It looks like Apple will retire another obsolete piece of HW. After the floppy, CD/DVD, comes the tower case. The tower is a dinosaur! Long live the cube!
Of course it will. Just like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Oh, and non-removable batteries, discontinuation of the Macbook, the Xserves, removing DVD drives from the Mac mini, etc etc. According to messageboard commentators, every single one of these actions was supposed to be 'the undoing of Apple'. Thanks for your insight.
Of course it will. Just like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Oh, and non-removable batteries, discontinuation of the Macbook, the Xserves, removing DVD drives from the Mac mini, etc etc. According to messageboard commentators, every single one of these actions was supposed to be 'the undoing of Apple'. Thanks for your insight.
These things are not the same. DVD drives. Complete waste of space. I have not used one in the last 5 years. I'd much rather put an SSD/HDD in the valuable space that old rotating peace of plastic occupies.
I never complained about disruptive technology like iPhone, iPad. I'm not one of those PC guys not seeing the point. But of course neither do you, you are only parroting what you heard in forums over the years.
People like me who actually need Mac Pro class machine will look elsewhere if Apple stops making one. And that means those people will no longer be using OS X to do their work. And where the alpha geeks go, sheep follow in 5 - 10 years later.
well i dont know some people need to have big bulky equipment (or very expensive) to feel professionial. They might think the other stuff is toy equipment
I disagree. The real problem is that technology has changed. Towers were needed for their PCI slots and internal drive speeds (it was about speed rather than merely the ability to house the drives internally). My Pro Tools rig used to eat up four PCI slots and its own internal hard drive. Now, it just needs a firewire port (for the audio I/O), a USB port (for that frigging iLok dongle) and a few external drives (including backups).
What does one need a giant tower for that can't be better handled by external gear? The only thing a Mac Pro has going for it is processing power and RAM. Put that in a Mac Mini Pro.
What worries me is the phrase: "the consensus among sales executives". What makes Apple great is a focus on creating great products. A mess of external gear might offer the technology, but where is the elegance?
I would expect something insanely great like a wonderfully elegant stackable solution which is a modular Mac Pro at an affordable price. Or something like that. "Sales executives" are not going to come up with something wonderful like that. They just kill products based on what people do not want now, they don't invent what people are going to want tomorrow. Skating where the puck is now, that is.
Sales executives running Apple? That would quickly kill the soul of the machine.
BTW. Did anyone notice that Apple's VP line up has Scot Forstall as VP iOS, there is a hardware VP, but no OS X VP? Who is responsible for OS X these days? The janitor?
I haven't had a Mac tower since 2009, when I bought my current iMac. It took some time to get over my bias that the iMac was not a "pro-user" acceptable machine, but it truly is. It is hard for me to see returning to a tower--mainly due to cost and footprint.
Apple really hasn't had an affordable tower since the G4s. I had a graphite, quicksilver, and a wind tunnel (which I used for several years) and all of them were purchased new at the sub-$1500 mark. I think I held off with the G5 due to the price point and definitely did w/ the Mac Pro. When my wind tunnel's PMU started going bad, I decided to go with an iMac and haven't regretted it. With the increase in size and decrease in cost of hard drives, I found I didn't need to run 4 hard drives in a machine any longer.
Frankly, I thought the Cube was the best Power Mac produced and have always jonesed for one (and a NEXT cube as well). It was remarkable piece of engineering.
And, lastly, since getting and iPad last year and an iPad 2 this year, I use my iMac far less than I did. I use it only for business related stuff and do everythin else on the iPad.
These things are not the same. DVD drives. Complete waste of space. I have not used one in the last 5 years. I'd much rather put an SSD/HDD in the valuable space that old rotating peace of plastic occupies.
I never complained about disruptive technology like iPhone, iPad. I'm not one of those PC guys not seeing the point. But of course neither do you, you are only parroting what you heard in forums over the years.
