New Mac Pro release date, rumours and leaked images

[MacMilligan]

Originally Posted by scottrichardson

Haha thanks Mr Jenkins! Amazing how many people know of Ulladulla, have relatives here, or own a holiday home here! Great place.

No, certainly not a cameraman by any standards, I prefer to stick to showing off my 'photoshop skills' making web sites

Hey, if you guys have better ideas for the design of the pro, and can't photoshop, let me know and I'll try to mock something up in my spare time. Honestly I'm just kicking time until the new pro comes out, so coming up with quick concepts in photoshop is a nice way to kill the time.

I think your design looks good. I don't particularly care for the apple logo and finding a way to hide the power button and inputs would be even sleeker. Don't be discouraged by the macrumors crowd, for some reason they are typically angry and cynical.

Holy crap, I think deconstruct has never heard of a conceptual mock up before... I hope he never goes to a car trade show less he be having seizures from all the concept cars without engines! Oh my!

[deconstruct60]

Originally Posted by theSeb

I am not talking about stability when I mentioned the iMac.

That's cute because the discussion lead off was all about stability. It isn't lost on me that you took a tangent. I was merely using the relevance you swept under the rug to highlight that your assertion that it is without reason is deeply flawed.

I was talking about form over function. The edges of the iMac were made thinner for no reason, other than aesthetics.

Not they were made thinner because there was nothing in them. Once the side with the ODD loses the ODD that edge can go thinner. Once that edge is thinner than the other 3 can go thinner by symmetry.

Once throw out the design constraint that you need a flat edge so can put sockets to stick stuff into then the tapered edges are a very straightforward design move. If dropped the ODD ( and moved SDcard slot to back) it would be silly to keep solid flat edges on the top 3 sides.

[theSeb]

Nothing in the edges, apart from the ODD?



That space could have been used for many things now that the ODD is gone.

[calaverasgrande]

there are numerous reasons we can imagine that make it difficult for the next Mac Pro to have thunderbolt. But the main reason it might not is entirely non-technical.
If Jobs was still around he wouldn't tolerate not having TB on the Mac Pro in this next revision. He would be on the phone with Intel calling in his chips. (pun intentional).

[PowerPCMacMan]

Maybe he is doing just that, but through telepathy with the Chinese owner of Foxconn.

Originally Posted by calaverasgrande

there are numerous reasons we can imagine that make it difficult for the next Mac Pro to have thunderbolt. But the main reason it might not is entirely non-technical.
If Jobs was still around he wouldn't tolerate not having TB on the Mac Pro in this next revision. He would be on the phone with Intel calling in his chips. (pun intentional).

[mrxak]

Absolutely, the next Mac Pro will be made out of LEGO.

[GermanyChris]

What would you use TB on a MP for?

[ScottishCaptain]

Originally Posted by GermanyChris

What would you use TB on a MP for?

Let me know when you figure that one out, because I've been pondering that for months now.

TB is nothing but bad for towers, because it requires hardware modifications to the GPU. That means that a Mac Pro with Thunderbolt ports would carry a proprietary GPU not unlike the extra ADC edge connector on the old AGP graphics cards shipped in various PowerPC Mac towers back in the day.

Why does everyone want that? I see a lot of modding going on these days, people replacing their stock GPUs with other models using flashed firmware (or not).

A Mac Pro that supports Thunderbolt will automatically preclude the ability to do that. So you're stuck with the GPUs that Apple produces, full stop.

Why do people want to bring this upon themselves for a couple of crappy ports designed for mobile gear? Bringing in Thunderbolt will limit the Mac Pro more then it offers expansion, just because of the requirement for custom GPU cards. It's not worth it when you have access to full fledged PCI-e slots.

-SC

[dan1eln1el5en]

Originally Posted by ScottishCaptain

A Mac Pro that supports Thunderbolt will automatically preclude the ability to do that. So you're stuck with the GPUs that Apple produces, full stop.

-SC

Exactly !
I had the first edition of the Intel MP, and darn were you stuck with EFI only cards, no modding until "recently".
Apple usually don't see the modding community as something they support.

[calaverasgrande]

Originally Posted by ScottishCaptain

Let me know when you figure that one out, because I've been pondering that for months now.

TB is nothing but bad for towers, because it requires hardware modifications to the GPU. That means that a Mac Pro with Thunderbolt ports would carry a proprietary GPU not unlike the extra ADC edge connector on the old AGP graphics cards shipped in various PowerPC Mac towers back in the day.

