Quite a machine! But does it really have only PCI 3? PCI 5 is around the corner and PCI 4 is currently adopted by the industry ...
It was the same with Mac Pro 2010 + 2012 which used to have PCI 2 while PCI 3 was already standard.
Yes, I am surprised it's only gen 3 but it does have 16x support to extract the maximum speed out of it. But odd that it doesn't use gen 4 or 5 which would be much faster.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
The new Mac mini doesn’t work for indie developers?
You assume that I'm implying that Indie app developers have no options from Apple. I didn't write that. I wrote that it's a shame that Apple left out so many legitimate pros with the new Mac Pro. At one time they had a modular pro machine on the low end that we could afford. That is no longer the case. If you can figure out how to add an I/O card to a Mac Mini let us all know.
What I/O card do we software devs need for our pro work? Enlighten. I'm an enterprise software dev, and all I need is a fast machine. Craig said most of their pros are devs, and most of them use iMacs or MBPs, which is why they released the iMac Pro. It's more than enough power for me. Even a normal maxed iMac is more than enough power for me -- SSD, RAM, VRAM.. it's plenty to run VMs and create builds and maybe do some renders.
Don't complain just because the top-tier model isn't priced for your use case. The new MP is not a hobbyist or tinkerer machine. It's not even for most pros. It's for the pros who claimed there was nothing that they could use previously. Now there is.
Why wouldn’t the iMac or iMac Pro meet their needs?
This is the Mustang or super car of computers. In these cloud-based times it makes very little sense to have this power outside the cloud. This is simply Apple showing that they care about the Pro influencers. If you make 100k+ then buying one of these is a no-brainer. To the target audience this is far easier to stack than yet another Mercedes and it comes without the jet lag of intercontinental business flights.
Who/what are enthusiasts? Are they so-called professionals or not? I’m struggling to understand why an iMac Pro or a Mac mini wouldn’t meet their requirements.
If you want to understand the type of Pros that Apple is targeting with this new Mac Pro, I recommend reading this marketing release by Apple with reactions from Pro users. It should give you an idea
So in Canadian funds, to get into a basic model and the usual upgrades, the new display and stand with a mouse, keyboard, and AppleCare, Taxes... $20,000! Thats right... $20,000
This is exactly what Pro's have been screaming for...
Who/what are enthusiasts? Are they so-called professionals or not? I’m struggling to understand why an iMac Pro or a Mac mini wouldn’t meet their requirements.
If you want to understand the type of Pros that Apple is targeting with this new Mac Pro, I recommend reading this marketing release by Apple with reactions from Pro users. It should give you an idea
I asked the question because people here are saying Apple missed the enthusiast market. I don’t know what that market is and/or how other Apple products aren’t able to service it.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
The new Mac mini doesn’t work for indie developers?
You assume that I'm implying that Indie app developers have no options from Apple. I didn't write that. I wrote that it's a shame that Apple left out so many legitimate pros with the new Mac Pro. At one time they had a modular pro machine on the low end that we could afford. That is no longer the case. If you can figure out how to add an I/O card to a Mac Mini let us all know.
What I/O card do we software devs need for our pro work? Enlighten. I'm an enterprise software dev, and all I need is a fast machine. Craig said most of their pros are devs, and most of them use iMacs or MBPs, which is why they released the iMac Pro. It's more than enough power for me. Even a normal maxed iMac is more than enough power for me -- SSD, RAM, VRAM.. it's plenty to run VMs and create builds and maybe do some renders.
Don't complain just because the top-tier model isn't priced for your use case. The new MP is not a hobbyist or tinkerer machine. It's not even for most pros. It's for the pros who claimed there was nothing that they could use previously. Now there is.
I've answered this already (I used an ethernet card upgrade as an example). A spec'd out iMac is nice, but what if you didn't buy it that way? An iMac Pro doesn't help in that regard. Apple can sell whatever they want. But it's a shame that they left out so many devs who just want some modularity, especially when they had options from Apple in the past. Mac devs have no other vendor options. And your penultimate sentence describes my position quite well
It's called a debate. It's a place where people share conflicting ideas and opinions. It's OK not to agree without resorting to name calling. That's usually an indication of immaturity or a bad counter-argument. Let's keep it classy and listen to each other.
