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

[mattspace]

I love this take on “cars and trucks”.

Yup, of course if more of the tech press had been paying attention outside of their little bubble or unreality, they'd have rightly howled down "Cars and trucks" as Apple's "noone needs more than 640k of memory". One of the most fundamentally incorrect things any tech executive has ever said.

The Ford f-150 is the largest selling motor vehicle in the United States.

The market equivalent vehicle in Australia (the Toyota Hilux) is the largest selling vehicle here, and every manufacturer is falling over themselves to get into the market, namely 4 door dual-cab, tray-back (4wd) pickup truck, or "tradie ute" (Mercedes just launched one here).

The idea that people are moving away from wide-capability, user-configurable trucks is a fiction. As overall car sales growth contracts, it's the configurable truck that people keep. They make it nicer inside to use for non-work purposes, and then they ditch the sedan. Yet another demonstration of how Apple's lack of diversity (of wealth, of occupation, of socioeconomic & geographic distribution) has isolated them from reality.

"Cars and Trucks" should be chiselled into the lintels of their new campus as a warning, "remember, thou art mortal"-style.

 

[AidenShaw]

they'd have rightly howled down "Cars and trucks" as Apple's "noone needs more than 640k of memory".

Big difference is that Apple has said "cars and trucks" on many occasions, and nobody ever said "640K of memory" is enough.

 

[mattspace]

Big difference is that Apple has said "cars and trucks" on many occasions, and nobody ever said "640K of memory" is enough.

Substitute any other boneheaded vision of the future that’s not just folklaw then...

Someone, something, redesigning cities around self-balancing electric scooters...

 

[OS6-OSX]

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".....

I see where you are going with the "Pizza Box" theory. Just make sure the mMP does not have the heat issues of the 6,1 or there will be cheese everywhere!

 

[mikas]

How cheesy is that?
That's almost exactly what I have predicted a few years ago. I had to refine my design a little bit. There are all these stackable different sizes of modules; GPU, CPU, Storage, Power and a NIA, New Innovations my Ass, modules. These modules automatigally click to each other with a new ingenious super speed bus built around the modules edges; It's female and male in every module, at the top and at the bottom.

You can buy as you need, what you need, and it's all there to be bought by you, at Your local modular Apple Store, with an  price.

I wish I could not predict..

 

[flowrider]

Aww, the Pizza Box. Anybody remember the LC Series?

Lou

 

[mikas]

Of course. One of my studying loans (at late 80's or early 90's something) was used for getting a pizza box. LC II 8MB/80MB, if I remember it right. I used all my available money for this thing, money originally meant to be used for eating rice and tuna fish along a whole year.

I still love rice, but not so much tuna anymore. And I've sold the LC II for money somewhere in between 1990-2000.

My retro collection do need a representative of the LC family.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^Not in the 80s, my friend. The LC came out in late 1990. the LCII in mid 1992 and the LC111 in early 1993.

Lou

 

[mikas]

You have to be right. Seems like you know your stuff. I bought my most expensive gears at 90's. The stuff cost a life for me back then. Nice to meet some oldies from that era.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^^I never bought an LC for my self, I used one at work. But, my first Mac was a Mac Plus back in '86. While I was using the LC at work, I had a IIci at Home.

Lou

 

[flat five]

the thing with the cars & trucks analogy is trucks generally keep the same capacity etc as they always have.
it's not like a 2017 F150 is thousands of times more capable than a 1997 model.

whereas with computers, they shrink while performance increases.

if you needed a truck computer 10 years ago (and not an 18wheeler)... sorry, but you very likely need a car today.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[singhs.apps]

Well the ‘trucks’ of today need to carry more amount than the ones of 20 years ago... in the same space. Data expands to fill the capacity available ;P

 

[flat five]

Well the ‘trucks’ of today need to carry more amount than the ones of 20 years ago... in the same space. Data expands to fill the capacity available ;P

yeah, in video i see that as being the case.. not so much in most other creative usages.

or-- with CAD at least, the applications are more optimized and the computers are waay faster.. and the amount of data remains similar.. so, in that field in particular, you absolutely do not need a truck anymore.. in fact, a truck will probably be worse to use at a greater expense..

i imagine this same scenario repeats many times over throughout most other fields.
(i mean, so many pros have switched to iMac and MBP this decade that i'd say it's more than just my imagination)


------
regardless of all that..
i still think the cars VS trucks analogy isn't quite applicable anymore and will continue to lessen as an effective comparison.

