My church recently did a did a big A/V build out. We have a couple of Mac Pros in the video suite with various I/O cards - for video and balanced audio, and a Mac Pro in the record suite with a ProTools PCI card using both Ethernet connectors - one for network and one to connect to a C|24 desk, and with extra internal hard drives for recording up to 128 channels of audio at the same time. We have a few iMacs floating around to run Pro Presenter on in the sanctuary.
As others have pointed out, there are real applications for big beefy towers. The CPU and GPU power are not necessarily as important as lots of internal bus speed and expansion. Is this a large market? No. Is this a prestigious market? Yes. There's not many "Avatar" level movies made or albums produced, but being able to use those pros using your machines for real heavy-lifting in marketing material seems like it ought to pay dividends in the sales of the consumer class machines.
One of Apple's claims to fame is OS X and it's claim to be UNIX under the hood with industrial strength OS technology. If you have no industrial strength machines doing industrial strength jobs, the claim that your OS is awesome doesn't hold much weight.
But, it's now Apple, Inc. not Apple Computer, Inc. so maybe they are fully embracing the consumer electronics moniker and abandoning the serious computer market.
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 thought this was funny too. Also the suggestions about connecting a bunch of minis together if you want extra power. Lol.
Apple must decide if the prestige is worth the effort to continue to manufacture the Mac Pro. I'm not in this market segment and never will be. I can't cry for its demise or cheer for a newer model.
I like the Mac Mini but it costs too much for what is inside it. I've got a 2008 Mac Book and it is acting up lately due to a previous problem caused by the battery expanding inside the case. I'm not sure I want to purchase another Mac computer.
I would have bought a new iPod Touch if it would have been upgraded with the new A5 and had some software updates. Instead the only upgrade or change was the availability of the white color option. My main hope was for a larger screen along with the processor upgrade. Apple gave me a big disappointment. If the rumors of a seven inch screen device are true then it might be worth a look when it comes out. Otherwise I'll be switching to a different brand of laptop and putting a version of Linux on it.
Mac Pros are no longer a significant part of Apple's business, but any of you who think they are not profitable are out of your gourds.
Of course they are profitable, to the tune of at least 40% margin. Even though the product might be a small part of their revenue, its a 40% margin they would be fools to hand over to anybody else. when they can let the Mac Pro line just cruise along making its 40% nut every month.
Only when the 40% margin begins to look like not enough to support the Mac Pro line will this become a consideration.
And even then, they'll probably revamp the chassis to accommodate a smaller footprint and let it go on another ten years.
It is the toys, dummies. It is the realization of your dream on your dream machine that brought them here. Whether a Mac Pro, iPod or Mini, each toy is simply the best of its kind, making your dreams come true every day. As long as Apple engineers are using Mac Pros, they will be available.
Over $1k cheaper to get the iMac, you'll have more storage, a better processor and videocard and you also get TB. This is why the Mac Pro is looking like a less likely keeper.
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.
They have no idea what professionals actually do with computers.
Can you help satisfy my own curiosity? Did you expand your own Mac Pro? If so, in what way? Did you add additional video cards? More disk drives? I'm curious as to how many people might have bought a Pro - just in case, but no case as arisen for the need to expand.
I upgraded the RAM to 12GB
I have a total of five drives, two of them SSDs (one for Lion and one for Windows 7)
I have a Blu-ray BURNER
I added a USB card because this thing only has three ports on the back
I have a Matrox CompressHD card, which encodes HD at about 5X real time when making videos for BD, youtube, and the iPhone.
I haven't yet had the opportunity to read all posts in this thread, however, just to add some perspective, this is the performance of my 2 year old iMac under Mathematica, which is quite a demanding program. Of course, this doesn't talk to graphics capability but underlying math processing is tested and of course, doesn't address concerns about expandability etc. I had always expected to be using a Mac Pro for this work but don't believe that it was necessary to look beyond the iMac. (I have a bigger version of the second image if anyone is interested.)
Thunderbolt allows EVERYTHING to be external. Storage, GPU, Networking. Why stuff it all in a huge and expensive box?
Because GPU over Thunderbolt would be slow. How about multiple GPUs? Thunderbolt provides a couple of 4x PCIe lanes, not the 16x that just one GPU requires. Storage, networking, fine. GPU? No.
Who are these people that actually WANT a bunch of external devices cluttering their desks?
Who are the IT people that actually want computers that you have to take the screen apart to service? Or that you need 'spudgers' to open? Or that have next to no serviceable/replaceable parts?
I understand the people who only want to play on Facebook not caring about pro machines, but they really sound stupid when they try to claim the either the iMac or the Mac Mini even come close to being suitable professional machines.
This. A billion times this. In fact they should make the GPU optional, since any standard GPU card will work. They could easily price them somewhere around $1500 and still make a healthy profit on them.
That's brain dead on the Generic GPUs.