People like me who actually need Mac Pro class machine will look elsewhere if Apple stops making one. And that means those people will no longer be using OS X to do their work. And where the alpha geeks go, sheep follow in 5 - 10 years later.
I don't see 'the point'? So tell me, who will 'the sheep' follow next? HP? Compaq? Dell? Apple didn't become a mainstream success because of their MacPros. They did it because of the strength of their consumer computer line, starting with the iMac. They garnered more mindshare with an mp3 player, not a computer. And again with a phone. You're telling me the 'sheep' (nice to know thats how you define Apple users, quite original) will drop Apple contingent on what they do with their Mac Pro line? You're delusional.
I have a Mac Pro with 12 cores and 32GB's of RAM. I use it to do the work of about 10 PC's. I run VMWare Fusion on it and can simulate an entire PC lab in this one box. i.e. Server 2008, Multiple Win7 clients, Ubuntu servers, etc. This is why I bought it.
If Apple discontinues the Mac Pro than they must make Lion run in VMWare's vSphere / ESX. This would allow the server crowd to use it like a virtual XServe. The workstation crowd can get a power HP workstation and run Lion at almost full bore.
I have thrown everything I can at this box and have yet had it slow down. It remained response even with about 8 Virtual Machines each with heavy loads plus Digital rendering humming way and Handbrake cranking 64bit using all remaining resources. It was still very responsive to loading web pages, etc.
So nice to have a machine faster than I am and that can do amazing things. Scientists, Programmers (big apps like Wolfram's Mathmatica), Engineers, CAD users, 3D Animation, etc. They all need the power of a Mac Pro. Video editors and photographers may not need it quite so much but they still like them.
This machine will last me at least another 5 years. Maybe much more. That's why they don't sell as many, they are too dang good!
Not worried about Thunderbolt support, there's not a big choice in accessories. I am looking forward to dropping in an eSATA PCIx card and plugging in a 5 bay external enclosure and using Ten's Compliment's Z-410 (ZFS for OS X) and doing that instead of a Thunderbolt drive. Cost quite a bit less and will be scalable fast storage. If Apple sells a Thunderbolt card, I would use it, but I think they need a Processor and chipset upgrade for it work. Short of the Promise drive array, I don't see other options and that solution is crazy expensive. For a few hundred bucks I can go the Z-410 route and switch to Thunderbolt later when it's more affordable.
I know. It looks like most people posting here and not caring don't actually do any work. They browse web pages (which can comfortably done on an iPad) and think this is all that can be done with a computer. If you are a software developer making software for various platforms, it it amazing how much more productive you can be if you have a powerful machine where you can quickly power up a VM with customer config, reproduce the problem and fix it, all from your workstation. Testing your software on supported platforms is so much easier when you can run 8 VMs with different OSes on your workstation, etc. Just to mention a few use case.
True all of this can be done on a PC, but some of us like having a great, usable OS and nice, well built hardware to do all this. I'll be really sad if Apple actually does this. This means end of Apple purchases for me really.
Apple, don't be stupid!!! You may not sell a lot of Mac Pros, but guess who's buying them:
>>> DEVELOPERS. And HIGH END USERS <<<<
Both of these groups are important to keep happy for the health and well-being of the Mac ecosystem. What are we supposed to build Mac apps on, iPhones?
Personally, I'd be fine with a less-nice case. I just want expandability and lots of fast CPUs. Or, let us boot Mac OS on generic PC hardware. That would be fine. Maybe you could re-start the licensing program, but only allow hardware to be made that doesn't overlap with Apple's offerings. This could be really great: more Mac options for users, and Apple could unload models that weren't profitable.
When all the drive bays and PCI Express slots in a Mac Pro are running at full speed, how much total bandwidth are we dealing with? Is a single 10 gigabit Thunderbolt connection enough to support all that bandwidth at once?
