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New Mac Pro Nearing Release as Apple Advises Technicians How to Place Computer in DFU Mode
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I'm always amused at these discussions of the price of Macs. Many years ago (early 1990s) I was able to get a Mac IIx on my desk at work. CPU was a Motorola 68030 @ 16 MHz. It had 1 MB of RAM (I later upgraded to 4 MB), with a 40 MB hard disk and the Apple 13" color monitor. I don't remember exactly what I (actually, the company) paid, but, according to a Wikipedia entry, that computer listed at $9369 in Sept., 1990. Adjusted for inflation that is roughly $20K in today's dollars.
The first Mac I bought with my own money was the Mac IIci. List price was about $6300, equivalent to about $12,900 today.
I would love to have the new Mac Pro. However, for my needs, the new one looks like massive overkill in terms of capability and probably price when adequately configured. The base model is not what the people in the target market are going to be looking at. The base model could be considered as simply infrastructure waiting to be configured so as to reach the intended potential based on whatever the intended use case.
Currently, I have a mid-2010 (5,1) Mac Pro that is still working fine.
The first Mac I bought with my own money was the Mac IIci. List price was about $6300, equivalent to about $12,900 today.
I would love to have the new Mac Pro. However, for my needs, the new one looks like massive overkill in terms of capability and probably price when adequately configured. The base model is not what the people in the target market are going to be looking at. The base model could be considered as simply infrastructure waiting to be configured so as to reach the intended potential based on whatever the intended use case.
Currently, I have a mid-2010 (5,1) Mac Pro that is still working fine.
I'm always amused when people bring up the price of historical Macs in order to justify the prices of modern Macs. The truth is that the prices you quote and today's prices do not exist in a vacuum. That IIci in 1989 was cross-shopped against the ALR 486/25 I was using at the time which cost about $8,000 (no display in that price). As always the Macs cost more, but they weren't that much more. The desktop computer market in 1990 is nothing at all like the market is today. They all cost a lot more back then, Macs and PCs alike.
It's a different world now and people rightly have different concepts when it comes to their expectations for price, performance, and value. The 7,1 Mac Pro isn't being cross-shopped against an inflation-adjusted ALR 486. It's being cross-shopped against Windows boxes from vendors in 2019 and the price to performance ratio that those other platforms bring today.
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WiFi exists on the 7,1 Mac Pro just so that AirDrop can be used. They don't expect people to actually rely on it.
Sure, there is going to be heavy use of Ethernet but they put in WiFi regardless, so they should make it the latest version for this price. It’s future proofing it. WiFi 6 routers are out now and it brings a significant speed improvement.
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You know this rationale first hand? And why not include an even older version of WiFi? Makes no sense, you include the latest version for it to be future proof, especially at the price these machines are selling for.
To be fair - that was pretty much my point: "If you can't contemplate Windows or Linux as an alternative then maybe the Mac Pro is for you." There are plenty of pro audio and video packages for Windows.
I certainly wouldn't pick Linux for music production (if you think Reaper has a horrible UI you clearly haven't looked at Ardour... although it looks pretty) but for things like web development (which would be my 'business case' for any new system), database work, scientific computing, Linux can be 'Now we're cooking with gas!'.
My 'business case' for a new Mac would be web development and, today, Linux or Windows (most likely Windows + Linux Subsystem for Windows) would be just as good for that.
I only mess around with Logic Pro X strictly for my own amusement - but it's about the only Mac-exclusive software I depend on - and I actually quite like Reaper, esp. for dealing with external MIDI and things like making gapless 'albums'. Logic's advantages are increasingly looking like superficial cosmetics and the huge bundled collection of instruments/effects. As I accumulate more 3rd party 'instruments' Reaper looks more and more attractive (the killer will be if the forthcoming VCV rack plug-in is VST only, which seems likely) - as I say, though, that's really a aside Logic isn't my "pro" use-case.
(A few years ago I'd have said that the Mac was better for audio driver issues/latency etc. but today you might want to google "T2 audio problems" and convince yourself that those have been fixed first).
I have consciously avoided the T2 and do not own a Mac with one (T1, yes). I briefly considered a 2018 mini and it would work fine as a render node for Compressor, but the audio and Bluetooth issues put me off to it for core production.
