Apple Offers Developers a Closer Look at the New Mac Pro

[chaosbunny]

I'm reading all the trashcan comments, the hate, the condescension, and I'm kinda chuckling to myself. You bozo savants were saying the same stuff about the iPad. Remember the feminine napkin comments? Remember the giant iPod comments? Remember the naysaying? Remember the condescension? Who had the last laugh then? How quickly you forget who really pwns you every time.

Well, I never bought an iPad as I still don't know why I should. I can't do anything on that device.

I want to read, well I prefer a book that can't be edited once I bought it, doesn't need electricity and is much better for my eyes.

I want to play a game, well nothing on the iPad is interesting for me. I prefer more complex games like Skyrim, Starcraft2, TotalWar, ... doesn't and can't work on an iPad because of clumsy touch input.

I want to work, well why create a layout with a limited iPad App that I have to redo in Illustrator/InDesign later? I'll just do it with the proper tool right away and save time.

I want to watch a movie, well I have a TV for that.

On topic, well, at least that Mac Pro is something different. And it's a computer and no angrybirds fakebook crap. Somehow it reminds me of the days of the Cube (I still have mine but the power supply is broken), the iMac G4, the tibooks and alubooks ... the days when I was excited about Apples industrial design. Only thing is, I'm not really excited.

Maybe because back in the day it was more like form follows function than all form less function.

Time will tell - I wonder what kind of options it will have, if there will be a lower price point 6-core/1 gpu version. If that gpu isn't upgradeable that would be a deal breaker though.

It's great that I could just buy a regular GTX670 and put it in my Mac Pro, seems like these days are over.

 

[xgman]

All I can say is that I got tired of waiting for a new Mac Pro last year and got a high end imac with a bunch of TB enclosures. I was afraid of the transition and after a brief adjustment period, I was fine. In fact everything is quite a bit smoother and faster than I had thought, and I no longer miss any aspect of the Mac pro I had. I expect the same with the new Mac pro now as long as they have a great monitor to compliment it. All I can say is don't be afraid of TB enclosures for drives. They make easily swappable enclosures for pretty much any need. Yes they are still pricey, but they are fast, seemingly trouble free, easy to access, quiet and it's all relative. If all this isn't your cup of tea, then I suspect you will eventually get a pc, whose days are probably also numbered in the scheme of things.

 

[kunia]

I bet this thing will be an incredible machine. Not going to be cheap though. Probably more than the current 1, so north of $2495.

LOL...for the first 6 months.
It'll cost 2,5k...yes..but you'll get low end CPU, 4gb of ram, and Low end *****ty AMD GPUs...Want an incredible machine? Be prepared to spend 5k+....and that too will be obsolete within 1 year.

I bought my MP 5,1 for one reason only - expandability: ram, hard drives, PCI cards, CPU updates (possible), GPUs....No, sorry, I'll take the last one back. Apple showed all of us a big middle finger when it comes to GPUs and not even bother to update them.
Whoever thinks this new Mac Pro is innovation is simply delusional.

 

[the8thark]

This coming from the person who has been commenting to others in a disrespectful manner

And this is different to you how?

 

[coolspot18]

I didn't realize Apple started selling vacuum cleaners?

 

[nastri83]

This looks cool, my only gripe with it is that it's sold with 2 GPU's. Say I want to use this for Pro Tools. What good would 2 super-powerful GPU's do me? Wonder if you'll be able to take those out before you buy, just have one, etc.

I'm wondering if the fact that it comes with 2 "standard" means that it's the minimal config, or if you can downgrade and save some $$$.

 

[coolspot18]

I was really hoping for Apple-branded DAS and 4K Thunderbolt 2 Display to complement new Mac Pro.

Perhaps, but what's wrong with Synology or ReadyNAS? Those companies make a superior product and Apple will be hard pressed to catch up anytime soon. The Time Machine capsule has basically not changed for years and remains just as unreliable as before?

 

[Rocketman]

OSX Mavericks with its multi-monitor (as primary desktop) support in combination with the coming 4K TV's will bring near consumer prices to vast displays.

