When an ENGINEER IS REQUIRED TO BUILD A COMPUTER This happnes:
When a DIY builds a Computer, this happens
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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
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When a DIY builds a Computer, this happens
When an ENGINEER IS REQUIRED TO BUILD A COMPUTER This happnes:
When a DIY builds a Computer, this happens
I could post some links of awfully engineered computers vs some really neat built computers by DIY folks.
Don’t use this to circumvent the issue of who is or isn’t a professional.
Case in point is the very basis of your thread : a 7’1 Mac Pro.
The one doing circles on what a PRO Computer's user does, is you, if you actually needs a PRO Computer (use it cpu,gpu in your projects), you dont care to assembly it unless you need a Monster like thianne-2, you care is to put ir to work.
I like to remember you, this is not a Hardware DIY forum, neither a hackintosh thread, its a MP7,1 thread,
No more than it is an iMac pro, iOS devices, nvidia fanboys or who is or isn’t a professional ? What is your point ?
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Exactly. No one wants to lift a finger to mess with hardware unless said hardware is limited in some way for the user. In which case, the user would like to put in a peripheral of choice to continue to work. Else the old Mac pros or even Dell HP should stop offering open slots.
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Yeah, you are right. Back in the day's everybody used desktops. There where laptops early but at the time they were utterly expensive. This trend will continue and there are already mobile phones that you can put in a dock at your office and it works as a desktop. It´s not quite there yet but not far away.
As for desktops/workstation as you point out the roof hasn´t been reached and probably never will in the near future driven by 3D, VR, Machine learning++ And there are already no need f.ex. have your own render farm as that can easily be done in the cloud.
If you think about technologies like Nvidia game stream combined with faster and faster networks real cloud computing isn't really far away... We who have lived a while and like having control over our own hardware might not like that idea so much but I don't think the younger generations of creators will have the same attachment to the systems as many of us have... It may be a bit further down the road but I think the idea is not too far-fetched.
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There is definitely a reasonable sized crowd of content creators who are free from the "shackles" of traditional computers. This we have no issue about. The MacBooks the iMacs or even the iPad Pros are there to serve this need. The key to the question is if the full blown workstation market with no-nonsense artificial ceiling is still viable business for Apple, which as described above, is a smaller and smaller niche since the "casual" pros are departing from this form factor.Yeah, you are right. Back in the day's everybody used desktops. There where laptops early but at the time they were utterly expensive. This trend will continue and there are already mobile phones that you can put in a dock at your office and it works as a desktop. It´s not quite there yet but not far away.
As for desktops/workstation as you point out the roof hasn´t been reached and probably never will in the near future driven by 3D, VR, Machine learning++ And there are already no need f.ex. have your own render farm as that can easily be done in the cloud.
If you think about technologies like Nvidia game stream combined with faster and faster networks real cloud computing isn't really far away... We who have lived a while and like having control over our own hardware might not like that idea so much but I don't think the younger generations of creators will have the same attachment to the systems as many of us have... It may be a bit further down the road but I think the idea is not too far-fetched.
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I love this kind of attitude. It is as if the people approving the tcMP decision are also posting here. "If you don't like our obscurely designed product, you are just not serious enough."
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I dont stand on Peter's asumptions, since he just make this video for fun, but I love his way to tell us few facts about Apple some people seems forgot: the Cheese Grater was not an Apple product with Apple DNA, jobs hated this fact, and we know Apple's dna: propietary/locked/beautiful.
Few things Peter underestimate (besides he assumes the iMac Pro its an success, never), Apple needs a Pro Workstation capable for Dual GPUs at least, and top compute performance for R&D developer, Apple dont cares about Pixar, Pixar's render farms run on CentOS (linux).
When a DIY builds a Computer, this happens
This is the definition of upgradeability. A really "open" system...
[doublepost=1519491921][/doublepost]And it's relevant, as it is built inside a real Apple Case™!
The iMac Pro may have been doing well (if at all), it is probably in the same vein as the touch bar MBPs doing well sales wise: a long stagnation of the highest performing Mac in that category, so waiting users just have to get one since it doesn't suck as bad as the previous. If Apple takes this as a hint that the mMP has no urgency to be released ASAP, then they are making the same wrong assumption that "pros" are preferring the iMac form factor over headless. You can't dismiss the fact that the headless version is an inferior choice while assessing the situation.
