If it starts at $1800 it should do really well if it comes with a half decent GPU. Doesn't have to be awesome but half decent. Say a GTX 775M or equivalent with 2GB RAM. Something that 3 years from now will perform okay with the latest pro app since you can't upgrade it.
Two ATI FirePro 6GB video cards capable of running 3 screens at 4096 resolution be okay for you? That's 12GBs of video RAM there and you want to ditch it for a 4GB video card?
Still won't run MechWarrior Online though because some numpty decided that it will only work on NVidia cards. Who does that these days? Idiots that's who.
There has never been a better time for Adobe to release Creative Suite for Linux. Personally I like big cases and motherboards that I can build to suit my needs. Hackintosh is probably not an option going forward, but neither is this new Mac Pro in my opinion. 4K video and thunderbolt are not exclusive to Apple. Premier is already 4K capable. TB2 will also be available on other boards around the same time.
Problem is; your concept of "building to suit" is from a past era. That's ok. It has always been this way with "Pros" and Apple. Probably always will be.
That is my reaction. I was chilly to the concept when I first heard about it, but the walk through made it clearer what it was: a small but powerful processor module with fast local storage for the system and fast ports for connecting to bulk storage. The cooling setup is great. The bet Apple is making is by the time you need to upgrade the two GPU modules, you will want to upgrade the CPU and memory as well.
On top of all that, it looks nice once you see it in regular light. Some photos look like black shiny plastic when it really is reflective metal. They need to take better shots.
The cost will be killer though. 5K to start, up to 10K/15K USD depending on setup? Way outside what I can afford, but some forward thinking professionals should be able to appreciate it.
If it's 5K to start it's going to be another Cube. I'm guessing $3K for the base model which will be 12 core.
It's a great machine if you wanted to buy a Mac Mini Pro. I was hoping that the Mac Mini Pro was going to actually BE a mini upgraded to pro levels but this will work for me. Pricier than I'd prefer but Apple's always pricey.
Shame for the folks looking for an actual Mac Pro though.
The folks here dissing them for being old fashioned simply don't get it. Stuff they need is stuff they need. A TB single card full length enclosure is $800 and doesn't run as fast. A 4 bay TB RAID is $1K. That's around $2600 of extra expense over the old Mac Pro if you have two processing cards and need local storage. A thousand here and a thousand there multiplied by a few dozen machines and you're talking a noticeable cost delta.
We have SANs and that's a huge performance hit because they're just on our regular GigE infrastructure because our office complex is very large.
7 teraflops in a cylinder 6" dia x 9" tall. I need to check but I believe this puts it in the supercomputer top 500 list as a single device. It wasn't that long ago it would have led all supercomputers. Of course the old IT gang will say it can't fit into an industry standard 19" rack. Who cares, build a new rack. If I had the skills necessary to design one I would but for those who do, here's my idea. Tilt each MP 15-30 degrees and stack them into the old spice jar rack offsetting each column half a unit to allow more MPs. To get good air flow, you could arrange them around a central core for cabling. Once we hear how much heat these generate, design a large airflow up-draft base to provide cool air. The MP's fan will draw this air across the its central core providing proper cooling. There's no reason we need to have all these computers in an antiquated row of 1U servers.
We will have to wait to hear if Mavericks supports CPU sharing across Thunderbolt 2. I don't believe TB-1 does. If it does, then one rack of 36 MPs could conceivably run at 1/4 petaflop. That's cooking!
Not sure what you mean "as a single device." But it has been a few years since 7 teraflops would make it on the top 500 list of supercomputing.
As for building a true supercomputing cluster, it seems the Mac Mini remains the more convenient choice. But I could be proven wrong.
There doesn't seem to be anything stopping upgrading of RAM or for that matter the HDD. They aren't soldered on at all but are in reasonably standard slots from what I can see.
The problem with the RAM is it dropped from 8 slots to 4 slots.
