Apple Continues to Work on All-New Mac Pro With Upgradeable Design

[pertusis1]

That is interesting. It would be interesting to get numbers on component failure rates for people that build their own PCs versus, manufactured PCs, vs All-in-ones like the iMac.

Would be very interesting indeed. I have had 3-4 spinning disk failures, one power supply (I think, in my blueberry iMac), and a RAM module fail (Powermac 7100 or mirror doors - can't quite remember now) in 20 years. The thought of attaching a monitor to such a nice computer frightens me a bit, but in truth I have never had a monitor fail. Current monitors include a 20" Apple Cinema Display (at least 9 years old, but more like 12, I think), and two 30" ACDs (both bought on the used market 3-5 years ago).

I don't follow the iMac forums, but Apple should have quite a bit of data on monitor failure rates at this point.

 

[Naimfan]

To be fair to Apple, the trash can is very good at what it does. It just so happens, though, that a few years on people don't need what it does.

I do think they ignored pro users for a while and are now trying to win them back.

I broke down and bought a used tcMP, just for fun. I think cyrax is exactly correct - it's very good at what it does. But I would not want to buy one at new prices and then not be able to update/upgrade it down the road. Yes, I know you can update the internal storage, RAM, and even the CPU (though possibly not if you bought a 12 core to start). But the GPUs cannot be updated, there is obviously zero expansion space in it, and it only has a single CPU socket.

Down the road, I'm sure the tcMP will be remembered in much the same way as the G4 Cube (without the over-hyped "cracking" of the Cube case that was simply heat exposing variations in the plastic of the case).

Overall, I'd say it was, to quote W.E.B. DuBois, a "splendid failure."

 

[fairuz]

It is beginning to look like my next computer will have to be a PC. For the price of an entry level imac pro I can build a thread ripper machine with change left over. This sucks because compared to MacOs I HATE WINDOWS! So I'm left with choosing the lesser of two evils. I can use an operating system I hate, or play silly hackintosh games. Neither of these choices is good, especially playing hackintosh games.

It's not Apple's fault the iMac Pro is expensive, just that they don't make consumer towers at all (yeah I don't count the 4-year-old Mac mini that you can't even upgrade).

If you're on the fence between two machines, one being enterprise-grade (Xeon and Vega) and the other being consumer-grade (Ryzen and GTX), you probably don't need enterprise-grade and would be better off with the less expensive parts, except for the lack of macOS support. If you do need enterprise-grade, most PC builds are out of the question.

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

They just sing it more loudly.

Nope, sorry.
[doublepost=1513591829][/doublepost]

Yep, no reason at all to talk in less than glowing terms about the trash can Pro and Apple's handling of it over the years

You're REALLY going to compare the 2013 Mac Pro with a current ANYTHING?
[doublepost=1513592014][/doublepost]

My customers just loved having to have the D500s and D700s serviced under the Quality Program (https://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/06/late-2013-mac-pro-video-issues-repair-program/) that are a major pain in the ass to replace. They love the proprietary SSD that can't be upgraded later unless you use OWC's garbage ones. They love that hardly anyone optimized software for dual GPUs and people with 2010/2012 Mac Pros can run more powerful single GPUs. Go on eBay and take a look at what 2010/2012 Mac Pros still sell for. I'm using one from 2009 that's still a beast.

SSD SHOULD have had an Upgrade, I will agree with that.

The fact that hardly anyone optimized for multiple GPUs is NOT Apple's fault.

 

[FM-2030]

I hope all us bedroom producers are accounted for!! We don't have the budgets to support your profits Apple but we sure hope you'll bring a nice surprise we can afford

 

[5590982]

.

 

[Eightarmedpet]

Can I just add to points to this discussion.

1. When the current Mac Pro was designed Apple took the gamble that the GPU industry was heading towards dual cards for max performance (SLI, Crossfire), turns out they were not and instead built single more power hungry and heat generating cards which would never be suitable for the Mac Pro. The gamble did not pay off, but thats just luck..

2. For those complaining about price - you are not obliged to buy anything and no one owes you their latest and greatest machine. Will I buy one? I want to, but I imagine the cost may be more than I am willing to spend, but thats a decision I will make at the time.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

Can I just add to points to this discussion.

1. When the current Mac Pro was designed Apple took the gamble that the GPU industry was heading towards dual cards for max performance (SLI, Crossfire), turns out they were not and instead built single more power hungry and heat generating cards which would never be suitable for the Mac Pro. The gamble did not pay off, but thats just luck..

2. For those complaining about price - you are not obliged to buy anything and no one owes you their latest and greatest machine. Will I buy one? I want to, but I imagine the cost may be more than I am willing to spend, but thats a decision I will make at the time.

