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

[pl1984]

I'd rather have any space/bandwidth on storage spent on M.2 or PCIe.

You could put dozens of spinning drives on a Thunderbolt connection and not come close to saturating it. Putting drive bays in the case is sticking people with a legacy technology that don't necessarily need it. Back in the day of USB2, you had to put the drive inside the case to get full speeds from it. These days, that's not true. Spinning drives are multiple factors slower than even the slowest I/O connection on the box.

So much for space. What I find amusing is Apple has, by moving things outside of the computer, convinced people they're saving space. Perhaps this is true for people who don't need anything more than the computer itself. But for those who require storage (as an example) they're not saving any space. Now they have a tangle of wires, an external drive enclosure, and an external power supply (or, a larger enclosure to accommodate the power supply). Same goes for graphics adapters. Want a more capable GPU? No problem, buy an external eGPU. How is this saving space?

Would you rather have an extra PCIe slot or some drive bays? I'd take the PCIe slot.

Why can't we have both?

 

[ssgbryan]

I'd rather have any space/bandwidth on storage spent on M.2 or PCIe.

You could put dozens of spinning drives on a Thunderbolt connection and not come close to saturating it. Putting drive bays in the case is sticking people with a legacy technology that don't necessarily need it. Back in the day of USB2, you had to put the drive inside the case to get full speeds from it. These days, that's not true. Spinning drives are multiple factors slower than even the slowest I/O connection on the box.

Would you rather have an extra PCIe slot or some drive bays? I'd take the PCIe slot.

(Apple is also never going to sell a hard drive only Mac Pro ever again, so if it's a price advantage you're looking for by skipping the SSD, we could probably just move straight past that.)

Obviously, you don't have very much data. It is also obvious that you haven't dealt with the joys of a row of external boxes to go with your system.

You may prefer dealing with a rats nest of cables and adding additional points of failure to your system - I don't.

 

[goMac]

Obviously, you don't have very much data.

I have over 10 terabytes of data.

It is also obvious that you haven't dealt with the joys of a row of external boxes to go with your system.

I have.

You may prefer dealing with a rats nest of cables and adding additional points of failure to your system - I don't.

I put it in a place I don't have to look at it. And I don't know why putting the disks inside my Mac Pro would have any lower failure than outside.

Bonus: I have >4 hard drives so it would have never fit in my Mac Pro anyway.

(I'd also still rather have my internal space given to something that's not hard drive bays. I have a 5,1 and it's looking pretty ridiculous with all this empty space filled with tiny SSDs, while the PCI-E bay is filled to the brim.)

 

[danwells]

Agreed

You could put dozens of spinning drives on a Thunderbolt connection and not come close to saturating it. Putting drive bays in the case is sticking people with a legacy technology that don't necessarily need it. Back in the day of USB2, you had to put the drive inside the case to get full speeds from it. These days, that's not true. Spinning drives are multiple factors slower than even the slowest I/O connection on the box.

If you are doing work that is speed intensive but doesn't use huge datasets, your only need for spinning rust may be for backups - use a drive or two on USB 3.1 - the external cases add $50 to a $6499 machine... Plenty of people don't want that drive inside because it's much more likely to break than the rest of the machine.

If you do use huge datasets, as many Mac Pro users will, there are so many choices... Would you want a machine with four drive bays if you needed a 5-bay RAID? Unless you have 8-12 bays and an internal RAID controller, there will be frequent use cases where you don't have enough drives. If you do have 8-12 bays, what about the person whose data fits within 4TB? They suddenly end up with a 100 lb machine with an extra $1500 of hardware they didn't need.

Some users will want to keep huge datasets on a NAS so they can access them from multiple machines - remember this monster will have 10 Gb Ethernet (possibly dual ports)...

I would like to see multiple internal SSD slots - that does have a speed advantage, and it neither bulks up the machine nor adds unreliability. Knowing Apple, they may not make them standard form factors (I'd like to see something like 4 standard PCIe m2 2280 slots in addition to an even faster boot drive running off the T2, but that's not how Apple usually thinks).

