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Apple Offers Sneak Peek of Completely Redesigned Mac Pro

antonis said:
That "maybe" is that kills me though :p
I hope the double box cards are not soldered. However, even if they are not, they look custom-made especially for this box, so I don't see a big chance for 3d party user upgradeable gfx card.
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No choice. Because of this Thunderbolt garbage, the video cards can't output directly to the monitors. They need to loop back to the motherboard, then the motherboard sends the output to the Thunderbolt ports. This could get very messy as, you can have several monitors hooked up to different TB ports, or they can be daisy chained.

Video will be redirected all over the place, before it hits your screen.
 
I don't really care about the video card much, other than knowing that when my Mac Pro's video card died, I was able to swap it out myself with a more current card for relatively cheap. That doesn't seem possible with the new one.
 
danielsutton said:
The 17" MacBook Pro does not have Thunderbol(t) ports...
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LOLWUT? I'm looking at the Thunderbolt ports on my 2011 MacBook Pro 17" right now.

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kirkbross said:
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.
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I often take my Mac Pro out on photoshoots. There are custom rack-mountable rolling cases that help facilitate that.

The small size here does help.
 
Ralf The Dog said:
Thunderbolt 2 -> PCIe only gives you PCIe 2 x8. If you want to run high end graphics cards, you need PCIe 3 x16.

As to changing out the graphics card, just like a laptop, I would hope a top of the line workstation would have better expansion options than a laptop.

This is a supped up headless iMac. Time for Adobe to start porting it's software to Red Hat.
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You sure about those numbers? TB 2.0 gives a max of 20 Gb/s (2.5GB/s) in either direction.

PCIe 2.0 x8 is 4GB/s (500 MB/s per lane) as I understand it.

PCIe 3.0 x16 would then be 16 GB/s.
 
avkills said:
I saw the writing on the wall a long time ago, so I never had the company invest a lot money in PCIe cards. The only thing up in the air is how to attach eSATA Hardware RAIDs; Maybe retire them and buy a "empty" thunderbolt RAID and add the drives.

I still think this is going to be a $5000 machine, unless AMD is giving Apple one hell of a deal on those GPUs.

-mark
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LaCie makes a thunderbolt-to-eSATA bridge that would probably save you a few bucks, but the Thunderbolt RAID may be faster.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
There is no room (they expect you to expand everything EXTERNAL so welcome to the Mac Mini Pro). :(

The GPU will not be upgradeable unless you use Thunderbolt (which can't handle anything fast so no, you can't upgrade it).

In short, this is not a Mac Pro. It's a POS that looks like a trash can from a Casino. Expansion is dead. They include 6 Thunderbolt ports (which no one uses), only 4 USB ports (not even certain they are USB3, although one would assume so). Heck, my Mac Mini has 4 USB ports.... :rolleyes:

They include zero Firewire ports (so much for Pro Audio without an adapter).

They include zero eSata ports (still no professional in "Pro" I guess; they forget people out there use and need these things whether they think they're the future, past or just crap it doesn't matter; they are used by Pros and Apple doesn't include them)

They include zero free drive bays

They include zero expansion ports (forget all true Pro cards made for the Mac Pro; they expect them all to make new Thunderbolt devices instead, I guess or you to buy some external PCI box expansion to take up all the room they claim you save.

All in all, it's truly disappointing to see Apple sell GIMMICK instead of an actual professional product. Based on the responses, it's pretty obvious that is what Apple fans respond to these days. Throw in the absolutely HORRID looking iOS7 interface shown and I think you can expect the next version of OSX to look just plain GOD AWFUL. :(
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Why should anyone care what you think when you can't even bother to check if the USB ports are USB 3 or not? Cleary you couldn't be bothered to give this a fair shake. Instead, you've just made a number of assumptions (like graphics cards can't be replaced), dismissed Thunderbolt and whined about missing I/O connectors that are worse than Thunderbolt. I suspect the thunderbolt market will look a little different once this launches.
 
For a company that loves to brag about their designs is not it stupid to then go and put mic&headphone jacks on the rear side? Some USB ports on the front would not hurt either
 
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to "The Forum Guy" episode 2.

This episode features user imageWIS. He says that the new iMac has no VESA mounting, which is "BS". He's sure mad about that!

Unfortunately for imageWIS, Apple does sell the new iMac in that configuration. In fact, when you go to the store, right at the bottom of the page it asks "Looking for an iMac with a Built-in VESA Mount Adapter?"

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac/imac_vesa

But wait a minute... How could the Apple salesman at the store not have alerted imageWIS to this fact when he went to buy one? After all, he's an Apple customer, right? He would have totally bought it, if Apple wasn't totally screwing him, right? Or maybe, he's just a guy who likes to post to forums, and isn't actually buying the stuff he's talking about. Like most of the people here talking about the Mac Pro.

imageWIS said:
My prob with the new iMac is no VESA mounting is possible, which is BS.
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wiz329 said:
You sure about those numbers? TB 2.0 gives a max of 20 Gb/s (2.5GB/s) in either direction.

