Will there be a new Mac Pro in 2015?

[filmak]

That means "failed on most" on a list of 3 elements isn't particularly accurate.

I'm sorry, I was wrong. (?)

 

[flat five]

Their main focus is the iPad and iPhone. That's why they went "small" with their TrashCan Pro with only one CPU and crappy GPU.

i'm not saying you're wrong or right etc.. what i am saying is that you state "main focus = ipad/phone" ..and that's why "they went small. using only one cpu and crappy gpu"... and there's simply no solid paths in that logic.

they went small? if you mean the size of the nmp is smaller than before then yes.. they did that.. but it doesn't make sense with the rest of the statement so i assume you mean they went small as in they don't give a crap about the macpro and just slapped something together.

reality is they went huge.. i'm willing to bet they spent more hours&money designing the mac pro than they've done with any other computer to date.

---
saying another way.. you've failed at being even slightly convincing when trying to correlate the single socket design of nmp with apple's success of the iphone or ipad.

 

[filmak]

Anyway this topic is about our speculations / prophecies about the next nMP's release date.
Let's stay on this...

 

[tomvos]

For example.. i can think a sentence in a fraction of a second but it takes much much longer to make those words appear on a screen.. the keyboard itself is a huge bottleneck.

the mouse is also incredibly inefficient.. the most versatile part of our bodies are our hands (or maybe mouths) yet when using hands to talk to computers, we're limited to pointing and clicking.. pretty much the extent of what an infant can do with their hands.

i can think of a shape in a second.. say a 6' wide strip through the middle of a sphere with a 1' wide thickness and 1" filleted edges.. to actually model it, i spend about 90secs.. it takes me 100x longer to do a simple task than it does to think it.

things like this are the major (major!) bottlenecks in modern computing in my opinion. (not talking about benchmarks.. talking about actually getting things done using the tools)

I'm quite happy that we still have no direct brain interaction with our computers. I think of computers as the brain amplifier. And sometimes my brain has kinda strange and funny thoughts. I don't want to know what these thoughts could lead to if amplified.

E.g. when reading in this forum. I quite often start a reply ... but then after a few lines I think: no, it's not worth it. There are enough flame wars already. So these slow interfaces like mouse and keyboard, they are my filters. They keep me from posting very stupid answers.

Additionally, when you think of a sentence, it's in a different form then when you have formulated a sentence. Choosing the right words and putting them into the required order is something we had to learn while growing up.


And regarding the visualization of something: How do you actually know that our brain processes images in the same way like we perceive them? E.g. scientists know that the information from the eye is processed many times before it actually hits the brain. It seems like we have some local "DSP-chips" in our eyes. Some to detect horizontal or vertical lines, some to detect color differences. And did I mention that our eyes jitter to improve signal quality? It a mechanism based on stichting together temporal different images to one "image".
So basically, you may think you see in the same way like printing on paper or displaying on your screen. But what the brain actually makes from an image - at least signal wise - is quite different. One nice example are these image recognition pictures from google. So to make a 3D model of a torus, you would have to reverse the eye post-processing in order to create an image from your idea as it is represented in your brain. I guess, this would be a major scientific achievement.

 

[flat five]

I'm quite happy that we still have no direct brain interaction with our computers. I think of computers as the brain amplifier. And sometimes my brain has kinda strange and funny thoughts. I don't want to know what these thoughts could lead to if amplified.

hmm.. not really amplification (though for me, i'd welcome that too).
amplification seems to imply giving our brains the ability to work faster than current.

i'm more saying it would be beneficial to bring our interaction with the computer nearer the speed of our brain.

especially when the background topic being discussed is computer speed.. using wonder_world as example, computers have limitless speed. (or maybe speed of light limit).. unlimited data can move at that speed.. this forum would be gone since every benchmark just reports infinity so there's nothing to argue about ; )

now, sit down at the computer and do your task.. notice in almost every single case, you worked just a long today as you did yesterday.. you did the exact same motions at the exact same time etc.. nothing has changed even though you have this amazing mcproForum dream computer at your hands..

this place would lead you to believe that you can just not work anymore since the computer is infinite speed.

so, why are you still working the same amount of time doing the same things? how important is it that your computer benches 05309 more than the other one when pretty much nothing is going to change for the user?

E.g. when reading in this forum. I quite often start a reply ... but then after a few lines I think: no, it's not worth it. There are enough flame wars already. So these slow interfaces like mouse and keyboard, they are my filters. They keep me from posting very stupid answers.

ha. ok

Additionally, when you think of a sentence, it's in a different form then when you have formulated a sentence. Choosing the right words and putting them into the required order is something we had to learn while growing up.

again.. i'm not suggesting the computer to think our thoughts faster than we ourselves can.. just saying the computer needs to catch up with our thoughts because it's lagging way behind / bottlenecking in that dept.

you can formulate a sentence way way faster than you can type it.

