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

[deconstruct60]

Yep - but can provide the same (or better) error recovery by just keeping systems and software redundant. So while ECC RAM makes sense by itself, it is by no means a non-substitutable necessity.

Errrr, no. This is the same spin that was offered up when VaTech tried whipping together a supercomputer with non-ECC G5s. "We'll just do the computations twice and compare". When ECC macs arrived they ripped those non-ECC models as quickly as possible.


ECC is useful not only in correcting errors but also in informing you that you had one. Non ECC systems won't tell you anything.

If you data isn't valuable then you don't need ECC. If you data is valuable you can benefit from it. A single pixel in a video stream has a miniscule value so that's which video cards don't care. There are lots of errors in the data, but that data only have value in expensive bulk. (and frankly even in bulk some isn't valuable either. )


Nobody buys storage drives without ECC. The drives could all be very incrementally cheaper if keeping the data in intact is made a non issue. Practically, nobody thinks data rot on there disks is a good thing.

Once get into the double digits GB of RAM, ECC has benefits.

In current forms ECC is not that significantly more expensive. The only "boost" can get is that often faster memory ( if going to be overclocking) or denser memory ( if going to insert larger DIMMs than on Apple's specs ) is an issue.


Redundant components and failover software are useful and effective for whole component failures. Not single bit errors.

 

[dethmaShine]

MR members have been making similar inane predictions about various parts of Apple's lineup for years. I put nothing past the out of touch "techie" contingent here (which accounts for the majority of members.)

You're a pain. I don't know if you intentionally act sadistic but the very act of ignoring the concerns of thousands of professionals who make a living off of their Macintoshes makes you sound like a little kid who really doesn't care what people actually want.

There are millions who want an iPhone or an iPad. Great. Apple is working hard to serve those people.
There are thousands of professionals who want this high-end equipment for professional work for e.g. mathematical/algorithmic computation, video/audio processing, etc. And these are the only people who have ever been loyal to Apple. Apple doesn't really owe to these people but should definitely respect the needs of such people as they made Apple what they are today.

This idiosyncrasy of yours to just support Apple irrespective of context is beyond me. You really need to grow up and understand the real stuff.

I feel like punching you hard right now.

 

[Keebler]

i find this story ironic as I'm reading the SJ autobiography and I'm near the beginning where they launched the Apple I and IIs. I wonder if one of Steve's final moves was to kill or deny this product line.

I think it's silly for them to drop the MP line when it helped launch this company.

Add the fact they are at their most profitable position in their history so they can afford to float a supposed declining product line.

I still think there is the satellite connection between their product lines. Buy a Mac Pro, then buy a macbook air or pro for travel, buy an ipad and/or iphone to help supplement the product line.

Maybe it's beyond this point now and they're consumer products are driving business.

I still think they'll keep the line.

but who knows.

 

[haruhiko]

What is the accuracy of AppleInsider rumors?

 

[KnightWRX]

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.

I think his point is that your niche of "professionals" is too small to sustain the fixed costs associated with producing a model that fits your needs. He's not denying you exist or that your workflow requires the power, he's just saying you're now not big enough of a blip on the radar to justify the continued existence of the Mac Pro in Apple's eye.

I tend to agree. Computing power increases faster than software can keep up.

 

[vitzr]

Dropping the Mac Pro would mean the end of my business with Apple, unfortunately. I have a 2009 Mac Pro and an iPhone. I also have a new Android phone and a PC. Right now, the non-Apple stuff is working better than the Apple gear, and if Apple doesn't get it together with updating their high-end gear, there will be absolutely no reason for me to stay with them.

Here's another post that I can relate to ever so closely. While I'm a huge Apple enthusiast and professional user, working in a cross platform environment and being a very avid technologist, I too have new Androids I enjoy, and 2 Win 7 workstation class machines, a desktop & W520 ThinkPad.

Therefore in my case, just as in the one above I'm actually experiencing better features and performance from my alternative gear than i am from Apple. Yet that said, my long term use & fondness for Apple computers is something I dread losing.

Finally as several have brought up, if my beloved Mac Pro goes away it breaks my personal Apple ecosystem, even though I still have new MBP's & MBA's. Since I am neither attracted to, or using iCloud. My Mac Pro's (2) are indeed at the top of my Eco System, therefore as unpleasant as it would be, I will divest myself of every bit of Apple gear I have post haste. I will also venture an educated guess that my close friends and counterparts at work will do the same.

