Apple Offers Developers a Closer Look at the New Mac Pro

[ChrisA]

Henry Ford once said "If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said 'a faster horse'."

So many mac Pro users here are asking for about the same, A faster 80's vintage PC that run Mac OS X.

Seriously. The 1984 vintage PC made by IBM set the standard. In was a box box with a mother board, card slots and a bay for disks. Then some one turn it on it's side and called it "tower". We've been stuck with this rather poor design for 30 years.

Finally Apple figured it out. Storage and computing are not the same thing. Computing needs to be "per user" and close to the user. Storage needs to be shared by all within an organization AND it needs to be backed up to remote locations. There is no reason to put storage and computing in the same box except to save money on boxes.

 

[Nameci]

Henry Ford once said "If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said 'a faster horse'."

So many mac Pro users here are asking for about the same, A faster 80's vintage PC that run Mac OS X.

Seriously. The 1984 vintage PC made by IBM set the standard. In was a box box with a mother board, card slots and a bay for disks. Then some one turn it on it's side and called it "tower". We've been stuck with this rather poor design for 30 years.

Finally Apple figured it out. Storage and computing are not the same thing. Computing needs to be "per user" and close to the user. Storage needs to be shared by all within an organization AND it needs to be backed up to remote locations. There is no reason to put storage and computing in the same box except to save money on boxes.

That is by far the most intelligent theory I have read why apple opted for a smaller form factor and ditched all the peripherals that previously reside inside the enclosure.

Basically, the "tower" and the "box" is just an enclosure. And next generation computing will be made up of the "logic core" and data storage, peripherals housed separately from it. Makes sense to me.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Henry Ford once said "If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said 'a faster horse'."

So many mac Pro users here are asking for about the same, A faster 80's vintage PC that run Mac OS X.

Seriously. The 1984 vintage PC made by IBM set the standard. In was a box box with a mother board, card slots and a bay for disks. Then some one turn it on it's side and called it "tower". We've been stuck with this rather poor design for 30 years.

Finally Apple figured it out. Storage and computing are not the same thing. Computing needs to be "per user" and close to the user. Storage needs to be shared by all within an organization AND it needs to be backed up to remote locations. There is no reason to put storage and computing in the same box except to save money on boxes.

I agree with your overall idea. But internal storage isn't the only thing Apple got rid of with the new Mac Pro.

There is still the issue of upgradable video cards and other PCIe cards.

The GPU might be replaceable... but it will basically be a part made specifically for the new Mac Pro. No off-the-shelf parts... so it will probably be quite expensive.

And you can use PCIe card in external Thunderbolt enclosure... but bandwidth might be an issue.

I don't think either of those situations are dealbreakers... but it is a drastic change to what you've been able to do before with "the tower"

This is still the fastest Mac ever made... you just might have to switch a few things up.

 

[Macman45]

Looks like it may be upgradable. I'm happy with this new Mac Pro, can't remember the last time I actually was drawn to one!

The upgradabilty was what concerned me at first,,,,looks like its going to be easier to work on than I thought at first..,.very nice looking design and about time too.

I may well sell my new iMac and buy one if the new Pros when they are available....not like we havent been patient....but looks like the long wait has been worth it.

 

[xSinghx]

Henry Ford once said "If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said 'a faster horse'."

So many mac Pro users here are asking for about the same, A faster 80's vintage PC that run Mac OS X.

Seriously. The 1984 vintage PC made by IBM set the standard. In was a box box with a mother board, card slots and a bay for disks. Then some one turn it on it's side and called it "tower". We've been stuck with this rather poor design for 30 years.

Finally Apple figured it out. Storage and computing are not the same thing. Computing needs to be "per user" and close to the user. Storage needs to be shared by all within an organization AND it needs to be backed up to remote locations. There is no reason to put storage and computing in the same box except to save money on boxes.

I'm sick to death of people using that quote to mask their blind brand obedience. As many people in these forums have already pointed out the compact form with external peripherals is nothing new. It failed before it will probably fail again.

