Well they’ve invited journalists to come to Apple to talk about it, as early as two calendar years before the thing actually ships, which is unprecedented for the modern Apple, and if you take at face value the research they say they are doing into what it needs to be, well, that sounds pretty serious to me.
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MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)
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Where in that article does it tell us what Apple is expecting it to be? Other than some ambiguous "pro-workflow" system.
pro workflow is a dual socket computer with 5 Pcie x 16 lanes slot , 4 M2 slot, 16 ram slot , 10gbe and a 1600w psu... period
sale it for 3000$ with one cpu, a dirt cheap gpu such as a 1060 , 2 stick of 16gb and one 256gb ssd and let us upgrade what we want...the way we want
sale it for 3000$ with one cpu, a dirt cheap gpu such as a 1060 , 2 stick of 16gb and one 256gb ssd and let us upgrade what we want...the way we want
To me this means they are (once again) working on proprietary hardware. If they would use standard hardware (like we all want) they could spit out a new Mac Pro in 6 months.
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+100
The "mea culpa" was in spring 2017.
If the MP7,1 were based on standard hardware - it would have been out in fall 2017.
And today we'd have a "Waiting for the Mac Pro 8,1" thread.
(And far fewer people moving to the Z-series.)
+100
The "mea culpa" was in spring 2017.
If the MP7,1 were based on standard hardware - it would have been out in fall 2017.
And today we'd have a "Waiting for the Mac Pro 8,1" thread.
(And far fewer people moving to the Z-series.)
give them some slack - coming up with a really good customer gaslighting, to convince everyone that what Apple wants to sell, is what the customers said they wanted, takes time, to say nothing for getting all the Mac blogaratti onto the same page so that what Apple wants to do (ensure they never make another Decadal Workstation like the 2009-12), is "the way the industry's heading", despite all evidence to the contrary.
Just think how much effort they're going to have to spend on getting the "workflow professionals" to fine-tune examples so that all problems are expressed in terms of "ecosystem efficiency" and "whole widget integration" advantages.
"People told us they wanted upgradable (display) graphics" is massaged into "People told us they wanted upgradable graphics for improving their compute performance in Resolve and FCPX, and eGPU is a sweet solution for that".
Marcom works its innovatin' ass off to newthink that stuff out - there's no time to actually make a Mac Pro when you're that dedicated to your craft.
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ew! Fosters - a beer so awful, we kick it out of the country & banish it to the rest of the world.
But, a nice Suntory Premium Malts...
Just raided MR's fridge! Here is a Fosters replacement. Drinks all around!
I completely agree. But doing that would be inconsistent with their business and product principles. And I think that's a huge part of their challenge - how to satisfy the needs and expectations of the pros, whilst also satisfying their own principles. Those two things are in significant conflict.
To this day I still have no clue why they even bother anymore. Pre-roundtable it looked like they were ready to pull away from "pro space" completely and silently. Their whole ecosystem + service ingratiation approach and the fact that mobile devices have taken over as central piece of the digital hub, every clue told us traditional desktop Macs was not going to have a future at all. The corporation is now both structurally and culturally inept to accommodate producing professional workstations, and it really shows in the iMac Pro repair issues, and how they needed the "pro-workflow" campus tour just to cover up further delays.
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Exactly, while we are on pro-workflow... It is a hilariously ineffective approach to base a professional tool on. A computer is as specialized as the specific user and his use case needs it to be, and at times this changes frequent over the span of a workstation's active life span. Various industries have already agreed that an internally expandable chassis with standard components is the best design for this, and this isn't by proxy but by natural selection over decades. The longer it takes Apple to devise a Mac Pro basing on workflow studies will just mean they are digging a deeper hole than they should have.Just think how much effort they're going to have to spend on getting the "workflow professionals" to fine-tune examples so that all problems are expressed in terms of "ecosystem efficiency" and "whole widget integration" advantages.
"People told us they wanted upgradable (display) graphics" is massaged into "People told us they wanted upgradable graphics for improving their compute performance in Resolve and FCPX, and eGPU is a sweet solution for that".
Marcom works its innovatin' ass off to newthink that stuff out - there's no time to actually make a Mac Pro when you're that dedicated to your craft.
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Then one needs to think back to why Apple exists. Is it to build products to sell? Or to build products which satisfy Apple's principles?
Agreed, and overall the big concern that I've had with this all along has been in just how Apple is choosing to define "Modular". My misgiving is that it doesn't mean "Modular for the customer" (to DIY upgrades) in as much as it means "Modular for aid Apple in cheaply deploying next year's hardware updates" (by not designing themselves into a corner again).
And the reason why I'm very concerned about the latter is that Apple has had a pretty lousy track record of making 'upgraded' hardware available to existing customers ... at least through any means other than by selling last year's Mac and buying this year's Mac.
