New Mac Pro
All these people who think Apple has given up on pros need to get a clue. Apple is preparing to launch the next big thing. Whether it happens at this next Keynote is not important. It will happen this year and probably soon. All the clues point to one thing - and I am not just talking about an iWatch.
Apple has the money and the tech resources to design the future and that is what they have done. That is why the Mac Pro has limped along. It is not that Apple no longer cares about power users. They are leap-frogging the competition. They have been focusing on the next generation of professional computers. Just as Jobs introduced the Mac, the NeXt Cube, the iMac - I see a new generation of computer being introduced as Steve's last great computer.
This computer will probably have a 4K display with enough graphics power to run Red video in real time. It will run new powerful versions of Final Cut, Logic Pro, and Aperture. (I sure wish they would also do something like Pixelmator/Vectormator and a version of iWeb Pro. I can only hope.) It will be for content creators not for consumers. It will redefine the standard of what a pro computer is.
The CPU will actually have a Xeon Phi coprocessor card or GPU coprocessors for all the media creation work. This ties in to Grand Central Station and Xgrid. Logic, Aperture, and Final Cut will all take advantage of this. It will be ten times faster that current computers.
The computer will probably have a huge flash drive, no spinning drives of any kind and a next generation TB or something like that far beyond what we currently know about. It will use Lightning instead of USB and not use FW. Maybe we will see removable flash drives of some kind.
The other big thing will be OS Xi. iOS and OS X will merge and continue on in the iDevices. OS Xi will be for pro desktops. I'd really like to see OpenDoc make its comeback here and all the OS moved to a metadata based system. What better system to introduce it on than the next generation computer.
Of course it should all be in the form of a cube, brushed aluminum, a lot like the old NeXt cube. It will run silent and cool. I really wish it would be in a form that can be rack mounted, but it would not have the same emotional impact. Maybe in the future.
When it is introduced, it will say hello to the audience in Steve Job's voice. It will feature an updated version of Siri so you can talk to it and control it.
It will be everything Steve Jobs ever worked on rolled into one.
When everybody sees it they will get it immediately. Cook and Ives will be smiling as they help honor Steve one last time. The tech world will be in a buzz. It will be the top news all over the world.
Comments
I sure hope so. I sure hope so…
When I read this stuff, it seems more like excerpts from tech blogs and trade shows stitched together. It's easy to project things that may not totally align with system design when you don't have a lot of information on a product update. The no spinning drive thing is the most outlandish. If they were relics, the fusion drive concept would not exist as an option. You're likely to see more mature hybrid drives if the price of flash remains flat and consumer requirements escalate across a significant percentile. At the consumer level, games and possibly video (as a distant second) drive storage requirements more than anything else.
Generally the goal is to satisfy users up the the 90th or 95th percentile with internal storage where the external portion is relegated to backups only. Outside of that you still have a market for the "outside the box" solutions. I think it's a fun writeup, but solutions like Xgrid died out long ago for Apple. They are more likely to pick up business from people with static workloads moving off those aging Linux based clusters to custom GPGPU code. I mention this as some developers have ported from Linux turnkey solutions to Macs. It would be a drastic change in strategy for Apple to attempt to leverage its offerings in the other direction.
My couple year old laptop I am typing on has no spinning hard drive. Why is it so outlandish to suggest this for the next great computer? My internal flash drive is so much faster than a spinning hard drive. I think this is a no brainer really. Sure my laptop drive is only 500 GB but it is also a couple years old. Tech has improved since then.
I do not expect this new computer to be cheap. Get an iMac if what you want is cheap. But when it comes to doing audio, video, or as I did recently, a 60 foot by 12 foot photo project, you want horsepower and lots of RAM. And I am willing to pay for it. I would not balk at a $10,000 Mac Pro. If somebody is expecting a $2,000 machine, then get an iMac. But for next generation stuff, it will cost a lot.
The funny thing to me is how obvious all this is. I am not just making stuff up without evidence. Even the theatrics of it all is based on history. This is what Steve would do. If Apple doesn't do all this then they are missing their own legacy.