And just to harp on that stupid quote a second - Henry gave us a faster horse. You missed the point. He gave people what they wanted simply not in the way they expected - in other words he met their needs. This is in no way comparable to the new Mac Pro. None. Zilch. Nada.

Bricking your video cards, getting rid of PCIe and internal expansion, in favor of the more costly external expansion shortens the lifespan of the product and makes it more costly to upgrade in its limited capacity. I'm not sure how you can wildly abandon any sort of reason and describe planned obsolescence as product innovation.

You now have a product with half the life span of the former and twice the cost to upgrade. How is that adding value exactly? Who's ready to sign up for that? Who's ready to jump from the paradigm of a box that provides lasting value to one that needs to be tossed every 3yrs? Reading these forums less than would have bought a proper update.

The move Apple is making is betting that the professional market (which is already pissed after waiting 3yrs for a meaningful update) won't just abandon ship now and instead eat this new iMac'ed treadmill of a product that you'll likely toss sooner than later. They're tapping their brand loyalty extra hard here and hopefully they'll get burned for doing so.

As I've said before true innovation from Apple would be listening to the needs of this community and actually trying to address them. This new Mac Pro is a complete failure in that regard.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Bricking your video cards, getting rid of PCIe and internal expansion, in favor of the more costly external expansion shortens the lifespan of the product and makes it more costly to upgrade in its limited capacity. I'm not sure how you can wildly abandon any sort of reason and describe planned obsolescence as product innovation.

You now have a product with half the life span of the former and twice the cost to upgrade. How is that adding value exactly? Who's ready to sign up for that? Who's ready to jump from the paradigm of a box that provides lasting value to one that needs to be tossed every 3yrs? Reading these forums less than would have bought a proper update.

The move Apple is making is betting that the professional market (which is already pissed after waiting 3yrs for a meaningful update) won't just abandon ship now and instead eat this new iMac'ed treadmill of a product that you'll likely toss sooner than later. They're tapping their brand loyalty extra hard here and hopefully they'll get burned for doing so.

As I've said before true innovation from Apple would be listening to the needs of this community and actually trying to address them. This new Mac Pro is a complete failure in that regard.

It's definitely a paradigm shift.

The new Mac Pro... all external expansion and minimal internal upgrades.

Maybe the new Mac Pro will be like a DSLR... you buy a new Mac Pro every few years like you do a camera body... but you keep all your external devices like you do your lenses.

It might be a hard pill to swallow buying a new $6,000 Mac Pro cylinder every few years... in addition to having to buy all the external Thunderbolt expansion chassis in the first place. But once you have all those devices... you can use them on the next Mac Pro.

How much upgrading did the old Mac Pro tower see? Once you max out the RAM... that's about all you can do with that. The video card is another possible upgrade... but how many Mac Pro users installed the newest GPU?

Storage is another issue... but are people really wanting to pull their 4 SATA drives out of their old Mac Pro and shove them in a new one? It seems like anyone who needed multi-terabytes of storage would already have some sort of external RAID array.

I see what Apple is doing... making a tiny powerhouse and then you can add whatever accessories you want.

Would it have been better if they just made the exact same tower with the same 4 SATA sleds but used a modern CPU and GPU? Isn't that what is wrong with the existing Mac Pro?

 

[GermanyChris]

It's definitely a paradigm shift.

The new Mac Pro... all external expansion and minimal internal upgrades.

Maybe the new Mac Pro will be like a DSLR... you buy a new Mac Pro every few years like you do a camera body... but you keep all your external devices like you do your lenses.

It might be a hard pill to swallow buying a new $6,000 Mac Pro cylinder every few years... in addition to having to buy all the external Thunderbolt expansion chassis in the first place. But once you have all those devices... you can use them on the next Mac Pro.

How much upgrading did the old Mac Pro tower see? Once you max out the RAM... that's about all you can do with that. The video card is another possible upgrade... but how many Mac Pro users installed the newest GPU?

Storage is another issue... but are people really wanting to pull their 4 SATA drives out of their old Mac Pro and shove them in a new one? It seems like anyone who needed multi-terabytes of storage would already have some sort of external RAID array.

