I got the impression from the first time they said "modular" that this is the kind of approach they would go for. A central processing box, with connectivity to external storage, graphics, etc. I was surprised at how many people thought "modular" meant a cheesegrater-like box. The cheesegrater isn't really modular.
I think their way to accommodate the many different "Professional" users out there is to provide for different external units that plug in over TB3. People who aren't doing video or graphics work (and even some who do) will be fine with the internal GPU, for others there are the eGPUs. Similarly if you're working with audio, plug in an external DSP or hardware encoder.
Then, when there are new processors available, you upgrade the central box, and keep all the peripherals, provided TB3 is available. Yes, that is a risk, but any future version is likely to stay backwards-compatible, and the worst outcome is you buy a (GASP!) dongle. I expect, however, the USB-C connector will stay for a while. Maybe as long as the USB-A connector has.
Simply put, the reason why people think modular means something different than the Mac Pro 2013 is because of the big deal of inviting video creation press in for a big pow wow and basically trying to freeze the people in place because they had backed themselves into a corner and they were going back to the drawing board. People hoped, maybe delusionally so that that meant they were going back to the machine before... The fact is that the manufacturing lines etc. are all torn down, the factories moved and just going back is not an option. I think there is room for a modular machine that is not modular in a Mac Pro 2013 way, it is not going back to the Cheesegrater and will satisfy the needs of those that need to seed their own GPU card different than what is available (upgradeable). The compute units (GPU, CPU, TPU, etc) are the only ones that really are problematic moving across a Thunderbolt connectivity. I don't know what Apple is doing, but if it is just a headless iMac Pro or bigger trash can - then I think Apple will have wasted all their good will for those that despised the Mac Pro 2013. In that case, they really should not have done the press event with the 5 because it would not have been worth anyones time.
People that believe the Mac Pro Cheesegrater (2008, 2010) were the king of modularity -- I think are also delusional. Let us face it once you put two GPU cards in the machine all that was left was one gimped PCIe slot that could not even handle the full bandwidth for a SAS controller. The outboard expandability was limited to USB2 (maybe 3 on 2010). Those that want incase hard drive disk space - are also delusional. Spinning rust is best handled in its own specialised enclosures... there is a lot of mechanical vibrations that should not be mounted inside the computer. Thunderbolt is a great mechanism for expansion -- but for compute units that should sit close to the CPU... it is a massive massive compromise just to fit a certain form. For everything else, Thunderbolt is a great solution.
There is room for a 3rd way - not the Mac Pro 2013 model, not the Mac Pro Cheesegrater... I will just wait to see what it is.
From Phil's quote it sounds like they are making it modular so that Apple can produce regular updates rather than saying anything about end-user expansion or lack thereof. Because one problem with the 2013 was the long time between updates.
I think you have something there. Car makers do this now - VW has the MQB architecture that defines how the underpinnings go together and what size the car will be, but really has little to do with how the car looks. It standardizes engine mountings regardless for what fuel is used for example. Like you say, Apple might be referring to modularity more for their own purposes and not ours.
I don’t think they’d announce ‘modular’ unless it was from a user perspective. It’s a pretty simple pitch; the enclosures are good for 7-10 years but the silicon needs upgrading every 18-months. Cards would be the way to go though modularity does imply external upgrades.
spliff monkey said: I’m a little “worried” Apple won’t replace the cMP with something decent. It seems most are keeping healthfully low expectations and are starting to make adjustments as well.
I’ll continue to use their iPads, iPhones maybe MacBooks (they’re good, just iPads are a better fit for me in mobile), but for work I may have to make the transition to a hackintosh or god forbid windows. The reason? Well my current 2012 cMP (granted with some heavy Mods) is running 12- cores at 3.46, 128gb ram, a 1080ti, a highpoint 7101 4x- m2 ssd blade NVMe raid card on 16 lanes, usb C, 16 TB internal storage on Ssd, 4K 10 bit broadcast I/O. It’s gone through several iterations before that. Anything that can do less than that or have a shorter lifespan potential is a serious downgrade and an absolute no go.
Explain why Apple should care about customers with a 6+ year replacement cycle?
For the most part, just being factory configurable to meet current needs is sufficient if you have a 3 year replacement cycle.
It’s nice that Macs are usable for much longer and Apple supports them with OS updates but there’s no overwhelming benefit to Apple or even most pros to make a 6+ year replacement cycle a goal.
One thing that seems clear is that the system will include the T2 chip or its next iteration. While the added security certainly makes sense on any pro machine, it would also most likely mean that we won’t see a machine where users can upgrade the ssd.
