This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
Exactly! They really need a midrange desktop with a bit more capability than the Mini. Imagine a Mini in a taller case with a GPU card and a couple of SSD slots. Then against n maybe AMDs new APUs next year might have the GPU performance to upgrade the Mini. By the way the goal for the GPU is compute capability. I only mention that because bozzos immediately try to imply that I want a gaming machine. This isn’t the case at all but rather it is to leverage the growing adoption of GPU compute in applications.
So essentially an iMac 5K but without the screen. Plus, there's nothing wrong with wanting a gaming machine. It's one of the fastest growing segments in the desktop space.
At best you'll get a trashcan in another form factor in the $3000-$5000 range with upgradable RAM and Graphics Cards and no PCIe slots or CPU upgrades. By the time you add it up, it will cost the same as a 5K iMac with similar specs and no monitor. That will be the price of admission for semi-upgradability, just like the MacMini. I'd be pretty happy with that.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
No, that is a terrible idea.
Consumer Macs should be even more sealed in than they are -- the number of repairs needed to consumer Macs in the last 15 years has dropped very very dramatically thanks to Apple closing up the access to the innards -- both to consumer "tinkerers" who used to provide the repair shop I worked for with regular (and expensive) business after their "tinkering," and the sealing of components also prevents all kinds of unintentional ingress of various things that can cause computers harm.
The Mac Pro is so open because it is being sold almost exclusively to people who are comfortable with doing upgrades themselves (if they ever choose to) or can afford to hire a certified tech to do them if not. An old Mac Pro you got for 20 percent of its original purchase price -- that's a machine for tinkering.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
Everything in engineering is a tradeoff. For example, putting all chips in sockets makes them replaceable and perhaps upgradeable, but dramatically reduces reliability, because connectors are so much less reliable than soldered joints. Adding connectors also increases size and weight, which is not the right tradeoff if the goal is lightness and compactness. Most of the decisions made in mobile devices that make them hard to fix are not made out of perversity, but to make them better at being mobile. Eventually you put everything into one super-small and super-light chip, and iFixit has nothing to repair.
Too many past Apple decisions have involved trade-offs that weren't really necessary in the first place.
That is how we ended up with laptop components in desktop machines.
Like saying "this is the design. Now engineer everything to fit inside it".
The socket vs soldered issue really doesn't hold much water when one of the most common failures of iMacs for example was failed graphics cards which slow cooked themselves to death, accumulated dust and are extremely inaccessible.
While trade-offs will always exist some decisions were taken because things like accessibility were never on the cards from the outset. That is why you had to remove the protective glass, display and other components on my last iMac, just to get at the hard drive.
Now, SSDs are soldered onto laptops and if one fails you have to take the whole machine in.
On laptops, the top case, keyboard and battery are all unnecessarily dependent on each other (that's without getting into the butterfly debate). Once again, certain considerations simply weren't on the table from the get go.
I'd take a socketed option over any soldered/glued on option on a Mac - every time. Especially as I've not had a single issue with socketed components. Not even had to re-seat RAM. On the other hand just about every single Apple laptop battery I've had has swollen and required replacing.
At the end of the day, it would be nice to have choice but that is denied us.
This Mac Pro could exist in a far lower cost version with all the upgradeability but the only reason it doesn't exist is because Apple doesn't want it to exist.
Given the choice, many users would opt for such a machine but that would take a bite out of the iMac - and that's why it doesn't exist.
I'd love for Tim to call my bluff and get one onto the market and let the market (us) decide.
In what price slot? Put it in the same slot as the iMac Pro then nobody would buy it because for just 20% more you get the much powerful Mac Pro. So you want Apple give you all those expandable architecture, RAM slots, PCI lanes and the monitor for free. That won’t happen.
Make it cheaper than the iMac Pro and put it in the same slot as the 27” iMac then you get a much weaker iMac Pro added the monitor price.
Everyone would ridicule such a monstrosity. At ieast even the most fervent attackers of the new Mac Pro cannot deny its power.
That may change in the future provided that component and integration options allow a meaningful price range to fit such a “Mac Pro Mini”, for whatever it means...
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
Exactly! They really need a midrange desktop with a bit more capability than the Mini. Imagine a Mini in a taller case with a GPU card and a couple of SSD slots. Then against n maybe AMDs new APUs next year might have the GPU performance to upgrade the Mini. By the way the goal for the GPU is compute capability. I only mention that because bozzos immediately try to imply that I want a gaming machine. This isn’t the case at all but rather it is to leverage the growing adoption of GPU compute in applications.
