It's possible that it could help push less expensive options.
It would have been nice to have an nVidia option, you need nVidia for certain tasks.
Is it possible to do SMART over any external device save for maybe eSATA?
Given that Thunderbolt is PCIe, I think it could support SMART because it would be a SATA chip on PCIe.
That said, the number of times SMART saved my bacon on any computer was zero.
Same experience with SMART. It will only detect mechanical failure, and typically only at the brink of destruction if at all. The metadata can be somewhat helpful, but that requires a third party app to view in OSX. I'm not sure about Windows on that one. I would have preferred NVidia as CUDA is still a better match for certain things. It appears to have a lot of thunderbolt ports relative to the number of devices out for thunderbolt. I've indicated before that I think thunderbolt was designed with notebooks in mind. It's designed for form factors where things won't fit internally. Given the ratio of notebook to desktop sales and that Apple has some seemingly popular $2k+ notebooks, I would have expected them to be the real driver in thunderbolt sales. They definitely kicked the specs up though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elliots11
I think we're going to see upgraded graphics cards done externally through Thunderbolt 2 which is why they decided to debut it here. Just my theory.
Apple has historically been trying to keep people from tinkering inside its machines, so by releasing basically a badass Mac Mini with a way to add on externally what you previously would have internally... well that's about par for the course.
You can't tinker with the insides, but you can add on more powerful attachments so it's flexible. Fine by me as long as I'm right on this. I have a videocard that would never fit into that little case.
I'm highly skeptical of that. Notebooks have the most to gain, unless manufacturers feel that the next generation provides adequate bandwidth. If everything made sense there, including price, the companies that released a 680 and 7970 for Mac would have also released thunderbolt versions to maximize the sales potential of those cards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
Doesn't matter when there are known driver issues with the FirePro and some pro apps that AMD is aware of and haven't fixed (ArcGIS, Autodesk, even some issues in CS) but work perfectly fine on the Quadro. And anyone that does CUDA is also now screwed.
Windows drivers do tend to be different than OSX ones. For example the Quadro 4000 had kernel panic issues with its early drivers. I agree with you on CUDA. Some things where this machine would be used just don't work with OpenCL. I'll reserve judgement somewhat on the use of thunderbolt for everything, but I'm skeptical that the mac pro would drive adoption where other machines have yet. If it's an issue of a stable thunderbolt spec, that would make more sense.
Huh? He just misspoke. They were ALL pretty nervous up there for some reason. Don't know why; they succeeded phenomenally.
It probably started with the race cars and the little issue they had getting going. Honestly though I'm not sure if it was nervousness or excitement. When he got to the Mac Pro you could almost feel the excitement. This is obviously something they have been working on for some time now so they likely where charged up so to speak. This is a revolutionary machine and as such they probably have been excited about it for months now.
Meanwhile, OS X refuses to support modern OpenGL…
Mavericks is supposedly taking care of this. It had better.
I was a bit disappointed that they didn't go into Mavericks a little deeper. There appears to be a huge amount of innovation in this Mac OS release that nobody will notice. In fact Mavericks could end up selling even more Mac Books of various types. It doesn't look like MS has anything close to the power saving technologies that Mavericks has.
The last one was portable, too. I literally carry mine around from place to place when I have to work to move.
60 lbs. does great stuff to your upper body.
I really think this is a machine that will grow on people over time. I'm not sure why so many expected a machine built like the Mac Pro of today. While I wasn't expecting Mac Tube and this specific configuration I was expecting a much smaller platform focused on modern technology. I kinda see this like the first MB Airs. It introduces an entirely new concept that at first has some rough spots. Eventually like the Air this machine will morph into something thoroughly modern.
It looks like a fun and capable upscale consumer computer. Big upgrade from a mini or an iMac, for sure.
HUGE downgrade from a Mac Pro though. This will further send more audio and video professionals away from the Mac.
I really wish somebody would explain how this can be a downgrade. You will have 7 TeraFlops of performance through the GPUs', what current Mac Pro can do this? Your through put to RAM doubles which is nothing to sneeze at either. Everything about this design indicates huge increase in performance over previous designs, so how is that not "pro". The only real issue is the lack of internal PCI-Express slots which is of concern to only a tiny portion of Mac Pro users. Eventually those slot users will have to upgrade anyways.
Frankly I think you have it all wrong, I would expect true professionals to see this platform for what it is. That is a very high performance computational node.
All this talk of external expansion being the future makes me think of this old ad:
But the future is the future. I just hope that all these wonderful external devices will last for at least a few generations of hardware upgrades.
Flaw in this picture is that the MacPro is not marketed as an All-in-One, nor it is even a consumer-level machine like the Dell in this photo. The Mac Pro was always about function not form, and more liberal expansion options. Things that required extra cables.
