Apple's Revamped Mac Pro to Launch in December

[ruka.snow]

No, those for us that use electric stand desks at home and work. So basically everyone with a university degree i'd say.

Those of us that went past a degree and into masters and doctorate level, we use VESA mount. And those folks that work in a office that’ll buy hundreds of the things, they will have mandated VESA mounts to comply with various “don’t sue us, adjust your screen until it complies with the picture” compliance documents. Isn’t it great the minority home users can buy a stand and the majority business users won’t need to banish millions of stands to the cupboard.

 

[McTaste]

Don't worry, guys. For those of us using monitor arms or other mounts, you still get the luxury of paying $200 for the VESA adapter.

Out of the box, you get a display that just sort of leans against the wall or something.

 

[throAU]

Threadripper is not a workstation part. EPYC might be able to outperform whatever CPU ends up in this thing but it won't matter one bit if you can't connect all your drives and other devices to it; USB4 and the end of expensive TB3 licensing will change this situation soon so maybe your AMD Mac Pro can come to be next year.

Threadripper is most certainly a workstation part. Supports ECC, has more PCIe lanes than almost (maybe all) Xeon processors, clocks higher than anything Apple are using. You can get TB3 on it (even in PC land), and apple most definitely could build a board with TB3 on it, given they are one of the partners who designed the port. Licensing thunderbolt for apple is not a thing.

Threadripper generally clocks higher than EPYC, because it is more workstation focused. EPYC is aimed at datacentre.
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So yeah, it’s kind of a big job, especially considering the things I left out and/or don’t know anything about. Doing all that took a few years.

If apple don't already know what their core market for pro machines is (and has been for decades), they're idiots.

Putting an ASIC in a machine and building a case is 6 months or so of work, what have they been doing for the rest of the time? AMD build the GPUs, intel build the CPUs....

 

[tubomac]

Happy to see I was completely wrong about the price! the base configuration is very, very convenient starting with 16 Gbyte RAM and 512 Gbyte SSD.
Unfortunately I bought a MacBook Pro 13" recently (and damn! I also upgraded it with 16Gbyte RAM and 512Gbyte SSD that makes it more expensive than the new 16")

 

[6IXGUN]

I find it kind of funny that Apple is aiming this product squarely at businesses - yet they seem to be ignoring the fact that most businesses are spending RIGHT NOW to shore up their expenses for the year to maximize their Section 179 write-offs. It also happens to be right smack in the middle of the BUSIEST season of the year in terms of commerce, retail etc which many of us cater to. We had a budget for two of these machines , but unfortunately, without any kind of configuration info - we have no idea what to budget for - is it $15K or $30K. Not releasing pricing is absolutely stupid if you ask me. We had to commit the budget $ elsewhere. So now the delivery window is December, but is that Dec 1 or Dec 30 ? Year over, we moved on. I suspect many studios were in the same predicament we are - some could afford to defer to next year - we were not so fortunate - we needed the horsepower now. Dell got our money - not really happy about it, but business is business. I doubt Apple will ever really understand this market and pulling stupid moves like not providing configuration pricing or a more definitive delivery window is just further proof that they don't get it.

 

[PickUrPoison]

I find it kind of funny that Apple is aiming this product squarely at businesses - yet they seem to be ignoring the fact that most businesses are spending RIGHT NOW to shore up their expenses for the year to maximize their Section 179 write-offs. It also happens to be right smack in the middle of the BUSIEST season of the year in terms of commerce, retail etc which many of us cater to. We had a budget for two of these machines , but unfortunately, without any kind of configuration info - we have no idea what to budget for - is it $15K or $30K. Not releasing pricing is absolutely stupid if you ask me. We had to commit the budget $ elsewhere. So now the delivery window is December, but is that Dec 1 or Dec 30 ? Year over, we moved on. I suspect many studios were in the same predicament we are - some could afford to defer to next year - we were not so fortunate - we needed the horsepower now. Dell got our money - not really happy about it, but business is business. I doubt Apple will ever really understand this market and pulling stupid moves like not providing configuration pricing or a more definitive delivery window is just further proof that they don't get it.

My guess is they aren’t going to ship before the end of the year, but who knows.

 

[6IXGUN]

My guess is they aren’t going to ship before the end of the year, but who knows.

Agree - I doubt it now - no one will care either, once Dec 20 comes around most of us will have shut down for the year. From now until Dec 20 we are working 16 hour days between Black Friday and Christmas advertising season. Any company that prides itself on serving business would never be so short sighted as to withhold pricing and sales on a new product this close to the end of the year. Surprises and building anticipation might work for iPhones and iPads but its absolutely idiotic to do so on large dollar business assets like the Mac Pro.

 

[PickUrPoison]

If apple don't already know what their core market for pro machines is (and has been for decades), they're idiots.

Putting an ASIC in a machine and building a case is 6 months or so of work, what have they been doing for the rest of the time? AMD build the GPUs, intel build the CPUs....

Of course they know who their target markets are, and they just spent 2.5 years working with the most important vendors of hardware and software those customers use to optimize those pros’ actual, real-world workflows. You can wave your arms and say “that’s six months work”, but it’s not. It’s rather apparent that Apple did a lot more than just build another box with slots. Isn’t it?

In any case, as of Aug/Sep the W-3200 Xeons still were not shipping, I still haven’t seen them in a shipping workstation yet but maybe something shipped and I missed it. AMD has also been having their own issues with Navi, re-spinning designs and screwing up the schedule for getting capacity out of TSMC. It’s barely shipping. For instance the 5700X was only launched today.

In addition the Afterburner card is a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), emphasis on the programmable. Designing a high performance FPGA is in no way a six month undertaking.

 

[PickUrPoison]

Agree - I doubt it now - no one will care either, once Dec 20 comes around most of us will have shut down for the year. From now until Dec 20 we are working 16 hour days between Black Friday and Christmas advertising season. Any company that prides itself on serving business would never be so short sighted as to withhold pricing and sales on a new product this close to the end of the year. Surprises and building anticipation might work for iPhones and iPads but its absolutely idiotic to do so on large dollar business assets like the Mac Pro.

Agreed that makes it tough to budget, but if it isn’t put into service this year, it can’t be deducted for 2019 even if it’s on order or even paid for already.

But beyond the budgeting/tax impacts is the reality on the ground. Like you mentioned, you try to hold out but at a certain point you need equipment and you have to pull the trigger. You can’t buy what’s not for sale, but at least let us know the timing.

Well, I guess they finally did tell us last week but September, October, nothing. Finally mid-November they say December launch, but delivery? Hello, December delivery is different from Feb or March 🤬

 

[Abazigal]

No, those for us that use electric stand desks at home and work. So basically everyone with a university degree i'd say.

In which case you get a very capable monitor for $6k, which to me is still a very compelling deal.

 

[5232152]

Those of us that went past a degree and into masters and doctorate level, we use VESA mount. And those folks that work in a office that’ll buy hundreds of the things, they will have mandated VESA mounts to comply with various “don’t sue us, adjust your screen until it complies with the picture” compliance documents. Isn’t it great the minority home users can buy a stand and the majority business users won’t need to banish millions of stands to the cupboard.

A master and doctorate are also degrees.
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Wow, you have a pretty warped view of the world if you think that most people with university degrees use electric stand desks. However, most people I know with adjustable desks, have their monitors mounted on VESA mounts so that they can be easily adjusted.

It's called life experience. Once you see a pattern of highly educated people requesting and not budging on poor working conditions (of modern standards), then it's not a warped view - then it's reality.