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Apple Continues to Work on All-New Mac Pro With Upgradeable Design
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If it is a Thunderbolt 3 display it should. Take the latest TB display, upgrade it with a 5K panel and wide color gamut, keep the speakers and camera and the back hub, have just one TB3 cable that can also charge a MBP at full power and you're done. I've had my TB display for years now and have happily avoided a 3rd party 4K/5K upgrade because I love the Apple friendly feature set and would purchase again.
The reality is the iMac is a powerful laptop computer with the keyboard detached. I’ve taken one laptop apart to fix a fan. It was easier than replacing a hard drive on the iMac. And taking that laptop apart wasn’t fun. That said I do appreciate the thinness. I just don’t want thinness to mean inaccessible and it doesn’t have to mean that. At least the memory on the 27” is still very accessible.
Bulk Storage is one use case. Of course a SSD for boot, another for a work drive. Hdds mainly excel at bulk storage.
And people who literally use their Mac as a tool to make money doing specialized things like video editing, 3D work, VR...
As a freelance 2D graphic designer and photographer, Apple's consumer offerings are more than sufficient to run the software I need. I don't need these expensive pro machines, but you also won't catch me on here kvetching about the price either.
I believe the trash can was 100% Ivie going with good looking with little thought to what people wanted/needed. "Pros" have ALWAYS wanted upgradeable, replacabe parts machines that they can do themsleves. If AMD makes the best GPU, go there, if nVidia makes the best, go there. Use industry standards for every connection, not just one proprietary thing that need bunch of dongles to connect to the real world (look at the number of dongles you need of you buy a current mac laptop). It's NOT a hard concept to grasp... but I am afraid all the real engineers were replaced with lawyers and finance types who were SO successful at hiding money from the IRS offshore. While I think I like the talk about a moduoar machine, I have serious doubts about what they may end up being. I just KNOW it's going to be all FORM with little function (other than maybe interchanging nicely with a bunch of in-house built, uber expensive bits and pieces).
I have 3.5" bays (I have an SSD + 3 spinners) and a blu-ray drive in my 2012 Mac Pro and I would hope that the new Mac Pro would have the space at a minimum to move them over to the new design. SSDs and 2.5" drives can easily be put into a 3.5" bay but a 3.5" drive will never fit into a 2.5" bay
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Sadly, it’s a trend that is being copied. MS Surface devices keep getting worse, too. Surface Laptop is so bad that there is no way to access the internals without literally destroying the keyboard panel. Most companies know that their average user won’t service their machine, which is a big negative for those of us that actually know how to do so. Apple has a chance here to show that they listen by bringing back something like the cMP, but I don’t think many people would bet on it right now. I guess it depends on how seriously the Cylinder MP apology was meant. It’s a golden opportunity for them to restore the faith of some of their oldest customers.
There are always people who will complain about prices but I mostly see concern over what will be and not be in the new Mac Pro.
Not to mention cost. A 4TB ssd is something like 7x more expensive than a 6TB spinning 3.5” drive.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I doubt that former group actually exists- at least among people with objective minds. I NEVER hear people talking about wanting a new desktop computer and keying around "super thin." I hear them wanting power, compatibility, can run <their key software>, upgradability, etc, but "super thin" and "fashionable" seem to never make it into the conversations.
I think this crowd is created by Apple, meaning knowing that Apple will key on "thinner" makes the Apple fan crowd covet thinner... not so much because they actually want a thinner or fashionable desktop, but because they know that's what they will get from Apple... and they want an Apple desktop. In other words, instead of Apple listening to a crowd of customers wanting "thinner" & "fashionable" and building for them, I think it's the other way around: Apple is building a "thinner & fashionable" computer and a crowd buys anyway FOR OTHER BENEFITS of Apple hardware.
Look at the headphone jack decision in iPhone. Those happy with bluetooth or lightning connections ALREADY had that with iPhones that also had a headphone jack. Nobody was clamoring for Apple to get rid of the headphone jack before rumors started implying they would do so. Nobody gained ANYTHING when Apple jettisoned it as the bluetooth or lightning connection crowds could already connect that way. Only the headphone jack segment lost something. iPhones without headphone jacks sold like crazy anyway. Did that mean that every buyer wanted rid of the headphone jack? Did Apple do a market research study, discover that iPhone users wanted to get rid of that jack and thus chose to give the market what it wanted?
