I thought the pros referred to beyond-HD resolutions as 2K or 4K ...
"For example, 2K reference resolution is 2048×1536 pixels, whereas 4K reference resolution is 4096×3072 pixels. Nevertheless, 2K may also refer to resolutions like 2048×1556, 2048×1080 or 2048×858 pixels, whereas 4K may also refer to 4096×3112, 3996×2160 or 4096×2048 resolution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution
"Originally Posted by hmurchison
My guess...there's a 30" or larger Quad HD monitor coming.
3840 x 2160"
So that would be more or less a 4K-resolution 16:9 monitor.
Probably my biggest compaint with the Mac Pro is that they put a single processor MB in the case if you order the single processor system. No option to add the second processor and seriously bump the power down the road. This was seriously annoying to me, but it didn't prevent me from buying the system. Oh well.
I used to feel this way too until I found out that the single processor system uses the i5 which cannot be used as a dual processor. Unfortunately, Apple still insists on having a huge profit margin on these machines of almost $1000. If they would drop the price on these to $1999, I would have scooped one up.
That's the idea. They don't want you buying one of these. They want you buying the beloved iMac which better matches their preferences for an integrated device and with has coincidentally also has a shorter useful lifespan the Mac Pro.
I thought the pros referred to beyond-HD resolutions as 2K or 4K ...
"For example, 2K reference resolution is 2048×1536 pixels, whereas 4K reference resolution is 4096×3072 pixels. Nevertheless, 2K may also refer to resolutions like 2048×1556, 2048×1080 or 2048×858 pixels, whereas 4K may also refer to 4096×3112, 3996×2160 or 4096×2048 resolution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution
"Originally Posted by hmurchison
My guess...there's a 30" or larger Quad HD monitor coming.
3840 x 2160"
So that would be more or less a 4K-resolution 16:9 monitor.
With LED-backlighting?
I agree. I think there will be "true" 2 and 4k monitors but the more affordable options will be the Quad 720 (like we have with the iMac) and eventually Quad 1080 monitors.
The coolant leaked out of my Dual 2.5 G5... on mine and as it turns out many other aging G5s.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OzExige
A new DIX-CORE Mac Pro x 2 = 24 threads
Hard to imagine the outright speed of such a beast especially if anyone can afford to fill it with 64G of RAM.
I think my major hurdle will be the price, however, (drawing a fairly long bow here) maybe the iPad entry price is a portend of Apple's 2010 pricing? But I doubt it very much.
My Dual 2.5 G5 is starting to show its age in many ways but credit where it's due - its never missed a beat. You gotta luv them Apples
Yeah Apple has the best cases in the industry. Why the hell doesn't any other PC have handles!?
Why doesn't it have wheels? Who wants to get a workout lifting handles all the time. I've never understood this. Actually I just stuck some wheels on the bottom of my 08 MP. So much easier to slide in and out.
Intel's CEO stated that PCs would have this technology "about a year from now" at CES last month. Since he didn't say this year or in less than a year we should probably read that as between 1-1.5 years. We should also assume that is for the first logic board to get it, not for it to become a standard on certain class of machines.
While the Mac Pro is a great fit for this tech it's hard to tell where Apple will be with new tech. They aren't usually the first to use it, just the first to make it standard across all their devices. On the other hand, they do have a special partnership with intel.
Intel's CEO stated that PCs would have this technology "about a year from now" at CES last month. Since he didn't say this year or in less than a year we should probably read that as between 1-1.5 years. We should also assume that is for the first logic board to get it, not for it to become a standard on certain class of machines.
While the Mac Pro is a great fit for this tech it's hard to tell where Apple will be with new tech. They aren't usually the first to use it, just the first to make it standard across all their devices. On the other hand, they do have a special partnership with intel.
From what I've read, Apple has some role in developing Light Peak.
I can't imagine Light peak being deployed in Macs until there are devices which support it.
From what I've read, Apple has some role in developing Light Peak.
I can't imagine Light peak being deployed in Macs until there are devices which support it.
