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Revamped Mac Pro to Address Current Model's Shortcomings in VR and High-End Cinema Production

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In the midst of a flood of reveals and announcements surrounding the Mac Pro and iMac, Apple today gave a hint as to what the upcoming Mac Pro will be able to accomplish for high-end, professional users. Although little information was given about the revamped Mac Pro, Phil Schiller described it as the "highest-end" desktop system the company has created yet, and that it will be "designed for our demanding pro customers."

TechCrunch asked Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, what the boost in the "pro" aspect of the Mac Pro will mean for the company's power users. In response, Federighi mentioned software capabilities in the virtual reality space, as well as tasks centered on high-end cinema production.

mac-pro-vr.jpg
I ask who, exactly, the pro customers are that needed the more powerful GPU in a Mac Pro most.

"There's certain scientific loads that are very GPU intensive and they want to throw the largest GPU at it that they can," says Federighi. "There are heavy 3D graphics [applications] or graphics and compute mixed loads. Those can be in VR, those can be in certain kinds of high end cinema production tasks where most of the software out there that's been written to target those doesn't know how to balance itself well across multiple GPUs but can scale across a single large GPU."
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Virtual reality is a noticeable shortcoming of Apple's current Mac Pro line, as well as its iMac desktop computers. Although Federighi doesn't go into any more detail about how VR support might function on the Apple ecosystem -- including which headsets will be supported, and what software will take advantage of VR -- it's an interesting tidbit of information regarding the upcoming Mac Pro line launching sometime after this year.

In regards to virtual reality and augmented reality, in recent reports Apple has been more closely aligned with development on the latter technology, which doesn't require a cumbersome headset and can be used with technology already on modern smartphones, as it was in Pokémon Go. Still, specific hardware has been rumored to be in the pipeline by Apple, most recently including an Apple-branded pair of AR glasses that would connect to iPhones and "show images and other information in the wearer's field of vision," but they're predicted to be far from launch.

Apple has filed a collection of patents focused on virtual reality headsets that could in theory function with an all-new Mac Pro, but such filings have slowed down in recent years among Apple CEO Tim Cook's well-known preference for AR over VR. Over the past few months, Cook has referred to AR as everything from a "profound" piece of technology that could "amplify" human contact to an idea that could result in a paradigm shift as "huge" as smartphones.

Rumors currently suggest that Apple's AR glasses could launch in 2018, but any news regarding an Apple-branded VR headset have been quiet for over a year. As such, it's likely that the upcoming Mac Pro will support third-party VR headsets from companies already in the market.

Article Link: Revamped Mac Pro to Address Current Model's Shortcomings in VR and High-End Cinema Production
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/04/mac-pro-vr-cinema-production/
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People will just complain about the price of the Mac Pro for VR and cite cheaper Windoze systems capable of running it. This will be true of the Apple monitors too.
 
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This is one thing that made think the Mac Pro might not be discontinued: I couldn't imagine Apple missing out on VR. It seems like kind of thing they'd be really interested in and it baffled me that they didn't seem to have or be working on a computer that could handle it.

OldSchoolMacGuy said:
People will just complain about the price of the Mac Pro for VR and cite cheaper Windoze systems capable of running it. This will be true of the Apple monitors too.
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Well of course. I'm imagining a $6000+ system for VR on a Mac. Less than half that for Windows. But it's Mac :)
 
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OldSchoolMacGuy said:
People will just complain about the price of the Mac Pro for VR and cite cheaper Windoze systems capable of running it. This will be true of the Apple monitors too.
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Exactly.

To some people price is the most important thing, and they don't get that it's NOT the most important thing for most people. Convenience or ease of use is.

I could save money by making lunch at home and bring it to work, but fast food is so much more convenient. I could save money by riding my bicycle to work, but buying a car is so much more convenient. I could buy Android tablets for my family, but buying iPads is so much easier as I don't need the support headache from my wife and kids.
 
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bbeagle said:
Exactly.

To some people price is the most important thing, and they don't get that it's NOT the most important thing for most people. Convenience or ease of use is.

I could save money by making lunch at home and bring it to work, but fast food is so much more convenient. I could save money by riding my bicycle to work, but buying a car is so much more convenient. I could buy Android tablets for my family, but buying iPads is so much easier as I don't need the support headache from my wife and kids.
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Oh please. You need to take both into consideration. How useful is the world best and most useful item if you can't even get your hands on it due to cost. The price of the hardware is only part of the equation.
 
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I do an extensive amount of "prosumer" video and audio work, and I've been really happy with my 2013 Mac Pro. I recently upgraded it to 32 gb RAM and a 1 tb SSD. I have an 8 tb external Thunderbolt drive for my media. The system works great. But the key here, I think, is that I'm "prosumer"; the actual pros are probably looking for something other than my more modest needs.
 
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I sniff the end result of Apple's partnership with NVIDIA being the reason it's going to take until 2018 to get these out the door.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16...n-graphics-for-revolutionary-new-mac-products
[doublepost=1491322141][/doublepost]
jayducharme said:
I do an extensive amount of "prosumer" video and audio work, and I've been really happy with my 2013 Mac Pro. I recently upgraded it to 32 gb RAM and a 1 tb SSD. I have an 8 tb external Thunderbolt drive for my media. The system works great. But the key here, I think, is that I'm "prosumer"; the actual pros are probably looking for something other than my more modest needs.
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I work at a certain Micky Mouse owned sports network. You'd be shocked by how much work gets done here on plain vanilla Mac Pros.

