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+100

I think most of the pros around here are still working through emotional issues from when Apple took away their floppy drives. DVD is dead people. DEAD! Nobody watches those antiquated things any more. The future is the cloud. The future will be streamed to you wirelessly no matter where you are. Apple knows this and is planning a path forward. This Mac Pro is going to take us into the next decade. With the tremendous speed of TB2, there will be no limit to what can be done with this new Mac Pro.

The basic fact remains that most of the people here who are complaining are not even using their existing Mac Pros to the fullest potential. Usually those who complain the loudest are also the ones least qualified to complain.

Some of us still do a lot with that 'old dead media'. Sometimes jumping to the future drives people there, and sometimes it's just too soon...
 
JK. Will wait for the announcement of the PS4 design though, if the Mac Pro can hold my coffee cup it's a winner.

Well, it takes air from the bottom and hot air exits at the top. So if it can hold your coffee cup then it will also serve as a coffee "hot plate".
 
The new Mac Pro is one sleek and beautify machine.

Sleek? I'll give you that. Beautiful? OK, that too. I would like to point out that there are a plethora of 'sleek' and 'beautiful' people in HollyWeird who are as useful as a brick for dinner...

I see the limitations in the design. It's not expandable. Everything has to be connected from the outside (except for memory, and SSD 'drives').

I see the limitations. I see people that are not going to settle for this system. Sorry.

Sexy, yes... Useful? Depends... Paris Hilton is sexy, and my German Shepherd is more intelligent than she is.
 
That's called an iMac.

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Unbelievable. For years Apple was criticized for not changing the design. They finally move to something truly revolutionary and you lament the loss of the old design? Expansion is no longer needed in one case. Thunderbolt 2 makes expansion external and removes the need for a large, unwieldy box. But some people lament the loss of the box because they are unable to think outside of one.

eloquent and yet powerful post! I'll be watching for your future ones ;)
 
Size doesn't matter

I don't understand the obsession with the smallest form factor possible for a desktop computer, particularly a high end model. Sure, if it were a six foot cube it would suck, but let's get real. This is not a mobile computer.
 
This is going to be very expensive. $2999.99 base and $3999.99 for the upgraded model.

Plus: the external drives plus the side table next to your dest to hold them all.
 
So all these pros.. I haven't seen how I am supposed to attach my digi racks to this thing. This machine my be great for a photo editor but what about folks with studios full of gear like digital audio and pro video supposed to use this thing without re tooling the whole studio?

It is as others have said a "Mac mini pro"
 
Spaghetti

As a system admin, Apple's choice to force PCIe and HDD in expansion chassis is a real drag.

More cables to fall out (or break part-way), more power supplies to fail, more vendors involved, and generally more to go wrong in a workstation is not a positive design step. Yes, the NGMP is a big step forward in its core tech, and I'm glad to see that, finally.

But in real, practical terms, I see deploying a studio full of these as step backwards. It forces individuals and organizations to accept a higher probability of routine failure (not to mention vendor hassle), instead of simply keeping key services within the physical envelope, and bolted to the motherboard. Seriously, just managing power for all the expansion hardware is going to be tricky.

A slick design of all-capable expansion is possible, where the NGMP gets bolted in, and a connection panel mates up to it. Who knows, maybe that's going to show up tomorrow at the Foundry/Pixar demo?

But really I think we're in for lots of spaghetti.
 
+100
Nobody watches those antiquated things any more. The future is the cloud.


Unfortunately, most Pros aren't using DVDs to watch Avatar while working, but rather putting them to other uses such as cheap archival storage, or having a quicker means of transferring data than the Internet by just having a DVD with the data sent across the city.

As you've just proven with your comment, if you aren't a "pro," then your assertions about pro's uses for DVDs are invalid.
 
As a system admin, Apple's choice to force PCIe and HDD in expansion chassis is a real drag.

More cables to fall out (or break part-way), more power supplies to fail, more vendors involved, and generally more to go wrong in a workstation is not a positive design step. Yes, the NGMP is a big step forward in its core tech, and I'm glad to see that, finally.

But in real, practical terms, I see deploying a studio full of these as step backwards. It forces individuals and organizations to accept a higher probability of routine failure (not to mention vendor hassle), instead of simply keeping key services within the physical envelope, and bolted to the motherboard. Seriously, just managing power for all the expansion hardware is going to be tricky.