Apple delivered the Bondi iMac with USB only before there was a large market of support. I fondly remember being extremely happy about the Epson 740i because it was the first widely available USB printer with Mac support.
Light Peak ports have to hit the computer before vendors are going to support it. That being said I don't see Light Peak enabled Macs until say January of next year.
Apple delivered the Bondi iMac with USB only before there was a large market of support. I fondly remember being extremely happy about the Epson 740i because it was the first widely available USB printer with Mac support.
Light Peak ports have to hit the computer before vendors are going to support it. That being said I don't see Light Peak enabled Macs until say January of next year.
YES, it is a bit of a Catch 22 as far as Light Peak goes. I could see PCI cards along with LP devices appearing first, THEN Apple adding them to Macs. Sort of the way USB 3 is beginning to appear... a few external devices and PCI cards.
As far as the original iMac goes, there were USB ports on some PC, but wide adoption didn't really kick in until Apple and the iMac legitimized USB for a broader market.
I know it's been asked thousand times before, but dear Apple – please stop insist only using the Xeon processors from Intel!
I hear a lot of whining (sorry to single this comment out), but little understanding of how Apple has segmented their product line.
The first thing you must understand is that Apple caters a small share of the population:
21% HP (18M machines)
13% Acer (11.4M machines)
12% Dell (10.6M machines)
9% Lenovo (7.8M machines)
6% Toshiba (4.8M machines)
Apple shipped only 3.36M machines in the same time period giving them less than 4%. There is another 96% which constrains what Apple can do.
The second thing you must understand is that Apple MUST differentiate their machines. This means that Apple has much higher NRE costs and suffers from worse economies of scale by not repackaging 3rd party motherboards, etc. Apple cannot drop prices because of their NRE costs and shareholders expectations of margin.
The result of these two constraints is that Apple cannot serve everyone. There are only a few target audiences which are large enough and wealthy enough to target. Hence we have the following divisions:
* MacBook: the gateway drug for eventual MBP migration
* MBP: 'normal mobile users'
* Mini: serves as both a low end server and as a gateway drug for iMac migration
* iMac: 'normal desktop users'
* Mac Pro: graphics professionals, software developers, scientists
* xServe: data centers of Apple-centric businesses
And some key populations that are not served by these offers:
* Financially constrained consumers: there will _always_ be cheaper options from the other 96% of the market.
* Gamers: game titles and graphics cards are available on Windows first
* Heavy CPU users: For users needing serious horsepower (e.g. render farms, cloud computing), the requirements vary and the population just isn't large enough for Apple to address.
If you're whining, I'm sorry to say that you're not a member of one of the target populations. Either that or you just like to whine.
What does this all mean for the Mac Pro? Because the heavy CPU users will eventually migrate to Linux or Windows, the Mac Pro is not addressing a server market. It must instead address the needs of multiple, small markets which need more CPU than available in the iMac but less than would mandate a migration to Xeon MP machines. This is a delicate juggling balance and the Mac Pro represents a compromise solution.
Reverse engineering the Mac Pro, we can say a few things about this population. Errors are costly and ECC memory is a hard requirement (only Xeon supports ECC). Disk capacity and speed are important (Apple makes a RAID card and provides multiple SATA channels for internal drives). Expandability through graphic cards, data collection cards, etc. is a requirement.
Looking forward, we can make a few predictions. There will be SATA 6 in the next update. There could be special expansion bays for SSDs. There will likely be a single processor option, again allowing users to decide between faster execution of fewer threads or slower execution of more threads. The form factor cannot dramatically change.
It works better than I thought it would, but still not without (rather minor) issues here and there and I had to spend quite some time to get things working.
I fully understand that Apple consciously has decided not to offer a wide amount of hardware options. But I still think it's sad when I see what they could have had ? especially when ?a bunch of hobbyists? (the Hackintosh community) can make Mac OS X run pretty well on generic PC hardware.
I've never really understood this talk about ?Apple isn't into gaming?.
A computer that's good for gaming is also good for other things, especially now with OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch.
Anyway, I appreciate your post and I guess what you say is pretty spot on to Apple's thinking.
