't in their best interest.
There is no doubt that the trend in the industry has been towards laptops but I don't really see that as an excuse to maintain a line of crap desktop machines that have barely been given a thought in years and don't meet the needs of desktop users anyways. Maybe the new Mac Pro will address this with a significant update, but if Apple believes they will be successful with a base machine that starts at +$3000 they are nuts.
I know it sounds funny, but I find editing 720p video on my MBA perfectly acceptable. Better than the last PowerMac I had perhaps four years ago, which is good enough for me. Now, if I ever need to edit multiple streams of 4k 60fps, maybe the Pro will make more sense. Of course, by then the iPhone 7 will serve this functionality.
Why does a discussion about a "Pro" computer always turn into a discussion about editing video???????
This perplexes me to no end and leaves me thinking people have a very narrow view of the world on this forum.
I know it sounds funny, but I find editing 720p video on my MBA perfectly acceptable. Better than the last PowerMac I had perhaps four years ago, which is good enough for me. Now, if I ever need to edit multiple streams of 4k 60fps, maybe the Pro will make more sense. Of course, by then the iPhone 7 will serve this functionality.
Why does a discussion about a "Pro" computer always turn into a discussion about editing video???????
This perplexes me to no end and leaves me thinking people have a very narrow view of the world on this forum.
Uses Mac Pro for video editing = very narrow view of the world? That's quite an extrapolation, wiz!
I'm a video editor so I speak from my own experience; I never said you couldn't use a Pro for your own purposes. I've heard that MS Office runs SO FAST on a Pro.
It will either be a cheaper refactored Mac Pro (or not...and it's current design will lumber on with a specs bump...) or a Mini with Haswell 'gpu.' Pick one and start saving.
Ya.
Pick one Wizard. Because you're not getting what you want. So keep dreaming. Apple left that space over ten years ago. And you can whine like a stuck pig. The mythical X-Mac isn't coming. The iMac sits in the mid-tower space. It sells a million or there abouts. Apple pushed the tower into the 2k plus bracket. And they canned the Cube. There isn't the market unit to drive sales of what you're talking about. It's also not Apple's direction.
They're all about the AIO. Guess you don't understand that. But try walking past one of their stores sometime...
They get greedy. That's always been Apple's problem. But the affordable 'X' Mac Blue and White G3 tower got left behind...back when Apple 'wanted' to try for the 'Id' gaming crowd with their affordable gpu power tower. But it didn't last. Apple doesn't go back to the past. The Cube and Tower are so over. They're history. And the current Pro looks like it might be history too. It's on thin ice. It hasn't got the volume to drive the sales. Why didn't it sell like hot cakes when Apple offered a G5 tower at £995? Yeah. Crap specs and poor value. It's less value now at £2k+.
The current iMac is selling wayyyyy more than either of those two ever did or would now. Even the iMac is getting borderline affordable at a £1099 starting price. It used to be as low as £675? ish?
The current desktop is iPad on a keyboard...or a floating giant iPad minus touchscreen. That's Apple's design direction for desktops and desktop replacements.
What's happened in the last ten plus years that makes you think they're going to do a fancy little uber powered all access box for Dave? Anything? How many Dave's are there out there? (Well, I'll rephrase that...) how many will Apple sell of an uber cube? All access? Uber powered? Uber valued?
Yes. I know. It sounds ridiculous from a company that charges 2k+ for a tower. And £500 for a biscuit box without a k/b, mouse or monitor...
Even more ironic? Wizard, a laptop user complaining about the lack of a low volume mid-tower.
Lemon Bon Bon.
What is more ironic is that people don't grasp why I didn't have much of a choice. If you wanted an affordable Mac with a real GPU, the laptop was the only decent choice at the time.
It will either be a cheaper refactored Mac Pro (or not...and it's current design will lumber on with a specs bump...) or a Mini with Haswell 'gpu.' Pick one and start saving.
Ya.
Pick one Wizard. Because you're not getting what you want. So keep dreaming. Apple left that space over ten years ago. And you can whine like a stuck pig. The mythical X-Mac isn't coming. The iMac sits in the mid-tower space. It sells a million or there abouts. Apple pushed the tower into the 2k plus bracket. And they canned the Cube. There isn't the market unit to drive sales of what you're talking about. It's also not Apple's direction.
