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Apple Offers Sneak Peek of Completely Redesigned Mac Pro

neuropsychguy said:
I agree to a point but I do think there is utility in asking if Jobs would have approved. I think Apple would do well to ask themselves that as they work on products. Jobs wasn't always right but the question can serve as an important thought exercise. I was going to tell the commentator I replied to to read his biography but I erased the statement (it's a great biography). Woz had completely different ideas about how Apple products should be so asking him doesn't get answers fitting with Jobs' vision (or really with what Apple is doing now). Woz is laid back though so he wouldn't really criticize much.
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Steve would have approved. He hated redundant and/or underutilized functionality, and this is a very functional design, but he also never wanted or attempted to please everybody.

Seems that this Mac Pro is both functional and not for everyone.

Yeah, he would have liked it.
 
mryingster said:
12 cores, presumably after hyperthreading, which indicates that It has 6 physical cores, which would reside on a single processor chip. So it sounds like it has a single processor... I could be mistaken though...
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It says "up to 12 cores" so there must be two 6-core processors.

And if you think about it. with Open GL 4.0 and more GPU usage there really isn't any need for any more since a lot of computing will be handed off to the dual GPU's.
 
ChrisA said:
I think in the past the Mac Pro was cheap enough that people with no real need for a high end computer bought them "just because".
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Wow, I wish I had the money you must have to consider thousands of dollars "cheap." :eek:

prowlmedia said:
Like what? a $60 bluray burner?
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Mac Pro's never had blu-ray burners, just so you know. So they couldn't have removed them as a feature.
 
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willcapellaro said:
I know there's an adapter, but why sacrifice a TB port and require an adapter for something you KNOW you'll need? Why create unnecessary wifi traffic?

Ethernet and power plug should be in the base, the rest of the ports should swivel like a lazy susan (switch from motion sensor to another sensor then). Or somehow there should be a division between -never need to see it ports, -sometimes need to see it ports, and -always want it accessible ports.

Battery backup would be nice.

How does the motion sensor work?

Anyways, do want.
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It would have been so nice to have an ethernet port that they put *two* on it.

Seriously?

first the crying because it "looks" like it's made of plastic, now crying about it not having ports that it totally has built in right there. They even lit them up for you in one of the photos. Oh, and talked about them in white on black text.
 
In the BlackMagic Design forum, the makers of Davinci Resolve say they couldn't be happier with the new Mac Pro. They've been testing it, and it's incredibly fast. I've quoted their message below.

I always love it when a guy on a forum (in this case, rascopico) has no idea what he's talking about. Everybody who is complaining on this thread is doing the exact same thing. Kicking up a bunch of fuss and speculating rather than dealing in real facts.

If people who had actually used the machine had a problem with it, then it might be a concern. But wouldn't it be crazy if Apple knew how to make a product? You think they might have talked to some of their post-production partners before building and releasing this?


"Hi,

We have been testing with DaVinci Resolve 10 builds and this (the new Mac Pro) screams. Its amazing and those GPUs are incredible powerful. I am not sure what I can say as I am only going off what Apple has talked about publicly here in the keynote for what I can say right now, however there is a whole new OpenCL and DaVinci Resolve 10 has had a lot of performance work done to integrate it and its really really fast. Those GPUs are very powerful and have lots of GPU memory so this is the Mac we have been waiting for! We have lots of Thunderbolt products too so video in and out is taken care of.

We will have more details once the guys get back from WWDC and we get some more info from Apple on what we can talk about etc.

Overall we could not be happier!

Regards,

Grant Petty
Blackmagic Design"

rascopico said:
Really Disappointed!!!

Plastic? Cylindrical? Not very good if going in a rack!

What about all the professional programs that require Nvidia Cuda graphics processing?

AMD is sper slow on Davinci Resolve. Looks like I will have to sell my mac version of the software and go Windows. Then I can expand without having to but thunderbolt cables and external chassis as these wont be cheap! And Thunderbolt 1 won't cut it.

How small is this new design going to be after you have external chassis for raids, gfx cards, video cards, audio cards etc? not so small then!

Plus Apple don't pay tax. Maybe its time to say goodbye to Apple......
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Jasoco said:
It's the G4 Cube evolved. Except this time they don't need to sacrifice performance for size and appearance. The original Cube failed because it was underpowered, but 13 years of technological advancements have finally made this stuff possible again.

Can't wait to see benchmark comparisons when it comes out.
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This was my first thought to. :)

Very exited over the new Mac Pro and its shape. I really like the idea to bring back the minimalistic "Cube". A real beauty that stands out in the long run.
 
I'll only buy it if/when my 2008 Mac Pro dies.
I *AM* the guy that buys the pro machine.
I've owned the following 8100-> 8500-> 9500-> Dual Processor 450 G4-> Mirrored Door G4 (1GHz)-> Powermac G5-> 2008 Mac Pro.

I have used expansion slots in all the above machines.
I have also used multiple expansion chassis in those machines.
I currently have all drive bays filled in my current machine with two NAS units on my network. One is 2.1 TB usable and fully redundant with RAID5 and the other is 6 TB usable and fully redundant RAID5.

The new machine would immediately necessitate a purchase of a Thunderbolt Enclosure and Thunderbolt to PCIe Expansion chassis. Unless the new machine is comparable to what I have at $1700 or less, it's an EPIC FAIL! Mind you I will need to put that extra crap somewhere.

To make it equivalent to what I have today, I need to go out and spend at least $1400 on extra stuff.........

EPIC FAIL!!!!
 
