For some reason I'm now seeing a similarity with those canisters of organic warfare from Prometheus movie (Big things come from something small).
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Apple Offers Sneak Peek of Completely Redesigned Mac Pro
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For some reason I'm now seeing a similarity with those canisters of organic warfare from Prometheus movie (Big things come from something small).
I didn't say "that they have made" I said it would look like something Dell or Lenovo would make. If I had never seen it before and had no idea that Apple made it. The last company I would think to have made it would have been Apple, because it looks so unApple like.
Ah yes, I fully agree with you on that. I've heard only good things about Drobos and their flexibility / ease of use (until the box dies and your drives are useless until you buy a replacement) I know this is extremely superficial of me though, they're a bit too playfully designed for my liking, although it fits a lot better with the new Pro now.
I always eyed up the Lacie 4 big with lust, but ... well I don't have the money to waste on it. I say this, but I have 3 'Porsche' drives sat under my TV right now.
I'm hoping Apple can create their own complimentary expansion system, and god knows Apple will love to overcharge you for offering you expandability at a premium across all the mac models.
^ I can't argue with anything you mentioned there. I too can't afford Drobo's ~ currently. I'm aiming at September at the earliest to afford the low end of this Mac Pro first with a new HDTV/Ultra HDTV (2nd gen in 2014) and some other home entertainment and system components. I'm not a prosumer or Digital architech/tech or creative professional of any kind. I am just learning audio composition but I'm just a lowly and hungry user that just doesn't like a disposable MBA; I've tried the 2011 model didn't like it.
We'll see if external storage and expansion drops in price rapidly as we've seen for internal SATA3 SSD drives in the last 6 months.
With respect, how on Earth can you say that you won't buy the new Mac Pro, and will probably buy the new MBA instead? There can be no 'instead' between a 12-core Xeon that requires external storage and monitors and an Ultrabook. If the MBA fits your need then yes, the MP probably is not suitable for you. Other people, wanting a new MP, are probably not considering a MBA 'instead'.
lolwut?
That computer is amazing. And the computer you have been "waiting for" was never going to be made. That's not how Apple works. You were never a fanboy.
Ok I stand corrected but still, if it can drive 3 4K video streams, isn't it enough to connect external storage, even fast SSD RAID arrays ? Or any professional expansion card ? In my line of work wich is audio pro, we already have DSP and I/O interfaces working over TB 1, so my guess is that we'll get even more powerful DSP and more I/Os with new TB 2 interfaces. Like an AVID HDX over TB 2 for example.
Jony Ive just doesn't get it. He thinks what's on his design pedestal is what goes on a user's desk.
Set this cylinder on a desk. Set a Drobo to one side, a PCIe expansion chassis to the other. Stand back and observe. The system takes up more space than the previous Mac Pro and it's a cluttered mess of mismatched boxes and cables.
Regarding expandability, say this cylinder is purchased with a 256GB SSD. 6 months later the 256GB is outgrown so a 512GB SSD upgrade is purchased and installed. On any other Xeon workstation, the user would end up with 768GB of SSD storage, yet on this cylinder, the user ends up with 512GB SSD storage and a useless 256GB blade with nowhere to go! What an incredibly short-sighted design flaw.
Finally, another WTF to proprietary, non-upgradable video cards. GPUs nearly always grow obsolete before the CPU. I wonder how many Radeon HD 5870 video cards Apple has sold to older Mac Pro users?
It's like Apple took all the Mac Pro feedback from the past decade and built exactly what people haven't been asking for.
Set this cylinder on a desk. Set a Drobo to one side, a PCIe expansion chassis to the other. Stand back and observe. The system takes up more space than the previous Mac Pro and it's a cluttered mess of mismatched boxes and cables.
Regarding expandability, say this cylinder is purchased with a 256GB SSD. 6 months later the 256GB is outgrown so a 512GB SSD upgrade is purchased and installed. On any other Xeon workstation, the user would end up with 768GB of SSD storage, yet on this cylinder, the user ends up with 512GB SSD storage and a useless 256GB blade with nowhere to go! What an incredibly short-sighted design flaw.
Finally, another WTF to proprietary, non-upgradable video cards. GPUs nearly always grow obsolete before the CPU. I wonder how many Radeon HD 5870 video cards Apple has sold to older Mac Pro users?
