Why does the Mac Pro line 'badly need' a new case?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Outsider
In my opinion, it's too big. He just received some HP workstations with dual Nehalem CPUs (5500 series) and their cases are about 30-40% smaller volume wise. Externally, they look much smaller and fit in more places. Plus, they look dated, in Apple terms. I think a new case is in the works. Something more efficient and less costly to manufacture.
What is the model number? If you're comparing it to the xw6000 series, then that's not necessarily the same thing, xw6000 series is in a chintzy desktop case. Well, it's not horrible, but I don't think it befits the parts inside. Mac Pro is similar in volume to the xw8000 series (a very solid workstation case IMO) if you don't count the handles.
I think it's a fair point that the same basic shell design has been used for six years, though I still do like it.
Why does the Mac Pro line 'badly need' a new case?
1) Every other entry in this field has six DIMMS per CPU in two triple channels. The Mac Pro has four DIMMS per CPU with one triple channel and one out there by itself.
2) The external design has not changed since 2003 and they need something with black accents that fits better.
Basically we have a case designed for the G5 that fits neither the hardware inside it or with other 2009 Macs.
What is the model number? If you're comparing it to the xw6000 series, then that's not necessarily the same thing, xw6000 series is in a chintzy desktop case. Well, it's not horrible, but I don't think it befits the parts inside. Mac Pro is similar in volume to the xw8000 series (a very solid workstation case IMO) if you don't count the handles.
I think it's a fair point that the same basic shell design has been used for six years, though I still do like it.
I'll have to check, but it's the one with the recessed handles on the top. It feels very solid and put together. I think it's the Z800 or Z600.
1) Every other entry in this field has six DIMMS per CPU in two triple channels. The Mac Pro has four DIMMS per CPU with one triple channel and one out there by itself.
2) The external design has not changed since 2003 and they need something with black accents that fits better.
Basically we have a case designed for the G5 that fits neither the hardware inside it or with other 2009 Macs.
1) has nothing to do with a case redesign. It's Apple choice to cripple the RAM capacity of the single cpu Mac Pro. There is lots of room on the daughterboard to support 6 or 8 RAM slots.
2) i wouldn't consider black accents a major redesign or badly needed.
Yes, the enclosure is old, the exterior didn't change much, but the interior is way better than the first models.
a) The only case redesign that I would like to see is making it just a little smaller so that it would fit in the standard 19" racks of audio/video production suites, with optional rack "ears".
b) pricing: either cut the price by up to $500 throughout the line or offer a real speedbump (top of the line cpus like they used to do) with some price adjustments (some examples):
$2199 single 2.66 (W3520, $284), 3GB RAM
$2499 single 3.06 (W3550, $562), 3GB RAM
$2999 single 3.33 (W3580, $999), 3GB RAM
$3499 dual 2.53 (E5540, $744x2), 6GB RAM
$4499 dual 2.80 (X5560, $1172x2), 6GB RAM
$5499 dual 3.33 (W5590, $1600x2), 6GB RAM
But I don't think Apple will update the Mac Pro before mid next year (Westmere cpus). Models like the Mac Pro and the Mac mini will probably be updated once a year, while better sellers like the notebooks and iMacs will probably be updated every 6 months or so.
Mid-2010, will also probably be a good time to offer USB3, FW3200, SATA III, (not PCIe 3, since it has been delayed to 2011), 10GbE?, 3.5" SSDs (Ã* la OCZ Collossus: 128/256/512GB and 1TB)...
Mid-2010, will also probably be a good time to offer USB3, FW3200, SATA III, (not PCIe 3, since it has been delayed to 2011), 10GbE?, 3.5" SSDs (Ã* la OCZ Collossus: 128/256/512GB and 1TB)...
1) has nothing to do with a case redesign. It's Apple choice to cripple the RAM capacity of the single cpu Mac Pro. There is lots of room on the daughterboard to support 6 or 8 RAM slots.
It cripples the dual CPU model as well. Its a matter of the case being too narrow.
The current quad-core Mac Pro is very much the Yikes! to the current 8-cores Sawtooth. In practice, this will mean dropping the CPUs into the new 8-core system board, and discontinuing the crippled single socket entry level system board.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777
So the mid-range isn't coming. Period.
