Somebody here stated that professionals have had the hackintosh to work with for many years. But few professionals can afford to invest the money, reputation, and time in an illegal, unreliable hackintosh. I'm still missing the dual processors of the original Mac Pro.
Apple basically gave the middle finger to pro’s with the new Mac Pro. The Mac Pro IS NOT for pros at all - it’s for a niche market of video content creators. A ‘pro’ computer would service all professionals, not just one small segment The cheese grater was the last truly ‘pro’ computer.
Like many others, I bought the iMac after they announced this thing and it will probably be my last as I’m buying a Windows box to test out that playground for possible transition out of the Apple environment. This is after 28 years and an entire career with Apple.
Another point to consider - is after Apple's track record of support, you have to be a gambler to invest 10k into a single desktop that could very well be unsupported a few short years later.
Well written as usual. Unfortunately the crowd that incessantly clamors for the slotted tower of olden days at a consumer level price will not be convinced even though they have had the Hackintosh option for years now. It’s a shrinking niche as pointed out but that niche is angry and vocal so we have to put up with all the bullshit about it.
It has little to do with being a niche or even angry. Rather it is the stupidity of trying to market a machine with limited appeal to the wider “pro” market. In the end, over time the new Mac Pro will not ship enough machines to justify its production. Combine that with nothing else in Apples line up that could be considered by a pro in need of a desktop and you end up with zero pro interest.
As for slots a midstream “pro” computer these days only really needs one slot and that would be for a GPU card. By the way a standard GPU card. The great failing of the trash can is no capacity for a standard off the shelf video card. Such a card slot would have allowed a pro to configure the video card to his specific needs.
You can make excuses for Apple but the reality is this new pro has huge obsticals to over come. If Apple takes the same path as the trash can they will not even have an entire system on offer.
Ugh! Such a Love/Hate relation with Apple. It's clear Apple wants to go the direction of tablets and phones only. However, until an ipad can do EVERYTHING a mac pro can do . . . (where is my Xcode) then I will always be somewhat at odds. A very wise man once said "PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people.”
And that was the village idiot comment of the day!
Please don't abuse the comments section with insults that do not add anything to the discussion. Aim higher up on the hierarchy of the disagreement.
What a nice chart! It should hang right next to some people's keyboards as a reminder. Not seen this one before, have you had that pyramid long?
Except that we rarely see that chart in use. In these forums the “explicitly refutes the central point” usually begins with Siri sucks, Apple sucks, or AirPods are useless. You know, personal opinion expressed as unassailable, indisputable fact. Hard to use the chart when debate starts like that.
Ugh! Such a Love/Hate relation with Apple. It's clear Apple wants to go the direction of tablets and phones only. However, until an ipad can do EVERYTHING a mac pro can do . . . (where is my Xcode) then I will always be somewhat at odds. A very wise man once said "PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people.”
One funny thing about that truck quote is that trucks are actually pretty popular. Ford and GM have almost entirely stopped making cars, at least for the US market. Of course, what's even more popular than trucks is the SUV -- something in between a truck and a car.
Apple basically gave the middle finger to pro’s with the new Mac Pro. The Mac Pro IS NOT for pros at all - it’s for a niche market of video content creators. A ‘pro’ computer would service all professionals, not just one small segment The cheese grater was the last truly ‘pro’ computer.
Nope. Since there is no such thing as one professional user, there can be no one computer for all said users. That’s why Apple makes several computers. There are even three with the name “Pro” in them, including also the MBP and the iMac Pro, which is way more machine even than I need as a pro software developer. I elected for a maxed out iMac 5K, which is all the power I need. My 5K does more work than the old cheese grater could for its time.
But what you really mean to say is, “I want slots!” Not having slots doesn’t make the iMac Pro or even my 5K less of a solution for professionals.
Well written as usual. Unfortunately the crowd that incessantly clamors for the slotted tower of olden days at a consumer level price will not be convinced even though they have had the Hackintosh option for years now. It’s a shrinking niche as pointed out but that niche is angry and vocal so we have to put up with all the bullshit about it.