It's like Apple took all the Mac Pro feedback from the past decade and built exactly what people haven't been asking for.
Well, if Apple does get into the thunderbolt expansion market itself and even if it does overcharge for its products, it will at least push competitors prices down by comparison! This could be good for everyone! Thunderbolt might finally go mainstream...
Yeah on a personal note, I used to have a Gen 1 Mac Pro and it was an incredible machine. Used to do rendering and 3D / CAD work for uni on it. Stuffed it full of hard drives and upgraded the GPU / optical drive at various points of its 5 year life, then sold it on to a guy building a start up company as a cheap(ish) workstation. Still held its price very well! But I moved myself 6000 miles around the world so yeah I've got a 2011 MBA 13" at the moment and while I love the portability, it still comes with a ton of drives and a wheezing processor. Having said that, all I do with it these days is watch films and the odd bit of PS / AI work. Hope you get your Pro when it graces us with it's presence ... and give us all an unboxing
Sure, TB has a lot of bandwidth. (Incidentally, the ONLY thing TB 2.0 did over 1.0 is combine the 2 10 Gb/s channels into a single channel -- no overall increase in bandwidth, although in real world usage you'll see an improvement from the greater versatility) Plenty for external storage arrays etc. etc.
But since it simply doesn't have the bandwidth of PCIe slots (unless you can somehow combine ports), it won't replace any cards that can saturate PCIe 3.0 at x8 or x16. Admittedly, most cards can't. But some do, especially GPUs designed for compute (although unless you need CUDA, the built in GPUs shoud give you plenty of compute power).
Bottom line, while TB may suffice for plenty of uses, it simply doesn't provice near the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0, since it provides (1) less lanes and (2) only PCIe 2.0.
The new Mac Pro looks great and the specs are very promising. But I do have one critical note to add, or rather a question I'm not able to let go...
It seems to me that Apple is making a huge mistake if they are going to walk the same path as when designing the Macbook Pro and also with the whole iMac's setup. You see? There is a fundamental flaw in the iMac line and the Macbook Pro, and that is: lack of to extend those devices in the way -you- want.
For example, you need to buy a more expensive iMac in order to put more memory in, and that's basically it. You can't put out the graphic card and put a new better one in return back in after a year or so. With the Macbook Pro laptop, which isn't the fastest laptop any longer up to date, you can't put stuff out to replace it with better new equipment....
That's exactly why I never ever bothered to buy an iMac. Nice for most basic task but for creating movies with multiple layers both with integrated special effects the iMac's are a laughing matter....
What I like about the current Mac Pro, where I'm working on, is that I could replace the old graphic cards for better new ones and at some time I replaced all the hard drives for SSD drive's. The machine is designed in a way that even a child would be able to replace the hardware....
So, don't get me wrong here. The new Mac Pro looks awesome, but I don't like to pay for awesome design, it doesn't play a role when it come to make money with creativity for me. I don't need a machine to show off with. Yesterday at the presentation Mac told the audience that they could use this machine for years.... well they are lying about just that if the hardware within this new machine can't be replaced. Let's hope for the best ^^
It seems to me that Apple is making a huge mistake if they are going to walk the same path as when designing the Macbook Pro and also with the whole iMac's setup. You see? There is a fundamental flaw in the iMac line and the Macbook Pro, and that is: lack of to extend those devices in the way -you- want.
For example, you need to buy a more expensive iMac in order to put more memory in, and that's basically it. You can't put out the graphic card and put a new better one in return back in after a year or so. With the Macbook Pro laptop, which isn't the fastest laptop any longer up to date, you can't put stuff out to replace it with better new equipment....
That's exactly why I never ever bothered to buy an iMac. Nice for most basic task but for creating movies with multiple layers both with integrated special effects the iMac's are a laughing matter....
What I like about the current Mac Pro, where I'm working on, is that I could replace the old graphic cards for better new ones and at some time I replaced all the hard drives for SSD drive's. The machine is designed in a way that even a child would be able to replace the hardware....
So, don't get me wrong here. The new Mac Pro looks awesome, but I don't like to pay for awesome design, it doesn't play a role when it come to make money with creativity for me. I don't need a machine to show off with. Yesterday at the presentation Mac told the audience that they could use this machine for years.... well they are lying about just that if the hardware within this new machine can't be replaced. Let's hope for the best ^^
This is exactly where I'm worried about... I rather see a huge new Mac Pro with expandability possibilities then a thin looking design that disabled those options. I don't need a good looking machine, that's for the iMac fanboys, I need a machine I can build on for years to come like I've done with my current Mac Pro....