So essentially an iMac 5K but without the screen. Plus, there's nothing wrong with wanting a gaming machine. It's one of the fastest growing segments in the desktop space.
At best you'll get a trashcan in another form factor in the $3000-$5000 range with upgradable RAM and Graphics Cards and no PCIe slots or CPU upgrades. By the time you add it up, it will cost the same as a 5K iMac with similar specs and no monitor. That will be the price of admission for semi-upgradability, just like the MacMini. I'd be pretty happy with that.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
Exactly! They really need a midrange desktop with a bit more capability than the Mini. Imagine a Mini in a taller case with a GPU card and a couple of SSD slots. Then against n maybe AMDs new APUs next year might have the GPU performance to upgrade the Mini. By the way the goal for the GPU is compute capability. I only mention that because bozzos immediately try to imply that I want a gaming machine. This isn’t the case at all but rather it is to leverage the growing adoption of GPU compute in applications.
So essentially an iMac 5K but without the screen. Plus, there's nothing wrong with wanting a gaming machine. It's one of the fastest growing segments in the desktop space.
At best you'll get a trashcan in another form factor in the $3000-$5000 range with upgradable RAM and Graphics Cards and no PCIe slots or CPU upgrades. By the time you add it up, it will cost the same as a 5K iMac with similar specs and no monitor. That will be the price of admission for semi-upgradability, just like the MacMini. I'd be pretty happy with that.
Re-purposing the trash-can Mac could work.
So, after so many years of denial and rejection the good old trash-can Mac Pro becomes a favorite?
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
Everything in engineering is a tradeoff. For example, putting all chips in sockets makes them replaceable and perhaps upgradeable, but dramatically reduces reliability, because connectors are so much less reliable than soldered joints. Adding connectors also increases size and weight, which is not the right tradeoff if the goal is lightness and compactness. Most of the decisions made in mobile devices that make them hard to fix are not made out of perversity, but to make them better at being mobile. Eventually you put everything into one super-small and super-light chip, and iFixit has nothing to repair.
At the end of the day, it would be nice to have choice but that is denied us.
This Mac Pro could exist in a far lower cost version with all the upgradeability but the only reason it doesn't exist is because Apple doesn't want it to exist.
Given the choice, many users would opt for such a machine but that would take a bite out of the iMac - and that's why it doesn't exist.
Opinion masquerading as fact. Apple execs have said over and over that they don't fear cannibalizing their own products, and they've proven it more than once, yet some of you still like to make conspiracy claims.
Of course they could build a mid-range tower, who on earth believes otherwise? But that isn't this. This is a high-end workstation. Maybe they'll build a mid-range tower, maybe they won't. Not relevant at all to what the new MP is.
You do have choice. The market has plenty of machines to chose from. So, repeat after me: "I...am not...a victim."
It's an opinion. That should have been clear to you when I said I call Tim's bluff but you didn't include that when you quoted me.
As for what Apple execs say, you can take that with a pinch of salt unless they state something unequivocally.
Case in point. AFAIK, Apple has never stated (much less, 'over and over') that it doesn't fear cannibalising iMac sales with a 'low end tower' (or whatever you want to call it) and it has never been 'proven' as the option was simply removed.
It crippled the Mini for years and then made matters worse by not updating it. They basically said the iMac was your only desktop option because at the other end of the range they left the high end Mac Pros to literally rot for years, too.
Then, in a show of utter disdain for the desktop line, they presented the exact same iMac for two consecutive Christmas seasons.
In the computer industry I'd say that is unprecedented for a consumer machine.
The situation was so bad that people thought the Mini was actually dead. So bad that Apple had to admit screwing up the Mac Pro and pre-announcing its successor. There was a period where Apple's desktop line went completely off the rails.
So here we are in late 2019. The Mini was resucitated, the iMac Pro was introduced and now the Pro has landed with decent upgradeability. The regular iMac continues with all the issues it has always had. Limited accessibility and a screen incrusted on it.
For all your attempts to demonstrate otherwise there is still a gaping hole in the Apple lineup.
Where there is a will, there is a way and Apple could easily fill that hole with a desktop that mirrored the key design goals of the Pro.
Modularity Accessibility Upgradeability
No need for for $400 wheel options or fancy shells although perhaps even the mega expensive Mac Pro lacks something: a dust filter.
