One of them has 7 slots -
and a load of USB, SATA etc. that the Mac Pro puts in one of its PCIe slots.
To repeat: the ability to support 8x PCIe slots with 8 or more lanes each
on a single CPU system is a new feature of the very latest Xeon-W processors. There aren't a lot of 8-slot, 2TB RAM, single-CPU boards available to buy right now, but then there are ZERO Mac Pros to buy at the moment. This is not some magic technology exclusive to Apple.
Of course, the other possibility is that maybe, just maybe, there aren't a lot of 8-slot systems
because there isn't any demand for them in a general-purpose workstation... If you have such a specialist requirement then most likely you'd be looking at specialist equipment - like this:
12 slots, support for 10 GPUs, 3TB RAM:
https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/4U/4028/SYS-4028GR-TR2.cfm - but don't start making feature-for-feature comparisons between that and the Mac Pro because its not remotely a general-purpose workstation, nor am I suggesting you'd buy the MB for a kitchen table build... but it
is the sort of thing you might want to consider
over a general-purpose workstation if you have a GPU-heavy workflow.
The point is they
were cheaper - there was always a powerful,
headless workstation around the $3000 mark (unfortunately, since 2012 that's been the trashcan and even if you like the trashcan concept its been hopelessly out of date for the last few years).
Apple have. doubled the entry price of the Mac. Pro - and with a configuration that even you admit doesn't make sense. End of argument.
Nonsense - if
nobody was supposed to buy it it wouldn't be on the price list... Plenty of people buy the base models of every other Mac model. There's no excuse for the entry level not to be a viable product.
Meanwhile, if the 28-core, quad GPU beast that the demoed at WWDC is going to be so amazing, why didn't they announce the price of
that? Do they think we're stupid and expected that sort of config - including an $8000 guide-price CPU - to cost under $20k? Truth is, we have no idea how much the "beast" configurations of this are going to cost.
If I didn't grasp the concept of "paying for niceness" then I wouldn't own any Apple stuff and would't even be reading this forum. It has
always been the case that I could "get the job done" with Windows or Linux, but Mac OS has been just a bit nicer and worth paying a modest premium for. In the last few years, though, Apple have been testing just how much they can drive up that premium - they seem to have given up on the idea of competing with the PC world in favour of wringing the last drop out of loyalists.
Playing the "real Pros are going to be happy to pay for the functionality of the Mac Pro" card and then bringing up the "paying for niceness" and Apple Watch really shows up the cognitive dissonance here. One of these things has the function of being
a piece of jewellery and the other has the function of sitting under the desk and crunching numbers as fast as possible. One is something that (...certainly for the versions costing $1000 or more) people might want to hand down to their kids, the other is something that the target market will be getting on a 4 year lease for tax efficiency.
One of these things is not the same as the other.
Some people are still living in the good old decade of 1985-1995 where Macs had radically different hardware (like true 32-bit CPUs and fully bitmapped graphics) and software giving them technical capabilities far beyond the capability of PCs (kludgy 8/16 bit hybrids running a CP/M knockoff that couldn't even take advantage of full 32-bit Intel CPUs when they arrived). That's not the world in 2019 - Mac OS is
arguably a bit nicer than Windows 10 or Linux for some things, and Mac hardware is PC hardware in a nicer box (...with a bit of 'Only Sudso has SudsoLux(tm) Suds' in the form of T2 chips and Thunderbolt - Mac users only care about those because Apple has forced them to by - e.g. - making/endorsing displays that don't have DisplayPort inputs and not having internal expansion). Pro graphics/audio/video tools that once were the domain of Macs because DOS just couldn't hack it are now, predominantly, multi-platform, if not Windows-only. FCPx/Logic may be nice - but they are not unique. Having Unix on a machine for web development/scientific computing is handy - but not a must-have in a world of containers/VMs, the cloud and Linux on cheap commodity hardware.
That's Apple's real problem with the Mac Pro - with laptops and all-in-ones they can distinguish themselves by being thinner, lighter, having better displays, trackpads, keyboards (well, 4/5 ain't bad!) and looking cool when you whip one out in a meeting. The Mac Pro is a box that sits under a desk and blows cool air over a collection of Intel, AMD and Foxconn (or whoever) parts. Any "true Scotsma... sorry, Pro" will judge it on how fast it can crunch numbers c.f. commodity hardware, not how cool the grille looks. They will also bear in mind that MacOS is a dead end: with Windows/Linux you can expand your computing power indefinitely using the cloud or racks of high-density servers (and, no, turning the Mac Pro on its side and bolting it in a rack doesn't make it a high-density server). Apple won't let you run Mac OS on anything other than a Mac...
What the Mac Pro offers is a generic Xeon tower with (a) bling and (b) more PCIe slots than most people need (...but still less than specialist hardware for GPU-based computing). It may be a hit with the niche-within-a-niche of people who have pro needs/aspirations and don't have to justify their expenditure or are badly locked in to Mac-only software (and depending on a single supplier for hardware - especially given Apple's track record on the last MP - is not a wise position to be in). I'm sure Dr Dre will buy one for his personal studio.
Except for possibly the
most relevant issue to this discussion: The critics of the 2012 Mac Pro cylinder were right on the money, something Apple eventually had to publicly admit.
Here's a question: Apple pretty much invented modern personal computing (or at least, was the first to commercialise many of the key innovations) but they were flat-out beat by DOS. Then, Windows had a
decade horribilus from 2006-2016 with Windows Vista/7/8 and the early days of Windows 10 - while, simultaneously, web apps and mobile were undermining Office's stranglehold. Over that period, MacOS was stronger, more stable and more powerful than ever. So why does Mac
still have such a small market share c.f. Windows and virtually no presence in the corporate market? Is that success?
Their current stratospheric stock value is based almost entirely on iPhone sales - a market that is reaching saturation, faces massive competition from Android and other phones and is hugely dependent on brand loyalty and fashion (and we're reaching the stage where more and more young adults can say "my dad had an iPhone"...) - when that bubble bursts, a strong foothold in general computing could be a great comfort...
