All-New Mac Pro Launches Thursday, December 19 Starting at $2999

[prowlmedia]

Arguing over semantics now, are you? This is a desktop workstation computer. Satisfied?

And if I may ask what makes people feel special about owning this kind of computer? It starts at $2999 and I could just build $8000 PC system. But then what? That makes me god?

In real world, engineering and science fields rarely rely on a Mac. They do Linux and often their daily software run exclusively on Windows workstation, many dated back to XP.

That's a massively broad statement. My university ( that I lecture at now and again is almost all mac and Linux. Windows got the boot with vista )

Scientific software often runs on Linux as it's free and open source. And can be integrated into stand alone systems with no licensing issues, well certainly less.

And nothing makes us feel special? It's a tool to use to create things and make money. Apple does that very well. My 2008 has been used non stop since I bought it and never gone wrong or actually crashed completely. Software has hung - mostly old Adobe stuff, but even that is much better now. Something I cannot say of ANY PC I own or have owned. So I guess that makes me feel special.

Actually you know what gives me that warm fuzzy feeling?

It's that I can spend 8K on a mac and I know I have 3 years of instant swap out if needed. Try that with a Dell or HP... 3-4 week turn around is all I've ever received from them.

 

[iSayuSay]

It's a very cool machine with tons of graphic power. Will be great for video editors and professionals. However, it won't be great for audio people. A Macbook Pro might be nice on the road, but many people want a cpu powerhouse with multiple processors and room for PCI(XXX) cards.

We don't necessarily need a SSD drive, but would like an internal raid. I don't need to hear your arguments about program in OpenCL for use with plugins etc and I don't need you arguments about external chassis.

And there are gamers who want more than an iMac and be able to do some video card upgrades over the years. Apple has nothing for them.

Apple seems to only think about the high-end professional and consumer.

Exactly.. Apple takes only two extreme sides of the consumers. Either very basic or very expert. The Mac desktop is limited between basic slow mac mini, locked and not flexible system like iMac, or professional expensive system like macpro.

Most tech savvy people, even many video editor could live with the medium side of i7 CPU and consumer grade graphic like 780ti. It's just much more coste effective and also gets the job done at the same time. Apple simply does not provide this.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

A $3k starting price for a "Pro" machine with no internal expansion? What a freaking BARGAIN! Woo Hoo! They'll definitely sell MILLIONS of these things immediately!

 

[69650]

It's Thursday now and it still won't let you order the darn thing. They must mean Thursday California time which is nearly Friday for the rest of us given the time difference. This must be just about the most frustrating product launch in Apple history. I just want to get the bloody thing ordered before we close for the holidays on Friday evening.

 

[arbitrage]

This thread must be full of poor teenagers and college kids. Why is everyone complaining about the pricing. I can generate income to pay for the fully specced version in 2 days of work. As a few others have noted, there are obviously very few actual professionals on this thread. The complainers should just leave and go back to their LeapPad Pros.

 

[wovel]

It depends on the setup/config of the system, rendering from and to the internal SSD of the nMP will be alot faster than rendering to and from a mechanical disk, even faster than most of the 4 HDD raid systems. You would need a pretty good Thunderbolt external HDD system to outperform the PCI SSD in the nMP. If your CPU isn't the bottleneck in the system that is.

I think ideally (and actually fairly commonly) you will see three pools of storage. Boot, scratch, and data storage. I suppose you could set up another scratch pool for audio but it hardly seems worth it. Depending on the workflow you might also see separate ssd scratch pools for capture and rendering (like in Premiere).

I am sure some people will do it all in SSD for active projects. There are 100 ways to do it. You have to balance cost and performance benefit.

Rendering previews to an SSD drive or two (separate from the boot disk) is a fairly good option. There are some nice thunderbolt rack mount units in the 8-24 disk range which can present multiple volumes so you can mix SSD and mechanical disks in one chassis and still maintain control over how they are used.

It actually gets easier when you have a larger organization with the ability to leverage a SAN environment. The one gap for small groups/individuals right now is the lack of a semi-reasonable LTO solution for backups over Thunderbolt (they all are still bizarre two chassis configs). Maybe the new Pro will help change that. A lot of people like to get their raw footage onto tape and locked up someplace else as quickly as possible. At over 500GB an hour, RAW 2k footage would be a nightmare for optical (blue-ray backup) and remote replication is only a reasonable solution for James Cameron.

