Yah, you're right they'll use a quad core E5-1600 v2 but I was under the mistaken impression they were all 6+ core. /shrug Shame on me for not double checking.
Yes, a new logic board is unlikely but maybe for Haswell it's worthwhile. LOL...imagine the screaming if they did have a $1799 Mac Pro but it was a E3-1285 v3 and no discrete GPUs at all.
I was pony-wishing for a mini with the E3-12x5. LOL.
I meant you would need one for E3s and one for E5s. E3s even have some pricing overlap with the most expensive one being $885 for a 1290. They aren't that common of a workstation processor choice, although Dell uses some of the cheaper ones in their T1600s line. I suspect it wouldn't be that logical for a company who would only use them in one model out of one line, but it would literally be the headless imac. If they were crammed into a mini case, you wouldn't get the ECC ram as I've never seen ECC in sodimm form. I don't think it would be very compelling for that at $1800. You wouldn't get the extra level of internal customization back. You would probably be limited to one thunderbolt chip. I don't think integrated graphics, especially the type included with E3s would support that whole array of thunderbolt ports unless they starved the usb3 ports with 1 lane at the back end. The igpu typically soaks up 4. Right now I wouldn't say even the $2500 solution is that great. The extra bays and things give it slightly more value by reducing dependence on third party peripherals where possible.
I think intel will continue to maintain a quad option with ivy or at least something at the $300 cpu price point. The other thing is some of the Firepro pricing is weird. Cards that they market as mid range are based on low end gaming cards chips or older designs. It may not line up quite as you suggest if the primary relationship to the other cards is one of branding. It could end up no different than what they labeled as a radeon with the current one. OSX cards have to at least be stable in OpenGL use, which was the older purpose of professional graphics.
Yep. You're arguing for the sake of I have no clue what if you claim you would turn down a dual Firepro W5000 hexa core Mac Pro in favor of a quad core Core i5 iMac for the same $2000.
ESPECIALLY given what you stated you do with your iMac and your described needs and other considerations. So you're just trying to be offended and pretend I called you a moron.
Even ignoring all that it STILL would be an insanely poor value to pick the base 27" iMac over that hugely underpriced Mac Pro configuration AND YOU KNOW IT.
Even for Dell that would be a $3000 machine. Go price out a T5600 with 6 cores, dual W5000s, 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.
Drop it down to dual V4900s, quad core and 8GB RAM and you're back down to $2200. For a Dell.
Just because my computer needs and other considerations don't match yours, I'm a moron?
Such a sweet thing for you to say. Should I accept that as a compliment?
Edit:
Sorry, you said "complete moron".
The top end iMac is a sound piece of kit.
There's a few reasons why you'd take it over the base Mac Pro. The monitor being a key one. Some people like it's AIO appeal.
As for Morons. Complete or otherwise... It's name calling based on hypertheticals. We don't know how much the new Pro is going to be.
Likely as pricey as the old entry point for £2045 inc VAT. But better value if it includes two gpus trade off vs the monitor in the iMac?
Expect the base Pro to pick up after the top end iMac.
Still could do with having a price lower than £2045 inc VAT.
£1500 with hex core and dual gpus instead of the monitor you'd get with the iMac. Lower price could get units moving again.
An iMac selling 1 million units is 20 times the units of the Pro selling 50k units. £1199-£1699 isn't cheap either. So there's an argument for having an entry option that isn't insanely priced.
It's not like the BTO and higher models won't allow Apple to do their customary 'Apple' pricing...
Never said it wasn't which is why this is funny. In fact I've been saying all along that there is no need for a $2000 Mac Pro because that role is already very ably filled by the 27" iMac.
I'm not shouting it's just that some folks here apparently can't read.
Quote:
There's a few reasons why you'd take it over the base Mac Pro. The monitor being a key one. Some people like it's AIO appeal.
As for Morons. Complete or otherwise... It's name calling based on hypertheticals. We don't know how much the new Pro is going to be.
Except we were discussing a specific scenario of the base Mac Pro being this uber machine for $2K. Not generalities. The "we don't know how much blah blah blah" is again the result of folks who apparently can't read. For this specific scenario postulated by MacRonin to pick the 27" Core i5 iMac is just dumb. Which is why I said that such a machine would crater iMac sales and Bergermeister got his panties in a wad as if it were a general attack on the iMac or AIOs and ignoring the entire f**king thread where I've been saying otherwise.
But I don't care how well you think iMacs currently sell because if Apple releases a $3000+ Mac Pro for $2000 that completely changes the value proposition of the entire Mac lineup. Something Apple has put tremendous thought into as opposed to someone like Dell with 6 gazillion possible machine combinations at every price point.
Yah, they sure would sell a lot of Mac Pros. And a lot less of the 27" iMacs. Who's IPS panel is the same LG IPS panel seen in $300 retail monitors on eBay and $450 from Monoprice.
Just like if they put a 640M in the current Mac Mini. A $999 2.6 Ghz Quad i7 Mac Mini with a 512MB GT 640M would crater 21" iMac sales. Which is why no such machine exists even if it would sell well with decent margins. A machine I would dearly love to see appear but understand it simply ain't happening. There's a huge profit advantage in selling AIOs which is why Apple still protects the iMac line even today even with Jobs gone. It's not whimsy or some kind of AIO fetish but why Apple makes money selling desktops and Dell not so much. That $500 cost delta between the base $1300 quad core i5 iMac and the $800 quad Core i7 Mac Mini is mostly profit on top of the profit inherent in the mini that you pay every time you refresh your iMac.