Whether you think of the new MacPro as a "wind tunnel" as I do, or mock it with "master cylinder", "trash can", "android robot", or "R2D2", consider this. The new MacPro is approximately 1/2 the size of the original Macintosh 128 and Plus. It is slightly larger than the G4 cube.

By being a wind tunnel, it is well suited to clusters, grids, server farms, colos, etc. By having dual gigabit Ethernet and triple I/O Thunderbolt 2 it has the connections to support all that!

The varied layers of innovations and possibilities are interesting.

But above all else, this is squarely a Mac Rumor! Macintosh is not only not dead, it is innovating and improving. Limited only by Intel innovation.

Rocketman

 

[coolspot18]

There's a world outside LA - I promise - look on a map - you'll see!

But the market for the Mac Pro remains the same - higher end semi-professionals or professionals. Those people don't care what the Mac Pro looks like - as long as it is fast and powerful.

 

[trellus]

Thunderbolt 2 *is* the expansion

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.

1. There are already Fibre Channel adapters for Thunderbolt -- you won't have to wait two or three years. There's even one sold on the online Apple Store.

2. There is a very inexpensive Firewire adapter for Thunderbolt sold by Apple. I'm with you on Firewire as I still have some legacy Firewire devices myself, but this has already been addressed.

3. There are tons of cable management solutions. Also, you can daisy chain Thunderbolt devices, and there are 6 Thunderbolt 2 ports as it is.

4. As the market responds to this new beast, there will be clever, third party solutions that make this even more convenient. I'm sure some smart business will introduce an enclosure with multiple drive bays, etc.

 

[GermanyChris]

I'm reading all the trashcan comments, the hate, the condescension, and I'm kinda chuckling to myself. You bozo savants were saying the same stuff about the iPad. Remember the feminine napkin comments? Remember the giant iPod comments? Remember the naysaying? Remember the condescension? Who had the last laugh then? How quickly you forget who really pwns you every time.

I still don't own an iPad..

What can it do better than my MBP?

 

[JesterJJZ]

That leaves storage. Now you have to think. What kind of storage would a film editor or pro-photographer or an recording engineer want? Certainly NOT a coiuple small 2TB hard drives.

For our project files and assets? Yes that's exactly what we want. No one keeps their project files on the scratch volume. Same thing with sample libraries, assets and what not. I've got an SSD for boot, two drives in raid1 for project files, another drive for my assets and application scratch, and on top of that a personal drive where I keep my music and photos etc.

My external array is for my large video files, that's it. Everything else we want inside the machine.

 

[RobertPS]

First of all, did you forget that there are 6 of those 20GB/s Thunderbolts?
Making it 120? And they have to work the same time as there's a possibility for 3 4K screens via TB ports.

Originally Posted by Squishy Tia
I'll break it down for you and let you be the judge. I'm assuming PCIe 3.0 architechture since the bandwidth claims exceed PCIe 2.0 by 100%.

Thunderbolt 2 Array: 20 GB/sec. That's equivalant to an x20 link width card on a PCIe bus. That's also half of the entire PCIe bandwidth for the entire computer just for that array.

Do you two know your Gb's from your GB's?
Isn't Thunderbolt 20Gb/s?

 

[kunia]

But the market for the Mac Pro remains the same - higher end semi-professionals or professionals. Those people don't care what the Mac Pro looks like - as long as it is fast and powerful.

...and user-upgradable. Most semi-pros and pros are NOT made of gold. How many pros can justify spending upwards of 5k for a machine that has no way of easy and cheap upgrade options. TB is expensive, period.

 

[xcodeaddict]

Apple care about those who like and buy their products - if all the moaners don't like and won't buy it, why are you sitting online complaining? You are surely too busy for that, being the professionals you imply you are?

I don't hear Apple complaining about you - nope they're too busy working on products that their customers are too short sighted to see they'll need one day soon, because they are stuck in their comfort zone.

 

[the8thark]

My main disappointment is that Apple still doesn't have any computers which are any good for gaming. Sure the iMac with the 680 card is nice, but ultimately it's still a laptop-class graphics processor.

