Mac Pro Launching in December with Xeon Processors, Dual FirePro GPUs and PCIe Flash Storage

[korgri]

List price

I'll take a 'made in china' version for base $1299.
Didja notice in that new promo movie there are
no asians building that new mac pro, when
you can find asians in nearly every single
piece of other promo material?

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I'll bet this is the last iteration of the Mac Pro,
and they only reason it got released is that it's
likely one of Job's last pet projects and the
fellas all made a commitment to him.
Betcha they lose money on it and it's
gone in three years. Or like the G4 Cube
got flattened down into the mac mini,
this mac pro will get flattened
down into a hockey puck.
The Apple Puck,
with Apple's A10 'Slapshot'
cpu/gpu

Oh, god, I can't wait.

 

[blackcrayon]

gone in three years. Or like the G4 Cube
got flattened down into the mac mini,
this mac pro will get flattened
down into a hockey puck.
The Apple Puck,
with Apple's A10 'Slapshot'
cpu/gpu

Oh, god, I can't wait.

You joke, but if they made a new Mac mini with 3 thunderbolt 2 ports and the fastest CPU they can fit and it's like $799 for a quad core, and you didn't need a fast internal GPU and external ones work through TB...

 

[milo]

likely one of Job's last pet projects

No way, he was notorious for hating the Mac Pro and wanted to dump it completely. Doing a complete overhaul of the machine is a complete U turn from his point of view.

 

[Larry-K]

No way, he was notorious for hating the Mac Pro and wanted to dump it completely. Doing a complete overhaul of the machine is a complete U turn from his point of view.

That's because you don't need a workhorse computer to be a "Visionary".

 

[Philter]

What peripheral mess? Just about every audio rig I've seen has stuff hanging out of the back of it, since there aren't many audio PCI cards that don't have some type of external device connected to them pretty much by definition (breakout boxes, connections to rack mount gear, etc). The new Mac Pro would just make it more convenient to add or replace devices that already had external components. There's definitely a downside if you have a huge investment in PCI based stuff and don't want to get an enclosure, but I still don't see the "mess" aspect in terms of what a pro audio setup already looks like.

You don't understand. Apple sacrificed function for form with this thing. We don't need form in a recording studio dude, the computer sits in a machine room! So basically Apple takes away expandability while offering nothing practical in return. And what studio without a proper machine room is going to have $3k or $4k to plunk down on a hot mess like this thing?

 

[blackcrayon]

You don't understand. Apple sacrificed function for form with this thing. We don't need form in a recording studio dude, the computer sits in a machine room! So basically Apple takes away expandability while offering nothing practical in return. And what studio without a proper machine room is going to have $3k or $4k to plunk down on a hot mess like this thing?

I don't see where the expandability has been taken away. You can connect a lot more high bandwidth devices with 6 thunderbolt ports and 4 USB3 ports than you could on the old model Mac Pro. And, though I guess it's possible, no audio gear I've seen is going to need more bandwidth than a Thunderbolt 2 port supplies. They certainly took away the ability to use your old PCI cards (without an expansion chassis), but the new model appears to be more expandable than the old. And of course an interface change has happened before with the Mac pro desktop in the audio world- do you remember when they switched to PCIe from PCI-X? Progress has to happen at some point.

And in terms of not needing form- aren't you agreeing with my previous statement? If it's all hidden away in the control room, who cares if there are more devices hanging out of the back or not? And again, this ignores the fact that the CURRENT Mac Pro has likely tons of stuff hanging out of the back in an audio environment. I know it will be a lot easier to swap out gear using Thunderbolt stuff. Hell, in some cases it could mean buying less gear because it can be so easily moved from machine to machine- most people aren't willing to open something up and swap a PCIe card on a whim.

 

[aloshka]

My prediction is that they won't be available this year. 4K displays are way too expensive and are a niche product at the moment. Even more niche than a Mac Pro. Apple stopped being a niche company years ago. When they are more affordable, Apple will be the first one to mass market them though I bet.

Retina screens on a laptop were beyond a niche and yet Apple chose to mainstream them. They are also insanely expensive.

How is this any different? If no one pushes the screens, they will continue being a niche. I think until apple comes up with one, they will be dead in the water since windows (even 8.1) could not scale dpi if their life depended on it. Osx however, does good scaling and a lot of apps now support hidpi.

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Was really expecting a new iMac-thin Cinema Display with the laminated screen treatment. The current lineup of Apple displays looks really outdated in stores sitting next to the much-improved and less reflective iMacs. I suppose it could still happen as a quiet update in the coming weeks.

Yes!!! I thought the same thing

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I think we glimpsed the new TB display in one of the parts of the Keynote.
It certainly wasn't an imac and it seemed a different form factor than the current TB display.
I seriously thought "why do they have that HP display? Oh wait..."

