Mac Pro Launch Nears as Apple Business Staff Begin Offering Price Quotes

[flat five]

Biggest downside now is just having more cables running out of the back of the new Mac Pro and to these external boxes/devices.

nah.. that's not as true as it first seems.. most of the stuff being plugged in via pci are things that you plug other cords into..

trying to say that if generally, you use a lot of slots on the macpro, you'll also have cables running out the back.

i counted them up a while back and found that i'll actually be using one less cable with thunderbolt.. and another -1 cord due to the ac wifi..

 

[Traverse]

I guess it is a bit overkill for a college accounting student...aw well....you gotta have dreams

 

[yinz]

Plenty of businesses out there consisting of a single individual.

Those people will do fine with an iMac/Mac Mini/PC

Building a hackintosh is way better than this.

Everyone has their own preferences. Some Pro's might not have time to fiddle with drivers and updates through unconventional means.

And don't forget that for millions of people across the world (the 1%), the price is meaninglessly low.

They will sell these based on their beauty and prestige to folks who will never do anything more taxing with them than pull up YouTube.

YouTube full time!

 

[michaeljk]

Not nearly alone, no. As an artist and musician who happens to be dirt poor, the computer upgrade money set aside for me some time ago has been waiting for this exact computer. Going to see how the first few months go, and then dive in and try to leave the Windows roach motel for good (though considering keeping the old beast PC for not-cutting-edge games, or maybe having a gaming Windows partition on the Mac Pro; not sure yet).

There are many like us (many with way more money than myself), who want a single-manufacturer computing appliance, rather than a box of variously incompatible parts.

I'd been planning to upgrade my older iMac (top-of-the-line when purchased in 2008) to speed up my photography work and to support a higher resolution external monitor. My music software (Logic, Native Instruments Komplete and Reason) runs pretty well on my iMac, but external storage is clunky with Firewire 800 my fastest connection. I was thinking new iMac, until I heard about the nMP. Now that I can see the prices, I will likely go with the base model, but will consider the next bump up if it is a fairly significant speed bump (I don't even really need the power of the base model, but it might make sense to "future proof" my investment if it is significant).

I remember buying a Power Mac G5, and still think it was the most "beautiful" computer I'd ever owned. I liked to take the case cover off and run it with the molded plastic airflow casing showing. At the time, my brother built a Beast of a Windows machine with AMD Opterons, a massive case, and a plethora of various components. When I went to see it, it ran so hot, had so many fans, and was frankly quite ugly (but cool still because he did build it and kudos for that). He was constantly tweaking it, until he got tired of it, and ended up buying a pre-made HP or something. My PowerMac served me well for four years until I sold and it and got a pretty good deal selling it. The only problem was I could not ever completely rid the thing of signal noise for recording, and it was kind of loud when the fans went full bore. Hopefully, heat won't be an issue for the nMP. I might wait to see if there are problems with heat dissipation or to see if it is louder than Apple currently claims before I buy one. The only problem is, I am impatient, and I've been waiting a long time to upgrade.

 

[michaeljk]

Let me see your logic here... "I consider myself a prosumer therefore all prosumers are like me." Uh. no. What you are is a wealthy individual or at least one with a lot of disposable cash and a fetish for expensive toys. Congrats. But the average individual hobbyist cannot justify a $3000 computer, especially one that still needs additional thunderbolt storage since there is no internal bay or connector. Add in another $700 right there if its going to be done right.

The previous MPs had a true "prosumer" model in the entry level model, just barely. But there is no middle ground in the new MP line up. The choices are expensive and even more expensive, and CTO's to make it hideously expensive. I would posit that Apple no longer makes a prosumer Mac, but guessing Apple believes the 27" i7 iMac fills that void being faster than previous entry MP.

But I think a prosumer machine needs to be headless, not just marginally affordable. Maybe they'll beef up the Mac Mini same way BMW did with the 3 series when they pushed out the 1, but I somehow and not feeling good that is likely.

Your perception of my logic is reductionistic and therefore incomplete and inaccurate, but not completely off the mark.