And where I work (a Fortune 100 company) IT does NOT swap out any components on their PCs. They will buy new machines. Sounds like your IT department is looking for ways to stay employed.
That has been my experience as well ... the accounting departments look at PCs like any capital expense.
And where I work (a Fortune 100 company) IT does NOT swap out any components on their PCs. They will buy new machines. Sounds like your IT department is looking for ways to stay employed.
That has been my experience as well ... the accounting departments look at PCs like any capital expense.
yes, many many do... which is why they tend to order the cheapest PC not Mac. But when we talk about Mac Pro we are not talking about PC class purchases they are specific workflow specific 'workstation class' (use to be a larger class back in the days of SUN). I would not be surprised if many of these fortune 100 companies actually leased (possibly from another wholy owned company) then and when they needed to upgrade they just have the leasing company upgrade (i.e. replace and change the monthly for the PC).
Come on people, this isn't that hard. We want to replace the machine components that get cheaper over time, and increase in capacity. That's RAM and storage. In addition, there's a small subset of users that need graphics card options. That's it.
High performance requires multiple compute nodes. I am increasingly using a Linux Box with Xeon chips for bioinformatics before I move to the cloud (which is slower because of input/output). The clouds are never able to keep up with the newest microprocessors and their increased compute capacity, nor is the massive storage often needed by bioinformatics inexpensive in the cloud. What Apple needs to do is to convene a group of experts; not only video editors, but high performance users of all sorts. Otherwise many many will move to Linux or other solutions, just based on box flexibility. I hope someone is reading this.
High performance requires multiple compute nodes. I am increasingly using a Linux Box with Xeon chips for bioinformatics before I move to the cloud (which is slower because of input/output). The clouds are never able to keep up with the newest microprocessors and their increased compute capacity, nor is the massive storage often needed by bioinformatics inexpensive in the cloud. What Apple needs to do is to convene a group of experts; not only video editors, but high performance users of all sorts. Otherwise many many will move to Linux or other solutions, just based on box flexibility. I hope someone is reading this.
Mathematics, simulations and heavy sciences only need powerful CPUs and fast storage. Very few simulators, except for some large economic aggregates use GPU farms instead. So the average Mac Pro-Mini farm already satisfies that need.
Again, the issue has nothing to do with DIY. The issue is the problem of Apple offering systems that are underpowered for Pro needs and then charging super-Pro prices.
The last Mac Pro dropped at a time when Apple still purchased from NVidia. The fastest GPU available at the time was the 780 Ti/Titan. Those GPUs even by today's standard, converted to AMD-eq in teraflops is about 5.2-5.5.
Uhm. Those GPUs are still solid by today's standards...almost six years later. You can dev for VR or 4K meshes on those GPUs. A 780 Ti trades with a Radeon 570/480, which is a modern midrange GPU.
Instead, Apple chose to push D700 270x-class "pro" line GPUs that only produced about 2.6 Teraflops or *half the performance*. Oh but wait, there were two of them right, right? Apple didn't have Crossfire and even if it had, they bet wrong because SLI and Crossfire are a pipe dream now (and they only ever were a thing in gaming but not in the maths/sciences and content/asset manipulation). So the GPUs *never* combined to produce a linear sum of Tflop performance.
So you were using a 4000 dollar computer that was equipped with a 175 dollar GPU. A GPU that by today's standard is woefully underpowered. It's basically a budget GPU. This is the core of the issue of the new Mac Pro. If they want to push carriages and eGPU, no one would care if they continued to provide a marked up but quality offering that offered comparable competence to other manufacturer systems. However, no sane person is going to pay twice as much for less performance. That just doesn't make sense.
NH: Is this software side of this exascale processor story something that will require a lot of lead time for HPC developers to get up to speed with? Are there elements that will be unfamiliar or that will lead to refactoring or changing codes?
Davis: There is definitely an ecosystem here we have to work toward. There is definitely software, but there always is.
It will not be disruptive to the ecosystem but yes, we will have to engage the ecosystem well in advance of 2021 to get codes ready. We are talking to people under NDA about this here at SC17 this week to start that conversation.
Soooo.... why is there not a possiblity Apple are waitng for something new from Intel?
Modular MacPro could be software development they need if an earlier small cluster of chips go in to the machines.
lkrupp said: [...] Real pros don’t have time to fiddle-fart around with slots
The absence of slots was actually a deal breaker for at least one installation that was supposed to get a Mac Pros back then, and added significant expense and inconvenience to another.
Pros may not want to "tinker" with slots, but the reality is -- whether Apple likes it or not -- PCIe cards are an important part of a complete breakfast. Avid doesn't even make a Thunderbolt version of their pro audio product, meaning that "pros" are left with a choice of noisy, awkward, expensive, external PCIe enclosures or just using HP workstations. It's no surprise that many choose the latter.