A slick design of all-capable expansion is possible, where the NGMP gets bolted in, and a connection panel mates up to it. Who knows, maybe that's going to show up tomorrow at the Foundry/Pixar demo?

But really I think we're in for lots of spaghetti.

You and anyone that thinks like you have the smarts to see why this machine is nice for the freelancer but a pita for the engineer/broadcast pro.
 
I don't understand the obsession with the smallest form factor possible for a desktop computer, particularly a high end model. Sure, if it were a six foot cube it would suck, but let's get real. This is not a mobile computer.

We should probably still have computers that take up an entire room. Who needs it to be smaller.
 
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.

Probably so, and it has his hallmark. But, he didn't want Apple turning into the "post-Walt Disney" Disney.

This is why they created Apple University. They can also keep the design ethos in mind when they're working on things in the lab, which has his spirit embedded in it, but pausing to think too long can cause big problems down the line.
 
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I'm impressed. I think leaving behind the optical drive was a good choice, CDs and DVDs will go the way of the floppy disk within the next few years. It's interesting that they didn't specifically mention whether or not the machine is user upgradable, but I think there's a good chance that it will be. They (hopefully) know that being able to upgrade the Mac Pro yourself is a major part of the reason professionals buy them. As long as memory and internal drives are upgradable, this is a very worthwhile computer. I like the design, too. Very futuristic.
 
No it isn't. The only thing missing from the equation of having a fully "stable" HackPro are specific Xeon kexts to enable speedstep and sleep. THAT'S IT.

And once this garbage can hits retail, those kexts will be out in the wild, and then fully, 100% functioning HackPros will be out there.

There are quite a few SandyBridge-based dual CPU HackPros out in the wild already. The iGarbagecan kexts will complete the loop. End of story.

They're NOT stable. Show me a Hackintosh that can hot swap Thunderbiolt. Or automatically update to a new version of OS X.
 
I don't understand the obsession with the smallest form factor possible for a desktop computer, particularly a high end model. Sure, if it were a six foot cube it would suck, but let's get real. This is not a mobile computer.

It does feel a little crazy, even if it was half the size of the old Mac they could have more options.
 
No it isn't. The only thing missing from the equation of having a fully "stable" HackPro are specific Xeon kexts to enable speedstep and sleep. THAT'S IT.

And once this garbage can hits retail, those kexts will be out in the wild, and then fully, 100% functioning HackPros will be out there.

There are quite a few SandyBridge-based dual CPU HackPros out in the wild already. The iGarbagecan kexts will complete the loop. End of story.

Yes. it. Is. Have you even looked at the specs on this thing. the potential throughput - Your toy is not comparable in a pro environment.

Speedstep and sleep - Righto. Point me to a fully functioning dual 12 core Xeon Hackintosh. And by fully functioning I mean it need to run Cuda and/or open CL flawlessly. Run After effects without crashing and render Maya for 12 hour.
 
I'm impressed. I think leaving behind the optical drive was a good choice, CDs and DVDs will go the way of the floppy disk within the next few years. It's interesting that they didn't specifically mention whether or not the machine is user upgradable, but I think there's a good chance that it will be. They (hopefully) know that being able to upgrade the Mac Pro yourself is a major part of the reason professionals buy them. As long as memory and internal drives are upgradable, this is a very worthwhile computer. I like the design, too. Very futuristic.

There aren't any internal drives. Just the flash storage. On the site, it looks like there's only one socket for it, which would suck. Most pros use external RAID arrays or Drobos and the like. Like others have said, the price point will make a big difference in its reception. I'm interested, but I'd like to see the price.
 
Thunderbolt 1.0 is already more than fast enough to run external GPUs/storage/displays. You're late to the party, for someone asking others to back up responses with "facts".

This simply is not true, not for all GPUs.

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For all the people concerned about existing PCI cards and how they can protect their investment with the new Mac Pro, I would like to find out what cards are still being used.

I'd like to start a list. Please post :)

RED Rocket
3 GTX GPU cards
8Gbps Fiber channel card (SAN)
and the ATI GPU (GUI) card

and this is just one of many systems that are networked together.

Yes, this box already uses an expansion chasis, PCIe connected.

I have serious doubts about being able to use this kind of third party PCI hardware via a TB2 expansion chasis. Why no PCIe-3 port?
 
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