No, it is not bad luck. Designing your top of the line pro (and aspirational) machine with serious limits that impede the ability to put best in class graphics etc. in the machine is either telling a certain niche of power users -- that they are no longer important to Apple in the future, or negligence. The Mac Pro is/was the machine for the people that any of the current machines is not sufficient for certain (undefined and various) needs. The tcMP is a perfectly good design for something like a Mac Mini (Pro), but kneecapping the top of the line machine is not good design.

The design should encompass the ability to use multiple-CPUs (allowing for more PCIe lanes etc.), top of the line Xeons if that is what is needed down to a single Xeon at a reasonable price. It should be able to handle at least one top of the line Graphics card, have the ability to add another slot available for either a second one of a TPU board (tensors), another slot for high speed IO controllers for whatever, at least one more useable slot (my Mac Pro 2008 still had limitations - I had two graphics cards in it leaving one slow speed PCIe slot that could not even handle a standard SAS card with the appropriate amount of bandwidth). None of this "pro" flexibility was ever considered for the tcMP, it was a consumer appliance design with the ability to add a single (not the best) Xeon processor and some ECC memory (Xeons can handle much more memory than was allowed in the tcMP). There was years and years of complaining that it was a dead end for many pro users (including even some internal Apple employees - where the tcMP was not enough) -- which fell on deaf ears. It was not until Microsoft who benefited by some who left -- started to actively market "creators edition" and surface desktop did Apple get it through their thick head that maybe they should actually listen to some of their pro users.

 

[krspkbl]

lmao so people have spent anywhere between £4,900-12,300 on this Mac Pro and it's immediately outdated when Apple say they are working on a new one.

 

[MichaelDroste]

Is the SSD on the iMac upgradable later?
[doublepost=1513607571][/doublepost]In a few years take it to owc - upgrade ram and hd...

 

[Zeitkind]

I just hate those AIO machines. In DTP area you need different displays, in development you need more RAM and more CPU, in video area you always need a recent GPU.. These iMacs don't really fit to any of them. Never did and never will.
And - which is really bad - I see so many of them dying. Hard disks getting grilled due to design, GPU fail in large numbers (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.. many die around 3-5 years in use), displays worn out (esp. those 27") often due to overheating. A Mac Pro was always the way to go, because you could have your own display(s), you had replaceable GPU cards, you could replace your drives and get whatever RAM you needed. The Mini was for kids, schools, grand parents, ...
And, tbh, I doubt we will see a more to standards designed Mac Pro. Not with Cook, Schiller and all those design fanboyz. Apple - please prove me wrong.

 

[cmaier]

Can I just add to points to this discussion.

1. When the current Mac Pro was designed Apple took the gamble that the GPU industry was heading towards dual cards for max performance (SLI, Crossfire), turns out they were not and instead built single more power hungry and heat generating cards which would never be suitable for the Mac Pro. The gamble did not pay off, but thats just luck..

2. For those complaining about price - you are not obliged to buy anything and no one owes you their latest and greatest machine. Will I buy one? I want to, but I imagine the cost may be more than I am willing to spend, but thats a decision I will make at the time.

Not so much bad luck as bad understanding of history. The history of computing is taking multiple things and making them one. Dual sockets in workstation used to be super common, but when the core count of CPUs went up they became not worth the cost and engineering hassle for most users. More and more chips on the motherboard have been consumed by the main processor package. RAID for speed gave way to single SSDs. Apple should have understood that SLI was a temporary kludge.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

Not so much bad luck as bad understanding of history. The history of computing is taking multiple things and making them one. Dual sockets in workstation used to be super common, but when the core count of CPUs went up they became not worth the cost and engineering hassle for most users. More and more chips on the motherboard have been consumed by the main processor package. RAID for speed gave way to single SSDs. Apple should have understood that SLI was a temporary kludge.

Apple is the only "workstation" manufacturer that has eliminated multiple CPUs as an option (cutting in half the available PCIe lanes, and limiting the CPU). Yes more people can be served with a single CPU than before - especially if you never did push the machine (and most people have idle processors at 80% to 90% of resources). But then the tcMP was no longer really a workstation, more a consumer PC with some workstation components. The high end niche will continue to push at the top end of the performance requirements. Going from two 6 core Xeon processors to one 12 core processor was basically standing still for a generation in CPU performance, and halving the amount of bus bandwidth available. Also as you put more cores on one CPU - the per core speed goes down once you reach a certain point... so you could end up doubling the cores, but dropping the per core performance by half.... where as just doubling the CPUs would have kept the CPU cores at a higher per core performance. I think we might see the 2 core Xeon system come back in the latest version - Logic Pro has been updated to handle 36 cores... maybe the Apple Logic Pro people know something we don't?