The butterfly keyboard debacle might indicate that Apple operates in cleanrooms with purified air and doesn't really understand that the rest of of the world lives in rooms full of dust, crumbs and humidity.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
Everything in engineering is a tradeoff. For example, putting all chips in sockets makes them replaceable and perhaps upgradeable, but dramatically reduces reliability, because connectors are so much less reliable than soldered joints. Adding connectors also increases size and weight, which is not the right tradeoff if the goal is lightness and compactness. Most of the decisions made in mobile devices that make them hard to fix are not made out of perversity, but to make them better at being mobile. Eventually you put everything into one super-small and super-light chip, and iFixit has nothing to repair.
Too many past Apple decisions have involved trade-offs that weren't really necessary in the first place.
That is how we ended up with laptop components in desktop machines.
Like saying "this is the design. Now engineer everything to fit inside it".
The socket vs soldered issue really doesn't hold much water when one of the most common failures of iMacs for example was failed graphics cards which slow cooked themselves to death, accumulated dust and are extremely inaccessible.
While trade-offs will always exist some decisions were taken because things like accessibility were never on the cards from the outset. That is why you had to remove the protective glass, display and other components on my last iMac, just to get at the hard drive.
Now, SSDs are soldered onto laptops and if one fails you have to take the whole machine in.
On laptops, the top case, keyboard and battery are all unnecessarily dependent on each other (that's without getting into the butterfly debate). Once again, certain considerations simply weren't on the table from the get go.
I'd take a socketed option over any soldered/glued on option on a Mac - every time. Especially as I've not had a single issue with socketed components. Not even had to re-seat RAM. On the other hand just about every single Apple laptop battery I've had has swollen and required replacing.
At the end of the day, it would be nice to have choice but that is denied us.
This Mac Pro could exist in a far lower cost version with all the upgradeability but the only reason it doesn't exist is because Apple doesn't want it to exist.
Given the choice, many users would opt for such a machine but that would take a bite out of the iMac - and that's why it doesn't exist.
I'd love for Tim to call my bluff and get one onto the market and let the market (us) decide.
In what price slot? Put it in the same slot as the iMac Pro then nobody would buy it because for just 20% more you get the much powerful Mac Pro. So you want Apple give you all those expandable architecture, RAM slots, PCI lanes and the monitor for free. That won’t happen.
Make it cheaper than the iMac Pro and put it in the same slot as the 27” iMac then you get a much weaker iMac Pro added the monitor price.
Everyone would ridicule such a monstrosity. At ieast even the most fervent attackers of the new Mac Pro cannot deny its power.
That may change in the future provided that component and integration options allow a meaningful price range to fit such a “Mac Pro Mini”, for whatever it means...
Upgradeability & Repairability: THAT is why I just bought a 2017 MacBook Air for my grandson (well that and the fact it was only $700).
The SSD on the 2017 can be upgraded and replaced. Apple won't do it -- but any reasonably tech savvy user or a repair shop can. The memory is not upgradeable. But, since they gave it 8Gb that should not be a serious issue. But, the standard but crappy little 128Gb has only very limited use. For instance, if he wants to run Windows 10 under boot camp the first step will be to replace the drive.
To get a decent sized drive in a 2019 would have cost too many dollars: $1,500 of them to be exact (for a 500Gb). Because Apple soldering the drive to the mother board forces you to over-buy beyond your current needs and then add a pad to the estimate just in case.
So, for me this was a no brainer: Since they are pretty equivalent machines, the decision was between spending $1,500 or $700.
Upgradeability is why I am able to use a 10 year old ThinkPad as my main machine. Both the memory and the (now) SSD have been upgraded and it runs like a charm (I even added a 2nd harddrive to it for automatic backups).
Or, even the laptop owned by my grandson's mother: It was so slow it was almost unusable even though it was only about 3 years old. It was a crappy HP but even still I swapped out the Harddrive for an SSD ($40) and now it runs fine. For $40 I saved her from having to buy a whole new machine!
Apple's decision to solder and glue everything together works in an iPhone because there's a reason for it. It doesn't work in computers (unless you're going for as thin & light as is humanely possible -- which in most cases is unnecessary). I am glad to see them finally getting away from that foolishness. I will be more likely to buy a Mac in the future if they extend this out to other lines like the iMac and MacBooks.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
Exactly! They really need a midrange desktop with a bit more capability than the Mini. Imagine a Mini in a taller case with a GPU card and a couple of SSD slots. Then against n maybe AMDs new APUs next year might have the GPU performance to upgrade the Mini. By the way the goal for the GPU is compute capability. I only mention that because bozzos immediately try to imply that I want a gaming machine. This isn’t the case at all but rather it is to leverage the growing adoption of GPU compute in applications.
