Apple 'Questioning' the Future of its Mac Pro Line?

[iBug2]

I don't work for your dad.

Luckily though, I have both a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro (which am now using hooked up via TB to my 24" LCD). The last job I worked had an iMac I was forced to use, so I can give an honest opinion on all the solutions as ive been exposed to a lot in my time. Let me tell you from the perspective of a professional;

The iMac in a studio environment was the least pleasant experience on any machine I've worked on. The screen was crap to the point my ditzy coworker used as a mirror, the graphics card inside was the equivalent garbage to that of a mobile gpu forced into a desktop where it has no godly place being, I could not install a secondary hard drive for greater storage of files and when working on intensive documents, regardless of being in photoshop or not, it was a slow tragedy. And if you think Indesign doesnt require a good computer, you might want to talk to your dad about CS5, its by far the worst piece of software in the entire Creative Suite there is. I don't mean that by functionality, I mean that in performance.

Don't take this the wrong way but who cares about your issues? Most probably your workflow needs a Mac Pro. Nothing in my father's studio requires a Mac Pro, and even though couple of Mac Pro's might speed up some of the workflow in an insignificant way, the extra cost wouldn't justify it.

I never claimed that iMac can do the job for everyone. I'm just pissed about the ignorants who think "if you are a professional, then you need a Mac Pro".
That hasn't been true for a long time now. Professional market has been switching to iMac/Mini solutions for a while.

 

[Eidorian]

For your usage, for most peoples on these forums too. Not for critical applications and systems, or where down time means loss of revenue far out classing the extra cost of ECC functionality. Just another feature required by those who are the big customers of Xeon platforms and gets passed on to others. Much like the massive memory bandwidths, SAS support, memory mirroring, virtualisation optimisations and so on.

To be honest the starting point for a Xeon system should be dual processor. The differences on a single socket are minuscule.

You get all those SATA ports, memory channels, and PCIe lanes on Core i7 3xxx. Moving up to Xeon just throws in ECC or a higher end PCH SKU. Even the Xeon moniker adds little to cost but you do get many more price points to choose from. If your firmware supports it.

 

[wiz329]

Future = couple years they said. And no, they are not having problems with optical connections. It's just too expensive. The tech is there. The first TB demo 2 years ago was done using optical 100mbit speed.

By problems, i mean making it cost effective. You are correct.
Ok, sure, the tech is there. They may have done a demo a couple years ago with 100 Gbit/s, I don't think so, however. Also you ignored the main point of my post -- its not feasible NOW.

Also, TB will NOT be up to 100 Gbit/s until the end of the decade - 10 years from now.

"But Thunderbolt was designed to scale much higher still, with a technology based on silicon photonics slated to take it to 50Gbps by 2015 and 100Gbps being Intel's goal by the end of the decade."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393677,00.asp#fbid=S8TL5UOePgv

Let me reiterate what a previous poster said:

"TB has bandwidth of 1.6GB/s.

Graphics cards? Maybe in time, but currently it operates at 25% of what is available and with the introduction of PCI-E 3.0: 12.5%.

RAM? Nope. Quad-channel DDR3 1333MHz bandwidth has a theoretical peak of 42.7GB/s per CPU.

It has its uses - most of which are for storage for small networks.

It doesn't solve the problem that Mac pros solve and that is the reduction in time on computationally intensive tasks."

 

[iBug2]

For your usage, for most peoples on these forums too. Not for critical applications and systems, or where down time means loss of revenue far out classing the extra cost of ECC functionality. Just another feature required by those who are the big customers of Xeon platforms and gets passed on to others. Much like the massive memory bandwidths, SAS support, memory mirroring, virtualisation optimisations and so on.

ECC makes sense for servers, for them downtime means a lot. But who buys Mac Pro for server use? That's what XServe was for.

 

[wikus]

Don't take this the wrong way but who cares about your issues?

Because my workflow is very much the same as others; power users. Have you not been reading anything in this thread?

 

[prowlmedia]

well of course the laptops are going to sell better than the desktops these days for 90% of people the fit their purpose. But I am a pretty high end Mac-Pro user 12-Core 48gb Ram - Quadra 4000 - SSD's etc. Like many switched from Windoze Vista after the horrible reliability and fudged implementation... and the amount of hour I lost keeping things running smoothly. My mac pro turns on - earns me money - and then I can go home. And I need 2 30" monitors with full calibration and no glossiness thanks.

But - I think this will come to nothing for the moment at least. While the big iMacs are powerful for reasonable use they are not great for very high end content creation.... and if they ditch the Content creation machines how are they going feed the iOS machine.