It has little to do with being a niche or even angry. Rather it is the stupidity of trying to market a machine with limited appeal to the wider “pro” market. In the end, over time the new Mac Pro will not ship enough machines to justify its production. Combine that with nothing else in Apples line up that could be considered by a pro in need of a desktop and you end up with zero pro interest.
Poor Apple! If only they knew what “wizard69” knows!
And you’re flat-out wrong about the rest. Per Apple/Craig, Apple’s #1 pro user is a....software developer. The iMac 5K and the iMP are perfect machines for professional coding. I do it everyday. I don’t need slots, I don’t need headless. I’ll likely get 8 years out of this machine as I did my last...by that point I have no problem upgrading the computer and the monitor with another AIO. I mount them on a VESA arm and it’s a sweet set up with a clean desk.
Well written as usual. Unfortunately the crowd that incessantly clamors for the slotted tower of olden days at a consumer level price will not be convinced even though they have had the Hackintosh option for years now. It’s a shrinking niche as pointed out but that niche is angry and vocal so we have to put up with all the bullshit about it.
It has little to do with being a niche or even angry. Rather it is the stupidity of trying to market a machine with limited appeal to the wider “pro” market. In the end, over time the new Mac Pro will not ship enough machines to justify its production. Combine that with nothing else in Apples line up that could be considered by a pro in need of a desktop and you end up with zero pro interest.
As for slots a midstream “pro” computer these days only really needs one slot and that would be for a GPU card. By the way a standard GPU card. The great failing of the trash can is no capacity for a standard off the shelf video card. Such a card slot would have allowed a pro to configure the video card to his specific needs.
You can make excuses for Apple but the reality is this new pro has huge obsticals to over come. If Apple takes the same path as the trash can they will not even have an entire system on offer.
1. That's "obstacles". Honestly, we live in an age of spell-checkers, and STILL folks can't get this basic stuff right?
2. Per the nice little triangle at the beginning of the opinions section, you are simply "contradicting" lkrupp's statement, i.e., offering "little or no supporting evidence". Your blanket statement that the Mac Pro won't "justify it's production" is just an opinion. Also, you don't define what YOU mean by a "pro" market, which means it could be anything.
Your final two paragraphs are equally superficial.
Based on past history of just abandoning anything that takes a modicum of effort it would be unwise for those who are not of the Apple Sheep cloth to put much faith in Apple being consistent with any product at this level. You only need look at
1. The demise of the Xserve server and RAID 2. Apple acquiring and doing nothing with PowerSchool. 3. The neglect of iBook Author despite the small but fanatical fan base 4. Aperture’s slow decaying death 5. OS X Server turning into a toy
Apple’s spent their money on AI companies and other ancillary technologies but they haven’t spent much effort into growing their Pro apps beyond routine small features and maintenance updates.
I’d trust Apple if I had a few workstations to purchase but I’d be wary with committing to anything more than that.
The Google list is pretty good and the reason why I don't trust them with anything.
Did you bother to read the Microsoft list? Ya Surface Pro is on there (because they came out with Surface Pro 2), SBS (Azure and Office 365 knock it out of the park in comparison), Xbox One DRM, Flight Simulator, Encarta (something called Wikipedia came along). I don't see how any of these are even remotely close to Xserve or OS X Server, but hey, who am I to judge.
We aren't allowed to quote ourselves (i.e., reply to our own comments), and nobody has taken up my question, so here it is, in response to Dan's closing section:
["So it would be a mistake to view today's Mac Pro only through the lens of previous Apple Pro products, like the Xserve or earlier Mac Pros. Apple is a wildly different company than it was even just seven years ago. There is, however, another factor related to the new Mac Pro that serves as a "negative cost" for developing the new machine. In other words, the existence of the Mac Pro creates or induces something that benefits Apple elsewhere, that it wouldn't be able to get without the Mac Pro existing as a product."]
I asked:
Does anyone care to speculate on what this other factor that serves as an additional "negative cost" is?
Surely it's got to be the investment into Apple News+, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, as well as into Xcode 11 and SwiftUI = the software that drives the publishing, entertainment, and gaming industries on the Mac and iOS, etc.