Unless you're a freelancer, most pros doing extremely heavy lifting user their company's server based infrastructure.
 
When you read reports, like those by Bare Feat, and you realize Apple hasn't been supporting the Mac Pro that is out now. I get that it's three years old, but if they wanted to show they are committed to the Mac they would support the ones they are selling now. Telling us that the next one will be good does nothing, expecially if you dropped $3k for a device that doesn't do what was promised. And yes, replacing the GPU with flagship hardware was what was promised. It was the reason for the ash tray design. I'd rather they just abandon the Pro market officially rather than sell devices they don't intend to support. Support is what we were paying for.
 
H2SO4 said:
Oh please. You need to take both into consideration. How useful is the world best and most useful item if you can't even get your hands on it due to cost. The price of the hardware is only part of the equation.
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I didn't say the ONLY thing to consider is convenience and ease-of-use, I said the MOST IMPORTANT thing.

Yes, I'm not taking a helicopter to work - while that would be MORE convenient.... cost does play a part, and that is cost prohibitive for me. But I won't criticize the person who CAN afford it to take a helicopter to work.
 
bbeagle said:
I didn't say the ONLY thing to consider is convenience and ease-of-use, I said the MOST IMPORTANT thing.

Yes, I'm not taking a helicopter to work - while that would be MORE convenient.... cost does play a part, and that is cost prohibitive for me. But I won't criticize the person who CAN afford it to take a helicopter to work.
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Sort of. Ease and convenience is only important if you can afford it.
 
Remember when they fired one of their best engineers over the Maps debacle?

Yet no one is getting fired for taking a giant crap on all the pro users with no new Mac Pro for what seems like an eternity!?

There should be refreshes to a pro lineup mat least twice per year, not per decade!! I am so ashamed of Apple right now.

Combine that with cancelling Aperture and how Final Cut Pro team treated their users, and I just think you need to look at the top.

I'm sorry but Tim Cook needs to resign. Let someone who actually cares about users take that role. Apple could be crushing it right now!

Also why do they need to get rid of the round design? I was thinking with Thunderbolt 3 it would be able to have expansion chassis galore and no slowdown. I guess cost is the real issue, and getting GPUs to fit?

Should have thought of that before eh?

Also why not have a midrange tower?

Or go back to the Apple I days and sell a logic board for Hackintoshes?

There is so much they could do, so much extra money they could be making, if only they lifted one finger to give a crap, instead of smoking their own pipe and not caring about what many of their users really want and need.

If I ran Apple the first thing I would do is hire 1000 people to respond to threads in Discussions and report issues they find to engineering so we could eliminate all the longstanding bugs and problems.

Then I would figure out how to dominate in VR and gaming and finally do it for real. And I'd bring back the Cheese Grater design—a perfect, flawless piece of art that could have continued being made FOREVER and no one would have questioned it, because no one disliked it.

The nMP is cool but should have been a custom thing just for certain uses.
 
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H2SO4 said:
Sort of. Ease and convenience is only important if you can afford it.
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What I'm arguing is that for some people, it doesn't matter. Even if they can afford something, they STILL want cheapest -even if the convenience and ease-of-use will be worth it. Saving a penny is THE most important thing.

For example, my brother makes 100K+, so he can afford convenience - but he chooses PRICE over comfort to a really ridiculous level. What does he have in his living room? White plastic furniture that he bought for $5 each. It's uncomfortable to sit in. He has a tablet that he props up to watch tv and movies he steals over the internet. Very poor sound. Small picture. He has awful posture to watch movies sitting for an extended time. His back hurts all the time, and this might be one reason why.

Why does he do this? His goal is to retire before he's 40. And live like a penny-pincher his whole life, but have his free time.

I have a different philosophy. I want the nice recliner, the 55" TV, speaker system, nice things to look at in the room, nice ambiance. A place to relax. It's worth it - TO ME - to retire at 60 instead.

Ease-of-use and convenience are much more important to me than my brother. I can see his points, I won't trash him for his way, but I just choose to live different.
 
If you visit the discussion boards of gaming enthusiasts, videographers, CAD engineers, 3D modelers, and other similar CPU/GPU-demanding interests, those professionals prefer DIY workstations. They claim they can build a PC from stock parts that is multitudes more capable than the Mac Pro. And they can do it for much less bling.

The only pros I know of that have a Mac Pro, use it for admin tasks! Their employers provide the highest end Macs to their creative/engineering employees, but the actual work is done on proprietary systems using a bank of CPUs.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
People will just complain about the price of the Mac Pro for VR and cite cheaper Windoze systems capable of running it. This will be true of the Apple monitors too.
Click to expand...
This! I will pay the Apple tax as I have gotten the best ROI on my Macs. I still use my 2006 G5 Cheese Grater as I still have software on it that is still functional today, along with the 20" Cinema display. My main computer now being a 2012 Mac Mini along with my 27" Thunderbolt display still going strong after 3 years. I believe I have received great value for what I have invested.
 
Wow. The iToy maker is going to be making computers again?

Better late than never. Hope it's not too late.
[doublepost=1491368447][/doublepost]I'm still waiting for these.

pros.jpg
 
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