And that is the core problem of Apple. Apple is more cocky and arrogant than ever, saying "we'll release pro products when WE feel like it, who cares about the demographic we're supposedly catering to"
Already the RSS debacle from last year and then Aperture, Final Cut, and a slew of other apps which have been basically left to die. Mac has never looked worse off. It feels like the pre Jobs-return days to be honest. Milking what works, ignoring the rest, sending out mixed signals. In long term it'll spell the death of Mac and possibly Apple too if they don't get their shit together. We'll have a repeat of the famous Wired magazine cover that said "Pray." Maybe that's all for the best, who knows. Over the years it's all but clear they're trying to get out of the Pro market. Servers? Gone. 30inch monitors? Gone. 17inch MacBook? Gone. MacPro in Europe? Gone since 6 months, no replacement. Hell, MacMini? Outlandishly expensive and underpowered. But they still have to sell some form of hardware simply because... how else are you gonna create Apps for the iCashcows? Hell, even consumer apps are half dead in the water. iPhoto, iWorks, iMovie.. they've all been fundamentally frozen and unchanged since half a decade ago.
The MacPro LOOKS nice, yet, I have a feeling it will go the way of the G4 Cube. It's a very nice conversation piece in my living room now. With the new MacPro they're going to make an amazing piece of hardware that will make everyone happy for 6 months... until everyone realizes you can't update it... at all. I still use (and currently typing this) on a MacPro 2008 that I've been able to stretch the life out of to the bone. Countless hard drives, ram, graphics cards have come in and out of this machine. Pros want 'work' stations, not pretty machines. We are generally quite conservative, wanting reliability and power rather than a Darth Vader helmet looking sexy beast. Will I buy it? Yes, of course. What option do I possibly have? None. Make a Hackintosh? Sure, cheap and powerful but not gonna happen.
To make a long thing short, I don't have confidence with where Apple is bringing the Mac line and it's Pro users
And that is the core problem of Apple. Apple is more cocky and arrogant than ever, saying "we'll release pro products when WE feel like it, who cares about the demographic we're supposedly catering to"
Or you could get off your high zebra and do this without the petulance.
“We’ll release products when we feel like it because we’re catering to a demographic that makes it possible for us to do this.”
Your personal inability to comprehend said demographic doesn’t give you leave to pretend it’s something that it isn’t.
Already the RSS debacle from last year…
You REALLY need to stretch when you wake up in the morning so you don’t waste our time doing it here.
…and then Aperture, Final Cut, and a slew of other apps which have been basically left to die.
Well, that’s not true, and anyone who can visit support.apple.com can prove you wrong.
Mac has never looked worse off.
Citation needed.
Milking what works, ignoring the rest…
I see, so they should invest time, money, and effort into things that DON’T WORK, huh? Keep those up for the five people who want to whine about them, eh?
Servers? Gone.
What was it, they sold 12,000 a year? Shut up. Maybe if you really wanted them around you would have actually bought one.
30inch monitors? Gone.
OH NO TWENTY SEVEN THATS LESS APPLE IS DOOMED.
17inch MacBook? Gone.
I don’t remember the sales numbers on those. It was similar to the Xserve. Again, if you cared at all, you would have bought one.
MacPro in Europe? Gone since 6 months, no replacement.
I bet you whined that Apple stopped selling the external iSight in Europe because the EU banned IT, too. Either educate yourself on the issues or get over them.
MacMini? Outlandishly expensive and underpowered.
Citation needed.
iPhoto, iWorks, iMovie.. they've all been fundamentally frozen and unchanged since half a decade ago.
Nice try. How about an actual complain, please?
It's a very nice conversation piece in my living room now.
There’s your problem; you’re buying workstation computers for the sake of them being conversation pieces.
…until everyone realizes you can’t update it…
If you’re going to spew FUD, allow me to give you advice: Don’t. Ever. Shut it.
Pros want 'work' stations, not pretty machines.
Funny how this thing is a station that will do work, then, eh?
Neither he nor wizard has EVER listed a comparable windows machine that was both faster and cheaper than the mini or the iMac. Both are highly competitive in the SFF and AIO markets.
What they continually bitch about is that Apple doesn't make a cheap tower (aka xMac).
Says nht who's been whinging on AI for years with his endless diatribes and snotty nitpicking. You b*gger off and get something better.
He says. *politely.
Lemon Bon Bon.
You're just sore because every time you whine I post prices that completely debunks your sodding wanker mentality.
The fact is that Apple desktops have always provided great value when compared to machines of the same class (excepting the current mac pro which is a pretty poor value even for a workstation).
You're a funny person Tallest Skil. Your reactions to my post are about as fanboy as I can possibly imagine. You remind me of me almost two decades ago, like when Apple was about to die and given I'd been using Apple products since the early 80s and have a thing for "underdogs" I felt it was my given right to defend it at every possible moment. When you're older one day you'll see that all the energy you've put into arguing with people online is just a waste of time. Given your post count I imagine you don't use you machine much for pro work. A poor attempted correlation on my side, I know, but it fits. There's so many holes in your own counter-arguements you should maybe take a step back from the kb and take a deep breath of fresh air. No really, I mean that in good faith. You took some observations and (admittedly) some minor rants of mine and seem to be taking them personally like some unholy crusade. Ease up
There’s so many holes in your own counter-arguements…
If there were holes, you would have responded to them directly, proving I was wrong and humiliating me publicly, instead of posting this. Now for your reply where I’m “not worth the time it would take to do that” to further worm your way out of actually responding to what I said.