If Apple introduces a tower at $1900-$2000, you buy it and thank the Lord that you've lived to see it.
I'm starting to wonder if the low-end Mac Pro will actually be discontinued, or just dropped further into the $2000. range. Considering the apparent willingness to stay competitive at the expense of margins, I think a $1999. Mac Pro makes sense in this economy.
Doesn't make sense in Apple's mind though. The Mac Pro is at the price points they are as to not overlap with the iMac or the quad core to overlap with the 8-core. In fact component prices suggest they're selling the quad core Mac Pros at a much higher margin than the iMac. Unless the corporate OCD is cured, you'll see them prices stay pat if not rise. Add to that, I just don't think Jobs and Ive are that interested in the professional segments anymore.
Doesn't make sense in Apple's mind though. The Mac Pro is at the price points they are as to not overlap with the iMac or the quad core to overlap with the 8-core. In fact component prices suggest they're selling the quad core Mac Pros at a much higher margin than the iMac. Unless the corporate OCD is cured, you'll see them prices stay pat if not rise. Add to that, I just don't think Jobs and Ive are that interested in the professional segments anymore.
In Canada, the top-end iMac is $2599 (with the 24" monitor, of course) while the Mac Pro starts at $2899 (sans monitor.)
So the Mac Pro's entry price can be cut $200 without even beginning to interfere with the iMac.
I think it's just a matter of corporate will. I doubt they are crazy enough to try to raise prices though.
What would help is competition. Neither Dell nor HP have a sleek tower pitched at creatives with any real brand recognition. Dell has tried with XPS, but for some reason has oriented the brand toward gamers instead of writers, musicians, publishers, photographers and videographers. It's not like it's 1999 and Windows doesn't have the software to power many of these markets.
The only way you'll enjoy a ~$1,000 tower running OSX is if you build it yourself. A hackintosh. This is where I'm unfortunately being forced to. I want to spend about $1K, and I know I can get some pretty hefty muscle on the PC side for this money, but there are just zero options on the mac side. The iMacs will always sport dinky little processors glued to that screen, so that's out. The mini is very weak. And the MP start at over $2K. It's crazy. Yeah, I'm sure Apple ran the numbers and it makes sense to them economically, but it leaves a lot of people with no real options. Hence the hackintosh - even though I hate the fact that most likely there will always be some kind of problems with stability or able to run all apps and all functions. But what choice is there? To me it's insane that the MP start at $2500 or so. I just cannot justify that for myself (for others I'm sure that's just dandy).
YOu're telling me.
Price hikes have added £500 to the base entry model of the Mac tower.
Sure the 'Mac Pro' is a 'workstation'. But if you compare the base model, there are PC towers that offer teh same or more performance for a grand less.
It's ridiculous that you have to pay £1800 to get a quad tower or any sort of quad cpu from Apple. It's indefensible.
That's what a lack of hardware competition in the Mac space does for you.
Hopefully with the Westmere chips they can install smaller coolers and provide enough room for 6 (for the single CPU) or 12 (for the dual) DIMMs.
Its very interesting that many of the Dell machines with Xeons provide slots for only 4 or 8 DDR3 modules. There must be something that we're all missing beside motherboard space.
Its very interesting that many of the Dell machines with Xeons provide slots for only 4 or 8 DDR3 modules. There must be something that we're all missing beside motherboard space.
Some, but not all. Look at the HP workstations. It appears that the issue is space. Their larger cased workstations have 6 DIMM slots, but the smaller cased ones have only 4.
I do not agree with the notion that the G3 towers were consumer design hopped up to pro.
Back in 1999 350 MHz was faster than the pentium II it was competing with. The B&W had a state of the art 100 MHz bus as well as a top of the line ATI 128 GPU, fast IDE drives USB and FW. The only miss step was DVDreader instead of a CDburner.
One obvius thing that the current Pros has to get as soon as Grand Central and GPU computing takes of is at least dual GPU slots with support for Crossfire & SLI.
This would also open up for a workstation/Pro line were there is support both for multi GPUs and multi CPUs. Lots of memory slots etc.
And a prosumer line with one GPU slot and only support for one multicore CPU. The question is the Intel roadmap were the workstations have hexacores coming but for native quadcores it looks a bit weak as Intel seem to focus on dual core with hyperthreading.