OpenCL is completely integrated with OS X, along-side OpenGL 3.x..
Apple writes the stack for both to work together in OS X.
Wake me when Windows has equivalent solutions with DirectX and it's hack-neyed response to OpenCL throughout it's OS, and can handle all the cores across it's entire OS.
It's really quite simple. If the people that require the best hardware/software, use something else, that's what everyone else is going to want to use.
If I switched to PCs, that would mean, my whole industry (Motion graphics/design/music/editing/etc) would switch, which would mean that whole industry would buy non-apple hardware, which would mean, you'd see no more apple products in TV shows.
If they kill the heart of the company, they kill the company.
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?
"Sales executives" ... 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.
So true. In Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother Steve, printed today in the NY Times, we see that Jobs was great precisely because he put aesthetics first. Sales were secondary, coming in droves as a consequence of building beautiful products.
It would be a terrible irony if, within weeks of Steve's death, Apple were to kill a line of machines that many ARTISTS rely upon.
But does it have to be this monster? The ever elusive hypothetical small form factor X-Mac mini tower would be just fine.
With the processors advancing they way they are, the need for Xeon monsters and the price tag to go with it has passed the point of diminishing returns. Users and software that are capable of taking advantage of them and sales with it.
GeekBench
Mac Pro (Mid 2010)
Intel Xeon W3530 2.8 GHz (4 cores)\t8665
Mac mini (Mid 2011)
Intel Core i7-2635QM 2.0 GHz (4 cores)\t8611
With Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge a tower half the size of the current Pro would go a long way.
If Apple drops the Mac Pro without making another high end alternative I will be throwing Logic and Apple out the door and get a PC with Pro Tools HD...
That goes for the rest of the pro audio marked using Mac as well....
Yeah, and I will dump all my iToys with it......
You're so right.
New York City is FULL of recording studios that use Nothing BUT Mac Pros & you will see a MASS EXODUS if Apple is stupid enough to get rid of it.
You ever seen AutoTune loaded on 25 Vocal tracks....?
Well i Have ... and a IMac / Macbook Pro cant handle the load.
You think people are gonna go to a $200 an hour studio that has an IMAC? no.
How many of you who don't want Apple to drop the Pro planning to (or have already) purchased the current Xeon-based Mac Pro? Because that's the only vote that counts. If these things were selling better, Apple wouldn't even think of killing it. And yet here we are.
How many of you who don't want Apple to drop the Pro planning to (or have already) purchased the current Xeon-based Mac Pro? Because that's the only vote that counts. If these things were selling better, Apple wouldn't even think of killing it. And yet here we are.
Comments
As others have pointed out, there are real applications for big beefy towers. The CPU and GPU power are not necessarily as important as lots of internal bus speed and expansion. Is this a large market? No. Is this a prestigious market? Yes. There's not many "Avatar" level movies made or albums produced, but being able to use those pros using your machines for real heavy-lifting in marketing material seems like it ought to pay dividends in the sales of the consumer class machines.
One of Apple's claims to fame is OS X and it's claim to be UNIX under the hood with industrial strength OS technology. If you have no industrial strength machines doing industrial strength jobs, the claim that your OS is awesome doesn't hold much weight.
But, it's now Apple, Inc. not Apple Computer, Inc. so maybe they are fully embracing the consumer electronics moniker and abandoning the serious computer market.
- Jasen.
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 thought this was funny too. Also the suggestions about connecting a bunch of minis together if you want extra power. Lol.
I like the Mac Mini but it costs too much for what is inside it. I've got a 2008 Mac Book and it is acting up lately due to a previous problem caused by the battery expanding inside the case. I'm not sure I want to purchase another Mac computer.
I would have bought a new iPod Touch if it would have been upgraded with the new A5 and had some software updates. Instead the only upgrade or change was the availability of the white color option. My main hope was for a larger screen along with the processor upgrade. Apple gave me a big disappointment. If the rumors of a seven inch screen device are true then it might be worth a look when it comes out. Otherwise I'll be switching to a different brand of laptop and putting a version of Linux on it.
Of course they are profitable, to the tune of at least 40% margin. Even though the product might be a small part of their revenue, its a 40% margin they would be fools to hand over to anybody else. when they can let the Mac Pro line just cruise along making its 40% nut every month.
Only when the 40% margin begins to look like not enough to support the Mac Pro line will this become a consideration.
And even then, they'll probably revamp the chassis to accommodate a smaller footprint and let it go on another ten years.
It is the toys, dummies. It is the realization of your dream on your dream machine that brought them here. Whether a Mac Pro, iPod or Mini, each toy is simply the best of its kind, making your dreams come true every day. As long as Apple engineers are using Mac Pros, they will be available.
If it didn't cost more than a third-world Kidney transplant, I'm guessing more people would be mac pros.
