Add discontinuation of Xserve and constant pissing Adobe off to that. You'll get the bigger picture.
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Apple 'Questioning' the Future of its Mac Pro Line?
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Add discontinuation of Xserve and constant pissing Adobe off to that. You'll get the bigger picture.
Maybe now is the time for a minitower with room for 2 graphics cards, 2HDDs and an optical drive, with lots of TB connections for further expansion.
Someone's missing the point, and it's not me.
Spelling it out, slowly so you get the point:
Mac Pro setup:
1 very large box, with a cable running to the screen and a cable to the mains power
1 screen, with a cable running to the very large box and a cable to the mains power
iMac setup:
1 screen, with a cable to the mains power
if you need PCI cards, you can add:
1 small box, with a cable to the screen and a cable to mains power
The Mac Pro AS A DEFAULT needs to have these external boxes and wires that you hate so much. The iMac works without for 80% of the users, and for those that don't, it's a much smaller external box that can be added.
Hard drive space:
How much storage do people need onboard? Any one doing the level of work that "requires" a Mac Pro is using external storage via a NAS or a file server.
And a 1TB internal is definitely not enough for a scratch disk
what if you want 3-6 screens? Can an imac do that?
Funny that you mention eSATA since no macs include it. That's EXACTLY why many pros use MP with internal storage, until thunderbolt came along (and it's not a practical solution yet) none of the external busses were as fast as the internal drive bus. Sure, you can get a PCI card for esata or whatever but it's lame to waste a slot for something that should be included on the machine in the first place.
You're talking about having scratch files on your BOOT DISK. The whole point of the MP is that it can have four internal drives. Putting them on a secondary internal drive is no different from an external. And Ethernet storage is just as fast as internal? Link to a benchmark please?
I remember that several years ago the Mac Pros were priced very competitively indeed. This was before the whole iPhone, iPad, iOS craze. Only when the iProduce started becoming a success it became clear that Apple was shifting its interests. The subsequent Mac Pro releases started becoming increasingly expensive. Resulting in less sales, entering a downward spiral. One way to kill off a product line I suppose. Very sad to see Apple apparently resorting to/considering this tactic.
And no, iMacs are no comparable alternative. People that claim otherwise do not understand the needs of others.
Actually, doesn't the current iMac line-up have better GPUs than Mac Pros ?
If anything, Apple should have done a refresh of the Mac Pro 6 months ago to bump up the Radeon HD GPU to the 6xxx series. Maybe add a bit to base RAM/storage while keeping the same CPUs and call it the 2011 spec bump.
It can do three out of the box.
If you want more, you put the graphics cards in an external enclosure and run via Thunderbolt.
Check the graph again, the general desktop trend is not something that's a few months old or whatever, it's a decade long trend.
I am not even sure where to start with this...
"internal storage corrupting files",
"unstable performance",
"firewire is fast enough",
"eSata and Ethernet does not strain the CPU",
"as fast as internal storage".
I just don't. I would rather just hold my head in despair after reading this.
Why not ? eSATA is just SATA wired externally. If you're not sharing the port amongst multiple disks, it makes no difference.
However, isn't the Mac Pro the only one with an eSATA option anyway ? iMacs would use Thunderbolt.
Forget storage, what about all of the gear out there that relies on PCIe slots? Like the other guy who quoted me stated, Pro Tools is a great example. A PT HD system uses pretty much all your PCIe slots. So what, drop another $500 on a chassis THAT AVID HAS TO APPROVE AS COMPATIBLE? Uh no...
Actually that's why I never bought into PT, but that's another rant altogether
The point is, some of us who do various types of multimedia use a lot of stuff "outside the box" already. We don't want more crap cluttering our workspace, we want LESS.
Again people : check the graph. Desktop sales are plummeting, have been for years. The minitower is never coming back, that ship has sailed.
Apple insider also predicted Apple would discontinue their Mac mini line in 2007 http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/05/24/closing_the_book_on_apples_mac_mini.html
What a totally asinine comment.
So if pro users aren't willing to upgrade machines every year like the iphone and ipod fanboys do, it's their fault that apple is throwing them under the bus after spending years assuring the professional market that apple was a reliable partner?
Totally agree. My consumer products are based on the fact that I like to keep it all in one nice eco system. What drives the bottom line products for me are my professional needs. My whole business is driven by Macs. I started using Macs at home because it was a smooth cross over for all kinds of reasons. My kids get Macs (even though they have in the past preferred PCs) so that we stay within that eco system. Same goes for phones etc.
