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I'm always hyped about AS processors, but please don't make the same mistake you made with the 2013 one with the overly compact form factor. Several Apple execs apologized publicly for it, and they don't usually apologize!
 
With 3.5inch drive bays now antiquated and 2.5 inch drive bays antiquated and SATA antiquated ... and blown to bits by tiny NMVE M2 drives .. the need for large enclosures has been significantly removed for most users. I am quite excited to see this, and can see it as the replacement for my beloved R2D2 trashcan Mac Pro.
PCIe still takes a lot of space, and TB3 is not a viable alternative yet.
 
Apologies if this has already been brought up, but this could see the return of a multi-processor Mac Pro: the 'A' chips cost Apple next to nothing compared to the several hundred to a few thousand dollars that each Xeon costs. Sticking four twelve-core chips in there might cost Apple a hundred dollars, based on estimates of 'A'-series chips to Apple. Add to that the vast engineering simplification brought about by the reduced thermal load, and we might see the return of a £2500 Mac Pro... we can hope.
Each NUMA node has other costs too, but yes, I'm hopeful.
 
I feel bad for the people who buy the first rev of a new architecture.
Both. I'm glad I didn't buy a newer Intel Mac Pro, but I will probably get an AS Mac once they're well settled in. I haven't updated my stuff in years, and soon I'll finally have a reason to.

Worst deal was the iMac Pro. Right after being released, Meltdown was discovered, and they took the software patch performance hit. A common talking point is "that Mac you just bought won't get any slower," but that time it literally did.
 
Many independent creatives simply want a machine that balances power and affordability. These are the people that adopted the higher level machines in studios around the globe and essentially 'made' Apple before it got into consumer gadgets. The current Mac Pro basically shows the middle finger to those long term users, along with potential new ones - it's simply not justifiable cost wise. £700 for a set of castors and £940 for a screen stand underlines that blatant disrespect for for that brand loyalty. Any new machine needs to embrace its potential userbase - not take the p**s out of it.
 
Don't feel bad, mine rocks and will be serving me for a very long time :)
totally agree.
Many independent creatives simply want a machine that balances power and affordability. These are the people that adopted the higher level machines in studios around the globe and essentially 'made' Apple before it got into consumer gadgets. The current Mac Pro basically shows the middle finger to those long term users, along with potential new ones - it's simply not justifiable cost wise. £700 for a set of castors and £940 for a screen stand underlines that blatant disrespect for for that brand loyalty. Any new machine needs to embrace its potential userbase - not take the p**s out of it.
that is called iMac or iMac Pro.
 
dont feel bad, that mac will work perfectly for them for another 3 years
And remember, while this is still under R&D and it will be next year also, those people who already bought that mac year ago, are making money with no issues

No, actually do. Those machines will lose value at an absolutely crazy rate making them an extremely bad and costly business purchase. Case in point: G5 Powermacs. Also, 3 years from a 50k computer is an absolute joke, you expect 3 years from a $400 laptop, not a top tier workstation.
 
Not only dated but somewhat myopic as demonstrated by Amazon, Microsoft, and even Nvidia who either have gone ARM, have tried to go ARM, or are trying to buy ARM.

Some choice examples:
"It wasn't just all price. It was literally this "develop at home" issue"

Lot easier now then back in x86 days where you had to home-brew code and use little OS exploits to get the thing to work. Modern languages and methods make this a vastly different landscape. There are ARM packages for Docker, there is Swift, Unity supports x86 and ARM out of the box and I could rattle on for paragraphs.

"Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it."

Android and iPhone/iPad say "Hi" :p

"The price advantage of ARM will never be there for ARM servers unless..."
Amazon's Gavatron2 (ie ARM based) servers say "Hi!" :p

"This is basic economics."

About the only thing that actually makes sense in the whole piece but it doesn't look at the big picture. Mobile which is ARM (unless you consider laptops as part of that market) is cleaning the x86 desktop's clock in terms of marketshare. Yes business goes where the market is and no matter how much you may want the x86 to solder on that market is ARM. Heck the second most common console the Nintendo Switch uses ARM.

Apple's Rosetta 2 and whatever the blazes Microsoft calls its x86 to ARM translator address the biggest stumbling block to ARM: the amount of X86 code out there. Emulation blows goats but translation is a different animal as shown by Rosetta 1.

Rumor is Microsoft is in talks with Apple, likely because given Apple's narrow range of hardware Microsoft won't have to have more drivers then an a F1/Indianapolis 500 race ( :p ) in ARM Windows and don't have to worry about all the adware that bogs down their OS in the x86 world.

Microsoft and Nvidia, like Apple, know the future is ARM not x86. Even AMD with Project Skybridge tried to have a ARM-Intel platform but forces outside of their control killed the project. Their K12 efforts have been very quiet (I doubt they have canned it - it is blatantly obvious where the CPU market is and it isn't desktop but mobile and mobile is ARM)

It will take a long time but barring a rabbit out of a hat (ala Duparooh) the x86 is effectively a zombie CPU - it will solder on but it isn't really "alive" any more.
 