Yes, the 'workflow' conversation stuff is ..interesting. Cynically speaking, I suspect that it could be little more than to gage how little they can get away with spending R&D money on for their roadmap (despite 'modularity') for future hardware revisions. For example, if most of their workflow customer analysis says that the pros want massive storage, then they don't have to sweat the details for PCIe lanes for GPUs (or vice-versa, etc). Or it could just be a survey to find out what software application (& workflow) tools they're using to figure out where their biggest-bang-for-the-R&D-buck is for optimizing hardware.
Overall, it still probably tracks back to money and probably primarily in how Apple can maximize profits by minimizing R&D spending.
I gave my MacBook Pro to my grandpa this weekend. Now I do not own a Mac and am waiting for this new Mac Pro and then I will decide what I should get next. It feels really weird. I still have a 2015 MacBook Pro issued to me through my work with full administrator access, but it still feels weird. Hopefully they release it early 2019 rather than at WWDC but I doubt it. Honestly we'll probably be lucky if they release it at WWDC instead of announcing it and then releasing it on the last day of 2019 in limited supply. I'm hoping to just pick up a base model that I'll be able to upgrade over time. Hoping for 8 cores, 32GB RAM, and a decent GPU for $2999 and a 6K 32" display for $1499. Hoping another year will yield a display like that which doesn't completely break the bank. This would be the ideal purchase price for me. Hoping they don't jack up the base price when it is released but they may. I also hope the modularity isn't proprietary, or if it is, the components don't cost significantly more than they would off the shelf. I'd love to stuff it full of cheaper SSDs from Amazon over time.
That's ridiculous when most people, even pros, don't use something like that. We don't really know what the machine is going to look like, but expecting a highest-end, massive tower is setting yourself up to be disappointed when Apple has never made that product, ever (even the Z800s don't come with 1600W PSUs.)
I can see that worry, on the other hand that's still an improvement on the current scenario. If I know they aren't going to have many upgrade paths for the machine I know I won't be holding it for longer and thus I'm going to buy a cheaper SKU and just replace it more quickly.
They actually did not talk about the next Mac Pro much, other than they intended that it would exist and that it would have a few general, wide-spectrum criteria. The vast majority of the discussion was about the old, existing product did and didn't do well. They also talked about existing products and trends of customers buying those. About Apple's approach and general dedication to the Mac.
Lots of folks took the discussions of what the current Mac Pro didn't do well at and presumed that Apple was going to do a complete 180 turn. There are no Apple comments to directly support that. Similarly some folks have taken what Apple said that the current products did well ( and that they strongly hinted at ( in 2017) and delivered on (2018 ) an iMac Pro ) that Apple is going to task the next Mac Pro will all the same constraints as the iMac Pro except an attached display (since Apple said a display was generally coming). Again there are not Apple direct comments to support that either. They discussed no explicit, unique details of the Mac Pro physical capabilities at all. ( other Macs have a Thunderbolt socket to connect an external display to so not a huge leap that the next Mac Pro would have one. Although they didn't explicitly confirm that either. )
The most direct explicit pronouncements have been about which year the next Mac Pro will not appear in. There is a huge gulf between that and low level details (or requirements ) about the system.
What research? The details that this years "workflow" discussion where not about the Mac Pro specifically. In fact, the Apple representative said that the "Pro workflow" team was about all Macs ( perhaps a focus on those in the Pro space which Apple has explicitly outlined is represented by the MBP , iMac (and iMac Pro) , and lastly by the Mac Pro).
The Final Cut optimization that the article discussed in detail was applicable to all Macs; not just the Mac Pro. eGPUs... could be used with all relatively recently updated Macs ( except the Macbook, which hasn't seen a enclosure update in years at this point; so still stuck with just plain USB-C. It has just been processor speed bump. ). The iPads as controllers? Again, not Mac model specific.
Apple's discussions about the 'Pro' space have never been solely (or even primarily ) wrapped around the Mac Pro in at least the last decade. The Mac Pro is a "nice to have" product for them. It is not the central strategic core of the Mac business. Folks can stand on their head and read that the Mac Pro is super strategic into their Pro discussions, but if objectively read what they are saying that isn't present.
IMHO, a sensible path for Apple to go forward on is to improve the stuff they felt worked OK and to find a better compromise on requirements/constraints for that stuff that didn't.
Wasn't this the defense for the lack of upgradability in the 6,1 Mac Pro? That people don't upgrade but rather replace? A reasonable argument. Unfortunately there has been nothing to replace it and its lack of upgradability has caused many to prefer the model which it replaced.
+100
The "mea culpa" was in spring 2017.
If the MP7,1 were based on standard hardware - it would have been out in fall 2017.
And today we'd have a "Waiting for the Mac Pro 8,1" thread.
(And far fewer people moving to the Z-series.)
What is Z-series.