So essentially an iMac 5K but without the screen. Plus, there's nothing wrong with wanting a gaming machine. It's one of the fastest growing segments in the desktop space.
At best you'll get a trashcan in another form factor in the $3000-$5000 range with upgradable RAM and Graphics Cards and no PCIe slots or CPU upgrades. By the time you add it up, it will cost the same as a 5K iMac with similar specs and no monitor. That will be the price of admission for semi-upgradability, just like the MacMini. I'd be pretty happy with that.
Re-purposing the trash-can Mac could work.
So, after so many years of denial and rejection the good old trash-can Mac Pro becomes a favorite?
O Fortuna Velut luna Statu variabilis...
Nobody said it's a favorite. I'm saying it can work as opposed to engineering a brand new mid-range tower.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
No, that is a terrible idea.
Consumer Macs should be even more sealed in than they are -- the number of repairs needed to consumer Macs in the last 15 years has dropped very very dramatically thanks to Apple closing up the access to the innards -- both to consumer "tinkerers" who used to provide the repair shop I worked for with regular (and expensive) business after their "tinkering," and the sealing of components also prevents all kinds of unintentional ingress of various things that can cause computers harm.
The Mac Pro is so open because it is being sold almost exclusively to people who are comfortable with doing upgrades themselves (if they ever choose to) or can afford to hire a certified tech to do them if not. An old Mac Pro you got for 20 percent of its original purchase price -- that's a machine for tinkering.
WELL BUH HOW DARE YOU NOT LET ME TO HAVE MODULAR A POWER SUPPLY IN MY MACBOOK ELITE PORTFOLIO?
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now they need to give the same thinking to other Macs. It can be done.
Everything in engineering is a tradeoff. For example, putting all chips in sockets makes them replaceable and perhaps upgradeable, but dramatically reduces reliability, because connectors are so much less reliable than soldered joints. Adding connectors also increases size and weight, which is not the right tradeoff if the goal is lightness and compactness. Most of the decisions made in mobile devices that make them hard to fix are not made out of perversity, but to make them better at being mobile. Eventually you put everything into one super-small and super-light chip, and iFixit has nothing to repair.
Too many past Apple decisions have involved trade-offs that weren't really necessary in the first place.
That is how we ended up with laptop components in desktop machines.
Like saying "this is the design. Now engineer everything to fit inside it".
The socket vs soldered issue really doesn't hold much water when one of the most common failures of iMacs for example was failed graphics cards which slow cooked themselves to death, accumulated dust and are extremely inaccessible.
While trade-offs will always exist some decisions were taken because things like accessibility were never on the cards from the outset. That is why you had to remove the protective glass, display and other components on my last iMac, just to get at the hard drive.
Now, SSDs are soldered onto laptops and if one fails you have to take the whole machine in.
On laptops, the top case, keyboard and battery are all unnecessarily dependent on each other (that's without getting into the butterfly debate). Once again, certain considerations simply weren't on the table from the get go.
I'd take a socketed option over any soldered/glued on option on a Mac - every time. Especially as I've not had a single issue with socketed components. Not even had to re-seat RAM. On the other hand just about every single Apple laptop battery I've had has swollen and required replacing.
At the end of the day, it would be nice to have choice but that is denied us.
This Mac Pro could exist in a far lower cost version with all the upgradeability but the only reason it doesn't exist is because Apple doesn't want it to exist.
Given the choice, many users would opt for such a machine but that would take a bite out of the iMac - and that's why it doesn't exist.
I'd love for Tim to call my bluff and get one onto the market and let the market (us) decide.
In what price slot? Put it in the same slot as the iMac Pro then nobody would buy it because for just 20% more you get the much powerful Mac Pro. So you want Apple give you all those expandable architecture, RAM slots, PCI lanes and the monitor for free. That won’t happen.
Make it cheaper than the iMac Pro and put it in the same slot as the 27” iMac then you get a much weaker iMac Pro added the monitor price.
Everyone would ridicule such a monstrosity. At ieast even the most fervent attackers of the new Mac Pro cannot deny its power.
That may change in the future provided that component and integration options allow a meaningful price range to fit such a “Mac Pro Mini”, for whatever it means...
I can see him slotting ten PCIe cards with thousands of lanes inside his custom-made ATX SUPRA MAC.
Maybe read up on a little thing called a PCH. Generally hooked up to a consumer-level Intel processor with QPI or UPI. Adds a whole lot more PCIe lanes.
There are also PCIe switches. Like the one used to go from the 64 lanes of PCIe provided by the Mac Pro's processor to the 96 lanes it offers to peripherals.
