wizard69

macxpress said:

CobraGuy said:

I doubt we see a new Mac Pro in 2018.

Heck, Apple could not ship a Siri Speaker before Christmas.

And Apple was once rumored to be building a car?

LMAO

I doubt we'll see a MacPro in 2018 either, but only because it does take time to totally redesign a computer from the ground up. It seems that it takes a good 2-3yrs to totally redesign a product. If Apple just wanted to pull an HP and just slap a bunch of shit together with a shitty heatsink on it then they could have had a new Mac Pro out before the end of 2017, but obviously Apple isn't going to do that. If that's what makes you happy then by all means go buy the HP. Nearly everything you see on and inside a Mac (or any Apple product for that matter) is custom engineered and built by Apple. Its not as simple as slap a bunch of shit together and call it a day like PC manufacturers do. 

I'd rather Apple get it right than just rush a product to market to appease people like you. So if it takes a few extra months to get a product to market then so be it. 

it really isn't that hard to designing a computer using somebody else parts.   This especially  if you assemble a team of experienced designers and engineers.   It is far more complicated if you are designing in your own electronics which wouldn't surprise me one bit.

At this point though I really don't know what to think of Apple and the Mac line.   It is clear that they have ignored the desktop completely for years and have totally lost touch with their users.   I'm not convinced that they can turn things around in 2018 with compelling hardware at rational price points.    I stress price points here because ;the high entry price on many of Apples desktops has more to do with killing sales and impacting product viability than anything.

macxpress said:

jkichline said:

Let me make this really easy... Apple needs a rack mountable solution that is equally as sexy and useful on the desktop. The trouble is that “pro” can be graphic designers and photographers which the iMac Pro is perfect for. but for musicians, professional sound and video engineers, 3D artists and those with server farm needs, Apple has no entry.

My recommendation is for Apple to develop a half a 1U unit with basic high core count and optional high end graphics. Keep a smaller high speed SSD in that for boot and enough room to do basic needs (256 GB). Then sell other 1/2 rack units for RAID SSD storage. Interconnect it all with high-speed TB3 and 10Gb Ethernet. Great thermal management front to back and a sexy face (dark anodized aluminum with a glowing logo). Heck throw an OLED on the front with configurable display (CPU, RAM, Net, etc)

You ship it with rails and mounts. The 1/2 unit should be able to stand/lay on a desk or be mounted in a rack by itself or coupled with another one to make a full unit.

That’s it! It’s really simple. Make blocks. Make lots of them. Make the blocks work together seamlessly. Add hardware-level security like in the iMac Pro. Open up developer kits for PCI hardware developers. It’s pretty simple!

Everything seems simple on paper. We're not engineers so we don't realize the issues that come along with these thoughts on how something should be designed. This is just more armchair executive talk. 

It really isn't that difficult to design a machine that is compatible with the desktop yet can be rack mounted properly.    I wouldn't do 1U myself, preferring a deeper chassis but if you look at the Mini you can see that doing a 1U half wide or even 1/3 rd width PC is extremely doable and given that one dimension can be added to considerably you can put a lot of computational  capacity into a 1/2 wide or even a 1/3 wide platform.  

Oh by the way if you had a clue about what is already on the market you would know that this isn't an engineering problem at all.

Mike Wuerthele said:

blastdoor said:

Regarding “modularity” — Craig talked about modularity in the context of thermal/physical constraints. So I think what they meant is that it will be easier for them — Apple — to upgrade the new Mac Pro on a regular basis without the need to do a total redesign. It will be easier for them to swap out old Xeons for new Xeons, old GPUs for new GPUs. They will give themselves more thermal headroom and physical space inside the case so that they can adapt as technology changes, and perhaps to offer more BTO configurations. 

If you listen to what they said, instead of projecting your own BS onto it, I think that’s the most reasonable interpretation. 

In other words, I don’t think they meant “you can attach TB peripherals to it” — that’s what the 2013 Mac Pro was. (Although of course it will support peripherals — I just mean that’s not what they have in mind when they say “modular”) 

Nor do I think they mean “user-upgradable” in the sense that DIY PCs are user upgradable. It’s not like it will now be easy for users to swap out old Xeons for new. 

s

I'm puzzled, now. That's what I said and have been saying about "upgradeability," and precisely what I said about the CPUs in this articlTe -- not modular for the user, but easier for Apple itself to keep the specs up to date.

The problem with this perspective is that there was nothing to keep Apple form upgrading the trash can.   If You ignore the crap coming out of Craigs mouth and look at what is available chip wise you would see that there are plenty of potential chips for a trash can update.    The new GPU's from both AMD and NVidia offer plenty of performance upgrades in similar power profiles.   Likewise CPU chips from both AMD and Intel offer significant performance upgrades for a given amount of power.   Frankly I have a huge problem with Craig as anybody that follows the industry knows that he is full of crap in that regard.  There might not be upgrades suitable for annual updates but lets face it we are talking the XEON line here.