After a little more time to think about it, and noting the pun in the title of the current article, I think I'll argue instead that it is going to be Metal.
He hasn't yet mentioned it among the existing technologies Apple is leveraging here, and there's also the absolutely amazing Pro Display XDR to consider, something else that is usually left out in these discussions. I myself am fuzzy on what exactly it (Metal) does, but I'm pretty sure I'm glad it exists. It is obvious Apple sees it as essential, given the fact it seems to be at the center of the disconnect with NVIDIA.
I'll also repeat once again that we'll see another release in this iMac Pro, Mac Pro series, with a new "architecting" of the MacBook Pro by this design team. It will drive the Pro Display XDR with ease and it will be more expensive than what we're used to. Think of the difference between the iMac Pro and the iMac. The difference between the redesigned MacBook Pro and the MacBook will be similar.
I'm happy that Apple is still addressing the pro market, but it's unfortunate they missed so badly using Intel Xeon CPUs instead of AMD Epyc CPUs for this generation. The additional cores and PCIe bandwidth would be massively useful, especially if they could shave some serious money off the price at the same time.
Yeah, Rome is looking pretty good, and maybe that would have been better.
But, I can think of three reasons why the path they chose might be ok:
1. AVX 512 --- the AltiVec of our day. Xeon has it, Epyc doesn't. 2. AMD is historically an unreliable supplier on the CPU side of things 3. Intel has already announced that Cascade Lake Xeon Ws will be much cheaper than their Skylake predecessors. That could mitigate the Epyc price advantage.
"Pretty good" is a bit of an understatement. Epyc Rome thrashes Xeon Cascade Lake more badly than Apple's A-series CPUs beat Qualcomm's Snapdragon. It's all just flat-out annihilation with the exception of single-threaded loads on low core-count CPUs, where Intel maintains a very slight edge. On the top end, Epyc's multi-core performance is about 260% of Skylake at less than half the price. I don't expect this to change until 2022 unless Intel gets incredibly lucky. Their 10nm performance is still utter crap - stuff coming off the line right now is slower than 14nm unless they bump the TDP, and who wants to use more power for the same speed? Intel is still excellent at core and uncore design, but they can't manufacture at a competitive level so it doesn't matter. Ultimately, this is a leadership issue. AMD has a fairly brilliant engineer (Lisa Su) running things, and Intel has been trying to cost-cut itself to death (turns out that dumping engineering resources while bringing up 10nm cost them several orders of magnitude more that it "saved"). Anyway, if early-silicon Ice Lake vs. early-silicon Milan is anything to go by, it only gets worse in the near term. Much, much worse.
AVX512 is a distinct advantage in single-threaded loads (and how many of those are there for AVX512?), but I don't think it overcomes the massive overall performance differential (assuming one doesn't dump those loads to a GPU anyway).
With regards to reliability - AMD had their shot back in that Athlon64 / Opteron days and promptly fumbled the opportunity because they couldn't match Intel in IPC or performance-per-watt. Both of these issues have been overcome with Rome. AMD's Naples was a solid performer for the money (I bought a few of their servers to play with), Rome is awesome, and Milan is looking great. In the meantime, Intel has basically screwed things up fairly consistently for the past seven years (14nm was a mess and 10nm is still deeply problematic unless magic happens). Furthermore, AMD gambled heavily on their "chiplet" solution for scaling core count in a single package and it payed off perfectly. Intel doesn't have anything to compete with that in the near term, and even if they started their own project in the last year or two then they're still likely looking at a 2022 shipment timeframe (in line with when they expect 7nm to start volume production, assuming all goes well).
Intel will have to cut Cascade Lake prices to stay in the game, but it doesn't matter because except in a very few edge cases the performance will not be close. The 56-core Cascade Lake part is a joke - it requires water cooling, offers only one DIMM per channel, and nobody other than Intel is even bothering to make motherboards for it. AMD's 64-core Rome beats it soundly with air cooling, a full load of memory, massively more PCIe bandwidth, and for far less money. Even if Intel matches the price, they can't do anything about the performance (or lack thereof).
