A long time ago. Waiting to see the design of the next Mac Pro.
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The 'Trashcan' Mac Pro: Remembering One of Apple's Most Controversial Designs Nine Years Later
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I've been using it as my "portable" for many years, traveling in my carryon onto the plane. I then keep a monitor and keyboard ready in various locations. It never fails to mystify the TSA and often is swabbed for looking suspicious. An absolutely quiet, reliable machine that I've upgraded both the memory and storage. I'll eventually replace it with a Studio if that ever becomes upgradable.
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro nine years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup.
The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylinder that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan." All of the Mac Pro's components were mounted around a central thermal dissipation core, cooled by a single fan that pulled air from under the case, through the core, and out the top. The fan could spin more slowly than smaller fans and keep the Mac extremely quiet, even during intense operations.
Apple announced the radically redesigned Mac Pro at WWDC in 2013. During the announcement, Apple's Phil Schiller infamously remarked "Can't innovate anymore, my ass." The comment was directed at armchair critics who pointed at the previous Mac Pro's lack of updates and claimed Apple had largely abandoned its pro user base and was out of ideas.
Phil Schiller unveiling the redesigned Mac Pro in 2013
Apple said that the new Mac Pro offered twice the overall performance of the previous generation while taking up less than one-eighth of the volume, thanks to its unified thermal core. The Mac Pro twinned Intel Xeon processors with dual AMD FirePro workstation GPUs, enabling it to deliver seven teraflops of computing power.
While the striking design was undoubtedly ambitious, users were unhappy with the way that almost all expansion had to be served externally by Thunderbolt 2 ports. Professional users who were reliant on powerful hardware could not get past the Mac Pro's lack of internal slots to add graphics cards and memory.
The result was a device that was unable to adapt to changing hardware trends. Even Apple seemed unsure how to offer a meaningful hardware update for the Mac Pro – as recently as 2019, it was possible to buy a trashcan Mac Pro from Apple, with no upgrades coming to the device during the six years since its release.
This led Apple to make a rare admission of the product's failure during a meeting with reporters in April 2017, explaining in detail why the device didn't succeed in the way it had hoped. In 2019, Apple's full mea culpa came in the form of yet another Mac Pro redesign, which took the machine back to a highly modular tower form factor with eight PCIe slots and three impeller fans.
Yet in many respects, what the 2013 Mac Pro set out to achieve – a small, powerful computer for professionals, with external expansion only – lives on and has been executed more effectively by 2022's Mac Studio.
Article Link: The 'Trashcan' Mac Pro: Remembering One of Apple's Most Controversial Designs Nine Years Later
I've had two of the "trash can" Mac Pros. One at home and one at work. Never regretted getting them. But now that I have a Mac Studio, as pointed out in the article being a successor to the older Mac, I'm much happier with this Mac than any I've ever used before. Wish I had it back in 2014 instead of that blast furnace of a computer.
Firstly, nice link to an article from the 21st Century. Get your put downs in order, son.
Secondly, as the article relates to Black Boxes are the New Beige, here is a quote from your article.
"Jonathan Ive, the company's director of design, minces no words in explaining why Macs look so different from other personal computers. ''This industry generally has been creatively bankrupt,'' he said."
Which was exactly my point. Thanks Sir Ive.
It did NEED a refresh, Apple just didn't GIVE it one. Selling 2013's workstation until 2019 is embarrassing, not a point of pride.
I will put some blame on Intel for not delivering powerful and power-efficient chips according to their roadmap. But all the other workstation vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc) sucked it up and built new products regularly with Intel's "meh" chips. Apple is the only one who abandoned their workstation, because they had designed themselves into a corner with insufficient thermal margins to support the inefficient chips.
Apple always takes flak from the tech world about these things but they're the one of the very few tech companies that understands that traditional computer/PC designs are terrible and are generally eyesores in your home. A computer can be aesthetically pleasing. I don't understand the rigid thinking that says a computer must always be some variant of a box.
Design wise it's much better than the Studio, because to clean the fan out or service it you just remove the cover with ease. To do the same in the Studio requires the entire machine to be stripped down. You can tell the Trash Can was designed to be taken apart as they concealed the PSU to an extent, unlike the Studio where you have to remove screws that supply power from the fully exposed PSU to the board!!
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I agree about the look.
I didn't wrote, that the design of these machines were bad etc., but that they simply didn't have any ideas, how to go forward with these. That's why these were a dead end (or one-trick pony if that means something).
It's a shame the Mac Studio didn't take this design I prefer it over the current design.
Not really. The thermal design was actually pretty poor, which is why the trashcan was prone to overheating. And the use of fragile pressure connectors didn't exactly help reliability, either.
What "other mob"? Because at the time the trashcan came out, neither of the two main workstation vendors (HP and Dell) had made anything beige for at least a decade.