Silicon has more or less flat lined in the way of advances. The more cores you put on one silicon the larger the silicon wafer is, and as you increase the size of the wafer the cost of manufacturing goes up exponentially (since the percentage of silicon you have to through in the trash can goes way up). It is the reason why the price of Xeons goes up dramatically the more cores you have on one chip. My Mac Pro from 2008 with two processors -- 8 cores was $2,500 (general inflation has been flat).

SSDs might be great for some things but it is not cost effective for large storage (and won't be in the near or mid-term) where you don't need very low latency or super fast bandwidth. I have more than 60TB in storage, I have an SSD for the stuff I need fast access, but the rest -- archived on the RAID. Replacing 60TB of hard drives with SSDs is just not economical. Now just imagine the cost to equip a van with SSDs to store 4K footage while it is being filmed?

As far as video cards, or tensor processing cards -- just because you have high performance cards - does not mean that having one is enough for everyone (especially TPUs).

The issue is the tcMP was turned into a high end consumer PC. Workstations tend to be a class above (but not the top class) your standard consumer PC and just because more people can use PCs instead of workstations - does not mean there is not a need for the leading edge of workstations. In 2013, Apple basically said -- take a hike if you are in that class -- and many have, and more were on their way out as they gave up hope.... it is why they announced vaporware last year with regards to it -- trying to freeze that movement. When you spend the day working in one or two apps -- the operating system is in the background and not much of an issue (and many of the creative tools by vendors other than Apple are cross-platform).

 

[melendezest]

So, "Innovate, but not TOO much"?

Riiiiiight.

Wrong.

Innovate all you want.

But make sure I can use your stuff.

Within the context of this discussion, Apple innovated by literally making a round (cylindrical) hole for all the square (cubed tower) pegs out there.

Don't build a motorcycle, then stop building cars and trucks, and then have the balls to tell people they don't need neither the car nor the truck.

Or go right ahead, but don't be surprised when I leave. I refuse to ignore the Emperor is naked, so I'm calling him out.

 

[wigby]

Give credit to the other computer makers for understanding thermal dynamics.
[doublepost=1513447400][/doublepost]
No, they run hot - Diskwarrior constantly warned about the SOLID STATE DRIVE in mine running too hot. Had to install a fan controller to keep it cool -- and thus always here the fan running, and I had the base systems.

I wasn't really talking about thermal dynamics as much as marketing power. Apple releases AirPods and I see identical wireless earbuds from China available for $40. Apple releases the Macbook Air and now every laptop maker has the same thing. The list goes on but since Mac Pro wasn't a big success, no one bothered to copy it.
[doublepost=1513612245][/doublepost]

The Cylinder would be a great machine if it had an option for an i7 processor, one GPU and sold for under $1500.

Apple agrees with you on your 1st (although they would say it's really up to Intel) and 2nd point. I didn't hear what they said about your 3rd point point because they were laughing too loudly.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

Apple should have understood that SLI was a temporary kludge.

nVidia has not given up the idea of a "bridge" between GPUs.

NVIDIA NVLINK HIGH-SPEED INTERCONNECT
MAXIMUM THROUGHPUT FOR SUPERIOR APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

NVIDIA® NVLink™ is a high-bandwidth, energy-efficient interconnect that enables ultra-fast communication between the CPU and GPU, and between GPUs. The technology allows data sharing at rates 5 to 10 times faster than the traditional PCIe Gen3 interconnect, resulting in dramatic speed-ups in application performance and creating a new breed of high-density, flexible servers for accelerated computing Download the whitepaper for more details on NVLink.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvlink.html#utm_source=shorturl&utm_medium=referrer&utm_campaign=nvlink

 

[Bob Sanders]

lmao so people have spent anywhere between £4,900-12,300 on this Mac Pro and it's immediately outdated when Apple say they are working on a new one.

iMac Pro, not Mac Pro.

The iMac Pro is a separate product that will not be "outdated" when the Mac Pro comes out. They will both exist at the same time in the product line, with similar Xeon processors and (probably)Vega GPUs. They announced last spring that both of these products were on the way.

Macrumors would be a lot better off if troll posters like you were just perma-banned. This thread is the worst.

 

[Strelok]

That is interesting. It would be interesting to get numbers on component failure rates for people that build their own PCs versus, manufactured PCs, vs All-in-ones like the iMac.

I would guess there are differences. My guess RAM, Motherboard, and CPU failure rates are higher for those that build there due improper diligence about ESD.

I can only go off based on what I have, but I've only had a hard drive fail in the past 10+ years in my PC. I have a 9 or 8 year old SSD that still works fine. One of my graphics cards might have an issue, it's been sitting in a box for a few years after I stopped mining with it. My CPU has been overclocked to 4.4ghz (vs 3.5 ghz stock) for the past 6 years and it's still fine.

 

[baryon]

They kind of admitted that they screwed up with the trash can, changing the design so soon and not upgrading the existing one.
Wouldn't it be great if Apple offered at least one computer that isn't soldered and glued together? Just one? It could be the Mac Pro... But I bet it's going to cost even more than previous Mac Pros.