The SSD probably isn't a standard format as the industry hasn't really settled on one. Even within Apple machines there are SSB blade differences.
I see this as a very useful design. I see this like website design where you separate the content from the style. The Mac Pro separates the computations from the content. I would presume that most design houses will have large disk arrays, even in smaller shops, rather than large data storage at each desk. (just assuming) The new Mac Pro easily allows you to hook up what seems like very high computational power to your existing data storage. When your rig is outdated the IT department, or now yourself, simply places a new Mac Pro on your desk, quick transfer of applications and you are back to work.
Again, I am not a pro user, but this seems to be a lot simpler with a lot less IT involvement. If you need more storage, you upgrade your NAS, if you need more computational power, you update your Mac Pro.
Can you daisy-chaine two of these Mac Pros for more computational power?
I'm sure someone will design a blue-ray burner that is round and will stack under the Mac Pro. Or did I just do that?
BTW, it is an anti-ecological waste to discard a perfectly working display of the iMac just because the un-upgradable CPU is too old (yet the display is as new). And the Mac mini is not powerful enough. And the Mac Pro could be smaller as Mac Pro mini, between the Mac Pro and the Mac mini. That is!
This is bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about.
People have been saying "the time is finally right" for a MiniTower as long as Apple has been around. I distinctly remember having a long conversation with a computer tech guy who was fixing my thin wire network in 1989 about that very subject.
Just because someone writes an article about this nonsense, doesn't make it accurate.
Just because you read the article doesn't mean you have to swallow the argument wholesale.
Just because you do believe it, doesn't mean it's logical or rational or a good idea.
I am going to go out on a limb and suggest professionals looking for a workstation don't have "marvel of packaging" high on their list of wanted features. The design of this machine was not done to meet the needs of professionals. It was done for Apple's need to minimize upgradeability to keep people buying new machines every few years.
Don't get me wrong, I think the design is cool and I think they will probably sell a lot of them. Lets face it, there are a lot of professional Apple users that will buy whatever Apple throws at them and learn to deal with any limitations it may have. From a business standpoint, I think it is an amazing design. But from a professional user standpoint, it is horrible.
I am rather curious how long Apple can keep this kind of thing going and how long Apple users will keep accepting it? Maybe indefinitely I suppose. Time will tell.
-kpluck
I agree.
Interesting design. I probably won't buy one though. I was really looking forward to a new Mac Pro, just this isn't what I wanted. Personally I like the large case of the current design. With this new model, I can see a bunch of non-matching external chassis for hard disks, capture cards, optical media burners, etc, scattered around the desk connected by cables, all of which used to be neatly contained inside the tower.
Pros:
Faster
Cons:
Not expandable, ugly external accessories required
I was hoping for a hybrid server / pro workstation with dual power supplies, multiple fans for redundant protection, more ram slots, rack-able, card slots, Firewire, optical disks and internal HD capability. I don't like the inlet vent on the bottom either. Too easy for it to be obstructed by cables, papers, etc.
Oh, and BTW the HTML5 animations on the Apple site promoting the Mac Pro are a perfect example of why HTML5 cannot come close to replacing Flash at least not for quality animation. All kinds of glitches, timing issues and jerky non-buffered animation. If that is the best they can do, it says a lot about the lack of capabilities of the HTML5 platform.
You guys are just laughable. It's so funny when people can't adapt to new advancements in computing (I mean COMPUTING! for crisakes) Expandability potentials increase, and you don't even see it. Stuck looking backwards where you got stuck at some point in your lives.
There has never been a better time for Adobe to release Creative Suite for Linux. Personally I like big cases and motherboards that I can build to suit my needs. Hackintosh is probably not an option going forward, but neither is this new Mac Pro in my opinion. 4K video and thunderbolt are not exclusive to Apple. Premier is already 4K capable. TB2 will also be available on other boards around the same time.
Problem is; your concept of "building to suit" is from a past era. That's ok. It has always been this way with "Pros" and Apple. Probably always will be.
