Someone didn't read the followup article. If you did, you didn't understand it at all.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/05/apples-2019-imac-pro-will-be-shaped-by-workflows/
Read what they are doing (apps that don't yet exist) and whom they're working with (film and animation companies).
Playing misdirection or reading in some alternative universe isn't productive for reading comprehension.
From the article
" ".... Because we want to provide complete pro solutions, not just deliver big hardware, which we’re doing and we did it with iMac Pro. But look at everything holistically.” ..."
The notion that Apple has been beating the drum about 'big hardware' being the focus at all.
The article also doesn't mention "new apps". The phrase 'new apps' , 'new applications' , 'new software' is no where to be found in that article. The primary point of the article is about apps (including Apple's Logic and Final Cut Pro X) that
do exist.
" .. " .. And then we take this information where we find it and we go into our architecture team and our performance architects and really drill down and figure out where is the bottleneck. Is it the OS, is it in the drivers, is it in the application, is it in the silicon, and then run it to ground to get it fixed.”
This information has allowed Apple to make machines like the iMac Pro more performant, but also to enable creative users to stay in their flow and keep them moving forward. . .."
In short, this pro workflow groups is primarily tasked with making Apple's current solutions ( Apple software with the current hardware) work better. That includes bug fixes on
current software products. Making the software run better on all of the Macs was the point they are getting at in that article.
"...
a window that a 3D animator uses frequently to make some fine tweaks. The windows are not super graphically intensive in terms of processing and stewing but we have found an issue where that window was taking like 6 to 10 seconds to open and they’re doing that 100 times a day, right? Like ‘I can’t work on a machine like this, it’s too slow,’ so we dig in and we figure out what it was.
“In that case we found something in the graphics driver was not right, and once you know where to look and you fix it, ..."
How that is about hardware and/or software that is being created or doesn't exist yet is a tortured yoga exercise.
It is not about blindly throwing ever more expensive hardware at solving problems.
"... This kind of workflow analysis has enabled Apple to find and fix problems that won’t be solved by throwing more hardware at them. ..."
The work that team was doing would make the Mac Mini more viable in more contexts. It isn't about trying to push the most expensive x86 cores packages possible.
I've already mentioned the competition—the target industry already spends that kind of money on high end Windows stations. I'm expecting that, like the competition, the "modular" aspect will be additional GPUs and Cores.
The article highlights in several places about substantive use of eGPUs to make MacBook Pros and iMacs (Pro) work with more than one GPU. I don't think the Mac Pro will be entirely restricted to eGPUs, but when it comes to people needing 3-4 GPUs there is a quite significant likelihood that Apple is going to put Mac Pro users at eGPUs alongside the solution(s) for the rest line up. It is an established solution they are working on now explicitly in the article. It is highly doubtful they will abandon it in the future. So no your "mega box at mega expense" mac pro has little evidence that Apple is going to engage on an internal GPU slot count 'war' with their competition. There is a very decent chance there will be an empty slot in a new Mac ( so don't "have to" go eGPU for one more GPU).
There is absolutely nothing in the article where Apple hired external folks to come to their campus to run "mega budget movie" render farms jobs on their campus. These are real projects that have reasonable budgets that Apple is willing to front to get more info. Apple isn't embedding themselves in Peter Jackson movie back end render farm work.
The T2 chip allows multiple Minis to be linked to render high end video and animation;
The T2, in and of itself, does no such thing. There is
zero external linkage provisioned by the T2 chip.
The whole security focus of the T2 is on internal issues and connections.
it's reasonable to expect the new Pro to do a lot of this in one box... or frame or... Have you seen that video of 20 new Minis crunching a single file? If each has a 6 Core processor and a single eGPU, that's between $60–80,000 (around $70,000 cheaper than the top end Maya Box). This is the horsepower that the film industry needs.
Right so if Apple put one 18 core ( 3x 6 ) and two multiple thousand core GPUs (instead of one GPU) inside of a new Mac Pro they'd be meeting a larger set of the need inside of one box. Apple doesn't have to conquer all the render farm slots in the film industry to be successful. They just need enough single user, direct GUI operator wins to sell enough Mac Pros to make the exercise viable.
It's very clear that, despite the amount of wishful thinking and the "Apple will fail if they don't..." articles (all of which can be ignored) that the new, NEW Mac Pro is not being built for most of us.
Right so saddling it with a $10+ K base entry price would primarily be a suicidal act.
Apple doesn't have to chase every super,uber top 3% expensive configuration that other folks offer.
The current set of Macs inlcuding the iMac Pro provide decent coverage for a group of folks. There is a bigger other folks which could be called "rest of us" ( where 'us' folks who want something different). Apple doesn't have to cover all of that group with one system. They just need enough.
"Easier" 2nd large format PCI-e standard slot card path is probably in that set. More internal storage capacity than other Macs is also probably in that set. Larger than other Mac's RAM capacity is also probably in that set. None of that mandates moving to Intel Xeon SP or AMD Epyc solutions though. Nor does anything discussed in the article.
. But the new Pro is expected to be a higher end Mac than the iMac Pro
Expected by some, but the core issue there is why? Does the article support that in any more. Not even in the slightest. Apple discusses no pricing about the Mac Pro at all. Zero The current Mac Pro that is being sold by Apple starts at $2,999. The iMac Pro $4,999. If Apple had some dogma aversion to the "Mac Pro " having a lower price point why isn't there head spinning around and flopping on the floor now ?
Why bother sell a 2 GPU configuration to someone who needs it ? Because that is tool they need.
If someone else doesn't need a 2nd GPU but does need a space efficient desktop solution, 5K screen, the performance range that the then that the iMac Pro covers, and a 10GbE SAN/NAS connection for bulk storage then Apple can bother to sell them an iMac Pro.
The flaw is in the presumption that everyone in the video creation space all have the same requirements. They don't. Which means can sell different systems to different folks with different needs.
It will be priced accordingly. Count on it. Oh yea, a new monitor is supposed to be announced at the same time—how likely is that going to be inexpensive?
The monitor be "race to the bottom" inexpensive? That is extremely unlikely. Go out onto the price and find one the most expensive utra high end "pro" monitors available and priced exactly at that level ( $4+ K ) ..... that is just about equally unlikely. The display docking station will loose the vast majority of its utility as a docking station if it is priced extremely far higher than the systems that are being docked to it. The Mac Pro sales all by themselves are extremely unlikely a large enough base to support monitor sales. Other Mac systems are going to have to be a target.
I'd like to be wrong but no amount of old news and wishful thinking will change my mind on this.
On several of the points you made are past the "like to be wrong" stage. They are in the actually factually wrong state. There is no 'like' aspect to them.
