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Steve Jobs Once Considered Killing Apple's Pro Products
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It's because motherboards and other chips as well as hard drives are all rectangles... without rounded corners. Apple had to really try hard to get this into a cylinder shape by arranging everything in a triangle-like fashion and cutting out things like 3.5" hard drives (not needed anymore) and PCI slots (still think these are very useful).
It would have been much easier to throw it into another cheese grater box and try to cool everything with a lot of power as usual, but they're trying to advance.
i hear you. i mean, you just repeated what i said about the past 30 years worth of computer design.. why does a motherboard have to be square? there's no functional reasoning as to it's shape.
the past 30 years has been trying to get all this stuff to work.. the past 10 years as being realizing that yes, all this stuff works.. so now we can start refining.. this happens over and over and over throughout technological history.. i mean, i'm not making things up.. maybe i just have my eyes open a bit more or smthng..
even if you're not design minded, i think its worth considering the possibilities that the engineers did not start with the shell and work inwards.. they worked outwards and this shell is the result
I'm the course of Steve Jobs' career, I am sure he considered a slew of things that never came to fruition for whatever reason.
For people just talking about the new Mac Pro, it's Apple's first attempt at a good design for parallel processing. While the new design is very forward facing and is pretty much shaped to force air cooling through the heatsinks, it's also designed with a more "pro" setting in mind such as parallel processing the renders through daisy chaining and also maximizing individual machine speed in order to give much higher parallel gains. Couple that with Thunderbolt storage, and the design is basically modeled after the Mac Mini cluster servers that exist today.
Regarding software, I think that the "pro" lines of software are where they need to be for the largest groups of people. It's still targeted more at the prosumer than the full professional but it works even for the full pro on a normal basis. When you start looking at where some of the software is headed, it seems like Apple is trying to save us time through interface design but at the same time taking their sweet time to make major revisions. Jobs would have been justified to 86 the Pro line of products but they also would have missed out on improving their consumer line of software and hardware. Now, a modern Macbook Air can out-perform some of the year old Macbook Pros with slower HDDs.
Regarding software, I think that the "pro" lines of software are where they need to be for the largest groups of people. It's still targeted more at the prosumer than the full professional but it works even for the full pro on a normal basis. When you start looking at where some of the software is headed, it seems like Apple is trying to save us time through interface design but at the same time taking their sweet time to make major revisions. Jobs would have been justified to 86 the Pro line of products but they also would have missed out on improving their consumer line of software and hardware. Now, a modern Macbook Air can out-perform some of the year old Macbook Pros with slower HDDs.
Same argument with ..
Why your computer display is rectangular?
Why your keyboard consist of square keys?
Why your shoes look like shoes as it is today?
Everything can be made oval, trapezoid, round, or amorphous if we want it. We could, but should we?
It's the norm, it's what people perceive from the very beginning. The new MacPro not just looks like trashcan, but it also stands out compared to other Apple products, but not in a good way. It's crap design IMO. Let's just hope the innards not.
How if the new MacPro designed just like hideous Razer or Alienware, also throw some crazy LEDs as a bonus, would you call it a Mac design?
Funny.
I remember the same **** when the Air came out.
Apple laughed all the way to the bank.
That's what I really like about it. IMO, we are going to see a nice aftermarket replacing the brushed aluminum cover with a bunch of custom enclosures seeing into the device with under-lighting like a lot of the tricked out PCs power users have.
My prediction is the entry level will be quad core and flash for $1999 and sell like gang busters. If you really look at the size and mostly the footprint of this, we have a Super Mac Mini. I can see a lot of unplug their Mac Mini from their KVM switch and put this in.
no, it's not the same argument.
a keyboard is shaped like it is because of our fingers.. same with the mouse.. are shoes are designed according to our feet.. a bike fits our bodies.. same thing as a chair.. and on and on
the computer has no such functions.. it has nothing to do with our bodies or any other limitations really.. we barely need to touch it other than plugging something in or turing it on.
if it makes better design sense than sure.. of course we should.. but we shouldn't do it just for the sake of doing it.. and that's what i'm saying about this new computer. there's a reason it's shaped like it is wherein the past, computers were boxed shaped simply as a matter of convenience with no more thought than that.. just like the first cars.. they were boxes on wheels.
again, it depends on how you're looking at it..
i mean think about it.. some of the absolute best engineers in the world created this design and they were doing from a clean slate.. this is the result.
i get it.. some people are going to perceive it as "oh.. publicity stunt.. make it smaller for no reason.. etc.." ..but so what, you know? it will look normal to you in a few more years..
i don't know what those computers look like but probably not.
^^^^ The best comment in the history of MacRumors. Very good explanation on why the Pro Apple products are here to stay.
The next "pro" computer from Apple is an abomination and whoever designed it should be fired. There is absolutely nothing "pro" about a trashcan with wires sticking out of it.
Why not make an iMac Pro? A matte screen option....I dunno... thicker so you can actually expand inside the unit.... maybe put the optical drive back that is still used by lots of "professionals". Maybe have 2 thunderbolt video outs to matching screens.... better heat dissipation abilities....