[...] Do you think Microsoft cares what video card a user wants to use in his/her workstation?
Microsoft's effort to be inclusive has its own downside. When I built my own Windows machines I often ran into issues with peripherals that worked fine on their own but not with each other. For example, my preferred graphics card worked great but installing the capture card caused it to misbehave. I had to experiment with various combinations of drivers and hardware to find ones that not only did what I wanted, but would play nice together.
I don't want to be bothered with that stuff. That's one of the obstacles I want the Apple approach to solve for me. I want to be able to buy and get right to work with products I know will be compatible.
BigDann said: [...] The Real MacBook Pro would have what the engineering, code & web development and lastly music editing pro's want. Ports (no dongles), MagSafe and performance the i9 could offer if it had the needed cooling the current MacBook Pro's don't have do to the size. As well as a bigger battery option.
With complete respect for your own needs and preferences, I am an audio pro and the 2016 MacBook Pro was pretty much exactly what I wanted. The newer ones are even better. I don't want single-purpose legacy ports. I don't want different power supplies for every device I own. I don't want to lug around a 5kg computer. There's a lot to love about this machine.
wizard69 said: This means a professional level Mac Pro that starts at less than $1500 dollars.
The Mac mini is pretty close to being that now.
wizard69 said: [...] most users don’t need dual GPU cards.
That seemed like a really weird offering to me at the time.
"Here's your new bathroom. It has TWO bathtubs!"
Really? Why?
"That's where we see the future of bathing going."
Okay, I don't know what kind of use cases you're anticipating, but whatever. I really don't need two bathtubs, though. Can I replace the second bathtub with another toilet? I don't really need that either, but at least we would get more use out of it.
lkrupp said: [...] Real pros don’t have time to fiddle-fart around with slots
The absence of slots was actually a deal breaker for at least one installation that was supposed to get a Mac Pros back then, and added significant expense and inconvenience to another.
Pros may not want to "tinker" with slots, but the reality is -- whether Apple likes it or not -- PCIe cards are an important part of a complete breakfast. Avid doesn't even make a Thunderbolt version of their pro audio product, meaning that "pros" are left with a choice of noisy, awkward, expensive, external PCIe enclosures or just using HP workstations. It's no surprise that many choose the latter.
I agree, it all comes down to configurability. If you are talking about buying a computer for standard office purposes - you buy something off the shelf and put it to use. For varied professional tasks you buy components -- most often as PCIe boards -- and you install them in your computer for a given task. It could be a high end graphics card, it could be an accelerator card like a Red Rocket-X, it could be professional sound card, it could be other specialised compute units like tensor cards, it could be special scientific input cards etc.
I have been a Mac user for over 20 years and it is starting to feel like they are not listening to their customers. Cool looking hardware is fine but I want to know what customers felt like the new iPad Pro 12.9 should start at 64GB of Storage instead of 128 atleast. Which ones are happy that the baseline 13" Pro laptops start out at 128GB of Storage. What Pro can you do with 128GB. If you shoot photos in RAW you are screwed right out the box. 256GB for the 15" is still a joke. 512GB should be the baseline and to get to 1TB should not cost $600 dollars but in the area of $300 and 2 TB can be $600. It is price gouging at its best because since we cannot upgrade it ourselves. It pains me to say it but I am starting to look at Apple different since Steve left us.
If your argument over Apple product decisions is based solely on price, you’ve already lost the argument. They make products for customers who are price insensitive and that’s just the way it is.
I have been a Mac user for over 20 years and it is starting to feel like they are not listening to their customers. Cool looking hardware is fine but I want to know what customers felt like the new iPad Pro 12.9 should start at 64GB of Storage instead of 128 atleast. Which ones are happy that the baseline 13" Pro laptops start out at 128GB of Storage. What Pro can you do with 128GB. If you shoot photos in RAW you are screwed right out the box. 256GB for the 15" is still a joke. 512GB should be the baseline and to get to 1TB should not cost $600 dollars but in the area of $300 and 2 TB can be $600. It is price gouging at its best because since we cannot upgrade it ourselves. It pains me to say it but I am starting to look at Apple different since Steve left us.
If your argument over Apple product decisions is based solely on price, you’ve already lost the argument. They make products for customers who are price insensitive and that’s just the way it is.
True, but there are limits. I'm prepared to pay more for Apple products because I generally get more in return than I would from the competition. The question for me is how much more are those intangibles worth? If a MacBook Pro were to cost $100,000 you wouldn't buy it, even though it's a great machine.