I see what Apple is doing... making a tiny powerhouse and then you can add whatever accessories you want.

Would it have been better if they just made the exact same tower with the same 4 SATA sleds but used a modern CPU and GPU? Isn't that what is wrong with the existing Mac Pro?

I have 6 internal drives in my Mac Pro and an external NAS for backup and archive drives for really important stuff. now those six drives must sit outside.

If you peruse the MP forums you'll find plenty of processor swaps, and latest GPU's. You can even swap processor boards and go dual if your needs change.

RAM the current can take 128GB in 8 slots using 16GB DIMM's that cost about $140 each, the new Mac Pro to get over 64GB requires you use 32GB DIMM's that cost $700 to $1000 each.

Yes, I've carried my drives forward and back on my computers they're relatively expensive and in good shape why would I throw them out?

Most people would very much have been happy with the old chassis updated to the newer Spec's and left alone. I personally would have liked to see 8 internal drive bays in either 2.5 or 3.5 inch.

Most folks here think optical is dumb but I still use my internal BR and SD as well a two external 5.25 DVD drives.

This new MP should have been in addition to the old MP price the top end higher than the top end iMac use normal core processors and have the xMac.

 

[Michael Scrip]

I have 6 internal drives in my Mac Pro and an external NAS for backup and archive drives for really important stuff. now those six drives must sit outside.

If you peruse the MP forums you'll find plenty of processor swaps, and latest GPU's. You can even swap processor boards and go dual if your needs change.

RAM the current can take 128GB in 8 slots using 16GB DIMM's that cost about $140 each, the new Mac Pro to get over 64GB requires you use 32GB DIMM's that cost $700 to $1000 each.

Yes, I've carried my drive forward and back on my computers they're relatively expensive and in good shape why would I throw them out?

Most people would very much have been happy with the old chassis updated to the newer Spec's and left alone. I personally would have liked to see 8 internal drive bays in either 2.5 or 3.5 inch.

Most folks here think optical is dumb but I still use my internal BR and SD as well a two external 5.25 DVD drives.

This new MP should have been in addition to the old MP price the top end higher than the top end iMac use normal core processors and have the xMac.

Well said.

So... Hackintosh?

Or you can just use Windows (it's not so bad... I've been using it for 23 years)

 

[GermanyChris]

Well said.

So... Hackintosh?

Or you can just use Windows (it's not so bad... I've been using it for 23 years)

Windows isn't terrible but I still hold a grudge against them for their shenanigans in the 90's.

Hackintosh, been there, dunno if it's the future but I'm feeling the need to build myself a computer. The Hackintosh scene could dry up quick, fast, and in a hurry if Apple gives it a second though and with the paradigm shift that's about to take place we might see that. They already played games with k processors.

Linux with OSX in a virtual for things I need I have OSX licenses for is another possibility.

Right now then best move IMHO is no move.

 

[DutchMuscle]

Industry standards have to change.

...

Things need to change for the better, and it's always Apple that gets attacked for leading such change.

Dropping optical drives for example. Discs are stupid like floppy disks. I'm sure the first computer not to have Floppy drives got a negative in it's review because of it.

Better technology will catch on, like always. Just wait. We can't use old tech just because it is widely supported and nothing else. This has expandable RAM and storage. PCIe is faster than SATA so that is good.

Embrace the future. My opinion.

Amen to that!

 

[AidenShaw]

I don't give a **** what you have, and I'm not impressed! You are not in touch with reality because you fail to recognize the environments where Mac Pros are used. It's not in large scale enterprise.

And for what it's worth you previous example with the duo gives 2.6 GB/sec sustained throughput, just at the edge of what TB2 can handle. So we are back at the $100,000 option.

The Duo has sustained 3.0 GB/s read and 2.5 GB/s write. http://www.fusionio.com/products/iodrive2-duo/

TB2 is 2.0 GB/s theoretical peak.

That's not "on the edge", that's 2/3 of the performance of the SSD.