Instead we have a company gloating about how thin a desktop computer is (because that matters?) and the trash can. Well done Apple... well done.
Why not make an iMac Pro? A matte screen option....I dunno... thicker so you can actually expand inside the unit.... maybe put the optical drive back that is still used by lots of "professionals". Maybe have 2 thunderbolt video outs to matching screens.... better heat dissipation abilities....
Instead we have a company gloating about how thin a desktop computer is (because that matters?) and the trash can. Well done Apple... well done.
At least now with Creative Cloud, there's no longer an Adobe software cost in switching OSs. You can just switch under the same license. So once CC is fully in effect, creative professionals won't left holding the bag if Apple does at some point decide to kill the Mac Pro (maybe it won't sell well or whatever). They'll still be left paying the Adobe bill every month though.
it's not crap design. you don't like how it looks. it's new and weird and strange or whatever.
but the design is on point.. this thing is going to win all sorts of design and engineering awards.. expert opinion realm stuff
i just kinda wish instead of you saying "it's crap design" you would call a spade a spade and say "ewww.. it looks funny"
This would have been great and even cheaper for apple to manufacture! I sat this from a personal perspective of wanting to buy one.
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It's worth noting that many pros DO like the new Final Cut Pro X… at least now that it's regaining some of the features that were absent with the first release. That is my understanding after attending a seminar on it where a number of editors shared that same view. One of them has even spoken to the Final Cut team directly, and it seems that they knew in advance what they were doing… that by making radical changes they would lose some marketshare. But they saw Apple as uniquely positioned to make such a risky move because that's not where Apple's profits come from. Instead, the team was driven by a genuine desire to rethink video editing and deliver something better. That's a report I know many people will be cynical of, thinking that all big corporations are only driven by the $$$, but I like to think that this mindset does live on in the smaller creative teams that make up Apple.
I should add, I am not a video editor (I'm a graphic designer), although I have used Final Cut Pro in the past. I just hear so much negativity around the X release, that I thought it worth reporting the other side of the story. Some pros think that Apple did the right thing here by re-imagining and rebuilding Final Cut Pro from the ground up.
It's missing the mark on what it supposed to be. In order to use it you have to add a truck load of other devices. So you are actually buying 1/3 of a computer.
It's probably easier to build a square motherboard. Besides, unless the circular motherboard is the exact size of the computer's circular footprint and not smaller, it's a wasteful shape inside a computer.
Agree
This 'Steve didn't care but Tim does' BS isn't true. It's business, and in business it's about profit margins, sales, cannibalization. What Apple have now cleverly done is ditch the 'pro' as we know it and released a non upgradeable tin you don't keep for long and have to buy another of pretty soon. It's clever marketing and the truth is, it's a dumbed down machine from its former glory. No doubt it's a powerful machine but a very different direction than the old pro... It's more prosumer orientated like the software...and that's the trade off that takes priority; appealing to the prosumer as well as the pro.
It is a shocking design indeed...jet black aluminum cylinder with glowing LED port symbols on the back that has an active cooling system...a Mac Pro that is 9" tall.
It is just the lacking internal expandability that has me a bit upset. I was just hoping for more in the terms of internal storage options and PCIe slot. There is no way you can throw 3TB of SSD storage in this thing. I am guessing 1TB or 768GB will be the max. Current Mac Pros can throw four 4TB HDs in the drive bays and add even more in the optical drive bays. The one upside to this new Mac Pro model is the internal SSD will be fast!! Really fast!!
Still, like I said, I see this more as a Mini-Pro than a true Mac Pro due to the lacking internal expandability. It's a trash can, not a tank.
It is just the lacking internal expandability that has me a bit upset. I was just hoping for more in the terms of internal storage options and PCIe slot. There is no way you can throw 3TB of SSD storage in this thing. I am guessing 1TB or 768GB will be the max. Current Mac Pros can throw four 4TB HDs in the drive bays and add even more in the optical drive bays. The one upside to this new Mac Pro model is the internal SSD will be fast!! Really fast!!
Still, like I said, I see this more as a Mini-Pro than a true Mac Pro due to the lacking internal expandability. It's a trash can, not a tank.
Not being able to use your monitor of choice is what prevents the iMac from being a true "pro" solution for a lot of people. Some need different color spaces, better consistency, different size etc. Matte vs glossy is only one issue among many.
Not surprised, the money is on laptops, tablets and smart phones and that the direction many people are going for their computers, away from the desktop.
And even if you want a bigger screen then the iMac has more than enough power for most users. The Mac Pro had become old and over priced for all but the top end users.
I can't wait to see how Apple prices the new Mac Pro considering you'll need to budget for a good RAID system or external drives now, plus DVD/BluRay. I hope the base model with Apple LCD is not much more than the top iMac with upgrades.
And even if you want a bigger screen then the iMac has more than enough power for most users. The Mac Pro had become old and over priced for all but the top end users.
I can't wait to see how Apple prices the new Mac Pro considering you'll need to budget for a good RAID system or external drives now, plus DVD/BluRay. I hope the base model with Apple LCD is not much more than the top iMac with upgrades.