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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
- Thread starter Mago
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Thank you for the nice and informative reply. It is difficult to predict what customers want and history may give some clues. As I said before the large upgradable desktop were replaced by non upgradable computers (laptops and AIO and lately iPads) for a large majority of "office" workers (who by definitions also are professionals).These customers were willing to let go of upgradability.
The options for poweruser are much more diverse today than the time of the Cube or the cMP. TB3 (for breakout boxes), 10Gb ethernet (for high speed connections to servers) etc allows for other kinds of work stations where all the power does not necessary need to be under the table or inside one box. Because of that the classical big box existence can be questioned.
Regarding upgrade costs, we at this forum can probably all upgrade a computer for "free". However, many professionals cannot (or do not want to) and need to hire expertise to upgrade the computer making 3:th party upgrades DIY less interesting. I agree that 3:rd party has shorter time to development than Apple which is a bit plus.
It's an interesting question. I feel like the base price for the Mac Pro would be less than the iMac simply because there's not going to be a pretty big honking 5K display in there.
But beyond that, considering the Mac Pro seems to have been considered after the iMac Pro was envisioned, I'm not sure how they're going to position it, whether it's just going to be a more flexible system to fill around the use cases the IMac Pro doesn't, or something else. Certainly at the $5K price point there's plenty of room for a lower-end Mac Pro SKU, and the pro Macs always started scraping $10K when you maxed them out.
I think you're going to be disappointed if you think Apple will allow the pricing of the two machines to reflect any value in the display.
The iMac Pro will be a "Mac Pro with a free display". The Mac Pro will not be "An iMac Pro minus the price of the display".
If anything, the iMac Pro's display will be balanced against the value of expandability in the Mac Pro - you can get a non-expandable/upgradable machine with a display, or an expandable/upgradable machine with no display.
Giving Apple *less* money to get the contents of the iMac Pro without the cost of a display, that aint going to be an option (sadly).
It is too early to make a conjecture.
We don't know the mMP's form factor, if it is modular to the point of user-servciable to individual components, then a bare-bone case can possibly be provided as an option for cheap, if not up front for consumers but at least in volume for edu and businesses.
We also don't know if Apple will position the mMP out of the norm in respect to their recent Mac lineup "philosophy". Direction of the iMac Pro does not exactly take off too far from the trash can Mac Pro, where form has a bit too much edge over function, but then during the round table they effectively admitted the direction needed adjustment; it has been speculated that the iMac Pro may have been the original top of the line Mac, while the mMP is a newly conceived extra category, it remains unclear if these 2 products will have some overlap, or perhaps the lowest end of the mMP can each even lower than the entry iMac due to its modular nature, creeping into Mini territory.
We don't know the mMP's form factor, if it is modular to the point of user-servciable to individual components, then a bare-bone case can possibly be provided as an option for cheap, if not up front for consumers but at least in volume for edu and businesses.
We also don't know if Apple will position the mMP out of the norm in respect to their recent Mac lineup "philosophy". Direction of the iMac Pro does not exactly take off too far from the trash can Mac Pro, where form has a bit too much edge over function, but then during the round table they effectively admitted the direction needed adjustment; it has been speculated that the iMac Pro may have been the original top of the line Mac, while the mMP is a newly conceived extra category, it remains unclear if these 2 products will have some overlap, or perhaps the lowest end of the mMP can each even lower than the entry iMac due to its modular nature, creeping into Mini territory.
Apple does occasionally zag when we expect a zig - a slotbox that reaches down all the way to the processing power of a mac mini, and all the way up beyond the iMac Pro, based on what processor you option, would certainly be a marketable strategy, based on defining "pro" as the capability to reconfigure the machine.
It never got a lot of love, but the Powermac / Performa 6400/6500 series minitower was an interesting machine back in the day - lower end processor and dual pci slots in a compact, softer edge tower.
I think it was a vague rumour recently of a mac mini that was not so mini anymore. Would be intersting to see how a computer look like that scales from a "mini" to beyond iMac Pro.
@iPadified
Well I predicted something (03.03.2013, long before tMP) like the attached one. I wasn't sure whether it was gonna be called a mini, maxi, xMac or Pro. You could just strech it seamlessly. But don't ask how it's going to be engineered.
