Oh yes, I have seen not only in AppleInsider forums but somewhere else like in MacWorld, people arguing that the Mac Pro is not needed anymore therefore implying that no one needs it anymore.
And when it comes to people saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines, I am sorry but usually people don't really understand what is the matter here, referring to "many of the tasks" as a dummy argument rather than a real argument. Simply because they have no idea on what tasks really is the Mac Pro used for
Like Lord of the Rings for example CGI rendered on a farm of simple Linux PCs. Again my point stands. Mac Pro or not it doesn't really matter when you really need the juice (the real pro work) you will need some computer farm to do it.
While I'm not even close to being a power user (I'd be best served by an industrial-strength 9" AirBook), I would be disappointed if the Mac Pro were left to die. The Pro is like the Formula 1 cars that top auto manufacturers build. They're not just irreplacable for those few who need that kind of power (Grand Prix drivers), they're also a testing ground for future consumer technology, and a showcase for the brand. When Mercedes, BMW, or Jaguar win the Grand Prix, their sales go up, and more than make up for the R&D and other costs of racing. Apple is surely aware of this, so I don't believe they will discontinue the line.
I bow to you, sir. You had me at... er... lost me at "geophycicsl."
It is a shame Apple has fallen so far behind with the Mac Pro, but I can understand at least part of why they may have. So many of us former beast-buyers have moved on - not because we don't want Mac Pros, but because the technology has progressed to the point where we can do with less. I'd been buying the biggest, baddest thing Apple made since the days of the Quadra. It's been ten years since I bought a tower (9 and a half, actually, but who's counting?).
Just because I don't need one anymore certainly doesn't mean you don't. I'm just pointing out how much demand may have dropped thanks to faster speeds and less need for internal storage and things like SCSI. (Tangent: I remember thinking how huge yet physically tiny my external SCSI drives were. 2 gigs! And I could fit one in my backpack! WOO HOO! ...oh, how time flies).
...anyway...
I don't think Apple will abandon the Mac Pro (not that *I* have a clue, really), but I do think the next will be nothing like the towers we've known. I won't be surprised if the next beast looks more like a Mac Mini. I could be wrong, but, I still have high hopes for thunderbolt.
What pros need isn't a new tower. It's fast connectivity. You need access to tons of memory, tons of storage, preferably tons of other Macs, and you need it fast.
The tower was awesome in its day, but that model is outdated. I'm really hoping that Apple will soon deliver something better. I'm hoping for some sort of Mega Mini.
I don't think anyone believes Apple must produce any particular product. It's a commercial decision they themselves will make. But Long-term customers are surely entitled to some kind of "road-map", in fact, if there will be a "road" at all. Many of us are making our living from owning many Apple Products, for which we are eternally grateful, but we need to make capital investments and keep up with advances in software. All we would like to know is if they intend to continue or discontinue.
While they're at it...it would be nice to know if they intend discontinuing Logic Pro or re-vamping. Again, a DAW is a primary piece of kit for Pro users and I know where I am, we are very, very tempted to leap over to Presonus Studio One, particularly with the complete lack of knowledge on Logic Pro X.
Like Lord of the Rings for example CGI rendered on a farm of simple Linux PCs. Again my point stands. Mac Pro or not it doesn't really matter when you really need the juice (the real pro work) you will need some computer farm to do it.
Your point is naive. Businesses have for many years committed big dollars to workflows (that includes hardware, Mac-only software, skills training and so forth) that rely upon the Mac Pro, so it's not as simple as simply "switching" to Linux or Windows. Or using an outside render farm - which is a laughable alternative, and you should know that there are many many feature films, TVCs, television shows that cut, graded and output for distribution by small post-houses. Your inability to consider the needs of design and productions professionals is, ironically, elitist.
No one is saying there is no need for such machine, some however are saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines as well if you really think about it.
From all of your comments here, it seems you're mostly out to rile people up over this matter rather than to make constructive points.
Your suggestion of doing tasks on other machines is an OBVIOUS alternative that many would rather not do for a variety of reasons.