LMAO
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Technically I could be doing my work on an iMac Pro, I just dont buy the iMac pro because I want a Dual GPU solution, and give Apple a chance for an nVidia GPU (I'm hopless), maybe if Apple dont announce the Mac Pro on the next WWDC (I hope at least an sneak peek this quarter), then I'll go with an 10 core Vega 64 iMac Pro, and plug an nVifdia GPU thru Thunderbolt 3, I think most pros share this thinking (those that can hold for a while until the Mac Pro is avail), the iMac Pro is good for bloggers FCPx, but this is an limited realm, evenlogic pro users desire a Mac Pro (while most are happy with multi-core trash can).
Only way Apple could make all us happy, by simply releasing two Mac Pros, a lite single GPU trash-can like ultra quiet WS (imac w/o display), and a Modular Multi-GPU/Multi-CPU Monster (a NeXT cube?), for those on the edge.
As for the openness of the form factor, let me stress again, being open does not necessarily mean it exclusively caters to the DIY crowd that you seem to eagerly dismiss (rightly so, in fact). The core of the issue is the longevity of the platform, if it is modular in whatever sense, then its components will need to be actively updated to remain current down many years, something Apple isn't known to do well and frequent enough. It is just not a very strong sell, as it leads to worry if what I am buying is as obsolete as its BTO config, and whatever I need to replace the machine with is coming with another unknown form factor again. One could argue that some or even most of the workstation market actually never touch the machine after purchase, maybe the organization has mega budget, maybe it's on 3 year lease, what have you. But the concern is on the bigger picture. Having such a machine at the top of the line is just not a very assuring sight for many industries. It is asking too much confidence from users in trusting Apple to actively maintain an up to date catalog of setup/config/components. This is why using standard connectors is a thing out there. Having unused slots and spaces for most users, is a much smaller problem than having no slot and space for a given (edge) use case. This is a pretty logical solution to the high ceiling segment, despite it being ungracefully un-Apple.
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Just for those who point to the cloud as a panacea to not require 'compute performance' in the local office. There are a quite a few situations where a company might not be able to keep resources outside of its company walls. Some are required contractually, especially if dealing with PII/PCI type data. I could see one making the case where security and security of IP is an issue ( those darn leaky amazon S3 buckets ) as well.
Yet the youtuber continues to advocate Hackintoshes in lieu of a perceived lack of openness by Apple in the recent past. And if Apple was indeed so hell bent on locked out, you wouldn't have bootcamp windows running natively on macs, nor any IOs, no third market peripherals ( whatever scant that remain ). Steve Jobs himself blustered reg Styluses, large screen phones. Yet Apple is doing the exact opposite.
While its Renderman software runs on Windows and macOS too. Along with Renderman their Open Subdiv and USD technology need to support a wider industry install base than just Linux.
And yet, a fully loaded cheesegrater was Jobs' machine in his office at Apple's campus, not an iMac.
Most people will declare ‘evidences’ to suit their arguments without consideration of other evidences that might point to the opposite.
Apple and I think even the entire Silicon Valley was founded by tinkerers. And tinkering needn’t be just about hardware.
Software developers tinker with development kits all the time ( how many of them would like to be told X development code can only be used to do certain things a certain way and not the way the developer wants to ?)
I wonder how many apple products are designed with closed and restrictive hardware ?
Also Pixar used to have a lot of Mac hardware for workstations. That they moved to PC based systems running Linux speaks a lot about the restrictions that Pixar found with Apple systems.
joJs did not hate the "fact" the cheesegrate MacPro wasn't in Apple DNA.
There is no "cheesegrater Mac Pro" in this picture. The picture was taken in 2004. The "cheesegrater" didn't exist unitil 2006. Soo..... Jobs is using the technology available at the time; not necessarily what he wanted, but what he could get. You see the big iSight Camera perched on top ( before Jobs oversaw the integration of cameras inside of all Apple monitors by 2010. ) doesn't mean he was a fan of the solution, just that it was the available solution. The Apple store doesn't even sell any discrete desktop cameras anymore. So not only does Apple not make discrete iSight anymore they don't even sell 3rd party solutions wither. That is what happened in the 13=14 years since this picture was taken.