The only reason I can see for Apple to stay with Xeon for their Mac Pros is if macOS so heavily optimized for Intel's architecture that adjusting for AMD's Zen2 / Zen3 cores is too problematic to be worth the effort. AMD still isn't terribly competitive in the mobile / laptop space, which is where Apple sells most of their Intel-based machines (although there are some interesting APU possibilities there).
Ultimately, I don't care whether Intel or AMD supplies the CPUs - I just need some serious performance bumps. We've been treading water in the industry for over half a decade now, and it's getting very stale.
Based on past history of just abandoning anything that takes a modicum of effort it would be unwise for those who are not of the Apple Sheep cloth to put much faith in Apple being consistent with any product at this level. You only need look at
1. The demise of the Xserve server and RAID 2. Apple acquiring and doing nothing with PowerSchool. 3. The neglect of iBook Author despite the small but fanatical fan base 4. Aperture’s slow decaying death 5. OS X Server turning into a toy
Apple’s spent their money on AI companies and other ancillary technologies but they haven’t spent much effort into growing their Pro apps beyond routine small features and maintenance updates.
I’d trust Apple if I had a few workstations to purchase but I’d be wary with committing to anything more than that.
Sadly, I have to agree. And you left off Apple’s bizarre abandonment of WebObjects while simultaneously declaring Objective-C as the preferred development language moving forward.
Well written as usual. Unfortunately the crowd that incessantly clamors for the slotted tower of olden days at a consumer level price will not be convinced even though they have had the Hackintosh option for years now. It’s a shrinking niche as pointed out but that niche is angry and vocal so we have to put up with all the bullshit about it.
It has little to do with being a niche or even angry. Rather it is the stupidity of trying to market a machine with limited appeal to the wider “pro” market. In the end, over time the new Mac Pro will not ship enough machines to justify its production. Combine that with nothing else in Apples line up that could be considered by a pro in need of a desktop and you end up with zero pro interest.
Poor Apple! If only they knew what “wizard69” knows!
And you’re flat-out wrong about the rest. Per Apple/Craig, Apple’s #1 pro user is a....software developer. The iMac 5K and the iMP are perfect machines for professional coding. I do it everyday. I don’t need slots, I don’t need headless. I’ll likely get 8 years out of this machine as I did my last...by that point I have no problem upgrading the computer and the monitor with another AIO. I mount them on a VESA arm and it’s a sweet set up with a clean desk.
'Per Apple/Craig'?
Can I see the full quote from Apple/Craig?
I've brought this up for you before and you don't respond but insist on pushing the claim around.
What did they say?
I know of one case not too long ago. Which one are you referring to?
Why is everyone lamenting the loss of the Mac middle when it is here we just all fail to see it. I like many of you want something between a iMac or iMac Pro and a tower but what do I really want? I want to add in cards and RAIDS and whatnot. Well the eGPU and thunderbolt enclosures are here to stay. Yes we can lament the extra boxes and the lack of ability to have it all in one big box but thats about all we can lament. We CAN actually do everything we want, we just may not like it cuz it isn't "pretty" or "clean". I run pro setups all the time with iMac's connected to eGPU's and other boxes running other PCI cards and in the end it does in fact look clean and professional....it's not just not in one box. Think of it this way. The entire power of having a tower is gives you the "option" to add cards if need be. Well we still have this option with thunderbolt 3...yes we have to cough up some extra dough for a eGPU box but thats about it right? What am I missing here??? I would rather argue about the hatred of having to spend $300 on an eGPU box to add a card rather than arguing over a whole missing product or cheap tower. But hey, thats just me.
Because that would never be as good as a direct PCI-e connection, neatly out of sight inside the box. Sure thunderbolt can be a temporary solution, but wires and xtra boxes is offensive to my design sense.
Why can’t we have performance and style? That lovely intersection between liberal arts and engineering?
