Apple Offers Sneak Peek of Completely Redesigned Mac Pro

[ericmooreart]

As usual Apple has no clue what a Pro user needs. The new Mac trash can Pro is missing the most important part. Pci expansion slots.

If you use After Affects or Premiere Cuda cards take the software to a new level. AMD does not support Cuda. If you need any other high end Graphics or audio card be ready to shell out around 800 just for a thunderbolt expansion box.

If it sells for more then 1500 its a waste. You can build a high end Hacketosh for less.

Thanx but no thanks. I though they might have learned after the Final Cut X fiasco.

 

[SnoFlo]

As someone who had to switch away from the Mac for various reasons I am very happy to see Apple continuing with innovative design. My Dell mobile workstation does what it's supposed to do but it looks like a relic from the 80s.

 

[Rank Xerox]

Guess you didn't like...

By the looks of it, it doesn't seem like you could upgrade anything. RAM?

You can always download more RAM silly.

 

[neuropsychguy]

JK. Will wait for the announcement of the PS4 design though, if the Mac Pro can hold my coffee cup it's a winner.

Didn't you lose your coffee cup holder with the loss of a tray CD/DVD drive? Isn't that what those things are for?

 

[cbm]

Made out of plastic? Seriously?

No. Shiny black aluminum.

 

[SilianRail]

What does thermal core even mean?

Is dust going to accumulate inside the machine?

 

[reel2reel]

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.

Well that's exciting, actually.

Here's the link if anyone is interested.

 

[keysofanxiety]

I've been waiting silently to see what they've been teasing at for so long now. I thought for sure that with Steve gone, they'd finally release a modest, modular "xMac" after all these years.

Instead, they release a MacMini Pro.

For years, I've been hoping for a simple desktop from Apple that would grow with my needs. I've never needed a workstation, but occasionally I like to replace my graphics card, or throw in an extra hard drive. I've needed a Mac Pro Lite. Apple consistently refused to deliver.

I've tried hackintoshes for the past 8 years, but they're always too much work to maintain, and too unstable. Eventually I just gave up.

And I didn't end up settling for an iMac, a Mac Pro, or a Mac Mini.

After DECADES of being an Apple fanboy - believing in the company when no one else did (much to the ridicule of all my friends) - Apple has made a Windows user out of me.

I would've never believed it to be possible.

Hate on me all you want. You are no longer my people.

-Clive

With the greatest of respect, I'm not sure where you're getting your facts from. Phil stated that upgradability was one of the main factors in the new Mac Pro. It even mentions upgradability on Apple's website (see: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/201...-Peek-Into-the-Future-of-the-Pro-Desktop.html)

It comes with, from what I can see, a minimum of a 12-core CPU, and dual GPUs. It's got PCI SSDs, for god's sake; that's pretty much 4x as fast as any consumer SSD.

And although we all know very little about it, the 'facts' you have stated about the Mac Pro all seem to contradict what was in the keynote. And frankly, I'm amazed they've managed to pack so much power into such a small frame.

Small≠non-upgradeable.

 

[kitsunestudios]

According to the new Mac pro site, this isn't plastic, just highly polished aluminum.

Lots of questions about this, especially with GPU options and price. RAM, PCI SSD, Xeons and Dual GPUs should make this a screaming monster though. All hail the Mac Tube!

 

[G4DP]

Thank god nVidia have developed drivers for almost all GPU's to work out of the box in the 08, 08 and 10 models.

Would like to think Apple would be smart enough to no limit the new Mac Pro to just AMD but who knows.

 

[fermat-au]

Not enough graphics grunt for games. Can't upgrade the graphics card. Can't even do the RAM anymore. Can't fit the 27" model in my desk.

This isn't the XMac I wanted. But maybe I can work with it.

Is it confirmed that the RAM in these is not user upgradable? It so this is not a Pro machine.

 

[chumpy34]

I've been using a 2009 Mac Pro with 3 internal drives, partitioned for my various projects/needs. I am still on FCP6 and Snow Leopard. I finally ran out of room on my drives so have been using some external USB/Firewire 800's drives for moving files and freeing space.

So I am feeling very old school and out-of-touch but also comfortable as I work with video/editing everyday and I have a routine down. However, I am very pleased with the new Mac Pro and I am just thankful that Apple put some obvious time and effort into this. Would have been easy for them to just rehash the current machine but instead they innovated.