 

[mattspace]

if you needed a truck computer 10 years ago (and not an 18wheeler)... sorry, but you very likely need a car today.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I really disagree with you on that - the aspect of computers that was trucky was the post-puchase reconfigurability of them. If you needed a truck computer, you still need a truck computer. People used used truck computers in the past, but didn't necessarily need the truckyness, that was just where the performance they did need was co-existent. They needed an aspect of the product, not the whole thing.

 

[flat five]

I really disagree with you on that - the aspect of computers that was trucky was the post-puchase reconfigurability of them. If you needed a truck computer, you still need a truck computer. People used used truck computers in the past, but didn't necessarily need the truckyness, that was just where the performance they did need was co-existent. They needed an aspect of the product, not the whole thing.

oh.
i thought the analogy was more about processing capacity (for lack of better descriptor)

----
that said-- post-purchase reconfigurability is still greater on a computer than a truck VS car..
via software..

give two different people the same model computer and they're (possibly) going to be doing completely different things with them since they're running different software..

probably more different than, say, an ambulance vs. tow truck.

 

[mattspace]

with CAD at least, the applications are more optimized and the computers are waay faster.. and the amount of data remains similar.. so, in that field in particular, you absolutely do not need a truck anymore.. in fact, a truck will probably be worse to use at a greater expense..

I imagine CAD also has the unique thing that your working environment has a diagrammatic nature (wireframe etc) that acts as a brake on the amount of visual complexity the viewport needs to display - a fully photographic render in realtime wouldn't make the tool easier to use because it would hide a lot of the visual information you need.

I don't know if you've looked at VR for CAD, I spent last weekend getting some extended eye-time with Vive setups, both on laptops and liquid-cooled towers, and the most powerful impressions I came away from the event with are:

• VR needs a 1080ti as a minimum in terms of GPU power for a degree of visual fidelity to create a work environment you'd want to spend all day in. You really notice the decrease in visual quality when stepping down to lower cards, and "gaming performance" is probably the most applicable measure for the quality of the immersive environment.
• VR is where people are going to create content for VR - it's not going to be a thing you just preview stuff made on a 2d monitor. 30 seconds in Tiltbrush or Blocks is enough to make that obvious.
• Annual GPU upgrades are going to be the norm for anyone wanting to work in creating content for VR - you're going to have to be able to create in an environment as good as that used by people viewing your content.
• 360 video (and I say this as someone who's heavily invested in 360 still photography and saw 360 video demos back in 2001) is the new 3d tv. As the feature event, it's limitations are going to make it very hard to escape gimmick status, you can't walk around and change the viewpoint, and making it stereoscopic is problematic - it's got its purpose as skyboxes and backgrounds, but anyone saying a setup can do "VR" on the basis of 360 video, needs to be treated with caution.

[doublepost=1511074953][/doublepost]

oh.
i thought the analogy was more about processing capacity (for lack of better descriptor)

Yeah, but the processing capability was to an extent just piggybacking on the big load tray / pci slots of the truck.

Not having that distinction has been part of what got us into this mess - Apple not putting out machines (since the G4 tower & cube) with the same processing power but making the expandability the differentiator prevented them from seeing the the expandability for the purchase-choice feature it was.

that said-- post-purchase reconfigurability is still greater on a computer than a truck VS car..
via software..

Software can only do so much, especially when the alternatives that are software driven (which I'd class thunderbolt as, when compared to hardware pci slots) don't offer the same capabilities as the hardware option.

 

[singhs.apps]

What Matt said.
1080 ti is entry level and we have just gotten started on the AR/VR front.