I'm not passing a judgment on a not shipping computer just yet (especially since something else might pop out in the meantime) but the pro audio and video boards I frequent are having a field day to this effect.
Probably the same idiots that panned the FCP update. Which by the way might sell a lot of these machines once they optimize FCP for the new Mac Pro.
It's just that... this thing man Damn, I hate to say things like this but were talking $10,000 or minimum $5,000, THE LOWEST CONFIG, $4999.99
Seriously, Look at those parts
The 1 TB SSD PCIE 3.0? $#!+ Thats, like $1,500
It is probably Apples own controller. I wouldn't be surprised if they can get that sort of storage into the Mac Pro for under $500. Of course what they want to charge the buyer for that storage is another thing. in any event there is a lot of room for the cost of flash storage to come down.
Two Video Cards, what's that without looking? $2,000? or $1,000
This is actually most interesting. These aren't standard card obviously. The thing here is that the chips will be soon replaced in the market with new revisions. I could see each card going into the machine for less than $500.
Ram there's another $1,000
Err no not really
PROCS minimum $1,500 a piece x2 = $3,000
The way I understand it there is only one chip
That's $7Gs right there, and we're not even talking about Case, Motherboard, or Thunderbolt (pieces)
I'm actually thinking around $3000. Like you the rest also will cost money. It really depends upon what sort of deals Apple can cut with suppliers, especially AMD and the GPU boards. I suspect the potential is there for dramatic savings over a regular PCI Express card.
Dang... I think I better hit up eBay HAHA (or make some more money)
-- ADDED -- oh and I completely forgot, Made in USA? whoa :P
No, I'm in Hollywood working in theatrical and broadcast design. Last thing I want is a 1970s ashtray on my desk with a bunch of cables hanging out of it. Then not being able to upgrade the graphics card? Apple loves prosumers, hates professionals.
You are simply full of yourself. Once video professionals grasp what is in this machine they will be falling all over themselves to buy one. In the end upgrading video cards is becoming a thing of the past because the payoff isn't there anymore.
And now we just might be seeing how Apple really is going to kill the Mac Pro line.
Truth is, what's the difference between this and an iMac at this point, other than you don't get a built in display? Seriously. There's nothing in this box that couldn't be built into an (albeit thicker) iMac.
I don't know entirely, but I am thinking, as much as guys have been crying about SLI on the PC side, two big GPUs and a 1 TB RAM disk is pretty fly. The other thing to think about is that the 12 core is a new step, because Apple maybe saying lets get rid of two PROCs and only do 1 and not worry about messing with two processors anymore. Because really what is a 12 core chip? Two 6 core Chips. Here is the real upside, if they use the weird ones (chips) that have 2 extras virtual threads or something like that, we're talking 36 Threads!! That's quite a bit of a jump from mac-mini Quad-core with 8 Threads...
Note to Pros: save up and invest in the future. This is once again the future of computing staring you in the face, and you just don't have the vision to see it. The traditional tower workstation is dead. As with the death of the floppy, the first to implement USB, networking out of the box, wifi, touch computing... Apple is showing the way towards the next decade in computing.
Thank you! One of the few of you that actually gets it.
Yah, this is a very awesome Mac Mini Pro. The size is pretty decent for that as well.
There's going to be a lot of pros wondering what the difference between this and an iMac is if they have to buy an external PCIe chassis for any of the cards they are using. Sure performance will be faster than the iMac but given that the current iMac is faster than the old Mac Pro and the 2013 Haswell iMacs will be faster still that performance gap isn't likely to be 2x.
Funny enough, in a previous post I (and along with some others) predicted this kind of "mini pro" design with the multiple TB ports, and I also mentioned how this doesn't solve the GPU upgrade problem.
But to be fair, GPU's haven't improved in the last 3 generations. A Radeon 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx part is barely any faster then the previous part it replaced. In fact going from a 5750 to a 7770 resulted in a slight downgrade. So it may be fair to say that the energy use has gone down, allowing for the kind of design Apple has put out there.
The internal storage really is a non-issue. I pretty much nailed it where the OS drive (on a SSD) will be in the system, and a ratsnest of cables will be required. It solves one upgrade problem (by putting the drives in a separate enclosure, and thereby not having to migrate every time you change the core system.)
I'll wait till someone does a tear-down of it before considering buying it though. This is pretty much the G4 cube revived as a cylinder. It's an art piece, but it lacks rack-mountability and as far as we know, GPU upgrade ability. So this will likely be sufficient for most professionals who need a Photo/Video/CAD machine but will be woefully inadequate where OS X is being used as a server for the same reasons the Mac Mini doesn't make a good server.