PCIe 2.0 x8 is 4GB/s (500 MB/s per lane) as I understand it.

PCIe 3.0 x16 would then be 16 GB/s.
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From what I understand, PCIe 3.0 x16 is 32 GB/s
 
techwhiz said:
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!!!!
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You are not the target consumer for the new MP.

You lost me when you said "I *AM* the guy that buys the pro machine."

Do you REALLY need a pro machine?
 
kas23 said:
This has got to be the most ugliest thing I have set my eyes on. Steve Jobs just turned over in his grave.
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Any chance I can get a chunk of his corpse? A rotating corpse makes a perfect component for my Perpetual Motion Machine, a device that is essential for any i-Device with sealed in batteries.
 
Beautiful & Brilliant

It seems many are attacking this machine: some are against the new aesthetics, some against the lack of internal expandability, and some even against the purported build quality (it seems to be made of metal to me).

I'll go ahead and say that it's exactly the kind of machine I've been holding out for: legacy-free, maximum-performance components throughout, connected in a no-compromises way and crammed into a compact case.

Certainly, there is a lack of disk-drive bays, but platters of spinning rust will be phased out of core machine components because they simply cannot compete in terms of sheer performance against Flash-based solutions, particularly the PCIe-based solution Apple has adopted.

Drives, which will henceforth rightly be considered legacy devices, will be relegated to external assemblies and connected via ThunderBolt, which (particularly in it's new ThunderBolt 2 iteration) will offer plenty of bandwidth for most forms of expansion. Likewise almost everything else. It's already been noted that chassis exist to provide PCIe expansion potential: into these will go any cards that you might need, but increasingly producers will just release hardware with TB ports (as so long ago occurred with USB).

This is a Pro machine for those who (such as myself, I believe) require no-compromises performance at any cost. The externalisation of expansion is part of that cost.

As for the design, I personally find it lust-worthy. But that's down to individual preferences, is it not?

Will I be getting one? That depends on the price-tag they carry when they are released. I am currently using a year-old dual-hexacore Hackintosh. I probably won't be able to justify the expense for another year or so, which hopefully will let me coast along until the second revision of these machines are released sometime next year.
 
danamania said:
Not sure if there's multiple logic boards, but the one shown in the demo looks to just have one CPU socket.

Image
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Anyone know which Intel Xeon E5 cpu's will be used? I do see E7 cpu's featured on the Intel Ark but unsure what is what. Is not the current Mac Pro using some Intel Xeon E5 56xx family cpu's?

I really REALLY hope the cpu's that Apple has chosen are low power similar to that of the late 2012 Mac Mini or not too much more power consuming. These machines will be running pretty much 24/7/365 and for those of us renting + hydro monthly costs I'd like my bill not to sky rocket like that of my old late 2005 Power Mac G5 :(
 
woody reed said:
OMG WTF YGTOFBKM WTFWYT
maybe if we all spoke like that, apple would understand it. Or maybe we use :eek::mad::confused::confused::confused:

This is soooooo not a pro form factor, regardless of what's inside or not inside. Can't wait to see how one rack mounts it.

On the positive, considering no extra drive bays and no pci, should retail about for about $1250.
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Just the 2 GPUs alone are almost $4,000. Add in the Xeon, the Apple proprietary SSD, the signature design and Apple's 50% profit margins, you are looking at $6999 for the base model.

You heard it here first :apple:
 
wshyang said:
Just the 2 GPUs alone are almost $4,000. Add in the Xeon, the Apple proprietary SSD, the signature design and Apple's 50% profit margins, you are looking at $6999 for the base model.

You heard it here first :apple:
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Where did you get the numbers on the GPUs? The most expensive GPUs I know of right now aren't even $2,000 apiece.

EDIT: did a little research -- these are true workstation GPUs -- they are most likely the w9000, which started off retail $3,999 APIECE last year. I'm sure the price has gone down somewhat, but probably not even to $2k apiece. Wow.

Along with a TDP of over 500W just for the GPUs. I sure hope this new Mac Pro holds up under load.

Larger concern: many "pros" don't need $5,000 worth of GPU computer. Bummer it comes standard.
 
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I don't really see external expansion as a problem, I look at it like buying a computer for the basic pro use and just adding up hardwares for each personal work preferences. I can even imagine someone or Apple offering a dock or stand specifically to house expansions for those who needs them.

My main concern would be the pricing. I hope Apple would consider that a lot of pro consumers would need to invest on external expansions and that this design meant to lower the price as to open up the product making the price appealing and extending outside of the pro market.
 
Surely Graphics are upgradable..

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

Looks to me like they are two, full-sized graphics cards in there. I don't see why they wouldn't be upgradable. I think the "expansion is external" comment relates to any other cards/hdds/etc.

I guess we will just wait and see...
 
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