I personally think that Apple will "GeForce proof" the Mac Pro, whether that's wise or not. There's not going to be a double-wide PCIe x16 slot with plenty of power, just waiting for a standard GPU. If the slot exists (I suspect there will be some form of upgradeable GPU, but not standard PC parts), there will be some AMD-only firmware or software restriction.

I agree with Apple's probable decision on hard drives, am hoping for standard parts on SSDs, and I'm not sure what I think about the very probable AMD graphics restriction - Apple has their reasons, and some of them are good (stability), some are self-serving (contract with AMD), and some are not great (causing trouble for Premiere and encouraging the use of Final Cut)

 

[fuchsdh]

Obviously, you don't have very much data. It is also obvious that you haven't dealt with the joys of a row of external boxes to go with your system.

You may prefer dealing with a rats nest of cables and adding additional points of failure to your system - I don't.

What is this additional point of failure concern? I've never had an external hard drive or array fail on me beyond the actual disks inside.

 

[pl1984]

What is this additional point of failure concern? I've never had an external hard drive or array fail on me beyond the actual disks inside.

You just named them...the external components outside of the disks. A friend of mine, who has an iMac, uses an external enclosure for two of his hard disks. The power supply for that enclosure, which cost $400 alone, failed. he was without access to the data on those hard disks until he was able to order a replacement power supply.

 

[goMac]

You just named them...the external components outside of the disks. A friend of mine, who has an iMac, uses an external enclosure for two of his hard disks. The power supply for that enclosure, which cost $400 alone, failed. he was without access to the data on those hard disks until he was able to order a replacement power supply.

If you want to go down that path, I'm not sure having all your components dependent on a single power supply is any better.
[doublepost=1535492092][/doublepost]

If you do use huge datasets, as many Mac Pro users will, there are so many choices... Would you want a machine with four drive bays if you needed a 5-bay RAID? Unless you have 8-12 bays and an internal RAID controller, there will be frequent use cases where you don't have enough drives. If you do have 8-12 bays, what about the person whose data fits within 4TB? They suddenly end up with a 100 lb machine with an extra $1500 of hardware they didn't need.

I hinted at this, but it's also a good reason not to put drive bays inside. You get into weird conversations about how many drive bays everyone needs. Is one fine? Two? Four? 8 gig drives are great, but what if you want to mirror as well? Whelp that's half your drive bays gone.

Internal spinning metal drives get into this bad place where even if you put the drives inside the Mac it's never really going to work out. Pros that need spinning metal usually need really large sets of drives, so at some point they'll stop using the 4 internal bays anyway because it's not enough bays. Even if I wanted to move my current storage situation back inside my Mac Pro, 4 bays would not be enough.

Plus I'd just take all the hard drive noise I've hidden elsewhere and put it right back at my feet inside my tower. Ugh.

The only reason internal spinning rust would make sense is for price competitiveness so you could get an entry level box with just a hard drive cheaper. Apple's recent hardware should be an indication that Apple doesn't really care about that, and I can't really blame them.

 

[pl1984]

If you want to go down that path, I'm not sure having all your components dependent on a single power supply is any better.

Generally speaking the simpler something is the more reliable it tends to be, all else being equal.

 

[goMac]

Generally speaking the simpler something is the more reliable it tends to be, all else being equal.

I'm not sure one power supply powering all your things is simpler. You're putting more load on one power supply and shortening it's lifespan significantly.

I don't think it's a huge deal either way, but if we want to have this conversation about it being a problem, I'm really not sure a single power supply for everything is actually more reliable. Redundancy is usually better. It's like saying putting all your data on a single drive is more reliable.

 

[pl1984]

I'm not sure one power supply powering all your things is simpler. You're putting more load on one power supply and shortening it's lifespan significantly.