Windows has three legit options for video; Premiere, Resolve and Media Composer...I actually have one more on the Mac than Windows and that’s Final Cut Pro X, which is what I chose along with Logic Pro X. Resolve would be my second choice.
I really don’t care to spend any more time in the Adobe ecosystem than I need to because paying monthly for big fixes and sloth-like development is just not my idea of progress or good value for the customer.
Reaper is incredibly powerful, and while I respect the app, I have zero desire to build a workflow around it.
Yes, Linux is clearly a good choice for front and backend web development, but I can set up just about any flavor of Linux as a VM in Parallels and I’m also cooking with gas. Linux in the backend is probably the best platform for servers at this point.
Where Windows is is the sheer number of hobbyist or consumer things that Apple and the Mac just ignore. I have an older Core 2 Duo Dell that I can tinker with or play with things that simply don’t run on the Mac.
Again, the Mac Pro is not for me...yet. If I see the value in spending that sort of money on a workstation because I have outstripped my i9 iMac, I won’t hesitate to get one. Would I like it to be cheaper, sure, who wouldn’t. Do I expect Apple to alter how they make these decisions, no... no, I do not.
My explanation may lack a cold rationality, and Apple does lot of things wrong, but they get a lot of things right while Windows and Android are just two sides of the same crappy coin, a coin that cost me countless lost hours in a past life. I am simply getting too old to have any more of my time wasted when I just want things to work. Yes, Windows 10 is better, it’s not 2002 and it’s not XP, but it is still Windows and some things will never change.
Even Apple needs to know this...macOS Catalina and iOS 13 haven’t exactly been jewels in the crown for stability, refinement and elegance. Sort your s**t out, Apple!
> I briefly considered a 2018 mini and it would work fine as a render node for Compressor, but the audio and Bluetooth issues put me off to it for core production.
I was contemplating getting a cheap refurb 2018 Mac Mini. Can you elaborate more on this issues?
I was contemplating getting a cheap refurb 2018 Mac Mini. Can you elaborate more on this issues?
You quoted my definition. “Proper desktops have brand agnostic user replaceable parts.“
I didn't know that. I will check those out. But my main point is that most of the industry uses nvidia and thus while it is technically possible to use these frameworks on AMD, i think people will still be used using nvidia.
Yup all my data scientist colleagues were saying it wasn’t possible to I had to prove them wrong
Why do people use “proper” in place “my preferred”?
Your definition “proper” is somebody else’s very definition of “completely unnecessary” and in this case would be Apple’s definition of “our worst nightmare”. It gets extremely difficult to QA both OS and applications software when you’ve got thousands/millions of combinations of hardware that might be in a system.
Because they are different. My preferred desktop has specific components while a proper desktop has components that can be swapped out. For example, you could build your own computer with all of the parts you want and while it would be a proper desktop it likely wouldn't be my preferred desktop.
It sounds like those people don't need a desktop. Maybe the just want a laptop with a larger display. Which is fine because Apple already makes an iMac for them.
No one is suggesting apple has to QA every combination out there. All we want is for them to use standard parts without soldering them to the board. If someone buys RAM that doesn't work they can exchange it. Apple never needs to be involved. Or by nightmare do you mean that Apple can't force people to pay $500 for $50 in parts? Sure, this reintroduces the 25% premium that hardware manufactures (*ehem* WD *ehem) use to charge for 'Apple' devices, but at least it makes hardware available. It's not like Apple is keeping all of their configurations stocked at every Best Buy.
Not correct. Your “proper” desktop is merely your description of your preferred desktop.
My nephew thinks a proper desktop has a see-through case and lots of colored LEDs, and the ones on the heat sink fan are to be blue.
Now that’s a proper desktop! Just ask him. He’ll tell you.
I don't need to ask him because he is correct. A proper desktop would give you the ability to add those things. That is the point; a proper desktop is one that the end user can customize.
Now a “proper desktop” needs a see-through case so we can can dress it up with LEDs and watch them spin?
OK, cool, you and my 10-year old nephew are in agreement about that
I for one do not think a desktop needs a see-through case to be “proper”, but everyone has their own definition of “proper” if you’re going to re-define “proper” to mean “my preferred”.
Not sure why you think you’re the arbiter of a “proper desktop”; it seems rather presumptuous (and possibly even delusional) but if it includes a plexiglas side-panel and blue LEDs on the heat sink fan, my nephew is all in on the “proper”-ness. Should you use green LEDs, however, it is anything but proper.