You can call it a "debate" if you want. People try to pass off their opinions as fact, or they're under the false belief that their needs is what the market should be. Wrong in every way.
I didn't insult anyone in particular. It's more or less a general opinion of many people are nowadays. If you find something in my general post that offends you, grow some thicker skin.
I was trying to keep the discussion on information other than name calling. My skin is plenty thick, like your skull. See? name calling doesn't help anyone.
I still can't believe people are complaining about the price. I swear not one of you has ever worked in a business that relies on computers to get work done (specifically creative work). Especially if you've got a deadline to meet for a client or they want to see a demo in person.
The only way Apple could have made it cheaper would have been to make it incapable of powering the higher-end CPU and GPUs. The $5999 base configuration is a bargain, about $1000 cheaper than the equivalent HP Z4.
Is the CPU socketed? I missed that, and haven't noticed anyone mentioning it.
Socketed CPUs run the risk of developing loose pins over time as the box gets moved about. That’s probably OK for a desktop. Never for a laptop though.
I think I'm just going to put all the whiners on this thread on permanent "ignore." If you can't find ANYTHING positive to say at all (or even constructive criticism) on your first post about this amazing new machine, I don't need you in my life, and frankly AI will be a far better read without your relentless, boring negativity.
Ignoring the 'whiners' is not going to solve your problem in the sense of turning a deaf ear to reality. And second, those posters on AI are not part of your life and have nothing to do with it. You're on a forum, not hanging out at a sports bar rooting for a football team. And let me say that calling people 'whiners' or 'haters' doesn't make you ANY better than Trump calling the Democrats 'haters' just because he was voted as President.
It's the wrong attitude and by putting them on ignore, you could be missing out on some valuable feedback or information. You don't just go to a debate just to put on ear plugs and have 'selective hearing' what comes through your head. This is exactly the problem with this forum and other places.
And lastly, I'm not against the new Mac Pro. It's about effing time Apple got its act together. They got the hardware design right by going old school with the cheese grater approach BUT I do have to agree with some of the users' anger towards the bizarre pricing and set up. I'm a creative professional myself and I know that the Mac Pro is overkill for my case, however I'm acutely aware that this is more geared for the larger clientele base that has the budget for it. On the other hand, their argument on how the Mac Pro, especially how one AI Admin here posted, that it should be scaled down to be price accessible and then upgraded over time for the users' future needs and growth over the years. Trust me on this. I own an old school G4 tower stored away in my apartment and it still works, although I currently run on a mid-2010 iMac with 10 GB of RAM which gets the job done albeit somewhat slowly and I'm considering replacing it by the end of the year with either a new 4k iMac or a PC suited for 2D graphic design/digital illustration workflow. I still rely on the desktop for the heavy lifting and know better that the iPad Pro will NEVER, EVER replace a desktop. EVER.
Unless Apple grows a pair and makes the iPad Pro 'tabloid sized' as in 11 x 17 with full scale iPad OS and external drive connections. 11 x 17 is the right size to scale for professional comic illustrators, graphic designers and such to work on 100% actual scale without the pinch and zooming. Trust me on this. The pinch and zooming is somewhat discouraged in the creative field especially when digital painting or illustrating. Jony Ive as an industrial designer should've known better than that because people in his field and other creative industries are trained to draw from their shoulders by hand. I should know. It's how one is trained that way in art school. 11 x 17 is a good size to draw widely from your shoulder in loose form. I'm not sure 12.9 is enough.
Anyway, the new Mac Pro is impressive however I'm not discounting the skeptics either. I'm quite shocked that Nvidia was not mentioned for this machine as I wish Apple would stop acting juvenile and patch things up with that company. By having AMD and Nvidia as alternatives, it would've opened things up even more.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
I find it hard to believe that devs ever need that kind of power.