So it ain't likely that Apple is going to introduce either a Mac Pro or Mini that's going to significantly impact iMac sales.
we were discussing a specific scenario of the base Mac Pro being this uber machine for $2K. Not generalities. The "we don't know how much blah blah blah" is again the result of folks who apparently can't read. For this specific scenario postulated by MacRonin to pick the 27" Core i5 iMac is just dumb. Which is why I said that such a machine would crater iMac sales and Bergermeister got his panties in a wad as if it were a general attack on the iMac or AIOs and ignoring the entire f**king thread where I've been saying otherwise.
A 6-core for $2k certainly isn't likely considering the old Mac Pro had a $294 CPU for $2499 and a 6-core CPU costs at least $406. The dual FirePro can't be less than the single 5770 they used to have. The SSD will also cost more than the single HDD they used to sell with it. I do think they will have saved money on some of the design - they probably just buy the GPU chips from AMD and design the boards elsewhere, the single heatsink is likely cheaper to build than what they had before because it's just a single piece of extruded aluminium, just 1 fan vs 6 or more, no optical nor 5.25" bays/wiring, no HDD bays, much smaller enclosure, lower shipping costs (weight and volume).
I reckon they could sell a quad Mac Pro with dual W5000 for $2k and wouldn't impact the iMac significantly. Once a display is factored in, the cost is immediately higher. $2k is perhaps overly optimistic even for a quad but the original $2199 Mac Pro price wouldn't be all that bad. It's still higher than an iMac and they should be able to build the machine with a decent gross profit while still allowing for people to spend money on external storage or peripherals.
I don't expect that entry config to come with much though:
The current $2k iMac has 3.2GHz quad i5, 8GB, 1TB HDD, 1GB GTX 675MX and this will of course change with Haswell but despite it being clearly lower spec than the MP, I think some people would still take the iMac for the display if the spec meets their needs.
It wouldn't really matter one way or the other to Apple as long as the margins were high enough on both and it may convince some to buy an Apple Thunderbolt display on top of the Mac Pro.
The box design could be interesting as this is the first cylindrical machine they've had. I expect they'll ship it with a wireless keyboard and mouse and the wireless keyboard is taller than the Mac Pro. It could be a box that is curved on one side (heavily padded) and flat on the other with the wireless keyboard sitting vertically beside the documentation and the power plug under the mouse.
I reckon they could sell a quad Mac Pro with dual W5000 for $2k and wouldn't impact the iMac significantly. Once a display is factored in, the cost is immediately higher. $2k is perhaps overly optimistic even for a quad but the original $2199 Mac Pro price wouldn't be all that bad. It's still higher than an iMac and they should be able to build the machine with a decent gross profit while still allowing for people to spend money on external storage or peripherals.
I don't expect that entry config to come with much though:
E5-1620v2 quad 3.6GHz
8GB RAM (4x 2GB)
256GB SSD
dual W5000 2GB
I would suggest it could be all branding. On Windows it varies by card. Some get better OpenGL performance on Windows, and some have bugs that aren't seen under OSX. It could be as simple as a branding issue. I think going by existing firepro model numbers may be unrealistic due to pricing structure. It could be similar to that 5770, yet branded differently. For computation workstation cards aren't always faster. They usually contain ECC ram, and they don't typically run as hot.
Consider that 7000 drivers showed up in prior Mountain Lion betas.
Apple's typical Radeon selections aren't always precisely the same. Typically they have less ram and a high price. In this case it's x2, so I suspect higher spec options will be expensive. I don't think it will follow current W9000 price points with Apple's typical markup tacked onto that. The 6GB cards were still part of the up to spec, so obviously I don't expect them to be standard. Other than that I basically agree with your assessment. I'm pretty sure the v2 will still be a quad core, but either way I think that cpu will stay around the same price.
Never said it wasn't which is why this is funny. In fact I've been saying all along that there is no need for a $2000 Mac Pro because that role is already very ably filled by the 27" iMac.
I'm not shouting it's just that some folks here apparently can't read.
Except we were discussing a specific scenario of the base Mac Pro being this uber machine for $2K. Not generalities. The "we don't know how much blah blah blah" is again the result of folks who apparently can't read. For this specific scenario postulated by MacRonin to pick the 27" Core i5 iMac is just dumb. Which is why I said that such a machine would crater iMac sales and Bergermeister got his panties in a wad as if it were a general attack on the iMac or AIOs and ignoring the entire f**king thread where I've been saying otherwise.
But I don't care how well you think iMacs currently sell because if Apple releases a $3000+ Mac Pro for $2000 that completely changes the value proposition of the entire Mac lineup. Something Apple has put tremendous thought into as opposed to someone like Dell with 6 gazillion possible machine combinations at every price point.
Yah, they sure would sell a lot of Mac Pros. And a lot less of the 27" iMacs. Who's IPS panel is the same LG IPS panel seen in $300 retail monitors on eBay and $450 from Monoprice.
Just like if they put a 640M in the current Mac Mini. A $999 2.6 Ghz Quad i7 Mac Mini with a 512MB GT 640M would crater 21" iMac sales. Which is why no such machine exists even if it would sell well with decent margins. A machine I would dearly love to see appear but understand it simply ain't happening. There's a huge profit advantage in selling AIOs which is why Apple still protects the iMac line even today even with Jobs gone. It's not whimsy or some kind of AIO fetish but why Apple makes money selling desktops and Dell not so much. That $500 cost delta between the base $1300 quad core i5 iMac and the $800 quad Core i7 Mac Mini is mostly profit on top of the profit inherent in the mini that you pay every time you refresh your iMac.
So it ain't likely that Apple is going to introduce either a Mac Pro or Mini that's going to significantly impact iMac sales.
*crater? B*ll*cks.
Apple make some overpriced desktop sh*t in their line and they nickel and dime the customer...as you pointed out with the IPS 'LG' panel seen cheaper elsewhere. (Still a good display though.)
...and so?
The Mini SHOULD have a 640M in it's top model at least. (Guess it will be rendered mute by Iris...)