Maybe read up on a little thing called a PCH. Generally hooked up to a consumer-level Intel processor with QPI or UPI. Adds a whole lot more PCIe lanes.
There are also PCIe switches. Like the one used to go from the 64 lanes of PCIe provided by the Mac Pro's processor to the 96 lanes it offers to peripherals.
......
In a consumer platform? A switch can't make you magically having 32 lanes at full speed.
PCH? Nah, they're just DMI, good luck searching about that.
Comments
At best you'll get a trashcan in another form factor in the $3000-$5000 range with upgradable RAM and Graphics Cards and no PCIe slots or CPU upgrades. By the time you add it up, it will cost the same as a 5K iMac with similar specs and no monitor. That will be the price of admission for semi-upgradability, just like the MacMini. I'd be pretty happy with that.
Consumer Macs should be even more sealed in than they are -- the number of repairs needed to consumer Macs in the last 15 years has dropped very very dramatically thanks to Apple closing up the access to the innards -- both to consumer "tinkerers" who used to provide the repair shop I worked for with regular (and expensive) business after their "tinkering," and the sealing of components also prevents all kinds of unintentional ingress of various things that can cause computers harm.
The Mac Pro is so open because it is being sold almost exclusively to people who are comfortable with doing upgrades themselves (if they ever choose to) or can afford to hire a certified tech to do them if not. An old Mac Pro you got for 20 percent of its original purchase price -- that's a machine for tinkering.
Make it cheaper than the iMac Pro and put it in the same slot as the 27” iMac then you get a much weaker iMac Pro added the monitor price.
That may change in the future provided that component and integration options allow a meaningful price range to fit such a “Mac Pro Mini”, for whatever it means...
O Fortuna
Velut luna
Statu variabilis...
As for what Apple execs say, you can take that with a pinch of salt unless they state something unequivocally.
Case in point. AFAIK, Apple has never stated (much less, 'over and over') that it doesn't fear cannibalising iMac sales with a 'low end tower' (or whatever you want to call it) and it has never been 'proven' as the option was simply removed.
It crippled the Mini for years and then made matters worse by not updating it. They basically said the iMac was your only desktop option because at the other end of the range they left the high end Mac Pros to literally rot for years, too.
Then, in a show of utter disdain for the desktop line, they presented the exact same iMac for two consecutive Christmas seasons.
In the computer industry I'd say that is unprecedented for a consumer machine.
The situation was so bad that people thought the Mini was actually dead. So bad that Apple had to admit screwing up the Mac Pro and pre-announcing its successor. There was a period where Apple's desktop line went completely off the rails.
So here we are in late 2019. The Mini was resucitated, the iMac Pro was introduced and now the Pro has landed with decent upgradeability. The regular iMac continues with all the issues it has always had. Limited accessibility and a screen incrusted on it.
For all your attempts to demonstrate otherwise there is still a gaping hole in the Apple lineup.
Where there is a will, there is a way and Apple could easily fill that hole with a desktop that mirrored the key design goals of the Pro.
Modularity
Accessibility
Upgradeability
No need for for $400 wheel options or fancy shells although perhaps even the mega expensive Mac Pro lacks something: a dust filter.
The butterfly keyboard debacle might indicate that Apple operates in cleanrooms with purified air and doesn't really understand that the rest of of the world lives in rooms full of dust, crumbs and humidity.
None of that is true.
So, for me this was a no brainer: Since they are pretty equivalent machines, the decision was between spending $1,500 or $700.
Upgradeability is why I am able to use a 10 year old ThinkPad as my main machine. Both the memory and the (now) SSD have been upgraded and it runs like a charm (I even added a 2nd harddrive to it for automatic backups).
Wait it only has 7 slots and 16-lanes?
Wait wut? Two Thunderbolt 3 took all 8 lanes?
And then the GPU took another 8?
Then the SSD took over all the lanes available on my PCH?
UGH! HOW DARE APPLE NOT LETTING ME HAVE MORE LANES SO I CAN UPGRADE THE CRAP OUT TO BE A ELITE-CL...
Wut? That's Intel's pRoBlEm?
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/192990/intel-core-i9-9980hk-processor-16m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz.html
Why don't you all learn about computers first?
There are also PCIe switches. Like the one used to go from the 64 lanes of PCIe provided by the Mac Pro's processor to the 96 lanes it offers to peripherals.
In a consumer platform? A switch can't make you magically having 32 lanes at full speed.
PCH? Nah, they're just DMI, good luck searching about that.