Why does everyone want that? I see a lot of modding going on these days, people replacing their stock GPUs with other models using flashed firmware (or not).

A Mac Pro that supports Thunderbolt will automatically preclude the ability to do that. So you're stuck with the GPUs that Apple produces, full stop.

Why do people want to bring this upon themselves for a couple of crappy ports designed for mobile gear? Bringing in Thunderbolt will limit the Mac Pro more then it offers expansion, just because of the requirement for custom GPU cards. It's not worth it when you have access to full fledged PCI-e slots.

-SC

external hard drives,
external hard drive arrays,
and if they nuke firewire, we will want TB HBAs for that as well.
Oh yeah, and doesn't Apple sell TB monitors?
I sincerely expect the next Mac Pro to look more like
La Cie NAS Pro
than the current Mac Pro

[deconstruct60]

Originally Posted by ScottishCaptain

TB is nothing but bad for towers, because it requires hardware modifications to the GPU. That means that a Mac Pro with Thunderbolt ports would carry a proprietary GPU not unlike the extra ADC edge connector on the old AGP graphics cards shipped in various PowerPC Mac towers back in the day.

No. The Mac Mini and iMac require no such thing. The Mac Pro doesn't either. The hugely dubious premise is that TB has to be on or coupled to a detachable/modular PCI-e card. It doesn't. Proof? The entire rest of the Mac line up.

Neither does one embedded GPU preclude having two GPUs in a Mac Pro; one of which is a detachable PCI-e card. There is again zero requirement that two GPUs be hooked to the TB controller (i.e., that the GPU output of the modular card be routed though the TB controller ). When two GPU cards were present in current and previous Mac Pro class boxes the outputs were per card dependent. There is no reason to change.

There is nothing particularly wrong with a nominal Mac Pro configuration with two GPUs. The MBP 15" have been shipping that way for years.

A Mac Pro that supports Thunderbolt will automatically preclude the ability to do that. So you're stuck with the GPUs that Apple produces, full stop.

Only with this invented constraint of TB on discrete card....... well Intel hasn't promoted at all since the beginning of Lightpeak/Thunderbolt.

IMHO I think this preoccupation with putting TB on decoupled cards is in part the reason why it is has slow widespread adoption. Lots of efforts being poured into deeply flawed mindset and artificial constraints.

----------

Originally Posted by calaverasgrande

external hard drives,
external hard drive arrays,

currently capable by current and previous Mac Pro. Besides 'lock in' to specific SATA cards embedded into external TB connected drives there is no new and in some cases slower drive access here from the current PCI-e card solutions.

and if they nuke firewire, we will want TB HBAs for that as well.

Get rid of Firewire by adding a GPU (embedded or more expensive proprietary card ) to the system design? Not really. Besides they didn't dump from the 2012 Mac Mini.

Eventually, probably yes. Top tier priority removal? Probably not. An ODD is likely much higher on the list.

TB hard drives are a quite dubious key market focus for Thunderbolt. Running a single protocol ( SATA pci-e traffic) over a wire really doesn't leverage much of an advantage for TB over just using eSATA/SAS natively. There is absolutely zero speed increase. None. It is purely about placement of the of the SATA controller chip; inside or outside the Mac Pro. Given 2-4 PCI-e slots in a Mac Pro there is a very huge question mark about significant added utility there. Especially in the context where the Mac Pro's PCI-e card slots are v3.0 speed and wider lane bundles available and TB is capped at v2. and capped at 4 lanes.


The sole secondary upside to TB is a "buy once use many" effect when the SATA controller is placed outside the box. That controller could be added to a variety of Mac just by plugging in a cable. However, that convenience comes at a increased cost. Unless avoiding buying muliple cards the bang for the buck is there. Especially for those who have already adopted significant eSATA/SAS investments.

Oh yeah, and doesn't Apple sell TB monitors?

tail wagging the dog. The TB "monitor" is a docking station. Why does a Mac Pro need a docking station? It doesn't.

[deconstruct60]

Originally Posted by calaverasgrande

If Jobs was still around he wouldn't tolerate not having TB on the Mac Pro in this next revision. He would be on the phone with Intel calling in his chips. (pun intentional).

Jobs just as likely was the exec who reassigned resources away from the Mac Pro and onto other Mac projects. Jobs openly stated that one of his primary duties at Apple was to say 'No'. Given no new significant board or design work was put in on the Mac Pro from 2010-2011 it is highly like that someone at Apple said 'No'.