The iMac SHOULD be cheaper. (No sub 1K model...)
The Mac Pro SHOULD be cheaper. 2045 inc vat for a crap Mac Pro was an outrage and prob' why pro sales where in the toilet to the tune of 50k. (and it sells more than the mini which is an equally gimped machine.)
27-inch: 3.2GHz
3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
8GB (two 4GB) memory
1TB hard drive1
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX with 1GB
Dispatched:
Within 24 hours
Free Delivery
£1,699.00Includes VAT of approx. £283.00.*
Yes. We CAN read Apple's over priced by £250 prices.
A top end iMac which should have an i7 and a 680MX on it's top end as standard. Especially for that price. And an SSD/Fusion as standard.
Prices have been going up and sales growth has been slipping and hitting the ceiling.
Studios going to the wall. Banks not lending. Consumers losing jobs.
If they can sell an iPad for £399 they can sell a Mac Pro for £1500 F*cking quid. Trading the IPS cheap ass monitor for a 2nd GPU.
It gets artists and prosumers onto the ladder.
Whether you or Apple feels that way doesn't matter BEEP all to me.
My opinion is that they priced the last Mac Pro beyond all reality for the crap specs of the starter model.
Pricing it £1500-£1750 with a crappy quad core and a 2nd gpu isn't beyond. And then you have to add a crappy IPS Apple display on top.
No way it's going to 'crater' any iMac. Any. Time. Soon.
People get tired of getting ass raped for up sell.
Want an external DVD player, Sir? That will be £60 Sir. But you put up the price of the iMac. Yes Sir. So you want an extra £160 for an external DVD player?
...and the same sh*t on Ram prices and the same crap on the Fusion/SSD options.
I don't know if calling it a Mac Pro makes sense but people do want a reasonably priced desktop performance machine. At the entry point Mac Pros have traditionally been horrible values. This is what Apple should strive to address. Frankly it is the only way I see Apple getting enough volume to justify the Mac Pro line.
The only good thing here is that I see this chassis allowing Apple to restructure the Mac Pro line and associate price points to make the hardware profitable again.
People get tired of getting ass raped for up sell.
True but the AIR really gives me a lot of hope here. This machine has morphed into an exceedingly good value and has the sales result to go with it. So i don' think it is impossible for Apple to adjust the pricing structure on the Mac Pro to make it a far better value than the old design was. I suspect this was one of the goals for the radical redesign of the machine, that is to be able to market high performance at an aggressive price point for a workstation.
Want an external DVD player, Sir? That will be £60 Sir. But you put up the price of the iMac. Yes Sir. So you want an extra £160 for an external DVD player?
That isn't a good reference as like it or not DVD players are the floppy disks of this decade.
...and the same sh*t on Ram prices and the same crap on the Fusion/SSD options.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Apple has always been a little stupid when it comes to RAM which frankly I've never grasped why as the allotted RAM some machines shipped with hardly ran the OS well. Considering that at times the upgrade cost was trivial for Apple to properly populate the Mac one would have to think this stupidity came from the marketing department.
As for Fusion/SSD options, this is really perplexing as the AIR of all machines has one of the highest performing SSDs out there. Clearly this sort of tech could easily go into the likes of the Mini. The iMac could benefit from such hardware too. Even more so they could make those iMac SSd's user serviceable which would address one of the reasons I hate the iMac so much. I'm actually hoping that the coming iMac is a major overhaul that addresses most of the objections people have to this machine.
Sometime soon LBB is going to tell us what he really thinks about the MacPro.:D
All joking aside, I sympathise wrt the pricing. We get a touch from Apple Australia, here in NZ. Not much but sometimes it might be 100 or so depending on the exchange rate and the item being compared.
eg AirPort Extreme usd 199 That should be aud 215 and NZd 250 Of course there's freight to consider but Apple sells the item at Aud 249 which should make it nzd 289 But no sells here in nz at 319
Never said it wasn't which is why this is funny. In fact I've been saying all along that there is no need for a $2000 Mac Pro because that role is already very ably filled by the 27" iMac.
I guess this is the problem I have with your points. The roles as you say aren't in any way interchangeable. further a machines role is not determined by its price point.
I'm not shouting it's just that some folks here apparently can't read.
Maybe they are reading what you are saying and then rejecting it completely?
Except we were discussing a specific scenario of the base Mac Pro being this uber machine for $2K. Not generalities. The "we don't know how much blah blah blah" is again the result of folks who apparently can't read. For this specific scenario postulated by MacRonin to pick the 27" Core i5 iMac is just dumb. Which is why I said that such a machine would crater iMac sales and Bergermeister got his panties in a wad as if it were a general attack on the iMac or AIOs and ignoring the entire f**king thread where I've been saying otherwise.
Such a machine would have zero impact on the iMac. The fact is the Mac Pro would be an incomplete system at $2000 requiring a monitor at the very least.
But I don't care how well you think iMacs currently sell because if Apple releases a $3000+ Mac Pro for $2000 that completely changes the value proposition of the entire Mac lineup. Something Apple has put tremendous thought into as opposed to someone like Dell with 6 gazillion possible machine combinations at every price point.
Your logic is beyond explanation here. If Apple releases the base model Mac Pro for $2000 then it is a $2000 machine and nothing more. Besides as mentioned above that is just for the computer, monitor and whatever is still extra.
Yah, they sure would sell a lot of Mac Pros. And a lot less of the 27" iMacs. Who's IPS panel is the same LG IPS panel seen in $300 retail monitors on eBay and $450 from Monoprice.
You may believe that but I don't buy it. The markets for the two machines are so different that there is very little in the way of overlap.
