When the MacPro was first introduced, didn't they compare it to a "Dell" and you got more for your money with Apple? The MacPro at the time was 1,000 lesser than the "Dell" with the same specs.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
2007 Harpertown Stoakley-Seaburg Motherboard With New Graphics Cards 8-Core Mac Pro
- Thread starter Multimedia
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
When the MacPro was first introduced, didn't they compare it to a "Dell" and you got more for your money with Apple? The MacPro at the time was 1,000 lesser than the "Dell" with the same specs.
Yes.
You are correct, Apple was marketing the Mac Pro as an Apple quality workstation for less than the generic box competitions.
My comment was about inexpensive mid-tower PCs vs other (windows) platforms: laptops, full-towers etc. My comment was towards why (windows) mid-towers sell more than these other (windows) platforms.
Ahhhh, gotchya. Makes sense... So for this MiniTower, are you looking for something like the Cube? But half that size just as powerful as the MacPro?
It just wouldn't be feasible for Apple to make a Mid-Tower.
Look at their profit margins on their products. Steve Jobs kills any products that don't make money (See Newton, The Cube, and others I can't remember)
Apple's approach is All-in-One, the iMac, MacBook, and MacBook Pro are all-in-one's. The Mac Pro is for professionals and the Mac Mini is for BYOKDM'ers.
Quote me on this: There will never be a Mid-Tower from Apple.
Personally, I think Apple will update/enhance the mini before they make anything with close to the power of a Mac Pro (if ever).
Because most of the big decisions are made by Steve Jobs, and he tends to make what he wants to make over what consumers want. Not to mention that he'd probably consider the release of such a machine to be an admission that they screwed up. Even big successful corporations make mistakes.
I think a product like the appleTV shows how a company as smart as apple can screw up and deliver a product that completely ignores what consumers actually want.
I am OK with Steve Jobs determining what Apple will make or not make. Not that he never makes a mistake, but I trust his marketing sense above the posters here. He has proven his ability over and over again.
So, you are saying no one is buying the Apple TV? If it completely ignores what customers actually want, I do not see how any of them could have possibly sold.
Your post doesn't give a single reason why it wouldn't be feasable. And sorry, I don't put much stock in Because I/Apple/Steve Jobs said so.
They could release one with a similar profit margin to their other machines. And the notion that it wouldn't make money is pure speculation, unless they did something completely oddball and idiotic with it, or priced it so it had a far bigger profit margin than their other boxes, it would definitely make money. At the very least, it would do as well as the mini. It hasn't done that well, and they haven't killed it yet. Nor the appleTV at this point.
Jobs has made some great decisions and some poor ones, for example the underperforming aTV and mini. And of course the cube. Certainly his missteps were riskier and more expensive than a minitower would be. And I'm saying that the number of people buying the aTV is very low, because apple ignored what the majority of consumers want in that sort of device.
That's the one area I'll disagree with you on, FF. Their profit margins are very high on all of their products. And there are actually people dumb enough to choose BTO options that no other sane person in the world would do. Case in point: $323 for an additional 500 gig drive. That is just plain wrong. $400.00 for an x1800xt? $150.00 for a 7300GT??? Also quite obscene. And knowing Steve and his bargaining tactics, I am sure that they pay well below what others are paying for motherboards and CPUs.
I think there will be no mid-tower because they are afraid it will eat into the iMac and the Mac Pro marketshare. And the company has an aversion to a large (computer) product lineup, due to the mid-nineties' disastrous results.
I don't know that's hard to say, I think the iMac would pretty much some day get the Quad, leaving the MacPro with Octo. Seems like the iMac will be the Mid Tower thing.
The mini-tower isn't only about CPU
By end of 2008 or early 2009, Nehalem will be octo-core, so the Mac Pro would be hexa-core.
The mini-tower isn't just about CPU cores, it's about:
By end of 2008 or early 2009, Nehalem will be octo-core, so the Mac Pro would be hexa-core.
The mini-tower isn't just about CPU cores, it's about:
- Desktop CPUs - cheaper and better performance than laptop parts
- A PCIe x16 graphics slot for more graphics options
- Room for two or three internal disks, to reduce the need for an ugly tangle of external USB drives
- Room for quiet air flow, so that the system isn't compromised trying to reduce heat buildup yet is still as quiet as the Imac
- One or two PCIe x4 or x1 slots for TV tuner cards or other internal options
Hexa-Core sounds cool. That machine would be insanely powerful.
And on a side note. No longer a "Regular" graduated to "6502." lol
I'd agree with most of your specs. I don't see more than two hard drives. Two gives room for expandability while not stepping on the toes of the MP. Also, probably only one expansion slot. Pretty much the same reason, some expandability while not being as expandable as the MP.
Apple seems to have an aversion to "extra" computer lines and Desktop class parts. It would seem likely that the iMac could be four core and dual HD by this time next year, or early 2009. That might be a factor as well. Expandable video cards is just not the Apple approach.
One thing I would love (and might have tuned me into another iMac), is an Express Card port in lieu of PCIe. For digital audio applications an Express Card slot (or two) would more than make up for the lack of PCIe.
