Apple, if no new MP, why no allow clones?

[Tom71]

To answer the OP:

It would be the single biggest mistake Apple could do.

 

[nanofrog]

For one, Windows 7 continuously drops the ethernet connection after a certain amount of time on all our Dell workstations of a few different models and a few different ages. We have all the drivers up to date, but they're all Precision series desktops. So it's likely the same driver bug across all of them.

Windows just decides it doesn't have a net connection anymore, and the internet connection test fails. We disable/re-enable and it works again. None of our Macs have this issue. But it's really annoying when we have these workstations sitting there doing series work on ethernet, and suddenly the drop the connection.

Edit: Now that I think about it, my home Mac Pro has done the same thing several times in Windows 7. It pisses me off because I only boot into Windows to game, and it drops my connection. I know it's done it several times in Star Trek Online, and each time I thought it was the server, but then I realize it's my whole connection.

I've not seen this one, but hopefully your company's IT dept. will be able to get it sorted (assuming you have one; no idea of the size). I'd suspect it will take some time working with Dell (phone calls), web searches,... but they should be able to solve it.

Then find out what it is, and apply it to your MP.

In general, Win7 isn't perfect. No OS is in my experience. But considering Windows is the dominant OS out there, Win7 is better than Vista and XP (very "old in the tooth" as the saying goes, but not dead yet).

 

[DoFoT9]

IMO, yes. But there's other factors too, such as expected sales volume and desired margins.

true desired margins, not to mention the possible loss of other R&D projects due to the financial crisis that has been around for the last few years.

I was thinking in terms of throughput, not capacity. Mechanical sucks at random access compared to SSD's.

As per browsing, ISP bandwidth is definitely the main factor in speed (system waits for data, and that's the slowest link in the chain).[/quote]
i know what your saying - but wrt the scenario i stated before (for "general users") there would be absolutely no benefit upgrading RAM, upgrading CPU etc., well, except maybe for flash usage

for other users, sure! they will need faster bandwidth for RAM (i know i do!) and faster CPUs.

Yep. ASUS does that on some of their boards, and I'd think EVGA does on a few as well. Not sure about anyone else, but it's on the high-end retail models that you tend to find it.

i think that there would be a lot of potential for it to expand into something more. they could make the chip appear as a mountable, format-able drive - when you install the OS you choose to install it to the memory chip and away it goes. i dont see it being a very big problem provided that it is made to appear as a drive/partition. potential?

That article is beyond vague, as they've no test methodology, and it even states it's "estimates".

i guess. those estimates are high though

My biggest problem is with how the arrived at their conclusions, as it's not clear for most people IMO. In simple terms, it's not even close to Real World Conditions. Every cell is rotated in the write sequence involving wear leveling. That means it's on empty disks, not those that have unchanging capacity that's been filled.

As most SSD's are rather small, that means most of the disk is filled with OS and application data. So only a small portion is actually available for new data, and it's that small portion along with the unused capacity that's really available to wear leveling. BIG DIFFERENCE.

hmm yea im not quite sure yet what to believe. however history states that you are probably correct lol. research more is needed.

I look at it as a system as a whole. But the primary limitations are the NAND itself. SLC is better, but few users are using it (that's meant for enterprise systems, as they've the budgets for it).

true having the single layer does seem to greatly increase the longevity of the machine. i still think that the basics of the things are stupid, sort of seems half hearted.

There's newer forms of Flash, such as FeRAM. Write cycles of 1E16.

aahh yea forgot about FeRAM! how is that coming along? ive never ever seen it anywhere in the consumer market

Look here (Wiki), specifically at the right hand side (box) where it has a heading of Upcoming.

i would look there - but you fail hahahaha

 

[nanofrog]

aahh yea forgot about FeRAM! how is that coming along? ive never ever seen it anywhere in the consumer market

It's not out yet. The density needs to be increased before it's financially viable for manufacture.

As per current SSD's, it's not half-hearted, but a result of what's available to work with (much cheaper BTW than starting from scratch for all of the technology used to create it). That is, they started with existing NAND tech, and made controllers to create SSD (increased throughput, and wear leveling was created to address the write cycle issues).