Do you not think Steve wanted one more stab at the desktop before he died? Do you really think he only thought about iPads, iPods, iPhones, iWatches, and let his beloved Mac die? Also, Apple is not forgetting about all their software. This only seemed to die because they are preparing the next generation and have stopped development in the old. Once they bring out the new, it will become obvious that Apple never abandoned all this software and hardware after all.
Apple's own history shows they should have killed off the Apple II for the Mac. Hanging onto the past is what almost killed the company. That is why they let Steve go. Steve wanted to do the next generation and the board at Apple wanted to milk the current generation. At some point in time, it will be necessary to kill off the Mac as we know it for the next generation computer. If you really understood Steve Jobs then this makes sense. He left this legacy in Johnny Ives hands. He will bring Steve's last baby to birth.
Tech people look at specs and stuff and do not think outside the box. They do not understand philosophy and art. Steve did. You cannot understand Apple without understanding this bigger picture. Desktop computers are not dead for pros. However, pros - the content creators, should not be held back by content consumers. iMacs and iPads are great for consumers and semi pros. Once you take away this huge audience, you are left with a crowd of people who need horsepower. Apple is not just about computers for commuters, they are going to build race cars for the pros.
Apple is not out to make lots of money in this category just like car companies are not into racing because of money. It is about branding and marketing. And the tech eventually trickles down to consumers. At some point, all this pro level hardware today will be the consumer product of tomorrow. By the time that happens, Apple will have it all built already and everybody else will be stuck with old tech. They will die off.
The personal computer of old is dead. iPads, iWatches, iGlasses, etc are the future for all things personal. iMacs can handle desktops where stationary PCs are needed. But pro level workstations need a jump in technology that small evolution cannot accomplish. Darwinian gradualism cannot overcome irreducible complexity. It take intelligent design to jump to these higher steps.
Apple has the money to make this happen. They have the hardware, the software, the retail, the legacy, and they have one last computer from Steve Jobs. I believe this computer was started years ago. Apple has been building the pieces one by one and not until OS Xi will it all come together.
Steve quoted Wayne Gretzky about skating to where the puck was going, not to where it currently was at. Hence the iPad, iPhone, etc. But don't think for a second they ignored the pro market. It just has taken a while for the puck to get there. When it does, Apple will be there ready to score.
Some of this delay comes from intel and their chip design. The cell processor in the PS2 showed the way for the future but it has taken a long time for it to come to fruition. Don't think for a second Intel wasn't worried about the Cell processor. It may not be the best thing for a PC or a server, but the idea is solid for media content creators - the exact crowd that Mac Pros are meant to serve.
How many cores can Intel evolve in its chip design? At some point they too need to jump to a new architecture that can scale with many more cores. I think Apple and Intel are doing this together. Apple needs the chip and Intel needs the computer company who can do the rest of the hardware and software.
Even Intel has reached a plateau lately just like Apple. Both companies are still doing the x86 thing a little, but progress has tapered off. I think Apple's talent is working on the next gen and so is Intel's top talent. Intel wants to leave AMD in the dust. This is what will kill off AMD.
Intel also has to worry about GPU co-processing. Whether is is a Xeon Phi (cell type processor) or GPU coprocessors, this is where the next big power surge is coming from. This calls for an OS that can support this. That means Apple or Microsoft has to be onboard. But you also need apps that use this. Microsoft cannot do this. Apple has the software.
That is why Apple has not released a new Logic in a while. Same for Final Cut. I think Final Cut X was eventually meant to fill the pro-am iMac crowd and Apple has another pro app waiting in the wings for the new computer platform. As the new Mac Pro development took longer than expected, Apple had to do something with Final Cut in the mean time and that is why we got the debacle we did. Final Cut X was just a stop gap. Apple decided not to do that with Logic Pro X. They are waiting for the new platform.
What if Apple surprised everybody by introducing the new Mac Pro Monday. Even if it were not ready for another six months, they could show their future plans and get everybody ready to open their wallets when the time came. Apple would not be killing off their iMac, laptops, iPads, or IPhone sales at all by doing so. It would give the developers a heads up to develop for the new machine before it was ready to launch. It would not make sense to launch with no other developers on board.
