Apple Offers Developers a Closer Look at the New Mac Pro

[Michael Scrip]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4OVLoDrPME

That video showed a list of films cut on Final Cut Pro.

I asked whether AVID is the industry standard for Hollywood.

I'm reading things like "Avid's Media Composer is still the most used NLE on prime-time TV productions, being employed on up to 90 percent of evening broadcast shows."

And I would imagine Hollywood movies are a big part of AVID's userbase too.

I don't doubt that FCP is used for some amazing things... I was asking if AVID or FCP was used the most.

 

[langis.elbasunu]

seek help art mooney

 

[alephnull12]

What happened to secrecy????

It's a mistake to reveal this product so early before its release.

By the time it's out, enthusiasm will be down, competitors will have put out similar-appearing towers capturing consumers who are impressed by the aesthetics, and potential consumers not impressed by the aesthetics who are skeptical about the hardware aren't going to postpone buying for 6 months for something they think they may not want (because they haven't had a chance to try it or see the merits, if there are any).

The only reason I can see for announcing this product so early, is to encourage peripheral manufacturers to get on on board developing more Thunderbolt peripherals ahead of the launch. But overall, I think that's a bad reason. They could just as easily have put a message out to peripheral manufacturers that Thunderbolt was going to be central to the new Mac Pro without revealing any cards.

I hope this, the North American manufacturing ambitions, and the iOS & OS X interface mucking about are not getting in the way of development of new product categories, which is what Apple needs to be concentrating on more than anything else right now.

 

[sseaton1971]

Didn't say it was a failure, the point is that Apple is abandoning it now, after getting vendors to finally really support it. Of course, this is standard for Apple.

FW is still supported through a cheap TB adapter. I have one, and it works just fine. TB is faster, so why would Apple want to put a bunch of slow FW ports on their hardware when they could just put a bunch of TB ports that support FW? I think Apple made the right move here.

 

[pertusis1]

I have been following the Mac Pro rumors forums for several years now. What is interesting about this discussion is that almost none of the people who had been posting regularly are present in this thread. I have a feeling that most folks who had been looking forward to a pro are quietly digesting the news rather than blasting one another.

Ah yes, and just for fun, I thought I'd point out the five stages... I think a few have been on display today.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

 

[Michael Scrip]

Didn't say it was a failure, the point is that Apple is abandoning it now, after getting vendors to finally really support it. Of course, this is standard for Apple.

Apple is abandoning it only after a better solution came along.

Firewire 800 was great in its day. But it topped out at 100MB/s

We're beyond that now. I'm actually not surprised that Apple is putting more Thunderbolt ports on its machines instead of Firewire ports...

 

[avkills]

I have been following the Mac Pro rumors forums for several years now. What is interesting about this discussion is that almost none of the people who had been posting regularly are present in this thread. I have a feeling that most folks who had been looking forward to a pro are quietly digesting the news rather than blasting one another.

Ah yes, and just for fun, I thought I'd point out the five stages... I think a few have been on display today.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

The Power of Now could probably help some people out on this thread.

-mark

 

[wildmac]

I have been following the Mac Pro rumors forums for several years now. What is interesting about this discussion is that almost none of the people who had been posting regularly are present in this thread. I have a feeling that most folks who had been looking forward to a pro are quietly digesting the news rather than blasting one another.

Ah yes, and just for fun, I thought I'd point out the five stages... I think a few have been on display today.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

You forgot Sticker Shock. That will come.

 

[92jlee]

Look! It's the Mac Pro X! Just what everyone wanted - a smaller, lighter stationary computer that is only expandable via an expensive cable that no one supports.

We need tools, not shiny cases. I need expandability, not a table cluttered in expensive cables that don't plug into anything. I don't need a smaller, lighter stationary computer. I need more places to put hard drives, video cards and ram as I can afford it. I need a disk drive. Apple is killing me. For what I needed, wanted and waited patiently for so long for - I got not one single thing I can use. I understand trying to be innovative if they've found a new way to make an old tool better - but changing things we've all come to know, love and need into something useless and unrecognizable just for the sake of change is exasperating (see; Final Cut X). Sure, it's pretty. It'll look great under a table every time I accidentally kick it or get my foot tangled up in one of the 20 cables laying in a rat's nest next to it. Looking forward to the clutter of hard drive caddies, a RedRocket card enclosure, the bare LG BluRay writer tethered via a USB cable, the adapter array full of FireWire ports to access cameras and drives containing legacy projects…oh, wait, never mind. It also just occurred to me - how am I going to mount that thing in a rack??? How is any of this going to attach to shared storage when I'm gonna have to wait 2 years for a 3rd party to invent an impossibly expensive Fibre channel adapter? Seriously, does anyone there actually use these products when they're designing them or listen to customers - or do they look at the suggestion cards and do the opposite???

Not that any of this really matters because without a working version of Final Cut, I don't need one anyway. So, thanks for saving me a bunch of money I guess? 3 - 4K monitors. For who??? The high school students using FCPX won't be able to afford it, nor will they need that much real-estate to edit YouTube videos.