Didn't the previous Mac Pro start at $2,499? The nMP starts at $2,999. Do you seriously think a $500 difference for base models takes the nMP out of the "prosumer" range? And from the sound of things, the nMP base model offers far more bang for the buck. I don't need or want a huge box of a computer that will allow me to fill it full of HDDs, cards, etc. That is not a prosumer configuration. That is industrial. The nMP base model will be sufficient for me all by itself for some time to come. I can buy an adapter to hook up my current FireWire Audio Digital Interface, my display port monitor and my two external FireWire HDDs. When I can afford it, and when the prices start to come down, I can begin to put together a TB2 set of peripherals. The total cost of the base model is a few hundred bucks more than the top iMac. I have a far better monitor than any Apple monitor, so why would I want another iMac. I am by no means wealthy, but do appreciate having tools that work well for what I want to do, and am willing to pay a bit more for that. Like I've said before, if I could downgrade the Mac Pro to something with less GPU power, and get it for $1,999, that would be ideal. But I can't, so this is as good as it will get. Besides, by paying the extra $1,000 now for higher performing CPU/GPU and architecture enhancements, I might even end up saving money because I will not need to replace this computer for a much longer time than I might have wanted to do with a lesser machine. There is not an obvious bottleneck in performance right now that will hamstring the nMP like the HDD in my current iMac, or the state of the monitor technology in current iMacs. I also do believe that Apple intends to harness the power of the GPUs for more than video editing with OpenCL. Apple has made it clear this is where they are going. I will be staying with MacOS probably for as long as it exists (unless Windows is replaced with something that is better than MacOS--highly unlikely in my lifetime). So, I can foresee buying a base model, upgrading RAM, maybe the SDD, and then adding peripherals for the next 4-7 years. That's a pretty decent lifespan. I can't wait. And as other posters have already chimed in, I am pretty sure there are lots of folks who are more or less thinking just like me.

 

[GoldenJoe]

Man...that's alot of money for a computer. I mean, I'm all for paying for quality, but it's honestly kind of hard to imagine getting ten grand out of a desktop...

 

[H2SO4]

I get why people dislike a machine with a lack of expansion slots in it. But it's probably time to let go of that whole concept for system expansion. (Internal cards handling audio have LONG suffered from potential interference problems when installed in the electrically noisy environment of the inside of a computer, for example.)

Same reason they don't often buy a two seater despite it being smaller and cheaper to run/buy than a bigger car.

Plain and simple you buy what suits you/what you can afford. Those things have the largest influence on your purchase. If it's business then what you can afford has more bearing and if it's for personal the what suits you may hove more influence, (if still a little less than what you can afford).

It's complicated but on a personal front many people will buy that Mercedes even though a valid case can be put forward for many viable and cheaper alternatives. Suddenly the sport package and metallic paint are essential options, ones we mignt attempt to justify by speaking about residuals. None of which make our jobs more productive.

For business it could be more cost, those crappy laptops they supply take 25 minutes to boot up in the morning and endure 15 mins worth of freezing freeze during the day when trying to open a PDF;
Lets say an employee earns £25K pa.
That's £0.20/minute or £8/day which over 250 working days = £2000pa, (you may well do something else whilst you are waiting, so call it £1000pa but that's still money the business must factor as a loss - every year). Where's the long game?


We will always find a way to justify what we want. Also I'm still confused as to who these Pros are. What makes them a Pro and me a consumer?

 

[Michael Scrip]

Man...that's alot of money for a computer. I mean, I'm all for paying for quality, but it's honestly kind of hard to imagine getting ten grand out of a desktop...

Lots of people do

Plus... Apple is not the only company who sells $10,000 workstations

 

[wikiverse]

Not sure you will need the Red Rocket You should be able to run a number of 4K layers realtime on this..

If you are Doing 4k work you should be on SSDs anyway. And they wouldn't require Raid specifically. But of course Redundant drives are a better option. I only use physical drives to back up onto now. SSDs are becoming affordable as work drives.

But like you say you are used to your workflow and that's what's important. But you'll never see me going back to windows and the constant Tweaking it need to keep it all working. Painful.

I Can see where you are going with your pricing but I've found docks and adaptors way cheaper and it's only going to become cheaper.

Synology and Dlink will stuart putting in TB in and the prices will really come down. But it's really in Intel's court to lower the Licence fee on TB and open it up more.

The fact remains though that Apple doesn't offer any sort of expandability and is 100% reliant on 3rd parties to do that for them. Given the very low uptake (and need) for Thunderbolt among most users, the prices will always remain prohibitively high for accessories into the forseeable future. TB is 3 years old and there are barely a handful of hard drives, enclosures or other accessories. There is no reason that would change with this computer - there simply isn't a mass market for Thunderbolt.

All that said, the Mac Pro is vastly more expensive than the old Mac Pro or a comparable PC when you factor in basic expandability (such as hard drives or simple PCI cards).

 

[Larry-K]

Those people will do fine with an iMac/Mac Mini/PC

That shows how little you know.