Jobs is a major front running candidate. Given it took several months after his death for Apple to state that they were now going to do something about the Mac Pro ( someone had now said 'Yes') makes him a front voting thumbs down previously.

The handwaving about how adding Thundebolt is some sort of "land a man on the moon" technological complex task is goofy. It is not. It is a thoroughly solved problem on the rest of the Mac line up and on more than a couple of PC motherboards. The Rube Goldberg solutions are complicated, but that is primarily because they are Rube Goldberg solutions.

[spoonie1972]

Originally Posted by deconstruct60

The handwaving about how adding Thundebolt is some sort of "land a man on the moon" technological complex task is goofy. It is not. It is a thoroughly solved problem on the rest of the Mac line up and on more than a couple of PC motherboards. The Rube Goldberg solutions are complicated, but that is primarily because they are Rube Goldberg solutions.

Link to dual-xeon TB mobos, please!

[GermanyChris]

Originally Posted by spoonie1972

Link to dual-xeon TB mobos, please!

so what your saying is TB would be harder to impliment on say an SR-x board than some gigbyte 1155 board?

Workstation boards don't need TB, TB is redundant on something with 80 or so PCI-e lanes.

[spoonie1972]

i didnt say i wanted it or that it's necessary. the poster above said they're available. i'm just asking for links.

[GermanyChris]

Originally Posted by spoonie1972

i didnt say i wanted it or that it's necessary. the poster above said they're available. i'm just asking for links.

He said on PC motherboards not DP workstation boards. They are on 1155 boards, they most likely never will be on dual processor boards because they are redundant.

Here's and 1155 board http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008LTB3QW/...nymacx86com-20

[snberk103]

Originally Posted by GermanyChris

What would you use TB on a MP for?

To connect to the TB peripherals that were purchased to work with the MBP?

In essence, a MP needs a legacy TB port because someone with a portable system is likely investing in other stuff TB ports.

[GermanyChris]

Originally Posted by snberk103

To connect to the TB peripherals that were purchased to work with the MBP?

In essence, a MP needs a legacy TB port because someone with a portable system is likely investing in other stuff TB ports.

I'll bet it works the other way around for us..I use eSATA for external storage so I have an eSATA express card for my MBP... but you could be right

[spoonie1972]

thanks for the link.

and agree with above.

TB stuff, while it's bordering on vaporware right now, is coming out.

if FW800 ports are being dropped on the next mac pro, TB ports will have to be on there to use with adapters. I'm trying to imagine how pissed we'd all be buying adapters or PCIe cards to keep functionality we've gotten used to in older mac pros and/or macbook pros. (ie: retina macbook pro - no fw ports).

[GermanyChris]

there is no reason to drop FW ports, though they may. TB on the MP will have no influence over whether I buy one or not.

I just want the base entry to be six core and reasonably power efficient, I'll take care of everything else.

[VirtualRain]

I wen't back to the future, and saw the new Mac Pro...



Seriously, I wonder if a cube form factor makes sense for a modern workstation? What about "Back in Black"!

[between2tides]

Think I remember that black box . . .

[G4DP]

Originally Posted by scottrichardson

Haha really? You don't like? It's not so different to the existing towers, just narrower and with centrally aligned front ports.

Exactly, that's what makes it yuck,

[skllzdatklls]

waiting for the mac pro + displays is so excruciatingly painful

[Icaras]

Originally Posted by theSeb

The screen lamination is a good thing, but that's not a reason/excuse to try and make the edges thinner and compromise on thermal efficiency and possibility of better components and some serviceability purely for looks.

After owning the 2010, 2011, and now the 2012 iMacs, I can confidently say that the 2012 iMac is the coolest and quietest running iMac of the two designs, so I think Apple nailed thermal efficiency in the new design despite being in a 40% smaller enclosure. So I think the new the new fan cooling system works great. No compromises from what I see.

To note, I am running a 3.4 i7, 680MX, and fusion drive on the 27" top end. The machine always stays cool to the touch during normal processes and when fans are running, the machine never gets hot, only warm. In contrast, my 2010 and 2011 iMacs would burn up during intense workloads, while I have yet to see my 2012 get to that point.

Overall I'm pretty impressed with the redesign and would argue against the form over function complaints. Furthermore, keeping the ODD outside the system gives the iMac AIO design one less reason to take it to the shop.