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Apple Working on Two New Mac Pro Desktops, One of Which Will Be Reminiscent of Power Mac G4 Cube
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I'd love to know how well the Mac Pro sells because my gut feeling is that line hasn't been profitable for them. I wouldn't be surprised if they never update it.
A “cube” could use the same M1X/M2/whatever SoC as the iMac and 16” MBP, so Apple will sell plenty, and if the performance shown by the M1 scales up to 8+ HP cores or so and a better GPU then it should have jolly impressive performance, up to iMac Pro and entry level Mac Pro level... but those top-end Mac Pro configs will probably need a third AS chip, not just because of the CPU power needed, but because of the extreme amounts of RAM and I/O bandwidth those systems provide.
I’m sure Apple could make an AS chip that competed the high-end Xeon W with 28 or more cores, 64 PCIe lanes, support for 1.5 TB of RAM... the first question is, whether they would ever sell enough high-end Mac Pros - the only Mac that would use that chip - to make it financially viable.
The second question is how impressive AS is going to be in that scenario - some of the M1’s poke comes from having the RAM, GPU, neural engine etc. all on the same package without being connected via slow old external busses. The Mac Pro concept is built around loads of RAM slots, loads of PCIe slots and a few super-meaty AMD GPUs.
I think a more plausible/interesting top-end system that would play to the strengths of the M1 without Apple having to make a low-volume super chip would be a multiple M1 system - with each CPU contributing RAM, graphics and neural engine capacity to the pool. However, that would be a different beast to optimise software for and not a drop-in overnight replacement for the Mac Pro (which is barely over a year old). Still, not unheard of to use multi-computer arrays for rendering etc. Maybe Apple could dust off Xgrid.
Its also conceivable that the Mac Pro has just been a bit of a flop (can’t think why...)
Adobe? Really? Hasn't happened yet for Lightroom and Photoshop (and likely other Adobe apps) for the Mac.
What would be the benefits of a Mac Pro Mini over a Mac Mini?
High price and overheating were two of the main issues with cube and trash can Mac. Those previous issues can be addressed now. A smaller form factor with limited expandability, no thermal issues, and starting at maybe $2K would probably do well. But Apple has ignored this market for over a decade, so while I'm optimistic, I'll remain skeptical until we see it.
Probably way less then they used to, I would guess.
Anecdotally I remember seeing original "cheesegrater" Mac Pros fairly often in small-ish businesses and even some schools and universities back in the late 2000's. They used to be far more accessible to the "average" user seeing as they started at $2800 back then rather then the staggering $6000 today. In fact you could get a pretty high end model for less then the starting price of the modern Mac Pro. Sure, adjusted for inflation that $2800 turns into around $3377 today, but that's still almost half the price of a modern base-level Mac Pro.
In comparison, I'm not sure I've ever seen a new Mac Pro in person - other then maybe in an Apple Store. It just seams like a complete waste of money unless you buy the higher end models that start at $10K upwards, and that's the most extreme of niche's - to the point where it doesn't seam like Apple should have bothered in the first place. HP and Dell sell workstations of a comparable price, sure, but they far cheaper models (sharing the same chassis) in the $2-3K range, and probably make the bulk of sales from them.
In a way, they were positioned more as the Mac for people who just wanted more then just an iMac and were willing to pay a premium for it, rather then workstations targeted exclusively for large companies (and rich Youtubers). Would be nice to see them pivot back - they can still sell a fully fitted out Pro for $40k or whatever crazy price they want, but a more down to earth starting price would be very appreciated and might bring back some of the people who abandoned the Mac when Apple discontinued the original Cheesegrater Pro.
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That is not true.
Some application lend themselves for parallel execution.
A perfect example of where the number 0,1,2,..... infinity matter is H.264/265 encode and decode.
If you have a picture with a single slice you are never going to use parallelism to encode or decode the picture.
If you have an n-slice picture you only benefit to the number of slices.
Which compilation can benefit; most machines are used for compilation.
I would venture to say that the majority of 4 or 8 core machines rarely see more than 2 cores heavily used.
PCIe expansion, ECC memory, more than 16GB memory support, system memory not used for video.....
But even with the limitations I still like my trashcan Pro and expansion chassis.
it's not as expandable as my MacPro 2009 but it's blazing fast.
Would apple really go back to that small of a Pro machine? Didn’t they get enough flak over the lack of expandability of the trash can Mac Pro?
I dunno.
if it’s small enough and offers some expansion and at a more consumer friendly price, I’d be down for one.
I dunno.
if it’s small enough and offers some expansion and at a more consumer friendly price, I’d be down for one.
Well, this could be interesting, I'm set to get the upcoming MBP M1X 16” but would seriously consider a desktop mini Mac Pro with expansion.
Could possibly be closer to MiniITX in size then the Trashcan. You can build very small PCs nowadays that are still large enough for full size graphics cards and multiple ram slots:
Something like that, but maybe cut in half with a half-size MPX-based graphics card, maybe?
You described what I want.
although I have learned never to get too hopeful with Apple as they haven’t delivered a suitable desktop for me for years now (got a PC to fill that void).
really looking forward to seeing what they launch in 2021-22
And a serial port - don't forget that. I have a 56k modem revving its engine and ready to go!
D4mn kids and their 100GB Ethernet. Who needs Ethernet when you can get everything you could ever want from AOL and CompuServe on your trusty modem!
I would expect basic expansion of Ram and ssd together with GPU upgradeable would be spot on (most likely an Apple designed GPU I imagine).
Can’t see them doing it with PCIE slots, based on the M1 chip designs and lack of egpu support.
Is there some reality you see where this device gets released with an M1 in it? Why?
There’s also the potential of large businesses who are simply not ready to transition from software that will only work on an intel chip. Think of it as an updated “legacy” device...and likely the last one.
That's incorrect. Lightroom is Apple-Silicon-native, and the beta version of Photoshop is Apple-Silicon-native.