I reckon the Rumor is pure cynical speculation. Apple is a technology company. They want to produce the best. And the Pro machines when they have been released are way up there in speed - OK they don't update them that often - but I also have a 2008 Mac pro 8-core and that still smokes Most Workstations I've used in 3D production Houses etc.

 

[applekid]

If they do put Thunderbolt to good use and make it possible to hook up PCIe cards and hard drives to an iMac, I'm all for it. The Mac Pro's are pretty expensive compared to similar PC's with Xeon processors spec for spec.

As much as I'd love to be able to swap out hard drives and install my own graphics card, the Mac Pro is just too damn expensive for that kind of expandability. They should've introduced a low-end Mac Pro that has an i7 or i5 processor for those of us that want actual expandability with the power of a decent iMac. Xeon processors are just overkill.

 

[vitzr]

If Apple more aggressively marketed to educational institutions, research universities, etc., using OS X's UNIX compatibility as a selling point, I think they could really expand the Mac Pro's market.

Especially if they cut deals to bundle Matlab, Maple, Mathematica, etc., like NeXT used to do with Mathematica. I can dream...

Kudo's... Now this is a truly brilliant way to ramp up sales, and broaden the Mac Pro's market as you say.

Some "pundits" claim the sales are not there. I question the validity of that claim.

I find it terribly ironic that the very company that created this fine computer, is the same company that is even considering a move like this. Especially when one takes into consideration how much cash on hand Apple has, and the extreme sales volume of nearly every other product they make.

No one is in better shape to "carry a product" if that's what would be needed on a temporary basis.

I have been too loyal of an Apple customer to find myself and millions of other fellow professionals left high and dry by Apple.

All as a result of Apples catering to the "Fart App Loving Masses"....

 

[Chaos123x]

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Anyone have benchmarks of a new iMac with a Thunderbolt Raid vs a new Mac Pro with a internal raid card?

Looks like avid, adobe. Aja, and black magic were jumping all over thunderbolt at nab 2011.

Maybe the Mac Pro is dead?

 

[AppliedMicro]

The Mac Pro serves a different market than the iMac, so saying it is not price competitive seems off point.

Partly but not entirely true. The point is: The iMac can just (or almost) as well serve parts of the "creative professional" and prosumer market as the Mac Pro does. Sure, there will always be people who are (or least think they are) better served with a Mac Pro - but just by looking at those, the relevant potential base for the Mac Pro gets even smaller.

I work for the biggest Mac reseller in my country. While I assume a disproportionately high number of sales to creative professionals to be made by specialty shops and to educational institutions by Apple themselves, I still think the Mac Pro is just a small fraction of the Mac business in terms of numbers.

 

[R2D2 xx]

I have the more recent Mac Pro with 2x 6c processors @ 2.93 GHz. It's a great machine but I think I'll be doing a custom PC for my next one. Not only is it cheaper, I can put in better parts (for example, why didn't they use a Xeon 5580 or 5590?). I do like the case though, but there are some other good ones out there.

 

[iBug2]

Because my workflow is very much the same as others; power users. Have you not been reading anything in this thread?

Again the same ignorance. Your workflow is not very much the same as all others. Your workflow is very much the same as "some" others. See the difference?

And no, not all power users need a Mac Pro. What do you think a power user is? A power user can get away with a MacBook Air. That term has already a widely recognized definition and it doesn't mean "people who utilize processor heavy processes."

 

[nerdo]

Good for you, so can any wannabe powernerd. There are no big secrets in tech.

If you could actually give me the sales figures for the Mac Pro for the past 10 years it would actually add something to the discussion instead of being "yet another one stating the obvious".

I can tell you exactly what is different with it between the core i7. .

 

[linux2mac]

Attack of the Minis ?

It looks like Thunderbolt equipped Mac Minis may be the Mac Pro replacements.

http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/attack-of-the-minis/

Start with a Light Peak-equipped Mac Mini. Need more horsepower? Just get another Mini and connect with Light Peak. Grand Central will automatically distribute the load across multiple devices. A 2U rack will hold eight Mac Minis that, tightly coupled, will run rings around an Xserve.

It’s not that Apple doesn’t want enterprise business, they just want to support the enterprise market from the same simple product line, selling Mac Minis by the ton. With Light Peak, xGrid, Grand Central Dispatch and Mac Minis used as compute bricks, organizations will be able to build servers of any size, automatically backed-up from the woods of North Carolina.
Apple is out-Googling Google.

 

[firewood]

How could they be considered a real computer company at that point?

1) Apple dropped the "Computer" from the company name well over a year ago.

2) An iPad is a far more powerful real computer than an Apple II was back when the company was called Apple Computer.

 

[MacintoshMan]

What "screen restraints"?
The iMac can handle not one but two 30" external displays.

