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Sandy Bridge + Light Peak = EOL for Mac Pro & Xserve
- Thread starter fw3857
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I believe you are right about Steve being a minimalist but there is nothing minimalist about an outboard TB array. I don't believe this will be the only option. Especially when you can contain quite a large bunch of 2.5 SSD's in a small box. They're only going to get smaller in footprint and energy consumption with time too and probably exponentially so. 10TB on one small SSD is really not that unrealistic for the future.
Also, there are those that are going to always want/need the fastest and best equipped computer that they can get their hands on. This is different from the average mac buyer who wants/needs less. The Mac Pro will always exist is some guise.
As for XServe well that's a different story and has been dead in the water a while now.
Also, there are those that are going to always want/need the fastest and best equipped computer that they can get their hands on. This is different from the average mac buyer who wants/needs less. The Mac Pro will always exist is some guise.
As for XServe well that's a different story and has been dead in the water a while now.
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LGA 2011 seems almost certain. From everything I have read LGA 2011 is the successor to LGA 1366 in the traditional sense of how Intel move forward, with the main difference being multi-processor capable CPUs will be using the same socket rather than their own special one.
Let us see the goods: quad-channel RAM and 320Gb/s via 40xPCI-E 3.0 lanes, Hello horde of TB ports
How is this not very Apple like when Firewire (and SCSI before it) both work in the same way?
How is this not very Apple like when Firewire (and SCSI before it) both work in the same way?
Yes, they can work like Thunderbolt. The point is that Apple is heading towards computers with less options. One of those options is expandability. We can add cards to avoid the external wiring mess at this time. But one wonders if that choice will go away now that in Thunderbolt Apple can offer external solutions with internal speeds.
How so?
I don't think there has been any indication that the Mac Pros are going away (unlike the XServes) aside from some idle speculation here in the Macrumors Forums...
Thunderbolt is fast, but do understand that it's only the same speed as 4x PCI Express. Not fast enough to replace the card slots on a Mac Pro. Not even fast enough for a high end GPU.
MAC PRO users will change. The person that needed an iMac with two external drives at full speed will buy the iMac buy the Lacie raid0 t-bolt and buy the promise 6 drive raid6 he will daisy chain them and the internal will back up the lacie raid0 t-bolt for boot. Assuming iMacs allow this with t-bolt. This person had to buy a mac pro because he could not afford down time of an iMac with a dead internal drive. He did not want the slower fw800 as a backup. This is going to cut into mac pro sales. This same person was fine with 16gb ram offered in an iMac. He was fine with a glossy screen.
Like it or not he was buying mac pros base models most likely because drive management was his problem not gpu or cpu. How many mac pros did he and his kind purchase alot. He is not a 8 core or 12 core cpu with 32gb ram and up user. There are many people that need 32gb ram and 8 cores I don't think apple will strand them.
Like it or not he was buying mac pros base models most likely because drive management was his problem not gpu or cpu. How many mac pros did he and his kind purchase alot. He is not a 8 core or 12 core cpu with 32gb ram and up user. There are many people that need 32gb ram and 8 cores I don't think apple will strand them.
Not this again. Xserve is already EOL. Mac Pro most likely not going to change except for Ivy Bridge later in the year. All kinds of new pro apps out this year. Everyone is crapping their pants over SB laptops. The same is coming for desktops soon enough. 6-Core Westmere still the fastest chips Intel makes. Even against SB desktop i7-2600. Graphics in the laptops are still piss poor compared to Mac Pro. Not enough memory. If Steve wants to destroy his Final Cut user base then maybe but I though Apple was pretty proud of Final Cut's infiltration so far and the new version is supposedly great.
Errrrr... for a single drive FW800 is not slower. FW400 would even be fast enough.
I actually also agree that we'd have a better chance of seeing features like Crossfire/SLI after Jobs is gone.
However, I still don't think Jobs would cut the Mac Pro line. We'd just see more niche features that he doesn't necessarily care about.
for booting if your internal drive dies fw800 is not fast enough. My imac can access its internal at 115MB/s no fw800 is better then 75MB/s so if your internal hdd dies you reduce your imac's speed by more then 30 percent if you run the fw800 as your boot drive. further if t-bolt allows booting the lacie raid0 ssd will run at 250MB/s or better. when you had an Imac this was not an option that you could guarantee .
lets say you purchased a new iMac with the ssd option now your iMac was really fast (over 200MB/s) so now the internal ssd dies . you have a job so you attach a backup boot drive and what is it? Its a fw800 speeds of 75MB/s if you are using the iMac for business you are running around scared the internal will die. thus causing a huge slow down for work. So what did you do? You purchased a mac pro and for what? drive access / drive management however you want to name it..
I know many owners of mac pros that would have used Imacs if they could have a real drive boot external such as a lacie raid0 t-bolt. I even know a few that went with OWC's sata mod because they wanted a fast external boot setup. I have a friend with 2 iMacs one on the job and one at home. He had owc put in the sata hack in both of them. He walks this
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer Technology/GM8QMSSD400/
back and forth from work to home as his speedy boot drive. With t-bolt he would have even been more eager to do this setup. I have a few friends with small apartments that want an iMac to do work with they have older mac pros. They hesitated having owc mod an iMac but now they can't wait to see if a new iMac with a t-bolt to a lacie raid0 as booter will be a reality for them. PS I am not a fan of lacie but it will have a pair of intel 250gb ssd series 510 in them and be really fast. How reliable ?