Just like if they put a 640M in the current Mac Mini. A $999 2.6 Ghz Quad i7 Mac Mini with a 512MB GT 640M would crater 21" iMac sales. Which is why no such machine exists even if it would sell well with decent margins. A machine I would dearly love to see appear but understand it simply ain't happening. There's a huge profit advantage in selling AIOs which is why Apple still protects the iMac line even today even with Jobs gone.
I don't even buy the argument that the iMac is all that profitable. Maybe after overpriced upgrades but certainly not in the base models.
It's not whimsy or some kind of AIO fetish but why Apple makes money selling desktops and Dell not so much. That $500 cost delta between the base $1300 quad core i5 iMac and the $800 quad Core i7 Mac Mini is mostly profit on top of the profit inherent in the mini that you pay every time you refresh your iMac.
Are you trying to say the screen is free to Apple on the iMacs?
So it ain't likely that Apple is going to introduce either a Mac Pro or Mini that's going to significantly impact iMac sales.
it really doesn't matter one bit what price point Apple introduces the Mac Pro at as the markets are entirely different. Nobody interested in a Mac Pro is going to be shopping for an iMac and vis versa. beyond that I would expect far better profits form a $2000 Mac Pro than I would any of the iMacs.
A 6-core for $2k certainly isn't likely considering the old Mac Pro had a $294 CPU for $2499 and a 6-core CPU costs at least $406. The dual FirePro can't be less than the single 5770 they used to have. The SSD will also cost more than the single HDD they used to sell with it. I do think they will have saved money on some of the design - they probably just buy the GPU chips from AMD and design the boards elsewhere, the single heatsink is likely cheaper to build than what they had before because it's just a single piece of extruded aluminium, just 1 fan vs 6 or more, no optical nor 5.25" bays/wiring, no HDD bays, much smaller enclosure, lower shipping costs (weight and volume).
As the debut date gets closer the thoughts about how the machine will be marketed become more and more interesting. I'm pretty much convinced that part of the redesign goal was to hit a lower price point for the entry level model. This to encourage more volume for the Mac Pro. Without more volume the Mac Pro is a machine on lifer support.
I reckon they could sell a quad Mac Pro with dual W5000 for $2k and wouldn't impact the iMac significantly. Once a display is factored in, the cost is immediately higher. $2k is perhaps overly optimistic even for a quad but the original $2199 Mac Pro price wouldn't be all that bad. It's still higher than an iMac and they should be able to build the machine with a decent gross profit while still allowing for people to spend money on external storage or peripherals.
The reality is this, the people that found the old Mac Pro to be a bad value did not look at the iMac but rather went other ways. That would be either Linux or Windows hardware. The idea that a cheaper Mac Pro will impact iMac slaes is just laughable.
I don't expect that entry config to come with much though:
Up the SSD to 512GB and you would have an excellent workstation for hanging off a network. It is an area where Apple has failed to compete with anything lately And before any body says anything, NO an iMac is not acceptable for this sort of usage.
The current $2k iMac has 3.2GHz quad i5, 8GB, 1TB HDD, 1GB GTX 675MX and this will of course change with Haswell but despite it being clearly lower spec than the MP, I think some people would still take the iMac for the display if the spec meets their needs.
I'm not convinced that many take the iMc for its display. it seems to me most avoid it because of its display.
It wouldn't really matter one way or the other to Apple as long as the margins were high enough on both and it may convince some to buy an Apple Thunderbolt display on top of the Mac Pro.
It doesn't matter to Apple because over all the profit would be higher on a Mac Pro. More importantly they need to recover from the negative vibe they have in some professional markets now.
The box design could be interesting as this is the first cylindrical machine they've had. I expect they'll ship it with a wireless keyboard and mouse and the wireless keyboard is taller than the Mac Pro. It could be a box that is curved on one side (heavily padded) and flat on the other with the wireless keyboard sitting vertically beside the documentation and the power plug under the mouse.
Wiz, I don't think you can say that those who would buy a MacPro would ever consider an iMac. About 2-3 years ago many small shops of fcp were using iMacs successfully. Even some of the larger players started incorporating iMacs. http://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2012/08/anatomy-of-an-imac-suite/
A year or so before that - all MacPro. Many switched over to iMacs because of the price if they didn't need the expansion capabilities. Of course there are still heaps of other users, like me, who are still running MP 1,1 and 2,1 replacing the gpus and upgrading hard drives to handle editing requirements of hd video. Have I ever considered a 27" iMac ? Hell, yes. Had other stuff to buy tho If the new MacPro does not hit the right price points for me - it'll either be an iMac or beefed MacMini (depending on what they do with it, of course). jus my 0.02c
A year or so before that - all MacPro. Many switched over to iMacs because of the price if they didn't need the expansion capabilities.
Of course there are still heaps of other users, like me, who are still running MP 1,1 and 2,1 replacing the gpus and upgrading hard drives to handle editing requirements of hd video.
Have I ever considered a 27" iMac ? Hell, yes. Had other stuff to buy tho
If the new MacPro does not hit the right price points for me - it'll either be an iMac or beefed MacMini (depending on what they do with it, of course).
jus my 0.02c
You should make sure you view his words in context. He mentions the continued use of big iron, even though they aren't Macs. He acknowledges that one man shops may need a single more powerful station, although in terms of raw power, it's not quite possible to match the current imac on a mac pro 1,1. Even with 8 core setups the old fsb can be a slight bottleneck. They didn't go any higher prior to replacing it with quickpath interconnect. There are clarifications. I've personally articulated what I like and dislike about the machine, although I'm not primarily involved in video editing. With the new mac pro, the price won't be softened by extra space, so the choice is likely to come solely down to performance there. The extra thunderbolt ports on the mac pro are probably just to allow people to hook up more displays without tapping out all available ports on the system. Anyway if you read through his blog posts, he phased them in for lighter duties initially and doesn't really use them for finishing suites or the most demanding use cases. For a lot of people, probably the majority, they will work, but it's important to retain context on this stuff. I do wish we had more good DAS options for thunderbolt storage. Cheap DAS is not a headache anyone wants to endure, which would be why I'm such a proponent of internal bays.
ohh absolutely - the limitations are there, no doubt. One of the reasons why Ive hung to my old rigs. Go back a year or two - Thunderbolt not quite there, much of the new tech not there or some doubt as the new direction tech might take, although you can argue that some of those concerns have been resolved now.