 

[subsonix]

The Duo has sustained 3.0 GB/s read and 2.5 GB/s write. http://www.fusionio.com/products/iodrive2-duo/

TB2 is 2.0 GB/s theoretical peak.

You are wrong. To go from bits to bytes you divide by 8, 20/8 is 2.5GB/s.


Anyway, it's moot point because these are enterprise drives with customers like Facebook which uses them as caches to handle insane amounts of traffic, and it's reflected in the price ($28,000).

And for what it's worth I got that figure from the solidstateworks website, it said.

Sustain over 2.6 GB/sec of bandwidth

 

[AidenShaw]

You are wrong. To go from bits to bytes you divide by 8, 20/8 is 2.5GB/s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pci_express#PCI_Express_2.0

Like 1.x, PCIe 2.0 uses an 8b/10b encoding scheme, therefore delivering, per-lane, an effective 4 Gbit/s max transfer rate from its 5 GT/s raw data rate.

Four lanes at 4 Gbps is 16 Gbps, divide by 8 to get a theoretical peak of 2.0 GBps.

And that's assuming that Falcon Ridge bridges to PCIe 2.0 - very little has been said about T-Bolt 2 specs other than that the two 10 Gbps paths were combined into one 20 Gbps path.

Anyway, it's moot point because these are enterprise drives with customers like Facebook which uses them as caches to handle insane amounts of traffic, and it's reflected in the price ($28,000).

We put PCIe SSDs in our workstations for people doing data mining and other disk I/O intensive tasks. An 800 GB PCIe SSD can be found for about $4K, which is quite reasonable....

It's moot for the iTube, since you'll never have the option.

 

[subsonix]

Four lanes at 4 Gbps is 16 Gbps, divide by 8 to get a theoretical peak of 2.0 GBps.

And that's assuming that Falcon Ridge bridges to PCIe 2.0 - very little has been said about T-Bolt 2 specs other than that the two 10 Gbps paths were combined into one 20 Gbps path.

The published spec of TB2 is 20Gb/s, I went from there.

We put PCIe SSDs in our workstations for people doing data mining and other disk I/O intensive tasks. An 800 GB PCIe SSD can be found for about $4K, which is quite reasonable....

It's moot for the iTube, since you'll never have the option.

I was about to say that if want to quote an SSD from Fusion-io that is actually relevant to the discussion it's ioFX, it's specifically made for workstations with content creators in mind.

http://www.fusionio.com/products/iofx/

Not some $100,000 alternative, just to make a (silly) point. And for what it's worth it already has an internal PCIe SSD and at this point it's not clear if you can add more internally, otherwise there are chassis.

 

[BayouTiger]

The Future is calling....

Same old arguments from the same old crowd.....Is this the FCPX thread?

I loved my Gen1 Mac Pro and it served me well for 5 years - that's about 4 longer than any prior computer, but eventually, with thunderbolt, I moved to an iMac and bought an R6 Pegasus. Now all my data resides there and I am not locked to any given computer. I can plug it into the iMac, or my rMBP, or my Air and I can take it to my other office in an evacuation or emergency. I actually need an optical drive or even a floppy from time to time, so these site safely on a shelf and are very quick to plug in when the time comes.

As for the price, the price of entry for the Pro has always been $2499, so I would be shocked if that was not the entry level. It is amazing that we are now in 2013 and the old adage that "The computer you really WANT is always $2500" is still the case! That has always been the number going all the way back to my first Apple II.

 

[toke lahti]

Don't EVER plan on upgrading a computer, especially an Apple. Just buy a new one. The old one will have Apple's traditionally high resale value, and you will get all the latest features, ports, etc on the new one.

Traditional resale value was high because the parts were good quality made to last and you could upgrade what you needed. Like ram and hdd. When upgrading is taken away, resale value will fall.

Would you buy a used mac that does not have enough ram to run next version of OsX or which storage will probably fail in next 2 years, but you can't replace it with standard cheap component?

Now that, plus another one to account for the lost 4TB of drive space, will have to sit next to the MacPro, if it's even affordable at all.