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A $3k starting price for a "Pro" machine with no internal expansion? What a freaking BARGAIN! Woo Hoo! They'll definitely sell MILLIONS of these things immediately!

Every product is not designed to sell millions overnight, even at Apple.

 

[Rogifan]

I just wish it was available in silver aluminium instead of this silly black dust magnet.

It's not black. It's dark grey.

 

[td2243]

You're not going to be putting your projects on your boot drive. I don't know any professionals that put their projects on their main drive. 256GB is purely for OS and apps. For many people this is sufficient.

While I agree with your statement, 256GB is not even enough for my OS and apps. Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro 7 are about 40GB alone. I have a bunch of plug in with 20+ GB of samples. I eat through 256gb in OS and apps in no time.

I will definitely buy one (after consumers give it the run through), but I'd have to bump up the internal drive, just to not make myself crazy moving files off the internal all the time.

 

[wovel]

Exactly.. Apple takes only two extreme sides of the consumers. Either very basic or very expert. The Mac desktop is limited between basic slow mac mini, locked and not flexible system like iMac, or professional expensive system like macpro.

Most tech savvy people, even many video editor could live with the medium side of i7 CPU and consumer grade graphic like 780ti. It's just much more coste effective and also gets the job done at the same time. Apple simply does not provide this.

I think there is a place for a machine like that. I am not sure Apple will ever make it. I would buy one. I would like to see something with a desktop CPU/GPU that is not a workstation CPU/GPU. I think the baseline Pro is priced pretty well, but the GPU is not doing much for people that want to mix some gaming with their editing

BTW is the $2999 Pro quad-core or 6-core? The title on Apple.Com says quad core, but the specs under the $2,999 price say six-core.

 

[iSayuSay]

This thread must be full of poor teenagers and college kids. Why is everyone complaining about the pricing. I can generate income to pay for the fully specced version in 2 days of work. As a few others have noted, there are obviously very few actual professionals on this thread. The complainers should just leave and go back to their LeapPad Pros.

And that makes you feel special how? Smart work is all about making a great income with minimum effort. And by effort, it's not just about human effort but also the tools and capitals to do so.

Your work can self-pay a $9000 MacPro in 2 days, okay great. How about I could do the same with a $2000 machine? In that case I make $9000 with less so instead of break even I make it profitable already.

Professional or college kids, overspending is not a smart way to get the job done. Everybody love to boast about themselves being professional without knowing the true meaning of it. Some [professionals] could just get the job done on a mere iPad and still makes millions of $$$ in days.

 

[wovel]

And that makes you feel special how? Smart work is all about making a great income with minimum effort. And by effort, it's not just about human effort but also the tools and capitals to do so.

Your work can self-pay a $9000 MacPro in 2 days, okay great. How about I could do the same with a $2000 machine? In that case I make $9000 with less so instead of break even I make it profitable already.

Professional or college kids, overspending is not a smart way to get the job done. Everybody love to boast about themselves being professional without knowing the true meaning of it. Some [professionals] could just get the job done on a mere iPad and still makes millions of $$$ in days.

I think (I could be wrong) his point was more that people are complaining about the cost of something that isn't designed for them. The Mac Pro is targeted at a pretty specific market where it is indeed a good fit to accomplish the mission and is priced accordingly (and appropriately). I agree with your other post that there might be a decent market for a different machine.

----------

It's a very cool machine with tons of graphic power. Will be great for video editors and professionals. However, it won't be great for audio people. A Macbook Pro might be nice on the road, but many people want a cpu powerhouse with multiple processors and room for PCI(XXX) cards.

We don't necessarily need a SSD drive, but would like an internal raid. I don't need to hear your arguments about program in OpenCL for use with plugins etc and I don't need you arguments about external chassis.

And there are gamers who want more than an iMac and be able to do some video card upgrades over the years. Apple has nothing for them.

Apple seems to only think about the high-end professional and consumer. There are people in-between left out and they'll be forced to go Hackintosh or Windows.