What’s more likely: the most successful company in modern history is wrong or some moron on some website is wrong?
To make a long thing short, I don't have confidence with where Apple is bringing the Mac line and it's Pro users
The biggest thing you lose is slots. If all you have in your Mac Pro are video cards then the new Mac Pro can likely be upgraded in the same way. PCIe SSD can also be upgraded later. RAM is somewhat limited with only 4 DIMMs.
So the biggest downside is you can't run PCIe cards at full speed anymore.
I keep looking at the 6 TB2 ports and it's just either too much or too little. The thing that might make sense for Pros is if Apple redesigned the mac mini to work with the Mac Pro seamlessly. Put TB2 on the highest end Core i7 mini with Iris Pro. Make the mini round like the Mac Pro, black and stackable and then be able to put 4 Minis clustered using dedicated TB2 connects. 1 more TB cable to a 4 bay SSD raid base (also round black alu) for the 4 mini cluster. Run short TB2 cables to a small copper to fiber transceiver on each and then a thin x5 TB2 fiber cable between the two stacks or just one thick x5 TB2 copper cable. Last TB2 port left for a display and a second monitor on the HDMI port.
It would be pretty, not very big and not very noisy for 28 cores + 6 GPUs + 2TB SSD RAID. Warm though.
Even if they don't do anything hardware wise, combining 4 current mac minis on plain old TB1 will work pretty well for a quick, relatively cheap, cluster. There's just no software for using TB* as a mesh cluster interconnect which should work pretty well given the low latency. That's why I never bought into Marvin's Mac Pro as a compute node desire. The mini is already such a thing and the Core i7 quad mini is no compute slouch and will be even better with Haswell.
--
* Microsoft experimented with direct networking using light peak but no production software leveraging TB.
I'm not going to bother replying to your counter-arguements not because it's not worth my time but because from reading a few of your previous replies to others and myself, you're so entrenched, that no matter what anyone (myself included) will say, even if I'm right, will change your opinion nor would you admit it. When you're so entrenched into your own belief, even with cold hard facts shown in front of you, you still won't accept. You're in a phase where you have to be right about everything so, fine, if it makes you feel better, you're right, I'm wrong, I'm delusional and a hater and I have no idea what I'm talking about. There, feel better? Take care now, bye bye then
I'm not going to bother replying to your counter-arguements not because it's not worth my time but because from reading a few of your previous replies to others and myself, you're so entrenched, that no matter what anyone (myself included) will say, even if I'm right, will change your opinion nor would you admit it. That's why I said you're a fanboy. It's a psychological state, it's normal, it happens, there's nothing wrong with it. It's like political, or even religious, zealots. When you're so entrenched into your own belief, even with cold hard facts shown in front of you, you still won't accept. You're in a phase where you have to be right about everything so, fine, if it makes you feel better, you're right, I'm wrong, I'm delusional and a hater and I have no idea what I'm talking about. There, feel better? Take care now, bye bye then
Geez man. 2008 Mac Pro is the only rejoinder needed. I have one of those somewhere and I don't even bother turning it on.
good points, albeit there's also very little in terms of external storage solutions. They're either very small or gigantic and expensive as sin. Also no updates yet on TB2 compatible storage. I'm very hesitant about what a storage set-up would look like. Boot/Main HD for OS and Apps and some space for whatever media you're working on (photography mainly in my case). Then an secondary main high-speed HD for scratch disk, then a choice of either an extra HD for Time Machine or RAID back-up. It's too bad SSD is still so damn expensive and that the we can only have 1 slot in the MacPro
The GFX is also a bit of a concern to me. It'll be a beast for 2, probably 3 years. But after that, there is no other option but to get a new MacPro. Or... would an external TB2 Gfx card be feasable?
What I can't understand is why Apple is putting ALL it's eggs in one basket for the MacPro. Even at the times of the G4 Cube, which was marketed as the fastest, best, most Pro Mac the world had ever seen, you could still buy a normal tower.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
The biggest thing you lose is slots. If all you have in your Mac Pro are video cards then the new Mac Pro can likely be upgraded in the same way. PCIe SSD can also be upgraded later. RAM is somewhat limited with only 4 DIMMs.
So the biggest downside is you can't run PCIe cards at full speed anymore.
I keep looking at the 6 TB2 ports and it's just either too much or too little. The thing that might make sense for Pros is if Apple redesigned the mac mini to work with the Mac Pro seamlessly. Put TB2 on the highest end Core i7 mini with Iris Pro. Make the mini round like the Mac Pro, black and stackable and then be able to put 4 Minis clustered using dedicated TB2 connects. 1 more TB cable to a 4 bay SSD raid base (also round black alu) for the 4 mini cluster. Run short TB2 cables to a small copper to fiber transceiver on each and then a thin x5 TB2 fiber cable between the two stacks or just one thick x5 TB2 copper cable. Last TB2 port left for a display and a second monitor on the HDMI port.
It would be pretty, not very big and not very noisy for 28 cores + 6 GPUs + 2TB SSD RAID. Warm though.
Even if they don't do anything hardware wise, combining 4 current mac minis on plain old TB1 will work pretty well for a quick, relatively cheap, cluster. There's just no software for using TB* as a mesh cluster interconnect which should work pretty well given the low latency. That's why I never bought into Marvin's Mac Pro as a compute node desire. The mini is already such a thing and the Core i7 quad mini is no compute slouch and will be even better with Haswell.
