Speculation Targets Mac Pro as First "Made in USA" Mac Product

ppdix · Dec 13, 2012

timmothy90 said:
ppdix said:

About 128 simultaneous ones.
I created a thumbnail sized wall of porn to watch simultaneously.
I got the power.
How can your brain process each individual video o.o

Click to expand...

It's a joke.

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toke lahti said:

You surely don't know that most of music on this planet is still distributed in CD and most of movies in DVD?

Click to expand...

Yes, I know. That is now.
New iMacs already lack DVD drives.
Mac book airs sell like hot cakes too.
CDs have been around for 25 years and DVD for over 10.
Time to switch to better technology

nStyle · Dec 13, 2012

laserbeam273 said:
Sorry, but how is that unethical?

Responding to consumer complaints about lack of native manufacturing with most least impactful move just seems like a low blow.

snberk103 · Dec 13, 2012

nStyle said:
Responding to consumer complaints about lack of native manufacturing with most least impactful move just seems like a low blow.

I doubt it has anything to do with consumer complaints. I believe Apple and FoxConn (if it is FoxConn who is the 3rd party assembler in this case) are merely continuing to diversify where they make stuff. Having all your assembler eggs in one basket is a risky corporate move.

If (and it's a big 'if') it is a version of the Mac Pro then I would suggest that Apple (and their contractor) are starting with a product that doens't mean much to the bottom line.... so if there are issues it won't have a major impact on Apple's financial health.

Apple (and others) have consistently said that it is not primarily the cost of labour that has prevented a diversification of assembly plants, but the supply chains that already exist in China. If you are going to start assembling a new location, you have to give your suppliers a chance to establish their supply chains as well. A small volume product is perfect for this.

To suggest Apple is doing this because of consumer pressure though... that is, imho, not at all the case.

nStyle · Dec 13, 2012

snberk103 said:
To suggest Apple is doing this because of consumer pressure though... that is, imho, not at all the case.

I read it somewhere... probably can't find it.

toke lahti · Dec 13, 2012

faroZ06 said:
That's not a good justification for anything, and besides, Apple has always been concerned about the thickness of their desktop computers. If you really think this is going to be that first time when Apple decides to put 2.5" hard drives in their pro desktop but 3.5" in their consumer desktop, then we can just wait and see.

You surely know that servers have used 2.5" for years and fastest hdd's are 2.5"?

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ppdix said:
timmothy90 said:

Yes, I know. That is now.
New iMacs already lack DVD drives.
Mac book airs sell like hot cakes too.
CDs have been around for 25 years and DVD for over 10.
Time to switch to better technology

Click to expand...

People buy computers now for using them now, not in the future.
Good design would be fully usable with today's conventions and work also or would be expandable for future use.
But contrary to what you said, optical discs are not obsolete and won't be dead in 2 years.

thekeyring · Dec 13, 2012

ppdix said:
I laugh when I see the Mac Book Pro's benchmarks which are like 25% of the power I get on my 2010 Mac Pro.
I got 2 LED Cinema Displays, 1TB Mercury Accelsior PCI-e SSD Drive that gives me 700MB/second Read speeds, plus 6 additional Internal HD's, PCI-e USB 3.0, FireWire 800 and 32GB of RAM. Oh yeah, I removed the CD drive and hooked up a 480GB SSD instead.
Try to upgrade an iMac or Mac Book...
Mac Pro is the only REAL Professional Mac. The rest are toys...

:O I WANT.

Sorry, just all those specs sound cool. My mid-2012 13" MBP often struggles with Motion 5 & Final Cut Pro. I need to upgrade to a faster machine.

snberk103 · Dec 13, 2012

nStyle said:
I read it somewhere... probably can't find it.

I read lots of things too...

milo · Dec 13, 2012

toke lahti said:
You surely know that servers have used 2.5" for years and fastest hdd's are 2.5"?

Really? I'd like to see a source on that. Or by 2.5 are you talking about SSD?

And even if that is true, 2.5 drives are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to capacity and price. I could see a new MP having some bays that are intended for SSD, but it would be a shocker if a MP had no 3.5 bays.

faroZ06 · Dec 13, 2012

toke lahti said:
You surely know that servers have used 2.5" for years and fastest hdd's are 2.5"?