And regarding the visualization of something: How do you actually know that our brain processes images in the same way like we perceive them?

E.g. scientists know that the information from the eye is processed many times before it actually hits the brain. It seems like we have some local "DSP-chips" in our eyes. Some to detect horizontal or vertical lines, some to detect color differences. And did I mention that our eyes jitter to improve signal quality? It a mechanism based on stichting together temporal different images to one "image".
So basically, you may think you see in the same way like printing on paper or displaying on your screen. But what the brain actually makes from an image - at least signal wise - is quite different. One nice example are these image recognition pictures from google. So to make a 3D model of a torus, you would have to reverse the eye-post-processing in order to create an image from your idea as is represented in your brain. I guess, this would be a major scientific achievement.

we could still perceive in the same way.. just without all the waiting in between glances.

going through iterations in seconds as opposed to minutes or hours.. using seconds to measure the amount of time for us to make decisions in and minutes or hours to measure the time it takes for us to get the visualization to a point we can judge.

 

[fusionid]

Jesus,

god forbid someone finds a way to transcribe our thoughts to typing.

The internet is littered with garbage as it is. It takes time, effort, and hard work to formulate a good idea.

Let's get back to mac pro

-likely skylake
-several USB-C ports
-thunderbolt 3
-support for retina display in a one cable fashion

When?

Probably early 2016 based on skylake availability.

 

[fusionid]

Also a possible toss up to the mix is the apple relationship with musicians
A possible second mac pro that provides a better ground for those working with audio/midi

 

[flat five]

Jesus,

god forbid someone finds a way to transcribe our thoughts to typing.

huh? someone already did that when they invented the typewriter.

The internet is littered with garbage as it is. It takes time, effort, and hard work to formulate a good idea.

i think the point of what i said has been missed..
but to brush it off is to say the mouse, software, UI, and keyboard are fine as is.. we don't need to be able to communicate with a computer at any faster rate than currently possible.

 

[MacVidCards]

I still believe there is a strong possibility Apple will release OSX as a free OS for any x86 system in about two years, especially if Windows 10 slows or shrinks Apple sales.

When that happens Apple will still provide desktops but claim they have the best designs. They could offer barebones towers. One for gamers with two PCIE slots. One for Pros with four slots and more ports. Bring your own graphics card. Because OSX can officially be installed on any PC hardware then Nvidia and AMD will keep updating Mac drivers for all new hardware.

That's the only way Apple can make Metal look impressive. Otherwise it's going to look like a joke running on mobile or underclocked GPUs in sealed up systems.

Windows 10 is the best thing that ever happen to Apple in years. It will make them wake up and realise iPhones and that eyesight destroying watch isn't enough to impress anymore.

I would love for you to be right. But I have to agree with the naysayers, one of the primary reasons they are so thrilled to seal the machines up and keep the end-users out is that they only have to include drivers for the parts that they put in in the first place. I speak from what has happened with GPU drivers. They have literally, LITERALLY not added a single card from Nvidia since 10.8.5. Imagine how nice for them.

People putting El Capitan on many older Macs have reported that the machines are crippled by a complete lack of USB support. In the Windows world some poor basxxxd would have to keep writing drivers for those USB chipsets. Apple drops them like yesterday's Sushi.

I'm afraid that the mobile/underclocked GPUs are here to stay. I'm sure someone somewhere is busy clipping Fiji's wings enough to jam it into the Mini Pro. Under clocked, undervolted, some processor cores castrated away, they'll neuter it down to 125 Watts. To make you not notice that you are paying good money for a crippled, reduced version of AMD's best stuff, they will herald a new "Copper Convection Core" or "Fiji Functional Frappee" or some other Madison Avenue jingle. Expect some fun animations of molten copper poured into molds, or thermal updrafts spinning silently upward as some software package runs faster then before on the old D300s.

There really isn't much mystery here. The steady sealing of machines, the de-contenting of iMac and Mini.

 

[Stacc]

Roadmaps from a few months ago still have Broadwell-E slated for Q1 2016. Skylake-E is probably more than a year away, and most likely won't arrive until 2017. The rumors for the cancellation of Broadwell-E are unlikely to be true. Even if it were true, Skylake-E would not magically appear early next year, as it is still in development. Remember, the Xeon chips tend to lag behind their desktop counterparts quite a bit, usually on the order of a year or so.