--
* Microsoft experimented with direct networking using light peak but no production software leveraging TB.
it would be rare and risky if there's no configuration below $3000. And, honestly, I don't know how they could achieve that. They said "up to 12 cores", so it means they can save some money by putting a less powerful CPU in the entry model. However, "dual GPU" was announced as "standard", so this means the entry model will also have 2 GPUs. And it seems all models will have SSD storage.
In other words, the entry model will feature a basic Xeon, with two GPUs, and SSD storage. Can this be done at $2500?
It can be done below $2500 but it depends on how cheap AMD gave Apple the FirePros, the following are expected wholesale prices, not retail:
E5-2609v2 4-core ($294) or E5-1620v2 ($294)
8GB RAM (4x 2GB) $100 ( http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/85MP3E2M08GK/ )
256GB SSD = $230 @ $0.90/GB MLC
Dual W5000 - $200-500 for both together (depends on how good a deal they got from AMD)
Enclosure, PSU, motherboard, wifi, bluetooth etc probably around $300
Minimum build cost is $1124, add 40% margins and it can be $1899. If the entry FirePros are $200 each wholesale, this takes the price up to $2199. This was the original price of the entry Mac Pro. Lots of room to make a decent model even if the entry price is $2499.
I still use (and currently typing this) on a MacPro 2008 that I've been able to stretch the life out of to the bone.
You don't see any link between this and Apple's reduced Mac Pro sales? People always say that - they're reliable and last ages and they do their own upgrades, why would Apple ever consider dropping it? That's why.
Make the mini round like the Mac Pro, black and stackable and then be able to put 4 Minis clustered using dedicated TB2 connects.
Even if they don't do anything hardware wise, combining 4 current mac minis on plain old TB1 will work pretty well for a quick, relatively cheap, cluster. There's just no software for using TB* as a mesh cluster interconnect which should work pretty well given the low latency. That's why I never bought into Marvin's Mac Pro as a compute node desire. The mini is already such a thing and the Core i7 quad mini is no compute slouch and will be even better with Haswell.
The Mini is good value for money as the $799 model CPU-wise can come pretty close to the entry Mac Pro. The fan on the Mac Pro is the height of the Mini so it would double the height but at least it would be very quiet. I reckon the route they'll go with the Mini though is to make it as thin as a Macbook Pro. They get used sideways in server racks:
They wouldn't fit so well being short cylinders. I also don't think Apple wants to drive people down to the Mini but up to the iMac and Pro.
That's just $180/year more to keep upgrading and you get the benefit of having a faster machine every 2 years with renewed warranty rather than flogging a 5 year old machine until the end. The new design makes it much easier to upgrade. Bulk data goes outside so when a new one comes out, you buy the new one, transfer data SSD to SSD over Thunderbolt 2, should take about 13 minutes for 1TB (or however Migration Assistant interprets that time) and you just plug the external into the new one. Pop the old one in the box, carry it effortlessly to the door to be picked up by the delivery person or take it to a depot for delivery.
good points, albeit there's also very little in terms of external storage solutions. They're either very small or gigantic and expensive as sin. Also no updates yet on TB2 compatible storage.
This is a rational concern, the storage situation with TB needs a shake up. It would go a long way to making the Mac Pro a success if Apple would offer its own solutions to go with the new Mac Pro. Solutions that are offered at a reasonable price. I'm not talking high end storage systems here but rather smaller storage units which are universally over priced with TB ports.
I'm very hesitant about what a storage set-up would look like. Boot/Main HD for OS and Apps and some space for whatever media you're working on (photography mainly in my case). Then an secondary main high-speed HD for scratch disk, then a choice of either an extra HD for Time Machine or RAID back-up. It's too bad SSD is still so damn expensive and that the we can only have 1 slot in the MacPro
One of the beauties of TB is that the storage system can look like anything you want it to be. It is actually a very positive point with respect to TB. Cost is the real barrier to this ideal world right now.
As to the second SSD port in the Mac Pro, I'm not sue what in the hell Apple is up to in this respect. It is pretty obvious there is room for another SSD, so why they don't make the slot an optional SSD install point is beyond me. For many users a second internal SSD would be all they would need to drop the Mac Pro into an existing environment.
If anything the lack of that second SSD slot might be another example of form (or ideology) over function at Apple. It seems like a no brainer to put the socket in the machine. Maybe there is a technical reason for this screw up.
The GFX is also a bit of a concern to me. It'll be a beast for 2, probably 3 years. But after that, there is no other option but to get a new MacPro. Or... would an external TB2 Gfx card be feasable?
Well you are assuming no upgrades will be available. I'd be the first to say that is likely true but let's face it we don't know. In the end though in 3-5 years it will likely make far more sense to upgrade the whole machine, the days of GPU upgrades making sense is slowly going away just as CPU upgrades are now a waste of money. It would make more sense to simply buy a new machine and cluster it with the old one.
What I can't understand is why Apple is putting ALL it's eggs in one basket for the MacPro. Even at the times of the G4 Cube, which was marketed as the fastest, best, most Pro Mac the world had ever seen, you could still buy a normal tower.
Come on, have you not watched the news? The desktop market is in especially bad shape right now, they can't reasonably flood the market with a bunch of models and expect success. They do need rational models though and this is where I can see the current Mini going away for something XMac like that can cover a wider array of user needs.
Honestly in your scenario above the Cube is effectively replaced by the Mini today anyways. By the way the G4 Cube was not a Pro, nor was the G4 cube a high performance machine, nor was it rationally priced. In the end the Cube was an embarrassment for Apple as they tried to sell fluff as a desktop machine.