Simple fact Is tho for a one two man shop you can rig the iMacs to fly. If you're a straight shooter (little or no editingl - then it's a toss up going forward.
The peripherals and third party hardware that we had to have, AJA BMD cards, are now being replaced with other solutions, which can applied to any of the Mac range. This is fantastic because in the past it was a dualie G4,G5, MacPro tower solution or nothing. Unless you were DV via fw only.
Wiz is correct as is nht as is Marvin, LBB, yourself, et al - the new MacPro will have to represent good value going forward for it to succeed. There will be the maxed out version that is for the 4k crowd, it's the configs beneath that that Im interested in.
That said, imo, no matter if it succeeds or fails sales wise Apple still needs to continue to develop this machine.
(...)That said, imo, no matter if it succeeds or fails sales wise Apple still needs to continue to develop this machine.
I agree. I think Apple 'needs' this machine for internal use as well. Doesn't really matter if they sell it to clients or not. The current MP is being used t their headquarter, scattered throughout the building. Many pics can be found of employees using the MP. They also have a couple in their Executive Briefing Center:
ohh absolutely - the limitations are there, no doubt. One of the reasons why Ive hung to my old rigs.
I'd be the first to admit that as lower end machines become more powerful it is possible to move what was once considered advanced apps to the platform. However the thing with many "pro" apps (no matter the industry) is that they evolve in such a way as to demand the higher performance hardware.
Go back a year or two - Thunderbolt not quite there, much of the new tech not there or some doubt as the new direction tech might take, although you can argue that some of those concerns have been resolved now.
Simple fact Is tho for a one two man shop you can rig the iMacs to fly.
If you're a straight shooter (little or no editingl - then it's a toss up going forward.
Maybe they work well in some applications but I dismiss the iMacs out of hand due to what I consider to be a terrible design for a desktop machine. Think about it, it is easier to replace secondary storage on Apples laptops than it is on the iMac. That is pathetic as secondary store is a wear item with all technologies we have today. That is just one item that causes me concerns about the iMac.
The peripherals and third party hardware that we had to have, AJA BMD cards, are now being replaced with other solutions, which can applied to any of the Mac range. This is fantastic because in the past it was a dualie G4,G5, MacPro tower solution or nothing. Unless you were DV via fw only.
For many people the move to TB based I/O will be a huge win. It means that hardware used in a studio will be equally functional out in the field connected to a MBP. I know many, including me, have bitched about no slots but going forward it should mean that professional apps are now useful on a far wider array of Mac hardware.
Wiz is correct as is nht as is Marvin, LBB, yourself, et al - the new MacPro will have to represent good value going forward for it to succeed. There will be the maxed out version that is for the 4k crowd, it's the configs beneath that that Im interested in.
The same here. I know their is a limited market for the high end machines. The bread and butter though are the machines below that. People that think the Mac Pro can sustain itself only with a maxed out model are nuts in my opinion. Apple really needs a volume shifting machine and that is only possible if the value equation is right.
That said, imo, no matter if it succeeds or fails sales wise Apple still needs to continue to develop this machine.
If it fails sales wise you can kiss the machine good by. I really think Apple will dump it like an XServe if they can't improve sales over the old model. Frankly the machines design is a big gamble, it is more of what I expected from an XMac than a Pro, if you remove the workstation processors. That is good and bad. The good part is that they might meet a rational price point with low end XEONs in the base model. Apples marketing of the AIR gives me hope that they will be aggressive pricing wise. The really bad part from my perspective is the lack of slots, this means that some functionality will never be supported on the machine. The funny thing here is that I don't see the AV professionals having a problem here as there is enough demand to make sure the hardware they use transitions to TB.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
Yah, you're right they'll use a quad core E5-1600 v2 but I was under the mistaken impression they were all 6+ core. /shrug Shame on me for not double checking.
Yes, a new logic board is unlikely but maybe for Haswell it's worthwhile. LOL...imagine the screaming if they did have a $1799 Mac Pro but it was a E3-1285 v3 and no discrete GPUs at all.
I was pony-wishing for a mini with the E3-12x5. LOL.
I meant you would need one for E3s and one for E5s. E3s even have some pricing overlap with the most expensive one being $885 for a 1290. They aren't that common of a workstation processor choice, although Dell uses some of the cheaper ones in their T1600s line. I suspect it wouldn't be that logical for a company who would only use them in one model out of one line, but it would literally be the headless imac. If they were crammed into a mini case, you wouldn't get the ECC ram as I've never seen ECC in sodimm form. I don't think it would be very compelling for that at $1800. You wouldn't get the extra level of internal customization back. You would probably be limited to one thunderbolt chip. I don't think integrated graphics, especially the type included with E3s would support that whole array of thunderbolt ports unless they starved the usb3 ports with 1 lane at the back end. The igpu typically soaks up 4. Right now I wouldn't say even the $2500 solution is that great. The extra bays and things give it slightly more value by reducing dependence on third party peripherals where possible.