My question to you though, are you sure this machine enables you to bring in a new graphic card?
I tried hard to figure it out by looking at those photos too, but I'm not sure. As it is now, we don't even know if they are common slots or something proprietary. Even the design of those 2 cards is "too perfect" to fit inside this custom case. It would be really great if you could hook up a 3rd party gfx card in there, but I wouldn't bet on it.
My mind boggles with the possibilities of this.
It's insanely small and portable. Should fit in cabin baggage along with the retina 4K portable display. Will it chew up little enough power to plug in on a plane?
Cable management looks to be an interesting design challenge.
Can't wait to see what people do with new Mac Pro supercomputer clusters or cluster servers.
It's insanely small and portable. Should fit in cabin baggage along with the retina 4K portable display. Will it chew up little enough power to plug in on a plane?
Cable management looks to be an interesting design challenge.
Can't wait to see what people do with new Mac Pro supercomputer clusters or cluster servers.
This pretty much sums it up, im sure the new Mac Pro will be great but in a few years time when you want to upgrade you will have no choice but to fork out for a brand new machine. I also wish there were some 3.5" HDD bays, it is too early to drop them from a Professional machine.
To anyone who's arguing over the estimated price point of the shown configuration... don't you think there may be a smaller config for a lot less money? I mean, the sneak peek says "up to 7 TFlops", up to.... memory bandwith, up to.... this and that...
So all those "up to"'s are hints that there might be smaller configs with smaller GPUs, less cores and less memory bandwidth for a lower price.
So all those "up to"'s are hints that there might be smaller configs with smaller GPUs, less cores and less memory bandwidth for a lower price.
For those who are concerned with the 'plastic' appearance;
"Machined Aluminium Enclosure. Refined impact extrusion technologies are more material-efficient and give the polished aluminum enclosure its incredible shape and finish."
From the new Mac Pro teaser (page 15)
http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
Apologies if this has already been mentioned.
"Machined Aluminium Enclosure. Refined impact extrusion technologies are more material-efficient and give the polished aluminum enclosure its incredible shape and finish."
From the new Mac Pro teaser (page 15)
http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
Apologies if this has already been mentioned.
Three 4K displays is the equivalent of 16 1080p 24" displays. People need to think about that for a second. It has 6 TB and 1 HDM 1.4. So in theory you can connect 7 legacy monitor devices without any chaining.
Chaining, you can chain up to 36 devices. I've done the chaining multiple devices on my macbook so I know it is possible and useable. I do it all the time.
As for fas SSD RAIDs. Yes, Thunderbolt one is more than enough. The Pegasus R4 and R6 with SSDs in them do 800 MB/sec to 1GB/sec in the real world. 700 MB/s with platter drive. They are pretty much enterprise SAS controller with a thunderbolt backplane. You get that speed with a 11" macbook air from 2012. I know a few people complaining about lack of disk/raid space. And those people I know personally have $150 eSATA cards connected to 200 MB/sec eSATA boxes or do internal disk striping with three 7200rpm drives in their "old macPros" The built in SATA on those older Mac pros are SATA 2 and even with a SSD, the max they get is 175 MB/sec through the old bus. I do know a few people with SAS PCI cards but they've been impressed with that they've seen with Thunderbolt RAID, the move will be an improvement. The thing I am worried about is fast GigGbE etherent.
Whereas, I'm booting externally off Seagate Thunderbolt Desktop drives or portable SSDs in 7 seconds, launching the entire CS suite in 5 secs, copying 30 GB of files in a minute and a half. No, I don't miss internal storage. I can plug and unplug my drives, boot on other.
I think those other dedicated PCI cards for ProTools and AVID will move over to Thunderbolt. The only thing that requires more bandwidth than TB2 are GPUs. But who upgrades a GPU 3 year later? In 3-4 years, there will be faster I/O like USB 4, Thunderbolt 4, etc. The fact it has a beefy GPU now means you will at least get 3 years out of it. Which is coincides with lease/tax write offs for computer equipment. Then you go buy a new one.