MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

[vailr]

Why not push Apple to support the industry-standard UEFI firmware? Really, if there's a standard why accept that Apple has a proprietary BIOS?

Is there an actual hardware requirement difference between the two firmware types, or could HP (theoretically) simply keep with Apple's proprietary firmware type on their existing (Windows PC oriented) hardware?
I would assume that Apple is only keeping their proprietary BIOS firmware for "exclusivity" reasons, and avoid talking about the Hackintosh community.

 

[CWallace]

Why not push Apple to support the industry-standard UEFI firmware? Really, if there's a standard why accept that Apple has a proprietary BIOS?

Well Apple uses EFI with some UEFI extensions, though it's not UEFI 2.x compliant. Not sure what instituting full UEFI compliance would bring to the Mac and macOS that it does not already have other than maybe the ability to screw things up for folks who don't know what they're doing.

 

[AidenShaw]

Well Apple uses EFI with some UEFI extensions, though it's not UEFI 2.x compliant. Not sure what instituting full UEFI compliance would bring to the Mac and macOS that it does not already have other than maybe the ability to screw things up for folks who don't know what they're doing.

It would probably mean that Apple OSX would cleanly install on almost every current x64 mobo, without any shenanigans, and with boot screens.

I don't know why Apple wouldn't want that.

Do you think that Apples' refusal to adopt UEFI is an anti-competitive stand?

 

[CWallace]

It would probably mean that Apple OSX would cleanly install on almost every current x64 mobo, without any shenanigans, and with boot screens.

If adopting UEFI did make Hackintoshes and clones easy, then yes, I would very much see it as a way to prevent that.

 

[developer13245]

WTF! I can't believe people are still posting here...

All the blather here is useless.
Whatever poop Ive decides to poop on you, all while calling it the "Mac Pro", you will lap it up.... Just like you "took" his tube.

Good God people.... move on already!

 

[Zarniwoop]

Do you think that Apples' refusal to adopt UEFI is an anti-competitive stand?

If Apple had 60% marketshare, maybe. With less than six... no.

I think it is either Apple EFI or license number sticker... Which one would you prefer?

 

[pat500000]

WTF! I can't believe people are still posting here...

All the blather here is useless.
Whatever poop Ive decides to poop on you, all while calling it the "Mac Pro", you will lap it up.... Just like you "took" his tube.

Good God people.... move on already!

Yet, you're posting here....

 

[AidenShaw]

If Apple had 60% marketshare, maybe. With less than six... no.

I think it is either Apple EFI or license number sticker... Which one would you prefer?

UEFI and a license if the hardware is not made by Apple.

 

[CWallace]

UEFI and a license if the hardware is not made by Apple.

It would be interesting to see how much they would have to charge for the license to offset the loss of Mac sales re-starting the clone market would be.

Apple averaged $1300 in revenue per Mac sold in 2Q17. As such I would expect they would want at least $1500 per license to offset that.

That would make the "enthusiast" (i.e. - "gamer") Mac that most people want a non-starter as the license would equal the cost of the PC (for a mid-tier gaming machine). However, for high-end workstations, it might be an acceptable price to pay in order to configure the "beast machines" with multiple CPUs, GPUs, hundreds of GBs to TBs of RAM and TBs of storage that will be in the five figures, anyway.

 

[Biped]

It would be interesting to see how much they would have to charge for the license to offset the loss of Mac sales re-starting the clone market would be.

While interesting thought experiment, please let us not give Apple even the slightest wiff of interest in clones. None whatsoever, if ever there should a term thought of as blasphemous, I would nominate 'clone' to be the one that shalt not be uttered under any circumstances.

While it might solve this 'pro' level drought in terms of hardware... and I concede that which I am most attached to is the operating system, I do not want to go down the road of scale market economy with hardware.

As a metaphor, let me juxtapose

- the quality molding and thickness of the case fan in my 3,1.. really only a fit/finish seen in design and engineering ( outside of computers ) in higher tier industrial products, decade later, no bearing/bushing noises, still doing its job, will probably continue to do so for another decade.

with the

- stack of near dozen name brand, premium priced, 'quality' PC power supplies that have given up the ghost in servitude to the windows/linux gods

in about the same time frame.

While I would really really like a logical replacement for my 3,1; I have zero desire to replace it with commodity hardware that is mute on the topic of design quality, that inevitably any future clone war would nurture in.