I think intel will continue to maintain a quad option with ivy or at least something at the $300 cpu price point. The other thing is some of the Firepro pricing is weird. Cards that they market as mid range are based on low end gaming cards chips or older designs. It may not line up quite as you suggest if the primary relationship to the other cards is one of branding. It could end up no different than what they labeled as a radeon with the current one. OSX cards have to at least be stable in OpenGL use, which was the older purpose of professional graphics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
Yep. You're arguing for the sake of I have no clue what if you claim you would turn down a dual Firepro W5000 hexa core Mac Pro in favor of a quad core Core i5 iMac for the same $2000.
ESPECIALLY given what you stated you do with your iMac and your described needs and other considerations. So you're just trying to be offended and pretend I called you a moron.
Even ignoring all that it STILL would be an insanely poor value to pick the base 27" iMac over that hugely underpriced Mac Pro configuration AND YOU KNOW IT.
Even for Dell that would be a $3000 machine. Go price out a T5600 with 6 cores, dual W5000s, 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.
Drop it down to dual V4900s, quad core and 8GB RAM and you're back down to $2200. For a Dell.
Having a nice day?
Yep. You?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister
Just because my computer needs and other considerations don't match yours, I'm a moron?
Such a sweet thing for you to say. Should I accept that as a compliment?
Edit:
Sorry, you said "complete moron".
The top end iMac is a sound piece of kit.
There's a few reasons why you'd take it over the base Mac Pro. The monitor being a key one. Some people like it's AIO appeal.
As for Morons. Complete or otherwise... It's name calling based on hypertheticals. We don't know how much the new Pro is going to be.
Likely as pricey as the old entry point for £2045 inc VAT. But better value if it includes two gpus trade off vs the monitor in the iMac?
Expect the base Pro to pick up after the top end iMac.
Still could do with having a price lower than £2045 inc VAT.
£1500 with hex core and dual gpus instead of the monitor you'd get with the iMac. Lower price could get units moving again.
An iMac selling 1 million units is 20 times the units of the Pro selling 50k units. £1199-£1699 isn't cheap either. So there's an argument for having an entry option that isn't insanely priced.
It's not like the BTO and higher models won't allow Apple to do their customary 'Apple' pricing...
Lemon Bon Bon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.
The top end iMac is a sound piece of kit.
Never said it wasn't which is why this is funny. In fact I've been saying all along that there is no need for a $2000 Mac Pro because that role is already very ably filled by the 27" iMac.
I'm not shouting it's just that some folks here apparently can't read.
Quote:
There's a few reasons why you'd take it over the base Mac Pro. The monitor being a key one. Some people like it's AIO appeal.
As for Morons. Complete or otherwise... It's name calling based on hypertheticals. We don't know how much the new Pro is going to be.
Except we were discussing a specific scenario of the base Mac Pro being this uber machine for $2K. Not generalities. The "we don't know how much blah blah blah" is again the result of folks who apparently can't read. For this specific scenario postulated by MacRonin to pick the 27" Core i5 iMac is just dumb. Which is why I said that such a machine would crater iMac sales and Bergermeister got his panties in a wad as if it were a general attack on the iMac or AIOs and ignoring the entire f**king thread where I've been saying otherwise.
But I don't care how well you think iMacs currently sell because if Apple releases a $3000+ Mac Pro for $2000 that completely changes the value proposition of the entire Mac lineup. Something Apple has put tremendous thought into as opposed to someone like Dell with 6 gazillion possible machine combinations at every price point.
Yah, they sure would sell a lot of Mac Pros. And a lot less of the 27" iMacs. Who's IPS panel is the same LG IPS panel seen in $300 retail monitors on eBay and $450 from Monoprice.
Just like if they put a 640M in the current Mac Mini. A $999 2.6 Ghz Quad i7 Mac Mini with a 512MB GT 640M would crater 21" iMac sales. Which is why no such machine exists even if it would sell well with decent margins. A machine I would dearly love to see appear but understand it simply ain't happening. There's a huge profit advantage in selling AIOs which is why Apple still protects the iMac line even today even with Jobs gone. It's not whimsy or some kind of AIO fetish but why Apple makes money selling desktops and Dell not so much. That $500 cost delta between the base $1300 quad core i5 iMac and the $800 quad Core i7 Mac Mini is mostly profit on top of the profit inherent in the mini that you pay every time you refresh your iMac.
So it ain't likely that Apple is going to introduce either a Mac Pro or Mini that's going to significantly impact iMac sales.
A 6-core for $2k certainly isn't likely considering the old Mac Pro had a $294 CPU for $2499 and a 6-core CPU costs at least $406. The dual FirePro can't be less than the single 5770 they used to have. The SSD will also cost more than the single HDD they used to sell with it. I do think they will have saved money on some of the design - they probably just buy the GPU chips from AMD and design the boards elsewhere, the single heatsink is likely cheaper to build than what they had before because it's just a single piece of extruded aluminium, just 1 fan vs 6 or more, no optical nor 5.25" bays/wiring, no HDD bays, much smaller enclosure, lower shipping costs (weight and volume).
I reckon they could sell a quad Mac Pro with dual W5000 for $2k and wouldn't impact the iMac significantly. Once a display is factored in, the cost is immediately higher. $2k is perhaps overly optimistic even for a quad but the original $2199 Mac Pro price wouldn't be all that bad. It's still higher than an iMac and they should be able to build the machine with a decent gross profit while still allowing for people to spend money on external storage or peripherals.
I don't expect that entry config to come with much though:
E5-1620v2 quad 3.6GHz
8GB RAM (4x 2GB)
256GB SSD
dual W5000 2GB
The current $2k iMac has 3.2GHz quad i5, 8GB, 1TB HDD, 1GB GTX 675MX and this will of course change with Haswell but despite it being clearly lower spec than the MP, I think some people would still take the iMac for the display if the spec meets their needs.
It wouldn't really matter one way or the other to Apple as long as the margins were high enough on both and it may convince some to buy an Apple Thunderbolt display on top of the Mac Pro.