In any case, the Macintosh from its inception has been for people with "crazy needs," which makes your comment absurd.
And as long as Apple is adamant about OS X only running on its own machines, there will always be demand for Apple to make very powerful desktops.
So have fun following up the post of every person who has a legitimate desire to do powerful work on a powerful Mac, because all of your comments simply fall flat.
Like Lord of the Rings for example CGI rendered on a farm of simple Linux PCs. Again my point stands. Mac Pro or not it doesn't really matter when you really need the juice (the real pro work) you will need some computer farm to do it.
No your point does not really stand because you are not responding to my post. You are talking about "Lord of the Rings" but how a hell is it supposed to run my work? Are you saying that I should purchase a bunch of cheap Linux PCs to do my work? Let me tell you why I can't do that:
- I need OS X, I just can't use Linux for my daily work. As I said you, I am not only talking about some farm of machines. I am talking about workstations, needed also for visualization and so on, OS X has satisfied us for long time. we don't have any reason to switch to an OS that we don't want to use. It's like this.
- I need Xcode, period.
- I need the OS X Accelerate Framework, the vectorized and highly tuned version of the libraries BLAS and LAPACK which come with OS X by default. No way I give that up considering the speed up they bring. The closest thing to the Accelerate Framework is the libraries provided by Intel but they are expensive if we use them for non-prodit purpose.
- You are not understanding what we do. You are talking about some 3D rendering when indeed you can choose to run that on a farm of cheap pcs. We can't do that because we do science not entertainment, so we need reliable storage and ECC protected memory which is not available on a cheap simple pc.
- I am repeating myself, but we want workstations not a farm of racked boxes.
For my "real pro work", I need reliable machines for the "juice". You could argue that I could buy a Dell workstations and put Linux on it, but then I would answer to you, no thanks I want OS X and Dell hardware sucks.
I am an iMac man, but do consider the Mac Pro, and have bought one in the past.
I suspect it is not dead. All the Macs will be updated at WWDC, in a first-of-a-kind whole lineup refresh. There are new Xeon and Core chips available that Apple has yet to utilise. SSDs were only kludged in to the last Mac Pro, there needs to be a case properly designed for SSDs. Also optical drives could be dropped from the whole lineup at once, in a bold move. And a new Retina monitor to top it all off.
Of course, the dev conference usually (logically) focusses on the OS's so I could be wrong.
You are fundamentally too kind in this post Tallest, the petition is fundamentally stupid, especially a couple of weeks before WWDC. It is especially stupid coming from someone calling themselves a professional as it rather sounds like a 13 year old whining. It is like a kid asking what he is going to get for Christmas two weeks before the 25th.
1. Facebook.
2. Absolutely. No. Weight. in the real world.
3. I don't want it discontinued, either. But Apple will talk to its users thereof directly, not some… petition. Remember pre-FCPX? They gave software to people early to test it and to make it better. And they listened to the people after launch and made changes.
I still trust Apple to count on its pro users. Is six years ago too far back to cite? The first 15" MacBook Pro. Lack of FireWire 800. Threw a fit, brought it back. Apple will either ignore pros completely and discontinue it or build a breakthrough new machine designed to take the best advantage of Thunderbolt possible.
I'm leaning towards break through myself. I'm expecting a radical redesign. However I see Thunderbolt as only part of that new technology.
I just want to comment on another typical usage of the Mac Pro besides video production, 3D production or CAD oriented workflow. I am talking about science and engineering.
For for those who believe that there is no need of a Mac Pro, I should give them an example of a real workflow:
- I work on geophysics, dealing with high performance computing involving the simulation of complex problems.
- Method used: finite element
- Language: C, Objective C , OpenCL and Fortran,
- Platform:
- Several Mac Pros with dual Xeons, 12 cores total.
- Memory on board: 64 GB of memory
- Storage on board: 4 TB
- Workflow: The simulations are run with a custom finite element code written in Fortran (a next generation code base written in Objective C/C is currently under development). The parallelization of the code is done with OpenMPI (as it allows to dispatch work on all machines on the network) so EVERY SINGLE core is being used. The simulation itself eat up above 50 GB of RAM. Yes, only one simulation!!!