Mac Pro 3.2 quad Nehalem 16Gb RAM 4x2TB HDD 2 5770 1GB vcard 27" Cinema Display $5973
iMac 3.4 quad SB i7 16GB RAM 1TB HDD 6970M 2GB vcard Promise Pegasus 12TB TB Raid $4898
Over $1k cheaper to get the iMac, you'll have more storage, a better processor and videocard and you also get TB. This is why the Mac Pro is looking like a less likely keeper.
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.
They have no idea what professionals actually do with computers.
Can you help satisfy my own curiosity? Did you expand your own Mac Pro? If so, in what way? Did you add additional video cards? More disk drives? I'm curious as to how many people might have bought a Pro - just in case, but no case as arisen for the need to expand.
I upgraded the RAM to 12GB
I have a total of five drives, two of them SSDs (one for Lion and one for Windows 7)
I have a Blu-ray BURNER
I added a USB card because this thing only has three ports on the back
I have a Matrox CompressHD card, which encodes HD at about 5X real time when making videos for BD, youtube, and the iPhone.
All the best.
Thunderbolt allows EVERYTHING to be external. Storage, GPU, Networking. Why stuff it all in a huge and expensive box?
Because GPU over Thunderbolt would be slow. How about multiple GPUs? Thunderbolt provides a couple of 4x PCIe lanes, not the 16x that just one GPU requires. Storage, networking, fine. GPU? No.
Who are the IT people that actually want computers that you have to take the screen apart to service? Or that you need 'spudgers' to open? Or that have next to no serviceable/replaceable parts?
I understand the people who only want to play on Facebook not caring about pro machines, but they really sound stupid when they try to claim the either the iMac or the Mac Mini even come close to being suitable professional machines.
This. A billion times this. In fact they should make the GPU optional, since any standard GPU card will work. They could easily price them somewhere around $1500 and still make a healthy profit on them.
That's brain dead on the Generic GPUs.
OpenCL is completely integrated with OS X, along-side OpenGL 3.x..
Apple writes the stack for both to work together in OS X.
Wake me when Windows has equivalent solutions with DirectX and it's hack-neyed response to OpenCL throughout it's OS, and can handle all the cores across it's entire OS.
It doesn't.
Apple lists which GPGPUs it supports fully.
If I switched to PCs, that would mean, my whole industry (Motion graphics/design/music/editing/etc) would switch, which would mean that whole industry would buy non-apple hardware, which would mean, you'd see no more apple products in TV shows.
If they kill the heart of the company, they kill the company.
The developers at Pixelmator say they primarily use the iMac and Mac Book Pro as their development machines.
Meet The Developers: Saulius Dailide of Pixelmator
No offense, but Pixelmator isn't exactly going to task a system.
Wake me when ANSYS, AutoDesk and the big boys produce their Engineering FEA/FEM products with an iMac.
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?
"Sales executives" ... 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.
So true. In Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother Steve, printed today in the NY Times, we see that Jobs was great precisely because he put aesthetics first. Sales were secondary, coming in droves as a consequence of building beautiful products.
It would be a terrible irony if, within weeks of Steve's death, Apple were to kill a line of machines that many ARTISTS rely upon.
With the processors advancing they way they are, the need for Xeon monsters and the price tag to go with it has passed the point of diminishing returns. Users and software that are capable of taking advantage of them and sales with it.
GeekBench
Mac Pro (Mid 2010)
Intel Xeon W3530 2.8 GHz (4 cores)\t8665
Mac mini (Mid 2011)
Intel Core i7-2635QM 2.0 GHz (4 cores)\t8611
With Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge a tower half the size of the current Pro would go a long way.
If Apple drops the Mac Pro without making another high end alternative I will be throwing Logic and Apple out the door and get a PC with Pro Tools HD...
That goes for the rest of the pro audio marked using Mac as well....
Yeah, and I will dump all my iToys with it......
You're so right.
New York City is FULL of recording studios that use Nothing BUT Mac Pros & you will see a MASS EXODUS if Apple is stupid enough to get rid of it.
You ever seen AutoTune loaded on 25 Vocal tracks....?
Well i Have ... and a IMac / Macbook Pro cant handle the load.
You think people are gonna go to a $200 an hour studio that has an IMAC? no.
How many of you who don't want Apple to drop the Pro planning to (or have already) purchased the current Xeon-based Mac Pro? Because that's the only vote that counts. If these things were selling better, Apple wouldn't even think of killing it. And yet here we are.
But I cannot justify the pricetag as it stands.
You're so right.
New York City is FULL of recording studios that use Nothing BUT Mac Pros & you will see a MASS EXODUS if Apple is stupid enough to get rid of it.
You ever seen AutoTune loaded on 25 Vocal tracks....?
Well i Have ... and a IMac / Macbook Pro cant handle the load.
You think people are gonna go to a $200 an hour studio that has an IMAC? no.
For my education, what is it about the Mac Pro that recording studios require? (Not my field.)