Also, the fans in the Mac Pro run very quiet even under heavy CPU load. You can't say the same for a Mac Mini or MacBook Pro.
I also find it contradictory that the same people who praise the iMac for being an all in one computer with little cable clutter are also the ones advocating stringing together a bunch of external devices rather than have a single expandable tower.
I don't see 'the point'? So tell me, who will 'the sheep' follow next? HP? Compaq? Dell? Apple didn't become a mainstream success because of their MacPros. They did it because of the strength of their consumer computer line, starting with the iMac. They garnered more mindshare with an mp3 player, not a computer. And again with a phone. You're telling me the 'sheep' (nice to know thats how you define Apple users, quite original) will drop Apple contingent on what they do with their Mac Pro line? You're delusional.
I make my living by developing software. I develop software for OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX and currently I can do all that from single Mac Pro. I can test it all on VMs, 8 in parallel in fact deployed on single Mac Pro. I actually need 30'' screen (which Apple by the way doesn't make any more and I still can't get over that either). If Apple stops making a machine of this class (which by the way is a lower end workstation, as far as workstations go), I will have to look elsewhere and that means I will no longer be OS X user either. If more people like me who are avid technical advocates of the platform, who know what we are talking about stop supporting and advocating the platform to our friends and family and anyone online who asks for an advice, and start telling a different story about Apple, then people who need more from their computer will actually think twice about what they buy. And you know price is always going to be against Apple.
There are plenty of choices in the PC world for machines made for doing actual work. I used to build my own and may have to resort to doing that again.
Hey apple, ditch the Xeon! some core 17 chips can run in 2 socket MOBOs, and can use non ECC ram and for Gods sake, just let your BIOS/EFI work with over teh counter Windows GPU cards...the best GPU in Macs is still at least on average 12-18 months behind windows workstations.
Then with the one chip model they could easily get the price down to $1000-1200
How silly not to take the current weak economy as a factor affecting weak sales numbers for these high-end workstation? My 1st-gen Intel tower at work is still running flawlessly after 4-yrs. This is with minimal IT support, what a workhorse! I see more problems with co-workers newer iMacs. In the last 4-yrs, we spent more money upgrading Adobe CS suites than the original price of this tower!
I will say this, IF they lower their prices, settle for less profit margin and smaller form factor. There is no reason to think why this product line can not sustain itself with enough demands.
Comments
Apple needs to stop acting like a small start-up
They're acting more like prima donnas, IMHO.
TBM
They're acting more like prima donnas, IMHO.
They need to keep acting like a small startup!
this will be the undoing of Apple.
Of course it will. Just like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Oh, and non-removable batteries, discontinuation of the Macbook, the Xserves, removing DVD drives from the Mac mini, etc etc. According to messageboard commentators, every single one of these actions was supposed to be 'the undoing of Apple'. Thanks for your insight.
Of course it will. Just like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Oh, and non-removable batteries, discontinuation of the Macbook, the Xserves, removing DVD drives from the Mac mini, etc etc. According to messageboard commentators, every single one of these actions was supposed to be 'the undoing of Apple'. Thanks for your insight.
These things are not the same. DVD drives. Complete waste of space. I have not used one in the last 5 years. I'd much rather put an SSD/HDD in the valuable space that old rotating peace of plastic occupies.
I never complained about disruptive technology like iPhone, iPad. I'm not one of those PC guys not seeing the point. But of course neither do you, you are only parroting what you heard in forums over the years.
People like me who actually need Mac Pro class machine will look elsewhere if Apple stops making one. And that means those people will no longer be using OS X to do their work. And where the alpha geeks go, sheep follow in 5 - 10 years later.
I disagree. The real problem is that technology has changed. Towers were needed for their PCI slots and internal drive speeds (it was about speed rather than merely the ability to house the drives internally). My Pro Tools rig used to eat up four PCI slots and its own internal hard drive. Now, it just needs a firewire port (for the audio I/O), a USB port (for that frigging iLok dongle) and a few external drives (including backups).