- The post processing of the data are done with a custom code written in C and OpenCL which takes advantage of the Radeon HD 5870 to speed up the calculation. So by definition we need to have access to better and more powerful GPUs than what is available on iMacs and are only available on a Mac Pro.
- One simulation generates hundred of gigabytes of data. As a result terabytes of data are produced by successive simulations, data which are stored in large disks connected via firewire 800 to the Mac Pros for backing up the data if the results are acceptable.
Here you have it, this is my workflow. And as we keep studying bigger and more complex problems, we need again and again more powerful Mac Pros with higher processing power and better technology. This allows us to do things that would only be possible with much more expensive hardware, typically a supercomputer of a small size.
Anyone still saying that no one needs a Mac Pro?
Distributed computation and ThunderBolt graphic card expansion/storage. iMac will allow for 32GB of RAM, not sure if it can handle 64GB or not. The world is changing, for the better.
For the record, I'm not saying your work isn't important, cutting edge or otherwise doing quite well with Mac Pro workflow. I'm also not saying that Mac Pro may not be around for a generation or two longer. I do believe that cloud computing and distributed computing will ultimately outweigh the need for dedicated work stations in virtually all scenarios.
Just give me a 30" iMac "pro" with antiglare glass, OLED Retina display, dual i7 quad chips, AMD FirePro M8900 GPU, 64GB RAM capacity, dual Thunderbolt ports, multiple USB 3.0 ports, an eSATAp port, dual Firewire 800 ports, 10GbE, 8G Fiber Channel, a BD-RE Superdrive, one of those new OCZ Octane 1TB SSD's, a 4TB 7200rpm HDD, an SDXC card slot, and an ExpressCard|54 slot.
Oh, and a new generation Airport card with 802.11ac, and certified wireless USB added to the mix.
Apple speaks when they are ready to speak. They release when they are ready to release. They don't owe anyone information etc.
They are not going to change tactics because of some petition etc.
If these folks don't wait to wait then they are welcome to go buy a windows system etc. it isn't going to bother Apple if they lose those sales.
Yeah we all know how the creative pros stood by Apple blah blah. But that time is done. It died way before Steve did. The writing has been on the walls for years. Either you embrace the change or you move on.
I find this kind of arrogant FU pro users attitude very annoying. It's not just the Mac Pro - pro users also buy MBs, software, iPhones, iPads, etc, etc.
I don't think it's too much to ask for Apple to shed a little light on this subject. Pro users can't just switch back and forth - it's a very lengthy, complex and costly process to switch. And once you have switched there is less incentive to keep buying Apple kit. If you have a windows server and windows pro desktops then you might as well buy windows laptops, Android tablets, etc, etc.
Over the years I've seen a lot of tech companies rise to the top, become very aloof and alienate their core user base and subsequently come crashing back down again once their new fair weathered friends move on. I hope Apple doesn't follow this path.
3. I don't want it discontinued, either. But Apple will talk to its users thereof directly, not some… petition. Remember pre-FCPX? They gave software to people early to test it and to make it better. And they listened to the people after launch and made changes.
I still trust Apple to count on its pro users. Is six years ago too far back to cite? The first 15" MacBook Pro. Lack of FireWire 800. Threw a fit, brought it back. Apple will either ignore pros completely and discontinue it or build a breakthrough new machine designed to take the best advantage of Thunderbolt possible.
1. One of many available methods, although far from Apple.
2. It's not often that something isn't better than nothing.
3. Please tell me (and others) how Apple "will talk to its users thereof directly". Yes, they talk to you - product announcements and such. But you can't talk with them, or can you? No sarcasm here; I just want to know.
I've used Macs since 1986; all from a 128 upgraded to fat mac -> now I own 2 pros, iMacs, Macbooks... Have never known a way to talk with Apple so far. Was a developer for some time, and - if I remember correctly - had 1 free support incident available in the plan I paid for in case I got coding problems. That's it.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hakime
Oh yes, I have seen not only in AppleInsider forums but somewhere else like in MacWorld, people arguing that the Mac Pro is not needed anymore therefore implying that no one needs it anymore.
