I'm not sure how you fight against changes in the tech industry, change tends to happen anyway but Apple has changed more than any other tech company, it's kind of what they are known for. If this isn't the kind of thing people like, then Apple is probably going to disappoint again in future.
some believe [Steve] did "get" the PRO users needs. Lately, more and more people in MY circles seem to think that the current Apple people don't get it…
It has become a common practise these days for people to use Steve to backup whatever their personal preferences are e.g 'Steve would never have designed iOS 7 this way because I don't like it', 'Steve would never have designed the Mac Pro this way because I don't like it', 'Steve would never have caused AAPL to half in value' etc. The statements don't hold much weight and you can really say anything you like: 'my jam sandwich is sub-par, Steve Jobs would never have allowed this to happen'. Steve wasn't responsible for everything that happened at Apple, there were teams of people working on things when he was absent from the company and those teams of people are still there. As far as I can see, it's business as usual.
I'm not convinced that Thunderbolt is going to be the solution to "out-of-the box" expansion. Like all technology -- nothing is as perfect as one would lead you to believe it is. There is misinformation everywhere. If you believe that is what I'm dishing out, you have the right to your opinion.
If thunderbolt is so ubiquitous now why don't I see it in any competing workstation. Why don't I see pros that I deal with using it everyday. And if it is so transparent why is it that there are so MANY PCIe adapters that won't work in a Thunderbolt PCIe adapter?
There are a number of reasons why Thunderbolt hasn't been as widely adopted as some expected. It costs more to put into machines, there isn't a huge need for external PCIe (just like there wasn't for ExpressCard), Intel controls the certification, there was a perception that it was Apple's tech (same with mini-displayport) and there's resistance to it.
It doesn't appear to be straightforward to have both slots and Thunderbolt together so that's probably why it hasn't been adopted in a lot of workstations and other manufacturers wouldn't be as bold as to control the GPU upgrades the way Apple has - they don't have that freedom because of the competition. If you have slots anyway, there's less of a need for Thunderbolt. It's not transparent to support PCIe cards as the drivers have to be made to load/unload properly for plug-and-play.
As for card support, if one isn't supported, the manufacturer just has to get a driver developed for it, which they'd have to do for it to be supported on the Mac anyway. The support list seems fairly long:
There must be a few not on the list but Thunderbolt has only been out for 2 years and isn't in workstations yet at all. AFAIK, the new Mac Pro will be the first workstation with Thunderbolt. It's like saying 'where are all the other touchscreen phones with no hardware keyboard' when the iPhone came out. I don't think there will be quite the same effect of the industry moving in the same direction because of the nature of the industry but pretty much all of the machines use Intel processors and it's Intel tech so they are trying to push for adoption.
Apple has chosen to back Thunderbolt all the way - understandable as they helped develop it in the first place. The choice people have now is between buying the new Mac Pro or, if Thunderbolt isn't suitable, buying from another manufacturer.
Unless I'm reading something wrong, how can this mean anything with only 20 votes -- at least that is what it says when I just looked.
It really doesn't mean anything. Like most polls it is biased by where it is presented.
I don't get it -- how do you know this the better solution for the future?
Because I keep up to date on where semiconductor technology is going and what is required to build machines in the future. By definition for machines to get faster they will have to be smaller. It is simple physics related to getting signals from one place to another in a machine. Beyond that at Intels current process nodes we have a lot of technology packed into each chip. That will easily double in future chips.
Beyond the main processor you have the issues with RAM where getting data in and out of main memory is a huge bottleneck. This will lead to new memory architectures some of which require that RAM be soldered to the motherboard. Intel/Micron are working on very high speed 3D solutions and other standards are in the works, some to debut real soon.
Related is the move to flash secondary storage on the PCI Express bus. Flash may be short term here but secondary storage attached to the PCI Express bus isn't. It is currently the only way to get the required data transfer rates to really utilize all the processing power available in modern chips. SATA is a huge bottle neck and results in a lot of unneeded circuitry. I'm certain that Apple is pushing Intel to offer SATA free chipsets, to simple delete this old hardware to X out a source of power waste. Right now SATA represents unused transistors in a chipset that do nothing but waste power and die space.
Don't get me wrong, I LIKE THIS DESIGN, but there is still a lot to be learned and too many unknowns right now.
I like this design very much myself but it isn't perfect by any means. For one they need to ship the machine with that second SSD socket soldered on. This simple fix would do wonders for the machines versatility. Second I really don't like the lack of an internal PCI Express expansion slot as that means the machine will never be able to support some desired functionality.
However overall the machine in its lower end configuration comes close to what I would expect of an XMac.
Is Thunderbolt the wave of the future? Seems to me that it is still being shaken out -- even throwing the cost factor out, I don't think of it as "proven" technology.
That is horse crap. TB has already proven itself to be very functional. The problem with TB is the constant comparison to USB which it was never intended to replace. Once people understand that TB is a if fervent ball game than USB it will be better accepted. It takes time though, FireWire wasn't an instant success and frankly neither was USB.
Does everyone really need 2 GPUs? I don't unless I have software that uses them for things other than graphics! Are 1 CPU machines the wave of the future. Seems to me people are moving to more and more cores to get more processing power.
Does everybody need CPUs with 12 cores? Of course not. As to more cores that is exactly what GPUs offer.
By the way if this is the CPU I'm thinking about it is actually two CPU chips in one package. That is two six core chips to give you twelve cores. The lack of an additional socket may be a limitation from one view point but you run into diminishing returns once core counts get too high.
But more to the point, from what I read around the forums I watch, there are still a lot of people who DON'T think this is in their best interest.
So?
Really so what, if they don't want the machine they can suffer with something else.
I read a post the other day where a fellow said something that made an awful lot of sense to me. Wish I could quote chapter and verse, but I don't remember exactly where I was. <span style="font-family:Arial;line-height:normal;">Basically</span>
, he claimed to be an Apple vendor, and he personally did not believe Apple had the PRO users at heart at all.
Is that even rational considering they just introduced a "Pro" machine that will likely outperform everything in its price range? The problem with such comments is that the are all based on emotion and not rational thought processes.
That it really is just a gimmick to create more disposable gear and Apple doesn't genuinely want or need to sell a PRO machine anymore. Moreover, that those that he knows thought the whole thing to be something less than honest on Apples part…???…
He is most like an overbearing jerk that will have people agreeing with him in the hopes that he will go away and bother somebody else. In any event how in the world has Apple been dishonest in this subject matter. That is a horrible thing to imply when Apple is actually trying to be up front in previewing this hardware well before release.
Frankly this is why I think many of the people complaining about the new Mac Pro have mental issues. How can anybody rationally say Apple has been less than honest here? The debuted a new generation of high performance computers that will likely be around for a decade or more. Is the product perfect? Hell no, but what Apple product is? The reality is the machine has more performance potential than anything Apple has introduced in the past, it just requires opening up ones eyes to see it.
Again, I don't take this with anything more than a gain of salt, but do you really think Apple cares about or needs this portion of the market anymore? From what I read, the workstation market is shrinking. Does Apple really care about a shrinking market? What do they stand to gain?
Actually my understanding is that the workstation market has been steady. Why? Simple that market can't do its work on an iPad, cell phone or via a cloud computing experience.
As to Apple I do believe they think this market is important to them otherwise they would never have gone to the huge expense of engineering this new Mac Pro. The problem is that many potential customers displaying such negativity about the machine can't see past their own nose. Frankly I've seen this with many generations of computer hardware. The S100 guys never wanted to give up their bus even though the market soon buried them. Same thing with the AT bus and the original PCI. It was also a phenomena with respect to SCSI and other ports, everybody wanted to hang onto old junk. Sometimes it was justified behavior but more often not.
Would this be the next PRO machine that Steve Jobs would have released given what he said himself about what PRO users want?
Yes it would be because we have evidence that Steve worked on this machine.
At Macworld in 2009, Steve Jobs said, “Our pro customers want accessibility: […] to add memory, to add cards, to add drives.” Now that was a few years ago, and a visionary like him might change his mind, but this does not seem to jive with this machine -- at least as things stand right now…
I really can't understand why people can't grasp that Steve was all about marketing. As a marketeer you sell the products you have now, not the ones in development or that some customer wishes you had. This is so basic to understanding Steve's various comments over the years that I just can't understand why people even quote him like this.
Yes -- read that -- just seems THIS poll doesn't prove anything (yet).
Polls of this type never prove anything so frankly we can ignore it in that sense. The poll will reflect the biases of the members of this forum though.
Oh and maybe you didn't read my post. There are those who think Apple did their homework and in the end they decided that they really don't care whether people who earn their living using their products buy it or not.
That is asinine as this machine reflect exactly what people need. It concentrates most of its value on performance and connectivity at the expense of the old ways of doing things. Actually in some ways Apples approach here is validating the design of mainframe and Mini computers of the past. It is a good approach but it requires people to actually put in a little mental effort.
I personally like the "concept" of the design. Just think there a lot of holes yet to be filled. Guess they could have just dropped the whole PRO line (and some believe that would have been more honest on their part).
Really guy what in the hell is up your problem here with the word honest. You accuse Apple of being dishonest but a rational reality check would seem to indicate that they are being very innovative here giving real pro users a very high performance platform for their work. So either explain your usage here or clean up your act. Accusing someone of being dishonest when clearly they haven't been is just ugly and evil.
Hope you like yours if the factors you see as important work out for you.
The success of this machine comes down to one factor in my mind. That is value. If Apple can offer this machine at a reasonable price in the base form then it will sell like hotcakes.
Seems to be the foremost thing most people are talking about. Not sure -- may be performance is next? From my point of view, I would like for this to be the technology of the future, but I'm not convinced that it IS.
Price is very important. Frankly I would never have considered a Mac Pro of the last few years because the machine was basically a joke at the price point considered for an entry level model or even the mid range upsell models.
I actually am holding out great hope here as I see potential for a more rationally priced machine. If you look at Apples Mac Book Airs they are actually very good deals. I'm hoping that Apple can bring similar aggressive pricing to the Pro platform market. A base machine of this design shouldn't cost more than $2000 so let's hope Apple is rational here.
