Its definitely speed and performance. Did you see the demo Pixar and The Foundry did using Mari? Also Apple has a nice thing on their site showing why its designed the way it is. Its actually genius.
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Apple Begins Showing Mac Pro Teaser in Movie Theaters with 'Fall 2013' Announcement
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Its definitely speed and performance. Did you see the demo Pixar and The Foundry did using Mari? Also Apple has a nice thing on their site showing why its designed the way it is. Its actually genius.
Brand recognition and the halo effect. Companies often advertise their flagship, super expensive products actually intending to get you into stores to buy products in your price range.
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You're forgetting the fact that Apple pays far far far less than you do when you buy your video card at best buy..
Find the teaser was a bit long winding at the beginning, splashing the shiny part here and there, confusing more than arousing temptation. In all, I'm not for mac pro shape and material (plastic?) this time, it is nothing special, other than the size.
Where to begin...
First of all the FirePro W9000s are $3,000+ each, not combined, but they will surely not be the only graphics choice as many power users do not need graphics performance. Secondly "FirePro" is branding for better support, better - optimized - drivers and ECC video RAM. They have such a high price as add in cards in the PC world because it is a small market using them for efficiency in business and research i.e. those prices are not extreme to the audience they are intended for. Hardware performance wise the W9000 is similar to a Radeon 7970 as they share the same GPU.
Apple are placing a custom order for several hundred thousand graphics processors and I doubt they will be paying more than $800 to AMD per system with dual W9000s and I would expect a base model to have dual W5000s as many users of these systems don't need graphics performance which would likely cost Apple no more than $300 per system.
CPU wise the logical choices would be:
Xeon E5-1620 V2: 3.7GHz, 4-cores and ~$300
Xeon E5-1650 V2: 3.4GHz, 6-cores and ~$550
Xeon E5-2697 V2: 2.7GHz, 12-cores - I was able to find a pre-order for $2,299 by searching with the box code bx80635e52697v2, but we will have to wait to see what Intel are pricing this at. $2,500 upgrade from Apple could well be on the cards - maybe even $3,000.
None of the 8-core E5-2600 V2 Xeons make any sense on their own because of their prices, maybe a 10-core but again not great value.
The 128GB SSD isn't an off the shelf part for a tiny niche market. It is a design going in to hundreds of thousands of units; it won't add a huge amount to Apple's costs compared to if they were using an off the shelf 2.5" SSD. RAM is probably $4-$5 per GB for Apple and a 4-core system would likely start with 8GB.
So Xeon and FirePro do not mean high starting costs. Apple could have a box for $1,999 if they wanted to really be aggressive. Sure prices on the high end will be steep, but how steep will depend on how Apple price their graphics choices like the PC workstation market or more akin to the consumer cards they are as powerful as.
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Yes! Not for the first time either.
Heard something you didn't like? Celery goes straight in the ears!
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How on Earth do you come out with these one eyed rationalisations?
DLink has designed, built and delivered their product well before Apple has designed built and delivered anything.
How dense do you have to be to not notice that Apple has dragged their heals on just about everything over the last few years since Steve became terminally ill and left the scene?
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btw To add to the risible tone of the minions, Everybody knows that Nobody goes to the movies anymore! They all have AppleTV and subscribe to all their entertainment over the Internet using energy beamed down from sun orbiting satellites, so will never see these ads by Apple, for Apple and designed to stop any sense of rising panic at the apparent collective leadership's lack of ideas.
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Got mixed feelings about the new mac pro.
On one side, it does look sorta neat for a desktop "tower" computer.
On the other side, i wonder whom this is really for.
I mean i imagine the price will be high enough that it would be in pro ranges, but then, as a pro user, i wonder, how many do really want to have a switch to the smartphone/tablet model where the parts are so tightly integrated in custom layout that one basically can't extend/replace pretty much anything internally in the thing anymore.
It is basically a totally throw-away mentality product at a pro price, aimed at users who usually like upgrading/replacing parts.
Yes, i know one can sorta extend it due to thunderbolt etc, but hm, not the same thing.
And if this fails to gain high sales for that reason, Apple would likely not go back to the more extendable tower shape and rather instead probably more go towards ditching the pro line all together, hm..
Due to that downside of quite cut down tinkering possibilities i would only buy it if it had a very attractive price compared to the hardware internals used, but yeah, Apple usually does not go for low pricing relative to the hardware components used..
On one side, it does look sorta neat for a desktop "tower" computer.
On the other side, i wonder whom this is really for.
I mean i imagine the price will be high enough that it would be in pro ranges, but then, as a pro user, i wonder, how many do really want to have a switch to the smartphone/tablet model where the parts are so tightly integrated in custom layout that one basically can't extend/replace pretty much anything internally in the thing anymore.
It is basically a totally throw-away mentality product at a pro price, aimed at users who usually like upgrading/replacing parts.
Yes, i know one can sorta extend it due to thunderbolt etc, but hm, not the same thing.
And if this fails to gain high sales for that reason, Apple would likely not go back to the more extendable tower shape and rather instead probably more go towards ditching the pro line all together, hm..
Due to that downside of quite cut down tinkering possibilities i would only buy it if it had a very attractive price compared to the hardware internals used, but yeah, Apple usually does not go for low pricing relative to the hardware components used..