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I feel bad for the people that dropped over 50K for one of the Intel models.
I guess those people were not buying as a hobby enthusiast but for a professional purpose which justified the cost. And they will get good use out of the machine even after the Apple Silicon Macs came along. So where's the harm?
 
No, actually do. Those machines will lose value at an absolutely crazy rate making them an extremely bad and costly business purchase. Case in point: G5 Powermacs. Also, 3 years from a 50k computer is an absolute joke, you expect 3 years from a $400 laptop, not a top tier workstation.
your theory is entirely based on your own view and your view cannot represent all situations. what if I can earn more than 50K USD in 3 years so the Mac Pro is paid off. I am talking about real professional unlike a YouTuber claims themselves as professional ......

not to mention, ppl can spend whatever they like if they have money. few years ? 5 ? 10? 7 ?

I bet ' few years' to come is more than enough, considering intel still a tremendous market for apple as apple is selling over few thousand million Macs in a decade
 
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They'll lose OS support in just a few years. Look what happened with Power PC.
I did a detailed post on this. The first Intel mac came out January 2006 with support for PowerPC formally ending with Lion (July 20, 2011) - there was a Software Update option of adding Rosetta to Snow Leopard which didn't get clobbered until Security Update 2012-001. I would hardly call half a decade "just a few years". In the computer world that is an effective eternity..

Heck, if anything it showed that Apple was willing to cater to those who wanted to squeeze the last bit of life out of the PowerPC software they had. Also back then 2006 was wen the last PowerPC macs came out but Apple has confirmed that it will still put out Intel Macs (likely into next year) so the comparison is flawed from the get go.

Then there is the issue of Apple's Referb section which sales Macs as old as three years old which, in theory, could add another three years to the pile. If you haven't got with the program in five years (2025/2026) much less eight (2028/2029) than there is no hope.

As that os Christmas special song goes "the writing finger having writ moves on".
 
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The only reason I'm excited about Arm chips on the desktop is the possibility of porting some proper macOS apps to iPadOS like Ableton Live, Sketch etc.
 
No, actually do. Those machines will lose value at an absolutely crazy rate making them an extremely bad and costly business purchase. Case in point: G5 Powermacs. Also, 3 years from a 50k computer is an absolute joke, you expect 3 years from a $400 laptop, not a top tier workstation.
Yeah! Like a 3 year lifespan is a joke.
 
Well there is the eGPU option though I have to ask just how many people outside the low end Mac Pro crowd will use 1-2 PCIe x4 and given USB 3.1 Type-C is faster then SATA III why in the name of sanity would you want something with slower through put?! Never miming that if you ling out an iMac Pro you are going to go past the ~$7000 for the lowest end Mac Pro you can expand. iMHO you are suggesting a product that given its nitche audience is effectively the solution to a non-existent problem.
Why different interfaces? Options.

SATA SSD are cheap and fast enough for a heap of uses
SATA hard drives are huge
PCIe x4 can do various PCIe cards like network adapters, wifi cards fiber channel, etc.
A PCIe x16 slot - do I even need to explain upgradable video?

Not all Mac users are video editors and some want higher spec options (than a Mac mini without a display) not geared entirely around Hollywood
 
With 3.5inch drive bays now antiquated and 2.5 inch drive bays antiquated and SATA antiquated ... and blown to bits by tiny NMVE M2 drives .. the need for large enclosures has been significantly removed for most users. I am quite excited to see this, and can see it as the replacement for my beloved R2D2 trashcan Mac Pro.

wake me up when you can get 20TB m.2 drives for less than the price of a car for say, local bulk storage.

SSD is great, I have several terabytes of it in various machines around the house but for bulk storage you simply can’t get tens of terabytes for mostly archive/cold data that is still way faster than my internet connection or wireless network.
 
Since it is basically an iPad in a bigger case, I bet it has a all-day battery and usb C for power, instead of a line level power supply.
For sure the new MacPro will not have a battery at all, since it's a desktop. It might be able to run on USB power however. That would be pretty cool. Forget adding power hungry extension boards then though.
 
Not only dated, but outdated.
AWS already proves with it's ARM based servers that they have more power at lower cost.
At my company be develop on intel based machines, but build and deployment is all cloud based, so if we switch to ARM cloud over from Intel based, it does not effect what Linus refers to as "we use at home".
 
I guess those people were not buying as a hobby enthusiast but for a professional purpose which justified the cost. And they will get good use out of the machine even after the Apple Silicon Macs came along. So where's the harm?
It seems we have two parties.
Haves and have nots.
I was there from the LCIII, Quadra, PowerMac, etc...
Most professionals deal with this all the time.

Such is life.
 
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