It works better than I thought it would, but still not without (rather minor) issues here and there and I had to spend quite some time to get things working.
<snip>
I fully understand that Apple consciously has decided not to offer a wide amount of hardware options. But I still think it's sad when I see what they could have had ? especially when ?a bunch of hobbyists? (the Hackintosh community) can make Mac OS X run pretty well on generic PC hardware.
Glad to hear you got it working. I don't doubt that Apple is well aware of the Hackintosh market and is even happy to see it succeed...within limits. If the Hackintosh owner is someone who does not fall into one of the target segments and who would likely turn to an alternative platform, then every Hackintosh is a net gain for OS X, both in terms of market share and creative energy. But if the Hackintosh effort cuts into the target markets, you can be sure that Apple will take steps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by a Martin
I've never really understood this talk about ?Apple isn't into gaming?.
A computer that's good for gaming is also good for other things, especially now with OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch.
The statement is probably more historical than current. When the Macintosh was launched, its primary competitor wasn't the IBM PC but the Apple II. The game market on the Apple II was well developed and almost certainly the biggest among PCs. It may even have been larger than the Atari console. In releasing Macintosh, Apple needed to differentiate the product and chose to make it more 'serious'. A better statement is that 'Apple wasn't into gaming on the Macintosh'. Today, I would say that Apple IS interested but that their 4% of the market and the rise of excellent consoles means that 'games just aren't into Apple'.
Your comments on OpenCL and GCD are worth further discussion.
GCD is a programming technique for packaging up instructions for execution on multiple cores. It is a general programming tool focused utilizing the explosion in available cores. Until recently, none of the consumer products had more than 2 simultaneous threads of execution and this wasn't a serious issue. Today, even the upper-end iMacs will support 8 simultaneous. Single threaded code doesn't encourage users to buy newer and shinier multicore machines, hence the need for GCD.
OpenCL is interesting. It promises to reuse graphic processors for general computing tasks. In non-gaming use, most of the time the screen is largely static and the graphics processor has little to do. OpenCL would repurpose the graphics processor allowing the main processor to do less. This helps with energy management (i.e. longer battery life) and works in combination with the boost technologies in Nehalem series processors to provide faster single threaded code. Otherwise, there is limited benefit for the desktop. The rare code, such as Photoshop filters, will definitely benefit but others are unable to max out existing CPU. I see almost zero use of OpenCL today. We may expect to see more use of OpenCL in OS X system calls, but I am skeptical that code elsewhere will benefit enough to justify the higher development costs.
But will Apple deliver a monitor to compliment the set up?
You never know with Apple.
Price. Adopts monotone voice: 'Well, Mac Pro, due a price cut.'
If it doesn't? *Shrugs.
Buy an 'April' (?) refresh iMac quad core with 27 inch monitor and forget about the fact you ever wanted a 'Pro.'
I used to wish Apple would produce an affordable mid-tower like Apple produced an affordable Mac Book Pro. A single six core midtower for £1200 would be an ok price with a decent Ati Card. As opposed to paying £1899 for an entry tower (chokes, coughs...)
I like what the iMac's monitor has done (on the 27 inch) for value to the desktop. But seriously, the Mac Mini is a joke at £500 and the Mac Pro at £1899 is laughable. Both machines are out of touch. It's hardly surprising that the iMac is leading the desktop sales charge.
Still, it's Steve's company. Ironic considering Apple want to get the iPad 'into as many hands as possible' with its ground breaking price of £387 (UK?) ((When I was expecting £600-800!))
It seems like Apple have given up the price battle on their computers. But it's intriguing how their focus on the '3rd Great Age' has given us competitively priced products like the iPod, iPhone and the iPad. It's in sharp contrast to their computers.
Comments
My guess...there's a 30" or larger Quad HD monitor coming.
3840 x 2160
forgive if this is a stupid question
but what does "Quad HD" mean in this context?
forgive if this is a stupid question
but what does "Quad HD" mean in this context?