Even though it does not look bad (aside from looking like a trash can) you think the designers would have given that a bit more thought. Of course the iPad had a TON of jokes about the word pad and now no one really seems to care and mostly think of the iPad. However this is design not name and it will not be as huge as any of the other Apple products so it may not even be talked about that much anyway.

Compact design is cool and all, however they did not have to worry about it this much. Apple really does not want people having control over anything.
 
chumpy34 said:
Agree 100%. If Apple had announced a new Mac Pro that looked like the current one, everyone would be complaining about no innovation. So instead Apple comes out of nowhere with a design that is unlike anything else they have done in the last few years and ... people complain. I just watched the walk-thru on Apple.com, it's a gorgeous machine and they put a TON of thought into this, I for one, can't wait to get one.
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Pros would not be complaining about no innovation. Pros would thank Apple kindly and get back to work on their updated hardware with complete feature-set.
 
gorskiegangsta said:
You'll be able to [relatively] easily expand storage through thunderbolt. Also, it has 2x AMD FirePro's (2x ~3,500GFLOPs, for overall 7,000GFLOPs). By comparison, the GTX Titan (top of the line $1000+ desktop workstation GPU) offers only 4,500GFLOPs. Anyone who needs more GPU power should probably upgrade to Cray Titan. ;)



I think it's gorgeous. I do hope there's one in silver, though.
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That's not how GPU's work. You don't just add specs together. Dual GPU's have NEVER and will NEVER reach 100% scalability across their memory capabilities and even in gaming, you will only see 80% scalability with both AMD and Nvidia. In fact, AMD gets criticized for not even having shader ROP scaling as well as Nvidia.

Please research things like this before making false claims about GPU performance.

And also, please do not exclude truthful facts about workstation GPU's. It's not fair to users that read your post and take it at face value.

Nvidia's real workstation is the Quadro $6000. The GTX Titan is their "Gaming GPU with workstation capabilities". Its seen as a value because the FirePro W9000 and Quadro 6000 cost $4000 and the Titan offers at least half of their production performance at 1/4 of the price and it's the fastest gaming GPU on the planet. And you dont know what a Mac Pro user is into. Lets take a 3D animator for example. All my animator friends use Mac Pro but they like to have a hybrid gaming/workstation GPU like the Titian because at $1000, its cheap and it offers them great gaming performance. Now if they get a Mac Pro they have to settle for the gaming performance of the FirePro APU.

When you say $1000 like it's a huge figure to professionals, it doesnt sound correct. Real 3D and architecture workstations sometimes use $8000 GPU set ups. PS, the FirePro W9000 gets smashed by the Quadro 6000.
 
I sure hope Apple decides to release the new Mac Pro with other GPU configurations besides just dual AMD FirePro's. I want a high-end Mac with the Xeon processor but I have no use for workstation graphics and so the only way I'd invest the money to buy one for the outrageous price these new Mac Pro's are likely to cost is if it was configurable with non-workstation GPU's like dual nVidia GTX 780 Mac Editions or AMD's upcoming 8970/9970's.

Apple needs a high-end desktop computer for those that want to ditch PC's but can't if they're gamers because all Apple has to offer is an iMac with a barely mid-range mobile GTX 750m that can hardly get decent frame rates at 2560x1440 in non-demanding games with low to medium settings let alone handle one of the upcoming 4K displays.
 
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I think this new Mac Pro will breath new life into the platform across all companies.

For me personally, the price point for the new Mac Pro will be mostly irrelevant, whatever the base price is, only because $3000, $4000 or $7000 are all the exact same amount of "out of my budget."

Frankly, I'm just glad to see that someone, anyone, was thinking about making something besides another high profit mobile device. I was concerned that the Apple desktop was going fade away but it's clear they have been hard at work behind the scenes thoroughly rethinking the pro desktop from the ground-up.
 
kal101 said:
Image

Why is EVERYTHING from Johnny Ive actually from Dieter Rahms? Why?​
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to see 60's futurism introduced in copy-past terms i rather would like to see master minds like Sead Mead to work in that position and make full interfaces from desktop to mobile.


and byebye cofee machines-powermacs, ipod-radios, and metro-ui- trends..
​
 
mryingster said:
12 cores, presumably after hyperthreading, which indicates that It has 6 physical cores, which would reside on a single processor chip. So it sounds like it has a single processor... I could be mistaken though...
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It would have to be 2 6-core processors with no hyperthreading to get you the 12 cores. If it were with hyperthreading, you'd have 24.

Otherwise, you're looking at 2 triple-core processors (getting you the 6). Hyperthreading on those would get you the 12 cores.

BL.
 
I don't mind the enclosure, but the fact that they aren't making any expansion chassis available or atleast they didn't show it is annoying. I've read the reports that Nvidia Titan drivers are in the new builds of OSX, but where are you going fit a frickin Titan in that tube?

What I wanted was universal GPU compatibility...which means Mac users no longer get gauged with a paltry smattering of "Mac Edition" GPUs and all GPUs work on all x86 based systems. Certainly it could be the case, but with Apple not really getting into outlining the external chassis component and showing whether Thunderbolt is a good enough to replace extending the PCIe bus directly.
 
bradl said:
It would have to be 2 6-core processors with no hyperthreading to get you the 12 cores. If it were with hyperthreading, you'd have 24.

Otherwise, you're looking at 2 triple-core processors (getting you the 6). Hyperthreading on those would get you the 12 cores.

BL.
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HT does not equal a core. Never. Ever. It's a thread. If they sold based on threads, they'd be Sun all over again.
 
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