 

[Michael Scrip]

The fact remains though that Apple doesn't offer any sort of expandability and is 100% reliant on 3rd parties to do that for them. Given the very low uptake (and need) for Thunderbolt among most users, the prices will always remain prohibitively high for accessories into the forseeable future. TB is 3 years old and there are barely a handful of hard drives, enclosures or other accessories. There is no reason that would change with this computer - there simply isn't a mass market for Thunderbolt.

All that said, the Mac Pro is vastly more expensive than the old Mac Pro or a comparable PC when you factor in basic expandability (such as hard drives or simple PCI cards).

Maybe Thunderbolt will take-off now that there is finally a Mac Pro with Thunderbolt.

It's been in laptops for a while... but being in a pro desktop workstation might help adoption.

Who knows though...

 

[Larry-K]

Yeah the 4-core is truly pointless; Apple should have eaten the $300 premium the 6-core chip costs, and put that in the $2,999 model.

That, I might have pre-ordered.

 

[yinz]

That shows how little you know.

Enlighten me, instead of writing a generic condescending statement that has no meaning other than ad hominem attack.

Those very same people have been making do with the vary devices I've mentioned for the past 2-3 years. I don't see how it shows "how little" I know.

 

[MyopicPaideia]

But there's no need for a tubular design in a liquid-cooled machine. The on eyou cite, for example, is oil-cooled.

The Wilkes is actually air cooled and is the most efficient air cooled super computer in the world, and the 2nd most efficient overall. In the article, it appears you may have read it too fast. The oil cooled machine referred to is the one the Wilkes came in 2nd to in terms of efficiency and was built by a team in Tokyo.

However, your actual point is valid. Liquid cooled machines are shape neutral when it comes to cooling efficiency.

The original point made - asking why other high end pro machines are not also tubular designs and then citing the Wilkes super computer is a bit misleading and disappointing. That is a comparison between a huge supercomputer (the 166th most powerful computer made by man) that fills several hundred square feet, and a professional desktop workstation that fills less surface area than a tea saucer on a desk. Not really the best comparison.

Maybe the reason nobody else has done it yet is because they haven't been able to? Haven't thought of it? Didn't think it would be successful in the market? It sounds too much like Arthur Rock in the early 80's to be honest. The personal computer will never take off, etc. Or what about the music player before the iPod, the smartphone before the iPhone, the tablet computer before the iPad. Have a little bit of imagination.

If there is one thing that Apple has done in its history that has made it great, it is not being afraid to push the envelope on design language. Just look at the Macbook Air as another, slightly less dramatic, example - now literally every major and most minor computer manufacturer has an Air clone out there and a whole new class of laptop, the ultrabook, was created, killing the netbook craze overnight!

Have they made mistakes and/or failed on occasion with design and/or hardware choices? Heck yeah! But that list is a lot smaller than its counterpart.

Really a bit early to pass judgement on a machine that isn't even out in the wild yet. There seems to be overwhelming excitement from the demographic that are actually going to be in the market for these- seems most of the negativity is in general coming from people who were never int he market for this category of hardware in the first place and don't seem to know or want to educate themselves on how they will or are intended to be used.

Correct me if I am wrong!

 

[GJN]

If there is one thing that Apple has done in its history that has made it great, it is not being afraid to push the envelope on design language.

Important point. And in the nMP we now have the first powerful machine that has completely externalized all its expandability options including mass storage. This became possible with Thunderbolt or USB3+. No need for a big case with multiple HDD slots and associated extra cooling and power needs if you have an ample flash cache and Thunderbolt. It'll be interesting to see if and when other manufacturers follow suit.

 

[Spinland]

Enlighten me, instead of writing a generic condescending statement that has no meaning other than ad hominem attack.

Those vary same people have been making due with the vary devices I've mentioned for the past 2-3 years. I don't see how it shows "how little" I know.

Yes, I have been "making due [sic]" with the machines you cite, but they are limiting in my work and I have outgrown them. If not for knowing a new design was coming soon I would have upgraded to a Mac Pro over a year ago. Your assertion that I (since you seem to presume to speak for all small business owners using Macs) can continue to work satisfactorily on a lesser machine is incorrect.

 

[Spinland]

Also I'm still confused as to who these Pros are. What makes them a Pro and me a consumer?

My personal definition of a "Pro" in this context is that the Mac you purchase will be the tool to earn your primary paycheck, you expect to earn back the cost plus enough profit to live on, and you are allowed to deduct the purchase cost from your income tax bill.