Just checked the store, nothing.

Where in the keynote ?? Meaning time?

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Bottom line, if you're a CUDA-dependant workflow, start yelling at the software developers now to get their stuff moved over to OpenCL.

You are using an apple computer and yet you are talking about having more open software solutions vs proprietary things like CUDA and how it's at the mercy of nvidia.

You do realize Apple is ALL proprietary and the most closed software/hardware ever developed. And if it's ok because it just works, why not use nvidia because it just works. Oh wait, one closed system decided not to support the other closed system and now we are stuck hoping that one will eventually work with the other... Or that they both decide to use an open standard (well in this case just need one to decide)

This isn't a rant, it's just where technology is headed. You pick your camp and you stick with it and hope they take care of you. Because wanting one thing outside of your ecosystem means you have to switch to another one and probably lose a lot of what you love

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Still think my idea of selling 'cubes' that integrate together to form a larger hypercube would have been better.

Sell a processing cube.....sell a rendering cube...sell a DSP cube...sell a storage cube...etc.

And it would also be a shout out to the original cube.

Anyone wanna lend me a few Billion so I can get these things made?

I'm in!!!

 

[Ezlivin]

I'll take a 'made in china' version for base $1299.
Didja notice in that new promo movie there are
no asians building that new mac pro, when
you can find asians in nearly every single
piece of other promo material?
….

Oh, god, I can't wait.

I would gladly pay more for an American-made product. I don't mind handing over extra cash knowing that more people in this and other states are gainfully employed, that they have a safe working environment and humane hours because of federal regulations. I have no problem paying extra for something when it helps the people of my country.

But maybe I think different because I'm a disabled American veteran.

 

[mtennes]

IMHO, just a Mac Mini on Steroids

I'll take my MacPro (al) tower at eight times the volume with it's 16TB of internal disk storage and specialized PCI cards that tailors it to my PROfessional needs.

To me this new MacPro is just a Mac mini on steroids. As a loyal Apple customer and fan since the Apple /// & Lisa, I think Apple has excluded a demographic of their professional community. How many Pro users can live on 256GB (or even 1TB) of storage? It almost precludes the need for more.

Sure it looks sexy and small, but to match what I have now, it will require over $1000 in cables and enclosures that my MacPro tower has no need for. For guys like me that don't have a server farm in a closet somewhere, how sexy will my desk look with with a mound of cables a foot deep and enclosures that dwarf the nice looking unit. You won't even notice it with the cable ugliness all around it.

...disappointment...

 

[Setmose]

It is possible that both can be dedicated for graphics. It may even be possible that vice-versa, that resources of both GPUs can be used by an OpenCL application, like if I had no display hooked up to the Mac Pro just a terminal for serial port output then I could use both GPUs as 100% dedicated to OpenCL processing. I'm just not sure how the OpenCL application will contend if it is fighting with the graphics driver over processing resources.

Neither of us know if either of us is correct, but I do know that the under-lying operating system code would be much cleaner if each GPU had a clean break as to its purpose, rather than advanced code needed to virtualize both GPUs as arbitrary resources to either or both graphics and arbitrary processing.

It is clear from what I've read about the Mac Pro that built-in apps running on it are using the GPU for processing, so the underlying code of the OS would have to be constantly checking what resources are available on each GPU to processing instructions faster than using the main CPU, whether it needs to use both GPUs for processing or just one, or if both GPUs are busy then just use the main cpu. It can get pretty complicated. The memory of each GPU cannot be shared with the other, data on the memory of one GPU would have to be copied manually to the other. If OS X Mavericks has virtualized the two GPUs to appear as one entity then that would make it easier but that would be quite an amazing feat. Again a clean break of one GPU just for graphics and one GPU just for non-graphical processing would be much easier to implement under the hood and would be the exact same setup as an Intel Xeon Server with one high-end graphics card and one Xeon Phi card.

Good reply, thanks! I guess then that no pre-benchmark gaming calculations would be valid based on AMD Crossfire performance estimates. I wouldn't buy this machine purposed for gaming, but I do like gaming. I wonder if Boot Camp will even be supported?

 

[twoodcc]

as much as i want this, i'm gonna hold off for now. maybe the next version when apple has 4k displays to go with it

 

[CodeJingle]

Good reply, thanks! I guess then that no pre-benchmark gaming calculations would be valid based on AMD Crossfire performance estimates. I wouldn't buy this machine purposed for gaming, but I do like gaming. I wonder if Boot Camp will even be supported?

I just found this, so maybe you are right. Have to wait till the darn thing comes out to actually see how the cards are used http://www.amd.com/us/PRODUCTS/WORKSTATION/GRAPHICS/CROSSFIRE-PRO/Pages/crossfire-pro.aspx