The box design could be interesting as this is the first cylindrical machine they've had. I expect they'll ship it with a wireless keyboard and mouse and the wireless keyboard is taller than the Mac Pro. It could be a box that is curved on one side (heavily padded) and flat on the other with the wireless keyboard sitting vertically beside the documentation and the power plug under the mouse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I reckon they could sell a quad Mac Pro with dual W5000 for $2k and wouldn't impact the iMac significantly. Once a display is factored in, the cost is immediately higher. $2k is perhaps overly optimistic even for a quad but the original $2199 Mac Pro price wouldn't be all that bad. It's still higher than an iMac and they should be able to build the machine with a decent gross profit while still allowing for people to spend money on external storage or peripherals.
I don't expect that entry config to come with much though:
E5-1620v2 quad 3.6GHz
8GB RAM (4x 2GB)
256GB SSD
dual W5000 2GB
I would suggest it could be all branding. On Windows it varies by card. Some get better OpenGL performance on Windows, and some have bugs that aren't seen under OSX. It could be as simple as a branding issue. I think going by existing firepro model numbers may be unrealistic due to pricing structure. It could be similar to that 5770, yet branded differently. For computation workstation cards aren't always faster. They usually contain ECC ram, and they don't typically run as hot.
Consider that 7000 drivers showed up in prior Mountain Lion betas.
Sapphiretech also released a 7970 with 6GB of ram.
Apple's typical Radeon selections aren't always precisely the same. Typically they have less ram and a high price. In this case it's x2, so I suspect higher spec options will be expensive. I don't think it will follow current W9000 price points with Apple's typical markup tacked onto that. The 6GB cards were still part of the up to spec, so obviously I don't expect them to be standard. Other than that I basically agree with your assessment. I'm pretty sure the v2 will still be a quad core, but either way I think that cpu will stay around the same price.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
Never said it wasn't which is why this is funny. In fact I've been saying all along that there is no need for a $2000 Mac Pro because that role is already very ably filled by the 27" iMac.
I'm not shouting it's just that some folks here apparently can't read.
Except we were discussing a specific scenario of the base Mac Pro being this uber machine for $2K. Not generalities. The "we don't know how much blah blah blah" is again the result of folks who apparently can't read. For this specific scenario postulated by MacRonin to pick the 27" Core i5 iMac is just dumb. Which is why I said that such a machine would crater iMac sales and Bergermeister got his panties in a wad as if it were a general attack on the iMac or AIOs and ignoring the entire f**king thread where I've been saying otherwise.
But I don't care how well you think iMacs currently sell because if Apple releases a $3000+ Mac Pro for $2000 that completely changes the value proposition of the entire Mac lineup. Something Apple has put tremendous thought into as opposed to someone like Dell with 6 gazillion possible machine combinations at every price point.
Yah, they sure would sell a lot of Mac Pros. And a lot less of the 27" iMacs. Who's IPS panel is the same LG IPS panel seen in $300 retail monitors on eBay and $450 from Monoprice.
Just like if they put a 640M in the current Mac Mini. A $999 2.6 Ghz Quad i7 Mac Mini with a 512MB GT 640M would crater 21" iMac sales. Which is why no such machine exists even if it would sell well with decent margins. A machine I would dearly love to see appear but understand it simply ain't happening. There's a huge profit advantage in selling AIOs which is why Apple still protects the iMac line even today even with Jobs gone. It's not whimsy or some kind of AIO fetish but why Apple makes money selling desktops and Dell not so much. That $500 cost delta between the base $1300 quad core i5 iMac and the $800 quad Core i7 Mac Mini is mostly profit on top of the profit inherent in the mini that you pay every time you refresh your iMac.
So it ain't likely that Apple is going to introduce either a Mac Pro or Mini that's going to significantly impact iMac sales.
*crater? B*ll*cks.
Apple make some overpriced desktop sh*t in their line and they nickel and dime the customer...as you pointed out with the IPS 'LG' panel seen cheaper elsewhere. (Still a good display though.)
...and so?
The Mini SHOULD have a 640M in it's top model at least. (Guess it will be rendered mute by Iris...)
The iMac SHOULD be cheaper. (No sub 1K model...)
The Mac Pro SHOULD be cheaper. 2045 inc vat for a crap Mac Pro was an outrage and prob' why pro sales where in the toilet to the tune of 50k. (and it sells more than the mini which is an equally gimped machine.)
27-inch: 3.2GHz
3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
8GB (two 4GB) memory
1TB hard drive1
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX with 1GB
Dispatched:
Within 24 hours
Free Delivery
£1,699.00Includes VAT of approx. £283.00.*
Yes. We CAN read Apple's over priced by £250 prices.
A top end iMac which should have an i7 and a 680MX on it's top end as standard. Especially for that price. And an SSD/Fusion as standard.
Prices have been going up and sales growth has been slipping and hitting the ceiling.
Studios going to the wall. Banks not lending. Consumers losing jobs.
If they can sell an iPad for £399 they can sell a Mac Pro for £1500 F*cking quid. Trading the IPS cheap ass monitor for a 2nd GPU.
It gets artists and prosumers onto the ladder.
Whether you or Apple feels that way doesn't matter BEEP all to me.
My opinion is that they priced the last Mac Pro beyond all reality for the crap specs of the starter model.
Pricing it £1500-£1750 with a crappy quad core and a 2nd gpu isn't beyond. And then you have to add a crappy IPS Apple display on top.
No way it's going to 'crater' any iMac. Any. Time. Soon.
Lemon Bon Bon.
There is demand for a cheaper Mac Pro.
Just like there is demand for a cheaper iPhone.
Lemon Bon Bon.
People get tired of getting ass raped for up sell.
Want an external DVD player, Sir? That will be £60 Sir. But you put up the price of the iMac. Yes Sir. So you want an extra £160 for an external DVD player?