It's much simpler. Without question.

I don't think it's a huge deal either way, but if we want to have this conversation about it being a problem, I'm really not sure a single power supply for everything is actually more reliable. Redundancy is usually better. It's like saying putting all your data on a single drive is more reliable.

Setting aside reliability there's also the additional requirement for power outlets, cabling, space, warranty, and cost. My friend had to pay an additional $400 for his external Thunderbolt enclosure.

 

[ssgbryan]

I'm not sure one power supply powering all your things is simpler. You're putting more load on one power supply and shortening it's lifespan significantly.

I don't think it's a huge deal either way, but if we want to have this conversation about it being a problem, I'm really not sure a single power supply for everything is actually more reliable. Redundancy is usually better. It's like saying putting all your data on a single drive is more reliable.

That could possibly be true if you are running a PSU close to it's power envelope. Problem is that we are talking about a Mac Pro power supply (980 watts), not some 240 watt PSU in a Dell.

Having separate external storage isn't PSU redundancy - you are increasing the risk of failure. In my use case, instead of having 1 PSU point of failure - I now have 3 points of failure - especially if those external power supplies aren't up to the level of a Mac Pro PSU.
[doublepost=1535502380][/doublepost]

What is this additional point of failure concern? I've never had an external hard drive or array fail on me beyond the actual disks inside.

This may be hard to believe, but you are not the sum of all experiences of computer users.

Add an external drive, and you have 3 additional points of failure - the enclosure, the cable connecting (which is usually what breaks) or the connector on the computer.

 

[Chancha]

I hinted at this, but it's also a good reason not to put drive bays inside. You get into weird conversations about how many drive bays everyone needs. Is one fine? Two? Four? 8 gig drives are great, but what if you want to mirror as well? Whelp that's half your drive bays gone.

Internal spinning metal drives get into this bad place where even if you put the drives inside the Mac it's never really going to work out. Pros that need spinning metal usually need really large sets of drives, so at some point they'll stop using the 4 internal bays anyway because it's not enough bays. Even if I wanted to move my current storage situation back inside my Mac Pro, 4 bays would not be enough.

I agree with this, not necessarily how I would like my workstation to be, but in terms of expecting what Apple will choose. Difficulty to pin point drive configs for all users is enough of an justification for Apple to decide leaving HDDs out of the chassis (as they have done in tcMP). At most they can allow space for one 3.5"/2.5" slot like iMac 27" or Mini just to enable a basic config combo. But anything more will start treading into territory of wasting on slots / ports / bandwidth that some users don't need (internally).

There was similar consideration with the touch bar MBPs, whereas the ports went exclusively TB3 had to do with maximizing the PCI lanes potential, leaving the responsibility of choosing and mixing (slower) port configs to an external hub/dock. Whether or not this is ideal on a usability standpoint has been a heated discussion, but at least I can see how Apple justified the decision.

 

[AidenShaw]

(Apple is also never going to sell a hard drive only Mac Pro ever again, so if it's a price advantage you're looking for by skipping the SSD, we could probably just move straight past that.)

This whole subtopic is ignoring the fact that a lot of high capacity and relatively affordable SSD drives are showing up in 2.5" and 3.5" form factors, with SATA/SAS/NVMe interfaces.

The people who ignorantly dismiss "spinning rust" ignore things like


https://www.anandtech.com/show/12541/unlimited-5-year-endurance-100-tb-ssd

There's also the issue that SSDs simply wear out. Too many writes - dead drive. The spinning rust drives don't come with an "expiration date".

 

[fuchsdh]

This whole subtopic is ignoring the fact that a lot of high capacity and relatively affordable SSD drives are showing up in 2.5" and 3.5" form factors, with SATA/SAS/NVMe interfaces.

The people who ignorantly dismiss "spinning rust" ignore things like

View attachment 778425
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12541/unlimited-5-year-endurance-100-tb-ssd

There's also the issue that SSDs simply wear out. Too many writes - dead drive. The spinning rust drives don't come with an "expiration date".

