The next Mac Pro Enclosure

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
To the drawing boards my fellow insiders.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    ssquirrelssquirrel Posts: 1,196member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by microdisiac View Post


    To the drawing boards my fellow insiders.



    A cheese grater with a picture of frickin sharks with frickin lasers on their heads? Apple hasn't changed the exterior of the Pro for awhile. I half expect them to decide people don't need much expansion, drop down to a smaller body that only allows 2 or 3 expansion slots after the GPU. Quad core, plenty of ram options to play as nicely as possible w/Snow Leopard.



    If you mean a drawing I can't help you...my stick figures are even bad
  • Reply 2 of 12
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Ok....Apple's gotta take a mean and aggressive stance for their next lineup.



    Take this type of heatsink design and augment it with black texture or carbon fibre







    Shrink it down a bit and make the handles removable. The bulk of the cable should fit in a 19" rackspace.



    Get rid of 3.5" drive bays and add six 2.5" allowing for 8 total drives if you use the optical drive bay for SSD/HDD storage.
  • Reply 3 of 12
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    I don't think we're going to get one as long as Ive's around.
  • Reply 4 of 12
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    If they want to continue to ask for $3,000 for the base Mac Pro, I want a computer built to withstand a high-altitude nuclear EMP attack.



    Now there's something that just exudes street-cred.







  • Reply 5 of 12
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    There is one thing I'd like to see Apple do and that is make a PRO that is stand alone or easily converted to rack mount. This simply to give us mounting options in a machine that is 4 or 5 U in hieght.



    As to physical size I can't see it getting smaller, at least not an extreme shrink. There is a need for a large cabinet with a correspondidly large power supply. Why you may ask; well let me tell you it is OpenCL. Advanced usage will call for lots of compute units thus I can see Apple supporting Nvidias or ATIs compute cards. In other words Apple could enter the high performance computing market with a desktop solution. These cards suck lots off power thus the need for a big box and big power supply.



    As to some of the other comments I could see Apple going to the smaller drives. It's the green thing to do. Maybe they would even go and install a real RAID controller on the motherboard. In any event more slots mean more options for the user.



    Of course Apple could always punt and start over. Here I'm thinking a motherboard with an Nvidia compute engine on board. A partial move away from SATA to storage connecting directly via PCI Express would also happen. It would be nice to know that all PROs would come with dedicated GPU accelerators. I'd still like a flex case, that is one that can convert to rack mount or be used freestanding. The key here is that the case would be no more that 3U high.





    Dave



    PS



    With the way the world is going I'd like to see the EMP resistant design to. Probably would cost a fortune but hey some of us have to survive.





    Dave
  • Reply 6 of 12
    dhagan4755dhagan4755 Posts: 2,152member
    I would like to see Apple start using the Core i7's in the Mac Pro enclosure to get the cost of the Mac Pro below $2,000. There's no reason, in this day and age, that a tower computer should start at $2,500. Give us more choices, Apple!
  • Reply 7 of 12
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DHagan4755 View Post


    I would like to see Apple start using the Core i7's in the Mac Pro enclosure to get the cost of the Mac Pro below $2,000. There's no reason, in this day and age, that a tower computer should start at $2,500. Give us more choices, Apple!



    The Xeon 3500 series proc and a comparable Core i7 proc are within 20 dollars of each other or so. It's not the CPU pricing that is causing the inflated pricing IMO.
  • Reply 8 of 12
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DHagan4755 View Post


    I would like to see Apple start using the Core i7's in the Mac Pro enclosure to get the cost of the Mac Pro below $2,000. There's no reason, in this day and age, that a tower computer should start at $2,500. Give us more choices, Apple!



    They basically are. Xeon 3500 an Core i7 are different packages of the same bloomfield chip. The Xeon branded one has ECC memory support.



    Besides, I don't think it would do much good. There are signs point towards Apple raising the margins of the Mac Pros to not have them overlap with the 24" iMac or each other.
  • Reply 10 of 12
    Quote:

    I would like to see Apple start using the Core i7's in the Mac Pro enclosure to get the cost of the Mac Pro below $2,000. There's no reason, in this day and age, that a tower computer should start at $2,500. Give us more choices, Apple!



    Amen.



    The price of the entry 2.66 quad core Nehalem is dirt cheap. The m/board price is higher than average. Not by a great amount. GPUs. 1 gig. Verryyyyyyyyyyy cheap. There's no way you should have to pay £1500+ to get access to a cheap, entry level gpu. Poor. Poor. And Poor.



    Choice. A desktop that had Nehalem and a decent gpu. Part of a necessary re-think on the Apple desktop.



    Lemon Bon Bon.



    PS. And yeah, the over the top price rise in a credit crunching eco'. Yeah. Way to go, Apple! Yeah, let's blame the exchange rate. S'funny, Apple didn't pass on the dollar savings when the exchange was hanging the other way. And anyway. So what? The PC industry copes with the very same conditions.
  • Reply 11 of 12
    As for the next Mac Pro enclosure. I'd like a slight re-skin on the outside. Perhaps a more compact design...and the interior is state of the art...so np there.



    Lemon Bon Bon.
  • Reply 12 of 12
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    With the way the world is going I'd like to see the EMP resistant design to. Probably would cost a fortune but hey some of us have to survive.



    Exactly. Being able to say that "my computer can survive an EMP blast" is just the kind of geek-speak Mac fans would totally rail on the internet about.



    (Forget that with most electrical and utilities downed by an EMP, the Mac wouldn't be able to do much.)



    But Apple's used images of military tanks to sell Macs before, so this is just an extension of that idea.
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