Besides if AIOs could do do the job we expect from today’s systems why wouldn’t we buy it ?

Truth is they don’t. By the time these form factors have caught up with requirements of yesterday where they are now good enough .. kind of... the goal post has been moved further up.

 

[H2SO4]

oh.
i thought the analogy was more about processing capacity (for lack of better descriptor)

----
that said-- post-purchase reconfigurability is still greater on a computer than a truck VS car..
via software..

give two different people the same model computer and they're (possibly) going to be doing completely different things with them since they're running different software..

probably more different than, say, an ambulance vs. tow truck.

Depends what you mean by processing. The car 'processes' fuel and gives you motion, heat and electricity. Compare the performance and load capacity combination of a car with a 2 litre engine to one back 20 years ago.
My 3 litre diesel gives me the same performance but better economy than probably a 4-5 litre petrol engine from 20 years ago, while doing all that in a heavier chassis. (I hate diesels for the record).

 

[fuchsdh]

Yup, of course if more of the tech press had been paying attention outside of their little bubble or unreality, they'd have rightly howled down "Cars and trucks" as Apple's "noone needs more than 640k of memory". One of the most fundamentally incorrect things any tech executive has ever said.

The Ford f-150 is the largest selling motor vehicle in the United States.

The market equivalent vehicle in Australia (the Toyota Hilux) is the largest selling vehicle here, and every manufacturer is falling over themselves to get into the market, namely 4 door dual-cab, tray-back (4wd) pickup truck, or "tradie ute" (Mercedes just launched one here).

The idea that people are moving away from wide-capability, user-configurable trucks is a fiction. As overall car sales growth contracts, it's the configurable truck that people keep. They make it nicer inside to use for non-work purposes, and then they ditch the sedan. Yet another demonstration of how Apple's lack of diversity (of wealth, of occupation, of socioeconomic & geographic distribution) has isolated them from reality.

"Cars and Trucks" should be chiselled into the lintels of their new campus as a warning, "remember, thou art mortal"-style.

The number of pickup trucks and big SUVs I see in NYC, despite the fact that it makes no sense to have giant cars here let alone pickups if you're not a contractor, is pretty staggering. I'd wager a lot of people buying trucks are people who want pickup trucks just 'cause, the same way SUV sales ballooned because people didn't want to be the "uncool" people with minivans.

A more salient real-world example is the reality that in a modernized and increasingly urban world, individual car ownership increasingly makes less sense. The economics make no sense unless you're vastly overestimating "freedom" into the equation. Young people aren't buying cars because they don't fit their lifestyle and economic means. Arguing about car preferences is thus possibly missing the forest for the trees long-term.

Everyone arguing about workstations forget that they're on a very thin slice of the wedge, as Apple themselves pointed out. That thin slice might remain constant, and be profitable to target, but at the end of the day it's nothing compared to the rest of the market. People don't like to be reminded that their preferences are not the norm, and that they can be safely ignored... but that's how the cookie crumbles.

 

[CWallace]

Besides if AIOs could do do the job we expect from today’s systems why wouldn’t we buy it?

Truth is they don’t. By the time these form factors have caught up with requirements of yesterday where they are now good enough .. kind of... the goal post has been moved further up.

And yet every quarter for years Apple sells more and more of these "not good enough" machines. Paradoxically, the more Apple has simplified the designs, the better they sell. Meanwhile, traditional PC OEMs who still make the "big box of expansion" have seen their sales contract over the same period and the one area they are making money in is by adopting Apple's simplified designs in AIOs and portables. And the two drivers of that philosophy are Intel (who sell the CPUs) and Microsoft (who sell the software) with their Ultrabook and Surface lines, respectively.

People don't like to be reminded that their preferences are not the norm, and that they can be safely ignored... but that's how the cookie crumbles.

This in a nutshell - conflating and confusing one's personal needs / desires as those of the market's.