 

[Peace]

While interesting thought experiment, please let us not give Apple even the slightest wiff of interest in clones. None whatsoever, if ever there should a term thought of as blasphemous, I would nominate 'clone' to be the one that shalt not be uttered under any circumstances.

While it might solve this 'pro' level drought in terms of hardware... and I concede that which I am most attached to is the operating system, I do not want to go down the road of scale market economy with hardware.

As a metaphor, let me juxtapose

- the quality molding and thickness of the case fan in my 3,1.. really only a fit/finish seen in design and engineering ( outside of computers ) in higher tier industrial products, decade later, no bearing/bushing noises, still doing its job, will probably continue to do so for another decade.

with the

- stack of near dozen name brand, premium priced, 'quality' PC power supplies that have given up the ghost in servitude to the windows/linux gods

in about the same time frame.

While I would really really like a logical replacement for my 3,1; I have zero desire to replace it with commodity hardware that is mute on the topic of design quality, that inevitably any future clone war would nurture in.

That case fan is one reason they stopped making 5,1

 

[AidenShaw]

... I do not want to go down the road of scale market economy with hardware...

Anyone who is familiar with the build and component quality of Dell Precision and HP Z-series (and the ProLiant and PowerEdge servers) would disagree with this broadside against x64 workstations and servers from other vendors.

Yes, the $399 PCs at BestBuy are pretty dodgy regardless of the label, but the lower end $1499 workstations are quite good. The higher end systems are even better.

And there's a simple, obvious solution. Make that Apple license for Apple OSX only valid for systems and configurations approved by Apple. Try to activate the license on the $399 BestBuy special - *BUZZ*. Get a nice 22-core Z6, *OK*.

Apple averaged $1300 in revenue per Mac sold in 2Q17. As such I would expect they would want at least $1500 per license to offset that.

I'm putting $20K of RAM, four GPUs at $4K each, and two CPUs at $13K each into this system.

Do you think that I'll even care about a $1.5K operating system license? That's less than the sales tax.

 

[CWallace]

I'm putting $20K of RAM, four GPUs at $4K each, and two CPUs at $13K each into this system.

Do you think that I'll even care about a $1.5K operating system license? That's less than the sales tax.

Not at all - I said as much in the post you quoted.

 

[vailr]

It would be interesting to see how much they would have to charge for the license to offset the loss of Mac sales re-starting the clone market would be.

Apple averaged $1300 in revenue per Mac sold in 2Q17. As such I would expect they would want at least $1500 per license to offset that.

Kind of disagree. They already give away macOS system upgrades for free, and have continued that pricing for several years now.

If they decided they wanted to charge maybe $50 or $100 for a "fully legal, yet officially unsupported by Apple" version of macOS, that would seem like a more realistic price. Although: completely free to any and all interested (as is the case with most Linux distros) seems somewhat more likely.
And: let's not forget: that macOS is based on the open source Darwin software, which still includes an acknowledgement of "Regents of the University of California".

 

[Biped]

Anyone who is familiar with the build and component quality of Dell Precision and HP Z-series (and the ProLiant and PowerEdge servers) would disagree with this broadside against x64 workstations and servers from other vendors.

I am quite familiar with enterprise offerings from Dell and HP, having owned plenty of Dell Workstations in the past, currently feeding electrical pixies into a Poweredge in the basement (which I'm rather fond of), and having taken screwdrivers to HP blades at work. And no they are nowhere near in terms of build quality. They are definitely a step up from commodity PC, but still not close to Apple's better offerings.

I would wager that the last time PC and Jobs were close in terms of build quality, was when we could still buy a DEC, and NeXT Cubes were making nerds everywhere jizz their pants. Well maybe the duotone G4s were eclipsed by some Compaq or something ... we'll just sweep those under the rug.

 

[William Payne]

Kind of disagree. They already give away macOS system upgrades for free, and have continued that pricing for several years now.

If they decided they wanted to charge maybe $50 or $100 for a "fully legal, yet officially unsupported by Apple" version of macOS, that would seem like a more realistic price. Although: completely free to any and all interested (as is the case with most Linux distros) seems somewhat more likely.
And: let's not forget: that macOS is based on the open source Darwin software, which still includes an acknowledgement of "Regents of the University of California".

