Apple's cylindrical Mac Pro will debut in Dec. starting at $2,999

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  • Reply 21 of 285
    philipmphilipm Posts: 240member

    I still say it’s a dalek. Especially when they do one of those disassembly views.

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  • Reply 22 of 285
    philipmphilipm Posts: 240member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DrFreeman View Post

     

    I am a bit surprised that Apple went with ATI. The CUDA by NVIDIA is more accepted in the industry. For PRO users that is an important point...


     

    Not those with any sense. OpenCL is more portable.

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  • Reply 23 of 285
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Richard Getz View Post

     

    Audience seemed very underwhelmed, but I thought $3k was a good price, although I don't shop in that market. 


     

     

    They were only there for the iPad.  The media chose to say that this was an iPad event.  

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  • Reply 24 of 285
    Originally Posted by Evilution View Post

    My guess is to keep the price down and that most people who will buy one will be upgrading from an old Mac Pro so will already have the keyboard, mouse, screen etc.

     

    It's a lot cheaper than I was expecting.


     

    That and the box isn’t big enough to hold either. :p

     

    Know what I expect from the new Mac Pro?

     

    When the reviews come out, I see it being 2x as fast as anything else available on the market, but for only 1.5x the price. I see production studios being quoted, “We couldn’t afford NOT to buy ten Mac Pros. Their performance combined with the power draw blows away our old Dell crap.”

     

    Gotta shut up the haters. The best way to do that is to be the single greatest product on the market. 

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  • Reply 25 of 285

    Display?

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  • Reply 26 of 285
    Quote:


    Originally Posted by philipm View Post

     

     

    Not those with any sense. OpenCL is more portable.

     


    the issue is that research/industry software packages such as Cadence or MATLAB support CUDA and it would have been great to have CUDA NVIDIA there. 

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  • Reply 27 of 285

    That was my initial reaction, but then I started thinking about it.  Most of my Pro machines now have a custom "editor's keyboard" that I use with them, so my "free" ones from Apple never get used.  Honestly it's one less thing for me to have to store.

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  • Reply 28 of 285
    tbelltbell Posts: 3,146member

    The pros this is designed for buy specialized keyboards and mouses. Why ship with those things if they might not be used?
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  • Reply 29 of 285
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DrFreeman View Post

     

    the issue is that research/industry software packages such as Cadence or MATLAB support CUDA and it would have been great to have CUDA NVIDIA there. 


    Both MATLAB and Cadence support OpenCL but CUDA is a lot more mature. Give it time, if these new Mac's take off so will OpenCL. I still prefer CUDA though, as a programmer, there are a whole lot more code examples out there for CUDA over OpenCL. 

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  • Reply 30 of 285
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member

    3,000, isn't bad, good job Apple.

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  • Reply 31 of 285
    gwmacgwmac Posts: 1,830member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Filmmaker View Post

     

    That was my initial reaction, but then I started thinking about it.  Most of my Pro machines now have a custom "editor's keyboard" that I use with them, so my "free" ones from Apple never get used.  Honestly it's one less thing for me to have to store.


    Hey, send me one of those unused Mac Pro keyboards because mine certainly got used. 

     

    It was cheaper than I thought. With the dual GPU configuration I was expecting a $3299 starting point. Those are very expensive GPU's. I just wish they would offer a model with a standard (read far cheaper) desktop class GPU which would have allowed for an entry model a tad more affordable to home buyers that just don't want an iMac for a variety of reasons. But I admit I want one of these bad boys but I will need to wait and see what an external thunderbolt array will cost me to be able to bring over all my old hard drives. Even though the new Mac Pro may be a lot smaller I still have about 12GB of data I need to access so I doubt I will see any space or energy savings since now I will need an external array to hold my storage as opposed to now. 

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  • Reply 32 of 285
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by gwmac View Post

     

    Hey, send me one of those unused Mac Pro keyboards because mine certainly got used. 