 

[flat five]

Depends what you mean by processing. The car 'processes' fuel and gives you motion, heat and electricity. Compare the performance and load capacity combination of a car with a 2 litre engine to one back 20 years ago.
My 3 litre diesel gives me the same performance but better economy than probably a 4-5 litre petrol engine from 20 years ago, while doing all that in a heavier chassis. (I hate diesels for the record).

i mean:

the 'truck' is capable of hauling more stuff.. it's slower and less maneuverable but if you've got a big load to carry, it will finish that task quicker than using a car.
basically-- the truck is a big(ger) tower PC containing multiple processing cores..
the car is a quad or 6-core computer.

---
that's what i thought the analogy was saying.
[doublepost=1511110094][/doublepost]

I don't know if you've looked at VR for CAD, I spent last weekend getting some extended eye-time with Vive setups, both on laptops and liquid-cooled towers, and the most powerful impressions I came away from the event with are:

• VR needs a 1080ti as a minimum in terms of GPU power for a degree of visual fidelity to create a work environment you'd want to spend all day in. You really notice the decrease in visual quality when stepping down to lower cards, and "gaming performance" is probably the most applicable measure for the quality of the immersive environment.
• VR is where people are going to create content for VR - it's not going to be a thing you just preview stuff made on a 2d monitor. 30 seconds in Tiltbrush or Blocks is enough to make that obvious.
• Annual GPU upgrades are going to be the norm for anyone wanting to work in creating content for VR - you're going to have to be able to create in an environment as good as that used by people viewing your content.
• 360 video (and I say this as someone who's heavily invested in 360 still photography and saw 360 video demos back in 2001) is the new 3d tv. As the feature event, it's limitations are going to make it very hard to escape gimmick status, you can't walk around and change the viewpoint, and making it stereoscopic is problematic - it's got its purpose as skyboxes and backgrounds, but anyone saying a setup can do "VR" on the basis of 360 video, needs to be treated with caution.

VR is going to be most valuable as a CAD tool when it's very widespread. (imo)
not when the requirement is to have some very specialized or very expensive equipment in order to view.

AR will be the first step.. and currently, i'm getting far better AR experience with my iPhone (using models i created on my Macs) than i am with my Macs.. further, many to most of my potential clients also have these viewing capabilities since they also have iPhones.

if for VR usage i'll need to tell a client "hey, just go buy a 2018 MacPro and you'll be able to check this thing out".. well, that's not going to work.. at all.

VR is still in its infancy.. if you want to mess around with it now or contribute to it living up to its potential then so be it.. invest in the equipment to do so.. but as far as a necessary requirement for modern CAD designing and communication..
it's not even close to that stage yet.

or, saying another way-- if this is your rebuttal to what my point was then you're either conceding the point i made or entirely missing the point i was trying to make.

Software can only do so much, especially when the alternatives that are software driven (which I'd class thunderbolt as, when compared to hardware pci slots) don't offer the same capabilities as the hardware option.

hmm yeah.. we just see things very differently then.
to me, the software is orders of magnitudes more important than hardware as far as user experience or user capabilities is concerned.

it's the software that allows the highest degree of end user configurability over a base model.. pretty much every industry of the past century which previously required specialized hardware for certain aspects can now all happen on a single computer through various specialized softwares.

 

[singhs.apps]

And yet every quarter for years Apple sells more and more of these "not good enough" machines. Paradoxically, the more Apple has simplified the designs, the better they sell. Meanwhile, traditional PC OEMs who still make the "big box of expansion" have seen their sales contract over the same period and the one area they are making money in is by adopting Apple's simplified designs in AIOs and portables. And the two drivers of that philosophy are Intel (who sell the CPUs) and Microsoft (who sell the software) with their Ultrabook and Surface lines, respectively.

I think we are confusing "sell" with "performance". iOS devices sell quite a lot more than the entire mac division, So iPhones would be a better option than macs, right ? But then why do people still buy Macs?

