I still have my Dual 2Ghz G5, and I can't part with it because the design is just that good. Seriously, they could just bring back that case design with new components and I'm pretty sure everyone would be happy.
I admire your commitment.

I still have my Dual 2Ghz G5, and I can't part with it because the design is just that good. Seriously, they could just bring back that case design with new components and I'm pretty sure everyone would be happy.
So I suppose what happened is, the pro workstation became obsolete. Nobody needs one, so they are this expensive now. The intel switch is only partly responsible for this. 95% of all people that bought a Pro Mac back in those days are using laptops and entry level iMacs nowadays, which still cost around 1300$.
The aluminum design was introduced in 2003 and it still looks like it could have been designed yesterday.
They use Bloomberg terminals.Pseudo conspiracy theory:
I always thought that the 2013 Pro Cylinder was really designed for Wall Street. The "professional" traders who could bump up AAPL's stock price want multi-monitor support and were willing to spend a premium for something that looked trendy. Apple provided support for six monitors out of the box and figured nothing else mattered.
If they just brought that back, I'd buy it like yesterday.
It's very likely that I'll get the Mac Pro, even though I cannot afford the iMac Pro.For the complainers of the computer (iMac Pro) they won't buy or can't afford, Apple is working on another pro desktop that you won't buy or can't afford. But, upgradeability! TGIF!
When it was introduced the Mac Pro, they bragged how the thermal cooling worked.
There are so many logical fallacies in this argument. I get the preference for having a traditional tower that you can store everything internally, but argueing that having an updated Mac Pro is going to be cheaper than an iMac Pro in the long run is way off base. For all components you’ve listed there isn’t a single one besides possibly the display that makes very much sense.It's very likely that I'll get the Mac Pro, even though I cannot afford the iMac Pro.
The reason I can afford the Mac Pro and not the iMac Pro is precisely that I can upgrade it. You see, this allows me to use my existing display, mouse and keyboard, and it allows me to stick all my current internal storage into it, so I don't have to order all of that over again from Apple.
I completely appreciate that the iMac is a great product and even a great value if you have literally 0 computer components lying around already, but for most of us that isn't the case. I switched to the PC previously because Apple just didn't offer a solution I was happy with, and if they want me back, they can't ask me throw all my stuff out.
If the display is very good as well I might very well buy that LATER, when I can afford it after recovering from buying the Mac Pro itself.
I’d still buy one today if it had just been upgraded every year. I think neglect played as big of a role in the demise of the Mac Pro as the design did.I hope people here don't forget the fanfare involved with the previous model, "can't innovate anymore my ass," and the trailers with tantalizing cutscenes that made it seem like it would be the best computer since sliced bread. That was only 4 years ago. It turns out that isn't a timeless design, like the model before it which lasted for over a decade.
I'm going to number the points 1-3.There are so many logical fallacies in this argument. I get the preference for having a traditional tower that you can store everything internally, but argueing that having an updated Mac Pro is going to be cheaper than an iMac Pro in the long run is way off base. For all components you’ve listed there isn’t a single one besides possibly the display that makes very much sense.
Ultimately I think you are hoping for Mac Pro that is not going to be anything like what Apple will provide. Apple has already shown they are completely on board with Thunderbolt for expansion. They’ve also said that the new Mac Pro is going to be for the most demanding workloads. I see one of two scenarios for the new Mac Pro and neither one of them will fit with what your describe.
- Keyboard/Mouse - the iMac Pro’s slate gray keyboard, mouse and track-pad are already in such high demand you could easily buy an iMac Pro and resale the keyboard, mouse and trackpad at substantial profit. I’m almost certain these could easily be resold on eBay after purchase for $75 for the mouse, $100-$150 for the keyboard, and $150-$200 for the trackpad. When the iMac Pro was first shown, those are things that many got excited about.
- Display - you said yourself you’d likely get a new display eventually for the Mac Pro. Why not just keep your current display and use it with the iMac Pro. Most people that work seriously on their computers that I know of find a single display cumbersome even when it is is a nice as the 5K display in the iMac.
- Storage Components - TB3/USBC enclosure are cheap. For the money you’d get from selling the mouse/keyboard/trackpad you could easily buy a nice 4-6 bay TB3 enclosure.