This reminds me of people who argue that iPhones need a “proper” OS that can be “properly” customized
😂
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Now a “proper desktop” needs a see-through case so we can can dress it up with LEDs and watch them spin?
OK, cool, you and my 10-year old nephew are in agreement about that
I for one do not think a desktop needs a see-through case to be “proper”, but everyone has their own definition of “proper” if you’re going to re-define “proper” to mean “my preferred”.
Not sure why you think you’re the arbiter of a “proper desktop”; it seems rather presumptuous (and possibly even delusional) but if it includes a plexiglas side-panel and blue LEDs on the heat sink fan, my nephew is all in on the “proper”-ness. Should you use green LEDs, however, it is anything but proper.
This reminds me of people who argue that iPhones need a “proper” OS that can be “properly” customized
1. Macpro2019 made me arbitrator when they asked me to define proper.
2. Proper as been defined multiple times here as being able to be modified by the end user to fit their needs. If RGB lights is their need than yeah, that's how this works. No one except you is defining proper to mean preferred. Proper is the ability to customize and preferred is how you customize. I don't think anyone can simplify it more than that.
3. I think we can all guess why it reminds you of the proper OS argument.
The ability to pop parts in and out doesn’t really make anything “proper.” Modern phones are basically pocket computers, but you can’t swap hardware in and out of them. And I doubt you’d argue that a smartphone is lacking because you can’t customize its internals.
My work PC is a high end custom configured workstation for video work. And while I have the option to upgrade components as time goes on, by the time the hardware in it is old enough to make me want to upgrade, the chipset is going to be obsolete too. Which means it will need a full motherboard and cpu swap, all new memory, new GPU....which essentially means an entirely new computer.
In fact, in almost 20 years as a PC owner, all of my “upgrades” have been totally new PC builds from scratch. It was actually this realization that made me feel OK buying an iMac Pro recently.
I won't discount the power of modern phones, but I still can't exactly consider phones and computers to be the same thing. I don't know how I would call something a proper phone and if someone did I wouldn't really know what that means.
But to be clear, I am not saying that computers whose parts can't be swapped out are lacking. There are some laptops out there that rival some pretty serious desktops; but that doesn't make them comparable products. What we need is a term that distinguishes between disposable computing hardware and upgradable. You say your high end workstation could be upgraded, and while the performance gains may not be significant or cost efficient for your workload, it is different than a machine that can not be upgraded by the end user at all. I don't understand how the term proper is offensive to some people, but clearly it struck a nerve. That said, in order to be clear when discussing hardware there needs to be a way to modify the noun computer to identify that it is user serviceable.
1) If that were between you two in pm, that would be awesome. Out here in public, you’re likely to get pushback from those who don’t agree with your preferred description of a “proper desktop”. (This is me pushing back, and you not being able to defend your use of “proper”. ) You say the iMac is not a “proper” desktop. But you’re wrong. The iMac is a proper desktop.
2) “Proper is the ability to customize and preferred is how you customize.” You don’t get to make up your own definitions lol. Proper has nothing whatsoever to do with “ability to customize”. For hardware, or OSes. Your saying it, three times or three million times, doesn’t make it true.
3) No need to guess, I’ll tell you! It’s a common complaint by the Apple-hate crowd where they use the word “proper” when they actually mean “my preferred”. As in, “A ‘proper’ OS is customizable”, therefore iOS isn’t a proper OS.
Here’s a list of other fake “propers”:
1) A proper smartwatch is round.
2) A proper smart speaker can stream over Bluetooth.
3) A proper laptop has a touch screen.
4) A proper monitor has a matte finish.
5) A proper smartphone has at least 1080 resolution.
In any case, it’s perfectly fine if you want to buy a desktop with certain features, including the ability to swap out power supplies, motherboards, GPU cards, etc. You should buy what you want. But those features aren’t required for a desktop to be an actual desktop.
Similarly, if you want a round smartwatch, buy one. But an Apple Watch is still a proper smartwatch. Same for all the other fake propers on my list.
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i know all the prices very well. and i know the prices of high end professional monitors, i use them everyday, from $4k sony to a $34k dolby monitor. and still, the price of this monitor is too high for what it is.