I do not agree with the notion that the G3 towers were consumer design hopped up to pro.
Back in 1999 350 MHz was faster than the pentium II it was competing with. The B&W had a state of the art 100 MHz bus as well as a top of the line ATI 128 GPU, fast IDE drives USB and FW. The only miss step was DVDreader instead of a CDburner.
One obvius thing that the current Pros has to get as soon as Grand Central and GPU computing takes of is at least dual GPU slots with support for Crossfire & SLI.
This would also open up for a workstation/Pro line were there is support both for multi GPUs and multi CPUs. Lots of memory slots etc.
And a prosumer line with one GPU slot and only support for one multicore CPU. The question is the Intel roadmap were the workstations have hexacores coming but for native quadcores it looks a bit weak as Intel seem to focus on dual core with hyperthreading.
The Blue & White G3 towers were certainly designed from the get-go to be their professional workstation, no doubt about that. I think the reason people think the beige towers and desktop were originally consumer models was something said back then to this effect in a magazine.
The thing was the G3 was originally going to go into consumer class machines, but not in the incarnation they eventually were released in. They were going to be placed in logic boards similar to the ones they shipped in but in consumer level cases, like the 6500 tower and 6300 series desktop chassis. But early on Apple saw the superiority of the G3 and transitioned it to their more professional chassis, the 8600 and 7300 series chassis. The logic boards still reflect a transitional model (IDE drives) but had pro features like SCSI, 3 PCI slots, Personality card slot, decent graphics at the time, RAM up to 768MB, etc.
If the performance per buck doesn't vastly increase, more people may start to consider hackintoshes. Just like we all currently use 3rd party RAM instead of Apple-installed RAM.
The beige G3 was jsut the previous generation with G3 grafted to them.
In a similar way the first PPC 6100-8100 were quadras with 601 PPC CPUs but still nubus cards and so on. The second generation of 601 & 604 had both modern PCI card and better cases.
So I hold the B&W G3 as the truly native G3 generation as I do the PCI boxes to be the truly native 601/604. The 7500 actually could hold 1 GB of RAM. I had one upgraded with a 200 MHz 604E running OS X
Comments
Why does the Mac Pro line 'badly need' a new case?
In my opinion, it's too big. He just received some HP workstations with dual Nehalem CPUs (5500 series) and their cases are about 30-40% smaller volume wise. Externally, they look much smaller and fit in more places. Plus, they look dated, in Apple terms. I think a new case is in the works. Something more efficient and less costly to manufacture.
What is the model number? If you're comparing it to the xw6000 series, then that's not necessarily the same thing, xw6000 series is in a chintzy desktop case. Well, it's not horrible, but I don't think it befits the parts inside. Mac Pro is similar in volume to the xw8000 series (a very solid workstation case IMO) if you don't count the handles.
I think it's a fair point that the same basic shell design has been used for six years, though I still do like it.
Why does the Mac Pro line 'badly need' a new case?
1) Every other entry in this field has six DIMMS per CPU in two triple channels. The Mac Pro has four DIMMS per CPU with one triple channel and one out there by itself.
2) The external design has not changed since 2003 and they need something with black accents that fits better.
Basically we have a case designed for the G5 that fits neither the hardware inside it or with other 2009 Macs.
What is the model number? If you're comparing it to the xw6000 series, then that's not necessarily the same thing, xw6000 series is in a chintzy desktop case. Well, it's not horrible, but I don't think it befits the parts inside. Mac Pro is similar in volume to the xw8000 series (a very solid workstation case IMO) if you don't count the handles.
I think it's a fair point that the same basic shell design has been used for six years, though I still do like it.
I'll have to check, but it's the one with the recessed handles on the top. It feels very solid and put together. I think it's the Z800 or Z600.
I'll have to check, but it's the one with the recessed handles on the top. It feels very solid and put together. I think it's the Z800 or Z600.
I didn't realize they changed their numbering system, no problem, they knocked a zero off and changed the front letter.
It's probably a Z600 because Z800 has almost exactly the same volume as a Mac Pro. But Z800 looks pretty darn cool going from its technician guide.
1) Every other entry in this field has six DIMMS per CPU in two triple channels. The Mac Pro has four DIMMS per CPU with one triple channel and one out there by itself.
2) The external design has not changed since 2003 and they need something with black accents that fits better.