And when it comes to people saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines, I am sorry but usually people don't really understand what is the matter here, referring to "many of the tasks" as a dummy argument rather than a real argument. Simply because they have no idea on what tasks really is the Mac Pro used for
Like Lord of the Rings for example CGI rendered on a farm of simple Linux PCs. Again my point stands. Mac Pro or not it doesn't really matter when you really need the juice (the real pro work) you will need some computer farm to do it.
While I'm not even close to being a power user (I'd be best served by an industrial-strength 9" AirBook), I would be disappointed if the Mac Pro were left to die. The Pro is like the Formula 1 cars that top auto manufacturers build. They're not just irreplacable for those few who need that kind of power (Grand Prix drivers), they're also a testing ground for future consumer technology, and a showcase for the brand. When Mercedes, BMW, or Jaguar win the Grand Prix, their sales go up, and more than make up for the R&D and other costs of racing. Apple is surely aware of this, so I don't believe they will discontinue the line.
I bow to you, sir. You had me at... er... lost me at "geophycicsl."
It is a shame Apple has fallen so far behind with the Mac Pro, but I can understand at least part of why they may have. So many of us former beast-buyers have moved on - not because we don't want Mac Pros, but because the technology has progressed to the point where we can do with less. I'd been buying the biggest, baddest thing Apple made since the days of the Quadra. It's been ten years since I bought a tower (9 and a half, actually, but who's counting?).
Just because I don't need one anymore certainly doesn't mean you don't. I'm just pointing out how much demand may have dropped thanks to faster speeds and less need for internal storage and things like SCSI. (Tangent: I remember thinking how huge yet physically tiny my external SCSI drives were. 2 gigs! And I could fit one in my backpack! WOO HOO! ...oh, how time flies).
...anyway...
I don't think Apple will abandon the Mac Pro (not that *I* have a clue, really), but I do think the next will be nothing like the towers we've known. I won't be surprised if the next beast looks more like a Mac Mini. I could be wrong, but, I still have high hopes for thunderbolt.
What pros need isn't a new tower. It's fast connectivity. You need access to tons of memory, tons of storage, preferably tons of other Macs, and you need it fast.
The tower was awesome in its day, but that model is outdated. I'm really hoping that Apple will soon deliver something better. I'm hoping for some sort of Mega Mini.
I don't think anyone believes Apple must produce any particular product. It's a commercial decision they themselves will make. But Long-term customers are surely entitled to some kind of "road-map", in fact, if there will be a "road" at all. Many of us are making our living from owning many Apple Products, for which we are eternally grateful, but we need to make capital investments and keep up with advances in software. All we would like to know is if they intend to continue or discontinue.
While they're at it...it would be nice to know if they intend discontinuing Logic Pro or re-vamping. Again, a DAW is a primary piece of kit for Pro users and I know where I am, we are very, very tempted to leap over to Presonus Studio One, particularly with the complete lack of knowledge on Logic Pro X.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Povilas
Like Lord of the Rings for example CGI rendered on a farm of simple Linux PCs. Again my point stands. Mac Pro or not it doesn't really matter when you really need the juice (the real pro work) you will need some computer farm to do it.
Your point is naive. Businesses have for many years committed big dollars to workflows (that includes hardware, Mac-only software, skills training and so forth) that rely upon the Mac Pro, so it's not as simple as simply "switching" to Linux or Windows. Or using an outside render farm - which is a laughable alternative, and you should know that there are many many feature films, TVCs, television shows that cut, graded and output for distribution by small post-houses. Your inability to consider the needs of design and productions professionals is, ironically, elitist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Povilas
No one is saying there is no need for such machine, some however are saying that many of the tasks can be done on other machines as well if you really think about it.
From all of your comments here, it seems you're mostly out to rile people up over this matter rather than to make constructive points.