I also wouldn’t be suprised if Apple pushes really hard into the eGPU realm with an update to TB4, and support for their own eGPU enclosure, something that would benefit all their pro machines (MBP, iMac Pro, and a new Mac Pro). Just my 2 cents.
- Apple releases a new Mac Pro that looks a lot more like the trash can Mac Pro than the cheese grater one. It will continue to use TB expansion for everything except RAM, NVMe slots, and possibly a GPU. I highly doubt the new Mac Pro will have any SATA or SAS port internally, those are legacy interfaces now that would have died off 5 years ago if intel/Apple and even Dell and HP had their way.
- The new Mac Pro will likely be based on a dual or quad socket Xeon design, and the price will likely start at $7500+ without the keyboard mouse or display. That is the type of computer they mean when they say it will be designed for the most demanding workloads.
There are many different pro needs, you describe yours, that’s fine... but you can’t generalize your requirements to the universe of Mac Pro buyers.At work, I use a HP Z840 workstation with two 8-core Xeons (for a total of 16 real cores doubled to 32 virtual hypervisor cores), 128GB of ECC RAM, 500GB SSD, Nvidia Quattro video card with 8GB of RAM and 3 display ports support. The internals are nicely laid out and it has two ethernet ports on the back along with a myriad of ports. This is standard issue for all the engineers. I think it is overkill since a HP Z440 would suffice. What is so hard to make a workstation like this? You don't have to innovate in all fields. You have to focus on the innovation. For pro hardware, the software should be the innovation. Let the developers innovate with software and plug in hardware. All the thinness, and whizbang looks are not going to win the bread!
Apple has the wrong idea that pros are just consumers with more money. Wrong. Pros don't want to spend too much money on things that don't add value. They want the ease of replacing memory and storage. They want long lifespan, reliability, and cost effectiveness. They want the ability to virtualize environments such as iOS, tvOS and macOS, and may be even watchOS. They want virtual machines and ones especially tailored for testing, development, etc.
I stand corrected. Which means, I think, there won't be a third.
Yes it was.You probably meant two pro desktops. At least, that’s what I assumed you meant.![]()
...which is exactly why I'm going with a System76 laptop over a MacBook Pro. I'll keep my old 2015 MacBook Pro (with a 2014 processor, thank you Intel), but I can't justify the incredible lack of features on Apple's newest "pro" devices. The MacBook Pro is not a "Pro" device, if it requires you to fumble with dongles for everything. Once again, form over function."At the time, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi admitted that the 2013 Mac Pro's so-called "trash can" design has a limited thermal capacity that doesn't always meet the needs of the most demanding workflows."
Apple thought "Pros" preferred Form over Function. How could Apple be so out of touch?
At work, I use a HP Z840 workstation with two 8-core Xeons (for a total of 16 real cores doubled to 32 virtual hypervisor cores), 128GB of ECC RAM, 500GB SSD, Nvidia Quattro video card with 8GB of RAM and 3 display ports support. The internals are nicely laid out and it has two ethernet ports on the back along with a myriad of ports. This is standard issue for all the engineers.
Our company has been looking at switching from Dell Precision workstations to BOXX Apex series. A coworker got a demo unit, seems well built if not a little industrial but runs absolutely silent and cool. It looks like they run pretty standard ATX MSI motherboards so they should be pretty simple to hackintosh. For me I just don't have to the time to want to futz with it, I just want something that works well.I agree, the HP Z840 seems at least as well designed as the previous iterations of tower format Mac Pros.
This may, or may not, set well with your company's IT department, but: has anyone tried installing macOS High Sierra (Hackintosh) on an HP Z840, using a bootable external USB 3.0 connected via adapter cable to an SSD, simply as a "proof of concept"? I would think that booting and running macOS "natively" (instead of in a virtual machine) would be the better + faster solution.
Ironically, Turi Create requires CUDA if you want GPU acceleration.Note that Apple has released some of it's own ML tools: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/12/08/apple-turi-create-machine-learning-framework/ . I wonder if Apple has internal hardware ML acceleration platforms supporting the development of Turi Create (and et.al.), and if so, what they use ... CUDA, OpenCL, Metal, or ???