Will it be perfect, probably not and it will not meet everyone's perceived needs but for me, this will be a great machine and will finally push me to the new OS (Mavericks), FCPX (will still be able to use FCP6 if I don't like X) and even though I am used to internal storage, I am fine with moving to external thunderbolt drives as the speed of transferring files and portability of the new set-up will be great.

So yes, this will be completely different than how I work now but I am up for the change and moving forward. Excited for the fall when this thing comes to market and my guess is they will keep the same pricing structure, start them at $2400 or so on up. (My current Mac Pro that is going on 5 years old is still worth $1000, so nice to see Apple products retain their value!)

 

[cmanderson]

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.

Phil even said at one point "Six FIREWIRE 2 ports", by slip of the tongue. If that doesn't clue people in as to what they believe the spiritual successor to Firewire is (it's Thunderbolt, people), I don't know what does.

 

[hudson1]

I think the old (well, current) Mac Pro is the most beautiful desktop computer ever made, even after all these years. Shame to see it go.

Except the current Mac Pro is more of a floor computer than desktop computer.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

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!!!!

Fail for you maybe, just like the power loom was a fail to the Luddites.

I don't see how you can complain you'll have to find room for TB enclosures when the new MP is a fraction of the footprint of the old box. You could stack the MP on top of a 4 bay enclosure and it would still dwarf the old MP's size. Your reaction, I think, it complete knee jerk because you want the old in a new package, not the new in a new package and cannot process workflow and storage is changing.

And if you are a real true pro $1400 on extra equipment is nothing. If you are a consumer, yes, a lot of money. But for a pro, you make that back in a job or two and then its pure bonus profit because your productivity just increased because you are not sitting around for a drive to finish writing.

 

[Jst0rm]

Insanely fast storage, to boot.

yeah. To boot and not much else

There is nothing anywhere about how much space is on this flash drive is there?

 

[xcodeaddict]

Is it confirmed that the RAM in these is not user upgradable? It so this is not a Pro machine.

Hello? Noone has one yet.

 

[xxhatchxx]

Made out of Aluminum...looks great! Think polished bezel of the iPhone 5 kind of look

Made out of plastic? Seriously? Spend $1299 and get a nice aluminum iMac. $2499 gets me a plastic Mac Pro(predicting cost of the new Mac Pro)? Screw that.....

Check the details page on the apple website, the enclosure is all aluminum.

http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

"Refined impact extrusion technologies are more material-efficient and give the polished aluminum enclosure its incredible shape and finish."

 

[Asclepio]

so it's ridiculous ugly and i had to surround it with cables, external HDD, docks, hubs..
pass

 

[Rank Xerox]

Image

Noooo… now can't we whine about the expected platic encloser. Damn damn damn…

 

[irobot2003]

Well it looks cool, and since most of my storage is external, the lack of drive bays is not critical. However, it would be inconvenient if I wanted to transfer my current setup, since I dual boot Linux and OS X off separate internal drives.

The thing that is troubling is being locked into AMD graphics cards (with non-standard form factors). There are some NVIDIA specific APIs which are useful for development...

If they had a PCI express expansion connector, that might be less of an issue, but it appears they intend PCI express expansion to be through Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt 2 maxes out at 20 Gbps, while PCI express 2 x16 is 64Gbps...

Maybe one could use 3 Thunderbolt cables to an expansion chassis... ;-)

Hmmm...

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Except the current Mac Pro is more of a floor computer than desktop computer.

I think you mean WAS more of a floor computer.

 

[Ralf The Dog]

With all the internal Thunderbolt plumbing to support the graphics cards, I wonder how many displays this thing can support?

 

[Jst0rm]

Hello? Noone has one yet.

From the pic it is user upgradable. Its not soldered on. Thats for sure.

 

[danamania]

After a bit of time going over what little info Apple has given, and a few other replies here on what those newer expansion options mean to others, I think I'd be happy with this Pro. I tend to need all the CPU I can get, decent graphics support is fine, and a decent hit of RAM.

The only downside is a photo & image library spanning a few TBs and growing. It's *really* convenient having all that inside my current Mac Pro (across six SATA HDs), and it'll be a bit of a pain in the arse having to find a convenient drive box that's guaranteed to work as braindead simple as plugging extra drives into the Pro - I've never needed an external box like that, though, so maybe it's a lot simpler than I expect.

No optical disc is irrelevant, the optical drive in my Pro died years ago and I barely used the replacement I had after that before replacing it with a HD. I'm also no stranger to cables everywhere - card readers, cables for cameras, speakers, a cintiq and ACD with their complement of cables.

I wouldn't have designed the new Pro quite like it is, but it'll do.