At this point you're at greater risk of hard drive failure than SSDs wearing out from writes. SSDs can sustain a huge amount of writes before going dark, and I imagine reliability has only increased since that report.

Even for me constantly rendering out videos I'm not going to pump 2+ PB through my boot drive in its likely operational lifetime.

That could possibly be true if you are running a PSU close to it's power envelope. Problem is that we are talking about a Mac Pro power supply (980 watts), not some 240 watt PSU in a Dell.

Having separate external storage isn't PSU redundancy - you are increasing the risk of failure. In my use case, instead of having 1 PSU point of failure - I now have 3 points of failure - especially if those external power supplies aren't up to the level of a Mac Pro PSU.
[doublepost=1535502380][/doublepost]

This may be hard to believe, but you are not the sum of all experiences of computer users.

Add an external drive, and you have 3 additional points of failure - the enclosure, the cable connecting (which is usually what breaks) or the connector on the computer.

I don't worry about "additional points of failure" when I've never had to worry about them, and when if they were internal those same points of failure would still exist and affect more systems.

"I'd rather have one big honking thing under my desk" and cable management/quietness concerns make far more sense to me (I have never worried about a bad cable. You get a million of those things, I've always got a spare if I had to troubleshoot.)

 

[JVNeumann]

That is a rather dubious assumption. The current Mac Mini starts out at $499. Apple might backslide on that to $599 but it is highly unlikely that they will backslide to $799 ( $300 ). In countries where the dollar conversion is high, that is practically suicidal.

You make some good points. But I still wonder exactly how many people in what Apple might consider their entry level demographics would have a decent monitor and keyboard/mouse handy anymore (especially if Apple is building it for retina/4k instead of mere 1080p). A decade ago? Sure. Now though? I dunno...

If I were tasked with targeting an entry level computer demographic - the kind that needs to go higher than an iPad but lower than an iMac - I'd still bet on the $899 Retina laptop over the $599 desktop (assuming those are our new prices, which is just speculation)... especially when the desktop still needs another $150 for a mouse and keyboard and doesn't actually offer any monitor options at this time on Apple's website.

I hope you're right that they unveil a new display sooner than the new Mac Pro though.

 

[mattspace]

If I were tasked with targeting an entry level computer demographic - the kind that needs to go higher than an iPad but lower than an iMac

Except that what a lot of people want is "just as powerful as an iMac, but without (the cost of) a built-in display".

It's rather silly that the only way to get Macs where you're not also having to buy a display from Apple, is their lowest, or (until the iMac Pro) highest-end products.

 

[barmann]

I hinted at this, but it's also a good reason not to put drive bays inside. You get into weird conversations about how many drive bays everyone needs. Is one fine? Two? Four? 8 gig drives are great, but what if you want to mirror as well? Whelp that's half your drive bays gone.

Here's the catch with MacPros - there usually is only one model available .
This one model has to serve all OSX users who want a tower workstation .

And since you asked - I personally would like to see 4 drive bays ; maybe something like 2 full size SATA bays that can accomodate 1 3.5" each, and can alternatively be used for 2 x 2.5" each with an adapter solution .
Plus 2 bays for M.2 blades .

Internal spinning metal drives get into this bad place where even if you put the drives inside the Mac it's never really going to work out. Pros that need spinning metal usually need really large sets of drives, so at some point they'll stop using the 4 internal bays anyway because it's not enough bays. Even if I wanted to move my current storage situation back inside my Mac Pro, 4 bays would not be enough.

Plus I'd just take all the hard drive noise I've hidden elsewhere and put it right back at my feet inside my tower. Ugh.

The only reason internal spinning rust would make sense is for price competitiveness so you could get an entry level box with just a hard drive cheaper. Apple's recent hardware should be an indication that Apple doesn't really care about that, and I can't really blame them.

