cgWerks

MacPro said:
Lot of similarities.  I have both side by side.  The main difference is one is cold the other gets red hot just ticking over.  Now if the trash can had modern ports and a few M2 Ultras inside...

I don’t think the ‘trash can’ Mac Pro was actually a bad idea, if it would have been executed properly, and kept up to date, especially given Apple Silicon direction. If they would have kept modern on eGPUs, those could have even been moved external, with just a base level one inside (kind of like the base MP with RX580), then plug in what you need. It could have even been designed to stack on top (ex: Blackmagic eGPU on top of a ‘core’ cylinder CPU/GPU).

Some disciplines *like* putting everything in a big box, but I don’t see a lot of real need in most cases if Thunderbolt would have been pushed to keep up with bus needs. Storage is easy. Most other components are lower bandwidth. GPUs are the primary catch.

ravnorodom said:
… Cool concept for cloud computing. The down side if internet connection is down, the computer is down. Centralized workstation makes sense if everyone is back at the office and work. Post pandemic changes all that.

Yeah, the difference is that it is actually workable now… well, in best cases anyway. But, IMO, the idea it is all moving to the cloud is just silly and historically ignorant. We’ve been here a few times in the past. We do have options for a blend now, but I still think people are going to want the power local for many reasons.

tht said:
… The big issue, how do they get a class competitive GPU? Will be interesting to see what they do. The current GPU performance in the M2 Max is intriguing and if they can get 170k GB5 Metal scores with an M2 Ultra, that's probably enough. But, it's probably going to be something like 130k GB5 Metal. Perhaps they will crank the clocks up to ensure it is more performant than the Radeon Pro 6900X …

The devil is in the details. I’ve seen M1 Pro/Max do some fairly incredible things in certain 3D apps that match high-end AMD/Nvidia, while at the same time, there are things the top M1 Ultra fails at so miserably, it isn’t usable, and is bested by a low-mid-end AMD/Nvidia PC.

I suppose if they keep scaling everything up, they’ll kind of get there for the most part. But, remember the previous Mac Pro could have 4x or more of those fast GPUs. Most people don’t need that, so maybe they have no intention of going back there again. But, I hope they have some plan to be realistically competitive with more common mid-to-high end PCs with single GPUs. If they can’t even pull that off, they may as well just throw in the towel and abandon GPU-dependant professional markets.

entropys said:
… Then software companies stop making Mac versions because it’s too hard to do something entirely separate to wintel, and costs for a diminishing number of people, so people like me have no choice but to move to windows.  It was the exact same situation in the nineties, until Jobs came back and things revitalised the joint with common parts.  This is less of a problem for education and home use these days, but is rapidly growing worse for specialist software. …

I think our primary hope there, is that the rest of the market might start shifting towards non-Wintel solutions, which might force some developer change in focus as well. If Microsoft starts moving towards ARM, or forces a change in Intel’s direction, etc. some of the legacy aspect will begin to be broken and everyone will have to start shifting. But, this is a way down the road…. so we might be stuck on having a Wintel PC on the side for the next half-decade or more. The good news is that with the right software, I think one can ‘remote control’ a Windows box in a Mac window realistically for even the most demanding work (haven’t tried it yet, but if one can FPS game using GeForce Go, it must be possible to do CAD or 3D or such that way, too).

JoakimZiegler said:

Apple Silicon has a PCIe 4.0 controller. It's used for WLAN, Bluetooth, and of course Thunderbolt, which is PCIe over a serial bus. It's impossible to have Thunderbolt without a PCIe controller. The PCIe 4.0 controller showed up on Apple's list of M1 features in the presentation. The lack of eGPU support is more than anything a driver and OS support question than anything to do with hardware.

