Tough. I can wait a month. But then you have to wait another month and another month. Oh my. Apple is letting us down. Big time.
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Mac Pro Build-to-Order Ship Dates Slip as Future Remains Uncertain
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Tough. I can wait a month. But then you have to wait another month and another month. Oh my. Apple is letting us down. Big time.
I never came across this before. Didn't the early rollout for Apple only happen once in the past? If their shipping volume is lower on this class of machine, it could make it easier for Intel to fill orders, but I don't know that there's much of a precedence here.
Considering that Apple will most likely wait for the new CPU launch *if* they do an upgrade - you can probably just watch for news from HP/Dell and others for new systems. Intel typically has a public event to mark the "first sale" date for new releases.
If Apple doesn't have an announcement within a few weeks of Intel's public bash - you should consider the possibility that the Mac Pro is dead, and either order a bunch of the current model or look at a platform change.
Nuke had a very small market even after Apple discontinued Shake. ILM and Weta did not announce their migrations till almost a year after Apple EOLed Shake. We like many studios were testing Nuke as an alternative but people did not jump on Nuke till The Foundry released Nuke 5 with the revised non-Digital Domain interface (the Foundry had hired the entire Shake dev team including Ron Brinkman).
Things with Final Cut are still up in the air. Professional are not jumping to Premier but Avid Media Composer 6. Most FCP users are happy continuing to use 7 to see how things shake out. FCPX does have a lot of promise, Apple just botched the release. We are using all 3 and FCPX is by far the fastest but all 3 have their pros and cons. But FCPX while it works on an iMac is designed for a Mac Pro, just watch it do background processing on a 12 core box.
Tons of high-end software is being ported to OS X, XBR development is opening the way for Max to be porter, Autodesk just showed off Inventor Fusion, Apple paid Siemens to port NX since Apple does their CAD?CAM on it. We are an all Mac studio and this year alone we worked on movies like Real Steel and Hugo. Mac Pros give us the best solution since we need Nvidia Quadro cards and because of Bootcamp we can choose to run software that runs best on OS X and other that run best on Win7 or Linux. No other PC can touch that. For editorial and DI you need Red Rocket cards and Broadcast control cards. Try running Davinci on an iMac, it just isn't happening.
Apple is NOT abandoning this market. The Pro needs to be redesigned for Thunderbolt compatibility with high-end cards and and Apple is waiting to use Intels latest Xeon chipset. It is as simple as that. It will be out in Feb-March and Apple will sell enough to easily cover development, because professionals are ALL waiting for the new boxes.
My hope is for an aluminum cube that will also fit nicely into a rack.
Things with Final Cut are still up in the air. Professional are not jumping to Premier but Avid Media Composer 6. Most FCP users are happy continuing to use 7 to see how things shake out. FCPX does have a lot of promise, Apple just botched the release. We are using all 3 and FCPX is by far the fastest but all 3 have their pros and cons. But FCPX while it works on an iMac is designed for a Mac Pro, just watch it do background processing on a 12 core box.
Tons of high-end software is being ported to OS X, XBR development is opening the way for Max to be porter, Autodesk just showed off Inventor Fusion, Apple paid Siemens to port NX since Apple does their CAD?CAM on it. We are an all Mac studio and this year alone we worked on movies like Real Steel and Hugo. Mac Pros give us the best solution since we need Nvidia Quadro cards and because of Bootcamp we can choose to run software that runs best on OS X and other that run best on Win7 or Linux. No other PC can touch that. For editorial and DI you need Red Rocket cards and Broadcast control cards. Try running Davinci on an iMac, it just isn't happening.
Apple is NOT abandoning this market. The Pro needs to be redesigned for Thunderbolt compatibility with high-end cards and and Apple is waiting to use Intels latest Xeon chipset. It is as simple as that. It will be out in Feb-March and Apple will sell enough to easily cover development, because professionals are ALL waiting for the new boxes.
My hope is for an aluminum cube that will also fit nicely into a rack.
Reinventing the Mac Pro
Here' my prediction for the Mac Pro. As a whole, I think everyone has discounted how much the iOS has impacted the enterprise community. Which left many systems administrator begging for XServe class hardware. While I'm pretty sure we will never see another XServe class hardware from Apple, I do believe that they reinvent the Mac Pro line as pro/server hardware. Here's what I would do if I where Apple:
1) Create a much smaller form factor Mac Pro. I would make it look like a MacMini except 8x the physical size ( or the equivalent of 2dx2hx2w Minis) This would also sit on rack shelf only taking up 2 U's.