I think that at this point noone is arguing for massive internal storage options .
Archives and media libraries ( thanks for making this really easy, Apple ) are not something anyone demands to have in an MP .
Did everyone working in an air conditioned cubicle on computers and storage networks payed for by someone else get this ? Please say Ay .

And I for one would appreciate it if people would stop beating that sad dead horse to distract from the actual issue .

There are reasons for not having additional drive bays - it's cheaper for Apple ( not for us ) , the computer might be a tad smaller ( optical bays are gone anyways ) , ... and it could be cylindrical !
Now that would sell like hot cakes .

Then there are reasons for having additional drive bays - it's hard to explain, it's a workstation thing .
You know, getting stuff done efficiently, bang for bucks, flexibility, future proofing, all that jazz .
Been discussed and ignored by some a 1000 times .

If this confuses you, just ask your IT guy, he gets paid to help out the less computer savvy ...

 

[BlueTide]

Obviously, you don't have very much data. It is also obvious that you haven't dealt with the joys of a row of external boxes to go with your system.

10GbE is here, TB3 arrays are here for even more speed locally.

Then there are reasons for having additional drive bays - it's hard to explain, it's a workstation thing .
You know, getting stuff done efficiently, bang for bucks, flexibility, future proofing, all that jazz .
Been discussed and ignored by some a 1000 times .

I consider to be in this camp; at work, we have very large data sets that need to be shared and worked on in real time. At home my media assets just grow. And you know what? Local storage just utterly sucks. There are rare cases where this is needed/wanted, but for most parts it's just better to run this stuff over 10GbE. It's easier to maintain, it's easier to back up, it's easier to share, it's silent since it's somewhere far, etc. If you run other OSes, you have even faster alternatives for remote storage, tied to a single computer or shared. It's not even that pricy.

The cases where local storage is really better is rare and coming even more rare. Sucks for those wo want it, but really, I would find it hard to justify to have more than 1 NVME blade in the workstation itself.

 

[JesterJJZ]

You guys talk about spinning drives like they are some ancient antiquated technology. Seriously? Capacity increases and cost decreases on these rapidly going forward. Not everything needs to be on a fast and expensive SSD. I personally like to keep a large amount of video and graphic assets inside my machine and mounted whenever I turn it on. I’m not going to buy a $2000 4TB SSD for that stuff when a 4TB spinner for $100 will do.

It’s about options, options are good. They don’t force you to use things you don’t want or need.

A couple 3.5” bays in the next MacPro would be perfect.

 

[goMac]

I consider to be in this camp; at work, we have very large data sets that need to be shared and worked on in real time. At home my media assets just grow. And you know what? Local storage just utterly sucks. There are rare cases where this is needed/wanted, but for most parts it's just better to run this stuff over 10GbE. It's easier to maintain, it's easier to back up, it's easier to share, it's silent since it's somewhere far, etc. If you run other OSes, you have even faster alternatives for remote storage, tied to a single computer or shared. It's not even that pricy.

This.

People are trying to justify this as for people with large datasets, and with someone as a lot of data, it just makes no sense.

1) Four drive bays would not be enough, especially if I add any sort of mirroring. And I'm not splitting my storage arrays over internal and external storage. So right away it doesn't make sense.
2) Yes, you can get internal SSDs, but I use SSDs for performance and not capacity. And if I want performance, why would I want SATA slots? Give me a bunch of M.2 slots instead of SATA bays.

Again, I think this is all about cost. One reply to me noted that cheap SSDs are SATA (even though they don't perform that well), and another reply noted to me that a $400 hard drive array is expensive. A $400 enclosure is not expensive. I have graphics cards that cost more than that. Heck, I have pro speakers that cost that much. I have headphones that cost that much. I'm pretty sure the total MSRP of all the drives I have in my enclosures are higher than the enclosure cost. And an enclosure will last me a lot longer than the drives. I've already gone through a full swap in one array.