You might be rightly concerned that the Mac Pro Tube is going down the same route as the Cube. I really don't think this is true and I do believe Apple has more up its sleeves. I see TB being leveraged in ways we haven't yet seen for example. In the end it comes down to pricing, if Apple can't ship the new Mac Pro at an aggressive entry level price point it will be a failure. They can't repeat the mistakes made with the old Mac Pro where there was no volume due to no rational entry point. This is the one thing to me that will make the 22nd most interesting, that is what Apple will do to assure enough Mac Pro volume to keep the machine around for awhile. I really believe that they need an entry level machine that they can ship for well under $2000 to have a chance in hell of enough Mac Pro sales to keep the line viable.
By the way I fully expect a bunch of pros to chime in saying that there is plenty of demand for the high end machines. That is complete garbage, the lack of demand is why the old Mac Pro sat through 3 or more years of no real upgrades nor improvements. An entry level model that is suitable for the wider professional market would actually spur sales to a sustainable point.
I would expect Apple is doing better than the above on RAM and flash prices. 8GB is well under $100 retail now. Siri was being a bitch but I'm thinking the cost to Apple would be in the $30-40 dollar range. Flash is dropping month after month so it would be a wild guess to determine what Apple pays, however we can see with the Mac Book AIR that Apple can be aggressive with the pricing of strategic parts.
As you note the GPUs are also a unknown here. By the time the Mac Pro ships they could be running on an older generation of GPUs. It has been suggested that new AMD GPUs are scheduled for this month or next so the old FirePros could all be bumped down in price a notch or two.
Enclosure, PSU, motherboard, wifi, bluetooth etc probably around $300
I'm actually thinking this will be slightly more expensive. First a high quality 750 watt or higher power supply isn't exactly cheap. Second there seems to be a lot of bleeding edge chip technology going onto the motherboard. I wouldn't be surprised to find the motherboard costing Apple well over $150.
Minimum build cost is $1124, add 40% margins and it can be $1899.
That might be slightly high, I could see Apple hitting the $1700 dollar mark and still being able to rightfully call the machine a Mac Pro. That might mean slightly tighter margins but I'm a firm believer that they need an introductory machine that is well under $2000 to drive the success of the platform. I'm also optimistic that the GPU boards will be cheaper than many imagine, well cheaper to Apple, due to basically being a printed circuit board as opposed to a system. By this I mean the housing, fan assembly and other parts of a modern GPU card represent a system with parts and assembly costs. Most of that goes away with the printed circuit board based GPUs.
By the way even $1700-1899 is still very high for many desktop uses. This is why the idea of a Mac Pro Jr is so appealing to me. Put a Haswell chip in there running at 75 watts and you have a very nice machine that with other cost savings (smaller power supply and optional GPU) could be marketed for under $1200.
If the entry FirePros are $200 each wholesale, this takes the price up to $2199. This was the original price of the entry Mac Pro. Lots of room to make a decent model even if the entry price is $2499.
They won't be lacking options, this is actually a very flexible platform for Apple to configure. For example to save some money on the low end machine they could put two GPUs on one circuit board. I see lots of possibilities if Apple wants to be creative with the machine.
You don't see any link between this and Apple's reduced Mac Pro sales? People always say that - they're reliable and last ages and they do their own upgrades, why would Apple ever consider dropping it? That's why.
It is no different in the PC/Windows world. In most corporations these days the only way to get a new oC is to drop the old one form a very high table or be assigned to sales. (Yes the bitter taste of corporate life). This is no different for Apple. The odd thing though is that most of the people claiming to milk hardware like this are in a position to upgrade as needed.
The Mini is good value for money as the $799 model CPU-wise can come pretty close to the entry Mac Pro. The fan on the Mac Pro is the height of the Mini so it would double the height but at least it would be very quiet. I reckon the route they'll go with the Mini though is to make it as thin as a Macbook Pro. They get used sideways in server racks:
Some people get me wrong with respect to the Mini as I like the idea, what I never like about the machine is the terrible GPU options. It is hoped that Haswell can address this if the Mini is sill around after the 22nd. The power limitations also impact the number of cores in that box and the performance one can get from them. In the end you still need a bigger box, but who knows maybe Broadwell will take care of that.
They wouldn't fit so well being short cylinders. I also don't think Apple wants to drive people down to the Mini but up to the iMac and Pro.
Would be nice if that was true. However for a large number of users, the lack of a real option between the Mini and the iMac/Pro drove us off the desktop into a portable. Frankly that is frustrating to say the least.
Why the resistance to getting a new Mac Pro? It's a bit more expensive to buy new ones but not by that much:
That's just $180/year more to keep upgrading and you get the benefit of having a faster machine every 2 years with renewed warranty rather than flogging a 5 year old machine until the end.
You make that sound enticing but business or personal it sometimes makes sense to run a machine into the ground. Especially if that cash can go to more productive uses.
The new design makes it much easier to upgrade. Bulk data goes outside so when a new one comes out, you buy the new one, transfer data SSD to SSD over Thunderbolt 2, should take about 13 minutes for 1TB (or however Migration Assistant interprets that time) and you just plug the external into the new one. Pop the old one in the box, carry it effortlessly to the door to be picked up by the delivery person or take it to a depot for delivery.
I do believe many many people miss the real advantages of the new Mac Pro. It is a change of mindset, but upgrades of the main machine should be fairly painless with the design of the Mac Pro and its reliance upon TB2.
Neither he nor wizard has EVER listed a comparable windows machine that was both faster and cheaper than the mini or the iMac. Both are highly competitive in the SFF and AIO markets.