At this point I have no idea what modular means to Apple.   I do know one thing, if they don't bring out a platform that has a far lower entry point the line will have terrible sales just like the trash can.   The overwhelming problem for the Mac Pro as a desktop computer is the lack of a reasonably priced machine for the workstation market.   That doens't mean that the avoid making a high performance machine, just that they need a machine that can support a range of performance options and price points to move enough product to pay for the tooling to build the machine.   Lets face it there are not enough media pros out there to justify Apple making any sort of pro machine tailored for their needs.   However there is a massive market for workstation class machines that start at $1200 and can easily run into the $10,000 mark.   This can easily be done in one box these days.   A low end workstation suitable for a programmer might have one multicore CPU and a low end video card, maybe even a high end APU type chip (think a step or two above today's Mini).    Swap in a high end video card and you have a machine for web development and minor game development.   From there it is a simple matter to scale performance as the user needs.   In the end there is no rational reason why Apple can't have a pro machine starting at $1200 and going as high as the professionals are willing to pay.

The thing is that these days all of this can be had in a platform much smaller than a cheese grater type tower.  The people demanding a tower just are not living in todays technology world.

canukstorm said:

wizard69 said:

The thermal throttling is a huge problem in a professional machine.   Sadly AI is seeing throttling in extremely light usage imagine how much you would loose over 8 hours. 

Frankly this is not unexpected!   Apples history with the word "pro" and cramming hot parts into a tight enclosure isnt good.  Every day im becoming more and more convinced that Apple just doesnt understand the "PRO" market.   

As a point of record i was looking at a iPad Pro in a store yesterday.    Nice device but there is nothing about it that stands out as being pro.   I do believe that common sense has left the building at Apple and has been replaced by marketing morons that likely have never engaged in professional work.  Sad.  

"Apples history with the word "pro" and cramming hot parts into a tight enclosure isnt good.  Every day im becoming more and more convinced that Apple just doesnt understand the "PRO" market"

To their credit, they are hitting the restart button the Mac Pro.  So we'll have to wait and see until that gets released to see if you're correct (or not).

It is more speculation at this point until we can get testing done in a way that replicates what a pro would do all day at the machine.    I only brought up the concept because AI was seeing throttling in very basic and light usage. 

As for the coming Mac Pro; well I've had ideas for a long time on how that should unfold but here is the problem, Apple user base is too small and too fractured for a ground swell of happiness out of any new Mac Pro design.   Frankly I didn't think that the trash can was that bad of a design and frankly don't understand the lack of upgrades!    The excuses coming out of Apple don't make any sense either as suitable new chips did arrive that had more performance per watt especially with regards to the GPU?   All that talk about thermal limitations don't pan out if you look at Intels chip lineup, Same thing for GPU's.    I'm strongly in favor of a Mac Pro with a far lower entry point price wise to pull in more users to the platform with a wide spread in possible performance improvements on up sell models.    In other words Apple has to get more volume out of a Mac Pro chassis to pay for development costs.   More so they need to keep revising the machine instead of these years long delays in model revamps.   Same thing goes for the Mini, I'm sitting at a PC with an old Dell Model Dx0D, from 2015, that is in many ways a better Mini that Apples Mini.

Personally I think somebody at Apple got a bug up their ass with respect to the desktop and decided to ignore the whole area for years.   When it became obvious that this was hurting them, they started to back pedal but had nothing in the line up for any of the markets targeted by Mini, the iMac and Mac Pro.   The iMac was simply the platform they could address the quickest thus the iMac Pro.   Given that I'm not sure they can even design machines anymore that will meet user needs or set them apart from generic machines running Linux.   Why they haven't come out with a ARM based laptop is beyond me.

bobolicious said:

wizard69 said:

The thermal throttling is a huge problem in a professional machine.   Sadly AI is seeing throttling in extremely light usage imagine how much you would loose over 8 hours. 

Frankly this is not unexpected!   Apples history with the word "pro" and cramming hot parts into a tight enclosure isnt good.  Every day im becoming more and more convinced that Apple just doesnt understand the "PRO" market.   

As a point of record i was looking at a iPad Pro in a store yesterday.    Nice device but there is nothing about it that stands out as being pro.   I do believe that common sense has left the building at Apple and has been replaced by marketing morons that likely have never engaged in professional work.  Sad.  

Indeed I have mixed feelings about the latest design decisions, without knowing more of course... On the one hand 'Apple giveth' (back) - the new thermal design seems to have allowed restoration of user changeable VESA mount ie. something that in my work I have found very useful... And yet the RAM is inaccessible...? Time will tell if ram and drive upgrades are possible, if bizarrely inconvenient - and I do ask about 'common sense' and any number of design decisions relating to future proofing of such premium hardware since the passing of the torch, so to speak...

It is like the machine is half there as far as meeting the targeted users need.    Take that RAM for example, on a consumer grade machine and even laptops for advanced users I have no problem with soldered in RAM, on a machine like this I can hardly see it as ideal.   Now it appears that he RAM is indeed socketed on this machine but extremely difficult to get to, that is odd beyond belief.   

Now there is a wide array of what might be called professional users that may be attracted to this machine.   The problem is many of those are the same types of people that might find need for a RAM upgrade, an upgrade that doesn't require a magician to perform.

Some might have taken my concerns about throttling a little personally in this thread, but that shouldn't be taken as meaning I find the whole machine appalling, just that you have to consider the machines worth based upon how much it will throttle with your work load.    for some people that throttling could have a significant impact on the machines value.    In the end the "pro" tag just doesn't seem genuine.