I have worked with a lot of organizations doing video but really know nothing about strictly audio use cases, but I can't imagine internal raid is really a plus for the Pro Audio market. They have to want the noisy disks out of the room more than anybody.

 

[jm001]

What the hell is all the griping about?! How old are you people who are griping about the price? I remember in the 90's plunking down serious change for a IIsi, but still wishing I could afford the IIci. For a serious machine such as the new Mac Pro $2999 is actually pretty reasonable for a completely redesigned Mac and taking inflation into account. The IIsi was OVER $2000 with one NuBus slot and a maximum RAM of 65MB. Yet no one really griped about these prices due to the fact they were Macs, made by Apple and their quality was beyond the run of the mill PCs out there.

Yeah the new Mac Pro is pricey, but actually cheaper than what the IIsi sold for. The components themselves are pricey. Building one of these on the cheap using the exact parts of the main components would be quite difficult. You'd probably be able to build one cheaper, but I doubt the savings would be that great. Plus this is one Mac Pro with a hell of a design.

 

[iSayuSay]

I think (I could be wrong) his point was more that people are complaining about the cost of something that isn't designed for them. The Mac Pro is targeted at a pretty specific market where it is indeed a good fit to accomplish the mission and is priced accordingly (and appropriately). I agree with your other post that there might be a decent market for a different machine.

Except he posted with a derogatory manner implying true professionals (not even sure what that means?) don't have problem paying for $9000 because it pay itself somehow.

Even people as rich as Bill Gates (which obviously doesn't have a problem buying truckloads of maxxed out MacPro outright) wouldn't mind of having a more cost effective solution for their projects. Little saving here and there end up saving big.

The "medium Mac" desktop I believe would not only slash desktop PC sales but also Apple's own current desktop lines. Most Mac Mini, iMac and even a few MacPro users would crave over the idea of having a tower desktop Mac with not so expensive price point (let's say $1500 - $2000) with Core i5 or i7, top of the line desktop graphic, 4 slots of RAM, PCIe SSD and HDD slots with medium upgradeability.

In short a souped up iMac without built in display.

 

[phoenixsan]

The day.....

has come, at least.....I expect a flood of histories coming to the Forums.....

 

[jm001]

The "medium Mac" desktop I believe would not only slash desktop PC sales but also Apple's own current desktop lines. Most Mac Mini, iMac and even a few MacPro users would crave over the idea of having a tower desktop Mac with not so expensive price point (let's say $1500 - $2000) with Core i5 or i7, top of the line desktop graphic, 4 slots of RAM, PCIe SSD and HDD slots with medium upgradeability.

In short a souped up iMac without built in display.

This was done back in the 90's and almost killed Apple with all the different models i.e. IIsi, LC, IIci, IIvx, plethora of Perfoma models, etc. When Jobs took back the reigns he wiped the slate clean and started over with the iMac, followed by the G3 towers (Yosemite and on) and then the iBooks. Simple, not many models. The Mac mini is the cheap Mac with the iMacs filling in the void, price wise, between the mini and the Pro. If you can't afford the Pro then you can't have the Pro. If you want a cheap Mac get the iMac or mini.

 

[AidenShaw]

That's a massively broad statement. My university ( that I lecture at now and again is almost all mac and Linux. Windows got the boot with vista )

Scientific software often runs on Linux as it's free and open source. And can be integrated into stand alone systems with no licensing issues, well certainly less.

And nothing makes us feel special? It's a tool to use to create things and make money. Apple does that very well. My 2008 has been used non stop since I bought it and never gone wrong or actually crashed completely. Software has hung - mostly old Adobe stuff, but even that is much better now. Something I cannot say of ANY PC I own or have owned. So I guess that makes me feel special.

Actually you know what gives me that warm fuzzy feeling?

It's that I can spend 8K on a mac and I know I have 3 years of instant swap out if needed. Try that with a Dell or HP... 3-4 week turn around is all I've ever received from them.

Cool story, bro.

Until that last paragraph.

All of our Dells and HPs have 3 year next-business day on-site service as standard. (We don't upgrade to 24x7 four hour service for personal systems, but do for critical infrastructure servers.)

Your uni is "buying it wrong".

 

[69650]

It's not black. It's dark grey.

It looks black on their website which is very misleading if they don't have it in the stores for a while to see for yourself.