Note also that 2004 is 3 years before the iPhone release ( and iPad development project). Desktop unit sales were as high as laptop sales in that era.
see link here https://gigaom.com/2010/11/05/the-ongoing-decline-of-the-desktop-mac/
(iMacs drive the desktops slightly higher when got them onto desktop CPUs versus mobile ones, but the growth is on a different track. )
The primary point of what Jobs was doing in the first decade of this century was primarily focused on driving those blue bars in the article above higher. To spin it otherwise is just an alternative universe timeline. A picture of the office in 2009 quite likely was different in significant ways. Circa 2004 the developers were probably primarily using the Power Macs. So if jobs wanted to boot the latest build of the internal "dog food" he'd probably need a Power Mac. Development being 90+% confined to towers isn't quite as closely mapped to reality today.
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Because it was his primary usage system or because it is a status symbol ( order most expensive thing possible for the office just because you can? ).
In the latter case Jobs would have shifted over to the Mac Pro 2013 max build system as soon as it shipped.
The more salient question would be how many times did Jobs ( or his private sysadmin) open his Mac Pro for updates. Extremely likely that was zero times. Quite liley every time a new one came out they just dropped a max BTO system on his desk and transferred the files. The spin here is that Jobs have the cover cracked open and he is fussing around in the internals.... how likely is that really????????? Or is it more likely that he treated it as an appliance and never opened it before he got a new one ?
The iSight camera current status - embedded directly within the screen- is a logical, elegant and excellent evolution of its earlier form factor. No one is worrying about evolutionary designing that betters earlier capabilities so long as it doesn’t take away, or under delivers on, what was possible before. If the iSight camera performed poorly because of its new design and yet people embraced it overwhelmingly then we can say form does trump function in this case.
Also
This one is pure speculation.
On one hand you have the boss who can toss away one unit and get it replaced by another, esp when said boss leads the very company that makes those units.
An interesting question to ask is this : jobs practically ran Apple. For some odd reason, he didn’t get a custom one made for his own use ( a cylinder, a cube..take your pick ) considering some people suggest he hated those cheese graters.
Moreover why wasn’t a fully loaded iMac on his desktop ? Or a MacBook Pro ? Why Mac pros ? There is nothing inherently complicated about the cylinder that couldn’t be made in an earlier era.. TB2 is just a faster IO.. you could just as well have designed it with usb 3s and fire wires..the cpu and GPUs were also not so thermally demanding.
Also a design with a similar philosophy as the tcMP existed 4 years prior to when the picture was taken. The cube. People didn’t want it ? Fine. Jobs could have as many made for his use as he wanted.
Here is another article reg why the cube didn’t catch on ( for the record I love the design but I wouldn’t like it to be the only option available)
https://www.macworld.com/article/1153341/macs/cube-10thanniversary.html
If the reports are true, of how fans of the design are keeping it alive, it’s ironical that they are doing it in the very way that the cube tried to block ( because ‘appliance’ ) - tinkering. I suppose the cylinder will find an afterlife cult following in a similar way, just like the SGI boxes.
Side note : while it is an interesting topic reg what jobs liked or didn’t like, there is enough evidence that Apple is doing things that jobs ‘supposedly’ didn’t like. Also Jobs would just as often take a u-turn on earlier stances so I take what he advocated with a pinch of salt.
I would be more interested in what works for me ( I would like to think I can take informed decisions reg that, thank you ) than someone else’s belief system that inhibits it.
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Some odd reason? It is called "eat your own dog food". It is a philosophy practiced widely in Silicon Valley. Apple and Jobs are/were not outliers to that approach. To a small extent (since Jobs have finish design approval on all Macs) they are his customized systems. Some aspect of every system is tweaked by Jobs that is how he ran up his design patent count. But it is also the case they are being developed for customers not just the internal folks.
Steve Jobs on the "20th anv mac "
"Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. In March 1998 he made sweeping changes, .... It was at this time that the TAM was discontinued, and remaining stocks reduced to US $1,995. The timing itself was not conspicuous – most Apple computers only feature a 1-year production run, and the TAMs began in March 1997. However Jobs was on record stating that he hated the TAM[6], as it stood for everything that was wrong at Apple when he returned." ..."
