Apple Offers Sneak Peek of Completely Redesigned Mac Pro

Clive At Five said:
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
Click to expand...

Touching story bro. Haven't even used the new Mac Pro and you're already dismissing its capabilities...
Go back to your W8 trash.
 
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.
 
This is great for our animation studio. We need VERY fast machines and we dont need much internal space because everything is hosted on servers. I'm excited just to see one.
 
First, I can't tell much from the picture, so I withhold judgment on the case and its looks. While I love the shiny aluminum of my Mac Pro, it's also as heavy as a Mack truck and has a lot of wasted space, so there may be improvement there. While black is not my favorite color, under my desk, it doesn't matter and on top, well, move over shiny slab from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Second, yes, I love that I can put four drives in my current Mac Pro, plus have an expansion bay that now ouses my SSD and also have space for expansion PCIe cards, but the premise of Thunderbolt was to maintain the speed and eliminate the need for such internal storage. I currently have two four bay external eSATA drive boxes because of how long the drives last and how long it took to get affordable larger sizes. It would be nice if the Thunderbolt solutions were less expensive, but it takes time to get critical mass and for smaller manufacturers who might put presssure on prices to get the necessary licensing and chipsets to force prices down. We're starting to see some relief, I would hope that this accelerates it. I think that many Mac Pro users are already using external solutions, so removing them from the box and connecting from Thunderbolt, while a pain in the ass to have to figure out inexpensive connectivity solutions, should not pose that big a problem.

Finally, we all know that this comes down to power and price. I will venture a guess that Apple made a choice, either put in the fastest technology and graphics processing ability, while shunting off to externals the storage capacity to maintain its price levels, or maintain the behemoth that the Mac Pro, but raise price points to upgrade the technology. There is no need anymore for there to be four internal hard drives, there are a variety of solutions, so maintaining that internal capacity was an unnecessary cost. While the pictured case is nothing to write home about, I will need to see what it is made of, and decide then. Yes, I like the strength of the current Mac Pro case, but I can't tell anything from a picture, so won't jump to the conclusion that it is cheap plastic.

Bottom line, I don't know enough about the redisgned Mac Pro to say anything other than that it will continue to be a processing screamer, with improved strength in its graphics processing power. Sounds like what everyone said they wanted.
 
hvfsl said:
There are already thunderbolt expansion chassises in development that allow you to plug in PCI-EX graphics cards, so installing a new graphic card should be possible. Although it remains to be seen how much of a performance impact there will be. Although the Mac Pro may even let you change out the GPU like a lot of high end Windows laptops do now.

Thunderbolt expansion Chasis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MBOfIm3HQtI

But as everyone is saying, it will be interesting to see how much this thing costs as most will probably need to spend at least $1000 on thunderbolt expansion.
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt is worthless for graphics expansion and I'd assume someone informed enough to need the option would already be aware of why that is:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard164.html

Bandwidth is limited to 2.5x PCIe and GPUs typically need an additional power feed that is also absent on expansion systems.
 
ChrisA said:
There are NO internal hard drives. It uses FLASH.

Next question is about "Fusion". I assume it will appear the user that all storage is in the flash, then adding a Thunderbold disk array will add more storage but the user will NOT need to manage what is kept where.
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I don't think it'll support fusion. It does not have a hard drive bay. It uses flash on PCI bus directly, which is the fastest way. A fusion drive still is a hard drive, so won't fit anywhere inside that thing.
 
RDStrong said:
I can't use specific cards without multiple chassis (and even then the bandwidth would be restricted) that I need for media production.

Thanks for trying.
Click to expand...

You need more than 20Gb/s bandwidth per card and you have more than six of them?

What media production are you doing where 20 Gb/s is a bottleneck?
 
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.
Click to expand...

How did you rack mount the last Mac Pro?
 
barkmonster said:
Thunderbolt is worthless for graphics expansion and I'd assume someone informed enough to need the option would already be aware of why that is:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard164.html

Bandwidth is limited to 2.5x PCIe and GPUs typically need an additional power feed that is also absent on expansion system.
Click to expand...

Correct. You cannot run an external GPU through thunderbolt yet, well you can with separate power connectors but still the performance will be degraded.

Unless they are using special on board chips from ATI (which I have never seen before), there will be two regular GPU's inside the chassis, which should be upgradeable, I hope.
 
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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......
Click to expand...

Bye!
 
Eidorian said:
How do you make it smaller? You remove the drives.
Click to expand...

Makes perfect sense to me. Thunderbolt is as effective as internal connections. Why make lots of internal bays if half go unused? This way the user can add what's needed. It sounds like there can be multiple internal SSD drives; that's good. But I can live just fine with a few peripherals.

I'm really excited about this. And I think Apple will surprise us with a very reasonable price.
 
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.
Click to expand...

I've been a pro user for many years and have never needed to rack mount anything. Tunnel vision, my friend.
 
It is the G4 Cube. On steroids.

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.
Click to expand...

The G4 cube wasn't expandable as well.

And, yes, I understand that this is "expandable". But it's expandable by going through third party manufacturers and I don't like trusting companies that may not have tested their products to last long periods of time.

I still own and run a 1GHz Powerbook G4... The same can't be said for any of the PATA, USB, FireWire 400 peripherals I bought with the laptop. I hope that Apple comes out with their own Thunderbolt 2 PCI-E/2 chassis and HDD arrays. Then, I'll be sold on this.
 
joe-h2o said:
You need more than 20Gb/s bandwidth per card and you have more than six of them?

What media production are you doing where 20 Gb/s is a bottleneck?
Click to expand...

This. Maybe people should actually read into the PCI-e cards they are using. Most of them don't use 1/20 of PCI-e bandwidth.
 
Clive At Five said:
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
Click to expand...

Have you used windows 8? Just like Arnie, you'll be back.
 
RDStrong said:
I can't use specific cards without multiple chassis (and even then the bandwidth would be restricted) that I need for media production.

Thanks for trying.
Click to expand...

You obviously arent talking about the GPU performance when you say that, as its leagues ahead of what is available on the now classic Mac Pro.

I cant imagine you are talking about bandwidth in regards to your storage, as thunderbolt 2 has substantially more bandwidth than the sata connections you are using to connect your current HDD's.. So what exactly are you talking about?
 
rascopico said:
I guess Apple mean Pro like they meant Pro when talking about FCP X, i.e. not Pro in the slightest....

I hope the specs improve when more info comes out, as this could be like FCPX and be another factor driving Professionals back to Windows or Linux.
Click to expand...

Umm...have you ever edited a feature film with FCP 7 and with FCP X? If so, you wouldn't say that about FCP X.
 
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