Your suggestion of doing tasks on other machines is an OBVIOUS alternative that many would rather not do for a variety of reasons.
In any case, the Macintosh from its inception has been for people with "crazy needs," which makes your comment absurd.
And as long as Apple is adamant about OS X only running on its own machines, there will always be demand for Apple to make very powerful desktops.
So have fun following up the post of every person who has a legitimate desire to do powerful work on a powerful Mac, because all of your comments simply fall flat.
(double post)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Povilas
Like Lord of the Rings for example CGI rendered on a farm of simple Linux PCs. Again my point stands. Mac Pro or not it doesn't really matter when you really need the juice (the real pro work) you will need some computer farm to do it.
No your point does not really stand because you are not responding to my post. You are talking about "Lord of the Rings" but how a hell is it supposed to run my work? Are you saying that I should purchase a bunch of cheap Linux PCs to do my work? Let me tell you why I can't do that:
- I need OS X, I just can't use Linux for my daily work. As I said you, I am not only talking about some farm of machines. I am talking about workstations, needed also for visualization and so on, OS X has satisfied us for long time. we don't have any reason to switch to an OS that we don't want to use. It's like this.
- I need Xcode, period.
- I need the OS X Accelerate Framework, the vectorized and highly tuned version of the libraries BLAS and LAPACK which come with OS X by default. No way I give that up considering the speed up they bring. The closest thing to the Accelerate Framework is the libraries provided by Intel but they are expensive if we use them for non-prodit purpose.
- You are not understanding what we do. You are talking about some 3D rendering when indeed you can choose to run that on a farm of cheap pcs. We can't do that because we do science not entertainment, so we need reliable storage and ECC protected memory which is not available on a cheap simple pc.
- I am repeating myself, but we want workstations not a farm of racked boxes.
For my "real pro work", I need reliable machines for the "juice". You could argue that I could buy a Dell workstations and put Linux on it, but then I would answer to you, no thanks I want OS X and Dell hardware sucks.
"I bow to you, sir. You had me at... er... lost me at "geophycicsl.""
Thanks, I corrected that!!!!
No worries
I am an iMac man, but do consider the Mac Pro, and have bought one in the past.
I suspect it is not dead. All the Macs will be updated at WWDC, in a first-of-a-kind whole lineup refresh. There are new Xeon and Core chips available that Apple has yet to utilise. SSDs were only kludged in to the last Mac Pro, there needs to be a case properly designed for SSDs. Also optical drives could be dropped from the whole lineup at once, in a bold move. And a new Retina monitor to top it all off.
Of course, the dev conference usually (logically) focusses on the OS's so I could be wrong.
If you need one now, just go out and get one. The 2010 model has everything you need.
If you need one now, just go out and get one. The 2010 model has everything you need.
I'm leaning towards break through myself. I'm expecting a radical redesign. However I see Thunderbolt as only part of that new technology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hakime
I just want to comment on another typical usage of the Mac Pro besides video production, 3D production or CAD oriented workflow. I am talking about science and engineering.
For for those who believe that there is no need of a Mac Pro, I should give them an example of a real workflow:
- I work on geophysics, dealing with high performance computing involving the simulation of complex problems.
- Method used: finite element
- Language: C, Objective C , OpenCL and Fortran,
- Platform:
- Several Mac Pros with dual Xeons, 12 cores total.
- Memory on board: 64 GB of memory
- Storage on board: 4 TB
- Workflow: The simulations are run with a custom finite element code written in Fortran (a next generation code base written in Objective C/C is currently under development). The parallelization of the code is done with OpenMPI (as it allows to dispatch work on all machines on the network) so EVERY SINGLE core is being used. The simulation itself eat up above 50 GB of RAM. Yes, only one simulation!!!
- The post processing of the data are done with a custom code written in C and OpenCL which takes advantage of the Radeon HD 5870 to speed up the calculation. So by definition we need to have access to better and more powerful GPUs than what is available on iMacs and are only available on a Mac Pro.
- One simulation generates hundred of gigabytes of data. As a result terabytes of data are produced by successive simulations, data which are stored in large disks connected via firewire 800 to the Mac Pros for backing up the data if the results are acceptable.