The iMac is hardly a tower at all but then again neither is XMac. The only thing that we know for certain right now is that there is no market for the current Mac Pro. You can't really say there isn't a market for a machine apple hasn't even tried to market in over a decade. As to the cube that was a marketing mistake as big as the Mac Pro, a grossly over priced machine considering its spec at the time.
They're all about the AIO. Guess you don't understand that. But try walking past one of their stores sometime...
Actually I avoid walking by their stores because that leads to walking in which leads to a lighter wallet. Frankly though it doesn't matter what is in the stores now, which by the way seldom have Mac Pros on display. What maters is trying to turn around the desktop market with a machine that can sell in volume. I've yet to see anybody offer a real solution to the Mac Pros problems. Just to be clear that solution isn't the iMac and never will be.
They get greedy. That's always been Apple's problem. But the affordable 'X' Mac Blue and White G3 tower got left behind...back when Apple 'wanted' to try for the 'Id' gaming crowd with their affordable gpu power tower. But it didn't last. Apple doesn't go back to the past. The Cube and Tower are so over. They're history. And the current Pro looks like it might be history too. It's on thin ice. It hasn't got the volume to drive the sales. Why didn't it sell like hot cakes when Apple offered a G5 tower at £995? Yeah. Crap specs and poor value. It's less value now at £2k+.
Sadly you are agreeing with many of my points here, yet reject my solution which is to market a reasonable machine at a reasonable price.
The current iMac is selling wayyyyy more than either of those two ever did or would now. Even the iMac is getting borderline affordable at a £1099 starting price. It used to be as low as £675? ish?
It might also be noted that the iMac is the only machine that gets any engineering investment at all. The last Mini update could have been phoned from the beach. Apple is as much the author of the failures seen in the Mac Pro or the Mini as is the market.
The current desktop is iPad on a keyboard...or a floating giant iPad minus touchscreen. That's Apple's design direction for desktops and desktop replacements.
You see I don't see the market going that way ultimately. I see a rapid decline in laptop sales and a return to "desktops" as the adjunct to a tablet.
What's happened in the last ten plus years that makes you think they're going to do a fancy little uber powered all access box for Dave? Anything? How many Dave's are there out there? (Well, I'll rephrase that...) how many will Apple sell of an uber cube? All access? Uber powered? Uber valued?
done right such a box could take all of the Mac Pro sales, some Mini and a lot of iMac sales. Plus I see a gradual abandonment of the laptop segment for the combo of a desktop and a tablet. What it comes down to is hitting the right price point with the right performance. There is nothing "Über" about this machine which is something I've been very clear about, the goal is to get a entry level machine into the market at a reasonable price point.
Yes. I know. It sounds ridiculous from a company that charges 2k+ for a tower. And £500 for a biscuit box without a k/b, mouse or monitor...
Lemon Bon Bon.
Which is maybe part of the problem don't you think? Lets face it apples pricing on the Pro sucks, a new machine gives them the opportunity to introduce it at a more reasonable price point. Possibly more importantly they can rename the machine to start fresh without the tarnish of the Mac Pros history.
It is interesting that you try to make this about me, it really has nothing to do with me. I'm simply offering a solution to Apples problems, you are free to think it won't work, but I'd like to see a real alternative offered up. And no you can't offer up the iMac as that isn't a desktop machine worthy of the name. To put it simply to remain a viable player, in personal computing, Apple has to offer up a desktop machine to run Mac OS/X on for the foreseeable future.
Today I talked with an Apple Genius about the fastest graphics card available on the Mac Pro. It is an AMD Radeon 5870 but he told me AMD was teaming up with Sapphire to make the Radeon HD 7950 Mac Pro Edition which is really good news for Mac Pro owners who are stuck with the old PCI 2 slot. I mean the Xeon processors are still incredibly fast. So that's awesome.
Also today Haswell 4770K is available online for $364 so it seems like all is in line for the June 10 release of an updated Mac Pro/ xMac. The LGA1150 Socket will support it's successor Broadwell too.
I'm more excited though about the upcoming DDR4 RAM in the Fall. Now I can speculate about even more in the future Macs with Gigabit Internet Cards, an updated Airport Router with Wifi AC, iPods, iPads, and iPhones with it, and the upcoming Geforce and Radeon Cards.