As for technologies future at best we can only predict short term. I see this platform as a good solution for the coming years. Process shrinks and other improvements put a lot of heat in a small space which this design addresses. This design should hold its own for 5-10 years.
Apple has been pushing Thunderbolt for quite awhile; yet, doesn't seem to have caught on -- at least in the circles I travel. I have yet to see someone (r organization) that owns a Thunderbolt product.
So? I really don't understand all of this fretting over TB, do you guys even remotely realize how long it took USB to gain acceptance on PC's? It took years for primers to give up Centronic ports after USB was introduced.
Price could be the issue there too. Or, it could be that the technology is just being fleshed out … or both.
Price is only an issue if you make the mistake of comparing it to current USB hardware. TB doesn't exist to compete with USB, it is there to offer performance that USB can match.
But I have seen Mac Pro 1,1s maxed out and upgraded in ways that Apple never intended. Hmmm… Just maybe that is their problem with the current design?
Or maybe that is a problem with the way you set up your machine. I don't know the nature of your upgrades but considering the model of computer you are talking about I can suggest that some of those upgrades have been ill advised. It comes to a point where old hardware just doesn't support "upgrades" in the same way a more modern platform would.
You may honestly believe that you have been smart about your upgrade choices but you need to realize that in some professional organizations upgrades are not permitted or looked down upon. In your case you now have a non standard platform that isn't targetable by software developers. That may not be a problem for you, if so great, but not everyone sees life that way.
I'm not sure how you fight against changes in the tech industry, change tends to happen anyway but Apple has changed more than any other tech company, it's kind of what they are known for. If this isn't the kind of thing people like, then Apple is probably going to disappoint again in future.
It has become a common practise these days for people to use Steve to backup whatever their personal preferences are e.g 'Steve would never have designed iOS 7 this way because I don't like it', 'Steve would never have designed the Mac Pro this way because I don't like it', 'Steve would never have caused AAPL to half in value' etc. The statements don't hold much weight and you can really say anything you like: 'my jam sandwich is sub-par, Steve Jobs would never have allowed this to happen'. Steve wasn't responsible for everything that happened at Apple, there were teams of people working on things when he was absent from the company and those teams of people are still there. As far as I can see, it's business as usual.
There are a number of reasons why Thunderbolt hasn't been as widely adopted as some expected. It costs more to put into machines, there isn't a huge need for external PCIe (just like there wasn't for ExpressCard), Intel controls the certification, there was a perception that it was Apple's tech (same with mini-displayport) and there's resistance to it.
It doesn't appear to be straightforward to have both slots and Thunderbolt together so that's probably why it hasn't been adopted in a lot of workstations and other manufacturers wouldn't be as bold as to control the GPU upgrades the way Apple has - they don't have that freedom because of the competition. If you have slots anyway, there's less of a need for Thunderbolt. It's not transparent to support PCIe cards as the drivers have to be made to load/unload properly for plug-and-play.
As for card support, if one isn't supported, the manufacturer just has to get a driver developed for it, which they'd have to do for it to be supported on the Mac anyway. The support list seems fairly long:
There must be a few not on the list but Thunderbolt has only been out for 2 years and isn't in workstations yet at all. AFAIK, the new Mac Pro will be the first workstation with Thunderbolt. It's like saying 'where are all the other touchscreen phones with no hardware keyboard' when the iPhone came out. I don't think there will be quite the same effect of the industry moving in the same direction because of the nature of the industry but pretty much all of the machines use Intel processors and it's Intel tech so they are trying to push for adoption.
Apple has chosen to back Thunderbolt all the way - understandable as they helped develop it in the first place. The choice people have now is between buying the new Mac Pro or, if Thunderbolt isn't suitable, buying from another manufacturer.
First I didn't think I wast speculating… the quote is what Steve actually said. Well, maybe people are speculating that Apple doesn't get its PRO users anymore. But the market will sort that out… If what I read on other boards is true, I think some are starting to hate Apple the way many hated IBM back in their hey-day -- just MHO.
Sorry, as for the fighting technology stuff, I guess I'm just a poor communicator, but that is not what I meant. Tech is always in a constant state of flux, right? Things (hardware and software) don't alway play well together when you try to put them together on the same box. Older tech is not alway compatible with newer tech. I just think of all the changes we've had to do in the last decade. There are still PCI cards around even though the upgrade to PCIe was such a great advance. It is fight when you can't alway upgrade all of the stuff. Usually it is because of costs but it can be that what you have works really well for what your are doing. If it isn't compatible with the new stuff (or vice-versa) what is one supposed to do? Abandon the entire platform. It is not because one is stuck in the mud or doesn't want to change -- sometime it is just not feasible.
Then there's the problem that manufacturers of computer cards have budget constraints and their own plans as well. They won't always just "develop a new driver" for legacy hardware when they think it will take too much of their time and resources. Especially if they have their own new products that they would rather you buy.
I think Thunderbolt support has gotten better but there are still problems and it's not as transparent as some would want you to believe. This comes from my own experience with the technology. I'm not a newbie. My organization has passed on it until it is a proven commodity. We're not comparing it to USB, Firewire, or anything else like that. It doesn't really solve any problems we're having. It is expensive to implement (which you know), and we had performance problems and flaky experiences in our testing. If anyone thinks this is "horse crap" they can come work with my people and prove to me they are incompetent. It seemed to be more limiting than a step forward… Oh and it is my belief that Thunderbolt will remain high in cost even when the new MP comes out. But, again, the market will decide in the end if that is the future.
It is clear you are VERY pro Apple. When I went to college my statistics classes taught me that 20 votes was not "statistically significant" anywhere :-)
It all depends upon the number of potential voters. In any event it isn't the voters but the way the poll is conducted here that makes it useless.
With me it is not Apple love it or leave it -- I have to close on this best possible tools to get the job done. I have fought changes in the PC market for years. You can upgrade "this" component, but "that" is not compatible!
If this is a problem for you then why do you resist Apples new Mac Pro. I mean really this is something that Apple effectively addresses in this machine.
And I didn't say that he was "pro" workstation, I was merely regurgitating a quote by Steve -- some believe he did "get" the PRO users needs. Lately, more and more people in MY circles seem to think that the current Apple people don't get it…
We don't care about your circles. Honestly if the people in your circles are coming up with the same drizzle you are nobody will listen to them. As you have indicated with comments about compatibility above, you seem not to grasp that Apple is doing you a favor here.
I'm not convinced that Thunderbolt is going to be the solution to "out-of-the box" expansion. Like all technology -- nothing is as perfect as one would lead you to believe it is. There is misinformation everywhere. If you believe that is what I'm dishing out, you have the right to your opinion.
Nobody here really believes TB is perfect, certainly no more than we believe Mac OS is perfect. What is obvious is that it provides for a way to factor out those items that don't lead directly to a high performance workstation.
If thunderbolt is so ubiquitous now why don't I see it in any competing workstation. Why don't I see pros that I deal with using it everyday.
Ask those pros! Seriously every opinion is valid when coming to a conclusion even if some of those opinions are not rational. You may want to consider though that those pros aren't upgrade nuts like you are. The vast majority of pro computer users don't throw away money on every trivial up grade that comes along. More so in the Mac World there hasn't been a pro computer with TB ports. So in a sense you are looking for something that doesn't exist yet.
But seriously if you can get those pros to talk about their intentions IT wise do so. However don't bother until Apples complete solution is released. Most pros will take a rational amount of time to determine how they will evolve their systems over the coming years. Frankly somebody that makes a snap decision based on this Mac Pro preview doesn't have an opinion worth natural cow fertilizer.
And if it is so transparent why is it that there are so MANY PCIe adapters that won't work in a Thunderbolt PCIe adapter?
This is a ridiculous question, there are hundreds of cards that don't work in the old Mac Pros. Drivers have to be written and the device needs proper firmware. This isn't rocket science at all.
So? I really don't understand all of this fretting over TB, do you guys even remotely realize how long it took USB to gain acceptance on PC's? It took years for primers to give up Centronic ports after USB was introduced.
Price is only an issue if you make the mistake of comparing it to current USB hardware. TB doesn't exist to compete with USB, it is there to offer performance that USB can match.
Or maybe that is a problem with the way you set up your machine. I don't know the nature of your upgrades but considering the model of computer you are talking about I can suggest that some of those upgrades have been ill advised. It comes to a point where old hardware just doesn't support "upgrades" in the same way a more modern platform would.
The fretting over TB (much easier to type) is that in this case there are not really other backward compatibility paths in this new machine. When USB came out NO ONE HAD TO USE IT! So, if it was there it didn't hurt you. You could simply wait until it was accepted or ignore it altogether. Most people cannot do without our PCIe cards these days. Price is an issue because it could drive the costs out of the realm of possibility. Performance is a problem if doesn't allow one to do what needs to be done.
BTW, I get the impression for some reason everyone thinks that everyone uses a workstation as a personal computer. There is no such thing a PC anymore in the organizations I deal with. They are corporate assets -- networked and limited to corporate work. These are just tools to get work done and not toys to play with for personal pleasure!
Why would anyone want to "reduce anyone else's happiness"? Are you that jaded? Or is it that you think I'm an Apple competitor or have some other reason to "Apple bash". Sorry -- no, I'm just another guy whole believes in the free market system, believes that 2 heads are better than 1, believes that 4 heads are better than 2… I believe in a "free and open discussion" of the facts as presented to me.
Then deal with facts! You have repeatedly failed to do so in your posts.
Free from marketing hype! It's difficult to sift the facts from the crappola on the internet. I've been around for a while myself and I have eyes, ears, and a brain of my own. I've put up with enough of that crappola to be entitled to my own opinion even if I'm NOT perfect and not alway right.
No the problem here is that all you have added yourself is crap. You accuse Apple of being dishonest which is childish at best and all around evil. Further you reasoning seems to be extremely twisted to support your feelings.