The iMac comes in 21.5 and 27". The industry standard setup is 2 x 24" 1920x1200 monitors. If you ad a 24" to either of those, the aspect ratio gets f'd not to mention how un cosher it looks.

 

[Orcasound]

Really would hate to see this happen.
Sure the iMacs are great machine - so is my macbook pro - but as a recording engineer and producer - seeing apple move to a "no mac pro" would truthfully make me actually consider taking a look at the dark side - I've been using macs for 25 years- never did windows... because of what macs did. - However PCI expansion audio cards from MOTU, ProTools, etc. would be a thing of the past - music for film and other editing features that rely on the 64bit benefits of over 4gig utilization - upwards of 32bg of ram - etc etc - iMacs don't do this - // there are things that we just can't do on an iMac - PERIOD.
I would venture to say that at least 80-90% of the pro audio market that currently use mac pros - would have no other choice but to move to PC based system - (ugg... damn the thought of it.)
I can't speak for the video folks -but if apple thinks that their pro user base can exist on iMovie and garageband running on iMacs - they will learn a sad lesson. - Sure they may keep selling iThings, but that too shall pass.

 

[iBug2]

No one is in better shape to "carry a product" if that's what would be needed on a temporary basis.

I agree. At this point I'd like Apple to carry Mac Pro, even if it loses them money in the long term. They have tons of cash and carrying an extremely small market shouldn't be an issue.

 

[gugy]

Because my workflow is very much the same as others; power users. Have you not been reading anything in this thread?

Just because him or his dad doesn't need the power, his belief is all professionals out there are on the same boat.
Talk about being closed minded.

 

[Chaos123x]

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http://activestorage.com/ to announce Mac Pro replacement?

 

[macpeach55]

Hello,

I've skimmed the discussion and read countless arguments. I've even said some of them myself in the past, but now I think it's much simpler.

Value A = how much profit would Apple make by keeping its Mac Pro line.
Value B = how much money would Apple save by killing its Mac Pro line.

If A is greater than B, the Mac Pro lives. If not; it will die.

Simple as that. Everything else is irrelevant now, and has been ever since Apple stopped making Mac-PC Photoshop comparisons.

Remember folk, Apple is a business, not your friendly neighbourhood shop!

Loa

You are wrong my friend. If a company wants to stay visible in all aspects of a certain market. they accept they may even lose money on certain items.

Otherwise once you pull out that area is lost to you

 

[bpd115]

I'm not going to argue over weather the iMac is powerful enough to do such and such. It is a powerful machine.

What sucks is today if a hard drive would die in my MacPro, I run to the nearest store and can pop in a SATA drive in under a half hour. People who deal with mission critical deadlines, this is enormous. If a hard drive were to die in a current generation iMac, you are toast for at least what, 2 days? It has to be replaced by Apple using their now stupid in drive thermal sensors.

Hard drives die. I've swapped hard drives in iMacs before (when the thermal sensors were just attached to regular SATA drives) and it is no picnic and not something the average user can do.

Also, I've taken a standard PC graphics card and slapped it in my MacPro easily giving me another 2 years out of the machine. Flashed it and I had a less than 200.00 upgrade. Not possible on the iMac. If you couldnt do the flashing part you would have paid a bit more for the Apple tax.

An external high end thunderbolt graphic card? That is not going to be a cheap solution.

 

[iBug2]

Just because him or his dad doesn't need the power, his belief is all professionals out there are on the same boat.
Talk about being closed minded.

Really? I suppose that's why I kept saying over and over that some people do need Mac Pro's, just not every professional.

The funniest thing is, the close mindedness comes from the other side, from people who think that just because they need the horsepower, all professionals do.

Maybe actually read the posts before you reply next time.

 

[wikus]

Just because him or his dad doesn't need the power, his belief is all professionals out there are on the same boat.
Talk about being closed minded.

'Again the same ignorance. Your workflow is not very much the same as all others. Your workflow is very much the same as "some" others. See the difference?'

Going so far as to even make me look as if i make sweeping generalizations. I never said all, some, many, or anything in regards to numbers.

But since im not alone, then I can make that statement. The 500 and counting replies in this thread are proof of that.

 

[SVegard]

We'll come back to that statement when/if Apple actually discontinues the Mac Pro line.

It would be just an absurd an absurd overreaction for most people invested in Logic to drop Apple altogether.


I cannot tell you, what you need. I do, however, have a picture, of what most people need and actually buy. Music/audio professionals are a niche for Apple nowadays. And I can see Apple clearly not giving a ***** about several of their niche markets and customers' needs
r.

Yes, it is easy to think that they give a damn about the niche marked. If that is the case I will go...