Yep, that is my understand too. They can do it, it is more a matter of if they will or not.

mjtomlin said:

1. If these new Mac Pros do not have support for all the PCIe cards that the current Intel Mac Pro support, this system will fail. Most users interested in this system will be those looking to upgrade from their current Mac Pro and will want to bring their extremely expensive MPX modules (GPU cards) with them. The advantages of PCI slots isn't just expandability, it's also portability - moving those cards to another system. …

I hear you, but I have to be honest that I don’t think Apple cares about that.

ravnorodom said:

The next Mac Pro is better be something that Mac mini and Mac Studio can't: Stacks multiple layers of M2 Ultra chips on top of each other with blade fans/thermo sitting in between each chips. Max out these guys to the height of the current Mac Pro chassis. It maintains the modular concept in term of adding extra M series chip set instead.

I suppose, but it could do that at barely bigger than the Mac Studio. There is no need for a huge chassis like the previous model if there is little to no expansion/configuration. I’m fine with that, *if* they can actually compete. But, unless they’ve got some super-secret plan we can’t even imagine right now, it doesn’t look promising. IMO, w/o AMD support in some manner, Apple is going to remain a distant 2nd to the PC for certain pro segments, who’ll have to beg developers for support (in other words, the last how many decades of Apple).

Fidonet127 said:

I think the ASi Mac Pro will be tested by actual professionals just like the current Mac Pro. The design and testing with real professionals has been the hold up with covid affecting the process. As such I think some professionals will still want it. People forget the current Mac Pro was tested by professionals and more importantly, professionals require a wide range of computers. Yet the current Mac Pro was derided as too expensive for some professionals. Now we have a wide range of Mac computing power from the Mini and iMacs, to the Studio and the the Mac Pro.

I suppose, but it isn’t exactly a secret pros in certain segments need some serious GPU power, which is quite lacking in what we know of the current road-map.

9secondkox2 said:
… 2) a new motherboard framework that acts as a “fabric” which ties together multiple SOCs, with slots that you can add more SOCs after purchase. Each SOC would contain CPU, GPU, and RAM and that would be how you expand. Apple would of course charge crazy money, laugh all the way to the bank, and yet it would still enable customers to get what they want. 

True, though they are lacking a solution for ‘the rest of us’ that is even close to being competitive. I suppose after a couple more iterations of ASi, maybe they’ll get back in the ballpark? We’re kind of getting mixed messages right now, as they seem to be working with software vendors in areas they are way behind in, or would have to drop, if there weren’t some plan. That gives me a bit of hope. I just wish we knew a bit more about it.

ericthehalfbee said:

People are missing another obvious possibility: what Apple calls Ultra Fusion or a silicon interposer that allows two M1 Max chip dies to be connected together to make the M1 Ultra.

Gurman simply took the 38 cores of the M2 Max and doubled it as he thinks the Mac Pro will be using an M2 Ultra.

Apple has a very high bandwidth interconnect to pair two M1 Max chips. But who says that this interface can only pair two identical chips? Apple could make a companion chip that was simply made up entirely of GPU cores. So you could have an M2 Ultra with 12 CPU cores, the NPU and encoders/decoders from the M2 Max and have an M2 GPU with a whopping 128 (or more) cores.

Or if Apple went with a 4 die chip (the rumored Extreme version) then 2 x M2 Max along with 2 x M2 GPU and you’d have 24 CPU cores and upwards of 300 GPU cores.

I don’t know why people assume Apple can only connect two identical chips when they make an Ultra version. 

I like that idea, but I guess my question is if it would matter? It would cost quite a bit of money, and I still think not really be competitive in certain GPU aspects, even if exceeded the raw performance on benchmarks of a good AMD/Nvidia.

darkvader said:

"Profits are up!  What should we do about that?"

"I know, let's fire the people who made it happen!"

I’d take heed. I think they are just preparing for what they expect to be coming, and probably taking advantage of the situation to do some house-cleaning/trimming.

DAalseth said:

… The era of pie in the sky concepts is over. 

Yep, the ‘free money’ driving lots of things is now gone. Now we pay the piper. The real question (looking historically), is whether we’re just going to get *another* major devaluation of our fiat, or whether this one will trip the empire-fall protocol. The Keynesian farce is about to be put to the test.