Does anyone know if it's the same colour as the Space Grey they just introduced? It seems to look a different colour in every picture.

 

[iSayuSay]

This was done back in the 90's and almost killed Apple with all the different models i.e. IIsi, LC, IIci, IIvx, plethora of Perfoma models, etc. When Jobs took back the reigns he wiped the slate clean and started over with the iMac, followed by the G3 towers (Yosemite and on) and then the iBooks. Simple, not many models. The Mac mini is the cheap Mac with the iMacs filling in the void, price wise, between the mini and the Pro. If you can't afford the Pro then you can't have the Pro. If you want a cheap Mac get the iMac or mini.

And also there's Power Mac Cube.

But that doesn't stop Apple for making and selling Mac Mini which proves to be (relatively) more successful.

But again Mini is a relatively cheap, basic computer for daily purposes made of laptop components, and disguised as desktop. How about me (and I belive many other people) want a reasonably powerful desktop computer with desktop components?
iMac fills the gap alright, except it's a sealed system, mostly made of laptop components and sold with a built in display I might not need. It's really huge, heavy and cumbersome when it's time for moving, upgrade, or bring it in for a repair.

 

[wonderspark]

What the hell is all the griping about?! How old are you people who are griping about the price? I remember in the 90's plunking down serious change for a IIsi, but still wishing I could afford the IIci. For a serious machine such as the new Mac Pro $2999 is actually pretty reasonable for a completely redesigned Mac and taking inflation into account. The IIsi was OVER $2000 with one NuBus slot and a maximum RAM of 65MB. Yet no one really griped about these prices due to the fact they were Macs, made by Apple and their quality was beyond the run of the mill PCs out there.

Yeah the new Mac Pro is pricey, but actually cheaper than what the IIsi sold for. The components themselves are pricey. Building one of these on the cheap using the exact parts of the main components would be quite difficult. You'd probably be able to build one cheaper, but I doubt the savings would be that great. Plus this is one Mac Pro with a hell of a design.

Ah, yes... *repositions monacle*
I recall back in the year of our lord 1546, when the German King paid the court armorer Jörg Seusenhofer of Innsbruck the enormous sum of more than 1,200 gold coins for fabricating a suit of armor for use in battle and tournaments.

Le sigh ~~~ That was when a man's character *meant* something. Today, you peasants fritter about with your paper money and your magical, fruity devices.

 

[Chastepe]

I made an account just to tell you that was not funny nor clever. What the **** is wrong with the people on this website?

Do not take such things so seriously, sometimes I comment just to comment. Obviously you are free to do whatever you want but I did not use profanity words or insulted anyone...I don't misunderstand you for calling me indirectly stupid but it is not right to make judgements so easily. Thanks for taking the time to create an account just for my nonsense comment but instead use your energy and time on something more valuable. Piece my friend & be more positive.

 

[flat five]

How about me (and I belive many other people) want a reasonably powerful desktop computer with desktop components?

if you want a mac and don't want a mini or iMac, i think you get a mac pro then.

 

[thewap]

Looks at the *revolutionary form factor* of the new mac pro..then glances over at the TAM's speaker power supply..

 

[iSayuSay]

if you want a mac and don't want a mini or iMac, i think you get a mac pro then.

True. Simple, right? Just like the world is only black and white?

Or maybe too simple? Which is my point. I don't want to pay for Xeon and the Firepro graphic but want the versatility of a MacPro.

 

[mandoman]

Prosumer audio guy here and thinking of picking up the baseline quad model.

I know I should probably wait a couple of months for the bugs to be worked out (I hope it's not as bad as the 2013 iMac audio issues, still not fixed!), to see what the Mac Mini update looks like as that might be powerful enough, and for NAMM show to see what new thunderbolt/usb3.0 audio interfaces might come out, but it's so tempting...

 

[flat five]

True. Simple, right? Just like the world is only black and white?

Or maybe too simple? Which is my point. I don't want to pay for Xeon and the Firepro graphic but want the versatility of a MacPro.

it's not about black&white or whatever.. you really do have 3 desktop choices with apple computers.

the odds of them making a 4th are, i'd say, incredibly slim.

you gotta make some choices.. we all do.