So Monday could be a big day.
You will be surprised on Monday your wish is coming true.
MMXIII
Media Mac (os) XI (and two more things) II
Quote:
Originally Posted by visionary
It will be everything Steve Jobs ever worked on rolled into one.
So it'll be the Apple III crossed with the Lisa?
Some of what you wrote is nice, but for the most part it makes little sense. Lightning connector replacing USB? WHY!?!? Are you just throwing technical terms out hoping one fits? Speaking in Steve Job's voice? That would be ridiculously simple for even an iPad to do now.
The "new" Mac Pro will be the same box with updated hardware inside, TB (replacing the FW800) and USB3 ports. They might change the front to ditch the optical drives and reconfigure air flow for cooling.
My next array has 4x4 TB drives and 5TB drives are coming soon (end of the year). To equal this space I would need 16 SSDs costing $9,600 alone (micron m500) not to mention needing a 16 drive bay. That's still a lot cheaper than the 2TB SSD that I was considering for $5000 each.
There's costs a lot and there's being stupid. A 1TB SSD main drive for $600 + a 4 drive internal array of HDDs is a lot less stupid. Replace the 2 optical bays with 2.5" bays for SSDs and you get a smaller footprint and higher capacity.
That would be $1200 worth of ssds and another $1200-1600 or so for decent 4TB HDDs (around $350+ for SAS drives if you want that...cheaper otherwise) for 2TB of fast SSD working space and 16 TB of local project storage.
I already pointed out that hybridized drives will provide a high level of performance with higher bandwidth. If Apple thought it was going toward full ssd implementation across the line soon enough, fusion drive solutions would not have been offered as cto options. Do you think it's really impossible to set up a secondary cache? HDDs already have a primary cache in the form of volatile memory. As for the rest of your caffeine frenzied rant, who do you think was responsible for the lack of an updated mac pro last year? They had extra development time due to intel's lagging, yet nothing materialized. If you read back your own words, they're filled with logical fallacies and emotional projections. They have nothing to do with system design.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
My next array has 4x4 TB drives and 5TB drives are coming soon (end of the year). To equal this space I would need 16 SSDs costing $9,600 alone (micron m500) not to mention needing a 16 drive bay. That's still a lot cheaper than the 2TB SSD that I was considering for $5000 each.
There's costs a lot and there's being stupid. A 1TB SSD main drive for $600 + a 4 drive internal array of HDDs is a lot less stupid. Replace the 2 optical bays with 2.5" bays for SSDs and you get a smaller footprint and higher capacity.
That would be $1200 worth of ssds and another $1200-1600 or so for decent 4TB HDDs (around $350+ for SAS drives if you want that...cheaper otherwise) for 2TB of fast SSD working space and 16 TB of local project storage.
HDDs still have a lot of valid use cases. You could even run everything in a striped RAID format with hourly backups for less than you would spend using high capacity SSDs. I don't see much of a point in multiple ssds in a single machine unless they become much more cost effective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmm
I already pointed out that hybridized drives will provide a high level of performance with higher bandwidth. If Apple thought it was going toward full ssd implementation across the line soon enough, fusion drive solutions would not have been offered as cto options. Do you think it's really impossible to set up a secondary cache? HDDs already have a primary cache in the form of volatile memory. As for the rest of your caffeine frenzied rant, who do you think was responsible for the lack of an updated mac pro last year? They had extra development time due to intel's lagging, yet nothing materialized. If you read back your own words, they're filled with logical fallacies and emotional projections. They have nothing to do with system design.
HDDs still have a lot of valid use cases. You could even run everything in a striped RAID format with hourly backups for less than you would spend using high capacity SSDs. I don't see much of a point in multiple ssds in a single machine unless they become much more cost effective.
I was responding to the assertion that the next Mac Pro would have no HDDs. Perhaps you need to chill and actually read what is written. My tolerance for idiocy here is dropping rapidly.