And it still doesn't answer the question: if AIOs would work for my use case scenario, why wouldn't I buy it? just because i "like"big boxes? ( hint: I don't, but no manufacturer has managed to solve the performance vs form factor yet in certain industries. Why do dell and Hp and others continue to make more boxes if the "simplified" designs sell well? )

if the "simplified" design worked for the market that Apple was after with its tcMP, why go back to the design board? Why were some users still sticking with their cheese graters ? why did some migrate to other platforms?

If Intel and Microsoft are driving the philosophy of simplified designs, they are actually after the market that the ipads and other similar form factor devices are threatening to replace. Intel's push for the ultrabook segment was to stay on the radar of users who might be just as well served with the tablets and phones as with the traditional laptops.

Please show me a simplified apple workstation that will be just fine for my work. I will buy.

Everyone arguing about workstations forget that they're on a very thin slice of the wedge, as Apple themselves pointed out. That thin slice might remain constant, and be profitable to target, but at the end of the day it's nothing compared to the rest of the market. People don't like to be reminded that their preferences are not the norm, and that they can be safely ignored... but that's how the cookie crumbles.

mac pro users are very much aware that workstations aren't in the same segment as the mobile devices...but how is this related to what mac pro users are asking for?

As a side note, sometimes I get a feeling some users are worried Apple might actually release a workable, upgradable mac pro. And that their desire for cool and small form factor workstations might not see the light of the day.

 

[CWallace]

I think we are confusing "sell" with "performance". iOS devices sell quite a lot more than the entire mac division, So iPhones would be a better option than macs, right ? But then why do people still buy Macs?

Considering Apple sells more Macs than iPads per quarter so I don't think we are since few would argue that even if an iPad Pro can benchmark as good as or better than many Macs, overall performance in many real-world uses still favors the Mac as does the flexibility and suitability to task in many instances.

Why do dell and Hp and others continue to make more boxes if the "simplified" designs sell well? )

The bulk of their sales are to enterprise customers and those customers are looking primarily at Total Cost of Ownership. And part of that TCO equation is keeping peripherals (like the monitors) on much longer replacement cycles than the PC itself (which is usually 3 years as that is the standard warranty). They rarely, if ever, upgrade those PCs and with modern component reliability, ease of repairability is probably not a major factor, either (especially if they outsource that warranty work to the OEM).

if the "simplified" design worked for the market that Apple was after with its tcMP, why go back to the design board? Why were some users still sticking with their cheese graters ? why did some migrate to other platforms?

I expect the majority migrated because of software. Plenty of people have said that the tools they use in a professional level work best (or only) in Windows and/or on nVidia hardware so that Macs run macOS and use AMD means they cannot use a Mac regardless of how powerful it was.

As a side note, sometimes I get a feeling some users are worried Apple might actually release a workable, upgradable mac pro. And that their desire for cool and small form factor workstations might not see the light of the day.

There will always be people who have enough money to buy the most expensive thing they can because they can (be it for whatever reason they rationalize the decision). Of the scores of thousands of people per quarter who bought the old Mac Pro, who buy the current Mac Pro and whom will buy the next Mac Pro, that number is probably in the scores of hundreds. The rest buy it because it either fits their needs period or it fits their needs best in terms of what else is on offer from Apple.

 

[flat five]

And it still doesn't answer the question: if AIOs would work for my use case scenario, why wouldn't I buy it? just because i "like"big boxes? ( hint: I don't, but no manufacturer has yet managed to solve the performance vs form factor yet in certain industries. Why do dell and Hp and others continue to make more boxes if the "simplified" designs sell well? )

what's your use case scenario?

(just curious)

 

[singhs.apps]

what's your use case scenario?

(just curious)

GPU Rendering, vfx, game designs and working on 16k , 50 layered PSD ( PSB rather )files. On occasion also dabble in video but not in a professional category.

Looking to try out the VR apps ( some traditional DCC apps are making the inevitable move to creating content in VR but it is a couple of years away at least before it becomes the norm ). In the meantime there are apps from the VR hardware makers that I desperately want to try but willing to wait until Apple announces its intention vis a vi the nMP ( not too long though )

Also external GPU solutions suck at present.