Don't feel bad, I was wondering the same thing.
forgive if this is a stupid question
but what does "Quad HD" mean in this context?
seems to be 4x the resolution of High Definition video, 1920x1080.
So Quad HD would be like 4 HD monitors arranged 2x2.
"For example, 2K reference resolution is 2048×1536 pixels, whereas 4K reference resolution is 4096×3072 pixels. Nevertheless, 2K may also refer to resolutions like 2048×1556, 2048×1080 or 2048×858 pixels, whereas 4K may also refer to 4096×3112, 3996×2160 or 4096×2048 resolution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution
"Originally Posted by hmurchison
My guess...there's a 30" or larger Quad HD monitor coming.
3840 x 2160"
So that would be more or less a 4K-resolution 16:9 monitor.
With LED-backlighting?
Probably my biggest compaint with the Mac Pro is that they put a single processor MB in the case if you order the single processor system. No option to add the second processor and seriously bump the power down the road. This was seriously annoying to me, but it didn't prevent me from buying the system. Oh well.
I used to feel this way too until I found out that the single processor system uses the i5 which cannot be used as a dual processor. Unfortunately, Apple still insists on having a huge profit margin on these machines of almost $1000. If they would drop the price on these to $1999, I would have scooped one up.
I thought the pros referred to beyond-HD resolutions as 2K or 4K ...
"For example, 2K reference resolution is 2048×1536 pixels, whereas 4K reference resolution is 4096×3072 pixels. Nevertheless, 2K may also refer to resolutions like 2048×1556, 2048×1080 or 2048×858 pixels, whereas 4K may also refer to 4096×3112, 3996×2160 or 4096×2048 resolution." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution
"Originally Posted by hmurchison
My guess...there's a 30" or larger Quad HD monitor coming.
3840 x 2160"
So that would be more or less a 4K-resolution 16:9 monitor.
With LED-backlighting?
I agree. I think there will be "true" 2 and 4k monitors but the more affordable options will be the Quad 720 (like we have with the iMac) and eventually Quad 1080 monitors.
A new DIX-CORE Mac Pro x 2 = 24 threads
Hard to imagine the outright speed of such a beast especially if anyone can afford to fill it with 64G of RAM.
I think my major hurdle will be the price, however, (drawing a fairly long bow here) maybe the iPad entry price is a portend of Apple's 2010 pricing? But I doubt it very much.
My Dual 2.5 G5 is starting to show its age in many ways but credit where it's due - its never missed a beat. You gotta luv them Apples
Yeah Apple has the best cases in the industry. Why the hell doesn't any other PC have handles!?
Why doesn't it have wheels? Who wants to get a workout lifting handles all the time. I've never understood this. Actually I just stuck some wheels on the bottom of my 08 MP. So much easier to slide in and out.
Is there even a 1% possibility of Light peak appearance in the next MP?
Sure, why not.
Is there even a 1% possibility of Light peak appearance in the next MP?
Absolutely not. It's far from being ready.Intel's CEO stated that PCs would have this technology "about a year from now" at CES last month. Since he didn't say this year or in less than a year we should probably read that as between 1-1.5 years. We should also assume that is for the first logic board to get it, not for it to become a standard on certain class of machines.
While the Mac Pro is a great fit for this tech it's hard to tell where Apple will be with new tech. They aren't usually the first to use it, just the first to make it standard across all their devices. On the other hand, they do have a special partnership with intel.
Absolutely not. It's far from being ready.Intel's CEO stated that PCs would have this technology "about a year from now" at CES last month. Since he didn't say this year or in less than a year we should probably read that as between 1-1.5 years. We should also assume that is for the first logic board to get it, not for it to become a standard on certain class of machines.
While the Mac Pro is a great fit for this tech it's hard to tell where Apple will be with new tech. They aren't usually the first to use it, just the first to make it standard across all their devices. On the other hand, they do have a special partnership with intel.
From what I've read, Apple has some role in developing Light Peak.
I can't imagine Light peak being deployed in Macs until there are devices which support it.
From what I've read, Apple has some role in developing Light Peak.