Today I talked with an Apple Genius about the fastest graphics card available on the Mac Pro. It is an AMD Radeon 5870 but he told me AMD was teaming up with Sapphire to make the Radeon HD 7950 Mac Pro Edition which is really good news for Mac Pro owners who are stuck with the old PCI 2 slot. I mean the Xeon processors are still incredibly fast. So that's awesome.
Also today Haswell 4770K is available online for $364 so it seems like all is in line for the June 10 release of an updated Mac Pro/ xMac. The LGA1150 Socket will support it's successor Broadwell too.
I'm more excited though about the upcoming DDR4 RAM in the Fall. Now I can speculate about even more in the future Macs with Gigabit Internet Cards, an updated Airport Router with Wifi AC, iPods, iPads, and iPhones with it, and the upcoming Geforce and Radeon Cards.
You're describing things that would show up in the imac either way. If you placed that in a mac pro, it would gut bandwidth. They would still sell many of them, but it may push away some of the prior customers. The PCIe 2 vs 3 slot isn't as big a deal when you cut back the lanes to 16 total. LGA1150 supports 16. LGA2011 supports 40 or 80. Most new cards are made for PCIe 3, but they won't saturate it. As for after market gpus, there's an NVidia 680 mac edition too. Apple has been pushing the imac for a long time, especially against the base mac pro. The 680mx this year and 6970m last year are higher end cards than what they've used in the past.
It's out, and it's six hundred dollars. There's also a GeForce 650 for Mac out, and it's $600.
Complete insanity.
You know how a few people on here kept mentioning the concept of thunderbolt gpus? Such a thing would carry a similar markup due to the imposed requirements. The NVidia one is a 680, not a 650.
You know how a few people on here kept mentioning the concept of thunderbolt gpus? Such a thing would carry a similar markup due to the imposed requirements. The NVidia one is a 680, not a 650.
I would expect the markup would be even higher. Assuming such a device is ever made.
I would expect the markup would be even higher. Assuming such a device is ever made.
Well I'm not one of the ones that believes such a thing will be made, just to clarify that. They would have to deal with certification, oem a chassis and power supply for the thing, and write drivers that accommodate hot plugging of the device. Such a device would probably provide a poor compromise in terms of cost relative to performance.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
It's had its day. I have an original Mac Pro. I'll probably give it an SSD and that's the last of it.
I think the latest update rendered most rational screen complaints moot, they finally made the screen surface to a degree of glare reduction that I wished they offered years ago. Most of the remaining screen complaints now aren't rational, or they haven't actually looked at the new screen in person.
I used to be very slot-oriented, but I haven't made a slot upgrade in years.
Not to the degree you think I did.
Jeff is calling it as it is. The Pro has about had its day. It will be lucky to see one more update.
And JeffDM is spot on re: the screen and the glare reduction. This beats the snot out of my last iMac's screen.
A million iMacs vs 50k units of the Mac Pro per quarter?
A 27 inch, 680 MX, quad core i7, 8 gigs of ram, fusion drive iMac vs the entry Mac Pro. No competition.
Times are a changin'.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
Even if Apple completely owns the workstation market, that's one million computers a year. That's a drop in the bucket for Apple, who sold 59M iPads last year. And I really doubt Apple can pull an upset in the engineering market.
Apple is high end consumer. Their professional users have been a sideline for years.
Frankly, a low end Apple workstation would just be a hail mary pass. The demand for that kind of machine just doesn't seem to be there, I've switched to an iMac with a Windows partition for my engineering tasks, the iMac replaced a dual socket Xeon computer.
*nods.
Rational. True. ...and the way the wind's blowin'.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
Oh, something with an even smaller target market. WINNING COMBINATION!
Heh. I don't see how Apple are going to bring an X-Mac to the table with potential sales of what? An extra couple of hundred k? 200K? Especially at mid-tower prices Apple would charge. Even IF Apple brought back the blue and white G3 tower value performance proposition, it wouldn't jettison sales into the million, half a million or even 1/4 million mark to justify them getting out of bed.
I think X-Mac devotees are ignoring where Apple desktop sales are going...and what they're selling most of (iMACS!!!) and what they're selling even more of (DESKTOP REPLACEMENTS - ie LAPTOPS!) They're lucky if they get 250 sales now of the mini and pro combined?
