docno42

canukstorm said:
You seriously think that a stand is worth $999?

Luckily it's optional and every monitor comes with a standard VESA mount.  

But yeah, for $1K it better do a whole lot more than hold the monitor up 

I wonder how much this beast will weigh and what a good desk or wall mount arm will cost?  I suspect the Apple stand at $1K may be a bargain (that screen is HUGE and probably pretty hefty).

And is this the introduction of the third or fourth Apple proprietary connector to combine video and power?  The more things change the more....

karmadave said:

Looks impressive, however there are a few drawbacks.

1. Single CPU only. Most professional workstations offer a dual CPU option.
2. AMD graphics only. Curious as to whether nor not nVidia GPU's will even work in this machine.
3. Limited storage bays. Two (2) SSD's seems quite limited compared to most professional workstations.
4. Price. $6K seems a bit over-priced for an 8-core workstation with minimal RAM, SSD, and Graphics.

Overall, this is a niche product and likely not a huge money maker for Apple. That said, I am glad they are re-engaging with professional video and audio producers who've been waiting years for Apple to (re)introduce a truly modular professional workstation...

1.  I was waiting for this complaint.  Why do you think dual sockets is a plus?  Because its not.  It adds EXTREME complexity, severely limits the number of chipsets and CPUs that are available to pick from, and caps the max clock frequency that CPU's can run at because higher clock speeds affect reliability over distance and at high GHz speeds every millimeter counts - among other things.

"Most professional workstations" are still dual socket because they are riding on old designs.  This is a new design, crafted from the ground up around modern, high core CPUs.   How many PCI Express lanes are in those dual core workstations you are thinking of?  What's their memory bandwidth compared to this Mac Pro?  And what are the price points for similar configured/capable machines?  

Thank goodness we have finally got enough cores in a single socket where dual sockets are not needed.  My big complaint on previous Pro's was them sticking to Xeons and dual sockets - driving the costs up and tying to Intel's glacial server chipset timelines.  

2.  Unless you are doing CUDA I have a feeling the GPUs in this beast will hang with or surpass Nvidia's offerings.  Benchmarks will be interesting, but I can't wait to see real world application performance.  This box is going to be a screamer for video!  Did you notice the second interconnect for multiple card setups?  I think Final Cut Pro X is going to absolutely kill on this machine.  You can do amazing things when you own the hardware, OS and application software   I don't think Windows/Linux boxes are going to be able to match video performance at any price; time will tell but boasting they can do three 8K streams in real time should hint that this just isn't a warmed-over PC workstation design.  There's quite a bit more going on under the hood (as there should be for this long of a wait and at this price point!).

3.  Meh - 4TB of flash is more than enough for in the box (as much as it pains me to say that).  Most video houses have all their video on a SAN or beefy NAS, not local.  And this isn't normal SSD - it's the same turbocharged SSD architecture power by the T2 for the SSD controller. Except in this Mac Pro it isn't soldered to the board - woot!  The performance on this stuff should be amazing compared even to NVMe SSDs thanks to the T2.  If you really need more local storage a Thunderbolt 3 array should more than make up for any missing internal drive capabilities.  The amount of native TB3 ports you can hang a large number of arrays on their own TB3 port not shared with anything else - this thing is a beast when it comes to I/O.  A mini mainframe, really...

4.  Compared to what I spent on my 2007 Mac Pro this machine isn't a steal, but it's a better value for what you get.  Yeah, it starts with a higher baseline - but feature for feature there is no comparison.  If you don't need the extreme expandability then that's what the iMac Pro or a tricked out iMac is for.  It would be nice if they had a smaller two or three slot Mac Pro (ala the IIcx/IIci) but really the case and slots aren't were the cost is.  The bulk of cost is in the chipset, the CPU, the RAM, the power supply - the engineering to make all of that work.  If they could shave $1K off would it be enough to justify a totally different SKU?  Nope.  Which is why we won't see the xMac any time soon (despite me still wanting one).  

The Mac Pro was always a niche product.  At least this iteration re-establishes that they wish to uncontestedly own that high end niche again

Ugh, once again integrated graphics only.  Once again Apple pays lip service to pro users.

rogifan_new said:
What’s embarrassing is the non-retina MBA is still in the lineup but at $999. 

Not everyone needs higher end stuff.  Like schools. 

Not everything is about you.  Or me.  Or even the other users of this forum.

rogifan_new said:
I’m specifically referring to hardware.

Which isn't very useful since HW without software might as well be a plain slab of metal or glass.