I'm just trying to make a living and get through life choosing the best path through the options and obstacles before me…
Then why this series of posts? You have made no mention of what you even intend to do with this new computer of yours. The fact remains that you will see technologies come and go over the next decade, the best way to manage your exposure is to change you buying habits. Your comment about your old Mac Pro doesn't inspire me one bit as you have taken the approach that might have made sense in the 1980's but is down right stupid in this day and age. You need to break with past thinking and refactor how you buy and keep hardware. This doesn't matter if you are considering a Mac Pro, MBP Air, Android cell phone or an HP workstation. Tinkering every couple of months with an upgrade of some sort is a hobby, it isn't wise business practice these days.
We don't care about your circles. Honestly if the people in your circles are coming up with the same drizzle you are nobody will listen to them. As you have indicated with comments about compatibility above, you seem not to grasp that Apple is doing you a favor here.
This is the problem -- "he who has ears let him listen" someone once said. I think you seriously underestimate the number of people that think what you are dishing out is drizzle -- again sounding very condescending. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY EXPERTS IN EXISTENCE.
First I didn't think I wast speculating… the quote is what Steve actually said. Well, maybe people are speculating that Apple doesn't get its PRO users anymore. But the market will sort that out… If what I read on other boards is true, I think some are starting to hate Apple the way many hated IBM back in their hey-day -- just MHO.
Your problem here is that you care to much for the opinions of others and seemingly can't express anything of your own. I've stress repeatedly that Steve was all about marketing and thus things he has said in the past where often tied directly to the marketing of a product.
Sorry, as for the fighting technology stuff, I guess I'm just a poor communicator, but that is not what I meant. Tech is always in a constant state of flux, right? Things (hardware and software) don't alway play well together when you try to put them together on the same box. Older tech is not alway compatible with newer tech.
Which Apple is addressing with this new Mac Pro.
I just think of all the changes we've had to do in the last decade. There are still PCI cards around even though the upgrade to PCIe was such a great advance. It is fight when you can't alway upgrade all of the stuff. Usually it is because of costs but it can be that what you have works really well for what your are doing. If it isn't compatible with the new stuff (or vice-versa) what is one supposed to do? Abandon the entire platform. It is not because one is stuck in the mud or doesn't want to change -- sometime it is just not feasible.
Which I understand 100% as I deal with outdated hardware on a daily basis. I still have hardware I/O cards tied to the AT his at work. The point is you can't look towards old tech to justify buying hardware in the present. If that old tech is bound to old computers then you keep them around until a new solution is found.
Then there's the problem that manufacturers of computer cards have budget constraints and their own plans as well. They won't always just "develop a new driver" for legacy hardware when they think it will take too much of their time and resources. Especially if they have their own new products that they would rather you buy.
In the case of the Macs the vast majority of expansion cards out there never had drivers for the Mac Platform. Never! So what is the point about keeping Apple saddled with old technology. The reality is they have little to loose by transitioning to next gen technology. This is especially the case when their pro hardware partners are actively pursuing TB.
I think Thunderbolt support has gotten better but there are still problems and it's not as transparent as some would want you to believe. This comes from my own experience with the technology. I'm not a newbie. My organization has passed on it until it is a proven commodity.
Which is an amazingly foolish thing to do. If everybody took your attitude we would all be running Apple 2E's and CPM machines. Seriously sometimes you have to take a bit of risk if you want to remain progressive.
Think back a bit to USB's debut, Apple jumped in with both feet while the PC industry took years to adjust. Many PC's still come with PS/2 ports to this day. I'd have to say USB is a proven port yet we still have Luddites using PS/2 ports. Is that the type of person you want to be?
We're not comparing it to USB, Firewire, or anything else like that. It doesn't really solve any problems we're having. It is expensive to implement (which you know), and we had performance problems and flaky experiences in our testing. If anyone thinks this is "horse crap" they can come work with my people and prove to me they are incompetent.
It doesn't matter if they are competent or not, they should have an expectation that something new will have teething pains though. What perplexes me here is that you expect instant TB products yet dis the products that come out early as being flaky! You can't have it both ways, especially when it has been indicated that some products have been delayed to shore up the quality of the drivers.
The reality is this, it hasn't been all that long since TB debuted. It takes time to develop new products, as such there really hasn't been any sort of extreme delays in getting hardware to market.
It seemed to be more limiting than a step forward… Oh and it is my belief that Thunderbolt will remain high in cost even when the new MP comes out. But, again, the market will decide in the end if that is the future.
Again TB is only high in coast if you compare it to USB. What you should do instead is compare it to the cost of putting a disk array on Infiniband or a full blown file server on Ethernet. It is always nice when you can artificially bias a decision with invalid comparisons but such comparisons just don't hold up to inspection.
You have yet to show any real justification for staying away from TB. Sure the tech has a ways to go maturity wise but this is no different than the grief seen with USB at debut or even today with all the crappy drivers available for USB devices. It really seems like you are trying to punish Apple and Intel here for doing exactly what you want which is to introduce quality products. Quality takes time and it isn't cheap. Beyond that TB isn't designed to be cheap, one look at the active cables ought to enlighten you there.
Then why this series of posts? You have made no mention of what you even intend to do with this new computer of yours.
Because of what I said earlier. I believe in the free exchange of FACTS. People don't get closer to perfection if they isolate themselves from other points of view. Why are you so angry and insolent? Does what I post defame you in some way? Do you work for Apple and you will lose your job if this doesn't fly. Seems you have way too much emotional capital invested not to have some involvement! From MY point of view, and from those that travel in my circles, what you are saying doesn't make sense! This comes from experience not conjecture.
And if you read my posts you might notice that this thing is bigger to me than a single computer for personal use. PRO to me means that this is a serious tool used for people's livelihood. That it can help make or break a business or some source of income. This is not personal to me! If a tool works for you great!
But as for me personally it would mean more work for me to make a break with OS X. There's investment in software and hardware to be considered (and I'm not talking about just computer boxes). But it could be more difficult to make this switch -- especially if the price is too high. It may be too big of a paradigm switch for too little return on investment. But I won't know for sure until there is something real on the market.
The fretting over TB (much easier to type) is that in this case there are not really other backward compatibility paths in this new machine.
When Apple dropped NuBus no one had a problem with that. Arguments about backward compatibility only go so far. If it is a real problem you keep old hardware around as long as you have to. Believe me I understand this having to support some rather old hardware in the plant I work in.
Interestingly at least one manufacture of instrumentation solved the bus problem by using Ethernet to connect to a single board compute of their own. Sometimes you beat bus compatibility issues by getting off the bus. This doesn't work for every need though, which is the only real problem with the new Mac Pro.
When USB came out NO ONE HAD TO USE IT! So, if it was there it didn't hurt you. You could simply wait until it was accepted or ignore it altogether.
If you where using Apple hardware you pretty much had to use it.
Most people cannot do without our PCIe cards these days. Price is an issue because it could drive the costs out of the realm of possibility. Performance is a problem if doesn't allow one to do what needs to be done.
I'm not dismissing that PCI Express or whatever cards can be hard to replace or easy to do without. What I'm saying is that those cards phased out previous technology and at the time we heard the same whining from the peanut gallery. Given that the new Mac Pro will either have new solutions for these problems or it will not take part in certain market segments. Not taking part in certain market segments will not make it a failure though.
BTW, I get the impression for some reason everyone thinks that everyone uses a workstation as a personal computer.
Nice! You might be surprised to find out what a computer with a PCI Express expansion slots can be used for. They can run everything from high performance high performance vision systems to the latest in machine control technology. They do get work done!
There is no such thing a PC anymore in the organizations I deal with. They are corporate assets -- networked and limited to corporate work. These are just tools to get work done and not toys to play with for personal pleasure!
Getting work done to me means making money, if an iPad can do that for you then it is a workstation. As technology has improved even iMacs have taken over some workstation duties. I suspect that you suffer from a common condition seen in these forums which says if you don't use your computer the way I do then you don't need a workstation / pro computer or anything more than a laptop. This is seemingly the big problem with many of the forum dismissals of the new Mac Pro, they fail to realize that many pros will be lining up to get this machine (given the right marketing and support components) as it packs a lot of power into that enclosure. As you note many people are tied to corporate networks and data storage policies, in such cases this new Pro is an excellent workstation.
Because of what I said earlier. I believe in the free exchange of FACTS. People don't get closer to perfection if they isolate themselves from other points of view. Why are you so angry and insolent? Does what I post defame you in some way? Do you work for Apple and you will lose your job if this doesn't fly. Seems you have way too much emotional capital invested not to have some involvement! From MY point of view, and from those that travel in my circles, what you are saying doesn't make sense! This comes from experience not conjecture.
And if you read my posts you might notice that this thing is bigger to me than a single computer for personal use. PRO to me means that this is a serious tool used for people's livelihood. That it can help make or break a business or some source of income. This is not personal to me! If a tool works for you great!
But as for me personally it would mean more work for me to make a break with OS X. There's investment in software and hardware to be considered (and I'm not talking about just computer boxes). But it could be more difficult to make this switch -- especially if the price is too high. It may be too big of a paradigm switch for too little return on investment. But I won't know for sure until there is something real on the market.
Here is the problem…
You roll up on this Apple forum, spouting off how the new Mac Pro is complete shitte "for your industry & the circles you travel in", but you give zero indication what that industry or those circles are…
You bad mouth the new Mac Pro because it does not have PCIe slots for you to place your existing cards in, and whine about the cost of getting TB chassis for said cards…
Then you whine about the cost of switching from OS X to another platform (that still has traditional PCIe slots), even though that cost has to be MUCH higher than the cost of a TB expansion chassis…
Step back, take a breath; new Mac Pros are coming out; they have TB instead of PCIe…
Get a TB chassis, get your card manufacturer to knock out drivers, get on with it all…
The new Mac Pro may not be the workstation tower of old, but it is SO much more…!!!
And the worst thing of all is you are naysaying a product that NO ONE has even gotten hands on with yet…!!!
This time next year there will probably be satisfactory TB solutions for most any issue, OpenCL will be looked at harder by developers & stuff will get done faster than with that old silver beast Mac Pro boat anchor…
But that might be progress of some sort, so we best all go back to our steam-powered computational engines…!!!