You should try it. The iMac games very well. I know from personal experience.

 

[rei101]

I work in video post production, motion graphics and 3D.

This Mac Pro is perfect. No to mention it can be use in live events doing visuals for big concerts, and that is something I do as well managing multiple screens.

You will see there is going to be a huge market for custom skins to replace the enclosure.

The actual enclosure is crap, it just shows the design decadence Apple is living without Steve Jobs. De enclosure is poor, but it can be replaced as I said.

Still, the technical aspects are perfect because we use external drives any way or external servers for storage.

 

[kunia]

For our project files and assets? Yes that's exactly what we want. No one keeps their project files on the scratch volume. Same thing with sample libraries, assets and what not. I've got an SSD for boot, two drives in raid1 for project files, another drive for my assets and application scratch, and on top of that a personal drive where I keep my music and photos etc.

My external array is for my large video files, that's it. Everything else we want inside the machine.

correct me if I'm wrong, but

TB2 - 20 gigabit/sec (Gbps) = 2.5 gigabyte/sec (GB/s)
PCIe 3 -15.75 GB/s (128 GT/s)

External PCIe GPUs....yes...lets invest in a $500 external 2xGPU case just so that it can run at 15% PICe bandwidth. Genius.

 

[GSPice]

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.

I truly feel sorry for professionals like this who desperately cling to old, old paradigms. To put it lightly, folks really need to start thinking with portals. This is nothing new, though - time will always bring "professionals" kicking and screaming into the future.

 

[gugy]

Damn people like to whine.

This MacPro looks awesome. Just hope for 4k ACDs to come along when they launch this.
Hopefully this machine will follow the same price range of current MacPros.

That said my current 12 core is going to Craigslist close to the release of the new one.

 

[AnonMac50]

As we rotate the device to plug something in the labels on the back light up, right? At least that's what their site says. But if there are things plugged in, I think it would be a major easier said than done scenario.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Fair comments I guess. But Apple are promoting the facts of (up to) 6GB RAM per card and 7 Teraflops of compute, so there will be a machine with two of these (or very similar cards) inside.

I was more just suprised by how expensive these professional grade graphics/compute cards are. I was thinking up to 1000 per card at most. So I've learnt a lot!

Right, but Apple always promotes the "up to" aspect to promote power or the "starting at" aspect to promote affordability (relative). But your post implied that the MP would start at $10K, not have a model that would cost that much. Right now you can trick out a MP to cost well over $10K, but you can also buy an entry level model for $2500 (or less).

 

[powers74]

Well, I've still got a good 5+ years left in my '09. By the time I'm ready for this new machine it'll be better and they'll have most of the bugs worked out.

 

[CalMin]

Has anyone considered the possibility of beautiful looking peripherals? This thing is designed to be modular. Perhaps Apple is designing external drives and GPUs as well as monitors. It will all fit together beautifully.

 

[Doc69]

Rectangular is better than round

I think it's not attractive, nor a practical shape, not just "form over function" but "form separated from function".

Only the early Crays had a convincing arguement for the round design.

This is a ridiculous form-factor, never mind the fact that I think it looks like a trash-can prop from Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back.

When I first saw the photo of the thing, I had to double check if it was an Onion spoof.

I totally agree. The new round Mac Pro is a beautiful object, but not very practical. Why would you put form over function in a professional product? I think that's crazy. Pro's care about performance and function first!

I think a square or rectangular form factor works much better for a workstation computer. It's easier to fit in your work environment as well as rack mounting it for server rooms or live shows. And a round case does not utilize space very well since everything in computing is square, from motherboards to hard drives, GPUs, PCI cards, RAM etc.

And why no ports on the front? I guess you'll need to pay extra $$$ for an Apple cinema display or a Thunderbolt breakout box.

I'm a bit sad to see that most computer manufacturers seem to think that regular computing is dead. For many consumers, yes, but not for professionals in general or content creators. I would have preferred a similar size case to the old one. Just with more ports, slots, drive bays and power etc.