That comes back to the alternative to a mini-tower being a better spec'd Mac Mini. But given that base price for the Mini is already $799 (compared to the better spec'd but similar iMac at ($1199), I'm not sure we would see the "mini-tower" idea out in a usable config for much less than $1500 - especially since most people asking for mini-tower also want a spec as good as (or better) than the top range iMac.
But the whole reason the mini is so expensive is because it uses laptop parts, especially the hard drive and optical drive.
If they just made the mini a bit bigger and swapped the mini components for desktop equivalents, they could easily make huge improvments to the specs at the same price point, if not lower.
If they can make an iMac for $1199, why would it cost $1500 to ship the same thing without the monitor? With the cost savings of not having a monitor and not having to use the thin iMac form factor (which is extremely design heavy and uses some laptop components, which both raise the price), they should be able to save $100-200 on a headless iMac. I don't think they'd have to beat the top range iMac, what would make the most sense is the same range of speeds as the iMac - they could easily cover a range of $899 to $1999 (especially with BTO).
Not to mention that the things people ask for the most, an open drive bay and an open slot or two, add very little to the cost. Most drive busses already support 2 drives, so they'd just have to provide the space to mount it and a couple extra internal cables. An AGP slot may add a little more cost than a PCI slot, but still not that much. And would a couple extra ram slots cost much more?
But... but... hexa means 6... Not 16...
So that would mean 2 chips with 6 cores on each? That's still more powerful than 2 chips with 4 cores on each.
Three or four hard drives seems standard for most mini-towers (three 3.5" slots, and a 5.25" slot that can be either a second optical or a HD with a 5.25" adaptor).
It is true that Apple seems to believe that their customers are too stupid to handle specs that come close to overlapping (e.g. not offering Clovertown in the Mac Pro until they could get CPUs that were the same speed as the top quads).
I believe, however, that the maxi-tower having twice as many cores, two to four times as much memory, three full-width PCIe slots instead of 2 PCIe x1 slots, H/W RAID support... offer a clear differentiation between the mini-tower and the maxi-tower.
If you look at a workstation quality mini-tower like the Dell PW390, you save about $1000 off a similarly equipped quad core entry Mac Pro.
That's about the price of a 23" Apple Cinema Display (or the price of the 27" ACD when those are announced on 13 November).
Entry Mac Pro, or Mac Amateur and 27" ACD for the same price?
Why would Apple release a screen size that shares the same resolution as the 23" Apple Cinema Display?
But... but... hexa means 6... Not 16...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal
"In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal, base-16, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16,...
It was IBM that decided on the prefix of "hexa" rather than the proper Latin prefix of "sexa". The word "hexadecimal" is strange in that hexa is derived from the Greek έξ (hex) for "six" and decimal is derived from the Latin for "tenth". It may have been derived from the Latin root, but Greek deka is so similar to the Latin decem that some would not consider this nomenclature inconsistent.
An older term was the incorrect Latin-like "sexidecimal" (correct Latin is "sedecim" for 16), but that was changed because some people thought it too risqué, and it also had an alternative meaning of "base 60". However, the word "sexagesimal" (base 60) retains the prefix. The earlier Bendix documentation used the term "sexadecimal".
Donald Knuth has pointed out that the etymologically correct term is "senidenary", from the Latin term for "grouped by 16". (The terms "binary", "ternary" and "quaternary" are from the same Latin construction, and the etymologically correct term for "decimal" arithmetic should be "denary".)[1]
Schwartzman notes that the expected purely Latin form would be "sexadecimal", but then computer hackers would be tempted to shorten the word to "sex".[2] Incidentally, the etymologically proper Greek term would be hexadecadic (although in Modern Greek deca-hexadic (δεκαεξαδικός) is more commonly used)."
An older term was the incorrect Latin-like "sexidecimal" (correct Latin is "sedecim" for 16), but that was changed because some people thought it too risqué, and it also had an alternative meaning of "base 60". However, the word "sexagesimal" (base 60) retains the prefix. The earlier Bendix documentation used the term "sexadecimal".
Donald Knuth has pointed out that the etymologically correct term is "senidenary", from the Latin term for "grouped by 16". (The terms "binary", "ternary" and "quaternary" are from the same Latin construction, and the etymologically correct term for "decimal" arithmetic should be "denary".)[1]
Schwartzman notes that the expected purely Latin form would be "sexadecimal", but then computer hackers would be tempted to shorten the word to "sex".[2] Incidentally, the etymologically proper Greek term would be hexadecadic (although in Modern Greek deca-hexadic (δεκαεξαδικός) is more commonly used)."
Let's just call it "hex", OK?
The 27" panels are available, and at a good price.
Since Leopard still doesn't have resolution independence, a 27" 1920x1200 is a good way to get slightly larger fonts.
The presbyopians would love the 27" displays....
Right, let's just say the MacPro will be released at MacWorld. But we can only say that AFTER 11/13. lol
Just curious....when was the Octo introduced? Was it coincident with an event or did it simply get "introduced"?
dave
It was a silent update April 2007. The other line hasn't been updated yet, since August 2006. Apple is soooooo slow at these things. lol
I think Apple will go the other way 23" res on the new 20"... 30" res on a 27" and then a new top end res.
they squeezed 1920x1200 onto the 17" MBP, they can easily do it on a 20".
- Status