Because of what I said earlier. I believe in the free exchange of FACTS. People don't get closer to perfection if they isolate themselves from other points of view. Why are you so angry and insolent?
Because I really don't like people who accuse others of being dishonest without justification. This is something you have done more than once and frankly I can't see any rational way that you could come to that conclusion. If you have evidence of Apple being dishonest then offer it up.
Does what I post defame you in some way? Do you work for Apple and you will lose your job if this doesn't fly. Seems you have way too much emotional capital invested not to have some involvement! From MY point of view, and from those that travel in my circles, what you are saying doesn't make sense! This comes from experience not conjecture.
I've been involved in computer technology for many decades now and frankly I've seen the same crap offered up again and again with respect to new ideas in the industry. Sure many new ideas don't pan out and others run their course, but over all the industry moves forward. If you have gotten a hostile response here from me and others do consider what you are posting as a significant cause for those response.
If you where around in the days of the original Mac with its little black and white screen you would have heard the same sort of unjustified negativity that we are hearing from you now with respect to this Mac Pro. Like the original Mac, this Mac Pro is not designed to be a solution for every problem. No computer can be realistically. As a workstation computer though you seem to be damning it without any real consideration for its overall potential in the marketplace.
And if you read my posts you might notice that this thing is bigger to me than a single computer for personal use. PRO to me means that this is a serious tool used for people's livelihood. That it can help make or break a business or some source of income. This is not personal to me! If a tool works for you great!
Of course that is in a nut shell what professional usage is. However professionals use a wide range of hardware to get the job done. It simply isn't rational to dismiss this computer as less than Professional because it doesn't support the array of expansion cards you currently make use of. I'm completely confident that many professionals will have this machine doing productive work within hours of purchase.
But as for me personally it would mean more work for me to make a break with OS X. There's investment in software and hardware to be considered (and I'm not talking about just computer boxes). But it could be more difficult to make this switch -- especially if the price is too high. It may be too big of a paradigm switch for too little return on investment. But I won't know for sure until there is something real on the market.
Well this is one thing we can agree on (I hope), success here will be tied to the cost of the hardware. More so I believe it will be the cost of the base model that will drive success or failure. One of the great problems with the old Mac Pro is that the pricing model was out of whack with reality. It was almost as if the price in the base models was used to underwrite the more robust configurations.
First I didn't think I wast speculating… the quote is what Steve actually said. Well, maybe people are speculating that Apple doesn't get its PRO users anymore. But the market will sort that out…
Apple's recent decisions won't align with the preferences of every potential Mac Pro customer but people get into a habit of suggesting that every professional Mac user is at odds with what Apple is doing despite many using iMacs and Macbook Pros. Nobody knows the ratios of people who buy Mac Pros for performance and who buys them for high-end expansion. The Mac Pro sales volume is low, it's certainly no more than 250k units per quarter worldwide. If a portion of those buy PCIe peripherals (especially expensive ones), they will complain loudly about the new design but they wouldn't necessarily be considered representative of the majority. The majority could be buying for the extra performance. People who do graphics work don't really have a need for IO cards at all.
A portion of users who need IO devices will also be satisfied with Thunderbolt peripherals and there will be a portion of users attracted by the new design. It's not going to be a high volume market going forward. It's not a design to reinvigorate the industry either, it's a design that allows Apple to comfortably maintain a presence in the market while it naturally scales down in volume and it will allow people to quite freely move to or from any of the other machines they offer. It won't be a case where someone buys the new Mac Pro and say 3 years later decides to go mobile and none of their hardware works with a laptop. That would happen with Windows workstations.
The biggest transition that's happened in computing over the last decade or so is the move to mobile computing. Apple's desktops outsold their laptops in 2000 by about 3:1 and now it's the other way round. Not everyone takes notice of this because it happens slowly enough but when you put things side by side, it's quite impressive the changes that have happened.
An iPhone now performs faster than a high-end G5 tower from 10 years ago. When Flash storage reaches $0.10/GB in a few years down from $0.60/GB now, affordable laptops will be able to hold a couple of TB no problem and extra fast storage will be inexpensive. CPU/GPU performance will be significantly higher by then - even if the power consumption is scaled down, it will become inexpensive.
Then there's the problem that manufacturers of computer cards have budget constraints and their own plans as well. They won't always just "develop a new driver" for legacy hardware when they think it will take too much of their time and resources. Especially if they have their own new products that they would rather you buy.
For some companies, it will be cheaper to develop a new driver than custom Thunderbolt hardware. They'd have to have a driver developed in the first place for it to work on a Mac. If the sales potential is high enough, they'll do it. If not, then it doesn't affect that many people anyway.
I think Thunderbolt support has gotten better but there are still problems and it's not as transparent as some would want you to believe.
The general idea with Thunderbolt is that you'd buy Thunderbolt hardware where possible rather than PCIe cards. If you have a card, an expansion chassis and a compatible driver, it should be a fairly seamless transition.
I really don't like the lack of an internal PCI Express expansion slot as that means the machine will never be able to support some desired functionality.
There shouldn't be any functionality that is no longer possible as long as the drivers are developed.
Apple's recent decisions won't align with the preferences of every potential Mac Pro customer but people get into a habit of suggesting that every professional Mac user is at odds with what Apple is doing despite many using iMacs and Macbook Pros. Nobody knows the ratios of people who buy Mac Pros for performance and who buys them for high-end expansion. The Mac Pro sales volume is low, it's certainly no more than 250k units per quarter worldwide. If a portion of those buy PCIe peripherals (especially expensive ones), they will complain loudly about the new design but they wouldn't necessarily be considered representative of the majority. The majority could be buying for the extra performance. People who do graphics work don't really have a need for IO cards at all.
A wild ass guess would put the percentage of users buying a Mac Pro for high end expansion at 5%. Frankly if the expansion card market was that hot you would see more ads targeting the platform.
A portion of users who need IO devices will also be satisfied with Thunderbolt peripherals and there will be a portion of users attracted by the new design. It's not going to be a high volume market going forward. It's not a design to reinvigorate the industry either,
Maybe that isn't Apples intention but I can see a resurgence coming for desktop hardware. One or two more revisions to the iPads, both hardware and software, will greatly reduce people's desire for laptops.
it's a design that allows Apple to comfortably maintain a presence in the market while it naturally scales down in volume and it will allow people to quite freely move to or from any of the other machines they offer. It won't be a case where someone buys the new Mac Pro and say 3 years later decides to go mobile and none of their hardware works with a laptop. That would happen with Windows workstations.
This is something I haven't considered, TB is a far better solution for environments with mixed hardware.
The biggest transition that's happened in computing over the last decade or so is the move to mobile computing. Apple's desktops outsold their laptops in 2000 by about 3:1 and now it's the other way round. Not everyone takes notice of this because it happens slowly enough but when you put things side by side, it's quite impressive the changes that have happened.
This is certainly true to an extent. Apple has benefited greatly from building some of the best laptops out there. The shift was industry wide but has basically come to a dead stop with the mobile devices like iPad and iPhone. I really think people are going to reevaluate their need for laptops in the future.
An iPhone now performs faster than a high-end G5 tower from 10 years ago. When Flash storage reaches $0.10/GB in a few years down from $0.60/GB now, affordable laptops will be able to hold a couple of TB no problem and extra fast storage will be inexpensive. CPU/GPU performance will be significantly higher by then - even if the power consumption is scaled down, it will become inexpensive.
I'm a bit awed everytime I start up my iPad or iPhone and the iPhone is a iPhone 4. Each of them is more powerful that probably 80% of the computers I've ever owned. That is impressive. However none of them completely replaces the need for a Mac or more generally a computer.
As to computer performance the operative word here is small. Everything will continue to get smaller as performance increases. This is why I see this new design arriving at an almost optimal time. New generations of hardware that will start coming to market in 2014 and beyond will just make this machine all that more impressive. As for power consumption I don't see that as a significant factor for desktop processors as any thermal gains new processes offer will be used up to increase performance. At least that should be the goal on a Mac Pro. Apples attention to thermals on this new machine tells me that Apple expects this machine to "burn" a lot of watts going forward.
This isn't something that's new. People have been hating Apple since at least the time they moved their focus to iOS devices 6 years ago.
For some companies, it will be cheaper to develop a new driver than custom Thunderbolt hardware. They'd have to have a driver developed in the first place for it to work on a Mac. If the sales potential is high enough, they'll do it. If not, then it doesn't affect that many people anyway.
There is only a very small percentage of the available PCI Express cards supported on the Mac Pro anyways. However the problem is this, the few cards that are supported are far cheaper than their TB equivalents. For example adding USB or FireWire ports is dirt cheap if you have a slot available. This is probably my biggest regret with respect to the new Mac Pro, the lack of even one slot means that somethings won't be cheap to do on the machine.
The general idea with Thunderbolt is that you'd buy Thunderbolt hardware where possible rather than PCIe cards. If you have a card, an expansion chassis and a compatible driver, it should be a fairly seamless transition.
We can wish for that. The reality is that these expansion chassis will never be cheap. If you need one the cost of your installation balloons significantly.
In what way? Unless you specify what problems you've had, manufacturers can't really address the problems.
There shouldn't be any functionality that is no longer possible as long as the drivers are developed.
TB is a killer when it comes to bandwidth. It is only 20Gbps in its latest form. PCI Express 3.0 runs at 1GBps per lane. Note we are comparing bits to bytes here. Beyond that many cards run at higher speeds than permitted by 1 lane of PCI Express.
Of course discussions about bandwidth can end up very drawn out. Needless to say you need to understand your app and hardware to know if TB is going to be a huge problem with your hardware.
Because I really don't like people who accuse others of being dishonest without justification. This is something you have done more than once and frankly I can't see any rational way that you could come to that conclusion. If you have evidence of Apple being dishonest then offer it up.