What they continually bitch about is that Apple doesn't make a cheap tower (aka xMac).
No Bullshit.
This is from the Apple/France web-store ( and yes I need a keyboard, a mouse and definitely 3-Year warranty service)
If only Windows uses could get a PC so advanced, practically bug-free with almost yearly $19,95 upgrades for that little money. That config will last you 3 years easily, so that's not even one Eurie a day. Windows? I look through Windows.
Comments
Real pros will wait, talkers will talk.
And that is the core problem of Apple. Apple is more cocky and arrogant than ever, saying "we'll release pro products when WE feel like it, who cares about the demographic we're supposedly catering to"
Already the RSS debacle from last year and then Aperture, Final Cut, and a slew of other apps which have been basically left to die. Mac has never looked worse off. It feels like the pre Jobs-return days to be honest. Milking what works, ignoring the rest, sending out mixed signals. In long term it'll spell the death of Mac and possibly Apple too if they don't get their shit together. We'll have a repeat of the famous Wired magazine cover that said "Pray." Maybe that's all for the best, who knows. Over the years it's all but clear they're trying to get out of the Pro market. Servers? Gone. 30inch monitors? Gone. 17inch MacBook? Gone. MacPro in Europe? Gone since 6 months, no replacement. Hell, MacMini? Outlandishly expensive and underpowered. But they still have to sell some form of hardware simply because... how else are you gonna create Apps for the iCashcows? Hell, even consumer apps are half dead in the water. iPhoto, iWorks, iMovie.. they've all been fundamentally frozen and unchanged since half a decade ago.
The MacPro LOOKS nice, yet, I have a feeling it will go the way of the G4 Cube. It's a very nice conversation piece in my living room now. With the new MacPro they're going to make an amazing piece of hardware that will make everyone happy for 6 months... until everyone realizes you can't update it... at all. I still use (and currently typing this) on a MacPro 2008 that I've been able to stretch the life out of to the bone. Countless hard drives, ram, graphics cards have come in and out of this machine. Pros want 'work' stations, not pretty machines. We are generally quite conservative, wanting reliability and power rather than a Darth Vader helmet looking sexy beast. Will I buy it? Yes, of course. What option do I possibly have? None. Make a Hackintosh? Sure, cheap and powerful but not gonna happen.
To make a long thing short, I don't have confidence with where Apple is bringing the Mac line and it's Pro users
And that is the core problem of Apple. Apple is more cocky and arrogant than ever, saying "we'll release pro products when WE feel like it, who cares about the demographic we're supposedly catering to"
Or you could get off your high zebra and do this without the petulance.
“We’ll release products when we feel like it because we’re catering to a demographic that makes it possible for us to do this.”
Your personal inability to comprehend said demographic doesn’t give you leave to pretend it’s something that it isn’t.
You REALLY need to stretch when you wake up in the morning so you don’t waste our time doing it here.
Well, that’s not true, and anyone who can visit support.apple.com can prove you wrong.
Citation needed.
I see, so they should invest time, money, and effort into things that DON’T WORK, huh? Keep those up for the five people who want to whine about them, eh?
What was it, they sold 12,000 a year? Shut up. Maybe if you really wanted them around you would have actually bought one.
OH NO TWENTY SEVEN THATS LESS APPLE IS DOOMED.
I don’t remember the sales numbers on those. It was similar to the Xserve. Again, if you cared at all, you would have bought one.
I bet you whined that Apple stopped selling the external iSight in Europe because the EU banned IT, too. Either educate yourself on the issues or get over them.
Citation needed.
Nice try. How about an actual complain, please?
There’s your problem; you’re buying workstation computers for the sake of them being conversation pieces.
If you’re going to spew FUD, allow me to give you advice: Don’t. Ever. Shut it.
Funny how this thing is a station that will do work, then, eh?
So why are you whining about it at all?
Nope. He's from Paris.
$1241 (916 EUR) for the basic model there. A fortune? Definitely.
2.5GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
4 Go de mémoire SDRAM DDR3
Apple Magic Mouse
Clavier sans fil Apple - Français
AppleCare Protection Plan pour Mac mini
Bullshit.
Mac Mini 2,5 Ghz i5 dual core. EUR 610,26.
http://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/275-1004900-2597349?__mk_fr_FR=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=mac+mini
Intel NUK 1,8 Ghz i5 dual core. No ram, no HDD, no power cable EUR 394,43
http://www.amazon.fr/Intel-Next-Unit-Computing-DC53427HYE/dp/B00DRR21YG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1382021723&sr=8-2&keywords=intel+nuc+i5
Neither he nor wizard has EVER listed a comparable windows machine that was both faster and cheaper than the mini or the iMac. Both are highly competitive in the SFF and AIO markets.
What they continually bitch about is that Apple doesn't make a cheap tower (aka xMac).
Says nht who's been whinging on AI for years with his endless diatribes and snotty nitpicking. You b*gger off and get something better.
He says. *politely.
Lemon Bon Bon.
You're just sore because every time you whine I post prices that completely debunks your sodding wanker mentality.
The fact is that Apple desktops have always provided great value when compared to machines of the same class (excepting the current mac pro which is a pretty poor value even for a workstation).