Japhey said:
Assuming the 2nd gen model gets the same AirPods Pro 2 upgrades, there are really only a few things I would personally like fixed. First, USB-C. Second, they could be a bit lighter. And third, they absolutely need a better case. Many will say they want lossless support, but that’s not as important to me. 

This article makes it seem like they are nearing the end of the line. But, in reality, they are only barely past midway of their rumored 4 year cycle. I say go for it, you won’t regret it. And if you do, at least you have 2 years until you have to worry about it. 

Thanks for the feedback! That’s mostly the stuff I’ve heard so far, too. The Lightning/USB-C thing isn’t a huge deal to me. I’d probably mostly use them at home, so the case isn’t huge either (I think). Lighter would be good, as that is a concern for extended use. How do you feel about fit/clamping force compared to typical headsets out there? I don’t have a lot of experience… I’ve just used gaming ones or a few times $100-$200 studio type ones (Sony, etc.).

The main thing would be enhanced Transparency mode, as that is what I mostly use on my AirPods Pro, but it is good-enough as it is, as much as I’d enjoy it being even better. I don’t think I’ve heard of any reliability issues with them, like HomePods or my AirPods Pro (which I’m kind of ticked off about).

benji888 said:

Yeah so I pre ordered an M2 Mac mini, but I have a non Apple Bluetooth keyboard and mouse… I might have a wired mouse somewhere, so I won’t be able to set this thing up?!?!?!? That’s really not cool for Apple, if they are not going to include one of their keyboards and mouse, they need to make it work with ANY keyboard and mouse! So, now I have to go get a wired keyboard just to set this up? You’ve got to be kidding me! Forkin a!

It is not a bad idea to have a wired keyboard/mouse around somewhere, just for such situations (or when things go wrong). If you’re not crazy about the keyboard you have, or want to upgrade (and ‘kill two birds with one stone’) you might look into something like my Keychron K3, which is a low-profile mechanical keyboard. This will cost quite a bit more than any old USB keyboard (which should work for that purpose), but IMO, it is night and day better than even my previous Apple Magic keyboard. The have several layouts and key-switch options. I think my K3 + ‘Banana’ switches is quite like a low-profile version of the famous Apple Extended II.

DAalseth said:
With Photos, and I believe Music, you can just set the system up normally, with no Photos or music data. Then you tell each of them the new location for the files. I’d probably let MacOS and most everything else on the internal drive and point Music and Photos at the external SSD. The spinning HDD would be for TimeMachine. 

Convenience aside, I now look at internal SSDs differently than I used to. I treat the internal like OS + most apps + scratch/working space, instead of trying to buy a big enough one to hold it all (unless it is a laptop for primarily mobile use). Apple’s SSDs are ultra fast, but also really expensive. For a desktop, I just add external storage as needed, and as you pointed out, just do a bit of additional pointing of data storage for certain apps. For others which allow, I just point them at external drives on install (ex: Unreal Engine or Native Instruments, which both use huge amounts of storage). Yes, Music and Photos let you easily pick where the data ‘libraries’ are located.

entropys said:

I suspect Tim Apple wants you to buy a mini/studio plus an Apple display rather than an iMac 27 inch and the power people expect.  Think of the difference in margins.
until Apple solves the margin issue, we won’t see a big iMac.

I don’t think it worth waiting to see if a reasonably priced iMac (reasonably priced = similar to that if the old 5K iMac) comes out.  Just Velcro a mini to the back of a decent 4K monitor.

Aside from a bit of aesthetics, I’d probably go that direction anyway. I loved my iMac, but there are so many advantages to the modularity. The reason for the attractiveness of the 5K iMac was more about the great overall deal it was, right? If Apple doesn’t replicate that, there isn’t a huge reason to go with an iMac for a power-user.

Yeah, and unless you really want/need a Studio Display, I also don’t get why someone wouldn’t put the extra cash into the Mac and just hook it to one of the many great 4k monitors (or a couple!) that are much cheaper.