**I** am not accusing any one of anything! I guess that must be my communication skills! I did say I took all of that with a grain of salt. But never-the-less, it is factual that people are saying and believe these things. I've been around long enough to know that companies actually have people that try to confuse others with outright lies and innuendo. Have you never heard of "let the buyer beware". And I'm not just talking about computers… We could just as well be talking about politics. Maybe you don't care, maybe I'm hoping for too much; but, I'm just passing it on because this seems to be such a closed forum and there seems to be this attitude that Apple can do no wrong. But, "along with the sunshine, there has to be some rain sometimes". If you don't want to hear it -- I'm sorry -- ignore me.
Do you think Apple's intentions are completely altruistic?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I've been involved in computer technology for many decades now and frankly I've seen the same crap offered up again and again with respect to new ideas in the industry. Sure many new ideas don't pan out and others run their course, but over all the industry moves forward. If you have gotten a hostile response here from me and others do consider what you are posting as a significant cause for those response.
I too have been around for many years. In fact, I may just retire soon and not try to fight about what needs to be done to stay on an OS X path. I'm getting tired of the endless upgrade merry-go-round. But, it is not new ideas that I have a problem with -- if they truly are a step forward. I'm just not convinced that this really a giant step forward as you seem to believe (for the reasons I've posted earlier). I too know about the physics behind how the hardware works. I could post my resume, but I doubt even that would make a difference -- probably just bore you anyway :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
If you where around in the days of the original Mac with its little black and white screen you would have heard the same sort of unjustified negativity that we are hearing from you now with respect to this Mac Pro. Like the original Mac, this Mac Pro is not designed to be a solution for every problem. No computer can be realistically. As a workstation computer though you seem to be damning it without any real consideration for its overall potential in the marketplace.
Yes, I was around when the Lisa came out and the Next cube as well. They were also purported to be "the future of computing". I can still remember what happened too. Although at least the tech from the Next cube was integrated into Apple. We would not have OS X otherwise. I didn't hear a lot of "unjustified" negativity or any other rampant negativity back then over the Macintosh. I "personally" wanted one, but corporate American might have been a different story -- and I was younger and less experienced then.
BTW it is phrases like "unjustified negativity" that bother me. From my point of view (and for many other highly trained and technical individuals) all of the negativity is anything but unjustified. I'm sorry if you don't see that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Of course that is in a nut shell what professional usage is. However professionals use a wide range of hardware to get the job done. It simply isn't rational to dismiss this computer as less than Professional because it doesn't support the array of expansion cards you currently make use of. I'm completely confident that many professionals will have this machine doing productive work within hours of purchase.
Again, I'm not dismissing it -- just looking at the rainy side of the picture. I've said it before: I LIKE THIS DESIGN! I think it has a lot of POTENTIAL. It is a question of if that potential will be realized IN THE MARKETPLACE. I think there is an awful lot working against it (for the reasons I've posted earlier). I'm still hoping for the best but there are a lot of forces working here. In this market segment, there are many highly technical people (as well as artistic temperaments, and if you've never had to deal with them, oh what a surprise it going to be) and many don't think Apple is listening to them anymore.
If Apple is now content to be a "consumer" products vender, fine! I just don't believe that this same mindset applies to the professional. It is not exactly a hugh market and it is highly fragmented ("professionals use a wide range of hardware to get the job done"). Except for their legacy -- why would they care? So much work, pain, and anguish for such a tiny portion of the total revenue. Maybe they should spin off the PRO line into a separate division with their own goals and incentives. Or sell OS X and let someone else deliver boxes based on it.
I just want an OS X box that fits into what me and my users need to get their jobs done. I love OS X, but most of what we have now are tired, old, and WAY past their prime. Got to do something soon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Well this is one thing we can agree on (I hope), success here will be tied to the cost of the hardware. More so I believe it will be the cost of the base model that will drive success or failure. One of the great problems with the old Mac Pro is that the pricing model was out of whack with reality. It was almost as if the price in the base models was used to underwrite the more robust configurations.
Apple's recent decisions won't align with the preferences of every potential Mac Pro customer but people get into a habit of suggesting that every professional Mac user is at odds with what Apple is doing despite many using iMacs and Macbook Pros. Nobody knows the ratios of people who buy Mac Pros for performance and who buys them for high-end expansion. The Mac Pro sales volume is low, it's certainly no more than 250k units per quarter worldwide. If a portion of those buy PCIe peripherals (especially expensive ones), they will complain loudly about the new design but they wouldn't necessarily be considered representative of the majority. The majority could be buying for the extra performance. People who do graphics work don't really have a need for IO cards at all.
A portion of users who need IO devices will also be satisfied with Thunderbolt peripherals and there will be a portion of users attracted by the new design. It's not going to be a high volume market going forward. It's not a design to reinvigorate the industry either, it's a design that allows Apple to comfortably maintain a presence in the market while it naturally scales down in volume and it will allow people to quite freely move to or from any of the other machines they offer. It won't be a case where someone buys the new Mac Pro and say 3 years later decides to go mobile and none of their hardware works with a laptop. That would happen with Windows workstations.
The biggest transition that's happened in computing over the last decade or so is the move to mobile computing. Apple's desktops outsold their laptops in 2000 by about 3:1 and now it's the other way round. Not everyone takes notice of this because it happens slowly enough but when you put things side by side, it's quite impressive the changes that have happened.
An iPhone now performs faster than a high-end G5 tower from 10 years ago. When Flash storage reaches $0.10/GB in a few years down from $0.60/GB now, affordable laptops will be able to hold a couple of TB no problem and extra fast storage will be inexpensive. CPU/GPU performance will be significantly higher by then - even if the power consumption is scaled down, it will become inexpensive.
This isn't something that's new. People have been hating Apple since at least the time they moved their focus to iOS devices 6 years ago.
For some companies, it will be cheaper to develop a new driver than custom Thunderbolt hardware. They'd have to have a driver developed in the first place for it to work on a Mac. If the sales potential is high enough, they'll do it. If not, then it doesn't affect that many people anyway.
The general idea with Thunderbolt is that you'd buy Thunderbolt hardware where possible rather than PCIe cards. If you have a card, an expansion chassis and a compatible driver, it should be a fairly seamless transition.
In what way? Unless you specify what problems you've had, manufacturers can't really address the problems.
There shouldn't be any functionality that is no longer possible as long as the drivers are developed.
You know what you saying is true, but again I only see the sunshine part of it here. In many of my previous posts I've tried to point out the rainy side. Fact is PRO users have myriad differences in what is necessary to get the job done. I think we have agreed on that at least. If Thunderbolt aware devices aren't available (even leaving cost out of the picture) what is the alternative. They can use TB PCIe expansion options (again leaving cost out) but some of those cards do not work (or at least not correctly) in a TB expansion chassis and the manufactures are not willing to help in this regard. For some, they have no intention of porting their old designs. One manufacture's rep clearly stated that they would gladly continue to support the old architecture for their older products "but Apple changed the rules on them" and they did not have the time and manpower to do that on newer machines. And in this case we were talking of the transition from the 1,1 and 2,1 machines to the 3,1 machines. Others have also flat out told us there would be no TB version until new hardware was ready. We certainly don't have the leverage to change that.
I'm not communicating well. All I can do is reiterate, I've done my due diligence -- I know what the possibilities for TB are as of this date for our situation. It is not by any means a "fairly seamless transition" (at least not right now). There are a lot of outstanding factors that could change that or mitigate the impact of the problems. I don't know what the future holds. The only thing that is certain in life is that things will change… I'm still hoping (and fighting) for a positive change.
Fact is PRO users have myriad differences in what is necessary to get the job done.
With a lot of this solutions either show up or they don't. If nothing materializes, some users will never touch those machines. The overall design makes certain assumptions. They are a low reliance on specialized hardware that is not available out of the box in thunderbolt form, possibly usb3 if Apple adds the required third party chipset. I couldn't find any mention of this, but I think they'll do it. The thunderbolt displays will probably use the same one or at least the same brand. It assumes external or possibly centralized storage. It also assumes that the workload exceeds the capabilities of the imac in whatever number of ways. In some ways a portion of the bandwidth is still there. It still has more total bandwidth than the imac, and you will be able to run multiple at least a couple displays and storage through it. I'm not sure how much can be run simultaneously as thunderbolt 2 (more of a 1.2, with 2 coming 2014 or 2015) adds channel bonding rather than an increase in bandwidth. Anyway if you are buying a computer, what matters is whether the solution is workable when you purchase it. That could be some point next year. It doesn't matter if it works now as long as everything works at that time.
Comments
I'm not sure how you fight against changes in the tech industry, change tends to happen anyway but Apple has changed more than any other tech company, it's kind of what they are known for. If this isn't the kind of thing people like, then Apple is probably going to disappoint again in future.
It has become a common practise these days for people to use Steve to backup whatever their personal preferences are e.g 'Steve would never have designed iOS 7 this way because I don't like it', 'Steve would never have designed the Mac Pro this way because I don't like it', 'Steve would never have caused AAPL to half in value' etc. The statements don't hold much weight and you can really say anything you like: 'my jam sandwich is sub-par, Steve Jobs would never have allowed this to happen'. Steve wasn't responsible for everything that happened at Apple, there were teams of people working on things when he was absent from the company and those teams of people are still there. As far as I can see, it's business as usual.
There are a number of reasons why Thunderbolt hasn't been as widely adopted as some expected. It costs more to put into machines, there isn't a huge need for external PCIe (just like there wasn't for ExpressCard), Intel controls the certification, there was a perception that it was Apple's tech (same with mini-displayport) and there's resistance to it.
It doesn't appear to be straightforward to have both slots and Thunderbolt together so that's probably why it hasn't been adopted in a lot of workstations and other manufacturers wouldn't be as bold as to control the GPU upgrades the way Apple has - they don't have that freedom because of the competition. If you have slots anyway, there's less of a need for Thunderbolt. It's not transparent to support PCIe cards as the drivers have to be made to load/unload properly for plug-and-play.
As for card support, if one isn't supported, the manufacturer just has to get a driver developed for it, which they'd have to do for it to be supported on the Mac anyway. The support list seems fairly long:
http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt-compatibility
There must be a few not on the list but Thunderbolt has only been out for 2 years and isn't in workstations yet at all. AFAIK, the new Mac Pro will be the first workstation with Thunderbolt. It's like saying 'where are all the other touchscreen phones with no hardware keyboard' when the iPhone came out. I don't think there will be quite the same effect of the industry moving in the same direction because of the nature of the industry but pretty much all of the machines use Intel processors and it's Intel tech so they are trying to push for adoption.