Didn't happen though..
Well I predicted something (03.03.2013, long before tMP) like the attached one. I wasn't sure whether it was gonna be called a mini, maxi, xMac or Pro. You could just strech it seamlessly. But don't ask how it's going to be engineered.
Didn't happen though..
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Unfortunately it did not happen. Adding locked modules to robust ports gives very high user friendliness - I like that. I think the critical part is the lack of high speed I/O between the components. Even TB3 is not quick enough for graphics cards. Stacking may also make ventilation of individual modules difficult.@iPadified
Well I predicted something (03.03.2013, long before tMP) like the attached one. I wasn't sure whether it was gonna be called a mini, maxi, xMac or Pro. You could just strech it seamlessly. But don't ask how it's going to be engineered.
Didn't happen though..
I want to remember the crowd there is an AMD/Industry(Apple included) project about Unified Hyperconverged Architecture, where all the heavy compute acceleration will be distributed along the CPU/GPU and External Co-processors Units (using high speed network/fabric interconnects like TB3/Mellanox/Infinity Fabric/etc) even off loading to purpose built processors like 64 core ARM CPUs even FPGA clusters, Apple may surprise us by building an mMP loaded with a single GPU and CPU but with high bandwidth buses that allow connect external modules as co-processing batteries on top the mMP, having you the choice to work with maybe 256 cpu cores, FPGAs, multi-TB HBM2 memory, etc. Its an very interesting advanced concept on where a lot of people is working right now, maybe not for Apple but at least with some Apple funding.
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Maybe now is closer to the reality...
I predict that the new Mac Pro will be powered by wishes and dreams, and be individually delivered on the back of a talking unicorn.
This thread is going to a place where if Apple does release a tower with four PCI-E slots everyone is going to be disappointed.
I don't know if this is a function of age, or just limited exposure to the computverse; but slimline, focus orientated machines have been around forever, maybe more so in enterprise than for family computing. Amber CRT WYSE dumb terminals were a thing. Slimline PS2 saturated offices everywhere. This idea of a 'classical big box' thing is a misnomer, yes it was a thing, but it was also surrounded by other things which you are conveniently forgetting about. Historical cherry picking. Remember those early Texas Instrument laptops of 40 years ago ? Not much has changed since then in terms of expandability or function philosophy, just the packaging has gotten tighter.
You might not see value in 'classical big box'... this is fine. But lets not go down the 'no true scottsman' path here. Others might; I know folks who have significantly more invested in DSP expansion hardware than the actual computer itself, and TB3 breakouts do not offer the throughput required. Machine control with custom I/O hardware, etc ..
I get the sentiment you are trying to make, but hey, there is an iMacPro coming to scratch your itch. But to suggest that 'classic big box' is questionable, it outright ignorant.
Think of the cooling architecture required for a workstation powered by dragons.
Unicorns deliver far better performance per watt.
Are you thinking I am young or old?
Hard to tell. I ran mainframes three decades ago and has followed the computer development over time. Sure it was slim line computes before although I do not think a terminal counts as computer. I fact the original IBM PC was larger physically than the many of the subsequent Sun WS! The PC tower has been around since the 90:th or so. In term of PC, this is "classical" age. I know fully well that TB3 is not sufficient for some I/O but as the I/O get quicker there will be new ways for modularity and connections to powerful server.
Are you thinking I am young or old?
I was thinking young, and so I am wrong
. And to ward off any other miss communication; I mean ignorant in the agnostic sense, not the pejorative. The dumb terminal was a pre-emptive strike to what i thought would be an inevitable reference to 'cloud application' trends, and downsizing of compute at the consumer level to allow for other packaging/price/lifestyle design choices. The other points to throw into cauldron:
- the 'classic pc big box' is still a stalwart in most mainstream pc brands lineups.
- sales trends can be deceiving, need to be in context with households with PC's. For obvious reasons, consumer demographics change, just because there are more vegans today, doesn't mean no needs a good steak anymore.
