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Apple Developing Narrower, Rackmountable Mac Pro Prototypes?

linuxcooldude said:
Making the width & height those dimensions, might make the length a lot longer. I could see space requirement problems & how would placement be effected without it being rack mounted?
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You mean depth. 1U's are DEEP.

sM1sK.jpg
 
I was wondering what took them so long to redesign this monstrous beast MacPro lol

It's very powerful and expensive but it was too big... Considering all other Apple Products
 
I'm more interested in the price/performance improvements on the lower end. The entry level Mac Pro is simply a horrible horrible value in terms of price per performance. I don't care how wonderful the build quality is or what other "features" it has, a $2500 system should have more than 4 DIMM slots and better than a under $300 CPU.
 
They cannot just abandon the rack mounted server market. Making the mac pro into a 3U format with optional rack mount ear would be ideal. However, to merge the Pro and Server market, I'd like to see:

1. At least 4 Hot Swap drive bays that don't require the unit being removed.
2. Redundant power supply option
3. I'd love for it to be less than 24" deep. Going 3U, this shouldn't be hard at all.

Hell, supermicro just released a new 1U case with Redundant PSU, only 19.8" Deep and has 4xSATA/SAS hot swaps. It's the 813MTQ-R400CB. Cannot wait to snag one.
 
Hopefully the smaller form factor won't cause additional heat dissipation issues.
 
rpenzinger said:
Funny to see you are basing a $4000 computer purchase on a $79 piece of crap-KEA furniture - LOL.
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I live in a teeny apartment, so even if I pitched the wardrobe I'd likely still be space constrained in whatever I replaced it with. Also, getting rid of furniture and installing new furniture is an enormous PITA - especially when your existing $799 wardrobe is still in great condition.

And you can get a pretty sweet Mac Pro for around $2K. All I'd need for the next few years, anyhow.

Also, shrinking the Mac Pro would cut down on the space it takes to store inventory at Apple stores, and reduce shipping costs by slashing both the weight and volume of the product. It would make the product more price competitive and/or more profitable.
 
I hope so, it would give confidence amongst "Mac Shops" that Apple is serious about its corporate / pro business.
 
you have to admit the design of the Mac Pro isn't looking at all dated, I think thats quite impressive to say its based on an 8 year old tower design, which is still in existence in 2011. I dont think I could say the same for any PC vendor :p. Although to me most of Apple's stuff still looks in date years after launch, look at the Ti-Book & iMac G4 launched in 2001 & 2002 and still look ultra modern today, heck in 2004 I remember a lot of current PC's still being beige
 
You'd think they'd want maybe to put more capabilities into expanding the GPU power to help with OpenCL and GCD - we'll see, but wouldn't a Mac Pro mountable rack or a new Xserve version want this?
 
madmax14304 said:
Making the mac pro into a 3U format with optional rack mount ear would be ideal. However, to merge the Pro and Server market, I'd like to see:

1. At least 4 Hot Swap drive bays that don't require the unit being removed.
2. Redundant power supply option
3. I'd love for it to be less than 24" deep. Going 3U, this shouldn't be hard at all.
Click to expand...


I agree with 1 & 3. 2 I could take or leave but it would be a necessity for server applications.

3RU would be 5.25", essentially 3 times the size of an XServe. Seems totally possible. The XServe at the studio where I used to work was one seriously loud box, and that's going to have to change.

IIRC the XServe had 4 drive bays on the front but not sure if they were hot swappable. I could see the possibility of 8 (or more) drive in more space efficient dual drive trays, although that would be less convenient for hot swap use, as you would have to take a drive offline that you may not want to swap.
 
The rack mount format is just for that: to mount in a standard 19" rack, along with other equipment and even a rack-mount UPS. That's not the realm of a Mac Pro. It's the realm of servers. I like the current, and brilliant, case design very much. It's an example of form follows function and great industrial design.
 
t0mat0 said:
You'd think they'd want maybe to put more capabilities into expanding the GPU power to help with OpenCL and GCD - we'll see, but wouldn't a Mac Pro mountable rack or a new Xserve version want this?
Click to expand...