Apple has chosen to back Thunderbolt all the way - understandable as they helped develop it in the first place. The choice people have now is between buying the new Mac Pro or, if Thunderbolt isn't suitable, buying from another manufacturer.
Beyond the main processor you have the issues with RAM where getting data in and out of main memory is a huge bottleneck. This will lead to new memory architectures some of which require that RAM be soldered to the motherboard. Intel/Micron are working on very high speed 3D solutions and other standards are in the works, some to debut real soon.
Related is the move to flash secondary storage on the PCI Express bus. Flash may be short term here but secondary storage attached to the PCI Express bus isn't. It is currently the only way to get the required data transfer rates to really utilize all the processing power available in modern chips. SATA is a huge bottle neck and results in a lot of unneeded circuitry. I'm certain that Apple is pushing Intel to offer SATA free chipsets, to simple delete this old hardware to X out a source of power waste. Right now SATA represents unused transistors in a chipset that do nothing but waste power and die space. I like this design very much myself but it isn't perfect by any means. For one they need to ship the machine with that second SSD socket soldered on. This simple fix would do wonders for the machines versatility. Second I really don't like the lack of an internal PCI Express expansion slot as that means the machine will never be able to support some desired functionality.
However overall the machine in its lower end configuration comes close to what I would expect of an XMac. That is horse crap. TB has already proven itself to be very functional. The problem with TB is the constant comparison to USB which it was never intended to replace. Once people understand that TB is a if fervent ball game than USB it will be better accepted. It takes time though, FireWire wasn't an instant success and frankly neither was USB. Does everybody need CPUs with 12 cores? Of course not. As to more cores that is exactly what GPUs offer.
By the way if this is the CPU I'm thinking about it is actually two CPU chips in one package. That is two six core chips to give you twelve cores. The lack of an additional socket may be a limitation from one view point but you run into diminishing returns once core counts get too high. So?
Really so what, if they don't want the machine they can suffer with something else. Is that even rational considering they just introduced a "Pro" machine that will likely outperform everything in its price range? The problem with such comments is that the are all based on emotion and not rational thought processes. He is most like an overbearing jerk that will have people agreeing with him in the hopes that he will go away and bother somebody else. In any event how in the world has Apple been dishonest in this subject matter. That is a horrible thing to imply when Apple is actually trying to be up front in previewing this hardware well before release.
Frankly this is why I think many of the people complaining about the new Mac Pro have mental issues. How can anybody rationally say Apple has been less than honest here? The debuted a new generation of high performance computers that will likely be around for a decade or more. Is the product perfect? Hell no, but what Apple product is? The reality is the machine has more performance potential than anything Apple has introduced in the past, it just requires opening up ones eyes to see it. Actually my understanding is that the workstation market has been steady. Why? Simple that market can't do its work on an iPad, cell phone or via a cloud computing experience.
As to Apple I do believe they think this market is important to them otherwise they would never have gone to the huge expense of engineering this new Mac Pro. The problem is that many potential customers displaying such negativity about the machine can't see past their own nose. Frankly I've seen this with many generations of computer hardware. The S100 guys never wanted to give up their bus even though the market soon buried them. Same thing with the AT bus and the original PCI. It was also a phenomena with respect to SCSI and other ports, everybody wanted to hang onto old junk. Sometimes it was justified behavior but more often not. Yes it would be because we have evidence that Steve worked on this machine. I really can't understand why people can't grasp that Steve was all about marketing. As a marketeer you sell the products you have now, not the ones in development or that some customer wishes you had. This is so basic to understanding Steve's various comments over the years that I just can't understand why people even quote him like this.
I actually am holding out great hope here as I see potential for a more rationally priced machine. If you look at Apples Mac Book Airs they are actually very good deals. I'm hoping that Apple can bring similar aggressive pricing to the Pro platform market. A base machine of this design shouldn't cost more than $2000 so let's hope Apple is rational here.
As for technologies future at best we can only predict short term. I see this platform as a good solution for the coming years. Process shrinks and other improvements put a lot of heat in a small space which this design addresses. This design should hold its own for 5-10 years. So? I really don't understand all of this fretting over TB, do you guys even remotely realize how long it took USB to gain acceptance on PC's? It took years for primers to give up Centronic ports after USB was introduced. Price is only an issue if you make the mistake of comparing it to current USB hardware. TB doesn't exist to compete with USB, it is there to offer performance that USB can match. Or maybe that is a problem with the way you set up your machine. I don't know the nature of your upgrades but considering the model of computer you are talking about I can suggest that some of those upgrades have been ill advised. It comes to a point where old hardware just doesn't support "upgrades" in the same way a more modern platform would.
You may honestly believe that you have been smart about your upgrade choices but you need to realize that in some professional organizations upgrades are not permitted or looked down upon. In your case you now have a non standard platform that isn't targetable by software developers. That may not be a problem for you, if so great, but not everyone sees life that way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I'm not sure how you fight against changes in the tech industry, change tends to happen anyway but Apple has changed more than any other tech company, it's kind of what they are known for. If this isn't the kind of thing people like, then Apple is probably going to disappoint again in future.
It has become a common practise these days for people to use Steve to backup whatever their personal preferences are e.g 'Steve would never have designed iOS 7 this way because I don't like it', 'Steve would never have designed the Mac Pro this way because I don't like it', 'Steve would never have caused AAPL to half in value' etc. The statements don't hold much weight and you can really say anything you like: 'my jam sandwich is sub-par, Steve Jobs would never have allowed this to happen'. Steve wasn't responsible for everything that happened at Apple, there were teams of people working on things when he was absent from the company and those teams of people are still there. As far as I can see, it's business as usual.
There are a number of reasons why Thunderbolt hasn't been as widely adopted as some expected. It costs more to put into machines, there isn't a huge need for external PCIe (just like there wasn't for ExpressCard), Intel controls the certification, there was a perception that it was Apple's tech (same with mini-displayport) and there's resistance to it.
It doesn't appear to be straightforward to have both slots and Thunderbolt together so that's probably why it hasn't been adopted in a lot of workstations and other manufacturers wouldn't be as bold as to control the GPU upgrades the way Apple has - they don't have that freedom because of the competition. If you have slots anyway, there's less of a need for Thunderbolt. It's not transparent to support PCIe cards as the drivers have to be made to load/unload properly for plug-and-play.
As for card support, if one isn't supported, the manufacturer just has to get a driver developed for it, which they'd have to do for it to be supported on the Mac anyway. The support list seems fairly long:
http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt-compatibility
There must be a few not on the list but Thunderbolt has only been out for 2 years and isn't in workstations yet at all. AFAIK, the new Mac Pro will be the first workstation with Thunderbolt. It's like saying 'where are all the other touchscreen phones with no hardware keyboard' when the iPhone came out. I don't think there will be quite the same effect of the industry moving in the same direction because of the nature of the industry but pretty much all of the machines use Intel processors and it's Intel tech so they are trying to push for adoption.
Apple has chosen to back Thunderbolt all the way - understandable as they helped develop it in the first place. The choice people have now is between buying the new Mac Pro or, if Thunderbolt isn't suitable, buying from another manufacturer.
First I didn't think I wast speculating… the quote is what Steve actually said. Well, maybe people are speculating that Apple doesn't get its PRO users anymore. But the market will sort that out… If what I read on other boards is true, I think some are starting to hate Apple the way many hated IBM back in their hey-day -- just MHO.
Sorry, as for the fighting technology stuff, I guess I'm just a poor communicator, but that is not what I meant. Tech is always in a constant state of flux, right? Things (hardware and software) don't alway play well together when you try to put them together on the same box. Older tech is not alway compatible with newer tech. I just think of all the changes we've had to do in the last decade. There are still PCI cards around even though the upgrade to PCIe was such a great advance. It is fight when you can't alway upgrade all of the stuff. Usually it is because of costs but it can be that what you have works really well for what your are doing. If it isn't compatible with the new stuff (or vice-versa) what is one supposed to do? Abandon the entire platform. It is not because one is stuck in the mud or doesn't want to change -- sometime it is just not feasible.
Then there's the problem that manufacturers of computer cards have budget constraints and their own plans as well. They won't always just "develop a new driver" for legacy hardware when they think it will take too much of their time and resources. Especially if they have their own new products that they would rather you buy.
I think Thunderbolt support has gotten better but there are still problems and it's not as transparent as some would want you to believe. This comes from my own experience with the technology. I'm not a newbie. My organization has passed on it until it is a proven commodity. We're not comparing it to USB, Firewire, or anything else like that. It doesn't really solve any problems we're having. It is expensive to implement (which you know), and we had performance problems and flaky experiences in our testing. If anyone thinks this is "horse crap" they can come work with my people and prove to me they are incompetent. It seemed to be more limiting than a step forward… Oh and it is my belief that Thunderbolt will remain high in cost even when the new MP comes out. But, again, the market will decide in the end if that is the future.
But seriously if you can get those pros to talk about their intentions IT wise do so. However don't bother until Apples complete solution is released. Most pros will take a rational amount of time to determine how they will evolve their systems over the coming years. Frankly somebody that makes a snap decision based on this Mac Pro preview doesn't have an opinion worth natural cow fertilizer.
This is a ridiculous question, there are hundreds of cards that don't work in the old Mac Pros. Drivers have to be written and the device needs proper firmware. This isn't rocket science at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
So? I really don't understand all of this fretting over TB, do you guys even remotely realize how long it took USB to gain acceptance on PC's? It took years for primers to give up Centronic ports after USB was introduced.
Price is only an issue if you make the mistake of comparing it to current USB hardware. TB doesn't exist to compete with USB, it is there to offer performance that USB can match.
Or maybe that is a problem with the way you set up your machine. I don't know the nature of your upgrades but considering the model of computer you are talking about I can suggest that some of those upgrades have been ill advised. It comes to a point where old hardware just doesn't support "upgrades" in the same way a more modern platform would.