I can't imagine Light peak being deployed in Macs until there are devices which support it.
Apple delivered the Bondi iMac with USB only before there was a large market of support. I fondly remember being extremely happy about the Epson 740i because it was the first widely available USB printer with Mac support.
Light Peak ports have to hit the computer before vendors are going to support it. That being said I don't see Light Peak enabled Macs until say January of next year.
Apple delivered the Bondi iMac with USB only before there was a large market of support. I fondly remember being extremely happy about the Epson 740i because it was the first widely available USB printer with Mac support.
Light Peak ports have to hit the computer before vendors are going to support it. That being said I don't see Light Peak enabled Macs until say January of next year.
YES, it is a bit of a Catch 22 as far as Light Peak goes. I could see PCI cards along with LP devices appearing first, THEN Apple adding them to Macs. Sort of the way USB 3 is beginning to appear... a few external devices and PCI cards.
As far as the original iMac goes, there were USB ports on some PC, but wide adoption didn't really kick in until Apple and the iMac legitimized USB for a broader market.
I know it's been asked thousand times before, but dear Apple – please stop insist only using the Xeon processors from Intel!
I hear a lot of whining (sorry to single this comment out), but little understanding of how Apple has segmented their product line.
The first thing you must understand is that Apple caters a small share of the population:
21% HP (18M machines)
13% Acer (11.4M machines)
12% Dell (10.6M machines)
9% Lenovo (7.8M machines)
6% Toshiba (4.8M machines)
Apple shipped only 3.36M machines in the same time period giving them less than 4%. There is another 96% which constrains what Apple can do.
The second thing you must understand is that Apple MUST differentiate their machines. This means that Apple has much higher NRE costs and suffers from worse economies of scale by not repackaging 3rd party motherboards, etc. Apple cannot drop prices because of their NRE costs and shareholders expectations of margin.
The result of these two constraints is that Apple cannot serve everyone. There are only a few target audiences which are large enough and wealthy enough to target. Hence we have the following divisions:
* MacBook: the gateway drug for eventual MBP migration
* MBP: 'normal mobile users'
* Mini: serves as both a low end server and as a gateway drug for iMac migration
* iMac: 'normal desktop users'
* Mac Pro: graphics professionals, software developers, scientists
* xServe: data centers of Apple-centric businesses
And some key populations that are not served by these offers:
* Financially constrained consumers: there will _always_ be cheaper options from the other 96% of the market.
* Gamers: game titles and graphics cards are available on Windows first
* Heavy CPU users: For users needing serious horsepower (e.g. render farms, cloud computing), the requirements vary and the population just isn't large enough for Apple to address.
If you're whining, I'm sorry to say that you're not a member of one of the target populations. Either that or you just like to whine.
What does this all mean for the Mac Pro? Because the heavy CPU users will eventually migrate to Linux or Windows, the Mac Pro is not addressing a server market. It must instead address the needs of multiple, small markets which need more CPU than available in the iMac but less than would mandate a migration to Xeon MP machines. This is a delicate juggling balance and the Mac Pro represents a compromise solution.
Reverse engineering the Mac Pro, we can say a few things about this population. Errors are costly and ECC memory is a hard requirement (only Xeon supports ECC). Disk capacity and speed are important (Apple makes a RAID card and provides multiple SATA channels for internal drives). Expandability through graphic cards, data collection cards, etc. is a requirement.
Looking forward, we can make a few predictions. There will be SATA 6 in the next update. There could be special expansion bays for SSDs. There will likely be a single processor option, again allowing users to decide between faster execution of fewer threads or slower execution of more threads. The form factor cannot dramatically change.
Still whining? Try a Hackintosh.
Still whining? Try a Hackintosh.
Guess what?
I already did.
It works better than I thought it would, but still not without (rather minor) issues here and there and I had to spend quite some time to get things working.
I fully understand that Apple consciously has decided not to offer a wide amount of hardware options. But I still think it's sad when I see what they could have had ? especially when ?a bunch of hobbyists? (the Hackintosh community) can make Mac OS X run pretty well on generic PC hardware.
