Mac Pro Turns 20 Today, Five Months After Apple Killed It

[deconstruct60]

1.

https://www.wired.com/2011/11/adobe-kills-mobile-flash/

2. I insinuated it helped kill it sooner.

Mobile flash didn't even exist until 2008-2009 timeframe. It was essentially a toddler ( 2011 - 2009 = 2 ) with little to no traction. The general Flash ecosystem was much older and deeper traction. The iPhone blocking it just kept it out of a category where didn't even have traction yet. 2009

from the linked article

" ... Despite attempts to breathe life into Flash on other mobile devices -- namely, Android and BlackBerry OS -- Adobe has failed to deliver a consistently stable version of the platform on a smartphone or tablet. ..."

From other reports over time the internals of the Flash code base was a twisted mess of poo-poo. In part why there was a never ending stream of security problems and fixes.

And it way more than just Apple pushing the HTML5/Javascript direction. Apple made contributions, but not just them before the letter got written.

 

[germanbeer007]

Mobile flash didn't even exist until 2008-2009 timeframe. It was essentially a toddler ( 2011 - 2009 = 2 ) with little to no traction. The general Flash ecosystem was much older and deeper traction. The iPhone blocking it just kept it out of a category where didn't even have traction yet. 2009

from the linked article

" ... Despite attempts to breathe life into Flash on other mobile devices -- namely, Android and BlackBerry OS -- Adobe has failed to deliver a consistently stable version of the platform on a smartphone or tablet. ..."

From other reports over time the internals of the Flash code base was a twisted mess of poo-poo. In part why there was a never ending stream of security problems and fixes.

And it way more than just Apple pushing the HTML5/Javascript direction. Apple made contributions, but not just them before the letter got written.

again, it accelerated the death. objectively true.

 

[deconstruct60]

again, it accelerated the death. objectively true.

Narrowed to the tiny fragile corner case, also objectively true that your analogy doesn't map at all onto the Mac Pro 2013.

 

[deconstruct60]

I have a mac studio sitting here on my desk and my biggest gripe by far is that you can't just upgrade the storage. As big as the stupid ugly metal brick is, it doesn't have removable m.2 slots. And I would LOVE removable m.2 slots.

As large as the Max Studio is it still has to also cover cooling the maximum sized Ultra running high end workload without making more noise than Apple's noise level constraints.

There isn't a ton of empty , grossly underulitzed space in the Mac Studio interior. The heat sinks (and their attachment points ) and dual fans are substantively large. There really isn't room for a secondary drive with a M.2 slot.

The area of the logic board (since parallel to the system footprint) isn't that large either.

iFixit teardown of original one.

1:21 get to see 'bottom' of board where Apple attached their NAND module(s).
[ Not particularly a 'spare' slot since that is how to get to the higher capacity options for the single internal SSD .
Need second slot because shorter NAND boards pushed into a corner becuase there is no 'extra' room,. ]

3:00 the outer gold box from the Max chip in this instance is the boundary need to have for the much larger footprint Ultra.

Pretty good chance the M5 Ultra is an even substantively larger footprint. That might trigger a bigger board ( or redesign to make board perpendicular to footprint). However, if constrained to the same 7x7 square that even more pressure where there is no room for an additional M.2 2290 'slot' .

As big as it is, it's a stupid design to not have easily upgradable storage.

For what is in the Ultra version, it isn't that big.

 

[underthere]

6,1 is still my dream Mac!

 

[underthere]

6,1 is still my cream Mac!

The machine hasn’t been “discontinued for good”. Apple said they had “no plans to update it” at the current time.

So there is hope!

 

[HiVolt]

Thunderbolt will never replace native PCIe. It adds extra overhead and the bandwidth can't even saturate a single gen 5 SSD.

 

[germanbeer007]

Narrowed

except no, my original post insinuated with the literal words "killed...sooner". nothing changed since then.

objectively true that your analogy doesn't map at all onto the Mac Pro 2013.

sorry but nope. what one believes how analogies matches or mismatches with the topic is a subjective matter, not an objective matter.

appreciate the responses, but have a good one from here out. ✌️

 

[deconstruct60]

The machine hasn’t been “discontinued for good”. Apple said they had “no plans to update it” at the current time.

. So there is hope!

For a. 'Mac Pro' I suspect probably not. The plain 'Macbook' name left and then came back, but left again. Apple could have used 'MacBook' for the more affordable model but when with Macbook NEO in part because it was a substantially different system.

If a system came back placed above the Mac Studio it would be a substantially different system than the legay MP from the 20006-2010 era. It would not likely be the same approach ( non modular RAM , intergrated GPU/accelerators , etc) or the old classic price point. The 'Mac Pro' has too much baggage on the name. They should just pick another suffix to do something 'new'.