- no one, and I am willing to bet the moderators family jewels on this one, no one was inspired back in the day by their older sister's function specific Brother™ wordprocessor with the 3 row lcd screen. Or their parent's office monochrome laptop running Visicalc™. The next compsci generation is not going to be inspired by a BTO only imacpro. It will either be RPis or Arduinos, or 'big classic pcs'. Consumption devices are just uninspiring.
There's a recent (~1 week old?) thread on Reddit of a Mac Mini concept that's essentially like a tubular bar (and has the TouchBar integrated on top) which got some of us talking. One of the ideas that was thrown out was a "PC integrated into the keyboard" ... not unlike the Commodore 64 (or VIC-20 if you're older still), although with modern components probably much slimmer.
In any event, this is an interesting approach for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is effectively a "headless" laptop that also doesn't need a battery, and it is potentially as simple as a "repackaged MacBook". The second is (Warning: my personal speculation) that it integrates the TouchBar with keyboard & CPU/system ... FYI my speculation here is that because we've not seen a TB-equipped USB keyboard for a desktop iMac, there's something more going on here within Apple (probably has to do with security?) for *why* we've not seen this accessory show up.
In any case, this got me thinking about a Mac Pro variant on this -- which literally started out as a return to the ancient Apple ][ case: keyboard & TouchBar in front, CPU underneath, and PCIe slots (and maybe some SSD bays) in back.
But in evolving - refining - modernizing ... this some, along with the "modular Mac Pro" mantra, what this design could morph to would be to (1): rotate the PCIe boards by 90 degrees (lay them on their side) to change to a lower profile "PIzza Box" (Mac LC) and make it a separate box that has a (TBD) "Modular" connection to the aforementioned Mac Mini-in-a-keyboard. This could also facilitate a couple of different Pizza Box Modules (PBM's), such as a PBM with just PCIe slots (such as for GPUs) and another PBM is set up to house & connect 3.5" and/or 2.5" HDDs/SSDs (for expanded local data storage), and so on.
The last question for this architectural concept would be "what's the interface?". Clearly, USB-C would be the first one to consider...and the spin-off of that choice would be that a stack of PBMs could also be a (flexible) docking station for a Mac Laptop too.
Finally, last spin: this concept has been illustrated with the front end CPU plug-in being a Mac Mini, but where's the heavier duty CPU for a Mac Pro? Simple answer here is that if the "Mini+Keyboard" box is designed intelligently (including thermal), it can be designed to be flexible in accommodating different CPUs installed on a standardized motherboard form factor - - from a manufacturing line standpoint, the case is the same, as are the assembly steps: it simply uses a different SKU motherboard. As such, this isn't a "can one PC replace two?", but rather that the two continue to exist, but because they're sharing the same external box and assembly line, becomes cheaper to fab: the difference between a Mini & Mac Pro effectively becomes which "BTO" option you choose, which translates down to which motherboard gets dropped in during assembly.
Ok we are officially going way out there regarding concepts for what this machine may be.
They’ll just make a connector themselves, the already did it with the Mac Pro before, the daughter board holding the dual Xeon CPUs in the old Tower Pro, they developed the connection from that to the motherboard themselves I think and no ones complained about it’s speed.
They didn't develop anything. It's just PCIe with a custom pin layout.
Which is not fast enough for a modular Mac Pro as being described.
And honestly if you're waiting for a modular Mac Pro like this you're just going to end up being disappointed.
Cost, security difficulties relating to touch ID modules not tied to specific computer, concern about long-term vision for touch ID vis-a-vis face ID (consider how much more natural face ID would be in iMacs and laptops), waiting to commit until 2nd revision incorporating force-feedback; also on that last point consider ergonomic considerations--with proper posture tb on desktop much further out-of-sight than for typical laptop posture).
One curious possibility for the mini is as basically a mini-pro, built around recently-announced Intel/AMD product, and about the size of a soda can (possibly a "fat" 12oz or "tall" 16oz, but in that ballpark). It's tight but everything a mini needs can be squeezed-in; power can be delivered over one of the 4 TB3/USB-C ports.
Well, to go one more step into the absurd, how about routing the cooling fan exhaust to be UP, through the keyboard, as a strategy to minimize dust mucking up the keys? Naturally, one would then want to incorporate a HEPA-like filter on the air inlet port ... something that's been lacking on PCs since forever for controlling dust infiltration.