Ha Ha! There are many things that belong to past eras that are never appreciated by the new generation.
Pros ask for a one ton 4x4 diesel truck and Apple delivers a solar powered hovercraft. This Mac Pro was designed for modern hipsters, wanna be "Pros".
I am not seeing too many comments on the thermal core either here or other parts of the internet. That's a shame because you are missing out on the fundamental innovation in the new Pro. Schiller was spot on with his pithy "my ass" comment.
Thermal design in workstations has become an engineering specialty over the last two decades. One persistent challenge is the traditional layout, which is a veritable maze. You have to bring air in from one or more ports, route it around and over myriad surfaces including multiple heat sinks and push it out another side. Liquid cooling looks as if it would become the norm. Even so, there is no guarantee that a user would not lay waste to the thermal engineer's best design intentions by adding/changing graphics cards, memory, etc.
Apple has solved this problem using the traditional Apple approach - by doing away with the design constraint that is only there because of legacy - the maze layout. Instead, they came up with a new layout that virtually eliminated the problem of labyrinthian air flow. They use a single heat sink that is easy to manufacture (hello unibody v2), reduces part count and distributes heat across components. So much for Apple choosing form over function!!!
This is Apple engineering at its best. Which company will dare to follow?
p.s. I wonder if this is one reason Bob Mansfield was convinced to stay. He likely started down this path and Cook convinced him to see it through. Pure speculation on my part, of course.
To those of you getting your unmentionables bunched up over (the lack of) CPU upgradeability: Sell me your 2 year old Mac Pro Cylinder at your orig purchase price net the cost of a replacement upgrade CPU. Then use the proceeds towards buying a more powerful version. Coming from an iMac, that would still be an upgrade for me, and for you, it costs the same as a CPU swap. Win-win!
Then again, it's ATI AND Adobe. The drivers will invariably be fubar'd somehow. The only folks that suck worse is Intel. How long were ATI 12.x drivers broken for CS6?
The SSD probably isn't a standard format as the industry hasn't really settled on one. Even within Apple machines there are SSB blade differences.
Look at the connector on the drive. I've seen a number of SSD drives with that connector in the Windows world. I think it will be relatively easy to upgrade that drive.
I am not seeing too many comments on the thermal core either here or other parts of the internet. That's a shame because you are missing out on the fundamental innovation in the new Pro. Schiller was spot on with his pithy "my ass" comment.
Thermal design in workstations has become an engineering specialty over the last two decades. One persistent challenge is the traditional layout, which is a veritable maze. You have to bring air in from one or more ports, route it around and over myriad surfaces including multiple heat sinks and push it out another side. Liquid cooling looks as if it would become the norm. Even so, there is no guarantee that a user would not lay waste to the thermal engineer's best design intentions by adding/changing graphics cards, memory, etc.
Apple has solved this problem using the traditional Apple approach - by doing away with the design constraint that is only there because of legacy - the maze layout. Instead, they came up with a new layout that virtually eliminated the problem of labyrinthian air flow. They use a single heat sink that is easy to manufacture (hello unibody v2), reduces part count and distributes heat across components. So much for Apple choosing form over function!!!
This is Apple engineering at its best. Which company will dare to follow?
You and I know the answer is: Every last sorry-assed one of them..
I believe the new Mac Pro will start at $1800-2000.
Yer nuts : ) Anything near that would make it a no brainer impulse buy for even people who don't need what it offers, and Apple has never done that.
It'll be expensive enough to give pause to those who don't require it.
The current Mac Pro price comparison is pointless because there's been zero market for it for literally years given how we've been waiting for an upgrade since forever and MacBook Pros have come so far in the meantime.
Can you daisy-chaine two of these Mac Pros for more computational power?
Not sure why you would, but the answer is yes. It would not be a matter of daisy-chaining. You would instead manage a cluster of these baby towers using software. That's how you manage most clusters anyhow.