All the skylake chips coming out this year are all destined for consumer products, with the desktop chips first followed by the laptop chips.

 

[mathpunk]

I'm afraid that the mobile/underclocked GPUs are here to stay. I'm sure someone somewhere is busy clipping Fiji's wings enough to jam it into the Mini Pro. Under clocked, undervolted, some processor cores castrated away, they'll neuter it down to 125 Watts. To make you not notice that you are paying good money for a crippled, reduced version of AMD's best stuff, they will herald a new "Copper Convection Core" or "Fiji Functional Frappee" or some other Madison Avenue jingle. Expect some fun animations of molten copper poured into molds, or thermal updrafts spinning silently upward as some software package runs faster then before on the old D300s.

I like the "Mini Pro" moniker. Maybe a better way to think about the Mac Pro now is to accept that the power ceiling is always going to be 450 watts, and think about how to best use that power. Would one faster GPU be better than a pair of lower power GPUs, for example? I don't know. It seems that the first incarnation of the trash can design was very efficient, at the time anyway. If we look towards how to best use that 450 watts today or in the near future, we may see what the next version of the Mac Pro looks like.

 

[flat five]

I like the "Mini Pro" moniker. Maybe a better way to think about the Mac Pro now is to accept that the power ceiling is always going to be 450 watts, and think about how to best use that power. Would one faster GPU be better than a pair of lower power GPUs, for example? I don't know. It seems that the first incarnation of the trash can design was very efficient, at the time anyway. If we look towards how to best use that 450 watts today or in the near future, we may see what the next version of the Mac Pro looks like.

i wouldn't say the ceiling is 450 watts.. i'd imagine it's entirely possible to design a higher wattage psu within the confines of the nmp design.. if it's a ceiling, it's one that's been imposed by apple as a sort of target number as opposed to apple designing themselves into the corner and forcing a 450watt limit throughout all iterations of the model.

 

[mathpunk]

i wouldn't say the ceiling is 450 watts.. i'd imagine it's entirely possible to design a higher wattage psu within the confines of the nmp design.. if it's a ceiling, it's one that's been imposed by apple as a sort of target number as opposed to apple designing themselves into the corner and forcing a 450watt limit throughout all iterations of the model.

Why do you think it could be higher than 450w? This is the max sustained power draw of the current nMP. Why do you think it is possible to exceed this without making it bigger and louder?

 

[flat five]

Why do you think it could be higher than 450w? This is the max sustained power draw of the current nMP. Why do you think it is possible to exceed this without making it bigger and louder?

because everything else gets smaller and more powerful/efficient.. not sure why PSUs wouldn't be included in that mix.

that said, apple would probably like to keep a 450 limit or maybe even lower eventually.. not because they can't draw more juice into the computer.. they don't want to (guessing)

 

[MacVidCards]

A page or so back I linked to some info about power and heat. Specifically a university study comparing heat output of a 1,000 Watt PC vs a 1,000 Space Heater. They were the same.

450 Watts in means it has to be able to transfer 450 watts to the surroundings as heat. If you want to run a 600 Watt PSU in there, the thermal design has to be able to transfer that to the outside world. So, more little heatsink fingers or faster fan.

They could use the AMD Fury water & heatsink, it is designed to transfer 500 Watts. Apple did it before when rising demands for CPU power exceeded what could be cooled by the existing methods.

It really is quite a corner they have painted themselves into. They already had to down clock the 7970 to fit in nMP. The 2generations of AMD cards since (Hawaii & Fiji) have both actually INCREASED their demands for power in and heat out. As much as the AMD PR department posting here would like to gloss it over, SOMETHING HAS TO GIVE. The high end new chips NEED MORE POWER and give off MORE heat then the generation in nMP from 2011.

 

[flat five]

And as to how heat from a computer is the same as a space heater, here is a link that might be interesting.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Space-Heater-Efficiency-511/

heh.. that is interesting.

 

[fusionid]

i think the point of what i said has been missed..
but to brush it off is to say the mouse, software, UI, and keyboard are fine as is.. we don't need to be able to communicate with a computer at any faster rate than currently possible.

You are right I was just joking. People talk a lot about that in the music production world. I see some people getting touchscreens and claiming it works well.

 

[PunkNugget]

i'm not saying you're wrong or right etc.. what i am saying is that you state "main focus = ipad/phone" ..and that's why "they went small. using only one cpu and crappy gpu"... and there's simply no solid paths in that logic.

they went small? if you mean the size of the nmp is smaller than before then yes.. they did that.. but it doesn't make sense with the rest of the statement so i assume you mean they went small as in they don't give a crap about the macpro and just slapped something together.

reality is they went huge.. i'm willing to bet they spent more hours&money designing the mac pro than they've done with any other computer to date.