Exactly. The most processor intense activity most software developers do is code compilation. An out of the box iMac is more than up the the job. But of course, many software developers earn serious $$$ so they’ll but the Mac Pro because they can.
The enthusiasts complaining about this machine are justified. The people pointing out that this machine is for an extremely niche and specific market are also correct.
IMO Apple messed up here, and they're going to get a lot of crap for it. This is a form factor that could, and should, have scaled to make multiple market segments happy. Instead Apple went as far to the extreme end as they could, to the exclusion of the middle road, and completely priced out individuals.The enthusiasts just wanted an expandable i7 with like 16-64GB of RAM and a good GPU they could upgrade. That should have been possible with this design.
Feels like a swing and a miss to me. Apple is either completely out of touch with the enthusiast market, or it might be time for the enthusiast market to give up on Apple. I think they probably sold a fair amount of PCs today.
Also, I know it's personal preference but man is that thing ugly. Can Ive stop trying to make every Apple product look like a Braun appliance from the 60s and 70s?
Or maybe there's a Mac tower in the future that will slot in below this device. If they want to sell as many Mac Pros as they can right out of the gate, it would probably unwise to roll out an "economy" version at the same time. Just looking at the naming convention of the current line-up of MacOS devices, there's one missing where a "Mac" would be.
While I'm fairly certain that Apple doesn't develop product lines in response to internet chatter, it's nonetheless true that some people have been, for the last few years, fostering a narrative that Apple has "abandoned" real "Pros" in favor of offering sleek, slim, underpowered, non-upgradable, non-modular hardware. This new Mac Pro kind of destroys that narrative, doesn't it? So this device is aimed squarely at the Pro market, not the "enthusiast" market. In six months or a year, they'll offer some upgrades to the Mac Pro, making it even more spectacular, and maybe at that time, hit the 'enthusiast' market with a Mac tower that emulates some of the aesthetics of the Mac Pro, but smaller, with less power under the hood, and a lower price to go with it.
If that were the case when they bring out a low powered Mac Pro set up, I suspect they would do this a year from now. Also, the design language of the Mac Pro's monitor could be a hint that the future iMacs might be getting this type of makeover and if they do that, the prices may even be a bit higher which could be problematic unless they bring it down to 21.5 and 27 inches.They probably won't have a choice but to make their next iMacs 'user upgradable' just like the Mac Pro to follow suit or incur more backlash as time goes by. However, by then it may be too late as for my case, I have to replace my 2010 iMac eventually by 2020 as I'm still lingering on deciding between staying on 1080p or switch up to 4K for print via CMYK or RGB graphic design/illustration needs. 5K would be overkill for me anyways. Even 6 or 8K.
CON: Apple has redefined what a "pro" user is by making a workstation specifically for organizations like Pixar. They left out pretty much every indie app developer, and that's a real shame. I still own a cheese grater Mac Pro. It was pricey but I could afford one. I can't afford this new one.
The new Mac mini doesn’t work for indie developers?
You assume that I'm implying that Indie app developers have no options from Apple. I didn't write that. I wrote that it's a shame that Apple left out so many legitimate pros with the new Mac Pro. At one time they had a modular pro machine on the low end that we could afford. That is no longer the case. If you can figure out how to add an I/O card to a Mac Mini let us all know.
What sort of I/O card are you looking for? Between TB3, USB and Ethernet, there are tons of expansion possibilities on the latest Mac mini.
One example would be ethernet upgrades. I have a cheese grater with built-in gigabit. I can add a card to give it 10 gigabit ethernet. The problem is that machine is from 2008 and Apple won't even let me run Mojave when it actually works if you upgrade the wifi/bluetooth module. Oh yeah, you can swap that out too.
I know things can get messy with dongles, but as long as it is just a few key I/O types required, TB3 is a really neat way to go for I/O expansion.