You're a funny person Tallest Skil. Your reactions to my post are about as fanboy as I can possibly imagine. You remind me of me almost two decades ago, like when Apple was about to die and given I'd been using Apple products since the early 80s and have a thing for "underdogs" I felt it was my given right to defend it at every possible moment. When you're older one day you'll see that all the energy you've put into arguing with people online is just a waste of time. Given your post count I imagine you don't use you machine much for pro work. A poor attempted correlation on my side, I know, but it fits. There's so many holes in your own counter-arguements you should maybe take a step back from the kb and take a deep breath of fresh air. No really, I mean that in good faith. You took some observations and (admittedly) some minor rants of mine and seem to be taking them personally like some unholy crusade. Ease up
If there were holes, you would have responded to them directly, proving I was wrong and humiliating me publicly, instead of posting this. Now for your reply where I’m “not worth the time it would take to do that” to further worm your way out of actually responding to what I said.
What’s more likely: the most successful company in modern history is wrong or some moron on some website is wrong?
To make a long thing short, I don't have confidence with where Apple is bringing the Mac line and it's Pro users
The biggest thing you lose is slots. If all you have in your Mac Pro are video cards then the new Mac Pro can likely be upgraded in the same way. PCIe SSD can also be upgraded later. RAM is somewhat limited with only 4 DIMMs.
So the biggest downside is you can't run PCIe cards at full speed anymore.
I keep looking at the 6 TB2 ports and it's just either too much or too little. The thing that might make sense for Pros is if Apple redesigned the mac mini to work with the Mac Pro seamlessly. Put TB2 on the highest end Core i7 mini with Iris Pro. Make the mini round like the Mac Pro, black and stackable and then be able to put 4 Minis clustered using dedicated TB2 connects. 1 more TB cable to a 4 bay SSD raid base (also round black alu) for the 4 mini cluster. Run short TB2 cables to a small copper to fiber transceiver on each and then a thin x5 TB2 fiber cable between the two stacks or just one thick x5 TB2 copper cable. Last TB2 port left for a display and a second monitor on the HDMI port.
It would be pretty, not very big and not very noisy for 28 cores + 6 GPUs + 2TB SSD RAID. Warm though.
Even if they don't do anything hardware wise, combining 4 current mac minis on plain old TB1 will work pretty well for a quick, relatively cheap, cluster. There's just no software for using TB* as a mesh cluster interconnect which should work pretty well given the low latency. That's why I never bought into Marvin's Mac Pro as a compute node desire. The mini is already such a thing and the Core i7 quad mini is no compute slouch and will be even better with Haswell.
--
* Microsoft experimented with direct networking using light peak but no production software leveraging TB.
I'm not going to bother replying to your counter-arguements not because it's not worth my time but because from reading a few of your previous replies to others and myself, you're so entrenched, that no matter what anyone (myself included) will say, even if I'm right, will change your opinion nor would you admit it. When you're so entrenched into your own belief, even with cold hard facts shown in front of you, you still won't accept. You're in a phase where you have to be right about everything so, fine, if it makes you feel better, you're right, I'm wrong, I'm delusional and a hater and I have no idea what I'm talking about. There, feel better? Take care now, bye bye then
I'm not going to bother replying to your counter-arguements not because it's not worth my time but because from reading a few of your previous replies to others and myself, you're so entrenched, that no matter what anyone (myself included) will say, even if I'm right, will change your opinion nor would you admit it. That's why I said you're a fanboy. It's a psychological state, it's normal, it happens, there's nothing wrong with it. It's like political, or even religious, zealots. When you're so entrenched into your own belief, even with cold hard facts shown in front of you, you still won't accept. You're in a phase where you have to be right about everything so, fine, if it makes you feel better, you're right, I'm wrong, I'm delusional and a hater and I have no idea what I'm talking about. There, feel better? Take care now, bye bye then
Geez man. 2008 Mac Pro is the only rejoinder needed. I have one of those somewhere and I don't even bother turning it on.
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks
Finally...fits in the bloody page. 64-bit multi-core geek bench (where the mac pros do best).
good points, albeit there's also very little in terms of external storage solutions. They're either very small or gigantic and expensive as sin. Also no updates yet on TB2 compatible storage. I'm very hesitant about what a storage set-up would look like. Boot/Main HD for OS and Apps and some space for whatever media you're working on (photography mainly in my case). Then an secondary main high-speed HD for scratch disk, then a choice of either an extra HD for Time Machine or RAID back-up. It's too bad SSD is still so damn expensive and that the we can only have 1 slot in the MacPro
The GFX is also a bit of a concern to me. It'll be a beast for 2, probably 3 years. But after that, there is no other option but to get a new MacPro. Or... would an external TB2 Gfx card be feasable?
What I can't understand is why Apple is putting ALL it's eggs in one basket for the MacPro. Even at the times of the G4 Cube, which was marketed as the fastest, best, most Pro Mac the world had ever seen, you could still buy a normal tower.
Quote:
The biggest thing you lose is slots. If all you have in your Mac Pro are video cards then the new Mac Pro can likely be upgraded in the same way. PCIe SSD can also be upgraded later. RAM is somewhat limited with only 4 DIMMs.
So the biggest downside is you can't run PCIe cards at full speed anymore.
I keep looking at the 6 TB2 ports and it's just either too much or too little. The thing that might make sense for Pros is if Apple redesigned the mac mini to work with the Mac Pro seamlessly. Put TB2 on the highest end Core i7 mini with Iris Pro. Make the mini round like the Mac Pro, black and stackable and then be able to put 4 Minis clustered using dedicated TB2 connects. 1 more TB cable to a 4 bay SSD raid base (also round black alu) for the 4 mini cluster. Run short TB2 cables to a small copper to fiber transceiver on each and then a thin x5 TB2 fiber cable between the two stacks or just one thick x5 TB2 copper cable. Last TB2 port left for a display and a second monitor on the HDMI port.