2) 3 card slots + 1 for Video
3) No Optical Drive
4) 2 x XEON Processors.
5) up to 96 GB of RAM.
6) 4x SSDs Drives Only (Apple form factor used in Mac Book Air)
7) starting at 1999
While I realize this might be wishful thinking. I think this would be welcomed by the pro and enterprise community.
Here' my prediction for the Mac Pro. As a whole, I think everyone has discounted how much the iOS has impacted the enterprise community. Which left many systems administrator begging for XServe class hardware. While I'm pretty sure we will never see another XServe class hardware from Apple, I do believe that they reinvent the Mac Pro line as pro/server hardware. Here's what I would do if I where Apple:
1) Create a much smaller form factor Mac Pro. I would make it look like a MacMini except 8x the physical size ( or the equivalent of 2dx2hx2w Minis) This would also sit on rack shelf only taking up 2 U's.
2) 3 card slots + 1 for Video
3) No Optical Drive
4) 2 x XEON Processors.
5) up to 96 GB of RAM.
6) 4x SSDs Drives Only (Apple form factor used in Mac Book Air)
7) starting at 1999
While I realize this might be wishful thinking. I think this would be welcomed by the pro and enterprise community.
Interesting...
Interesting, but I'm not sure that form factor would make either those who want an Xmac nor those who want a rack server happy.
For the server side, 4d*2h*1w would let you fit two on a 2U shelf. (Actually, they could be a bit more in each dimension and still fit two side by side in a 2U space (assuming a 0U shelf).)
To really make the enterprise folks happy, give it a separate power brick with dual inputs - and make it compatible with high amperage DC rack power.
On the Xmac side, you need about 3U in order to put a standard profile PCIe card in...
If you want to fit the 2U form factor, this would probably have to be 3 low profile slots and a sideways double-wide slot for a GPU.
Usually optional in a server anyway.
With 6 core to 8 core single-socket Core i* CPUs, the need for dual socket is lessened.
X79 already will handle 128 GiB with a single socket and 16 GiB DIMMs.
Expensive, tiny, slow disks? The server folks will want hot pluggable 2.5" SAS and SATA drives - the Xmac folks will want a mix of fast SSDs for speed, and 3.5" rotating for capacity. (Copy one of the other companies making slots that handle either one 3.5" disk or two 2.5" disks in the same slot.)
Ouch.
Interesting, but I'm not sure that form factor would make either those who want an Xmac nor those who want a rack server happy.
For the server side, 4d*2h*1w would let you fit two on a 2U shelf. (Actually, they could be a bit more in each dimension and still fit two side by side in a 2U space (assuming a 0U shelf).)
To really make the enterprise folks happy, give it a separate power brick with dual inputs - and make it compatible with high amperage DC rack power.
On the Xmac side, you need about 3U in order to put a standard profile PCIe card in...
If you want to fit the 2U form factor, this would probably have to be 3 low profile slots and a sideways double-wide slot for a GPU.
Usually optional in a server anyway.
With 6 core to 8 core single-socket Core i* CPUs, the need for dual socket is lessened.
X79 already will handle 128 GiB with a single socket and 16 GiB DIMMs.
Expensive, tiny, slow disks? The server folks will want hot pluggable 2.5" SAS and SATA drives - the Xmac folks will want a mix of fast SSDs for speed, and 3.5" rotating for capacity. (Copy one of the other companies making slots that handle either one 3.5" disk or two 2.5" disks in the same slot.)
Ouch.
While that's a good point, right now Apple is waiting on the next intel cpu and chipset. Once those chips ship, that's the timeframe when we'd see a MP update.
All good points, but hardware really isn't Apple's issue. It's the software. Third party vendors have been porting to the Mac since the 90's, that's nothing new. What is new however is a company that start axing it's higher end options. But in Apple's case it's expected . . . .they are making far more money with the iOS ecosystem.
Definitely wishful thinking. The Mac Pro isn't going to be a super Mac Mini. It's a form factor that won't serve either the IT server buyer OR the professional workstation buyer. The current form factor is going to stay or evolve slightly but it will still be in the tower form factor.