I kinda expect Apple did this, and will later go "oh look, not many people buy Mac Pros, let's discontinue it", when really the people who needed a "Mac Pro" for the last 3 years hung onto the previous generation model were those who an iMac/Mac Mini were never viable upgrades to begin with. Optimistically I hope someone figures out how to connect 3 TB 2 ports to an external GPU to get the full 16 lanes.
Forward thinking sums it up. Too many are dwelling on what they know from the past. to those I urge sitting back and taking a deep breath and really think hard about what Apple has here. This is one nice machine.
I probably won't be getting one of these new Mac Pros right now, simply because I'm pretty sure that the cost will be far more than I am willing to budget for a computer at the moment, but damn, this is one sweet machine!
Isn't it funny how people have been whining for ages about the Mac Pro? When is the new one coming out! Apple doesn't innovate anymore! Blah Blah, fucking Blah.
And now that Apple releases a truly innovative design that looks like no Mac before it, that's 1/8 the size of the previous machine, out come the whiners, with their endless whining! These people are truly old fashioned and they're better off building their own PC, so that they can get exactly the machine that is made for them. And hopefully they won't have to whine anymore, since Apple has apparently innovated too much and taken too much of a leap. A leap that is guaranteed to confuse certain people who are not forward thinking.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
It's possible that it could help push less expensive options.
It would have been nice to have an nVidia option, you need nVidia for certain tasks.
Is it possible to do SMART over any external device save for maybe eSATA?
Given that Thunderbolt is PCIe, I think it could support SMART because it would be a SATA chip on PCIe.
That said, the number of times SMART saved my bacon on any computer was zero.
Same experience with SMART. It will only detect mechanical failure, and typically only at the brink of destruction if at all. The metadata can be somewhat helpful, but that requires a third party app to view in OSX. I'm not sure about Windows on that one. I would have preferred NVidia as CUDA is still a better match for certain things. It appears to have a lot of thunderbolt ports relative to the number of devices out for thunderbolt. I've indicated before that I think thunderbolt was designed with notebooks in mind. It's designed for form factors where things won't fit internally. Given the ratio of notebook to desktop sales and that Apple has some seemingly popular $2k+ notebooks, I would have expected them to be the real driver in thunderbolt sales. They definitely kicked the specs up though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elliots11
I think we're going to see upgraded graphics cards done externally through Thunderbolt 2 which is why they decided to debut it here. Just my theory.
Apple has historically been trying to keep people from tinkering inside its machines, so by releasing basically a badass Mac Mini with a way to add on externally what you previously would have internally... well that's about par for the course.
You can't tinker with the insides, but you can add on more powerful attachments so it's flexible. Fine by me as long as I'm right on this. I have a videocard that would never fit into that little case.
I'm highly skeptical of that. Notebooks have the most to gain, unless manufacturers feel that the next generation provides adequate bandwidth. If everything made sense there, including price, the companies that released a 680 and 7970 for Mac would have also released thunderbolt versions to maximize the sales potential of those cards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
Doesn't matter when there are known driver issues with the FirePro and some pro apps that AMD is aware of and haven't fixed (ArcGIS, Autodesk, even some issues in CS) but work perfectly fine on the Quadro. And anyone that does CUDA is also now screwed.
Windows drivers do tend to be different than OSX ones. For example the Quadro 4000 had kernel panic issues with its early drivers. I agree with you on CUDA. Some things where this machine would be used just don't work with OpenCL. I'll reserve judgement somewhat on the use of thunderbolt for everything, but I'm skeptical that the mac pro would drive adoption where other machines have yet. If it's an issue of a stable thunderbolt spec, that would make more sense.
Can't wait for iFixit to review it and give it a ?27 on their "Repairability Scale".
I was a bit disappointed that they didn't go into Mavericks a little deeper. There appears to be a huge amount of innovation in this Mac OS release that nobody will notice. In fact Mavericks could end up selling even more Mac Books of various types. It doesn't look like MS has anything close to the power saving technologies that Mavericks has.
I really think this is a machine that will grow on people over time. I'm not sure why so many expected a machine built like the Mac Pro of today. While I wasn't expecting Mac Tube and this specific configuration I was expecting a much smaller platform focused on modern technology. I kinda see this like the first MB Airs. It introduces an entirely new concept that at first has some rough spots. Eventually like the Air this machine will morph into something thoroughly modern.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Conrail
All this talk of external expansion being the future makes me think of this old ad:
But the future is the future. I just hope that all these wonderful external devices will last for at least a few generations of hardware upgrades.
I would love to have one especially if it was Autodesk certified! How about a 4k retina monitor too please!
When I saw the case, I thought COOL!
But then I saw the inside.
Then I thought...
R2D2!!!!