The TAM was one of those simply design something expensive for the extremely small subset that will buy it. ( kind of like the 24k Gold Apple watch which is dead now too and only appeared post Jobs. )
Hated is probably an over blown term used too broadly. He did 'hate' on bad marketing. The function (how it works ..... which isn't how it is build/changed) was a driving factor just as much as form. Jobs was not deeply in love with tower designs either purely on form .
In a money flaunt, it boils down to most expensive. There is only going to be one Mac that fits that classification.
Same man who bought/leased a new Mercedes every x months because didn't want a license plate. Periodically, parked in handicap spots because it was convenient.
And still be the fastest Mac at the time of release? Not really. Substantially earlier you wouldn't have
a. best in class, large capacity SSD drive are reasonable enough prices. (completely dropping SATA wasn't practical)
b. max core count would have dropped relative to previous Mac Pro ( sub 12 cores with single CPU package )
c. pre OpenCL era a second GPU as a "Compute GPU" wouldn't 'buy' very much of anything. ( pre CUDA era if myopically fixed on it. )
d. one thing multiple GPUs bough pre mini DisplayPort was more connectors. MP 2013 has 6-7
e. need to lower the TDP of all of the secondary subcomponents ( wifi , bluetooth , storage drives , etc. ) to chop the supplied power in more than half.
Completely hooey. USB 3 didn't exist earlier. USB 2 as a video conduit for 30" monitors and/or hiDPI monitors is flakey. Firewire too. The aggregated bandwidth of a high fraction of x4 PCI-e v2 and additionally DP v1.2 far surpasses that of FW and legacy USB. Could be done to produce a mid-to-lower end machine that overalapped with iMac would have done what in terms of productively adjusting the overall Mac line up. That actually would have been a defacto repeat of Mac Cube. Thunderbolt very much was an enabler.
If anything the MP 2013 was targeted too early. Not a mature enough compute framework was a liability. TB v2 was primarily targeted for 2014 anyway. The pragmatic GPU TDP timeline would have been clearer in 2013 than was in 2011-12. Similar issues with lack of maturity with TB pre-2014.
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Completely hooey ? Splitting hairs much ?
The cube is essentially a similar design philosophy as the tcMP. Apple didn’t wait for Ssds to design it Nor worry about where it was usbs that would carry signal to the monitors or display ports. So to suggest it was TB2 or ssds were the reason that Apple made tcMPs .. the driving factor was that Apple wanted to make such systems ( for whatever reason )... also the speeds of the tcMP with its crippled , dual GPUs could have been speedier in a cMP. And handle 3.5 drives along with SSDs.
Let’s not go into the fastest Mac territory here. It was the fastest because Apple discontinued the cMP, which I say would age better than the tcMP.
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One hand it’s eat your dog food. On the other it’s flaunting your wealth ... which is the correct reason ? IF jobs penchant with flaunting money is the reason he would pose with loaded Mac pros, as you suggest, what would be more flaunting than a custom made Mac no one could buy but him ?
‘ One more thing ‘ : that 2004 pic doesn’t look terribly flaunting of wealth. Just saying.
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Doesn’t seem to be hooked into anything, so it’s likely a prototype fresh off the CNC.
I am more interested in the black/dark computer next to it that’s likely driving the display. The powermac was already out by then for a while, so which Mac is it ?
Genelecs, they are studio monitors ( speakers ) and rather good ones at that.
Ya know I'm not exactly sure when that photo was taken but it could be a PC with Intel chip running OSX.
When we got the Intel transition kits they had standard Intel CPU's in them.
His computer is not on his desk. In a photo from same session from another angle
( Look at the 3rd photo here https://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/11/15/an-inside-look-at-steve-jobs-home-office/ )
The computer is sitting on the floor, up against the outer wall, under the desk down by his feet. The notion it is up high were he can daily worship its beautiful shape doesn't pass muster.
P.S. The Genelec monitors , which possible cost a couple thousand, are yet again indicative of "expensive because I can" rather than some deep seated need. Probably a Power Mac G4 ( a flavor of cheesegrater design, but not the Mac Pro. )