I don't say this as though it would have a negative affect on Apple, or as a threat. Nothing will stop the cash cow know as Apple. I say it out of sadness that the company I once respected highly, would actually pull a stunt that reeks of extreme greed as this does.

 

[KnightWRX]

Well so far, the MAJORITY of people stating they should drop the Pro don't use one in a professional environment.

The MAJORITY of people stating they should keep the Pro are ones that DO use it in a professional environment.

Please note the, MAJORITY, word. So if it was dropped I do get the feeling that Apple would have a backlash from the market.

Sure, Apple should keep it around, just like they should have kept the Xserve around. The point is, the MAJORITY of people that DO use Mac Pros and need them are probably not enough to sustain continued work on them, just like the MAJORITY of people that DID use XServes weren't enough to justify the sustained development of the model.

 

[AppleScruff1]

The Mac Pro is Apple's halo product. I think it's good for a company that is this profitable to keep such a product line even though the sales numbers are small. Look at many major auto manufacturers and you will see that many have a limited production, high performance car. It does wonders for the brand. Chevrolet has the ZR1 Corvette, Lexus has the LFA, etc. Apple can afford this better than any tech company on earth. Goodwill is priceless.

 

[Prodo123]

You do know thats theres no magical speed advantage the same architecture xeon has over its equivalent core i7 sibling right. The motherboard isn't 450 like you said and the case certainly doesn't cost 300. So lets take off another 300 dollars for that case and motherboard. 1300 dollars cost. Now we're up to 1200 dollars profit. You said the video card costs 170. I found it for 110. Apples paying less than that because they buy in volume. We're up to 1270 profit. Superdrives are 20 not 30...1280... The single socket cpus that are nehalem are cheaper. About 70 dollars cheaper...1340 profit...memory is only 3gb, thats like 20 dollars less than you said...1360...hard drive isn't anywhere near 110. Maybe if you visit ripoffs are us. They are about 60, 50 less than what you said...1410... i could go on and on.

And Apple is paying less on all of this stuff because they buy in volume.

I give up. You idiots are a PITA and impossible to correct.

 

[AidenShaw]

Errrr, no. This is the same spin that was offered up when VaTech tried whipping together a supercomputer with non-ECC G5s. "We'll just do the computations twice and compare". When ECC macs arrived they ripped those non-ECC models as quickly as possible.

I've heard from friends who did consulting at VA Tech that in fact VA Tech was unable to fully put the system into production with the non-ECC G5s. Too many errors, too much weird stuff happening.

But, it appears that the "System X" pages at VA Tech were last updated in 2006 - so perhaps G5 systems weren't a good investment, even after Apple fixed their mistake and added ECC memory.

 

[vitzr]

What is the accuracy of AppleInsider rumors?

I would like to think it's quite poor. Conversely, I've read their site for quite some time and they are usually quite accurate. And _that_ is what truly concerns me.

Exacerbated by the fact that I spend hour after week, after month, after year in front of my Mac Pro's at home and work, making my living with these fine computers.

 

[blackhand1001]

I give up. You idiots are a PITA and impossible to correct.

what are you going to correct I may ask?

 

[gugy]

I think his point is that your niche of "professionals" is too small to sustain the fixed costs associated with producing a model that fits your needs. He's not denying you exist or that your workflow requires the power, he's just saying you're now not big enough of a blip on the radar to justify the continued existence of the Mac Pro in Apple's eye.

I tend to agree. Computing power increases faster than software can keep up.

MacPro has been update now on a 12 to 18 months cycle. It's a clear signal Apple is taking their time to develop new machines and not seriously paying too much attention to the professional community. That's not surprise to anyone since Apple's is cashing out big time on other segments.

That said I think it's unlikely they will kill this market for good. My reasoning is that professionals, especially the ones working with very processor demanding applications need the power and expandability of a machine like MacPro. While there is a huge segment of professionals that can accomplish their tasks using Macbook Pro's and iMac's the same can be said about MacPro.

My argument with this individual was that he was basically saying less than 1% of the professional community do use MacPro. IMO he needs to look beyond his field and note that there are indeed a larger groups of people and industries that rely on such machine. Film and video content creation is just one example of a huge field that demands such power.

 

[deconstruct60]

What if Apple were to come out with a "cluster" concept (i.e a Distributed Grand Central Dispatch) that worked through Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt ( and PCI-e ) is a bad NUMA interconnect bus. Look out there in the NUMA boxes that already exist. Nobody is using it. QPI, Hypertransport, proprietary NUMA buses used by Cray, SGI , IBM , etc. all put Thunderbolt in the rear view mirror when it comes to bandwidth. (or are so old that Thunderbolt looks competitive).