God help Apple this is a disaster. They do know 'Pro' is short for 'professional' right?

I'm so depressed. I waited for 5 years to get nothing I can use or wanted.

Althought I don't use my current Pro for things you state, I can completely see your point of view. I hope this "preview" is just to judge people's reactions and see what the customers think. Hopefully they will backtrack. It they can fit "2 times" the power of the current top end in something a quarter of the size, what's stopping them using all of those quarters to make one beast in a full size case "8 times" more powerful then the current top end?

 

[hayesk]

Anyone else have issue with the power button being on the 'back'?

The I/O section would be facing back in my machine room....id have to crouch and feel around behind the unit for the switch when i turn it on every morning.

Uhm... you've never heard of sleep?

 

[iZac]

I'd love for Apple to release a glossy white version of the new Mac Pro as well.

I would seriously like that too!

 

[LongSticks]

Look at other revenue streams

I hate to resort to name calling but you're an idiot. The old Mac Pro was a brilliant, useful design that got the job done for professionals. This new abortion is a useless paperweight. Sure, it's great if I need to cut wedding videos or GoPro video - but I promise you you will never see one in a legit post house. Ever.

Your constantly bemoaning this new devise nobody has seen running because it doesn't suit 1 industry in 1 town in America! After 3 years of stalemate and no new machine, I bet all those serious post houses moved on a long time ago!

I don't know whether anybody has posted this yet, too many posts to go through, but some more stat based info is now up on here and it looks like it has more than enough muscle for the next 3 years! Any serious professional would look to move on then, whilst there system has resale value and for tax write off reasons! - http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/index2.html

Lastly, when you look at high end PC workstations from Dell, Boxx, HP etc you may be noticing the Autodesk name being banded about. Not just for 3d Max, Maya etc - also now for Smoke! Autodesk will be taking great interest in this!

Autodesk are driving a huge wave in Building and Civil Engineering at the moment for Building Information Modelling - BiM; which also needs serious horsepower to manipulate massive 3, 4 & 5d models and database streams. I dare say that discussions may be under way for an OSX Revit or Civil 3d to compete with Archicad and Vectorworks on the Mac. These are massive global industries that utilise huge data suits costing 5 figure sums and the hardware is required to process 20 billion point cloud scans! And you can't hold 20 billion point surveys on few internal hard drives. All our machines work on server based data these days or arrays when serious speed is needed. Apart from the OS & software what storage do most professionals need?

This is an elegant and don't forget, portable, high end workstation that would appeal to many more industries than those just in LA!

 

[AppleFan1998]

Wow, didn't expect that.

We are getting closer to the future of computing.

Images from The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest

 

[asiga]

What happened to secrecy????

It's a mistake to reveal this product so early before its release.

By the time it's out, enthusiasm will be down, competitors will have put out similar-appearing towers capturing consumers who are impressed by the aesthetics, and potential consumers not impressed by the aesthetics who are skeptical about the hardware aren't going to postpone buying for 6 months for something they think they may not want (because they haven't had a chance to try it or see the merits, if there are any).

The only reason I can see for announcing this product so early, is to encourage peripheral manufacturers to get on on board developing more Thunderbolt peripherals ahead of the launch. But overall, I think that's a bad reason. They could just as easily have put a message out to peripheral manufacturers that Thunderbolt was going to be central to the new Mac Pro without revealing any cards.

I hope this, the North American manufacturing ambitions, and the iOS & OS X interface mucking about are not getting in the way of development of new product categories, which is what Apple needs to be concentrating on more than anything else right now.

Indeed, it's a premature announcement, and that's bad. It would sell very well if it was available today. But we're paying the price of the iOS focus here. They abandoned the design and improvement of their top of the line for too long. Now, seeing the plane of the pro products is close to crash, they make a quick reaction for avoiding the crash. I think it will be a very successful maneuver, and will sell well (I believe I'll buy one myself, as I'm very excited about it), but the bad Apple strategy from these last years, has forced them to do the bad step of a premature announcement. There was no choice, it was either to do a premature announcement, or a crash of the pro models.

 

[Blu Reel]

What happened to secrecy????

It's a mistake to reveal this product so early before its release.

By the time it's out, enthusiasm will be down, competitors will have put out similar-appearing towers capturing consumers who are impressed by the aesthetics, and potential consumers not impressed by the aesthetics who are skeptical about the hardware aren't going to postpone buying for 6 months for something they think they may not want (because they haven't had a chance to try it or see the merits, if there are any).

The only reason I can see for announcing this product so early, is to encourage peripheral manufacturers to get on on board developing more Thunderbolt peripherals ahead of the launch. But overall, I think that's a bad reason. They could just as easily have put a message out to peripheral manufacturers that Thunderbolt was going to be central to the new Mac Pro without revealing any cards.

I hope this, the North American manufacturing ambitions, and the iOS & OS X interface mucking about are not getting in the way of development of new product categories, which is what Apple needs to be concentrating on more than anything else right now.