In fact, back in 2013, HP had its 2nd generation of z series workstations (z220, z420, z620 and z820) designed by the famous BMW design studios:
And Dell didn't exactly came out with generic boxes, either:
All vastly more expandable and powerful than the trashcan, but more importantly, also much more reliable.
You were expecting an article written before the events take place? The article talks about the PC makers transitioning away in the late '90s.
Apple switching from a machine that works with the rest of the world of computer parts to another Apple black box (excuse me, black cylinder). That's not innovative. It's classic Apple deliberate incompatibility. Make all the parts something you have to buy from the company store so you don't have to worry about competition. Turn all expansion into dongles and claim it's a work of art.
You and I have both watched this play out going back to Power Computing and Umax.
If black became the new beige, it's because consumers made it that way. That's the (true) meaning behind the phrase "The customer is always right." It's talking about consumer sentiment and how it influences design and supply chain. If everyone is wanting black PC towers, black towers are what will be produced. All that needed to happen was a critical mass of people looking for a machine with more character to change that. We had that for awhile (early 2000's when a few PC makers started trying to copy the iMac with different color variations), but that kinda went by the wayside at some point. Maybe because Apple abandoned the idea itself, or was Apple really following the rest of the industry there?
That's nonsense. In fact, the 28nm AMD Pitcairn XL GPUs used in the trashcan were power hogs (the D300 had a TDP of 150W, and the D500 and D700 had a TDP of 275W). Subsequent AMD architectures were notably more power efficient (for example, a <75W TDP GCN4 GPU like the RX460 vastly outperforms a D300, and that's just one example of many; there were many later GPUs that easily outperformed a D700 with a TDP of less than 150W).
Had Apple updated the trashcan's GPUs then it would not have only increased the system's less than stellar GPU performance, it would very likely also have solved (or at least notably reduced) the overheating issue the trashcan was prone to.
No, it's not. The Mac Studio is clearly positioned below the Mac Pro line. Which is where such a system actually makes sense.
Which ones are the Dell & which ones are the HP's? I can’t see when I zoom them in. 😂 (kidding). But they are very similar.
To be honest, I remember these as we had them at work and for a PC they were actually quite nice. I wouldn’t call them particularly reliable though (the HP's). We had I.T. Coming out all the time to replace I/O boards, and we had sooo many hard drive crashes. They were mass produced, which isn’t the fault of HP & Dell, but as a result, they had certain regular faults. The Trashcan might have had heating issues, but they were very reliable.
You know beige doesn’t refer to the colour don’t you? It refers to bland.
Everyone copied them. Same ribbing, same form factor. Office machines were the size/shape of a VCR (landscape format) and the regular desktops were mini (2/3rd) atx cases.
I applaud Apple for bringing something actually nice looking to market, and very powerful. I do call bs, on your comment about those machines being more powerful than the Trashcan, but sure, they were generic and easily upgradable.
But it was clear that Dell & HP actually tried. But still, there has still been no decent attempt to improve the look of PC boxes, say for LED's and transparent walls.
The trash can was also positioned below the Mac Pro.
First point, I wasn‘t the one mentioning the 1900’s. That was you. I just corrected you, considering you said it as a put down.
Notwithstanding, the difference here is that they (PC manufacturers) don’t even try. You mentioned that if everyone wanted black towers, that is what is produced. That’s obviously not the way Apple work in many ways. For example. If everyone wanted a push button phone that’s what will be produced. Until Apple made the iPhone. I assume your Nokia 5110 doesn’t work so well anymore? There’s a reason why Apple are the #1 tech company. They were the first to drop Ethernet from laptops, the first with an aluminium unibody, they tried the Touch Bar. There are so many things they have done differently. Not everything they do succeeds, but at least they try. Trashcan is another example. Great machine in almost every sense, but not strong enough to hold a market, so they produced a more upgradable version.
Steve Jobs:
"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”
“Some people say give the customers what they want, but that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, 'if I'd ask customers what they wanted, they would've told me a faster horse.' People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
Think Different.Edit: Some nice looking cases here, but they’re still basically the same. #1 is nice. Best PC Cases of 2022. Having a longer look at them, they also all have serious flaws, like heaps of noise or rubbish cable management etc.
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They are similar in that they are based on Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors and AMD FirePro and Nvidia Quadro GPUs (which, aside from the Quadro thing, you could also say about the trashcan). Other than that, there are several differences between these machines.
Not my experience (and I deal with over a thousand of these machines across our client base in my day job). The failure rate of the HP z series has been constantly below 2% (Dell's is slightly above 2%, but then that's Dell). We also had a large number of trashcans (for scientific work, not video, though), and the failure rate was closer to 10%.
And then of course there's the fact that neither Dell nor HP require you to lug a defective system to their nearest retail outlet, they service it onsite (which is also part of the standard warranty, not a paid-for option), and also send out spare part if you want to replace yourself. HP even has a public website for finding part numbers (partsurfer.hp.com, the now separate server business HPE has the same).