There are very good reasons why CPU cores are not hooked together with PCI-e for internode data transfer.

The current Mac Pro already is a cluster concept. In the upper version there are 12 cores spread over two packages , two different banks of memory controllers also spread over two packages. It is a cluster inside a box.

That's the issue. One, who needs a cluster in a box. Two, is the cluster in the less expensive boxes enough for the large majority for the folks who bought the "cluster in a box" solution two or three generations back.

The mac already has "cluster" software. TB -> FC (or some other interconnect bus) connectors hooked to a switch would be better than multiple host computers sitting on a single TB daisy chain.

TB's sweet spot is multplexing slower legacy protocols. Not as a high speed low latency transport in and of itself.

 

[vitzr]

The Mac Pro is Apple's halo product. I think it's good for a company that is this profitable to keep such a product line even though the sales numbers are small. Look at many major auto manufacturers and you will see that many have a limited production, high performance car. It does wonders for the brand. Chevrolet has the ZR1 Corvette, Lexus has the LFA, etc. Apple can afford this better than any tech company on earth. Goodwill is priceless.

Thanks for this brilliant analogy.

Although we're discussing a disturbing possibility, this is the best, most intelligent thread I've had the pleasure of participating in here.

Devoid of the stunning immaturity, outright crude posts, and personal attacks that are everywhere within the iPhone forum, this is a vibrant, comprehensive discussion.

 

[krazygoat]

No professional audio engineer uses only a laptop. You need a Mac pro to control the mixing board.

I can tell from your posts that the people you are talking about are not doing high-end professional work but prosumer work or light duty design. Try doing billboard size or even banner size professional print ads on an iMac, try mixing multitrack audio for bands or movies. It is just not going to happen. It will work if you are doing ebooks or online publishing, but not much else.

I work in the film industry and yes we sometimes use Macbook Pros on set for things like checking feeds and takes with Final Cut Pro even some light duty slap comps. BUT once we get off set we use Mac Pros to get the work done because nothing else can handle the load of finishing a project.

We shot Pirates 4 with a batch of hand-built RED Epics shooting at 5K stereo. Try dealing with that on an iMac or mini. You can't even deal with it because you need RED Rocket cards to help handle the load. When I was at ILM on Pirates 3 I used a Mac Pro. You try and tell ILM, Weta, Pixar, our any number of FX houses that use Macs they should ditch their Mac Pros for iMacs because you buddy edits on Logic with his laptop or your dad uses iMacs for design.

Professional content producers in the film, audio, and graphics industry require a Mac Pro. Just because some joe schmoe with an iMac and Photoshop can make a print ad in their local paper does not mean Professional users problems are solved by joe schmoe's use case scenario.

Surely. I just gave our studio as an example to shut up the ignorants who think all design studios need a Mac Pro.

That being said, most Logic work can be done even on laptops. I know several professional artists who use nothing other than their MacBook Pro to do all their audio production. There are areas where one definitely needs a Mac Pro in music production certainly, but limited.

 

[dkouts]

There are more wanna-be pros, than pros.

 

[jackrv]

What is the accuracy of AppleInsider rumors?

They did post a R.I.P. for the Mac Mini in 2007. Take what you want from that.

 

[tonydickinson]

MacPro

I was not surprised to hear this, my last Macpro was a dual 2.26 which for a year was not much better than an expensive fan heater. I was very disappointed with this machine and I decided to have a look and try out a "hack" option without any EULA guilt as I have supported Apple from the G4 days, and felt very let down by Apple in acknowledging the MacPro 2009 problems, although it was eventually fixed.

I built an i7 PC which outruns the MacPro, in reliability and performance and cost a little more than one third of the price, and does everything I want of it and have a Recovery HD which allow FindMyMac etc.

Apple must be making a great deal of money to of the DIYers, and this might be an option if Apple were to charge more for the software to run on none Apple hardware.

Frankly the future of the MacPro has been in question for a long time and the dropping of the Xserv was the writing on the wall, particularly as thunderbolt will allow expansion on my 2011 MacMini i7 quad core server and my 2011 iMac, the only issue being the cost and availability of Thunderbolt peripherals. The LaCie Thunderbolt is mega expensive and Belkin's expansion unit which we have read about might not happens as the unit displayed was an early prototype.