They also have some of the highest profit margins in the industry as well. So while they may indeed get better pricing that doesn't mean it will be passed on to the customer.
I'm expecting an intro price of $3499 with lower specs.
I have not seen the teaser. The new Mac Pro is aluminum. If Apple is not clearly conveying that message then the teaser should probably be tweaked.
I thought this was a type of ceramic. Sounds like it would act as an insulator rather than a conductor.
Most likely it is a ceramic, and it would be a bad thermal conductor. Aluminum has a lot of good properties except fatigue life in cyclically loaded components. Then, advanced composites, carbon fiber for example, are greatly superior.
Except for a bit of fondling, the Mac Pro won't see much in the way of cyclical loading.
EDIT: says it is a ceramic in the link. I should have checked the link first rather that speculate.
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Disingenuous to say the least. I could put three drives and two optical drives in a single enclosure. And a power bar? Please. Who has a Mac Pro today that isn't plugged into a power bar or UPS? And with Thunderbolt, I could get a long cable and put all that stuff in a closet and not have it on or under my desk.
Good point.
I am afraid Apple is becoming a parody of itself. This scenario would fit right into an SNL skit.
I guess BMW shouldn't be advertising in theaters either, since their cars cost about $50,000 ... Right?
Cable nightmare?
There seems to be much negative comment surrounding cable multiplication with the new Mac Pro.
I checked my own installation and I already have USB cables for my scanner, Wacom tablet, Blu-Ray drive, video hub and keyboard. Also I do have two external drives for backups. Printer is on the network. Also I have cables for my iPhone, iPads, Nikon D70 and Nikon D5100 (the cameras use different plugs). I actually bought a Manhattan 28 socket powered USB hub to bring order to the whole thing. I highly recommend it, though I may not need it as much with the MP.
When I get the new Mac Pro I will probably add a Thunderbolt external drive RAID unit as well. I already have a lot of cables so I don't think the Mac Pro will add that much to the tangle.
One of those big boxes would not eliminate much of this.
I like the flexibility the new design brings. I think it will meet my needs for years to come. I don't care how much it costs; it's a Section 279 deduction anyway. I think you WILL be able to spend $5,000 on it, but you can spend that much now with the big box version. I bet the entry cost will be less than $3K. I think they'll sell millions of them. It will be a mass market and not a niche product is my bet.
There seems to be much negative comment surrounding cable multiplication with the new Mac Pro.
I checked my own installation and I already have USB cables for my scanner, Wacom tablet, Blu-Ray drive, video hub and keyboard. Also I do have two external drives for backups. Printer is on the network. Also I have cables for my iPhone, iPads, Nikon D70 and Nikon D5100 (the cameras use different plugs). I actually bought a Manhattan 28 socket powered USB hub to bring order to the whole thing. I highly recommend it, though I may not need it as much with the MP.
When I get the new Mac Pro I will probably add a Thunderbolt external drive RAID unit as well. I already have a lot of cables so I don't think the Mac Pro will add that much to the tangle.
One of those big boxes would not eliminate much of this.
I like the flexibility the new design brings. I think it will meet my needs for years to come. I don't care how much it costs; it's a Section 279 deduction anyway. I think you WILL be able to spend $5,000 on it, but you can spend that much now with the big box version. I bet the entry cost will be less than $3K. I think they'll sell millions of them. It will be a mass market and not a niche product is my bet.
a) You may not be familiar with the history of pro workstations. Sun, SGI, etc.--part of their branding was an exotic design far beyond what any normal desktop would dare to dream of.
b) The design isn't just about looks--it's about a central cooling core.
c) Some pros are creatives--and creatives don't always care that their tools not try unusual designs; they might even appreciate that! (And people can always add fake vents and stickers if they want it to look more like machines of the past. Or put it in a square box if it makes them more comfortable.)
d) Black and featureless... not so much as a blinking light or a colored stripe... gaudy?
Last I recall, many complained the "Apple tax" on RAM is too high, and let's be honest, Apple doesn't go the "cheaper route" even if buying in bulk.
Very surprised a few are giving Apple a huge pass on this one. I did a lot of research for that post, even the cheaper end with less BTO's was far from the $3k range. Even then, that's a good $500 more than the current base Mac Pro.
Honestly, I was excited at first to replace my Mac Pro, but a lot of us were hoping for more BTO's in an upgradable system, not an expensive and unnecessarily small workstation. Makes me miss the PowerPC years when Mac's were... affordable.
PowerMac G5
June 24, 2003
Introductory price USD$1,999 (as of 2006)
Probably some of the same people who don't want their computer and display integrated are the people who don want EVERY other thing integrated!
I think people will end up really liking this new, super-flexible, super-customizable system. (Innovation that goes very much against the stereotype of Apple.) The computer is now a hub of performance (including an extra GPU for OpenCL and a super-fast SSD for booting/apps/v-mem/caches). To which you connect a display at the minimum (well, probably) and also connect whatever other stuff you need: slots, drives, whatever. Skip what you don't. And if you want to upgrade the "performance hub" later (other than RAM and SSD)? Go ahead--and keep the rest of your rig intact.