I've never really understood this talk about ?Apple isn't into gaming?.
A computer that's good for gaming is also good for other things, especially now with OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch.
Anyway, I appreciate your post and I guess what you say is pretty spot on to Apple's thinking.
It works better than I thought it would, but still not without (rather minor) issues here and there and I had to spend quite some time to get things working.
<snip>
I fully understand that Apple consciously has decided not to offer a wide amount of hardware options. But I still think it's sad when I see what they could have had ? especially when ?a bunch of hobbyists? (the Hackintosh community) can make Mac OS X run pretty well on generic PC hardware.
Glad to hear you got it working. I don't doubt that Apple is well aware of the Hackintosh market and is even happy to see it succeed...within limits. If the Hackintosh owner is someone who does not fall into one of the target segments and who would likely turn to an alternative platform, then every Hackintosh is a net gain for OS X, both in terms of market share and creative energy. But if the Hackintosh effort cuts into the target markets, you can be sure that Apple will take steps.
I've never really understood this talk about ?Apple isn't into gaming?.
A computer that's good for gaming is also good for other things, especially now with OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch.
The statement is probably more historical than current. When the Macintosh was launched, its primary competitor wasn't the IBM PC but the Apple II. The game market on the Apple II was well developed and almost certainly the biggest among PCs. It may even have been larger than the Atari console. In releasing Macintosh, Apple needed to differentiate the product and chose to make it more 'serious'. A better statement is that 'Apple wasn't into gaming on the Macintosh'. Today, I would say that Apple IS interested but that their 4% of the market and the rise of excellent consoles means that 'games just aren't into Apple'.
Your comments on OpenCL and GCD are worth further discussion.
GCD is a programming technique for packaging up instructions for execution on multiple cores. It is a general programming tool focused utilizing the explosion in available cores. Until recently, none of the consumer products had more than 2 simultaneous threads of execution and this wasn't a serious issue. Today, even the upper-end iMacs will support 8 simultaneous. Single threaded code doesn't encourage users to buy newer and shinier multicore machines, hence the need for GCD.
OpenCL is interesting. It promises to reuse graphic processors for general computing tasks. In non-gaming use, most of the time the screen is largely static and the graphics processor has little to do. OpenCL would repurpose the graphics processor allowing the main processor to do less. This helps with energy management (i.e. longer battery life) and works in combination with the boost technologies in Nehalem series processors to provide faster single threaded code. Otherwise, there is limited benefit for the desktop. The rare code, such as Photoshop filters, will definitely benefit but others are unable to max out existing CPU. I see almost zero use of OpenCL today. We may expect to see more use of OpenCL in OS X system calls, but I am skeptical that code elsewhere will benefit enough to justify the higher development costs.
Quite the monster.
Along with a beefy Ati Card? Sounds juicy.
But will Apple deliver a monitor to compliment the set up?
You never know with Apple.
Price. Adopts monotone voice: 'Well, Mac Pro, due a price cut.'
If it doesn't? *Shrugs.
Buy an 'April' (?) refresh iMac quad core with 27 inch monitor and forget about the fact you ever wanted a 'Pro.'
I used to wish Apple would produce an affordable mid-tower like Apple produced an affordable Mac Book Pro. A single six core midtower for £1200 would be an ok price with a decent Ati Card. As opposed to paying £1899 for an entry tower (chokes, coughs...)
I like what the iMac's monitor has done (on the 27 inch) for value to the desktop. But seriously, the Mac Mini is a joke at £500 and the Mac Pro at £1899 is laughable. Both machines are out of touch. It's hardly surprising that the iMac is leading the desktop sales charge.
Still, it's Steve's company. Ironic considering Apple want to get the iPad 'into as many hands as possible' with its ground breaking price of £387 (UK?) ((When I was expecting £600-800!))
It seems like Apple have given up the price battle on their computers. But it's intriguing how their focus on the '3rd Great Age' has given us competitively priced products like the iPod, iPhone and the iPad. It's in sharp contrast to their computers.
Lemon Bon Bon.