No, it meant that even the headphone jack users wanted the rest of an iPhone bad enough to try to roll with Apple's decision to kick out that jack. Rather than giving the market what it wanted, Apple was deciding something for the market and leveraging the "whole" to be able to jettison some ubiquitous utility to "create space" for other stuff (and increase average revenue per sale by pushing AirPods + a market for dongles when some need more than the one they included, etc). I think if research was done, people would have chosen a modestly thicker iPhone that keeps the flexibility and creates that "room for other stuff" rather than going the way they want... especially when any such imagined research did not result in the jack getting kicked out of new iPads, new Macs, etc.
Apple seems to be in a mode of building things the way they want and trying to make the market like it the way they've chosen to go. They have the help of a segment of people who hang out here who always argue so very pro Apple no matter what Apple chooses to do (even if it doesn't affect them in any way at all). Because so much of Apple products is still good-to-great, such decisions are generally met with enough "buy anyway" actions to make it seem like Apple knew best yet again... aka "$XXX Billion in the bank can't be wrong" and "but who makes the most profitable ______", etc.
What are the gripes from this very passionate Apple crowd about the iMac Pro beyond price? Primarily, it's lack of upgradeability. What are we dreaming about in this Mac Pro? A very upgradable & keep-up-with-the-times (via upgradabiliy), headless Mac. Is anybody clamoring for a thinner Mac Pro? A thinner iMac Pro? Not that I've seen.
Almost never will you read comments about wanting just about anything Apple makes "thinner" until Apple actually rolls out a "thinner" whatever and then people let on that they wanted it "thinner." For example, gripe about any Apple product "thickness" right now and the apologists or ADF will tear into you for not liking it exactly as Apple has chosen to serve it up now... only to shift with Apple when they make it thinner in the future. That's the way it goes. I don't actually see market demands driving product evolution. Instead it's the other way around (with help of Marketing spin when the evolution is not obviously desirable or even downright taking something very useful away). And then many buy anyway, not to endorse the change but because we want the rest bad enough to endure some changes.
And before someone comes back with the tired Henry Ford quote about faster horses note that he also is quoted as saying "<consumers> can have any color of car as long as it is black." How well did that "I know best" mentality work out over the long run?
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As long as it’s upgradeable...i’m willing to drop major money....and probably the last time unless they maintain updates newer models bi-annual or annual.
Loved my G5 Mac Pro. There is going to be a generation of users whom have no idea about how a computer works (in a traditional sense).
I agree.
The real problem was that Apple forced (and "forked") pro users into a PowerMac vs PowerMac G4 Cube scenario, except one where they remove the PowerMac altogether.
Things may have been different if they chose to not discontinue the REAL Mac Pro, and instead sold it alongside the "Mac Pro Tube" (and continued to regularly update both with modern IO and CPUs).
The purported upcoming "Modular Mac" of our dreams would solve all issues with Apple desktops: it would give us a headless iMac, obviate the Mini, and give us as much Pro power and flexibility as we could want and afford.
But all evidence point to Apple NOT DOING ANY OF THIS.
Apple will somehow, someway, LEAVE SOMETHING OUT to make it a deal-breaker (like having non-upgradeable RAM in the iMac), in the BS interest of simplicity, thinness, profit, feature creep, or all of the above.
That was form over function, its not needed for a pro machine. Make it pretty, but make it so that thing can sweat and work hard.
From apple’s perspective, your wallet is the limit.
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We should wait and see....there will be workaround with the future mac pro.
Still got my G5. One of, if not the best computer Apple has ever made.
Yep, but it also uses multiple GPUs. The design does not work with one GPU doing all the work. Unfortunately, "one GPU doing all the work" is where the industry is right now.
I agree. Especially as lots of Pros basically need iMac Pro specs in a box they can plug a monitor in to. With parts that are user replaceable. If Jony Ive designed the Apple Watch case in like a month, why is this difficult?