The trashcan didn't had heating issues (i.e., problems to heat up), it had serious overheating issues (i.e., getting too hot to the point of shutdown or even damage). And that's a fact, not a "might".
I know taste varies a lot but I certainly see nothing bland in the images I posted. In fact, I see aesthetically designed tools for professional use. Which I guess is why these systems are so abundant in businesses around the globe.
There's also a reason why these systems are not round but box-shaped, because it makes it easier to mount them in a standard 19"rack (there are rack slide options for the larger models from both manufacturers). The trashcan requires a specialty rack tray which wastes valuable (and usually expensive) space in a rack. Which is probably the reason why the MP2019 not only went back to box shape but is also available in a rack version.
You're easily impressed when you believe that putting a few standard components in a cylinder form factor is innovative. But then, it seems optics is all you seem to care about.
And if you had any experience with these machines you'd know that there is a lot more inside than outside (because, for a start, these aren't office PCs) For example, the mid-range models (z620, T5600) can be upgraded with a 2nd CPU module which makes then dual processor capable where needed but without the waste of space and empty sockets where its not). HP's machines has standardized 3.5" SAS/SATA quick-swap trays with backplane which were common across three generations, and for the z840 they developed a drop-in replacement to convert the four 3.5"slots into eight 2.5"quick-swap slots. They also have quick-swap PSUs (Dell T3600/5600/7600 PSUs can even be pulled out with the chassis closed, while with HP you'd need to open the side panel). In fact, pretty much everything aside from the CPU is tool-less in these machines.
It's no BS, it's a fact.
The top-end trash can had a single XEON E5-2697v2 12-core 2.7GHz processor, 128GB (4x16GB) of RAM max, two D700 3GB GPUs, as well as a single PCIe 2.0 SSD.
The HP z620 already takes up to two of the same processors, 192GB RAM, two AMD FirePro W7000 4GB GPUs (or two Quadro K4000 4GB GPUs, or a single Quadro K6000 12GB GPU), and one or two HP z Turbo drives (PCIe SSDs, all PCIe 3.0 x4 with >2GB/s), plus space for three SATA or SAS 3.5"drives.
You seriously think that this system is slower than a trashcan?
And the z620 was just the mid-range model back then. Between trashcan and MP2019, when Apple was sleeping at the wheel, there was another generation (Haswell/Boradwell) which was even more powerful than the best trashcan.
Spoken like a true consumer, not a professional end user. But clearly, these products aren't for you then.
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I don’t know why you need to be so passive aggressive. I’m allowed to offer a different view from my own perspective. So what that I’m a consumer these days. Why does that even matter? People talking about aesthetics is now limited to those who make money from plugging in computer components?
No they're not for me, and I’m glad about that. I want to enjoy using a computer and happy doing so. Yeah it’s easy putting things in boxes, and I applaud you for doing it. Im glad you enjoy it so much.
I still call b.s. on your figures as you clearly have a bias and haven’t provided any support. Just a bunch of pictures of clones. It’s just an opinion from a random without actual facts. Saying something is a fact doesn’t make it so.
Clearly a heating issue is also an overheating issue, so your comment, trying to correct me was also rubbish. Talking down to people is not attractive.
No it’s not. I read the Mac Pro forums and they all unanimously said it there.
This is the kind of thing that I feel is out of order, Apple should be supporting hardware for longer whilst it can still serve its purpose well. I get that the business case is difficult when you have so few units in use and there is a cost overhead to supporting unique hardware, but the premium paid on these products justifies more longer term support IMHO.
The fatal flaw with the Trashcan design was that it was built around a triangular "thermal core" that completely relied on the heat generation being evenly split three ways between a CPU and 2 GPUs as more and more "general computing" was shifted to OpenCL etc. The cylindrical design followed from that. It was reliant on Intel and AMD not just releasing new chips, but releasing new chips designed for that architecture. That's what Apple admitted to in the 2017 press conference.
Likewise, the Mac Studio design is 100% dependent on everything being done by a single, super-power-efficient system-on-a-chip - but now, at least, Apple are in control of ensuring the supply of upgraded chips...
Apple's problem is that any "big box 'o' slots" is going to be fighting a war of attrition with generic PC hardware - which will always be cheaper, offer more choice and be first served with Intel, AMD and NVIDIA's latest and greatest. The 2019 MP only ever made sense if it was going to cost more to switch to a Windows or Linux workflow. The Trashcan, the iMac Pro, the Mac Studio are an attempt to offer something distinctive that is very efficient at certain types of task.
The other problem with the Trashcan (and the iMac Pro) is that they'd let the previous Mac Pro "big box 'o' slots" Cheesegrater get hopelessly out of date (it had even been discontinued in Europe) before coming out with the non-expandable, Thunderbolt-dependent Trashcan. They really needed the two to run side-by-side for a while to give people time to adapt. With the Studio, at least the 2019 MP is still viable (or would be if Apple committed to supporting it for another few years) so you won't have customers forced onto the Studio because they can't replace broken MPs or kit out new employees.