Fusion might be an option but frankly I'd rather manage my SSD/HDD allocation by hand if I have 2TB of SSD space available.
The lack of an updated Mac Pro last year is unexplained. The most likely is that they simply didn't have the bandwidth to bother with such a low volume item when they needed to get other stuff out the door. Even a spec bump requires effort and testing. You can't read anything useful into the gap.
As for multiple SSDs in a single machine:
1) 2TB is better than 1TB. OS, apps and scratch on one drive, working data files on the other. Can be 2 volumes of JBODed together. Reasonably safe to JBOD 2 SSDs. Depends on your risk tolerance.
2) Two 1TB SSDs in a RAID 1 is as fast and safer than just a 1TB SSD. SSDs can fail. It's just not as common as in HDD with moving parts but controllers go bad. Depends on your risk tolerance.
3) You need around 4-5 SSD to saturate the bandwidth available in a RAID array.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-iops,2848-7.html
Here you see 4xSSD has about the same performance as 6xSSDs but that may be a limitation of the R6 itself.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4489/promise-pegasus-r6-mac-thunderbolt-review/6
I can see folks wanting to be able to use the Mac Pro without needing an external 4bay or 6 bay RAID since it's going to want to be fairly large for cooling and slots anyway. I could go either way since TB is well suited as a storage interconnect and being able to use the Promise R4/R6 with a MBP on the go has great appeal. Especially since all the data I need would already be on it.
I think we might see some big news on the 3D graphics 3D UI front. And a powerhouse app from Autodesk
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
I was responding to the assertion that the next Mac Pro would have no HDDs. Perhaps you need to chill and actually read what is written. My tolerance for idiocy here is dropping rapidly.
Fusion might be an option but frankly I'd rather manage my SSD/HDD allocation by hand if I have 2TB of SSD space available.
The lack of an updated Mac Pro last year is unexplained. The most likely is that they simply didn't have the bandwidth to bother with such a low volume item when they needed to get other stuff out the door. Even a spec bump requires effort and testing. You can't read anything useful into the gap.
As for multiple SSDs in a single machine:
1) 2TB is better than 1TB. OS, apps and scratch on one drive, working data files on the other. Can be 2 volumes of JBODed together. Reasonably safe to JBOD 2 SSDs. Depends on your risk tolerance.
2) Two 1TB SSDs in a RAID 1 is as fast and safer than just a 1TB SSD. SSDs can fail. It's just not as common as in HDD with moving parts but controllers go bad. Depends on your risk tolerance.
3) You need around 4-5 SSD to saturate the bandwidth available in a RAID array.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-iops,2848-7.html
Here you see 4xSSD has about the same performance as 6xSSDs but that may be a limitation of the R6 itself.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4489/promise-pegasus-r6-mac-thunderbolt-review/6
I can see folks wanting to be able to use the Mac Pro without needing an external 4bay or 6 bay RAID since it's going to want to be fairly large for cooling and slots anyway. I could go either way since TB is well suited as a storage interconnect and being able to use the Promise R4/R6 with a MBP on the go has great appeal. Especially since all the data I need would already be on it.
I think you misinterpreted my response, which is actually my fault. The condescending portion at the top was aimed at the OP's response to my prior post where he went off on a silly rant about Steve Jobs and his dying wish. I just didn't bother quoting any of that nonsense. I added in your quote below to acknowledge it. I should have clarified that. I do think HDDs still have a place, thus my comments. They're much more cost effective per GB. I don't think the fusion option would have been released if Apple thought ssds were only a year away from being cheap enough to fully propagate throughout the line. Some raid solutions can be extremely expensive with HDDs, such as Raid 5. I'm not sure how ssds hold up in that scenario. The issue with raid 5 is basically the need to use enterprise grade drives and the flakiness of lower end controllers with either striped parity as in the case of raid 5 or a dedicated parity drive if anyone still uses raid 3. For something smaller I would just go with hourly backups and caviar black drives.