Comments
[deleted]
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
If it starts at $1800 it should do really well if it comes with a half decent GPU. Doesn't have to be awesome but half decent. Say a GTX 775M or equivalent with 2GB RAM. Something that 3 years from now will perform okay with the latest pro app since you can't upgrade it.
Two ATI FirePro 6GB video cards capable of running 3 screens at 4096 resolution be okay for you? That's 12GBs of video RAM there and you want to ditch it for a 4GB video card?
Still won't run MechWarrior Online though because some numpty decided that it will only work on NVidia cards. Who does that these days? Idiots that's who.
Edit: Possibly maybe this:
http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/WORKSTATION/GRAPHICS/ATI-FIREPRO-3D/W9000/Pages/w9000.aspx
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Quote:
Originally Posted by nonstopdesign
oh man....
There has never been a better time for Adobe to release Creative Suite for Linux. Personally I like big cases and motherboards that I can build to suit my needs. Hackintosh is probably not an option going forward, but neither is this new Mac Pro in my opinion. 4K video and thunderbolt are not exclusive to Apple. Premier is already 4K capable. TB2 will also be available on other boards around the same time.
Problem is; your concept of "building to suit" is from a past era. That's ok. It has always been this way with "Pros" and Apple. Probably always will be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JollyPaul
That is my reaction. I was chilly to the concept when I first heard about it, but the walk through made it clearer what it was: a small but powerful processor module with fast local storage for the system and fast ports for connecting to bulk storage. The cooling setup is great. The bet Apple is making is by the time you need to upgrade the two GPU modules, you will want to upgrade the CPU and memory as well.
On top of all that, it looks nice once you see it in regular light. Some photos look like black shiny plastic when it really is reflective metal. They need to take better shots.
The cost will be killer though. 5K to start, up to 10K/15K USD depending on setup? Way outside what I can afford, but some forward thinking professionals should be able to appreciate it.
If it's 5K to start it's going to be another Cube. I'm guessing $3K for the base model which will be 12 core.
It's a great machine if you wanted to buy a Mac Mini Pro. I was hoping that the Mac Mini Pro was going to actually BE a mini upgraded to pro levels but this will work for me. Pricier than I'd prefer but Apple's always pricey.
Shame for the folks looking for an actual Mac Pro though.
The folks here dissing them for being old fashioned simply don't get it. Stuff they need is stuff they need. A TB single card full length enclosure is $800 and doesn't run as fast. A 4 bay TB RAID is $1K. That's around $2600 of extra expense over the old Mac Pro if you have two processing cards and need local storage. A thousand here and a thousand there multiplied by a few dozen machines and you're talking a noticeable cost delta.
We have SANs and that's a huge performance hit because they're just on our regular GigE infrastructure because our office complex is very large.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rob53
7 teraflops in a cylinder 6" dia x 9" tall. I need to check but I believe this puts it in the supercomputer top 500 list as a single device. It wasn't that long ago it would have led all supercomputers. Of course the old IT gang will say it can't fit into an industry standard 19" rack. Who cares, build a new rack. If I had the skills necessary to design one I would but for those who do, here's my idea. Tilt each MP 15-30 degrees and stack them into the old spice jar rack offsetting each column half a unit to allow more MPs. To get good air flow, you could arrange them around a central core for cabling. Once we hear how much heat these generate, design a large airflow up-draft base to provide cool air. The MP's fan will draw this air across the its central core providing proper cooling. There's no reason we need to have all these computers in an antiquated row of 1U servers.
We will have to wait to hear if Mavericks supports CPU sharing across Thunderbolt 2. I don't believe TB-1 does. If it does, then one rack of 36 MPs could conceivably run at 1/4 petaflop. That's cooking!
Not sure what you mean "as a single device." But it has been a few years since 7 teraflops would make it on the top 500 list of supercomputing.