 

[DoFoT9]

It's not out yet. The density needs to be increased before it's financially viable for manufacture.

oh ok. still blazingly fast/efficient though? i see that its non-volatile which is always good

As per current SSD's, it's not half-hearted, but a result of what's available to work with (much cheaper BTW than starting from scratch for all of the technology used to create it). That is, they started with existing NAND tech, and made controllers to create SSD (increased throughput, and wear leveling was created to address the write cycle issues).

fair point, to get the technology out there for:
A) financial gain now &
B) benefit the consumers/market speed wise.

is there any other R&D going on to replace NAND? it does seem a bit silly in the scheme of things, sure it works - but not for very long. are we stuck with NAND for 10+ years?

 

[nanofrog]

is there any other R&D going on to replace NAND? it does seem a bit silly in the scheme of things, sure it works - but not for very long. are we stuck with NAND for 10+ years?

As an educated guess, I think so in some form or another, as there's been a significant investment in it. It'll be milked for all it's worth, and it can also buy time for the development of other technologies (as they're not being developed at blazing speeds due to limited budgets).

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/7E18)

Apple, criminy guys, if you will not update the MP in a timely and periodic manner, then at least allow clones for those of us interested in desktops?

I can't speak to Apple's licensing policies, but, until this month, there wasn't an appropriate, affordable CPU upgrade available. And remember that Apple was at the head of the pack with the Nehalems last year. Does a month make that much difference this time? Perhaps there were other challenges they were dealing with -- audio? graphics (there have been delays here also with some next generation GPUs after all ...)? maybe they would like to launch alongside a new display? Who knows?

I can think of a lot of reasons why Apple might have waited a month (so far) to announce a new MP, but, really, Apple has not really been slow -- in fact, sometimes they have been first out of the gate.

(Price is another story -- they have been slow to reduce prices.)

 

[DoFoT9]

As an educated guess, I think so in some form or another, as there's been a significant investment in it. It'll be milked for all it's worth, and it can also buy time for the development of other technologies (as they're not being developed at blazing speeds due to limited budgets).

yes you would hope so interesting topic to discuss imo.

 

[Woodcrest64]

Honestly if you do your research you can build a hackintosh and install osx in less than 40 minutes. As long as you have read about which hardware works you shouldn't have any issues.

 

[xgman]

, Apple has not really been slow -- in fact, sometimes they have been first out of the gate.

This is a myth at best. There has never been anything desktop related that Apple came out with including the 2009 cpus, that I couldn't have bought somewhere else before Apple released it, period. That said, being stuck on server components does slow Apple down with regard to the Mac pro line. I wonder how many "pros" really would pick the way more expensive server parts if given the choice if all other things were equal? I personally would have to think long and hard on that one.

 

[DoFoT9]

This is a myth at best. There has never been anything desktop related that Apple came out with including the 2009 cpus, that I couldn't have bought somewhere else before Apple released it, period.

do you have a bad memory or something? you dont recall apple bringing out MPs 1+ month before anybody else had access to those chips? no? i think this was on the 2008 model

 

[huscat]

I think my company is going to start building Hackintosh hardware

without the OS installed......

We have tons of experience buying the best hardware, and building and overclocking machines.

We are also well versed in the Efix and Chameleon worlds which makes us able to successfully build them. WE've modded 2009 Mac Pros and it just seems that for the best performance in OS X it's time to look elsewhere.

When a single processor based unit can achieve 19000 on Geekbench, and one of our dual models will hit 24000 and Apple's best 2.93 Mac Pro is stuck around 17000 then that tells me we can do it better.

In the end, it's not necessarily about making money, it's about providing the best most feature rich, performance oriented machine that runs OS X. Apple seems to continually abandon their high end clients.

We are also in discussions with a certain motherboard manufacturer about a 4 and and 8 processor motherboard that would run the Xeon 7500 series. We're not sure how that would stack up, but the top Geekbench result is running Solaris on a 4 processor 7500 and achieved 41000 on Geekbench.

Apple's new X5680 based Mac Pro will roll out next week at $5500. For the same money I can build a machine that is 35% faster with better equipment.

If you are interested in this I can be reached:

www.dealstarz.com
SKYPE: dealexpress2
AIM: dealexpress2

Chris

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

Why would Apple intentionally give itself more competition? Silly rabbits.

 

[nanofrog]

Why would Apple intentionally give itself more competition? Silly rabbits.

As I read it, Apple would have nothing to do with what's been mentioned, as it's a hack capable system (no OS X installed as a means to get around any law suits from Apple, but presumably hardware that's tested out and works properly).