I highly doubt there will be a competitor putting out something that looks remotely like this because
1) the existing Motherboard PCI architecture will not allow for it.
2) heat dissipation is simple but tricky to get right and to dissipate heat from 3 shared heat sources with one cooling system is unheard of.
3) No one else thinks it's equitable to R&D a custom motherboard and PCI architecture
4) There's no expandability and the PC world has not adopted Thunderbolt wholeheartedly, yet.
5) it was probably announced so early because so many people were asking if Apple was killing off the line.
6) This is potentially a revolutionary design - and to think I thought the PC Revolution was over. The more companies that copy this design and market it, the more the revolution can happen.
7) And really, it's ok for competitors to start making knockoffs to satisfy the myriad of different needs by different users. Why does one company have to make one computer to satisfy every possible different users set up and workflow?

Didn't mean to contradict myself at end there, but it's food for thought

 

[Nightarchaon]

SO, Ive has done it again, a pretty box thats utterly useless to anyone because its effectively a sealed unit...

this is not aimed at the PRO market at all, this is aimed at a few people with more money than sense... i wouldn't pay more than id pay for an iMac for this (And id expect that price to include a thunderbolt display).

My best guess is though the the price (made in the USA and all) will be higher than either of the voyager space probes, and that can be doubled by the time you have bought the Thunderbolt peripherals, external drives, and docking bays to give you the storage space, and ports you actually need..

Not to mention the cost in cable tidys alone .

Not what the Pro market wanted, and no, apple cant innovate for SH*TE these days, just create useless boxes no one actually wants.

 

[R3k]

Rr

Uhm... you've never heard of sleep?

Sleep doesn't cut it unfortunately on my pro system. Drives getting parked at inappropriate times, apps that don't like being slept upon, caches& mem servers that need a good restart one per day....

Mi iMac and mbp no issue.

But the production space has all computers and systems shut off overnight unless something is uploading or number crunching. Saves electricity too. All systems include screens, speakers, interfaces, lava lamps ect.

 

[ToM7]

Image

LOL haha great

 

[davidb367]

New MacPro is for content creation

My 0.02,

The MacPro is a content creation workstation. My current 1,1 has 2 internal drives installed. A SSD for the OS and HDD for user data. All of my other storage is external through a NAS and portable drives. The new MacPro was not designed to be a gaming system, or a general use computer. If you are not in video, audio, graphics, or 3D graphics creation, the new MacPro is not for you.

 

[bmacir]

Yes it is, but not from Johnny Ive.

Johnny (as with everything else he ever did) just took it from Dieter Rahms.

Image

In what are the two similar?
I just don't see it....

 

[subsonix]

SO, Ive has done it again, a pretty box thats utterly useless to anyone because its effectively a sealed unit...

this is not aimed at the PRO market at all, this is aimed at a few people with more money than sense... i wouldn't pay more than id pay for an iMac for this (And id expect that price to include a thunderbolt display).

Um, perhaps you should wait with judgement until it hits the street and benchmarks and reviews are in.

 

[nickane]

I understand why a lot of you are annoyed, but quite frankly, you're wrong. Apple have nailed this release.

I have a top spec 12 core 32gb MP at work. It's not as fast as the new 27inch imac the guy next to me has. This is largely down to SSDs. Most facilities who will buy this thing have a SAN. Everyone else will buy a thunderbolt drive array.

6 thunderbolt ports mean everyone is covered for whatever expandability they need and apple can still make a hefty profit on the machine.

Don't get me wrong, I really wanted an xmac that looked like a cube for home, but this is a more professional machine than anyone could have anticipated.

 

[Solomani]

Looks like a portable thermonuclear device.

 

[Chingu]

Best of both worlds

I love the new design, but find it lacking in terms of convenient expandability. As my title suggests, why couldn't Apple modify the case to allow a bottom docking station via an integrated Thunderbolt2 & power ports? You could have the same sleek design by only sacrificing a bit of height. Best of all, no external cables since Thunderbolt chains.

Need an Optical drive? Buy the slot loading Blue Ray puck and stack it on. Need more storage? Stack on an SDD puck. This concept would work for nearly any expansion except external graphics. Given the size, power and thermal considerations, an external enclosure would be necessary.

I'd wish they would get rid of the expensive ECC RAM modules, but I do understand the need. I think I spent $600-$800 for 10GB in my current 2008 Mac Pro. How much would that buy in a PC even at 2008 prices? I think customers will need internal memory more than internal storage.

I've never considered the Mac Pro as a desktop. It's a tower and as such it sits under my desk. Very convenient for ripping and burning. Now I need to find room for a desktop. Not an easy feat given the 3x25" wide screen monitors, printer and NAS. Its a shame I'll probably never be able to see the case behind the monitors.

 

[mabhatter]

I'd love for Apple to release a glossy white version of the new Mac Pro as well.

Then it would look like E.V.E. from WALL-E