The X-Mac's best chance is a more compact and cheaper Pro to get sales going again and/or a Mini with Haswell's gpu on board. That's your lot. There are worse fates.
Meanwhile, the new iMac is Apple's 'mid tower' with a screen. Slender. Powerful. And you can upgrade the ram. Add optical. Add external RAID. Add another screen. It's looking more like the future now and going forward than the Pro'.
Apple make volume items now. Most of them 'AIOs.' ie with screen built in. 4 million laptops. tens of millions of iPads. Tens of millions iPhones. 1 million iMacs.
Compare those numbers to the sales of a Mac Pro or a Mini. Tiny products with a yearning chasm inbetween updates. *(Still waiting on the 'Pro.')
Apple moved beyond the latter designs over ten years ago. They are no longer 'Apple Computer'... How come they didn't make an X-Mac when sales of the Mac have moved from sub 1 million when they had an affordable blue and white tower to where they're at now selling about 4-5 million Macs?
Look at the original Mac. That's who they are. And you can see that in the iMac, the laptop line and the iPad/iPhone. You don't see that in the 'pro' or the Mini.
They're 'Apple.'
Lemon Bon Bon.
Interesting that you should mention the original Mac because my first Mac was a Mac Plus! This machine started my love / hate relationship with Apple. Their screwing around with crap hardware and getting no where with the OS after that machine, caused me to leave the fold. OS/X got me interested in Apple again and after the Intel transition I started to think seriously about buying in. I did so in 2008 with a laptop because even back then the laptops where the best value to be had if iMac rubbed you the wrong way. The reality is nothing has really changed since the Mac Plus era hardware wise, Apples desktop machines are terrible values. Even now this reality will likely have me replacing that MBP with another laptop if I stay in the Apple fold. The frustration is made worst by the suspicion that the hardware line up is designed to "encourage" customers to buy laptops even if that isn't in their best interest.
There is no doubt that the trend in the industry has been towards laptops but I don't really see that as an excuse to maintain a line of crap desktop machines that have barely been given a thought in years and don't meet the needs of desktop users anyways. Maybe the new Mac Pro will address this with a significant update, but if Apple believes they will be successful with a base machine that starts at +$3000 they are nuts.
I know it sounds funny, but I find editing 720p video on my MBA perfectly acceptable. Better than the last PowerMac I had perhaps four years ago, which is good enough for me. Now, if I ever need to edit multiple streams of 4k 60fps, maybe the Pro will make more sense. Of course, by then the iPhone 7 will serve this functionality.
This perplexes me to no end and leaves me thinking people have a very narrow view of the world on this forum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Why does a discussion about a "Pro" computer always turn into a discussion about editing video???????
This perplexes me to no end and leaves me thinking people have a very narrow view of the world on this forum.
Uses Mac Pro for video editing = very narrow view of the world? That's quite an extrapolation, wiz!
I'm a video editor so I speak from my own experience; I never said you couldn't use a Pro for your own purposes. I've heard that MS Office runs SO FAST on a Pro.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Why does a discussion about a "Pro" computer always turn into a discussion about editing video???????
This perplexes me to no end and leaves me thinking people have a very narrow view of the world on this forum.
LOL. Ironic.
Wizard using 'narrow' to describe someone else's point of view.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Even more ironic? Wizard, a laptop user complaining about the lack of a low volume mid-tower.
Lemon Bon Bon.
It will either be a cheaper refactored Mac Pro (or not...and it's current design will lumber on with a specs bump...) or a Mini with Haswell 'gpu.' Pick one and start saving.
Ya.
Pick one Wizard. Because you're not getting what you want. So keep dreaming. Apple left that space over ten years ago. And you can whine like a stuck pig. The mythical X-Mac isn't coming. The iMac sits in the mid-tower space. It sells a million or there abouts. Apple pushed the tower into the 2k plus bracket. And they canned the Cube. There isn't the market unit to drive sales of what you're talking about. It's also not Apple's direction.
They're all about the AIO. Guess you don't understand that. But try walking past one of their stores sometime...
They get greedy. That's always been Apple's problem. But the affordable 'X' Mac Blue and White G3 tower got left behind...back when Apple 'wanted' to try for the 'Id' gaming crowd with their affordable gpu power tower. But it didn't last. Apple doesn't go back to the past. The Cube and Tower are so over. They're history. And the current Pro looks like it might be history too. It's on thin ice. It hasn't got the volume to drive the sales. Why didn't it sell like hot cakes when Apple offered a G5 tower at £995? Yeah. Crap specs and poor value. It's less value now at £2k+.