     

    It was cheaper than I thought. With the dual GPU configuration I was expecting a $3299 starting point. Those are very expensive GPU's. I just wish they would offer a model with a standard (read far cheaper) desktop class GPU which would have allowed for an entry model a tad more affordable to home buyers that just don't want an iMac for a variety of reasons. But I admit I want one of these bad boys but I will need to wait and see what an external thunderbolt array will cost me to be able to bring over all my old hard drives. Even though the new Mac Pro may be a lot smaller I still have about 12GB of data I need to access so I doubt I will see any space or energy savings since now I will need an external array to hold my storage as opposed to now. 


     

    12GB? Would that be TB? 

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  • Reply 33 of 285
    goldenclaw wrote: »
    Ouch.

    kootur wrote: »
    Waste of money, I could go on new egg and buy parts at half the price and build something more powerful.



    Just for some perspective...
    The first Apple II computers went on sale on June 10, 1977[2][3] with a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. The video controller displayed 40 columns by 24 lines of monochrome, upper-case-only (the original character set matches ASCII characters 0x20 to 0x5F) text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a TV monitor, or on a regular TV set by way of a separate RF modulator. The original retail price of the computer was US$1298[13] (with 4 kB of RAM) and US$2638 (with the maximum 48 kB of RAM).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series


    My first Apple ][ cost $2638 in 1978. It came with a keyboard and case. I had to buy separately (not in the box):

    • $115 Cassette Recorder
    •   $15 TV Adapter
    • $250 TV


    What cost $2638 in 1978 would cost $9,462.69 in 2012.

    http://www.usinflationcalculator.com
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  • Reply 34 of 285
    philipmphilipm Posts: 240member

    I’m sure you could put together something cheaper from a screwdriver shop but I just tried to configure something similar at Dell to compare, and with a slower CPU configuration and less RAM, it came out about $2.8k. I couldn’t spec it with all the parts Apple includes because Dell doesn’t e.g. have Thunderbolt on their options list. The AMD D300 seems to new, since I can’t find anywhere but in the Mac Pro PR, so I don’t know if I specced the Dell with comparable graphics.

     

    And someone else has also noted the dalek connection.

     

    Nice I suppose if you want a machine in this class. I would like something in the gap between this and the mini where I can spec my own parts and don’t need midget fingers or to desolder delicate parts to swap RAM etc.

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  • Reply 35 of 285

    Do i really need dual Firepro 2gbs? Wouldn't it be better for the base model to have one and a bigger SDD or better processor instead? Or is the graphics card used a lot in osx ?

     

    I'm looking for a home machine to be used for Photoshop and Logic X.

     

    I'm curious as to the UK price.

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  • Reply 36 of 285
    glnfglnf Posts: 43member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iCarbon View Post

     

    that's like 3K less than I was expecting. wow.


     

    Well, wait till we get the prices for the higher specs models. You won't be disappointed.

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  • Reply 37 of 285
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Relic View Post

     

    Both MATLAB and Cadence support OpenCL 


     

    MATLAB only supports CUDA natively. There's third-party OpenCL support but it doesn't work with the built in toolboxes, so it's basically worthless.

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  • Reply 38 of 285
    Originally Posted by Smarky View Post

    I'm looking for a home machine to be used for Photoshop and Logic X.


     

    27” iMac. 

     

    If you have to ask, you don’t need a Mac Pro.

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  • Reply 39 of 285
    I'm not convinced that $2999 is a good price for the entry level model. It's the pricing of the maxed-out high end model that matters. For post production we'll need a mix of mid- and high-end machines, ideally not the minimum spec that runs Avid, then you need decent RAM and at least some local Thunderbolt storage - or commit to a fast SAN with 10GB Ethernet or better. So there are significant additional costs beyond the cylinder. At $1999 up we'd buy 10 now, at a likely $4500 kitted out, one every 6 months over the next 3 years. There's pent up demand for sure, but at this price we won't be buying them in bulk.
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  • Reply 40 of 285
    kootur wrote: »
    Waste of money, I could go on new egg and buy parts at half the price and build something more powerful.

    For starters...

    Just how much is that worth -- in other words, how much are you getting paid for your time?

    Also, aren't some of those parts supply constrained -- in other words, how many weeks/months will elapse until you have a working computer.

    What will be its resale value?
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