It would be pretty, not very big and not very noisy for 28 cores + 6 GPUs + 2TB SSD RAID. Warm though.
Even if they don't do anything hardware wise, combining 4 current mac minis on plain old TB1 will work pretty well for a quick, relatively cheap, cluster. There's just no software for using TB* as a mesh cluster interconnect which should work pretty well given the low latency. That's why I never bought into Marvin's Mac Pro as a compute node desire. The mini is already such a thing and the Core i7 quad mini is no compute slouch and will be even better with Haswell.
--
* Microsoft experimented with direct networking using light peak but no production software leveraging TB.
Thanks for proving me right, by the way.
It can be done below $2500 but it depends on how cheap AMD gave Apple the FirePros, the following are expected wholesale prices, not retail:
E5-2609v2 4-core ($294) or E5-1620v2 ($294)
8GB RAM (4x 2GB) $100 ( http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/85MP3E2M08GK/ )
256GB SSD = $230 @ $0.90/GB MLC
Dual W5000 - $200-500 for both together (depends on how good a deal they got from AMD)
Enclosure, PSU, motherboard, wifi, bluetooth etc probably around $300
Minimum build cost is $1124, add 40% margins and it can be $1899. If the entry FirePros are $200 each wholesale, this takes the price up to $2199. This was the original price of the entry Mac Pro. Lots of room to make a decent model even if the entry price is $2499.
You don't see any link between this and Apple's reduced Mac Pro sales? People always say that - they're reliable and last ages and they do their own upgrades, why would Apple ever consider dropping it? That's why.
The Mini is good value for money as the $799 model CPU-wise can come pretty close to the entry Mac Pro. The fan on the Mac Pro is the height of the Mini so it would double the height but at least it would be very quiet. I reckon the route they'll go with the Mini though is to make it as thin as a Macbook Pro. They get used sideways in server racks:
They wouldn't fit so well being short cylinders. I also don't think Apple wants to drive people down to the Mini but up to the iMac and Pro.
Why the resistance to getting a new Mac Pro? It's a bit more expensive to buy new ones but not by that much:
If you bought a $2499 Mac Pro in 2008, it would be worth about $500 today (quads on eBay are $500) = loss of $2000
If you bought a $2499 Mac Pro in 2008, sold it for $1400 in 2010 for a new $2499, sold that for $1400 in 2012 for a new $2499, the latest one would be worth $1800 just now (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Mac-Pro-2012-3-2GHz-Quad-Core-Intel-Xeon-1TB-HD-6GB-RAM-MD770LL-Warranty-/130971216361)
So loss = $2499x3 - 2x$1400 - $1800 = $2897
That's just $180/year more to keep upgrading and you get the benefit of having a faster machine every 2 years with renewed warranty rather than flogging a 5 year old machine until the end. The new design makes it much easier to upgrade. Bulk data goes outside so when a new one comes out, you buy the new one, transfer data SSD to SSD over Thunderbolt 2, should take about 13 minutes for 1TB (or however Migration Assistant interprets that time) and you just plug the external into the new one. Pop the old one in the box, carry it effortlessly to the door to be picked up by the delivery person or take it to a depot for delivery.
As to the second SSD port in the Mac Pro, I'm not sue what in the hell Apple is up to in this respect. It is pretty obvious there is room for another SSD, so why they don't make the slot an optional SSD install point is beyond me. For many users a second internal SSD would be all they would need to drop the Mac Pro into an existing environment.
If anything the lack of that second SSD slot might be another example of form (or ideology) over function at Apple. It seems like a no brainer to put the socket in the machine. Maybe there is a technical reason for this screw up. Well you are assuming no upgrades will be available. I'd be the first to say that is likely true but let's face it we don't know. In the end though in 3-5 years it will likely make far more sense to upgrade the whole machine, the days of GPU upgrades making sense is slowly going away just as CPU upgrades are now a waste of money. It would make more sense to simply buy a new machine and cluster it with the old one. Come on, have you not watched the news? The desktop market is in especially bad shape right now, they can't reasonably flood the market with a bunch of models and expect success. They do need rational models though and this is where I can see the current Mini going away for something XMac like that can cover a wider array of user needs.
Honestly in your scenario above the Cube is effectively replaced by the Mini today anyways. By the way the G4 Cube was not a Pro, nor was the G4 cube a high performance machine, nor was it rationally priced. In the end the Cube was an embarrassment for Apple as they tried to sell fluff as a desktop machine.
You might be rightly concerned that the Mac Pro Tube is going down the same route as the Cube. I really don't think this is true and I do believe Apple has more up its sleeves. I see TB being leveraged in ways we haven't yet seen for example. In the end it comes down to pricing, if Apple can't ship the new Mac Pro at an aggressive entry level price point it will be a failure. They can't repeat the mistakes made with the old Mac Pro where there was no volume due to no rational entry point. This is the one thing to me that will make the 22nd most interesting, that is what Apple will do to assure enough Mac Pro volume to keep the machine around for awhile. I really believe that they need an entry level machine that they can ship for well under $2000 to have a chance in hell of enough Mac Pro sales to keep the line viable.
By the way I fully expect a bunch of pros to chime in saying that there is plenty of demand for the high end machines. That is complete garbage, the lack of demand is why the old Mac Pro sat through 3 or more years of no real upgrades nor improvements. An entry level model that is suitable for the wider professional market would actually spur sales to a sustainable point.