Basically we have a case designed for the G5 that fits neither the hardware inside it or with other 2009 Macs.
1) has nothing to do with a case redesign. It's Apple choice to cripple the RAM capacity of the single cpu Mac Pro. There is lots of room on the daughterboard to support 6 or 8 RAM slots.
2) i wouldn't consider black accents a major redesign or badly needed.
Yes, the enclosure is old, the exterior didn't change much, but the interior is way better than the first models.
a) The only case redesign that I would like to see is making it just a little smaller so that it would fit in the standard 19" racks of audio/video production suites, with optional rack "ears".
b) pricing: either cut the price by up to $500 throughout the line or offer a real speedbump (top of the line cpus like they used to do) with some price adjustments (some examples):
$2199 single 2.66 (W3520, $284), 3GB RAM
$2499 single 3.06 (W3550, $562), 3GB RAM
$2999 single 3.33 (W3580, $999), 3GB RAM
$3499 dual 2.53 (E5540, $744x2), 6GB RAM
$4499 dual 2.80 (X5560, $1172x2), 6GB RAM
$5499 dual 3.33 (W5590, $1600x2), 6GB RAM
But I don't think Apple will update the Mac Pro before mid next year (Westmere cpus). Models like the Mac Pro and the Mac mini will probably be updated once a year, while better sellers like the notebooks and iMacs will probably be updated every 6 months or so.
Mid-2010, will also probably be a good time to offer USB3, FW3200, SATA III, (not PCIe 3, since it has been delayed to 2011), 10GbE?, 3.5" SSDs (Ã* la OCZ Collossus: 128/256/512GB and 1TB)...
Mid-2010, will also probably be a good time to offer USB3, FW3200, SATA III, (not PCIe 3, since it has been delayed to 2011), 10GbE?, 3.5" SSDs (Ã* la OCZ Collossus: 128/256/512GB and 1TB)...
Along with the brand new SDXC card reader.
1) has nothing to do with a case redesign. It's Apple choice to cripple the RAM capacity of the single cpu Mac Pro. There is lots of room on the daughterboard to support 6 or 8 RAM slots.
It cripples the dual CPU model as well. Its a matter of the case being too narrow.
The current quad-core Mac Pro is very much the Yikes! to the current 8-cores Sawtooth. In practice, this will mean dropping the CPUs into the new 8-core system board, and discontinuing the crippled single socket entry level system board.
So the mid-range isn't coming. Period.
If Apple introduces a tower at $1900-$2000, you buy it and thank the Lord that you've lived to see it.
I'm starting to wonder if the low-end Mac Pro will actually be discontinued, or just dropped further into the $2000. range. Considering the apparent willingness to stay competitive at the expense of margins, I think a $1999. Mac Pro makes sense in this economy.
Doesn't make sense in Apple's mind though. The Mac Pro is at the price points they are as to not overlap with the iMac or the quad core to overlap with the 8-core. In fact component prices suggest they're selling the quad core Mac Pros at a much higher margin than the iMac. Unless the corporate OCD is cured, you'll see them prices stay pat if not rise. Add to that, I just don't think Jobs and Ive are that interested in the professional segments anymore.
In Canada, the top-end iMac is $2599 (with the 24" monitor, of course) while the Mac Pro starts at $2899 (sans monitor.)
So the Mac Pro's entry price can be cut $200 without even beginning to interfere with the iMac.
I think it's just a matter of corporate will. I doubt they are crazy enough to try to raise prices though.
What would help is competition. Neither Dell nor HP have a sleek tower pitched at creatives with any real brand recognition. Dell has tried with XPS, but for some reason has oriented the brand toward gamers instead of writers, musicians, publishers, photographers and videographers. It's not like it's 1999 and Windows doesn't have the software to power many of these markets.
The only way you'll enjoy a ~$1,000 tower running OSX is if you build it yourself. A hackintosh. This is where I'm unfortunately being forced to. I want to spend about $1K, and I know I can get some pretty hefty muscle on the PC side for this money, but there are just zero options on the mac side. The iMacs will always sport dinky little processors glued to that screen, so that's out. The mini is very weak. And the MP start at over $2K. It's crazy. Yeah, I'm sure Apple ran the numbers and it makes sense to them economically, but it leaves a lot of people with no real options. Hence the hackintosh - even though I hate the fact that most likely there will always be some kind of problems with stability or able to run all apps and all functions. But what choice is there? To me it's insane that the MP start at $2500 or so. I just cannot justify that for myself (for others I'm sure that's just dandy).