I don't want cheap. I don't want slow. That's what the Mac Pro is about. I think some people want a box full of drives and not a pro workstation, and they're not the same thing. The people that use these things don't even blink about spending $600-$1000 on a GPU, why would a $400 hardware RAID enclosure be a dealbreaker?

It's not that spinning drives are completely outdated. It's that there is not very much I can do with only 4 of them inside my Mac. Might as well just skip it because I'm going to buy an external box anyway.

If my Mac Pro goes down, I also want to be able to access my data from another machine. And that's where 10gige or Thunderbolt is a way nicer solution. 10gige is useful even just if I'm not at my desk.

(Oh, did I mention we haven't even brought up hardware RAID yet?)

 

[pl1984]

People are trying to justify this as for people with large datasets, and with someone as a lot of data, it just makes no sense.

Four 3.5" drive bays work just fine for me. Having them means I don't have a bunch of clutter around for external drive enclosures. Not sure why you're having trouble understanding this is a great setup for me. My 6,1 Mac Pro? Not so much.

 

[BlueTide]

Four 3.5" drive bays work just fine for me. Having them means I don't have a bunch of clutter around for external drive enclosures. Not sure why you're having trouble understanding this is a great setup for me. My 6,1 Mac Pro? Not so much.

Oh, it's just that many people don't give a crap about your requirements or whether you are happy or not. You know, presentative target audience and all that. Likewise, I don't expect people/Apple to give a crap about the quirks I have in my workflow, individually.

What matters for them to cover X% of the target audience and with luck, the rest have reasonable workarounds or alternatives. This hopefully creates a nicer machine for the majority without sacrificing too much for the minority. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

 

[pl1984]

Oh, it's just that many people don't give a crap about your requirements or whether you are happy or not. You know, presentative target audience and all that. Likewise, I don't expect people/Apple to give a crap about the quirks I have in my workflow, individually.

What matters for them to cover X% of the target audience and with luck, the rest have reasonable workarounds or alternatives. This hopefully creates a nicer machine for the majority without sacrificing too much for the minority. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

The thing is Apple can meet both our needs with a cMP type of system whereas with the nMP type of system they can meet yours but not mine. It seems reasonable that meeting both our needs would be preferable to meeting only one of our needs.

 

[goMac]

The thing is Apple can meet both our needs with a cMP type of system whereas with the nMP type of system they can meet yours but not mine. It seems reasonable that meeting both our needs would be preferable to meeting only one of our needs.

It's also being realistic that whatever Apple ships, it won't be larger than the cMP, and will most likely be smaller. Every drive bay will take away from another feature. The bright side of SATA is it's so slow it at least isn't going to be a bandwidth hog.

They could ship a full height tower that has a bay for everyone's pet use case, but we all know that's not going to happen.

Again, M.2 slots give you internal storage at far higher speeds than SATA. I'm not sure why anyone would pick a SATA bay over an M.2 slot, especially when you start talking about SSDs.

The only thing you lose is large storage, which again, is more suitable for arrays with hardware RAID and not internal.

I'm not saying don't have internally upgraded storage. I'm saying using the current connector, which is M.2, and not the connector from 8 years ago that's a fraction of the speed. It's like putting a parallel port on the back for people who still have parallel printers.

 

[BlueTide]

The thing is Apple can meet both our needs with a cMP type of system whereas with the nMP type of system they can meet yours but not mine. It seems reasonable that meeting both our needs would be preferable to meeting only one of our needs.

There are more factors in play that they need to consider, and the alternatives are not binary. I don't know what their plans are, who those plans are for or what kind of compromises they want to or have to make. Perhaps we get it all. Perhaps they value other factors more, like design, heat, sound, I don't know.

What I do know is that if they for some reason have to make a choice between 4x3.5" slots and blade SSD(s?), there are (very?) few arguments to support why to add the HDD slots and "because a person in the internets likes it" isn't among those.