As for building a true supercomputing cluster, it seems the Mac Mini remains the more convenient choice. But I could be proven wrong.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppeX
Apple should make a Mac Pro mini. Quiet and cheaper.
Says the commenter who cannot possibly have any idea how quiet, or how cheap, the new Mac Pro is, or is not …
… since the price hasn't been announced yet and no one has even seen one running yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darryn Lowe
There doesn't seem to be anything stopping upgrading of RAM or for that matter the HDD. They aren't soldered on at all but are in reasonably standard slots from what I can see.
The problem with the RAM is it dropped from 8 slots to 4 slots.
The SSD probably isn't a standard format as the industry hasn't really settled on one. Even within Apple machines there are SSB blade differences.
I'm not a pro user, so take that into account.
I see this as a very useful design. I see this like website design where you separate the content from the style. The Mac Pro separates the computations from the content. I would presume that most design houses will have large disk arrays, even in smaller shops, rather than large data storage at each desk. (just assuming) The new Mac Pro easily allows you to hook up what seems like very high computational power to your existing data storage. When your rig is outdated the IT department, or now yourself, simply places a new Mac Pro on your desk, quick transfer of applications and you are back to work.
Again, I am not a pro user, but this seems to be a lot simpler with a lot less IT involvement. If you need more storage, you upgrade your NAS, if you need more computational power, you update your Mac Pro.
Can you daisy-chaine two of these Mac Pros for more computational power?
I'm sure someone will design a blue-ray burner that is round and will stack under the Mac Pro. Or did I just do that?
looks like my plug hole
Who'll be the first to get it accidentally put out at the yard sale because it was mistaken for that 2002 Bose subwoofer?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppeX
You do not get it. Hint:
The time is (finally) right for a Mac minitower
http://www.macworld.com/article/2029740/the-time-is-finally-right-for-a-mac-minitower.html
BTW, it is an anti-ecological waste to discard a perfectly working display of the iMac just because the un-upgradable CPU is too old (yet the display is as new). And the Mac mini is not powerful enough. And the Mac Pro could be smaller as Mac Pro mini, between the Mac Pro and the Mac mini. That is!
This is bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about.
People have been saying "the time is finally right" for a MiniTower as long as Apple has been around. I distinctly remember having a long conversation with a computer tech guy who was fixing my thin wire network in 1989 about that very subject.
Just because someone writes an article about this nonsense, doesn't make it accurate.
Just because you read the article doesn't mean you have to swallow the argument wholesale.
Just because you do believe it, doesn't mean it's logical or rational or a good idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Quote:
Originally Posted by kpluck
I am going to go out on a limb and suggest professionals looking for a workstation don't have "marvel of packaging" high on their list of wanted features. The design of this machine was not done to meet the needs of professionals. It was done for Apple's need to minimize upgradeability to keep people buying new machines every few years.
Don't get me wrong, I think the design is cool and I think they will probably sell a lot of them. Lets face it, there are a lot of professional Apple users that will buy whatever Apple throws at them and learn to deal with any limitations it may have. From a business standpoint, I think it is an amazing design. But from a professional user standpoint, it is horrible.
I am rather curious how long Apple can keep this kind of thing going and how long Apple users will keep accepting it? Maybe indefinitely I suppose. Time will tell.
-kpluck
I agree.
Interesting design. I probably won't buy one though. I was really looking forward to a new Mac Pro, just this isn't what I wanted. Personally I like the large case of the current design. With this new model, I can see a bunch of non-matching external chassis for hard disks, capture cards, optical media burners, etc, scattered around the desk connected by cables, all of which used to be neatly contained inside the tower.
Pros:
Faster
Cons:
Not expandable, ugly external accessories required
I was hoping for a hybrid server / pro workstation with dual power supplies, multiple fans for redundant protection, more ram slots, rack-able, card slots, Firewire, optical disks and internal HD capability. I don't like the inlet vent on the bottom either. Too easy for it to be obstructed by cables, papers, etc.