If the MacPro line is dropped then Apple/Intel need to make the licensing of Thunderbolt more attractive to third parties to produce equipment that would not "break" the consumers' proverbial bank..., and allow some expandability to the existing ranges.

I would love to have a Cube as that concept was fantastic and it was totally Steve Jobes and Jonathan Ives.

 

[jcrowe]

Sure, Apple should keep it around, just like they should have kept the Xserve around. The point is, the MAJORITY of people that DO use Mac Pros and need them are probably not enough to sustain continued work on them, just like the MAJORITY of people that DID use XServes weren't enough to justify the sustained development of the model.

Do you have some sort of indicator for this assertion? Designing a hardware box these days is really not rocket science and even though the current MacPro design has been around for a while, there's no technical reason it needs to be scrapped. Apple could easily upgrade internal components and continue to support that market niche while making a decent profit I think. The reason I see Apple retreating from professional apps has more to do with the OS than with specific hardware platforms. Apple's cash cow is iOS and as MacOS heads in that direction we see "prosumer" apps dumbing down like the latest FinalCut version. Apple can obviously make a heck of a lot more money on iPhones, iPads and so forth than on Macs, ergo the change in focus. Building PCs is a cut-throat business that few survive.

 

[fluidfilm]

That would be bad

My entire professional career and skill set is based on the Pro line of hardware and software from Apple. If they kill the Mac Pro, turn FCP into iMovie, and OSX into iOS, that would just suck. I know movie theaters make all their money on popcorn, but if they don't show movies, nobody's going to come buy the snacks. I think Apple would cut out a lot of their community if they just become a consumer electronics "gadget" company. They have a computer hardware and software empire, with a respectable slice of the professional creative market, and some of the smartest products ever made. They would really be shooting themselves in the foot to go all iMac on us Pros.

 

[krazygoat]

physics sims and rendering requires ECC memory so it is not just for servers. Macs are used a lot in medical/scientific research so it is needed there too.

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.

 

[gugy]

No professional audio engineer uses only a laptop. You need a Mac pro to control the mixing board.

I can tell from your posts that the people you are talking about are not doing high-end professional work but prosumer work or light duty design. Try doing billboard size or even banner size professional print ads on an iMac, try mixing multitrack audio for bands or movies. It is just not going to happen. It will work if you are doing ebooks or online publishing, but not much else.

I work in the film industry and yes we sometimes use Macbook Pros on set for things like checking feeds and takes with Final Cut Pro even some light duty slap comps. BUT once we get off set we use Mac Pros to get the work done because nothing else can handle the load of finishing a project.

We shot Pirates 4 with a batch of hand-built RED Epics shooting at 6K stereo. Try dealing with that on an iMac or mini. You can't even deal with it because you need RED Rocket cards to help handle the load. When I was at ILM on Pirates 3 I used a Mac Pro. You try and tell ILM, Weta, Pixar, our any number of FX houses that use Macs they should ditch their Mac Pros for iMacs because you buddy edits on Logic with his laptop or your dad uses iMacs for design.

Professional content producers in the film, audio, and graphics industry require a Mac Pro. Just because some joe schmoe with an iMac and Photoshop can make a print ad in their local paper does not mean Professional users problems are solved by joe schmoe's use case scenario.

Thanks man, glad to see people that actually are on the industry and can recognized the need of such machines. iMacs are nice desktops but not even close to address the needs of serious professionals.

There are more wanna-be pros, than pros.

Yep

 

[Mebsat]

Mac Pro, Apple's just not that into you.

It's pretty telling that the Final Cut pro X and Logic Studio pages do not feature any pictures of Mac Pros, only MacBook Pros and iMacs.

The sad truth is that Apple has gotten out of the pro market what it can and is moving on. If FCP X didn't tell you what you needed to know, you just want to deceive yourself.

Start planning now for the migration.

At least all the adobe apps are identical on Win anyway.

 

[gugy]

My entire professional career and skill set is based on the Pro line of hardware and software from Apple. If they kill the Mac Pro, turn FCP into iMovie, and OSX into iOS, that would just suck. I know movie theaters make all their money on popcorn, but if they don't show movies, nobody's going to come buy the snacks. I think Apple would cut out a lot of their community if they just become a consumer electronics "gadget" company. They have a computer hardware and software empire, with a respectable slice of the professional creative market, and some of the smartest products ever made. They would really be shooting themselves in the foot to go all iMac on us Pros.

Yep, I am in the same boat as you with the only difference I use Adobe big time as well.
I do hope they will keep continuing their support to the pro machines and software as well.