Just in time for Star Wars. LOL
Curious about final specs when revealed. Been saving for a 15" MBP Retina.
But will spring for this if it's what I think it will be.
I really wish somebody would explain how this can be a downgrade. You will have 7 TeraFlops of performance through the GPUs', what current Mac Pro can do this? Your through put to RAM doubles which is nothing to sneeze at either. Everything about this design indicates huge increase in performance over previous designs, so how is that not "pro". The only real issue is the lack of internal PCI-Express slots which is of concern to only a tiny portion of Mac Pro users. Eventually those slot users will have to upgrade anyways.
Frankly I think you have it all wrong, I would expect true professionals to see this platform for what it is. That is a very high performance computational node.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Conrail
All this talk of external expansion being the future makes me think of this old ad:
But the future is the future. I just hope that all these wonderful external devices will last for at least a few generations of hardware upgrades.
Flaw in this picture is that the MacPro is not marketed as an All-in-One, nor it is even a consumer-level machine like the Dell in this photo. The Mac Pro was always about function not form, and more liberal expansion options. Things that required extra cables.
Nice try though.
Probably the same idiots that panned the FCP update. Which by the way might sell a lot of these machines once they optimize FCP for the new Mac Pro.
It is probably Apples own controller. I wouldn't be surprised if they can get that sort of storage into the Mac Pro for under $500. Of course what they want to charge the buyer for that storage is another thing. in any event there is a lot of room for the cost of flash storage to come down. This is actually most interesting. These aren't standard card obviously. The thing here is that the chips will be soon replaced in the market with new revisions. I could see each card going into the machine for less than $500. Err no not really The way I understand it there is only one chip I'm actually thinking around $3000. Like you the rest also will cost money. It really depends upon what sort of deals Apple can cut with suppliers, especially AMD and the GPU boards. I suspect the potential is there for dramatic savings over a regular PCI Express card. Assembled in the USA!
It is! Eventually people will see this.
You are simply full of yourself. Once video professionals grasp what is in this machine they will be falling all over themselves to buy one. In the end upgrading video cards is becoming a thing of the past because the payoff isn't there anymore.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ajmas
Does anyone know if the outer case is in metal? I hope they aren't using any plastic for the outer shell.
Everything I've seen says metal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhyde
And now we just might be seeing how Apple really is going to kill the Mac Pro line.
Truth is, what's the difference between this and an iMac at this point, other than you don't get a built in display? Seriously. There's nothing in this box that couldn't be built into an (albeit thicker) iMac.
I don't know entirely, but I am thinking, as much as guys have been crying about SLI on the PC side, two big GPUs and a 1 TB RAM disk is pretty fly. The other thing to think about is that the 12 core is a new step, because Apple maybe saying lets get rid of two PROCs and only do 1 and not worry about messing with two processors anymore. Because really what is a 12 core chip? Two 6 core Chips. Here is the real upside, if they use the weird ones (chips) that have 2 extras virtual threads or something like that, we're talking 36 Threads!! That's quite a bit of a jump from mac-mini Quad-core with 8 Threads...
Thank you! One of the few of you that actually gets it.
"But it doesn't have SCSI and ADB ports!!"
For some reason the hula hoop Steve used when introducing the iBook gave me imagery of a circus 8-)
Funny enough, in a previous post I (and along with some others) predicted this kind of "mini pro" design with the multiple TB ports, and I also mentioned how this doesn't solve the GPU upgrade problem.
But to be fair, GPU's haven't improved in the last 3 generations. A Radeon 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx part is barely any faster then the previous part it replaced. In fact going from a 5750 to a 7770 resulted in a slight downgrade. So it may be fair to say that the energy use has gone down, allowing for the kind of design Apple has put out there.
The internal storage really is a non-issue. I pretty much nailed it where the OS drive (on a SSD) will be in the system, and a ratsnest of cables will be required. It solves one upgrade problem (by putting the drives in a separate enclosure, and thereby not having to migrate every time you change the core system.)
I'll wait till someone does a tear-down of it before considering buying it though. This is pretty much the G4 cube revived as a cylinder. It's an art piece, but it lacks rack-mountability and as far as we know, GPU upgrade ability. So this will likely be sufficient for most professionals who need a Photo/Video/CAD machine but will be woefully inadequate where OS X is being used as a server for the same reasons the Mac Mini doesn't make a good server.
I kinda expect Apple did this, and will later go "oh look, not many people buy Mac Pros, let's discontinue it", when really the people who needed a "Mac Pro" for the last 3 years hung onto the previous generation model were those who an iMac/Mac Mini were never viable upgrades to begin with. Optimistically I hope someone figures out how to connect 3 TB 2 ports to an external GPU to get the full 16 lanes.