TubuMP is nice gimmick to show that thunderbolt will become popular. You have to buy TB-box to every and each expansion card & hdd from now on. TB sales will increase, but at the same time lots of people will ditch Mac and OsX as their tools for doing their work.

If they offer only S-series of FirePro the price of MP will be at least $3k. If they also offer cheaper FirePro's, entry level price might lower back to where it was when MP was new. I hope the latter. Apple has taken so much away from pro users who can't afford the most expensive rigs. Last year they took away 17" and mini with dGPU. If the cheapest headless mac with dGPU will be over $3k this will get even more people to abandon mac as their desktop workhorse.

 

[Maflagulator]

Hold up…..

Ok, I have a serious question here regarding the debate about having fast-enough throughput of data to an external storage unit:

If there is a major reason why the current scenario of how a Mac Pro is used in a video editing company cannot be adjusted, please let me know.

With the speed of the internal drive storage on the iTube MP, and current users having an external (non-TB) array of RAID storage (Fiber SAS) to access and work on content…why wouldn't you simply pull the content from the storage drives into a temporary work folder and work on the content locally on that computer. Then when you're finished with the project, drop it back on to the "server" drives.

I'll completely admit that I have zero experience with how to manage data at a video production company, so please help me understand why this issue of data throughput is so critical.

People are also freaked out that the memory expansion ability in this thing will be very limited. If so, then why would they allow Mavericks to be 128GB RAM capable? To give the owners of current MP systems a reason to sit on their current system? LOL Did everyone else forget about the fact that Apple owns a large stake in a memory company?

 

[greenmeanie]

I see some of those X Brackets which didn't work so well for the Xbox 360 LOL.

 

[elistan]

You're not in touch with reality. I have many systems with software licenses that cost 4x to 10x the price of the hardware, and storage/IO options that cost many times the price of the system.

Just this week I set up a pair of systems with two 40 Gbps Ethernet ports per system, a TB PCIe x8 SSD, and dual fibre channel ports. Just as a "playpen" for trying out some ideas.

Out of curiosity - what OS are those two systems running? Are they Mac Pros running OSX? If so, what software do they run that requires that kind of IO and has to run on OSX?

I can only guess, but I suspect that the number of users who need a desktop OSX box with dual 4 Gbps Ethernet links and 5 terabytes of dedicated storage running at 6 Gbytes/sec is vanishingly small. That's not to say they don't exist at all, but I wouldn't be surprised that if Apple tried to include that market segment in their Mac Pro design they would have had to compromise the box in ways that ultimately would have made it less profitable for them. So the new Mac Pro doesn't support third-party internal multi-TB x16 PCIe 3.0 SSD cards - big whoop, it also doesn't work as coffee roaster. One can point out many things the new Mac Pro doesn't work as. We understand that you don't like it, but you have to understand that most Mac Pro users, and probably Apple themselves, don't care about your use case.

 

[AidenShaw]

Out of curiosity - what OS are those two systems running?

RHEL

We understand that you don't like it, but you have to understand that most Mac Pro users, and probably Apple themselves, don't care about your use case.

Actually, I like it as an upgrade to the MiniMac.

 

[elistan]

RHEL

Cool. About what I figured. But if you already have machines that can do what you want with Red Hat, why are you bothered that the new Mac Pros can't? Again, yes, we understand that it can't accept third-party PCIe 3.0 x16 cards internally for FC, 40GBASE-SR4, and $100k SSDs, nor can it brew coffee. Nor is it particularly well suited as an HA database server.

Doesn't mean nobody will buy it, or that it will be a flop. It's simply not the everything-to-everybody universal computer.

Actually, I like it as an upgrade to the MiniMac.

Do you think that many existing Mac Mini owners have a use case for 12 CPU cores and dual FirePro GPUs and will be replacing their machines with this new Mac Pro?

 

[extrachrispy]

Eventually your clients will want you to join them in 2013.

Believe it or not, there are still vast swaths of the U.S. (and indeed the world) that have no broadband service. There are also vast swaths that can get broadband only via satellite, with sippy-cup-sized daily bandwidth caps (e.g., my in-laws get throttled to dialup speeds after they download 200MB--yes, megabytes).