I would imagine that currently operating systems costs are spread out in the overall pricing of the machines. Hence why we don't pay for upgrades. Also the way you describe would only be changing the legality of a Hackintosh. that may be fine for some people but I myself as far as operating systems go would want full factory support.

 

[vailr]

that may be fine for some people but I myself as far as operating systems go would want full factory support.

I think what you really meant to say was "full Apple (California) corporate support", since the (mostly Chinese based) "nuts and bolts" hardware factories have no direct participation in actual end user customer support.

 

[CWallace]

Kind of disagree. They already give away macOS system upgrades for free, and have continued that pricing for several years now.

They give macOS away because they make the money on the Mac, itself.

If they sell the license, that means someone is running macOS on hardware other than a Mac and Apple doesn't get any of that.

If they decided they wanted to charge maybe $50 or $100 for a "fully legal, yet officially unsupported by Apple" version of macOS, that would seem like a more realistic price.

You can be sure that a not-insignificant number of current Mac sales would not be made if those people could buy a Windows PC (or PC components) and run macOS on it easily. And that would mean significantly less revenue for the Mac division which means less incentive for Apple to pursue new Mac hardware or updates to macOS.

 

[flat five]

Anyone who is familiar with the build and component quality of Dell Precision and HP Z-series (and the ProLiant and PowerEdge servers) would disagree with this broadside against x64 workstations and servers from other vendors.

maybe you mean something different by 'build quality' but ,to me, Dell Precision ain't all that..

the front.. should be the cleanest since it's the most visible but :

----------------------
the back:

---------------------------------
in contrast, good build quality:

 

[vailr]

They give macOS away because they make the money on the Mac, itself.
If they sell the license, that means someone is running macOS on hardware other than a Mac and Apple doesn't get any of that.

The Amigos would still gain the $50 or $100 to add to their gigantic money pile, held in off-shore bank accounts.
And: Apple would maybe be more incentivized to sell additional system memory, for example, at prices similar to Newegg's memory pricing.

You can be sure that a not-insignificant number of current Mac sales would not be made if those people could buy a Windows PC (or PC components) and run macOS on it easily. And that would mean significantly less revenue for the Mac division which means less incentive for Apple to pursue new Mac hardware or updates to macOS.

They would also likely gain a greatly increased "intellectual market share", if they offered macOS as freely as your average Linux distro. And the more popular the O.S., the more genuine Apple hardware sales, the way I see it.
Could eventuate in less profit percentage per unit sold, however.

A decade or two ago, Indianapolis, Indiana area radio & TV stations used to have a TV commercial for a retail firearms merchant called "Don's Guns", where the owner "Don" would say on camera "I don't want to make any money, I just LOVE to sell guns", motioning in the air with his trigger finger.
Apple could do worse, by saying "I don't want to make any money, I just LOVE to see people using the macOS operating system software".

 

[William Payne]

I think what you really meant to say was "full Apple (California) corporate support", since the (mostly Chinese based) "nuts and bolts" hardware factories have no direct participation in actual end user customer support.

You mentioned a legal version of mac os unsupported by apple. I wasn't meaning the hardware I was meaning factory support for the operating system software.

 

[vailr]

You mentioned a legal version of mac os unsupported by apple. I wasn't meaning the hardware I was meaning factory support for the operating system software.

Do the people located at the various Chinese Apple factories provide any kind of support to the end user for the macOS operating system? Or do Intel personnel provide support to buyers of Apple computers?
No, Apple (California) provides all required support for the end user of their operating system, whether that software was provided "fully supported" as is currently done, or via a possible future "legal, yet unsupported" methodology.

 

[JamesPDX]

Does everybody know that DaVinci Resolve 14 editor will run on Linux? Maybe we're going to have to split machines for tasks. Can't fit 8 GPUs into a throttlebook lite.

Maybe that cylinder could be greatly enlarged. That would be somethin'...

 

[mattspace]

in contrast, good build quality:

View attachment 718119

...that auto-destructs if used to do the work it's sold to do.

 

[JamesPDX]

Gah, it's sad because it's the perfect computer to use in a studio setting. My dream machine would be one as quiet as that nMP, with the same ports, but with a 4.2 quad-core and a NVIDIA 1080Ti card. And yes, I'd be happy staying with Thunderbolt 2 x 6 because my two most important pieces of gear use those ports exclusively.