Marvin said: Obviously people can buy cheaper Xeons and do something similar but Apple's chips rival the lower Xeons in performance and these are 85W vs 5W and ~$300
... The main flaw was them not being able to get new dual GPUs to put into it. The above mockup follows a similar design and solves this problem.
I wonder if Geekbench really shows the real-world differences in capability though. Are Intel's chips really that inefficient? But, yea, it would be beneficial for Apple not to be tied to Intel's pricing.
And, I agree on the main flaw of the nMP being the GPUs. Aside from that, it's the kind of machine I'd be interested in, though a bit more expensive than I'd like. But, addressing the GPU issue would make it much more acceptable to most pros, I'd think.
tenthousandthings said:So it's not crazy to think the session was intended to start laying the groundwork for the idea that GPUs should be "architected" into separate modules, because "thermals."
I still have friends in the video post world and I have been told that DaVinci Resolve has burned up a lot of graphics cards in current model Mac Pros over the last few years. One story was that the job had a hard deadline and the system kept eating graphics cards which got replaced under warranty - seven times!
Apple created the affordable post market with the original Final Cut + Mac Pro. And compositing with Shake. Then they didn't stay on top of what people in that field actually wanted and the market started shifting. Then they changed Final Cut in ways no one expected or wanted and the market ran away. All this at the same time they were ignoring the Mac Pro. If they want to get back to that place where high profile pros (Hollywood, advertising etc) religiously use Apple hardware and software then Apple needs to talk to those people and find out what they want and where the industry is headed. People in video and film post used to Mac evangelists, but now they are not. Either because they no longer use Macs or because the Macs they are using disappoint them. If Apple would just get out there and give them something exciting and powerful to use these people would come back. And Apple would get their praise and evangelism which in the past certainly was very valuable.
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And, I agree on the main flaw of the nMP being the GPUs. Aside from that, it's the kind of machine I'd be interested in, though a bit more expensive than I'd like. But, addressing the GPU issue would make it much more acceptable to most pros, I'd think.
Apple created the affordable post market with the original Final Cut + Mac Pro. And compositing with Shake. Then they didn't stay on top of what people in that field actually wanted and the market started shifting. Then they changed Final Cut in ways no one expected or wanted and the market ran away. All this at the same time they were ignoring the Mac Pro. If they want to get back to that place where high profile pros (Hollywood, advertising etc) religiously use Apple hardware and software then Apple needs to talk to those people and find out what they want and where the industry is headed. People in video and film post used to Mac evangelists, but now they are not. Either because they no longer use Macs or because the Macs they are using disappoint them. If Apple would just get out there and give them something exciting and powerful to use these people would come back. And Apple would get their praise and evangelism which in the past certainly was very valuable.