As you note the GPUs are also a unknown here. By the time the Mac Pro ships they could be running on an older generation of GPUs. It has been suggested that new AMD GPUs are scheduled for this month or next so the old FirePros could all be bumped down in price a notch or two. I'm actually thinking this will be slightly more expensive. First a high quality 750 watt or higher power supply isn't exactly cheap. Second there seems to be a lot of bleeding edge chip technology going onto the motherboard. I wouldn't be surprised to find the motherboard costing Apple well over $150. That might be slightly high, I could see Apple hitting the $1700 dollar mark and still being able to rightfully call the machine a Mac Pro. That might mean slightly tighter margins but I'm a firm believer that they need an introductory machine that is well under $2000 to drive the success of the platform. I'm also optimistic that the GPU boards will be cheaper than many imagine, well cheaper to Apple, due to basically being a printed circuit board as opposed to a system. By this I mean the housing, fan assembly and other parts of a modern GPU card represent a system with parts and assembly costs. Most of that goes away with the printed circuit board based GPUs.
By the way even $1700-1899 is still very high for many desktop uses. This is why the idea of a Mac Pro Jr is so appealing to me. Put a Haswell chip in there running at 75 watts and you have a very nice machine that with other cost savings (smaller power supply and optional GPU) could be marketed for under $1200. They won't be lacking options, this is actually a very flexible platform for Apple to configure. For example to save some money on the low end machine they could put two GPUs on one circuit board. I see lots of possibilities if Apple wants to be creative with the machine. It is no different in the PC/Windows world. In most corporations these days the only way to get a new oC is to drop the old one form a very high table or be assigned to sales. (Yes the bitter taste of corporate life). This is no different for Apple. The odd thing though is that most of the people claiming to milk hardware like this are in a position to upgrade as needed. Some people get me wrong with respect to the Mini as I like the idea, what I never like about the machine is the terrible GPU options. It is hoped that Haswell can address this if the Mini is sill around after the 22nd. The power limitations also impact the number of cores in that box and the performance one can get from them. In the end you still need a bigger box, but who knows maybe Broadwell will take care of that. Would be nice if that was true. However for a large number of users, the lack of a real option between the Mini and the iMac/Pro drove us off the desktop into a portable. Frankly that is frustrating to say the least. You make that sound enticing but business or personal it sometimes makes sense to run a machine into the ground. Especially if that cash can go to more productive uses.
I do believe many many people miss the real advantages of the new Mac Pro. It is a change of mindset, but upgrades of the main machine should be fairly painless with the design of the Mac Pro and its reliance upon TB2.
Bullshit.
Mac Mini 2,5 Ghz i5 dual core. EUR 610,26.
http://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/275-1004900-2597349?__mk_fr_FR=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=mac+mini
Intel NUK 1,8 Ghz i5 dual core. No ram, no HDD, no power cable EUR 394,43
http://www.amazon.fr/Intel-Next-Unit-Computing-DC53427HYE/dp/B00DRR21YG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1382021723&sr=8-2&keywords=intel+nuc+i5
Neither he nor wizard has EVER listed a comparable windows machine that was both faster and cheaper than the mini or the iMac. Both are highly competitive in the SFF and AIO markets.
What they continually bitch about is that Apple doesn't make a cheap tower (aka xMac).
No Bullshit.
This is from the Apple/France web-store ( and yes I need a keyboard, a mouse and definitely 3-Year warranty service)
$1241 (916 EUR)
2.5GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
4 Go de mémoire SDRAM DDR3
Apple Magic Mouse
Clavier sans fil Apple - Français
AppleCare Protection Plan pour Mac mini
If only Windows uses could get a PC so advanced, practically bug-free with almost yearly $19,95 upgrades for that little money. That config will last you 3 years easily, so that's not even one Eurie a day. Windows? I look through Windows.
If you compare it to Dell, they have an entry-level Inspiron 660:
Core i3-3240
4GB RAM
NVidia 620
3 year warranty option
650 euros
Add Apple's keyboard and mouse 138 euros = 788 euros vs 916
Dell's margins are much lower than Apple's but you get a better designed computer and don't have to live with Windows 8.
Also, if you shop around, you can get a better deal:
http://www.amazon.fr/Apple-MD387F-Mini-Dual-Bluetooth/dp/B009WQH6LO = 610 euros
http://www.amazon.fr/Apple-MB110F-Clavier-avec-numérique/dp/B005DPEHHO = 50 euros
http://www.amazon.fr/Logitech-M175-Souris-optique-sans/dp/B00745IE3O = 10 euros
http://www.amazon.fr/Dell-UltraSharp-U2312HM-Moniteur-1920/dp/B005SNNCEA = 190 euros
860 euros for a full system
http://www.amazon.fr/Apple-AppleCare-Protection-Plan-MD011D/dp/B004RSFKGU = 125 euros for extra warranty
Not only a great post, but this part is key. Also, don't forget the costs for Virus Scanner(s).
No Bullshit.
This is from the Apple/France web-store ( and yes I need a keyboard, a mouse and definitely 3-Year warranty service)
$1241 (916 EUR)
2.5GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
4 Go de mémoire SDRAM DDR3
Apple Magic Mouse
Clavier sans fil Apple - Français
AppleCare Protection Plan pour Mac mini
And from Amazon France it's a total of EUR 869,75
EUR 610,26 for the mini.
EUR 61,99 for the mouse
EUR 72,50 for the keyboard
EUR 125,00 for Applecare
Still bullshit that any comparable product is both cheaper and more powerful.