Yes it is. The PC upgrade space is rather huge actually. Have you ever visited newegg.com or been to a Microcenter?
How much of that is "other system vendor" (i.e., john doe with trusty screwdriver building new system) and how much of that is upgrades ? Likewise spare spare parts. Failure driven replacements is not a "large upgrade space".
I've visited both. I've bought back-up rotation HDDs at microcenter. They permanently went into no system at all, nor retired any older components at all. I'm sure there are incremental upgrade folks buying from both, but there are also system builders and replacement parts folks too.
It is a different tool for a different job and I hardly think that a product which isn't even for sale yet foretells the end of the expandable computing platform for prosumers or professionals.
I don't think Apple is even remotely saying it is the end for all older and current Mac Pro users. Just that a subset is not seen as a long term viable growth path.
All expansion doesn't have to be internal. This Mac Pro isn't saying expansion is over everywhere. There is a balance point though were internal versus external is the focus. This one is firmly jumping on the external bandwagon. That probably isn't a fit with one-man-band-with-one-instrument shops ( either embedded inside of larger organizations or just small orgs than can only afford just one Mac). There is likely going to be initially a smaller core of Mac Pro buyers but if that is a growing group then Apple probably will line up with that group as opposed to the group with the every lengthening buying cycle.
Not really. The Nvidia Titan and GTX780 are pretty large leaps in performance over the gtx690 and gtx680.
Eh? The GTX 680MX -> GTX780M is zero architecture shift (same core count in same config). zero memory bandwidth increase. A 720 -> 823 speed bump in clock speed. There is no large leap there.
The Titan is the held back K20 finally released into the consumer space. High price change perhaps, but that performance was around for a while before introduction and most definately announced and outlined for over a year.
You will have no upgrade path at all with the GPU I suspect.
I don't think there will, but as I pointed out that is just as much user driven as much as Apple driven. There won't be much of an upgrade path because not going to be overwhelming, timely, coherent demand for it.
Yes, there may by some novel use of the GPUs we're not privy to, but really, there is very little chance that it will be unique to the Mac platform.
Probably won't be so much novel use but usage of what is there. For console gaming boxes developers can squeeze more out of the system because they know a certain set of minimum resources are always there. So software is built to leverage those known resources.
Infinite hardware variability tends to lead to software primarily built to lowest common denominator components and configurations.That kind of software tends not to get the most out of mid to upper end hardware.
Normalizing so that two GPU set ups are normal in most of the MBP and MP configurations will raise the lowest common denominator bar over time.
I'm not hating on this computer at all. It just could have been so much more and there some harsh compromises that just don't make any sense.
There are some harsh compromises but making sense of them also need to take into account where the Mac Pro was at and where groups of users are going.
The primary objective is not maximize old design constraints from the previous decade (or two). Nor the viewpoint that "as is" the Mac Pro was largely being successful over the 2006-2010 time span.
The only thing that could possibly offset my opinion is cost. If for some reason they manage to offer this system at a considerably lower price than the current numbers add up to, then of course its a different value proposition all together.
I don't think that is going to happen in major shift. Perhaps somewhat closer to the $2K border with the iMac but it won't be a major drop. If not going to be on a major GPU upgrade cycle there is about zero ration reason to gut them just to limbo into the iMac price zone. Fratricide with the iMac isn't going to buy much if any growth.
I think the "smaller must be cheaper" folks are going to be the next round of "I don't understand" folks.
The raw computational horsepower is going up from previous generation. Dramatically up. I think Apple has always targeted the Mac Pro primarily at folks who require more overall horsepower over time to generate more revenue. [ not a box that maximized squat on infrastructure and piecemeal upgrade. Nor a box where have largely uni-dimensional increased resource needs. I think those folks bought Mac Pro's just they never were the primary targets. ]