I just wish the Mac Mini could perform like a MacBook Pro, and for it to be serviceable like the previous design used to be. That would be so cool. Then it could act like a cheaper, but good performing computer that doesn't go to the landfill as soon as ANY component fails.

 

[saulinpa]

The iMac Pro is a separate product that will not be "outdated" when the Mac Pro comes out. They will both exist at the same time in the product line, with similar Xeon processors and (probably)Vega GPUs. They announced last spring that both of these products were on the way.

Macrumors would be a lot better off if troll posters like you were just perma-banned. This thread is the worst.

Is it trolling to ask: Will the new iMac Pro be updated in the next 5 years or is it a one-off product like the nMP?

 

[bkkcanuck8]

They kind of admitted that they screwed up with the trash can, changing the design so soon and not upgrading the existing one.
Wouldn't it be great if Apple offered at least one computer that isn't soldered and glued together? Just one? It could be the Mac Pro... But I bet it's going to cost even more than previous Mac Pros.

I just wish the Mac Mini could perform like a MacBook Pro, and for it to be serviceable like the previous design used to be. That would be so cool. Then it could act like a cheaper, but good performing computer that doesn't go to the landfill as soon as ANY component fails.

The argument that soldering all the components on a single board ends up in landfill more than those that are replaceable is a fallacy. Yes, you can replace parts on the computer if they fail, but the failure rate is dramatically lower (which lowers the warrantee costs to Apple). That said, I do like the ability to upgrade/replace things like SSDs, memory, etc. In fact when I bought all my 2009 Mac Minis I would buy the lowest version from the refurb store and then replace the memory with memory that I ordered from crucial, and replace the hard drive with the largest size available.
[doublepost=1513618716][/doublepost]

Is it trolling to ask: Will the new iMac Pro be updated in the next 5 years or is it a one-off product like the nMP?

The iMac Pro is more likely to be updated than the Mac Pro -- especially if they go with a tight custom thermal design where you cannot just come out with a new version by popping out component parts and replacing them with newer generation ones with little worry about the fact that it changes the thermal balance. The Mac Pro cheesegrater case was great in that you could easily do that without that worry (less investment in upgrading the design). And not having to change the design makes it easier to retool the assembly line to new models (it takes a long time to redesign, reimplement assembly line automation for new processes). Simply put, the iMac Pro fits in to Apples vision more than any headless design unfortunately.

 

[NT1440]

They kind of admitted that they screwed up with the trash can, changing the design so soon and not upgrading the existing one.
.

I would argue that their explicit remarks of screwing up with the trash can was their admitting that, but the semantics aren't important.

 

[MacsRuleOthersDrool]

Wrong.

Innovate all you want.

But make sure I can use your stuff.

Within the context of this discussion, Apple innovated by literally making a round (cylindrical) hole for all the square (cubed tower) pegs out there.

Don't build a motorcycle, then stop building cars and trucks, and then have the balls to tell people they don't need neither the car nor the truck.

Or go right ahead, but don't be surprised when I leave. I refuse to ignore the Emperor is naked, so I'm calling him out.

Because YOUR needs are EVERYONE's, right?
[doublepost=1513619722][/doublepost]

Phil Schiller: I’ve created a literal trash can fire. Can’t innovate anymore my ass!

Yeah, I’m not going to hold my breath on this one.

You've made your position clear, by repeatedly posting nearly the same thing multiple times.

Do you really think that is advancing the discussion of this topic?
[doublepost=1513620044][/doublepost]

"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?

Wrong.

Apple figured that the Cylindrical Mac Pro could provide BOTH form AND function.

They unfortunately gambled on two things that didn't pan-out.

1. The wide and quick adoption of Thunderbolt.

2. The wide adoption of software actually DESIGNED for multiple-GPU architectures, rather than one, honkin' GPU.

But you cannot say that the 2013 Mac Pro was SIMPLY form over function, or there wouldn't have been SIX Thunderbolt 2 Ports on it.

You can clearly see where Apple was trying to lead the industry; but Intel screwed-up the adoption of TB, and coders simply decided to not bother trying to create more parallel GPU code.
[doublepost=1513620255][/doublepost]

When it was introduced the Mac Pro, they bragged how the thermal cooling worked.

And it DOES.

That's why the people that actually OWN one complement the system on how QUIET it is.

 

[walkingman]

"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?

What you wrote is correct, of course. But. I think more than most pros, those who buy Apple are more attuned to form than others are.

 

[skinned66]

Good news.

On another note, the current Mac Pro should have already seen significant discount due to age. I know Apple doesn't do this, but they should.

• 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
• 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
• Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM each
• 256GB PCIe-based SSD1

$3,499.00

LOL. You can keep it.