Hell yeah.. :cool:
 
Two Suggestions

1) Make it anodized aluminum black and 2) allow enough room for me to stuff in a AV receiver, BlueRay, Apple TV and put all the ports on the back (side).
 
Very interesting. This is very plausible because of Lenovo has the C20 workstation (which I picked out for myself at my work):

http://news.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/10381/637217.html

The ThinkStation is 3U rackmountable, with the CD tray vertical for the thinner chassis. Fits full-length, full-height PCIe (video) cards. They called it the "world's smallest dual CPU workstation" so Apple could definitely match it for the Mac Pro.

I'd really like to get a Mac Pro, so this would be perfect. :) The size is nice though honestly I don't really see much need for rackmounting--do companies use these in a server room with a KVM or thin client or something?
c20_worlds-smallest.jpg
 
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GoodWatch said:
The rack mount format is just for that: to mount in a standard 19" rack, along with other equipment and even a rack-mount UPS. That's not the realm of a Mac Pro. It's the realm of servers. I like the current, and brilliant, case design very much. It's an example of form follows function and great industrial design.
Click to expand...

I know many professional situations where a Mac Pro would be ideal as a rack mountable unit.

Recording studio, on location video production (DIT), and studio based post-production rigs, basically places where other equipment is racked, may need to be secured, cooled, power conditioned, or in mobile racks. Rack mounting in not only for servers.

Having said that, I love the current Mac Pro towers, brilliant industrial design both inside and outside, unlike the G5 Quad 2.5.
 
Totally good idea!

I can understand the death of XServe. A product that doesn't make money should't stay around, it is simple as that. Such a dual purpose machine would allow Apple to address a broader range of user needs.

In any event I think part for the reason XServe failed was the lines limited nature. Like it or not a 1U server is still limited in capability. Also this idea that TB will effectively replace PCI-E slots is a bit crazy in my mind. Some cards simply need the lowest possible cost implementation and compatibility with PC hardware. In other words a Mac Pro without PCI slots would be crazy on Apples part.
 
Stella said:
I hope so, it would give confidence amongst "Mac Shops" that Apple is serious about its corporate / pro business.
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That's right, even if Apple never makes it into big enterprise, I think there's a lot of money to be made serving small business, and a little attention would pay off for everybody.
 
NY Guitarist said:
I know many professional situations where a Mac Pro would be ideal as a rack mountable unit.

Recording studio, on location video production (DIT), and studio based post-production rigs, basically places where other equipment is racked, may need to be secured, cooled, power conditioned, or in mobile racks. Rack mounting in not only for servers.
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And how do you operate it? A server can be accessed from a workstation but a Mac Pro IS a workstation, it's not a server. It's not a logical step. I have a professional photographer in the family, with a Mac Pro. He needs to load his RAWs onto his Mac for post processing. How to do this if that Mac is in another room, in a rack :confused: Very inconvenient if you ask me.
 
Lesser Evets said:
Having dug around in my Mac liberally over 4 years, I was surprised they didn't crunch down the design yet. It's got a lot of room in there. Though the sleds and space aren't unwelcome, there are ways to compact all that and still have a great machine which is easy to access.
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Past dual processors required a lot of heat sink fin surface to keep the G5's (remember water cooling?) and later Xeon's cool while keeping the noise level down. Now with plentiful 2 1/2 inch form factor SSD's available, and 32nm Xeon's on the way, heat will be less of a problem, heat sinks can be less bulky and Apple can maintain low noise in a very desirable 3U package.

Thunderbolt eases the RAID requirements of pro's by offloading to third party products as well as enable improved peripheral connection.

Seems like a natural evolution to me. Hoping for Xeon E5-2600 octo but I'll take whatever arrives Q4.
 
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