I think it makes sense to keep as many bays in the mac pro as possible, given that the cpu includes a SATA controller either way. You still need external backups, but the addition of a few bays makes little impact on price. I think the arguments against them are from people who don't understand controlled price points. Anyway regarding the anandtech link, the results with 4 ssds are in line with thunderbolt's bandwidth limits. They are impressive numbers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by visionary
All these people who think Apple has given up on pros need to get a clue. Apple is preparing to launch the next big thing. Whether it happens at this next Keynote is not important. It will happen this year and probably soon. All the clues point to one thing - and I am not just talking about an iWatch.
So there's an article on Macrumors about Douglas Brooks, the Mac Pro Product Manager at Apple, saying this about the next Mac Pro to Andrew Baird:
"You are going to be really glad that you waited. We are doing something really different here and I think you're going to be very excited when you see what we've been up to. I can't wait to show this off."
Douglas Brooks - Mac Pro Product Manager at Apple looking like a boss.
After speculating and thinking much about the subject for months I would like to say that this is what I expect from the next Mac Pro... a smaller footprint to reduce the resources used to manufacture it, allowing more to be made, and more shipments to be processed. Mac OS X 10.9 with Siri and Maps, iRadio, Bluetooth, Wifi AC, Gibabit Ethernet, PCI Express 3.0, Haswell or Xeon Processors, an IGP if they decide to not to allow PCI Graphics Cards, SSD's only, 4 USB Ports on the front, Mini Tower Chassis. A new bluetooth power connector capable usb keyboard with lithium batteries, a new magic mouse with lithium batteries, a better display with faster respond times and better contrast ratio with anti glare, 32 GB of RAM or more, Power User Features.
Originally Posted by darkdefender
"You are going to be really glad that you waited. We are doing something really different here and I think you're going to be very excited when you see what we've been up to. I can't wait to show this off."
Sounds like Final Cut Pro X's review by people in the industry who got it early.
Which means the new Mac Pro will be hated at launch.
Which means it will be a glorious success and truly will be the future of said computer type.
Looking at the nVidia Quadro offerings makes me wonder…
Apple has different GPUs available on the iMac & laptops, why not make sure these are all the kind that can be swapped out for upgrades; AND use the same mobile Quadros as the standard graphics system in the new Mac Pro. Regular full-size (and full horsepower) Quadro GPUs will still be available for BTO (as will the various performance grades of the mobile versions). Pricing could be lower, using the mobile cards across the MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini & Mac Pro lines would let Apple buy in volume. And the customers would get choices in their GPUs, no matter the form factor of the computer (laptop, AIO, SFF, desktop).
Realize part of the issue (especially with Apple's design formula of less power = less heat & noise) would be power draw, heat output & cooling noise; but it might be a neat idea…
hmm,
I too think spinning disks still have a place in today's computing. I just think the main boot drive should be SSD. This is the drive that should come standard on the new Mac Pro. What you want to add extra is up to you. If you want a RAID of HDDs then all the power to you. However, I do not think Apple should force people into one thing or another when it comes to expanding the base system. I did not say the system cannot use HDDs just that system should be all SSD - by that I meant the standard boot drive should be SSD. Sorry if you misunderstood. I could and should have clarified better.
When you call the Steve Job's angle silly, you give no support. I think it should happen - Steve's final "one more thing." It is not a silly idea. It is a very powerful idea that would cause ripples around the tech industry. I'd love to see a final video of Steve going "If you are viewing this, that means I have died..." It brings tears to my eyes just thinking of this possibility. I would love to see Steve give "one last thing". It would go down in history as the great tech moment ever.
Maybe I am wrong and it will not happen. However, it it doesn't, Apple will have missed a great moment.
So lets imagine that instead Apple has a box without those bays that can sit on top of another box with those bays and connect with no speed loss. The expense of the support for disk arrays is removed from the base model and is only of a concern to users that need large storage capacity. If they manage to do this without a significant impact on overall cost then everybody wins. Entry into the Mac Pro becomes far cheaper and one doesn't have to worry about space wasted on features that they would never use. For bulk storage no one is really dismissing magnetic drives. What we are dismissing is the need to support those drives in a base machine.