---
saying another way.. you've failed at being even slightly convincing when trying to correlate the single socket design of nmp with apple's success of the iphone or ipad.

Again, their focus is their iPad & iPhone and yes I would agree that they went big on their hours and money spent on this "new" mac pro, but to me compared to my machine; The Hackinbeast, their TrashCan Pro (TCP) is crap and they should be schooling me with a better performing mac pro, not the other way around. No logic in that either. That's what I'm sayin'. Feel me?...

 

[flat five]

That's what I'm sayin'. Feel me?

sure.. i see what you're saying.
just that it seems your expectations of what a computer should be and apple's expectations are completely different.
i'm pretty sure apple could easily build a MacosaurusRex (MR) if they so desired.. just that they don't desire and probably ridicule the idea.. just like you ridicule their ideas..
you & j.ive aren't a match made in heaven ; )

---
seems this is more up your alley than nmp?
https://www.gamingpc.ca/best-desktops/thebeast.php?pcID=3

 

[throAU]

I know that was over 20 years ago, but who gives a crap about clones when building hackintoshes have been around for over 6 years now and we have dedicated websites to show you how to build one. Hundreds of thousands of people are building them on their own.

Citation needed.

 

[Bradleyone]

Again, their focus is their iPad & iPhone and yes I would agree that they went big on their hours and money spent on this "new" mac pro, but to me compared to my machine; The Hackinbeast, their TrashCan Pro (TCP) is crap and they should be schooling me with a better performing mac pro, not the other way around. No logic in that either. That's what I'm sayin'. Feel me?...

Perhaps they they need help doing so and should hire you! (Well, they did hire the Anandtech guys away for something - maybe they're currently building hackintoshes for all the staff, you know, to get compile times up and iterate faster and ship bug-free iOS 9 and El Cap...)

Seriously, it only takes an afternoon to put together a system from off-the-shelf parts that would blow away a nMP in most vectors. I'm sure there are many engineers there who do indeed assemble such prototypes and wish they could advance them further towards marketable products, but are obstructed by many layers of product ethos.

I wouldn't say 2015 Apple is only concerned with iThings, as they are very proud of how much better than industry average the Mac is performing in sales, and the laptops are usually fairly close to state of the art. It's just sad they decided at some point that a big honking machine just didn't fit their product matrix.

The nMP was an attempt to reinvent the "ugly big box with a dozen fans blasting away" and make something that could sit on a desk and look serene, while still offering a modicum of power. Unless we can come up with a way to convince them there's a huge market waiting to be tapped to run OS X on a beast workstation, those design constraints are the best we're going to get.

 

[Bradleyone]

Hundreds of thousands of people are building them on their own.

Might explain the growth in sales of hair tonic! Building a hackintosh is one thing, keeping it running is a HAIR-TEARING EXERCISE IN SHEER FRUSTRATION.

The number of hours I wasted through 2014 just getting Yosemite to show 60 Hz on my 4K monitor (an MST based Dell UP2414Q)... Knowing all the time I was stuffing around patching display drivers and squirming to plug and replug cables that I could have just bought a nMP and be, like, doing useful stuff... sigh.

And last weekend I made a Chameleon boot drive for El Cap. Will I never learn!

 

[flat five]

Unless we can come up with a way to convince them there's a huge market waiting to be tapped to run OS X on a beast workstation

i get it that companies can be arrogant and make things that they think are best instead of what potential customers think are best..
but is that really what's going on here?
for practice, you can try to convince me there's a huge market waiting to be tapped to run osx on a beast.. because as far as i can gather, most people who like those types of machines are also ridiculing os x.. osx is a toy OS just like apple's computers and gadgets are toys etc.

i think by 'huge market' you actually mean 'a handful of people'

 

[mechasquid]

Skylake is apparently going to be revealed at Gamescon on Thursday... with an alleged retail packaging leak too. Could we get Skylake sooner than expected? If retail is almost good to go, I would have thought Apple will have their hands on it already maybe?

Link here to story

 

[mathpunk]

Skylake is apparently going to be revealed at Gamescon on Thursday... with an alleged retail packaging leak too. Could we get Skylake sooner than expected? If retail is almost good to go, I would have thought Apple will have their hands on it already maybe?

This is only relevant to the iMac; the Mac Pro uses Xeon processors, which lag behind i5/i7 parts by at least a year.