The fretting over TB (much easier to type) is that in this case there are not really other backward compatibility paths in this new machine. When USB came out NO ONE HAD TO USE IT! So, if it was there it didn't hurt you. You could simply wait until it was accepted or ignore it altogether. Most people cannot do without our PCIe cards these days. Price is an issue because it could drive the costs out of the realm of possibility. Performance is a problem if doesn't allow one to do what needs to be done.
BTW, I get the impression for some reason everyone thinks that everyone uses a workstation as a personal computer. There is no such thing a PC anymore in the organizations I deal with. They are corporate assets -- networked and limited to corporate work. These are just tools to get work done and not toys to play with for personal pleasure!
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
We don't care about your circles. Honestly if the people in your circles are coming up with the same drizzle you are nobody will listen to them. As you have indicated with comments about compatibility above, you seem not to grasp that Apple is doing you a favor here.
This is the problem -- "he who has ears let him listen" someone once said. I think you seriously underestimate the number of people that think what you are dishing out is drizzle -- again sounding very condescending. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY EXPERTS IN EXISTENCE.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Then deal with facts!
Well -- facts are facts and opinion is just that -- everone has one and they all…
Think back a bit to USB's debut, Apple jumped in with both feet while the PC industry took years to adjust. Many PC's still come with PS/2 ports to this day. I'd have to say USB is a proven port yet we still have Luddites using PS/2 ports. Is that the type of person you want to be? It doesn't matter if they are competent or not, they should have an expectation that something new will have teething pains though. What perplexes me here is that you expect instant TB products yet dis the products that come out early as being flaky! You can't have it both ways, especially when it has been indicated that some products have been delayed to shore up the quality of the drivers.
The reality is this, it hasn't been all that long since TB debuted. It takes time to develop new products, as such there really hasn't been any sort of extreme delays in getting hardware to market. Again TB is only high in coast if you compare it to USB. What you should do instead is compare it to the cost of putting a disk array on Infiniband or a full blown file server on Ethernet. It is always nice when you can artificially bias a decision with invalid comparisons but such comparisons just don't hold up to inspection.
You have yet to show any real justification for staying away from TB. Sure the tech has a ways to go maturity wise but this is no different than the grief seen with USB at debut or even today with all the crappy drivers available for USB devices. It really seems like you are trying to punish Apple and Intel here for doing exactly what you want which is to introduce quality products. Quality takes time and it isn't cheap. Beyond that TB isn't designed to be cheap, one look at the active cables ought to enlighten you there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Then why this series of posts? You have made no mention of what you even intend to do with this new computer of yours.
Because of what I said earlier. I believe in the free exchange of FACTS. People don't get closer to perfection if they isolate themselves from other points of view. Why are you so angry and insolent? Does what I post defame you in some way? Do you work for Apple and you will lose your job if this doesn't fly. Seems you have way too much emotional capital invested not to have some involvement! From MY point of view, and from those that travel in my circles, what you are saying doesn't make sense! This comes from experience not conjecture.
And if you read my posts you might notice that this thing is bigger to me than a single computer for personal use. PRO to me means that this is a serious tool used for people's livelihood. That it can help make or break a business or some source of income. This is not personal to me! If a tool works for you great!
But as for me personally it would mean more work for me to make a break with OS X. There's investment in software and hardware to be considered (and I'm not talking about just computer boxes). But it could be more difficult to make this switch -- especially if the price is too high. It may be too big of a paradigm switch for too little return on investment. But I won't know for sure until there is something real on the market.
Interestingly at least one manufacture of instrumentation solved the bus problem by using Ethernet to connect to a single board compute of their own. Sometimes you beat bus compatibility issues by getting off the bus. This doesn't work for every need though, which is the only real problem with the new Mac Pro. If you where using Apple hardware you pretty much had to use it. I'm not dismissing that PCI Express or whatever cards can be hard to replace or easy to do without. What I'm saying is that those cards phased out previous technology and at the time we heard the same whining from the peanut gallery. Given that the new Mac Pro will either have new solutions for these problems or it will not take part in certain market segments. Not taking part in certain market segments will not make it a failure though. Nice! You might be surprised to find out what a computer with a PCI Express expansion slots can be used for. They can run everything from high performance high performance vision systems to the latest in machine control technology. They do get work done! Getting work done to me means making money, if an iPad can do that for you then it is a workstation. As technology has improved even iMacs have taken over some workstation duties. I suspect that you suffer from a common condition seen in these forums which says if you don't use your computer the way I do then you don't need a workstation / pro computer or anything more than a laptop. This is seemingly the big problem with many of the forum dismissals of the new Mac Pro, they fail to realize that many pros will be lining up to get this machine (given the right marketing and support components) as it packs a lot of power into that enclosure. As you note many people are tied to corporate networks and data storage policies, in such cases this new Pro is an excellent workstation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mess
Because of what I said earlier. I believe in the free exchange of FACTS. People don't get closer to perfection if they isolate themselves from other points of view. Why are you so angry and insolent? Does what I post defame you in some way? Do you work for Apple and you will lose your job if this doesn't fly. Seems you have way too much emotional capital invested not to have some involvement! From MY point of view, and from those that travel in my circles, what you are saying doesn't make sense! This comes from experience not conjecture.
And if you read my posts you might notice that this thing is bigger to me than a single computer for personal use. PRO to me means that this is a serious tool used for people's livelihood. That it can help make or break a business or some source of income. This is not personal to me! If a tool works for you great!
But as for me personally it would mean more work for me to make a break with OS X. There's investment in software and hardware to be considered (and I'm not talking about just computer boxes). But it could be more difficult to make this switch -- especially if the price is too high. It may be too big of a paradigm switch for too little return on investment. But I won't know for sure until there is something real on the market.
Here is the problem…
You roll up on this Apple forum, spouting off how the new Mac Pro is complete shitte "for your industry & the circles you travel in", but you give zero indication what that industry or those circles are…
You bad mouth the new Mac Pro because it does not have PCIe slots for you to place your existing cards in, and whine about the cost of getting TB chassis for said cards…
Then you whine about the cost of switching from OS X to another platform (that still has traditional PCIe slots), even though that cost has to be MUCH higher than the cost of a TB expansion chassis…
Step back, take a breath; new Mac Pros are coming out; they have TB instead of PCIe…
Get a TB chassis, get your card manufacturer to knock out drivers, get on with it all…
The new Mac Pro may not be the workstation tower of old, but it is SO much more…!!!
And the worst thing of all is you are naysaying a product that NO ONE has even gotten hands on with yet…!!!
This time next year there will probably be satisfactory TB solutions for most any issue, OpenCL will be looked at harder by developers & stuff will get done faster than with that old silver beast Mac Pro boat anchor…
But that might be progress of some sort, so we best all go back to our steam-powered computational engines…!!!
If you where around in the days of the original Mac with its little black and white screen you would have heard the same sort of unjustified negativity that we are hearing from you now with respect to this Mac Pro. Like the original Mac, this Mac Pro is not designed to be a solution for every problem. No computer can be realistically. As a workstation computer though you seem to be damning it without any real consideration for its overall potential in the marketplace. Of course that is in a nut shell what professional usage is. However professionals use a wide range of hardware to get the job done. It simply isn't rational to dismiss this computer as less than Professional because it doesn't support the array of expansion cards you currently make use of. I'm completely confident that many professionals will have this machine doing productive work within hours of purchase.
Well this is one thing we can agree on (I hope), success here will be tied to the cost of the hardware. More so I believe it will be the cost of the base model that will drive success or failure. One of the great problems with the old Mac Pro is that the pricing model was out of whack with reality. It was almost as if the price in the base models was used to underwrite the more robust configurations.
Apple's recent decisions won't align with the preferences of every potential Mac Pro customer but people get into a habit of suggesting that every professional Mac user is at odds with what Apple is doing despite many using iMacs and Macbook Pros. Nobody knows the ratios of people who buy Mac Pros for performance and who buys them for high-end expansion. The Mac Pro sales volume is low, it's certainly no more than 250k units per quarter worldwide. If a portion of those buy PCIe peripherals (especially expensive ones), they will complain loudly about the new design but they wouldn't necessarily be considered representative of the majority. The majority could be buying for the extra performance. People who do graphics work don't really have a need for IO cards at all.
A portion of users who need IO devices will also be satisfied with Thunderbolt peripherals and there will be a portion of users attracted by the new design. It's not going to be a high volume market going forward. It's not a design to reinvigorate the industry either, it's a design that allows Apple to comfortably maintain a presence in the market while it naturally scales down in volume and it will allow people to quite freely move to or from any of the other machines they offer. It won't be a case where someone buys the new Mac Pro and say 3 years later decides to go mobile and none of their hardware works with a laptop. That would happen with Windows workstations.
The biggest transition that's happened in computing over the last decade or so is the move to mobile computing. Apple's desktops outsold their laptops in 2000 by about 3:1 and now it's the other way round. Not everyone takes notice of this because it happens slowly enough but when you put things side by side, it's quite impressive the changes that have happened.
An iPhone now performs faster than a high-end G5 tower from 10 years ago. When Flash storage reaches $0.10/GB in a few years down from $0.60/GB now, affordable laptops will be able to hold a couple of TB no problem and extra fast storage will be inexpensive. CPU/GPU performance will be significantly higher by then - even if the power consumption is scaled down, it will become inexpensive.
This isn't something that's new. People have been hating Apple since at least the time they moved their focus to iOS devices 6 years ago.
For some companies, it will be cheaper to develop a new driver than custom Thunderbolt hardware. They'd have to have a driver developed in the first place for it to work on a Mac. If the sales potential is high enough, they'll do it. If not, then it doesn't affect that many people anyway.
The general idea with Thunderbolt is that you'd buy Thunderbolt hardware where possible rather than PCIe cards. If you have a card, an expansion chassis and a compatible driver, it should be a fairly seamless transition.
In what way? Unless you specify what problems you've had, manufacturers can't really address the problems.
There shouldn't be any functionality that is no longer possible as long as the drivers are developed.