PS: Never mind the fact that built-in 10G Ethernet is now an option on a Mac mini.... Yeah, I get it, they're not easily upgraded, but from what I gather here in these forums, the way a lot of people "upgrade" once upgrade options became limited (like with laptops) is by selling their older Mac and getting a new one. Considering that you get all-new I/O this way, exchanging every 2-4 years (while older Mac is still worth something) is not a bad way to go for budget minded pros that need newer tech. Not sure what your GPU requirements are, but one of the 6-core i7 minis would easily double the CPU performance of a typical old 2008 MacPro.
Anyone notice that the new Mac Pro SSD read/write speeds are slower than the new iMac Pro? From Apple's own site, I see the following exact wording:
iMac Pro (up to 4TB SSD):
3.3GB/s write performance
2.8GB/s read performance
new Mac Pro (up to 4TB SSD):
2.7GB/s sequential write performance
2.6GB/s sequential read performance
Can anyone provide any insight here? It sure seems like the iMac Pro would be faster for storage reads/writes, unless the word "sequential" is relevant.
Woody
Comments
Don't complain just because the top-tier model isn't priced for your use case. The new MP is not a hobbyist or tinkerer machine. It's not even for most pros. It's for the pros who claimed there was nothing that they could use previously. Now there is.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/pro-app-developers-react-to-the-new-mac-pro-and-pro-display-xdr/
Thats right... $20,000
This is exactly what Pro's have been screaming for...
Middle finger noted Apple... noted.
It's the wrong attitude and by putting them on ignore, you could be missing out on some valuable feedback or information. You don't just go to a debate just to put on ear plugs and have 'selective hearing' what comes through your head. This is exactly the problem with this forum and other places.
And lastly, I'm not against the new Mac Pro. It's about effing time Apple got its act together. They got the hardware design right by going old school with the cheese grater approach BUT I do have to agree with some of the users' anger towards the bizarre pricing and set up. I'm a creative professional myself and I know that the Mac Pro is overkill for my case, however I'm acutely aware that this is more geared for the larger clientele base that has the budget for it. On the other hand, their argument on how the Mac Pro, especially how one AI Admin here posted, that it should be scaled down to be price accessible and then upgraded over time for the users' future needs and growth over the years. Trust me on this. I own an old school G4 tower stored away in my apartment and it still works, although I currently run on a mid-2010 iMac with 10 GB of RAM which gets the job done albeit somewhat slowly and I'm considering replacing it by the end of the year with either a new 4k iMac or a PC suited for 2D graphic design/digital illustration workflow. I still rely on the desktop for the heavy lifting and know better that the iPad Pro will NEVER, EVER replace a desktop. EVER.
Unless Apple grows a pair and makes the iPad Pro 'tabloid sized' as in 11 x 17 with full scale iPad OS and external drive connections. 11 x 17 is the right size to scale for professional comic illustrators, graphic designers and such to work on 100% actual scale without the pinch and zooming. Trust me on this. The pinch and zooming is somewhat discouraged in the creative field especially when digital painting or illustrating. Jony Ive as an industrial designer should've known better than that because people in his field and other creative industries are trained to draw from their shoulders by hand. I should know. It's how one is trained that way in art school. 11 x 17 is a good size to draw widely from your shoulder in loose form. I'm not sure 12.9 is enough.
Anyway, the new Mac Pro is impressive however I'm not discounting the skeptics either. I'm quite shocked that Nvidia was not mentioned for this machine as I wish Apple would stop acting juvenile and patch things up with that company. By having AMD and Nvidia as alternatives, it would've opened things up even more.
TB3 to 10G Ethernet:
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34934&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsOWr6L3O4gIViv5kCh06pABxEAAYAiAAEgLyu_D_BwE
PS: Never mind the fact that built-in 10G Ethernet is now an option on a Mac mini....
Yeah, I get it, they're not easily upgraded, but from what I gather here in these forums, the way a lot of people "upgrade" once upgrade options became limited (like with laptops) is by selling their older Mac and getting a new one. Considering that you get all-new I/O this way, exchanging every 2-4 years (while older Mac is still worth something) is not a bad way to go for budget minded pros that need newer tech. Not sure what your GPU requirements are, but one of the 6-core i7 minis would easily double the CPU performance of a typical old 2008 MacPro.