Based on past history of just abandoning anything that takes a modicum of effort it would be unwise for those who are not of the Apple Sheep cloth to put much faith in Apple being consistent with any product at this level. You only need look at
5. OS X Server turning into a toy
Apple’s spent their money on AI companies and other ancillary technologies but they haven’t spent much effort into growing their Pro apps beyond routine small features and maintenance updates.
I’d trust Apple if I had a few workstations to purchase but I’d be wary with committing to anything more than that.
All of OS X Server's functionality is still there via the command line. In fact, it's in every copy of MacOS.
Blatantly false. - See post above.
Customers can get these same services directly from open-source providers. Which for all practical purposes means a Linux distribution.
Looks like Open Directory is gone from 5.8 too, which cannot easily be swapped for a standard LDAP server.
Exactly. Apple never created an iSCIS initiator which meant you always had to look at 3rd party solutions, while I understand their motive for pushing people to just download and install the newest components. but let's call a spade a spade. They've put zero effort into making higher level computing suitable for the masses and that was pretty much the foundation for the company.
Apple really doesn't have clue where the future is going. Tim Cook gets on stage and prattles a word salad of technology but Apple shows very little ability to being the lighting rod that the industry needs going forward. Apple is spending billions on trying to become the next Netflix. Didn't Steve say "A computer is where you go to turn your brain on, a TV is where you go to turn your brain off". So Apple now casts it lot with the "Hey sit back and turn your brain off and watch some Apple TV +.
I love Apple ...but they've become old and stodgy.
Based on past history of just abandoning anything that takes a modicum of effort it would be unwise for those who are not of the Apple Sheep cloth to put much faith in Apple being consistent with any product at this level. You only need look at
5. OS X Server turning into a toy
Apple’s spent their money on AI companies and other ancillary technologies but they haven’t spent much effort into growing their Pro apps beyond routine small features and maintenance updates.
I’d trust Apple if I had a few workstations to purchase but I’d be wary with committing to anything more than that.
All of OS X Server's functionality is still there via the command line. In fact, it's in every copy of MacOS.
Blatantly false. - See post above.
Customers can get these same services directly from open-source providers. Which for all practical purposes means a Linux distribution.
Looks like Open Directory is gone from 5.8 too, which cannot easily be swapped for a standard LDAP server.
Exactly. Apple never created an iSCIS initiator which meant you always had to look at 3rd party solutions, while I understand their motive for pushing people to just download and install the newest components. but let's call a spade a spade. They've put zero effort into making higher level computing suitable for the masses and that was pretty much the foundation for the company.
Apple really doesn't have clue where the future is going. Tim Cook gets on stage and prattles a word salad of technology but Apple shows very little ability to being the lighting rod that the industry needs going forward. Apple is spending billions on trying to become the next Netflix. Didn't Steve say "A computer is where you go to turn your brain on, a TV is where you go to turn your brain off". So Apple now casts it lot with the "Hey sit back and turn your brain off and watch some Apple TV +.
I love Apple ...but they've become old and stodgy.
I'm 73, and I contend that you can be both old and the exact opposite of "stodgy"....
But I will say that Apple grabbed the tail of a tiger with the iPhone, and it's literally impossible for them to let go. I.e., they have to prioritize.
That's not an excuse, just a reason. I've watched the company long enough to see some real mistakes they've made. Is this one? Time will tell.
Why is everyone lamenting the loss of the Mac middle when it is here we just all fail to see it. I like many of you want something between a iMac or iMac Pro and a tower but what do I really want? I want to add in cards and RAIDS and whatnot. Well the eGPU and thunderbolt enclosures are here to stay. Yes we can lament the extra boxes and the lack of ability to have it all in one big box but thats about all we can lament. We CAN actually do everything we want, we just may not like it cuz it isn't "pretty" or "clean". I run pro setups all the time with iMac's connected to eGPU's and other boxes running other PCI cards and in the end it does in fact look clean and professional....it's not just not in one box. Think of it this way. The entire power of having a tower is gives you the "option" to add cards if need be. Well we still have this option with thunderbolt 3...yes we have to cough up some extra dough for a eGPU box but thats about it right? What am I missing here??? I would rather argue about the hatred of having to spend $300 on an eGPU box to add a card rather than arguing over a whole missing product or cheap tower. But hey, thats just me.