What does one need a giant tower for that can't be better handled by external gear? The only thing a Mac Pro has going for it is processing power and RAM. Put that in a Mac Mini Pro.
What worries me is the phrase: "the consensus among sales executives". What makes Apple great is a focus on creating great products. A mess of external gear might offer the technology, but where is the elegance?
I would expect something insanely great like a wonderfully elegant stackable solution which is a modular Mac Pro at an affordable price. Or something like that. "Sales executives" are not going to come up with something wonderful like that. They just kill products based on what people do not want now, they don't invent what people are going to want tomorrow. Skating where the puck is now, that is.
Sales executives running Apple? That would quickly kill the soul of the machine.
BTW. Did anyone notice that Apple's VP line up has Scot Forstall as VP iOS, there is a hardware VP, but no OS X VP? Who is responsible for OS X these days? The janitor?
Apple really hasn't had an affordable tower since the G4s. I had a graphite, quicksilver, and a wind tunnel (which I used for several years) and all of them were purchased new at the sub-$1500 mark. I think I held off with the G5 due to the price point and definitely did w/ the Mac Pro. When my wind tunnel's PMU started going bad, I decided to go with an iMac and haven't regretted it. With the increase in size and decrease in cost of hard drives, I found I didn't need to run 4 hard drives in a machine any longer.
Frankly, I thought the Cube was the best Power Mac produced and have always jonesed for one (and a NEXT cube as well). It was remarkable piece of engineering.
And, lastly, since getting and iPad last year and an iPad 2 this year, I use my iMac far less than I did. I use it only for business related stuff and do everythin else on the iPad.
These things are not the same. DVD drives. Complete waste of space. I have not used one in the last 5 years. I'd much rather put an SSD/HDD in the valuable space that old rotating peace of plastic occupies.
I never complained about disruptive technology like iPhone, iPad. I'm not one of those PC guys not seeing the point. But of course neither do you, you are only parroting what you heard in forums over the years.
People like me who actually need Mac Pro class machine will look elsewhere if Apple stops making one. And that means those people will no longer be using OS X to do their work. And where the alpha geeks go, sheep follow in 5 - 10 years later.
I don't see 'the point'? So tell me, who will 'the sheep' follow next? HP? Compaq? Dell? Apple didn't become a mainstream success because of their MacPros. They did it because of the strength of their consumer computer line, starting with the iMac. They garnered more mindshare with an mp3 player, not a computer. And again with a phone. You're telling me the 'sheep' (nice to know thats how you define Apple users, quite original) will drop Apple contingent on what they do with their Mac Pro line? You're delusional.
I have a Mac Pro with 12 cores and 32GB's of RAM. I use it to do the work of about 10 PC's. I run VMWare Fusion on it and can simulate an entire PC lab in this one box. i.e. Server 2008, Multiple Win7 clients, Ubuntu servers, etc. This is why I bought it.
If Apple discontinues the Mac Pro than they must make Lion run in VMWare's vSphere / ESX. This would allow the server crowd to use it like a virtual XServe. The workstation crowd can get a power HP workstation and run Lion at almost full bore.
I have thrown everything I can at this box and have yet had it slow down. It remained response even with about 8 Virtual Machines each with heavy loads plus Digital rendering humming way and Handbrake cranking 64bit using all remaining resources. It was still very responsive to loading web pages, etc.
So nice to have a machine faster than I am and that can do amazing things. Scientists, Programmers (big apps like Wolfram's Mathmatica), Engineers, CAD users, 3D Animation, etc. They all need the power of a Mac Pro. Video editors and photographers may not need it quite so much but they still like them.
This machine will last me at least another 5 years. Maybe much more. That's why they don't sell as many, they are too dang good!