The fastest HDDs are not 2.5"...
Servers are not Mac Pros, and not all servers use 2.5".
If 2.5" was what the pros used for the past few years, the Mac Pro would have them.

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ppdix said:
I laugh when I see the Mac Book Pro's benchmarks which are like 25% of the power I get on my 2010 Mac Pro.
I got 2 LED Cinema Displays, 1TB Mercury Accelsior PCI-e SSD Drive that gives me 700MB/second Read speeds, plus 6 additional Internal HD's, PCI-e USB 3.0, FireWire 800 and 32GB of RAM. Oh yeah, I removed the CD drive and hooked up a 480GB SSD instead.
Try to upgrade an iMac or Mac Book...
Mac Pro is the only REAL Professional Mac. The rest are toys...

Are you saying that all professionals who use computers need to be able to upgrade their computers? That's not the case.

nStyle · Dec 13, 2012

snberk103 said:
I read lots of things too...

Well you made me find it:

BLOOMBERG NEWS said:
It's no longer a pipe dream to bring some manufacturing back to the U.S. thanks in part to improvements in automation gear, said Pam Gordon, founder of electronics manufacturing consulting firm Technology Forecasters Inc. At the same time, the costs of making goods overseas are rising due to higher transportation expenses and increased consumer concern about worker safety and environmental responsibility, she said.

source

milo · Dec 14, 2012

That doesn't say that they're doing it because of consumer pressure.

Umbongo · Dec 14, 2012

toke lahti said:
You surely know that servers have used 2.5" for years and fastest hdd's are 2.5"?

Servers use 2.5" mechanical drives because they are more efficient. Two 2.5" drives in RAID use the same power as one, but can offer the same capacity and better performance. A single 2.5" drive is not as fast as a 3.5".

milo · Dec 14, 2012

Umbongo said:
Two 2.5" drives in RAID use the same power as one

As one 3.5? Maybe, do you have a source on that?

but can offer the same capacity and better performance.

To match the capacity of a single 3TB drive, you'd need two 1.5TB 2.5" drives, do those exist? And you might get better performance in some cases, but in a server why not just raid two 3.5 drives and get even better performance? 2.5 only seems to make sense when physical space is tight. Definitely in terms of cost, the 2.5s are at a major disadvantage.

But anyway, the Mac Pro isn't a server (or at least probably isn't used that way by most users). For MP it's hard to imagine wanting to use 2.5 other than for SSD (although the option to put two 2.5 drives in a single 3.5 bay would be a nice option).

snberk103 · Dec 14, 2012

nStyle said:
Well you made me find it:

source

Here's something I read, too... First from the article you quoted...

said Dan Luria, a labor economist at Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center in Plymouth, Mich., who studies factory operations. Apple will probably rely on tax breaks and other incentives for the facility, he said.

Second, from the NY Times...

Dec 1, 2012
A Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of local incentives granted nationwide and has found that states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world ...

The cost of the awards is certainly far higher. A full accounting, The Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the value of all their awards. Nor do they know if the money was worth it because they rarely track how many jobs are created. Even where officials do track incentives, they acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether the jobs would have been created without the aid.

Link to NY Times

So, are those jobs there- and it is only speculation that it will be about 200 - because the US is now becoming a cost competitive location? Or because there will be government subsidies? In effect, Apple (and its contractors) are not paying the full freight of on the expenses? In essence, a bribe by the government to a corporation.

Umbongo · Dec 14, 2012

milo said:
As one 3.5? Maybe, do you have a source on that?

All manufacturers list their numbers. Seagate's, for 15K SAS drives, are:
3.5" 600GB 16.31W
3.5" 300GB 12.92W
2.5" 300GB 7.92W

2.5" drives also have a much lower power usage when idle, 3.5" don't use much less at all.

To match the capacity of a single 3TB drive, you'd need two 1.5TB 2.5" drives, do those exist? And you might get better performance in some cases, but in a server why not just raid two 3.5 drives and get even better performance? 2.5 only seems to make sense when physical space is tight. Definitely in terms of cost, the 2.5s are at a major disadvantage.

Not talking about storage. That's a different issue, but 3TB and 4TB drives offer superior power usage at the moment, although many do not buy drives in such capacities for various reasons.