Because that would never be as good as a direct PCI-e connection, neatly out of sight inside the box. Sure thunderbolt can be a temporary solution, but wires and xtra boxes is offensive to my design sense.
Why can’t we have performance and style? That lovely intersection between liberal arts and engineering?
Form follows function. And somewhere in there is cost. It's called living in the real world.
If there is no option for a NVIDIA GPU, it is NOT a Pro computer period.
It is a Pro Computer but not one that meets your definition of Pro.
I've had many struggles with NVIDIA GPU's over the years. 200MB for a graphics driver? really?
Last year I took 10 different NVIDIA GPU to recycling. The guy sighed and said 'not more of these things? We can't give them away'.
Yes, you have a point if you want to use CUDA etc but for most people, as long as it can drive their display with minimum flicker and delay/pixelation they are happy.
Pros need the best hardware, not the second best. Ray Tracing and real AI kernals are not optional for many people but the most serious issue here is the lack of choice in a computer aimed at Pros. What if the Intel GPU turns out to be the one a pro needs to get their work done?
Comments
I'm still missing the dual processors of the original Mac Pro.
In saying that, my favourite the Granny Smith, even my dog won't eat.
The Mac Pro IS NOT for pros at all - it’s for a niche market of video content creators.
A ‘pro’ computer would service all professionals, not just one small segment
The cheese grater was the last truly ‘pro’ computer.
Like many others, I bought the iMac after they announced this thing and it will probably be my last as I’m buying a Windows box to test out that playground for possible transition out of the Apple environment.
This is after 28 years and an entire career with Apple.
Another point to consider - is after Apple's track record of support, you have to be a gambler to invest 10k into a single desktop that could very well be unsupported a few short years later.
But what you really mean to say is, “I want slots!” Not having slots doesn’t make the iMac Pro or even my 5K less of a solution for professionals.
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Diagnostic_Port.txt
Poor Apple! If only they knew what “wizard69” knows!
And you’re flat-out wrong about the rest. Per Apple/Craig, Apple’s #1 pro user is a....software developer. The iMac 5K and the iMP are perfect machines for professional coding. I do it everyday. I don’t need slots, I don’t need headless. I’ll likely get 8 years out of this machine as I did my last...by that point I have no problem upgrading the computer and the monitor with another AIO. I mount them on a VESA arm and it’s a sweet set up with a clean desk.
2. Per the nice little triangle at the beginning of the opinions section, you are simply "contradicting" lkrupp's statement, i.e., offering "little or no supporting evidence". Your blanket statement that the Mac Pro won't "justify it's production" is just an opinion. Also, you don't define what YOU mean by a "pro" market, which means it could be anything.
Your final two paragraphs are equally superficial.
Did you bother to read the Microsoft list? Ya Surface Pro is on there (because they came out with Surface Pro 2), SBS (Azure and Office 365 knock it out of the park in comparison), Xbox One DRM, Flight Simulator, Encarta (something called Wikipedia came along). I don't see how any of these are even remotely close to Xserve or OS X Server, but hey, who am I to judge.
I asked:
After a little more time to think about it, and noting the pun in the title of the current article, I think I'll argue instead that it is going to be Metal.
He hasn't yet mentioned it among the existing technologies Apple is leveraging here, and there's also the absolutely amazing Pro Display XDR to consider, something else that is usually left out in these discussions. I myself am fuzzy on what exactly it (Metal) does, but I'm pretty sure I'm glad it exists. It is obvious Apple sees it as essential, given the fact it seems to be at the center of the disconnect with NVIDIA.
I'll also repeat once again that we'll see another release in this iMac Pro, Mac Pro series, with a new "architecting" of the MacBook Pro by this design team. It will drive the Pro Display XDR with ease and it will be more expensive than what we're used to. Think of the difference between the iMac Pro and the iMac. The difference between the redesigned MacBook Pro and the MacBook will be similar.