Even in areas served by Google Fiber (only one city in the U.S. at present), a 25-50GB image is going to take awhile to download. The client, who has paid for a video professional to create a full-up Blu-Ray, complete with menus, special features, etc., now has to burn it to test-drive it on eir own player. Such clients might more reasonably expect to receive a Blu-Ray in the mail instead of shelling out for their own burners.

 

[StoneJack]

It's definitely a paradigm shift.

The new Mac Pro... all external expansion and minimal internal upgrades.

Maybe the new Mac Pro will be like a DSLR... you buy a new Mac Pro every few years like you do a camera body... but you keep all your external devices like you do your lenses.

It might be a hard pill to swallow buying a new $6,000 Mac Pro cylinder every few years... in addition to having to buy all the external Thunderbolt expansion chassis in the first place. But once you have all those devices... you can use them on the next Mac Pro.

How much upgrading did the old Mac Pro tower see? Once you max out the RAM... that's about all you can do with that. The video card is another possible upgrade... but how many Mac Pro users installed the newest GPU?

Storage is another issue... but are people really wanting to pull their 4 SATA drives out of their old Mac Pro and shove them in a new one? It seems like anyone who needed multi-terabytes of storage would already have some sort of external RAID array.

I see what Apple is doing... making a tiny powerhouse and then you can add whatever accessories you want.

Would it have been better if they just made the exact same tower with the same 4 SATA sleds but used a modern CPU and GPU? Isn't that what is wrong with the existing Mac Pro?

Its a great analogy. I am DSLR user and definitely was thinking about new body, Nikon. Lenses are most important for DSLR. I wonder if that will be true for videocards for new Mac, but then the body should be much cheaper than expandable cards.

 

[AidenShaw]

Do you think that many existing Mac Mini owners have a use case for 12 CPU cores and dual FirePro GPUs and will be replacing their machines with this new Mac Pro?

If there's a version with a single-socket quad or hex, and with a single GeForce or Radeon, I would think that lots of minis would be replaced.

Note that the phrase "up to" is used a lot in Apple's description.

And, since there must be some kind of PCIe attachment for the GPU cards, it should be possible to replace the second GPU card with a PCIe SSD option. With TeraByte SSDs priced from $599 at Newegg, imagine the iTube as a self-contained server....

 

[snowmen]

Apple may very well offer a transitional period by continuing to sell the existing Mac Pro (perhaps with an processor spec bump or a new GPU option), but I wouldn't bet a dollar on that possibility.

Customers will determine the success of the unit, and Apple has time between now and then to determine what's best for their interests if they want this to be a resounding success.

The transitional period you suggest doesn't help. Because we need a period of time that both TB and PCIe are supported in one machine. They could reduce the number of PCIe slot so we are prepared that the next external solution upgrade will have to be TB, but the current solution still need to be PCIe for a while. It will ease our expenses by a great deal!

Yes, customers will determine the success of the unit. That is why AAPL no longer like the pro market. That's why XServe and Mac Pro sales suffer. People working in professional know what tool we actually need to profit ourselves. We're not student, we're not rich kids, and we certainly are not fanboy. We cannot just upgrade everything because we want a new machine to show off! If all we want is a powerboat but nothing else, then what new Mac Pro offer is superb. But that's about it!

At the end we will for sure come up with solutions to deal with it -> either change to Windows/Linux, really spend great deal of money but we could just use iMac's TB port, or whatever. But before the new Mac Pro actually came out, we NEED TO COMPLAIN. Remember what happened to MBP 15"'s Firewire after we complain? Well... FW doesn't really matter now but it mattered at that time. Remember the FCPX complain? We hope AAPL could listen to what we discuss as I actually did E-mail them about it, but then if we silence just like other fanboys on this site told us to do, then we will really just change to another platform when AAPL failed to deliver our needs. If we don't care about AAPL then why we bother complaining? Tons of professional already goes to Windows/Linux world and they have proven to be good match to Mac's solution. But we simply don't like changes so we stay. And look at the change we have to make now!