...and the same sh*t on Ram prices and the same crap on the Fusion/SSD options.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I don't know if calling it a Mac Pro makes sense but people do want a reasonably priced desktop performance machine. At the entry point Mac Pros have traditionally been horrible values. This is what Apple should strive to address. Frankly it is the only way I see Apple getting enough volume to justify the Mac Pro line.
The only good thing here is that I see this chassis allowing Apple to restructure the Mac Pro line and associate price points to make the hardware profitable again.
Apple has always been a little stupid when it comes to RAM which frankly I've never grasped why as the allotted RAM some machines shipped with hardly ran the OS well. Considering that at times the upgrade cost was trivial for Apple to properly populate the Mac one would have to think this stupidity came from the marketing department.
As for Fusion/SSD options, this is really perplexing as the AIR of all machines has one of the highest performing SSDs out there. Clearly this sort of tech could easily go into the likes of the Mini. The iMac could benefit from such hardware too. Even more so they could make those iMac SSd's user serviceable which would address one of the reasons I hate the iMac so much. I'm actually hoping that the coming iMac is a major overhaul that addresses most of the objections people have to this machine.
All joking aside, I sympathise wrt the pricing. We get a touch from Apple Australia, here in NZ. Not much but sometimes it might be 100 or so depending on the exchange rate and the item being compared.
eg AirPort Extreme usd 199 That should be aud 215 and NZd 250
Of course there's freight to consider but Apple sells the item at Aud 249 which should make it nzd 289
But no sells here in nz at 319
It will be unbundled..
About 2-3 years ago many small shops of fcp were using iMacs successfully. Even some of the larger players started incorporating iMacs.
http://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2012/08/anatomy-of-an-imac-suite/
A year or so before that - all MacPro. Many switched over to iMacs because of the price if they didn't need the expansion capabilities.
Of course there are still heaps of other users, like me, who are still running MP 1,1 and 2,1 replacing the gpus and upgrading hard drives to handle editing requirements of hd video.
Have I ever considered a 27" iMac ? Hell, yes. Had other stuff to buy tho
If the new MacPro does not hit the right price points for me - it'll either be an iMac or beefed MacMini (depending on what they do with it, of course).
jus my 0.02c
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobM
Wiz, I don't think you can say that those who would buy a MacPro would ever consider an iMac.
About 2-3 years ago many small shops of fcp were using iMacs successfully. Even some of the larger players started incorporating iMacs.
http://www.biscardicreative.com/blog/2012/08/anatomy-of-an-imac-suite/
A year or so before that - all MacPro. Many switched over to iMacs because of the price if they didn't need the expansion capabilities.
Of course there are still heaps of other users, like me, who are still running MP 1,1 and 2,1 replacing the gpus and upgrading hard drives to handle editing requirements of hd video.
Have I ever considered a 27" iMac ? Hell, yes. Had other stuff to buy tho
If the new MacPro does not hit the right price points for me - it'll either be an iMac or beefed MacMini (depending on what they do with it, of course).
jus my 0.02c
You should make sure you view his words in context. He mentions the continued use of big iron, even though they aren't Macs. He acknowledges that one man shops may need a single more powerful station, although in terms of raw power, it's not quite possible to match the current imac on a mac pro 1,1. Even with 8 core setups the old fsb can be a slight bottleneck. They didn't go any higher prior to replacing it with quickpath interconnect. There are clarifications. I've personally articulated what I like and dislike about the machine, although I'm not primarily involved in video editing. With the new mac pro, the price won't be softened by extra space, so the choice is likely to come solely down to performance there. The extra thunderbolt ports on the mac pro are probably just to allow people to hook up more displays without tapping out all available ports on the system. Anyway if you read through his blog posts, he phased them in for lighter duties initially and doesn't really use them for finishing suites or the most demanding use cases. For a lot of people, probably the majority, they will work, but it's important to retain context on this stuff. I do wish we had more good DAS options for thunderbolt storage. Cheap DAS is not a headache anyone wants to endure, which would be why I'm such a proponent of internal bays.
Go back a year or two - Thunderbolt not quite there, much of the new tech not there or some doubt as the new direction tech might take, although you can argue that some of those concerns have been resolved now.
Simple fact Is tho for a one two man shop you can rig the iMacs to fly.
If you're a straight shooter (little or no editingl - then it's a toss up going forward.
The peripherals and third party hardware that we had to have, AJA BMD cards, are now being replaced with other solutions, which can applied to any of the Mac range. This is fantastic because in the past it was a dualie G4,G5, MacPro tower solution or nothing. Unless you were DV via fw only.
Wiz is correct as is nht as is Marvin, LBB, yourself, et al - the new MacPro will have to represent good value going forward for it to succeed. There will be the maxed out version that is for the 4k crowd, it's the configs beneath that that Im interested in.
That said, imo, no matter if it succeeds or fails sales wise Apple still needs to continue to develop this machine.
I agree. I think Apple 'needs' this machine for internal use as well. Doesn't really matter if they sell it to clients or not. The current MP is being used t their headquarter, scattered throughout the building. Many pics can be found of employees using the MP. They also have a couple in their Executive Briefing Center:
If it fails sales wise you can kiss the machine good by. I really think Apple will dump it like an XServe if they can't improve sales over the old model. Frankly the machines design is a big gamble, it is more of what I expected from an XMac than a Pro, if you remove the workstation processors. That is good and bad. The good part is that they might meet a rational price point with low end XEONs in the base model. Apples marketing of the AIR gives me hope that they will be aggressive pricing wise. The really bad part from my perspective is the lack of slots, this means that some functionality will never be supported on the machine. The funny thing here is that I don't see the AV professionals having a problem here as there is enough demand to make sure the hardware they use transitions to TB.