Not worried about Thunderbolt support, there's not a big choice in accessories. I am looking forward to dropping in an eSATA PCIx card and plugging in a 5 bay external enclosure and using Ten's Compliment's Z-410 (ZFS for OS X) and doing that instead of a Thunderbolt drive. Cost quite a bit less and will be scalable fast storage. If Apple sells a Thunderbolt card, I would use it, but I think they need a Processor and chipset upgrade for it work. Short of the Promise drive array, I don't see other options and that solution is crazy expensive. For a few hundred bucks I can go the Z-410 route and switch to Thunderbolt later when it's more affordable.
I know. It looks like most people posting here and not caring don't actually do any work. They browse web pages (which can comfortably done on an iPad) and think this is all that can be done with a computer. If you are a software developer making software for various platforms, it it amazing how much more productive you can be if you have a powerful machine where you can quickly power up a VM with customer config, reproduce the problem and fix it, all from your workstation. Testing your software on supported platforms is so much easier when you can run 8 VMs with different OSes on your workstation, etc. Just to mention a few use case.
True all of this can be done on a PC, but some of us like having a great, usable OS and nice, well built hardware to do all this. I'll be really sad if Apple actually does this. This means end of Apple purchases for me really.
>>> DEVELOPERS. And HIGH END USERS <<<<
Both of these groups are important to keep happy for the health and well-being of the Mac ecosystem. What are we supposed to build Mac apps on, iPhones?
Personally, I'd be fine with a less-nice case. I just want expandability and lots of fast CPUs. Or, let us boot Mac OS on generic PC hardware. That would be fine. Maybe you could re-start the licensing program, but only allow hardware to be made that doesn't overlap with Apple's offerings. This could be really great: more Mac options for users, and Apple could unload models that weren't profitable.
Also, the fans in the Mac Pro run very quiet even under heavy CPU load. You can't say the same for a Mac Mini or MacBook Pro.
I also find it contradictory that the same people who praise the iMac for being an all in one computer with little cable clutter are also the ones advocating stringing together a bunch of external devices rather than have a single expandable tower.
Meet The Developers: Saulius Dailide of Pixelmator
I don't see 'the point'? So tell me, who will 'the sheep' follow next? HP? Compaq? Dell? Apple didn't become a mainstream success because of their MacPros. They did it because of the strength of their consumer computer line, starting with the iMac. They garnered more mindshare with an mp3 player, not a computer. And again with a phone. You're telling me the 'sheep' (nice to know thats how you define Apple users, quite original) will drop Apple contingent on what they do with their Mac Pro line? You're delusional.
I make my living by developing software. I develop software for OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX and currently I can do all that from single Mac Pro. I can test it all on VMs, 8 in parallel in fact deployed on single Mac Pro. I actually need 30'' screen (which Apple by the way doesn't make any more and I still can't get over that either). If Apple stops making a machine of this class (which by the way is a lower end workstation, as far as workstations go), I will have to look elsewhere and that means I will no longer be OS X user either. If more people like me who are avid technical advocates of the platform, who know what we are talking about stop supporting and advocating the platform to our friends and family and anyone online who asks for an advice, and start telling a different story about Apple, then people who need more from their computer will actually think twice about what they buy. And you know price is always going to be against Apple.
There are plenty of choices in the PC world for machines made for doing actual work. I used to build my own and may have to resort to doing that again.
Then with the one chip model they could easily get the price down to $1000-1200
You mean almost like the 27" iMac?
Nope. I do not want to throw away a perfectly working display every three years. Protect the Earth!
Nope. I do not want to throw away a perfectly working display every three years.
Which is why you keep it and keep using it as a display alone?
Nope. I do not want to throw away a perfectly working display every three years. Protect the Earth!
This is apple you are talking about! Try changing the battery in your iphone or macbook!
Apple: Think Different; fuck the earth!
I will say this, IF they lower their prices, settle for less profit margin and smaller form factor. There is no reason to think why this product line can not sustain itself with enough demands.