One of the biggest considerations missing is the number of ports for the system. The Mac Mini form factor becomes even less desirable when you think about how many USB 2.0/FW800/TBolt and hopefully eSATA ports the Mac Pro should have.
The Mac Pro still needs double wide PCI slots IMHO, plus an additional 3 or more standard PCI slots. And no matter what there will be optical drives on the next Mac Pro. It they are optional . . . then Apple needs to give us more options to stick in the empty slots if a user chooses NOT to go with the optical drives.
All good points, and if we really want to make a breakthrough in price it'd have to be priced at $1799 - $1899 like it was back in the late G4 days.
Axing the higher end hardware options isn't "new", at this point it's just speculation and it remains to be seen if it will actually happen (I don't think it's likely).
Unless I misunderstood and you were referring to something else.
You misunderstood, I was referring more to high end software, but the same can be said for hardware too. I am not in the camp that believes the Mac Pro will get axed . . . Unless Apple corporate wants to run entirely off of Minis and iMacs.
I do however see an Apple that will look toward the Mac Pro less and less as the years go by.
I'm not sure this would actually drop manufacturing cost. Obviously lower cost for dual socket functionality would pick up a few extra buyers. SSDs aren't that great a solution for storage. It's typical to have one for boot and everything else SATA or SAS. If you mean the stick configuration, I don't see that happening in the near future as it's expensive. I still think we're going to see a really basic upgrade again. I mean new cpus and gpus, but nothing too special. Thunderbolt is a possibility, but it depends how much work it requires from Apple.
Apple should have some amount of pent up demand given the longer refresh cycle here, but it also depends how much of a speed boost users see from Sandy Bridge E cpus. The imac saw a significant gain because it received a significant boost in clock speed along with the updated architecture. I can't recall if the previous i7 (nehalem) imac supported hyperthreading. I'm not saying users will migrate to imacs. I meant that if the only gain is a minor cpu bump, they might just upgrade existing hardware. Given the long refresh cycles, I am going to update as soon as we see something new.
Regarding the mention of Nuke, I didn't know they hired the entire Shake team. That looks like it worked out exceptionally well for them. I don't entirely understand why Apple purchased Shake then didn't really do anything with it (and eventually killed the project).
maybe they did this to get all the patents to use in their product lines?
i look at this forum way too often waiting for the new pro... please!
Hey. I just saw Steve Jobs at Burger King, behind Elvis.
Let's get something out of the way. The Mac Pro is a great product, and can't be replaced by other products in Apple's lineup for specific tasks. Since I'm not disputing that, let's get on to the point.
Apple's flagship product is the iPhone (possibly to be replaced by the iPad). It gets the most attention internally and from the public. It is making massive profits for them. The iPhone software and hardware are the major structuring force in Apple's operations.
The idea that the Mac Pro is their 'flagship' product is laughable. It doesn't define the brand; it doesn't matter to major media outlets; it's not a cash cow; it's not where Apple is innovating. People who fancy themselves the Apple Loyal just want validation for their Serious Work and lament the fact that they don't get any status boost from using the MP. It's like kids who think the biggest truck is the best thing ever no matter what.
If the point of your post about Elvis is "xbjllb has questionable access to reality" I agree completely.
At the time there were rumors about a massive move from the six software bundle of post production apps to a single app called Phenomenom. Something similar to Autodesk Smoke, one app that does all of the post and compositing and such. I think Apple was trying to do something like that or at the very least pick up some patents and tricks for future versions of Motion and FCP.
Apple Dropping the Mac Pro... HAH
that would be like BMW dropping their M class.
just because it doesn't sell as much as their other products... that's not almost laughable... it is laughable.
MP may not be their flagship anymore. but without it, they would drop their monitors, which they should have done a long time ago... but since they just refreshed them with thunderbolt... that's not happening either.
They need the MP for all their peripherals, not to mention to keep their 3rd partied vendors happy, their peripherals too.
Sure people can use most of them with a MacBook Pro, but be realistic. all the Designers in the world WANT MORE power. a HUGE percentage of them use MAC's. specifically towers, because the need Monitor(s) extra HDs, extra RAM, Tablets, Cool machines (FANS)...
the MAC pro is NOT going anywhere any time soon.
Silicon Valley says so.
that would be like BMW dropping their M class.
just because it doesn't sell as much as their other products... that's not almost laughable... it is laughable.
MP may not be their flagship anymore. but without it, they would drop their monitors, which they should have done a long time ago... but since they just refreshed them with thunderbolt... that's not happening either.