As to computer performance the operative word here is small. Everything will continue to get smaller as performance increases. This is why I see this new design arriving at an almost optimal time. New generations of hardware that will start coming to market in 2014 and beyond will just make this machine all that more impressive. As for power consumption I don't see that as a significant factor for desktop processors as any thermal gains new processes offer will be used up to increase performance. At least that should be the goal on a Mac Pro. Apples attention to thermals on this new machine tells me that Apple expects this machine to "burn" a lot of watts going forward. There is only a very small percentage of the available PCI Express cards supported on the Mac Pro anyways. However the problem is this, the few cards that are supported are far cheaper than their TB equivalents. For example adding USB or FireWire ports is dirt cheap if you have a slot available. This is probably my biggest regret with respect to the new Mac Pro, the lack of even one slot means that somethings won't be cheap to do on the machine. We can wish for that. The reality is that these expansion chassis will never be cheap. If you need one the cost of your installation balloons significantly.
TB is a killer when it comes to bandwidth. It is only 20Gbps in its latest form. PCI Express 3.0 runs at 1GBps per lane. Note we are comparing bits to bytes here. Beyond that many cards run at higher speeds than permitted by 1 lane of PCI Express.
Of course discussions about bandwidth can end up very drawn out. Needless to say you need to understand your app and hardware to know if TB is going to be a huge problem with your hardware.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Because I really don't like people who accuse others of being dishonest without justification. This is something you have done more than once and frankly I can't see any rational way that you could come to that conclusion. If you have evidence of Apple being dishonest then offer it up.
**I** am not accusing any one of anything! I guess that must be my communication skills! I did say I took all of that with a grain of salt. But never-the-less, it is factual that people are saying and believe these things. I've been around long enough to know that companies actually have people that try to confuse others with outright lies and innuendo. Have you never heard of "let the buyer beware". And I'm not just talking about computers… We could just as well be talking about politics. Maybe you don't care, maybe I'm hoping for too much; but, I'm just passing it on because this seems to be such a closed forum and there seems to be this attitude that Apple can do no wrong. But, "along with the sunshine, there has to be some rain sometimes". If you don't want to hear it -- I'm sorry -- ignore me.
Do you think Apple's intentions are completely altruistic?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I've been involved in computer technology for many decades now and frankly I've seen the same crap offered up again and again with respect to new ideas in the industry. Sure many new ideas don't pan out and others run their course, but over all the industry moves forward. If you have gotten a hostile response here from me and others do consider what you are posting as a significant cause for those response.
I too have been around for many years. In fact, I may just retire soon and not try to fight about what needs to be done to stay on an OS X path. I'm getting tired of the endless upgrade merry-go-round. But, it is not new ideas that I have a problem with -- if they truly are a step forward. I'm just not convinced that this really a giant step forward as you seem to believe (for the reasons I've posted earlier). I too know about the physics behind how the hardware works. I could post my resume, but I doubt even that would make a difference -- probably just bore you anyway :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
If you where around in the days of the original Mac with its little black and white screen you would have heard the same sort of unjustified negativity that we are hearing from you now with respect to this Mac Pro. Like the original Mac, this Mac Pro is not designed to be a solution for every problem. No computer can be realistically. As a workstation computer though you seem to be damning it without any real consideration for its overall potential in the marketplace.
Yes, I was around when the Lisa came out and the Next cube as well. They were also purported to be "the future of computing". I can still remember what happened too. Although at least the tech from the Next cube was integrated into Apple. We would not have OS X otherwise. I didn't hear a lot of "unjustified" negativity or any other rampant negativity back then over the Macintosh. I "personally" wanted one, but corporate American might have been a different story -- and I was younger and less experienced then.
BTW it is phrases like "unjustified negativity" that bother me. From my point of view (and for many other highly trained and technical individuals) all of the negativity is anything but unjustified. I'm sorry if you don't see that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Of course that is in a nut shell what professional usage is. However professionals use a wide range of hardware to get the job done. It simply isn't rational to dismiss this computer as less than Professional because it doesn't support the array of expansion cards you currently make use of. I'm completely confident that many professionals will have this machine doing productive work within hours of purchase.
Again, I'm not dismissing it -- just looking at the rainy side of the picture. I've said it before: I LIKE THIS DESIGN! I think it has a lot of POTENTIAL. It is a question of if that potential will be realized IN THE MARKETPLACE. I think there is an awful lot working against it (for the reasons I've posted earlier). I'm still hoping for the best but there are a lot of forces working here. In this market segment, there are many highly technical people (as well as artistic temperaments, and if you've never had to deal with them, oh what a surprise it going to be) and many don't think Apple is listening to them anymore.
If Apple is now content to be a "consumer" products vender, fine! I just don't believe that this same mindset applies to the professional. It is not exactly a hugh market and it is highly fragmented ("professionals use a wide range of hardware to get the job done"). Except for their legacy -- why would they care? So much work, pain, and anguish for such a tiny portion of the total revenue. Maybe they should spin off the PRO line into a separate division with their own goals and incentives. Or sell OS X and let someone else deliver boxes based on it.
I just want an OS X box that fits into what me and my users need to get their jobs done. I love OS X, but most of what we have now are tired, old, and WAY past their prime. Got to do something soon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
Well this is one thing we can agree on (I hope), success here will be tied to the cost of the hardware. More so I believe it will be the cost of the base model that will drive success or failure. One of the great problems with the old Mac Pro is that the pricing model was out of whack with reality. It was almost as if the price in the base models was used to underwrite the more robust configurations.
I DO agree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Apple's recent decisions won't align with the preferences of every potential Mac Pro customer but people get into a habit of suggesting that every professional Mac user is at odds with what Apple is doing despite many using iMacs and Macbook Pros. Nobody knows the ratios of people who buy Mac Pros for performance and who buys them for high-end expansion. The Mac Pro sales volume is low, it's certainly no more than 250k units per quarter worldwide. If a portion of those buy PCIe peripherals (especially expensive ones), they will complain loudly about the new design but they wouldn't necessarily be considered representative of the majority. The majority could be buying for the extra performance. People who do graphics work don't really have a need for IO cards at all.
A portion of users who need IO devices will also be satisfied with Thunderbolt peripherals and there will be a portion of users attracted by the new design. It's not going to be a high volume market going forward. It's not a design to reinvigorate the industry either, it's a design that allows Apple to comfortably maintain a presence in the market while it naturally scales down in volume and it will allow people to quite freely move to or from any of the other machines they offer. It won't be a case where someone buys the new Mac Pro and say 3 years later decides to go mobile and none of their hardware works with a laptop. That would happen with Windows workstations.
The biggest transition that's happened in computing over the last decade or so is the move to mobile computing. Apple's desktops outsold their laptops in 2000 by about 3:1 and now it's the other way round. Not everyone takes notice of this because it happens slowly enough but when you put things side by side, it's quite impressive the changes that have happened.
An iPhone now performs faster than a high-end G5 tower from 10 years ago. When Flash storage reaches $0.10/GB in a few years down from $0.60/GB now, affordable laptops will be able to hold a couple of TB no problem and extra fast storage will be inexpensive. CPU/GPU performance will be significantly higher by then - even if the power consumption is scaled down, it will become inexpensive.
This isn't something that's new. People have been hating Apple since at least the time they moved their focus to iOS devices 6 years ago.
For some companies, it will be cheaper to develop a new driver than custom Thunderbolt hardware. They'd have to have a driver developed in the first place for it to work on a Mac. If the sales potential is high enough, they'll do it. If not, then it doesn't affect that many people anyway.
The general idea with Thunderbolt is that you'd buy Thunderbolt hardware where possible rather than PCIe cards. If you have a card, an expansion chassis and a compatible driver, it should be a fairly seamless transition.
In what way? Unless you specify what problems you've had, manufacturers can't really address the problems.
There shouldn't be any functionality that is no longer possible as long as the drivers are developed.
You know what you saying is true, but again I only see the sunshine part of it here. In many of my previous posts I've tried to point out the rainy side. Fact is PRO users have myriad differences in what is necessary to get the job done. I think we have agreed on that at least. If Thunderbolt aware devices aren't available (even leaving cost out of the picture) what is the alternative. They can use TB PCIe expansion options (again leaving cost out) but some of those cards do not work (or at least not correctly) in a TB expansion chassis and the manufactures are not willing to help in this regard. For some, they have no intention of porting their old designs. One manufacture's rep clearly stated that they would gladly continue to support the old architecture for their older products "but Apple changed the rules on them" and they did not have the time and manpower to do that on newer machines. And in this case we were talking of the transition from the 1,1 and 2,1 machines to the 3,1 machines. Others have also flat out told us there would be no TB version until new hardware was ready. We certainly don't have the leverage to change that.
I'm not communicating well. All I can do is reiterate, I've done my due diligence -- I know what the possibilities for TB are as of this date for our situation. It is not by any means a "fairly seamless transition" (at least not right now). There are a lot of outstanding factors that could change that or mitigate the impact of the problems. I don't know what the future holds. The only thing that is certain in life is that things will change… I'm still hoping (and fighting) for a positive change.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mess
Fact is PRO users have myriad differences in what is necessary to get the job done.
With a lot of this solutions either show up or they don't. If nothing materializes, some users will never touch those machines. The overall design makes certain assumptions. They are a low reliance on specialized hardware that is not available out of the box in thunderbolt form, possibly usb3 if Apple adds the required third party chipset. I couldn't find any mention of this, but I think they'll do it. The thunderbolt displays will probably use the same one or at least the same brand. It assumes external or possibly centralized storage. It also assumes that the workload exceeds the capabilities of the imac in whatever number of ways. In some ways a portion of the bandwidth is still there. It still has more total bandwidth than the imac, and you will be able to run multiple at least a couple displays and storage through it. I'm not sure how much can be run simultaneously as thunderbolt 2 (more of a 1.2, with 2 coming 2014 or 2015) adds channel bonding rather than an increase in bandwidth. Anyway if you are buying a computer, what matters is whether the solution is workable when you purchase it. That could be some point next year. It doesn't matter if it works now as long as everything works at that time.