YOu're telling me.
Price hikes have added £500 to the base entry model of the Mac tower.
Sure the 'Mac Pro' is a 'workstation'. But if you compare the base model, there are PC towers that offer teh same or more performance for a grand less.
It's ridiculous that you have to pay £1800 to get a quad tower or any sort of quad cpu from Apple. It's indefensible.
That's what a lack of hardware competition in the Mac space does for you.
Lemon Bon Bon.
That probably won't mean a Pro update though. Not if they are quietly tinkering with the spec sheets.
With the change, I guess the theory of Apple killing the 4-core model this fall dies here?
Early 2010 with Westmere chips, USB3 and SDXC?
Hopefully with the Westmere chips they can install smaller coolers and provide enough room for 6 (for the single CPU) or 12 (for the dual) DIMMs.
Hopefully with the Westmere chips they can install smaller coolers and provide enough room for 6 (for the single CPU) or 12 (for the dual) DIMMs.
Its very interesting that many of the Dell machines with Xeons provide slots for only 4 or 8 DDR3 modules. There must be something that we're all missing beside motherboard space.
Its very interesting that many of the Dell machines with Xeons provide slots for only 4 or 8 DDR3 modules. There must be something that we're all missing beside motherboard space.
Some, but not all. Look at the HP workstations. It appears that the issue is space. Their larger cased workstations have 6 DIMM slots, but the smaller cased ones have only 4.
Back in 1999 350 MHz was faster than the pentium II it was competing with. The B&W had a state of the art 100 MHz bus as well as a top of the line ATI 128 GPU, fast IDE drives USB and FW. The only miss step was DVDreader instead of a CDburner.
One obvius thing that the current Pros has to get as soon as Grand Central and GPU computing takes of is at least dual GPU slots with support for Crossfire & SLI.
This would also open up for a workstation/Pro line were there is support both for multi GPUs and multi CPUs. Lots of memory slots etc.
And a prosumer line with one GPU slot and only support for one multicore CPU. The question is the Intel roadmap were the workstations have hexacores coming but for native quadcores it looks a bit weak as Intel seem to focus on dual core with hyperthreading.
I do not agree with the notion that the G3 towers were consumer design hopped up to pro.
Back in 1999 350 MHz was faster than the pentium II it was competing with. The B&W had a state of the art 100 MHz bus as well as a top of the line ATI 128 GPU, fast IDE drives USB and FW. The only miss step was DVDreader instead of a CDburner.
One obvius thing that the current Pros has to get as soon as Grand Central and GPU computing takes of is at least dual GPU slots with support for Crossfire & SLI.
This would also open up for a workstation/Pro line were there is support both for multi GPUs and multi CPUs. Lots of memory slots etc.
And a prosumer line with one GPU slot and only support for one multicore CPU. The question is the Intel roadmap were the workstations have hexacores coming but for native quadcores it looks a bit weak as Intel seem to focus on dual core with hyperthreading.
The Blue & White G3 towers were certainly designed from the get-go to be their professional workstation, no doubt about that. I think the reason people think the beige towers and desktop were originally consumer models was something said back then to this effect in a magazine.
The thing was the G3 was originally going to go into consumer class machines, but not in the incarnation they eventually were released in. They were going to be placed in logic boards similar to the ones they shipped in but in consumer level cases, like the 6500 tower and 6300 series desktop chassis. But early on Apple saw the superiority of the G3 and transitioned it to their more professional chassis, the 8600 and 7300 series chassis. The logic boards still reflect a transitional model (IDE drives) but had pro features like SCSI, 3 PCI slots, Personality card slot, decent graphics at the time, RAM up to 768MB, etc.
In a similar way the first PPC 6100-8100 were quadras with 601 PPC CPUs but still nubus cards and so on. The second generation of 601 & 604 had both modern PCI card and better cases.
So I hold the B&W G3 as the truly native G3 generation as I do the PCI boxes to be the truly native 601/604. The 7500 actually could hold 1 GB of RAM. I had one upgraded with a 200 MHz 604E running OS X