They need the MP for all their peripherals, not to mention to keep their 3rd partied vendors happy, their peripherals too.
Sure people can use most of them with a MacBook Pro, but be realistic. all the Designers in the world WANT MORE power. a HUGE percentage of them use MAC's. specifically towers, because the need Monitor(s) extra HDs, extra RAM, Tablets, Cool machines (FANS)...
the MAC pro is NOT going anywhere any time soon.
Silicon Valley says so.
I had the same thought when this thread was started.
I might add that since it is a lower production, high end computer, Apple could use it as a showcase item and produce it in America -- much like many of the auto manufacturers do with their flagship models (i.e. produce them in their home countiries).
Then we could have our mighty Mac Pro and Apple could take a little heat off itself by not producing all its products in China.
Picture a diner. They're famous for their baked spaghetti; they sell well over a hundred servings a day; most customers come for that and the chocolate cream pie.
Also every day they sell two plates of liver and onions.
Should they ditch the liver and onions? Why? Perhaps if they discovered they were throwing away too much liver, but if they manage their supply they won't. Or perhaps if their cooler is so jammed full that they need the space for something that will sell better.
But not just because it doesn't sell many units; if that made sense then they should also axe the coconut creme pie because it's much less popular than the chocolate, and no orange juice or chocolate milk, just give 'em sodas, and keep the burgers but lose the fish sandwich and the veggie burger, and the porterhouse (MacPro) . . . and *then* you have a food truck! A place that has the capacity to do a small range of things very well.
Apple is bigger than a food truck.
- - -
What I need:
OSX, Cocoa, OpenCL, biiiiiig graphics card.
Making do with a 5870 but really would like a 7970! Wouldn't mind putting it in an updated Pro either, I can use all the power I can get, but could live with my 2009 4-core.
If they _were_ to fail to update it, which I highly doubt, I'd get a 2010 12-core. And maybe put an extra in storage. Rewriting outside XCode, without Cocoa, for a different platform, would be a nightmare. I could do it, but I don't want to, nope, nopenope.
Also every day they sell two plates of liver and onions.
Should they ditch the liver and onions? Why? Perhaps if they discovered they were throwing away too much liver, but if they manage their supply they won't. Or perhaps if their cooler is so jammed full that they need the space for something that will sell better.
But not just because it doesn't sell many units; if that made sense then they should also axe the coconut creme pie because it's much less popular than the chocolate, and no orange juice or chocolate milk, just give 'em sodas, and keep the burgers but lose the fish sandwich and the veggie burger, and the porterhouse (MacPro) . . . and *then* you have a food truck! A place that has the capacity to do a small range of things very well.
Apple is bigger than a food truck.
- - -
What I need:
OSX, Cocoa, OpenCL, biiiiiig graphics card.
Making do with a 5870 but really would like a 7970! Wouldn't mind putting it in an updated Pro either, I can use all the power I can get, but could live with my 2009 4-core.
If they _were_ to fail to update it, which I highly doubt, I'd get a 2010 12-core. And maybe put an extra in storage. Rewriting outside XCode, without Cocoa, for a different platform, would be a nightmare. I could do it, but I don't want to, nope, nopenope.
Exactly.
In reality, no you can't. Apple's displays stand out quite a bit from the competition in terms of price vs performance.
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They can price it higher if they need to, doesn't matter. Its a pro machine. Just give it to us already so we can buy it...
That's a myth. Apple use a standard LCD IPS display. The only thing that make it appear better is the strong backlight. Other than that, its still a standard screen, just in a fancy metal box with thunderbolt support.
The Dell UltraSharp U2711 is actually about the same as the Apple display in terms of picture quality and reliability. It's also cheaper.
I myself use a pair of 24" Samsung Syncmaster displays and they give out a very clear, crisp picture. Together they cost less than the Dell or Apple displays.
The good thing about the Apple displays is that they provide an alternative to the coatings being used by other companies on displays with this resolution. You can find a lot of people complaining about the various coatings just as you get with Apple's glossy issue. I've seen a fair number of people saying they went to or back to the Apple one over it.
Truth or Speculation?
I sure hope this is true...
http://micgadget.com/21980/apple-is-close-to-finally-updating-the-mac-pro/
I sure hope this is true...
http://micgadget.com/21980/apple-is-close-to-finally-updating-the-mac-pro/