Right now SSDs are expensive because manufactures can get away with high prices. While it may be a very long time before there is price parity the cost of SSDs will continue to decline. It won't be impossible to put a reasonable large SSD into the new Mac Pro that would cover many user needs. Apple has shown that they can be aggressive with SSD pricing if they want to be. The likely hood is that any SSD they implement in a Mac Pro would be large enough for a wide array of users while those with additional needs will have an option to support those needs.
To put it plainly, there is no reason to get ones undies in a bunch over a speculated SSD in these new machines.
Imagine a shiny new Mac Pro with a bootable Fusion-io ioFX 1.6TB SSD PCIe card…
Yeah, the card probably costs more than the mid-line Mac Pro; but just IMAGINE IT…!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I suspect everybody here realizes the cost differential. The problem is this, does it really make snes into days market to sell a huge machine with those drive bays for the few people that need them. Believe me of the potential Mac Pro customers out there your type of usage is a small minority of potential users.
4 bays isn't that many or that big. Given that you want 3 full sized slots anyway the enclosure will be big.
No, this isn't an invitation to revisit the whole "you don't need slots" debate again. If you don't need slots get an iMac and go away.
Small minority of users? Citation needed because I call bullshit. Folks that need Xeon + ECC RAM are often heavy users with lots of data. Engineering, video, science users. Large CAD projects, large video projects and large amounts of data for a heavy duty workstation.
Quote:
So lets imagine that instead Apple has a box without those bays that can sit on top of another box with those bays and connect with no speed loss. The expense of the support for disk arrays is removed from the base model and is only of a concern to users that need large storage capacity. If they manage to do this without a significant impact on overall cost then everybody wins. Entry into the Mac Pro becomes far cheaper and one doesn't have to worry about space wasted on features that they would never use.
Far cheaper? The 4 bays doesn't cost much in relation to the cost of a thunderbolt RAID enclosure. Find me a 4 bay TB RAID enclosure for under $500. The cheapest I've seen is $800.
Tell me that the 4 bays is adding more than $500 to the Mac Pro price. It doesn't so it's not going to become "far cheaper". Maybe 200-300 savings at a guess.
Quote:
For bulk storage no one is really dismissing magnetic drives. What we are dismissing is the need to support those drives in a base machine.
Right now SSDs are expensive because manufactures can get away with high prices. While it may be a very long time before there is price parity the cost of SSDs will continue to decline. It won't be impossible to put a reasonable large SSD into the new Mac Pro that would cover many user needs. Apple has shown that they can be aggressive with SSD pricing if they want to be. The likely hood is that any SSD they implement in a Mac Pro would be large enough for a wide array of users while those with additional needs will have an option to support those needs.
To put it plainly, there is no reason to get ones undies in a bunch over a speculated SSD in these new machines.
To put it plainly you can live with an iMac if you don't need slots or internal drive bays. There are damn few demanding tasks that require ONLY a high end Xeon CPU and nothing else. It's not a matter of aggressive SSD pricing. $600 for 1TB is pretty reasonable already if you only need a couple and that has nothing to do with why some folks will want internal bays.
Like I said, I'm going to get an external array but I don't view these things with the myopic perspective of just my own needs.
Apple makes ONE freaking medium/heavy truck. Stop dumbing it down because you want to save $300 or want to be able to park in a compact car only parking space. Hell, it saves you what? A whole inch and a half of height? Maybe $300 in price?
Quote:
Originally Posted by visionary
The other big thing will be OS Xi. iOS and OS X will merge and continue on in the iDevices. OS Xi will be for pro desktops. I'd really like to see OpenDoc make its comeback here and all the OS moved to a metadata based system. What better system to introduce it on than the next generation computer.
Actually comments from Apple, plus their actions over the past 6-7 years says no.
Common core yes. But the two are totally different systems. They see this which is why they haven't already merged them.
There will be common gestures, icons, some features. But the two will always be separate variations of a common theme. Each designed for ideal usage on a particular type of hardware.