I'd rephrase that to what their customers felt worked OK. The cMP was working fine, all they had to do was update it with newer technology and the majority of their pro users would likely be happy...today.
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HP Z series workstations.
I wouldn't call it a defense, but it's certainly a different use case. Certainly many pros just buy with the aim to replace in 3-4 years, and depending on what you're spending up front, etc. it can make a lot more financial sense than continually pumping money into a machine.
I would have bought a tube Mac Pro, but they never offered an upgrade to the 6,1 so I didn't, and it's certainly true you couldn't easily spackle over the lag time with upgrades beyond memory and processor.
My point is that serving people whose use cases and work needs are addressed by a constantly updated high-end machine is still better than Apple is currently doing. And even if that's all Apple means by a modular system, it's still an improvement. Consistent update schedules has of late been an issue with all of Apple's non-iPhone lines, so it's not a pro-hardware exclusive one, but it certainly matters more on the high end.
But it will meet the needs of the bulk of the market - every thing that is stripped out equals lost sales.
You might not need a bunch of PCIe lanes, but if I can pick up 4 wx 5100 video cards, then I can use them as 1 combined gpu. Much cheaper than the WX8200 I am lusting after (not to mention easier to power).
If Apple once again gives me fewer choices than I currently have with my cmp, I will join the exodus to the window side. And once that happens with the computer, there isn't a need to stay with the OSX ecosystem, especially since little Timmy has been doing a lot to undermine it already (whacking the routers, time capsules, monitors, etc).
But he's literally asking for far more than the Mac Pro tower previously afforded in terms of expansion. The cMP has a 1100W chassis, doesn't support more than two full-height GPUs, tops out at 8 DIMM slots.
(on the question of modular becoming "upgrade-through-frequent-replacement")
Sure, although it will only be an improvement if Apple actually provides _timely_ updates ...which they have failed at in this space.
The first part (fewer paths) does sound very much like Tim Cook (this is classical manufacturing cost streamlining by deliberate reduction of the number of product lines), which when we then combine it with "what does 'modular' really mean?" question again has to point to modular being more for Apple to be able to more cheaply deploy future versions with incremental upgrades than it does for customers to increase complexity through customization (enabled by use of existing standards, etc). The problem here is as I noted - - having things be "easy" for Apple to incrementally improve isn't the same as being easy for the customer.
The second part, on SKUs (particularly cheaper ones with more rapid change-over) is another interesting question and one fraught with issues. First issue is if it really is "cheap" gear (including just what is 'cheap'?). Next, even if we accept the upgrade-through-frequent-replacement as their intended business model, this sort of strategy still relies on Apple ... as a sole source provider ... in being able to _reliably_ deliver revised desktop hardware products on a far more aggressive schedule than they've done in the past decade.
Finally, another customer cost consideration can also be the schedule for hardware replacements. Being able to take a tax write-off on PC hardware every five years classically wasn't an insignificant deduction for small business, and selling a used PC before its 5 years old is a tax accountant headache.
Sure, although it will only be an improvement if Apple actually provides _timely_ updates ...which they have failed at in this space.
The first part (fewer paths) does sound very much like Tim Cook (this is classical manufacturing cost streamlining by deliberate reduction of the number of product lines), which when we then combine it with "what does 'modular' really mean?" question again has to point to modular being more for Apple to be able to more cheaply deploy future versions with incremental upgrades than it does for customers to increase complexity through customization (enabled by use of existing standards, etc). The problem here is as I noted - - having things be "easy" for Apple to incrementally improve isn't the same as being easy for the customer.
The second part, on SKUs (particularly cheaper ones with more rapid change-over) is another interesting question and one fraught with issues. First issue is if it really is "cheap" gear (including just what is 'cheap'?). Next, even if we accept the upgrade-through-frequent-replacement as their intended business model, this sort of strategy still relies on Apple ... as a sole source provider ... in being able to _reliably_ deliver revised desktop hardware products on a far more aggressive schedule than they've done in the past decade.
Finally, another customer cost consideration can also be the schedule for hardware replacements. Being able to take a tax write-off on PC hardware every five years classically wasn't an insignificant deduction for small business, and selling a used PC before its 5 years old is a tax accountant headache.
I couldn't agree more . Most of my drives are external, only 5 of them in my cMP .
Those five drives I need though, in close proximity, 24/7 .
Well, I could do with 3 or four , at least one of them a high capacity spinner .
All Apple needs to do is subtract the cost of a high quality, super silent 4-5 bay external HDD enclosure from the mMP price, and Bob's your uncle . 500 - 700 bucks less seems fair .
They could even make and sell one by themselves - bummer anything more complex than a watchband is overwhelming the Apple accessories department .
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Apple has not at all made it clear that they are serious about developing the next MP - repeating that claim endlessly won't make it a fact , not even in a certain cultural environment in a certain country .