Oh, and BTW the HTML5 animations on the Apple site promoting the Mac Pro are a perfect example of why HTML5 cannot come close to replacing Flash at least not for quality animation. All kinds of glitches, timing issues and jerky non-buffered animation. If that is the best they can do, it says a lot about the lack of capabilities of the HTML5 platform.
You guys are just laughable. It's so funny when people can't adapt to new advancements in computing (I mean COMPUTING! for crisakes) Expandability potentials increase, and you don't even see it. Stuck looking backwards where you got stuck at some point in your lives.
Quote:
Originally Posted by isaidso
There has never been a better time for Adobe to release Creative Suite for Linux. Personally I like big cases and motherboards that I can build to suit my needs. Hackintosh is probably not an option going forward, but neither is this new Mac Pro in my opinion. 4K video and thunderbolt are not exclusive to Apple. Premier is already 4K capable. TB2 will also be available on other boards around the same time.
Problem is; your concept of "building to suit" is from a past era. That's ok. It has always been this way with "Pros" and Apple. Probably always will be.
Ha Ha! There are many things that belong to past eras that are never appreciated by the new generation.
Pros ask for a one ton 4x4 diesel truck and Apple delivers a solar powered hovercraft. This Mac Pro was designed for modern hipsters, wanna be "Pros".
I am not seeing too many comments on the thermal core either here or other parts of the internet. That's a shame because you are missing out on the fundamental innovation in the new Pro. Schiller was spot on with his pithy "my ass" comment.
Thermal design in workstations has become an engineering specialty over the last two decades. One persistent challenge is the traditional layout, which is a veritable maze. You have to bring air in from one or more ports, route it around and over myriad surfaces including multiple heat sinks and push it out another side. Liquid cooling looks as if it would become the norm. Even so, there is no guarantee that a user would not lay waste to the thermal engineer's best design intentions by adding/changing graphics cards, memory, etc.
Apple has solved this problem using the traditional Apple approach - by doing away with the design constraint that is only there because of legacy - the maze layout. Instead, they came up with a new layout that virtually eliminated the problem of labyrinthian air flow. They use a single heat sink that is easy to manufacture (hello unibody v2), reduces part count and distributes heat across components. So much for Apple choosing form over function!!!
This is Apple engineering at its best. Which company will dare to follow?
p.s. I wonder if this is one reason Bob Mansfield was convinced to stay. He likely started down this path and Cook convinced him to see it through. Pure speculation on my part, of course.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister
Check out this over at Blackmagic Designs:
http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8898
That is good news. AMD has been working hard with Adobe and Premiere and After Effects will support OpenCL.
http://fireuser.com/blog/adobe_premiere_pro_next_amd_firepro_acceleration/
Then again, it's ATI AND Adobe. The drivers will invariably be fubar'd somehow. The only folks that suck worse is Intel. How long were ATI 12.x drivers broken for CS6?
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
The SSD probably isn't a standard format as the industry hasn't really settled on one. Even within Apple machines there are SSB blade differences.
Look at the connector on the drive. I've seen a number of SSD drives with that connector in the Windows world. I think it will be relatively easy to upgrade that drive.
You and I know the answer is: Every last sorry-assed one of them..
Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella
The current Mac Pro starts at $2500.
I believe the new Mac Pro will start at $1800-2000.
Yer nuts : ) Anything near that would make it a no brainer impulse buy for even people who don't need what it offers, and Apple has never done that.
It'll be expensive enough to give pause to those who don't require it.
The current Mac Pro price comparison is pointless because there's been zero market for it for literally years given how we've been waiting for an upgrade since forever and MacBook Pros have come so far in the meantime.
There will be more of a premium attached to it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Getz
Can you daisy-chaine two of these Mac Pros for more computational power?
Not sure why you would, but the answer is yes. It would not be a matter of daisy-chaining. You would instead manage a cluster of these baby towers using software. That's how you manage most clusters anyhow.