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the Imac will end some day ?
the mac pro will end some day ?
apple will end some day ?
the world will end some day ?
you will die some day ?
the fact is as others have said that prediction of the pro market dying has been around ? apple itself was supposed to die off
once again they are larger than MS
I dont care to much as long as I have a way to get my work done
if I could get it done on a machine that matched performance but was more quiet & energy efficient machine that had a good graphics card and I could run my monitors I wanted and have enough fast storage and way to have fast cache drives I am OK with whatever comes along
many of us do not need a mac pro ? we need things it offers though expansion and fast storage are the two main things with TB should be able to deliver
if I could get a 6 core i7 style chip and have TB for my storage
that might do me fine as long as I could get 24 gigs of ram in it
chances are that would do %75 or more of the Mac Pro users out today ? the other ones most likely need more muscle and more cores for video production etc..
the mac pro will end some day ?
apple will end some day ?
the world will end some day ?
you will die some day ?
the fact is as others have said that prediction of the pro market dying has been around ? apple itself was supposed to die off
once again they are larger than MS
I dont care to much as long as I have a way to get my work done
if I could get it done on a machine that matched performance but was more quiet & energy efficient machine that had a good graphics card and I could run my monitors I wanted and have enough fast storage and way to have fast cache drives I am OK with whatever comes along
many of us do not need a mac pro ? we need things it offers though expansion and fast storage are the two main things with TB should be able to deliver
if I could get a 6 core i7 style chip and have TB for my storage
that might do me fine as long as I could get 24 gigs of ram in it
chances are that would do %75 or more of the Mac Pro users out today ? the other ones most likely need more muscle and more cores for video production etc..
Agreed. I wish Steve would leave the responsibility for the the Mac Pro line to desktop enthusiasts in Apple. I assume there are a few of those left
Steve can continue to intensely manage iOS devices and give the thumbs up or down to MacBook Pros and iMacs.
Yeah, wishful thinking...
The users predicting that Apple is going to abandon the profitable "creative professional" niche because of growth in the consumer sector are idiots.
Apple makes healthy margins on every Mac Pro that they sell.
The fact that the professional market represents a smaller percentage of their income than it has in the past is irrelevant. As long as it continues to be a profitable market, Apple will have offerings for professional users.
Announcing to your shareholders "Revenue is up overall, but we've decided to back out of the professional market, and as such we will be making less than the theoretical maximum" just isn't something that is ever going to happen.
Even if it only represents 5% of their business at this point.
They still want that 5% on their balance sheet.
Apple makes healthy margins on every Mac Pro that they sell.
The fact that the professional market represents a smaller percentage of their income than it has in the past is irrelevant. As long as it continues to be a profitable market, Apple will have offerings for professional users.
Announcing to your shareholders "Revenue is up overall, but we've decided to back out of the professional market, and as such we will be making less than the theoretical maximum" just isn't something that is ever going to happen.
Even if it only represents 5% of their business at this point.
They still want that 5% on their balance sheet.
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Which brings me to another point.
If Apple finally found a winning formula and figured out how to make money in the business and enterprise markets, they would be there in a heartbeat.
It hasn't worked for them in the past, but as a technology company you better believe that they re-evaluate existing markets all the time.
Finally, businesses also engage in long term strategic (defensive) planning.
Businesses don't just look at expansion and growth, they look at how to protect existing revenue streams and work to determine which revenue streams would stay intact during potential down periods.
Apple isn't about the abandon the customers that sustained them during periods of past financial trouble and would likely be there to sustain them in the future if they hit another rough patch, due to increasing competition in the consumer market or whatever.
Letting their 'traditional' customers go would be terrible in terms of long term strategic planning.
If Apple finally found a winning formula and figured out how to make money in the business and enterprise markets, they would be there in a heartbeat.
It hasn't worked for them in the past, but as a technology company you better believe that they re-evaluate existing markets all the time.
Finally, businesses also engage in long term strategic (defensive) planning.
Businesses don't just look at expansion and growth, they look at how to protect existing revenue streams and work to determine which revenue streams would stay intact during potential down periods.
Apple isn't about the abandon the customers that sustained them during periods of past financial trouble and would likely be there to sustain them in the future if they hit another rough patch, due to increasing competition in the consumer market or whatever.
Letting their 'traditional' customers go would be terrible in terms of long term strategic planning.
Agreed. I wish Steve would leave the responsibility for the the Mac Pro line to desktop enthusiasts in Apple. I assume there are a few of those left
Why does everyone assume Steve is the one holding things back?
Now that MS finally seems to have their act together and people are leaving that doggy Windows XP technology behind, EFI use should increase. As others love to point out, Apple relies on commodity parts these days just like everyone else. The problem is the majority of those commodity parts are still on the last generation of technology since everything in the Windows world revolves around rock bottom pricing and not new technology (new tech is expensive!).
As more PC's ditch BIOS and ship with OS's that can talk EFI, graphics card manufacturers will follow suit.
And after that happens if there are still only a handful of cards to pick from, then I will happily break out my pitchfork and torch and join in.
Steve is king of the iTards and obviously hates Macs because the iToy man obviously couldn't like real computers