A Mac Ultra ( since it probably has an Ultra) might be a better name use than the other 'Ultra' suffies that Apple appears to bve slapping on products. Or Max XX. (twenthy or double X ).

The 'Mac Studio' obviously could not work with the 'iMac' name it was replacing for the large screen version. it is about just as large of a 'name gap' disconnect.

If it had 1-2 slots, an Ultra would still not be a "mac pro" in the legacy sense but would get past the donstaint of having one , and only one, internal drive. That was goofy in 2013. Apple as much as admitted openly that it was goofy in April 2017. It is still goofy in 2027 and will still be goofy in 2037.

There is a chance that Apple is going to lean on 3rd party solutions like. Sonnet Techs xMac enclosures. If Apple leasves a gap in product coverage there for a several years there is decent some set of 3rd parties will partially fill the gap. ( "Tower' enclosure instead of xMacs rack orientation, etc. ) . However, Apple could essentially decide to 'Sherlock' at least the xMac Studio by doing something just overlays that space.

Apple doing sever chips and system that are hyperfocused on running Private Cloud Compute OS/enviroment that is not likely to help a 'mac pro' system.

It will be easier to tell if Apple reveals some details about how the M5 Ultra (and M 7 Ultra ) is put together. The M5 pro/max was left a bit opaque by them.

 

[deconstruct60]

Thunderbolt will never replace native PCIe. It adds extra overhead and the bandwidth can't even saturate a single gen 5 SSD.

Apple could slpap a Oculink x4 socket on a future Studio and that would remove those points and still wouldn't have internal slots.

Thundrebolt was never trhing to completely replace PCIe; only transport it.

If Apple has limited die edge space to either put a x16 PCI-e controller onto a next gen or a yet another memory controller to feed data to their substantively enhanced AI compute engine ... pretty good chance the PCie lanes loose.

 

[theluggage]

Apple leaving Flash behind didn't really kill it , only slowed it until something else could kill it. Not a mostly Apple effort.

Flash died by a thousand cuts, but I'd say that Apple and the iPhone were responsible for at least 250 of those, by popularising modern smartphones and standards-based web browsers on which large, legacy software bases were useless.

2. I insinuated it helped kill it sooner.

I recall going into a Best Buy (during the very brief period when both Best Buy UK and Mobile Flash existed...) specifically to try some of my own - and other - Flash web apps on their range of Android tablets. Most of them either just plain didn't work or were unusable because of either screen size or that the controls hadn't been coded to correctly respond to touch events. Even things like simple video players - because many Flash developers rolled their own video controls from scratch. My impression was that flash-for-Android had mainly been created to create a tick-box marketing advantage over iOS rather than based on any sound reasonong.

Without dependable, usable compatibility with the vast base of Flash "legacy applications" mobile Flash went the same way as Windows Mobile and the former proprietary monopoly lost out to fresh thinking... Developers wanted to support iPhone and Android, so they looked to tech like standards-based HTML5/JS and native Apps which ultimately supplanted Flash...

Even Windows took a haircut as a result of not being able to leverage its legacy software base on mobile. Windows may still dominate but it has fallen back a lot since the near-total monopoly of the 1990s (when Apple was circling the drain and even IBM couldn't compete with "Wintel").

 

[germanbeer007]

Flash died by a thousand cuts, but I'd say that Apple and the iPhone were responsible for at least 250 of those, by popularising modern smartphones and standards-based web browsers on which large, legacy software bases were useless.



I recall going into a Best Buy (during the very brief period when both Best Buy UK and Mobile Flash existed...) specifically to try some of my own - and other - Flash web apps on their range of Android tablets. Most of them either just plain didn't work or were unusable because of either screen size or that the controls hadn't been coded to correctly respond to touch events. Even things like simple video players - because many Flash developers rolled their own video controls from scratch. My impression was that flash-for-Android had mainly been created to create a tick-box marketing advantage over iOS rather than based on any sound reasonong.

Without dependable, usable compatibility with the vast base of Flash "legacy applications" mobile Flash went the same way as Windows Mobile and the former proprietary monopoly lost out to fresh thinking... Developers wanted to support iPhone and Android, so they looked to tech like standards-based HTML5/JS and native Apps which ultimately supplanted Flash...

Even Windows took a haircut as a result of not being able to leverage its legacy software base on mobile. Windows may still dominate but it has fallen back a lot since the near-total monopoly of the 1990s (when Apple was circling the drain and even IBM couldn't compete with "Wintel").

yep, a lot of flash-only sites required "hover" states, something you couldn't do over mobile.

they needed to be remade anyways, better to just make an html5 version