"Pretty good" is a bit of an understatement. Epyc Rome thrashes Xeon Cascade Lake more badly than Apple's A-series CPUs beat Qualcomm's Snapdragon. It's all just flat-out annihilation with the exception of single-threaded loads on low core-count CPUs, where Intel maintains a very slight edge. On the top end, Epyc's multi-core performance is about 260% of Skylake at less than half the price. I don't expect this to change until 2022 unless Intel gets incredibly lucky. Their 10nm performance is still utter crap - stuff coming off the line right now is slower than 14nm unless they bump the TDP, and who wants to use more power for the same speed? Intel is still excellent at core and uncore design, but they can't manufacture at a competitive level so it doesn't matter. Ultimately, this is a leadership issue. AMD has a fairly brilliant engineer (Lisa Su) running things, and Intel has been trying to cost-cut itself to death (turns out that dumping engineering resources while bringing up 10nm cost them several orders of magnitude more that it "saved"). Anyway, if early-silicon Ice Lake vs. early-silicon Milan is anything to go by, it only gets worse in the near term. Much, much worse.
AVX512 is a distinct advantage in single-threaded loads (and how many of those are there for AVX512?), but I don't think it overcomes the massive overall performance differential (assuming one doesn't dump those loads to a GPU anyway).
With regards to reliability - AMD had their shot back in that Athlon64 / Opteron days and promptly fumbled the opportunity because they couldn't match Intel in IPC or performance-per-watt. Both of these issues have been overcome with Rome. AMD's Naples was a solid performer for the money (I bought a few of their servers to play with), Rome is awesome, and Milan is looking great. In the meantime, Intel has basically screwed things up fairly consistently for the past seven years (14nm was a mess and 10nm is still deeply problematic unless magic happens). Furthermore, AMD gambled heavily on their "chiplet" solution for scaling core count in a single package and it payed off perfectly. Intel doesn't have anything to compete with that in the near term, and even if they started their own project in the last year or two then they're still likely looking at a 2022 shipment timeframe (in line with when they expect 7nm to start volume production, assuming all goes well).
Intel will have to cut Cascade Lake prices to stay in the game, but it doesn't matter because except in a very few edge cases the performance will not be close. The 56-core Cascade Lake part is a joke - it requires water cooling, offers only one DIMM per channel, and nobody other than Intel is even bothering to make motherboards for it. AMD's 64-core Rome beats it soundly with air cooling, a full load of memory, massively more PCIe bandwidth, and for far less money. Even if Intel matches the price, they can't do anything about the performance (or lack thereof).
The only reason I can see for Apple to stay with Xeon for their Mac Pros is if macOS so heavily optimized for Intel's architecture that adjusting for AMD's Zen2 / Zen3 cores is too problematic to be worth the effort. AMD still isn't terribly competitive in the mobile / laptop space, which is where Apple sells most of their Intel-based machines (although there are some interesting APU possibilities there).
Ultimately, I don't care whether Intel or AMD supplies the CPUs - I just need some serious performance bumps. We've been treading water in the industry for over half a decade now, and it's getting very stale.
Can I see the full quote from Apple/Craig?
I've brought this up for you before and you don't respond but insist on pushing the claim around.
What did they say?
I know of one case not too long ago. Which one are you referring to?
pushing people to just download and install the newest components. but let's call a spade a spade. They've put zero effort into making
higher level computing suitable for the masses and that was pretty much the foundation for the company.
Apple really doesn't have clue where the future is going. Tim Cook gets on stage and prattles a word salad of technology but Apple shows very little ability to being the lighting rod that the industry needs going forward. Apple is spending billions on trying to become the next Netflix. Didn't Steve say "A computer is where you go to turn your brain on, a TV is where you go to turn your brain off". So Apple now casts it lot with the "Hey sit back and turn your brain off and watch some Apple TV +.
I love Apple ...but they've become old and stodgy.
But I will say that Apple grabbed the tail of a tiger with the iPhone, and it's literally impossible for them to let go. I.e., they have to prioritize.
That's not an excuse, just a reason. I've watched the company long enough to see some real mistakes they've made. Is this one? Time will tell.