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Mac Pro- any chance they don't refresh on Monday?
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This is the developer's conference so I don't see computer updates coming out of it.
Rather I see things related to the iPhone OS including related hardware being discussed/announced.
Guess we'll see soon enough.
But developers are nice share of Mac Pro sales so the audience would be happy of it. People were saying the same thing a year ago but surprise surprise, Apple updated MBP and MBA. Now that Apple doesn't participate in MacWorld anymore, WWDC is the only annual event when they can announce updates.
It only 24 hours or so, so we will see it pretty soon
Yeah there is, but it seems more unlikely than not to me having followed Apple, the Mac Pro line and Workstations closely for the past 4 years. It may not get any keynote time, just updated and a press release, but I'd be surprised if there was nothing. Any reason not to have updated by next week other than it not being profitable to update at this time doesn't seem to hold water.
As we could learn from the history of the last few years, the Mac Pro, the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini are lowest priority products. The MacBook Air fishes in the same waters as the iPad, but the iPad is a mass product while the Air isn't. Steve Jobs never liked expandable computers like the Mac Pro, but I'm actually not really sure why he has always treated the Mac Mini as a stepchild. Maybe it's because it's not an all-in-one.
The truth is that the Quad Core iMacs have become so powerful (and affordable), that there is little reason left to buy a much more expensive Mac Pro. My Quad i5 iMac mops the floor with my former Quad Xeon Mac Pro. Sure, the Mac Pros also became faster, but they also became even more expensive with an unacceptable bang-for-the-buck ratio when compared to the i5/i7 iMacs. And there are only very few (desktop) applications that can benefit from eight or more CPU cores.
And unlike what most people might believe: Developers actually do not need those machines (unless, maybe, you are developing that next generation 12-core plugin for Photoshop and need a working test bed). Developers like having two or more screens, but most compilers or build utilities don't do their job any faster on a multi-core machine.
In other words, a 27" Quad Core iMac is the best choice at that price. Even with Apple Care, that machine costs less than an entry-level Mac Pro. And it's got an awesome large screen, too. And it's quiet.
From this perspective, I wouldn't really be surprised if Apple phased out the Mac Pro entirely. On the other hand, many folks also use Mac Pros as servers, so Apple will maintain that product line. There won't be anything "magical" about the next series, though - they will just get the next generation of high-end CPUs (probably including AMD processors this time) and bigger hard disks, but that's it.
We might see a Quad Core Mac Mini and maybe even another Mac Mini server with a RAID 5 configuration. The latter would then be the "Mac tower" people have always been asking for. But it still won't have a replaceable graphics card. Why? Because this is not how Steve Jobs likes his products. People are supposed to fully replace their computers after a (short) while. This is the way how Apple runs its hardware business.
In all honesty, I don't care for another two years. I've recently purchased a Quad Core iMac for exactly the reasoning that I've posted above, so my next interest in new Apple desktop hardware won't be before 2012. And then my object of desire will probably be an eight core iMac with a 42" or larger screen. ;-)
final cut studio users still need mac pros
As far as I know, Final Cut is still single-threaded (only the compressor is multi-threaded) so performance wise quad core iMac is more than fine as it offers the same speed as Mac Pro. I don't know how big role the GPU plays but biggest advantage of Mac Pro is the upgradeability as video editors need a lot GBs
that and the ability to add video capture cards and all sorts of other expansion goodies
There are plenty of people who don't like the mirror screens of the iMacs. I certainly will not buy one again.
Come on, just release new Mac Pros that at least offer some bang for the buck!
Come on, just release new Mac Pros that at least offer some bang for the buck!
Good points
As someone who prefers matte screens, if I purchased a new iMac, for work related tasks I would attached a matte LCD display or take off the glass.
Interesting.
As someone who prefers matte screens, if I purchased a new iMac, for work related tasks I would attached a matte LCD display or take off the glass.
The panels iMacs use are very glossy so taking the glass off wouldn't help that much
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac-Intel-27-Inch/1236/1
From the one I saw, it made a difference with reflections.
But I would probably put some sort of cover on the glass first to see if it worked. If not, pop off the glass then try it.
However, the easy way would be to use an external matte LCD display which I already have, or I could connect it to my beast (22 inch ACD -- Apple's first one).
Getting back to topic, we'll know very soon what hardware will be introduced.
final cut studio users still need mac pros
As do Pro Tools HD users - got to have a place to plug in the Accel & Core cards which you don't have in ANY other Mac machine. And PT users definitely make use of 8 TB of disk storage (and even that isn't enough in a lot of cases).
From the one I saw, it made a difference with reflections.
But I would probably put some sort of cover on the glass first to see if it worked. If not, pop off the glass then try it.
However, the easy way would be to use an external matte LCD display which I already have, or I could connect it to my beast (22 inch ACD -- Apple's first one).
Getting back to topic, we'll know very soon what hardware will be introduced.
Mmm, iFixit just said that the panel itself is very glossy so wanted to point that out
Someone has made his 27" iMac antiglare though. Anyway, only an hour to go!
Besides a spec change and the looming 6 core CPUs, all you can hope for is a new GPU.
Since the next chipset is on the Intel roadmap for next year.
Wasn't there some rumors about 10Gbit/s LAN, support for +8GB RAM modules etc? Bunch of new GPUs would be nice (and expected) too. As I said, only an hour to go
Wasn't there some rumors about 10Gbit/s LAN, support for +8GB RAM modules etc? Bunch of new GPUs would be nice (and expected) too. As I said, only an hour to go
Does the Westmere board spec even support 10G Ethernet?
I'm not sure... Apple could always use a dedicated controller. Just firing from the hip but the time will show us, very soon
I'm not sure... Apple could always use a dedicated controller. Just firing from the hip but the time will show us, very soon
Broadcom has had the 10G ethernet chips since the G5, and Apple has avoided them.
So who knows when, been years already.
From the one I saw, it made a difference with reflections.
But I would probably put some sort of cover on the glass first to see if it worked. If not, pop off the glass then try it.
However, the easy way would be to use an external matte LCD display which I already have, or I could connect it to my beast (22 inch ACD -- Apple's first one).
Getting back to topic, we'll know very soon what hardware will be introduced.
Well, you'd want the bigger (more resolution) display to be the main one. I have a 21" Eizo next to my 24" iMac and it's somehow impractical to use that as the main screen. It still gets more use than the iMacs display though.
But who cares for Mac Pros anymore since you can now have farmville for the iPhone!