The current iMac is selling wayyyyy more than either of those two ever did or would now. Even the iMac is getting borderline affordable at a £1099 starting price. It used to be as low as £675? ish?
The current desktop is iPad on a keyboard...or a floating giant iPad minus touchscreen. That's Apple's design direction for desktops and desktop replacements.
What's happened in the last ten plus years that makes you think they're going to do a fancy little uber powered all access box for Dave? Anything? How many Dave's are there out there? (Well, I'll rephrase that...) how many will Apple sell of an uber cube? All access? Uber powered? Uber valued?
Yes. I know. It sounds ridiculous from a company that charges 2k+ for a tower. And £500 for a biscuit box without a k/b, mouse or monitor...
Lemon Bon Bon.
What is more ironic is that people don't grasp why I didn't have much of a choice. If you wanted an affordable Mac with a real GPU, the laptop was the only decent choice at the time.
It is interesting that you try to make this about me, it really has nothing to do with me. I'm simply offering a solution to Apples problems, you are free to think it won't work, but I'd like to see a real alternative offered up. And no you can't offer up the iMac as that isn't a desktop machine worthy of the name. To put it simply to remain a viable player, in personal computing, Apple has to offer up a desktop machine to run Mac OS/X on for the foreseeable future.
Also today Haswell 4770K is available online for $364 so it seems like all is in line for the June 10 release of an updated Mac Pro/ xMac. The LGA1150 Socket will support it's successor Broadwell too.
I'm more excited though about the upcoming DDR4 RAM in the Fall. Now I can speculate about even more in the future Macs with Gigabit Internet Cards, an updated Airport Router with Wifi AC, iPods, iPads, and iPhones with it, and the upcoming Geforce and Radeon Cards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by darkdefender
Today I talked with an Apple Genius about the fastest graphics card available on the Mac Pro. It is an AMD Radeon 5870 but he told me AMD was teaming up with Sapphire to make the Radeon HD 7950 Mac Pro Edition which is really good news for Mac Pro owners who are stuck with the old PCI 2 slot. I mean the Xeon processors are still incredibly fast. So that's awesome.
Also today Haswell 4770K is available online for $364 so it seems like all is in line for the June 10 release of an updated Mac Pro/ xMac. The LGA1150 Socket will support it's successor Broadwell too.
I'm more excited though about the upcoming DDR4 RAM in the Fall. Now I can speculate about even more in the future Macs with Gigabit Internet Cards, an updated Airport Router with Wifi AC, iPods, iPads, and iPhones with it, and the upcoming Geforce and Radeon Cards.
You're describing things that would show up in the imac either way. If you placed that in a mac pro, it would gut bandwidth. They would still sell many of them, but it may push away some of the prior customers. The PCIe 2 vs 3 slot isn't as big a deal when you cut back the lanes to 16 total. LGA1150 supports 16. LGA2011 supports 40 or 80. Most new cards are made for PCIe 3, but they won't saturate it. As for after market gpus, there's an NVidia 680 mac edition too. Apple has been pushing the imac for a long time, especially against the base mac pro. The 680mx this year and 6970m last year are higher end cards than what they've used in the past.
Originally Posted by dark defender
…AMD was teaming up with Sapphire to make the Radeon HD 7950 Mac Pro Edition…
It's out, and it's six hundred dollars. There's also a GeForce 650 for Mac out, and it's $600.
Complete insanity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
It's out, and it's six hundred dollars. There's also a GeForce 650 for Mac out, and it's $600.
Complete insanity.
You know how a few people on here kept mentioning the concept of thunderbolt gpus? Such a thing would carry a similar markup due to the imposed requirements. The NVidia one is a 680, not a 650.
I would expect the markup would be even higher. Assuming such a device is ever made.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
I would expect the markup would be even higher. Assuming such a device is ever made.
Well I'm not one of the ones that believes such a thing will be made, just to clarify that. They would have to deal with certification, oem a chassis and power supply for the thing, and write drivers that accommodate hot plugging of the device. Such a device would probably provide a poor compromise in terms of cost relative to performance.