Here you have it, this is my workflow. And as we keep studying bigger and more complex problems, we need again and again more powerful Mac Pros with higher processing power and better technology. This allows us to do things that would only be possible with much more expensive hardware, typically a supercomputer of a small size.
Anyone still saying that no one needs a Mac Pro?
Distributed computation and ThunderBolt graphic card expansion/storage. iMac will allow for 32GB of RAM, not sure if it can handle 64GB or not. The world is changing, for the better.
For the record, I'm not saying your work isn't important, cutting edge or otherwise doing quite well with Mac Pro workflow. I'm also not saying that Mac Pro may not be around for a generation or two longer. I do believe that cloud computing and distributed computing will ultimately outweigh the need for dedicated work stations in virtually all scenarios.
Just give me a 30" iMac "pro" with antiglare glass, OLED Retina display, dual i7 quad chips, AMD FirePro M8900 GPU, 64GB RAM capacity, dual Thunderbolt ports, multiple USB 3.0 ports, an eSATAp port, dual Firewire 800 ports, 10GbE, 8G Fiber Channel, a BD-RE Superdrive, one of those new OCZ Octane 1TB SSD's, a 4TB 7200rpm HDD, an SDXC card slot, and an ExpressCard|54 slot.
Oh, and a new generation Airport card with 802.11ac, and certified wireless USB added to the mix.
That'd be fine with me for a high-end Mac.
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlituna
Apple speaks when they are ready to speak. They release when they are ready to release. They don't owe anyone information etc.
They are not going to change tactics because of some petition etc.
If these folks don't wait to wait then they are welcome to go buy a windows system etc. it isn't going to bother Apple if they lose those sales.
Yeah we all know how the creative pros stood by Apple blah blah. But that time is done. It died way before Steve did. The writing has been on the walls for years. Either you embrace the change or you move on.
I find this kind of arrogant FU pro users attitude very annoying. It's not just the Mac Pro - pro users also buy MBs, software, iPhones, iPads, etc, etc.
I don't think it's too much to ask for Apple to shed a little light on this subject. Pro users can't just switch back and forth - it's a very lengthy, complex and costly process to switch. And once you have switched there is less incentive to keep buying Apple kit. If you have a windows server and windows pro desktops then you might as well buy windows laptops, Android tablets, etc, etc.
Over the years I've seen a lot of tech companies rise to the top, become very aloof and alienate their core user base and subsequently come crashing back down again once their new fair weathered friends move on. I hope Apple doesn't follow this path.
If I wasn't on a job until mid July I would have switched to PC already.
If there was a new Mac Pro out tomorrow, I would buy it tomorrow.
I know I'm not the only broadcast designer that needs new hardware to stay competitive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
1. Facebook.
2. Absolutely. No. Weight. in the real world.
3. I don't want it discontinued, either. But Apple will talk to its users thereof directly, not some… petition. Remember pre-FCPX? They gave software to people early to test it and to make it better. And they listened to the people after launch and made changes.
I still trust Apple to count on its pro users. Is six years ago too far back to cite? The first 15" MacBook Pro. Lack of FireWire 800. Threw a fit, brought it back. Apple will either ignore pros completely and discontinue it or build a breakthrough new machine designed to take the best advantage of Thunderbolt possible.
1. One of many available methods, although far from Apple.
2. It's not often that something isn't better than nothing.
3. Please tell me (and others) how Apple "will talk to its users thereof directly". Yes, they talk to you - product announcements and such. But you can't talk with them, or can you? No sarcasm here; I just want to know.
I've used Macs since 1986; all from a 128 upgraded to fat mac -> now I own 2 pros, iMacs, Macbooks... Have never known a way to talk with Apple so far. Was a developer for some time, and - if I remember correctly - had 1 free support incident available in the plan I paid for in case I got coding problems. That's it.
And if so... why not continue to sell them to [I]other[/I] people who need them?
Do we know for a fact Apple is losing money on every Mac Pro sold?