It's one thing to look at the price of a RAM or storage upgrade and pucker up a little. One could accept that. It's something else to look at it and think, "Are you fucking KIDDING me?!"
When Apple's prices for storage are double-to-triple the cost from any other supplier, it's hard not to respond negatively. There's premium pricing, then there's out-and-out gouging. Like with so many things, it's a matter of degree.
Comments
People that believe the Mac Pro Cheesegrater (2008, 2010) were the king of modularity -- I think are also delusional. Let us face it once you put two GPU cards in the machine all that was left was one gimped PCIe slot that could not even handle the full bandwidth for a SAS controller. The outboard expandability was limited to USB2 (maybe 3 on 2010). Those that want incase hard drive disk space - are also delusional. Spinning rust is best handled in its own specialised enclosures... there is a lot of mechanical vibrations that should not be mounted inside the computer. Thunderbolt is a great mechanism for expansion -- but for compute units that should sit close to the CPU... it is a massive massive compromise just to fit a certain form. For everything else, Thunderbolt is a great solution.
There is room for a 3rd way - not the Mac Pro 2013 model, not the Mac Pro Cheesegrater... I will just wait to see what it is.
For the most part, just being factory configurable to meet current needs is sufficient if you have a 3 year replacement cycle.
It’s nice that Macs are usable for much longer and Apple supports them with OS updates but there’s no overwhelming benefit to Apple or even most pros to make a 6+ year replacement cycle a goal.
Mathematics, simulations and heavy sciences only need powerful CPUs and fast storage. Very few simulators, except for some large economic aggregates use GPU farms instead. So the average Mac Pro-Mini farm already satisfies that need.
Again, the issue has nothing to do with DIY. The issue is the problem of Apple offering systems that are underpowered for Pro needs and then charging super-Pro prices.
The last Mac Pro dropped at a time when Apple still purchased from NVidia. The fastest GPU available at the time was the 780 Ti/Titan. Those GPUs even by today's standard, converted to AMD-eq in teraflops is about 5.2-5.5.
Uhm. Those GPUs are still solid by today's standards...almost six years later. You can dev for VR or 4K meshes on those GPUs. A 780 Ti trades with a Radeon 570/480, which is a modern midrange GPU.
Instead, Apple chose to push D700 270x-class "pro" line GPUs that only produced about 2.6 Teraflops or *half the performance*. Oh but wait, there were two of them right, right? Apple didn't have Crossfire and even if it had, they bet wrong because SLI and Crossfire are a pipe dream now (and they only ever were a thing in gaming but not in the maths/sciences and content/asset manipulation). So the GPUs *never* combined to produce a linear sum of Tflop performance.
So you were using a 4000 dollar computer that was equipped with a 175 dollar GPU. A GPU that by today's standard is woefully underpowered. It's basically a budget GPU. This is the core of the issue of the new Mac Pro. If they want to push carriages and eGPU, no one would care if they continued to provide a marked up but quality offering that offered comparable competence to other manufacturer systems. However, no sane person is going to pay twice as much for less performance. That just doesn't make sense.
I guess we'll all see what happens next year.
Pros may not want to "tinker" with slots, but the reality is -- whether Apple likes it or not -- PCIe cards are an important part of a complete breakfast. Avid doesn't even make a Thunderbolt version of their pro audio product, meaning that "pros" are left with a choice of noisy, awkward, expensive, external PCIe enclosures or just using HP workstations. It's no surprise that many choose the latter.
Microsoft's effort to be inclusive has its own downside. When I built my own Windows machines I often ran into issues with peripherals that worked fine on their own but not with each other. For example, my preferred graphics card worked great but installing the capture card caused it to misbehave. I had to experiment with various combinations of drivers and hardware to find ones that not only did what I wanted, but would play nice together.
I don't want to be bothered with that stuff. That's one of the obstacles I want the Apple approach to solve for me. I want to be able to buy and get right to work with products I know will be compatible.
The Mac mini is pretty close to being that now.
"Here's your new bathroom. It has TWO bathtubs!"
Really? Why?
"That's where we see the future of bathing going."
Okay, I don't know what kind of use cases you're anticipating, but whatever. I really don't need two bathtubs, though. Can I replace the second bathtub with another toilet? I don't really need that either, but at least we would get more use out of it.
"Two toilets?! That's CRAZY!"
It's one thing to look at the price of a RAM or storage upgrade and pucker up a little. One could accept that. It's something else to look at it and think, "Are you fucking KIDDING me?!"
When Apple's prices for storage are double-to-triple the cost from any other supplier, it's hard not to respond negatively. There's premium pricing, then there's out-and-out gouging. Like with so many things, it's a matter of degree.