 

[yinz]

Yes, I have been "making due [sic]" with the machines you cite, but they are limiting in my work and I have outgrown them. If not for knowing a new design was coming soon I would have upgraded to a Mac Pro over a year ago. Your assertion that I (since you seem to presume to speak for all small business owners using Macs) can continue to work satisfactorily on a lesser machine is incorrect.

Thanks for pointing out my mistake, I fixed it in the original post. How has your workflow been impacted by the machine? Did you not upgrade your Mac Pro? Has a Hackintosh or PC ever been an alternative?

 

[Spinland]

Thanks for pointing out my mistake, I fixed it in the original post. How has your workflow been impacted by the machine? Did you not upgrade your Mac Pro? Has a Hackintosh or PC ever been an alternative?

I don't (yet) own a Mac Pro, hence my need to be making do with what I have. The number one benefit to me will be more than four cores per machine, as well as a machine that doesn't force me into a specific display (such as the iMac). I already have a desk full of displays that serve me well and I don't intend to have to remove one to make room. The new Minis are fun little beasts and I have a quad core "server" model working as a render node but, again, only four cores limits it. Some of my recent 3d animation work has used models approaching a million polygons, plus dynamic fur that moves in the wind and by gravity. Current render times are becoming an issue and I intend by adding a nMP with at least six very fast cores to help bring that down.

Part of making do has been financial, and I'm at that point now where I'm on the verge of some fairly lucrative animation gigs but my hardware is holding me back. I expect the nMP to pay for itself in decent time.

As to the other alternatives, I will never run a "hackintosh." Apart from the hassle, risk and needing to invest extra time in care and feeding of such, I consider them to be unethical. I used to use Windows-based workstations but got fed up not only with the way Windows works (I cut my teeth on Unix, and OS X is basically *nix with a sexy GUI), but also dealing with driver issues and other incompatibilities with my software suite. At my last "day job" I was moved into an all-Mac lab, fell in love with the environment, and vowed never to go back. It's a walled garden, to be sure, but I can always rely on what's going to be inside and how it will work with the software and drivers. Above all else, I want my tools to "just work" with minimal need for care and feeding, and thus far Apple has stepped up to that.

 

[prowlmedia]

Sorry but it will perform in photoshop about as good as a mid range desktop. The 4 core xeon is actually slower than the haswell i7's.

My point is that ANY desktop is fine for shifting a few static pixels.

 

[ender78]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1614365/ is close.

I found the survey very interesting. Most of the add ons were either USB3 or SATA/eSATA one SSD accelerators. The majority of those upgrades are moot in the new baseline new MacPro.

 

[koban4max]

a keyboard and mouse wouldn't fit in the box.. duh.

i know that...but they should give it in a different box..give credit to buy a mouse and keyboard.

 

[Spinland]

i know that...but they should give it in a different box..give credit to buy a mouse and keyboard.

Heh. I know that I don't speak for anyone else but in my case I already have a cabled Apple keyboard, a wireless one, a Magic Mouse, a Magic Trackpad, a Wacom tablet, and two regular wireless mice. Last thing I need is a computer to come with more of that stuff.

 

[Spinland]

Depends entirely on what the business requirements are in one's locality. An LLC has a state and federal income passthrough to the individual but that has nothing to do with local business laws. Many localities have a business property tax on the value of equipment owned or leased at the end of the year. The tax is on any business regardless of how it's organized (sole proprietor, LLC, S corp, C corp, etc.

I agree that there are different tax burdens borne by different businesses in different areas. I was just providing a counter-example to your assertion of "no business." Again it was just a minor quibble.

----------

Most wind-tunnels have a square cross-section. Google "NASA AMES Research Center".

Well, I stand partially corrected and guilty of extrapolating my own experiences to all cases. The wind tunnels I am used to, by dint of a good friend working at the Ohio State subsonic and transonic tunnels when I was an undergrad, are oval in internal cross section if not outright circular (though the outbuildings are rectangular so you have to be inside to see). I assumed that was a standard configuration.

 

[flat five]

i know that...but they should give it in a different box..give credit to buy a mouse and keyboard.

an alternate theory (one less funny than them simply not fitting in the box) has to do with the price..

with the base quad, we've already seen them removing one stick of ram (as in- there is one empty slot if you buy the entry model).. i can't really think of any other reason as to why they'd do that other than trying to hit the target price of $2999.99.. (well, maybe they've done that to make the 6core config appear more attractive but using 1stick of ram in that game still seems odd (to me))

i imagine the keyboard/mouse also suffered this same fate as the ram.. if those were packaged in then the price people see at first click would be $3099.99 (or something).. they need the '2' in there.