If my business needs change then over the years, next upgrade cycle, my private needs will follow for sure.
What a shame if this turns out to be true... unless they can fill the professional needs in some way that we are not yet seeing...
C
Forget storage, what about all of the gear out there that relies on PCIe slots? Like the other guy who quoted me stated, Pro Tools is a great example. A PT HD system uses pretty much all your PCIe slots. So what, drop another $500 on a chassis THAT AVID HAS TO APPROVE AS COMPATIBLE? Uh no...
Actually that's why I never bought into PT, but that's another rant altogether
The point is, some of us who do various types of multimedia use a lot of stuff "outside the box" already. We don't want more crap cluttering our workspace, we want LESS.
Exactly. I was loping all of that gear into my "external devices" bit.
That is why Mac Pros will not go away anytime soon. Apple knows it.
Even if Avid, RME and others come up with Thunderbolt I/O Mac Pro will still be around for quite some time.
iMac will never be a substitute no matter what. That screen is more of an obstacle than anything else, especially in video editing where you might need a real monitor. Lack of GPU upgrade will make it happen that no 3D or video guys make a switch unless they bring it to a daisy chain.
What can replace Mac Pro at this point is another Mac Pro but in different package, smaller package with PCIe, upgradeable RAM, HD and multiple GPUs. That's probably whats going to happen.
iSCSI over 10 GE vs SATA III ? Throw in link aggregation...
(of course, no iMac is capable of 10 GE...)
Holy cow guys. You both seem smart, and I agree with your assertion that iMacs don't work for everyone. But the footprint / space thing is a bogus argument.
When you use an iMac, you LOSE THE MAC PRO TOWER.
I don't know how to make this any clearer. Even if you need an external PCI break-out box, it's going to be a fraction of the size of the MASSIVE TOWER that you no longer need.
The iMac WILL be more space efficient. There are MASSIVE tradeoffs to that space efficiency, but holy crap, this issue shouldn't even be up for debate.
I agree with you to a point. Yeah, we will eventually come to a point where a series of daisy chained Mac Minis working as a compact render farm supplementing an iMac will (potentially) offer just as much power as a Mac Pro. Any concerns over external storage and scratch disks are practically mooted when you consider the amount of bandwidth available on a Thunderbolt line.
Some form of distributed computing does seem to be the way things are headed over at Apple. All things considered, a world without the Pro wouldn't be as doom and gloom as some people believe.
Thing is, this is more a near future thing, when the iMacs and Mac Minis get a little more processing oomph behind them. Dropping the Pro now would leave alot of people hanging. Niche market though it may be, it's still a steady, lucrative one, and isn't exactly shrinking. New studios open every day, old studios need new hardware, and quite a few of them want Mac Pros. Abandoning them now, when Apple doesn't have a strong alternative option through their mid-macs, could end up costing them more than they think.
True, an iMac will never be comparable alternative. We use several iMacs in our studio but none of them could replace Mac Pro workstations.
I used and owned almost any Mac model since 90es and the Mac Pro line is the best of the best. I'd hate to lose that and that could be the real dealbreaker with Apple as company.
I love that I can put latest graphics cards, I love that I have 12 TB of fast and very cheap internal storage, I love reliability and chance to use it with anti-glare displays - Apple Cinema 30" FTW!
So, I just hope they will do to Mac Pro what they have done to 2009 Mac mini - rethink the case and concept, remove optical drive, make a lot of internal drive bays, mulitple memory banks and at least two PCI expansion slots .
I used and owned almost any Mac model since 90es and the Mac Pro line is the best of the best. I'd hate to lose that and that could be the real dealbreaker with Apple as company.
I love that I can put latest graphics cards, I love that I have 12 TB of fast and very cheap internal storage, I love reliability and chance to use it with anti-glare displays - Apple Cinema 30" FTW!
So, I just hope they will do to Mac Pro what they have done to 2009 Mac mini - rethink the case and concept, remove optical drive, make a lot of internal drive bays, mulitple memory banks and at least two PCI expansion slots .
Apple has always been about sleek design and minimal cable clutter.
I just can't see external PCI enclosures and stacks of hard drives all chained together. I would be back in the Windows environment before I would do that anyways.
Given the price of the Thunderbolt devices so far, something is going to have to drive that down if it's going to gain traction.