Never underestimate the need for physical space, power, and thus cooling, efficiency when it comes to servers.

Here is an article talking about it when enterprise vendors, such as Seagate, started pushing harder towards 2.5":
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/enterprise-storage-sas-hdd,2612-9.html

milo · Dec 14, 2012

Umbongo said:
Not talking about storage.

You are when you say "can offer the same capacity..."

toke lahti · Dec 14, 2012

milo said:
But anyway, the Mac Pro isn't a server (or at least probably isn't used that way by most users). For MP it's hard to imagine wanting to use 2.5 other than for SSD (although the option to put two 2.5 drives in a single 3.5 bay would be a nice option).

Velociraptor and fast SAS drives that still have 3.5" enclosure have 2.5" platters.
2.5" is getting cheaper, getting more capacity and saving more energy all the time.
I'd guess that in few years gigabyte is going to cost less in 2.5", since most of computers (all laptops and servers, some desktops already) use them and mass producing is all about economy of scale.
So if Apple redesigns MP every 10 years, they might be ahead of its time to ditching 3.5" just like they are now ahead of right timing for ditching optical disks in consumer's point of view.

Umbongo · Dec 14, 2012

milo said:
You are when you say "can offer the same capacity..."

Capacity of two performance 2.5" drives in relation to the capacity of a single 3.5" performance drive.

milo · Dec 14, 2012

If Apple designs with the intention that they won't update again for another ten years, drive size will be the least of our problems.

toke lahti · Dec 15, 2012

milo said:
If Apple designs with the intention that they won't update again for another ten years, drive size will be the least of our problems.

Has the enclosure been a problem for MP so far?
And when they designed it to be the G5 PowerMac?
I could easily list a dozen more serious problems with MP and a couple more with macs and even still more with Apple.

thekev · Dec 15, 2012

toke lahti said:
Has the enclosure been a problem for MP so far?
And when they designed it to be the G5 PowerMac?
I could easily list a dozen more serious problems with MP and a couple more with macs and even still more with Apple.

Heat has been an issue with gpus. Inconsistent airflow in drive bays was a lesser issue. They still significantly reworked the internal design at least twice with the Powermac G5, then with the Mac Pro 1,1 and 4,1. The shape of the shell has remained consistent, and they've worked within that form factor. It could be argued that they could do better with a more thorough reworking as other oems have done.

laserbeam273 · Dec 15, 2012

nStyle said:
Responding to consumer complaints about lack of native manufacturing with most least impactful move just seems like a low blow.

Not responding to consumer complaints isn't unethical.. you may want to read up on ethics a bit. If you label this unethical, then I don't know what you'd call child soldiers!

milo · Dec 17, 2012

toke lahti said:
Has the enclosure been a problem for MP so far?

It certainly has lagged in terms of what users need and are using.

davezak · Dec 22, 2012

TOWERS? is the future still to far?

Question:

Are we almost ready to think about how to do all of our processing in the cloud?

EVEN the big 'pro' stuff... (rendering 3d comps over 1080P video... instantly)

Don't get me wrong, I love my pro tower, and will buy the new one in a second - BUT I am feeling like really - maybe - possibly - a tower is an old way of doing things (if not now, then within coming years), and the technology we need to process and store all data in the cloud is available.

the computer we want is just a nice big touch screen with additional mouse and keyboard hardware - hooked into the cloud. (icloud - sure)

What do you ppl think?
Wanna make it happen?

thelead · Dec 22, 2012

davezak said:
Question:

Are we almost ready to think about how to do all of our processing in the cloud?

EVEN the big 'pro' stuff... (rendering 3d comps over 1080P video... instantly)

Don't get me wrong, I love my pro tower, and will buy the new one in a second - BUT I am feeling like really - maybe - possibly - a tower is an old way of doing things (if not now, then within coming years), and the technology we need to process and store all data in the cloud is available.

the computer we want is just a nice big touch screen with additional mouse and keyboard hardware - hooked into the cloud. (icloud - sure)

What do you ppl think?
Wanna make it happen?

There is NO WAY I will store all of my data in the cloud. Ever.

Speculation Targets Mac Pro as First "Made in USA" Mac Product

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