To be blunt, if that’s what they release, apple is DOA to pros. It’s all over. And this time, no one will come back.
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MP All Models 40 core ASI with PCI-E slot is around the corner!!
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Well, just like the afterburner, maybe post vr/ar stuff launch by Apple, we might see such accelerators in other Mac devices too..
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All of these specs of ASi speculations seems amazing. It's just that we would need software support for some and maybe more of those multidisciplinary softwares we use daily. Haven't seen but a couple of support yet. I can't see that is coming in floods as of now. So the 68k era compare was kind of spot on. Or PPC era. The "only we and us" attitude with Apple is troublesome.
Apple concentrates on profits now. And they are good at that, exceptionally good I think. Maybe It's not gonna last, mybe it is. Consumers are stupid, I know that, but I hope not that stupid, and not forever. And then there is this 1% sector, the group of the professionals. The firms. The big. The smaller. And the companies consisting of 1-5 persons like us are.
I think the firms exlusively using Apple today, are of about video and audio and film. They are supporting Apples own businnes,. aka. money making, the service, the monthly billings that is. That's why Apple serves them. kind of. There's nothing wrong with that neither. It's business.
Surely it feels good to make money. It's just that all the others than these money makers are going to apart, and get away from the platform. I mean apart from the Apple ecosystem (services and pay per month and whatever apple). They (Apple) have not left any space nad/or products and opportunities for others to proceed.
They are doing it all to dispart us from users, and interact through them instead. And get paid in the middle. They want to be the middleman for anything and everything.
They want to get paid for it. Tim is a genious of a money maker.
And I am an architect. And I don't f**** like it. I would want Epic support, fully (UE5). I would want nVidia support (40x0), fully. I would want AMD (7x00). I would want AEC software support, fully. I can't see any of that coming. Nor can I see Apple commenting anything about that.
I would state that Apple is a consumers services/products company only, today. Apple is a Moneymachine.
Apple concentrates on profits now. And they are good at that, exceptionally good I think. Maybe It's not gonna last, mybe it is. Consumers are stupid, I know that, but I hope not that stupid, and not forever. And then there is this 1% sector, the group of the professionals. The firms. The big. The smaller. And the companies consisting of 1-5 persons like us are.
I think the firms exlusively using Apple today, are of about video and audio and film. They are supporting Apples own businnes,. aka. money making, the service, the monthly billings that is. That's why Apple serves them. kind of. There's nothing wrong with that neither. It's business.
Surely it feels good to make money. It's just that all the others than these money makers are going to apart, and get away from the platform. I mean apart from the Apple ecosystem (services and pay per month and whatever apple). They (Apple) have not left any space nad/or products and opportunities for others to proceed.
They are doing it all to dispart us from users, and interact through them instead. And get paid in the middle. They want to be the middleman for anything and everything.
They want to get paid for it. Tim is a genious of a money maker.
And I am an architect. And I don't f**** like it. I would want Epic support, fully (UE5). I would want nVidia support (40x0), fully. I would want AMD (7x00). I would want AEC software support, fully. I can't see any of that coming. Nor can I see Apple commenting anything about that.
I would state that Apple is a consumers services/products company only, today. Apple is a Moneymachine.
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Maybe, maybe not. If Apple feel safe that the Audio and Video professionals would love that new Mac Pro, they might decide to say good enough. I don’ personally hope so, but I could see it happening.
My key concern is that I’m very sure Apple won’t create a custom CPU or SoC just for the Mac Pro and a M2 Ultra isn’t really fit for a full custom setup of external Ram, GPU etc. It will be interesting to see if they have solved this technical dilemma.
Yeah, we've been going around and around on this discussion for over 10 years. People arguing for what they want and hence what Apple must do against those who are speculating what Apple will do and hence what people should expect. Blaming Ive, Cook, Jobs, depending on what narrative is in fashion on the forums. All along, Apple has consistently tried to limit modularity to tighten replacement cycles and reduce support costs and to raise prices to attrition away unprofitable users to the PC market. And that was all before the Mac business became a fraction of the iDevice business, now it's all about aligning R&D across a single platform for every Apple product from device to desktop. So what do I expect Apple will do? Pretty much what they've been already doing for a very long time.
There is no maybe. We have entire threads here with what real pros say they will not move to machines that won’t support 3rd party gpus.
The above is from user with his own audio video production company that makes Hollywood movies, videos, audio work that said so.
Again, there is no maybe here. Just like there was no maybe about what a loser the trashcan was…there is no debate, the apple apology tour ended that. It will be game over.
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Wrong. Apple ended the debate with an apology tour. There is no debate. It, the non modular trashcan Mac, was a loser design that was an acknowledged failure by apple itself.
These are all the same “all apologies” hand wringing enabling excuses that were bandied about on how the 7,1 was going to be another trashcan, and were proven wrong.
The next Mac Pro must have features like PCIe and the third-party GPU support. Otherwise, it’s just a more powerful Studio.
Really? The Mac Studio exists and is selling faster than they can make them and the 7,1 is stagnating. It's pretty clear that Apple will only do the Pro on their own terms. Increase prices, increase margins, tighten replacement cycles, lower support costs, increase R&D leverage. This means target larger business users, drive to 3 to 5 years median replacements, reduce configuration variability at sale and aftermarket, fully embrace AS and accelerate Intel Mac OS EOL. Doesn't even require us to get into conspiracy theories, parse the words of a press interview from 4 years ago, or debate the number of PCIe lanes on the M2 to understand where this is going.
Dude the MacBook Air is selling faster too. Does that mean that’s what studios/pros use?
This is a fact. A cheap piece of crap 6900xt DECIMATES the top end studio for heavy graphics work. I have a top end studio, it‘s a pile of crap for real intensive video/graphics work. It’s a pumped up mini.
A 6900xt gets metal scores (apple’s metal) that are 80% higher. Apples cherry picked bogus benchmarks have been utterly dismissed by real video pros. No one gives a s*** what apple’s reasoning is, because it fails at and is insufficient for the job. Just like the trashcan was a complete failure in the real pro space that caused many pros to leave the Mac or hold on to their 5,1 way too long.
The pro market will utterly not give a damn about apples bloviating about how great something is when it’s not. Apple can have its reasons, and just like with the trashcan Mac, if the device isn’t up to the job, the pros will not care and leave. No amount of apple hand waving or puffery saved the trashcan from being the ignored loser it was, and your hand waving or apples about r&d or their thoughts on philosophy are not going to make pros give a darn about real requirements they need to get work done that these flawed machines cannot do In the pro space.
The studio is a nice beefed up Mac mini and great for many purposes (maybe it’s good for YouTube poser wannabes), but it’s not pro. Full stop. A now tediously not top end 6800xt destroys the top end Mac studio model, and it’s a joke to pretend otherwise.
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I won't debate what Pros want and what Pros will buy or what you want and what you'll buy. You're the expert on you, and I respect that you've put much thought into that. I'll definitely speculate all day long what I think Apple will do and why and what businesses interest them. I've read these threads for over 10 years now and people seem to think that Apple has been a drunken sailor or manipulated by Jony Ive whereas I see a company that is trying its best to build a business in a very competitive space and making hard choices around priorities, which it would be an understatement to say they've been more than a little successful at. I honestly don't know if Apple can do a Mac Pro that fits the market given the way their strategy seems to work. You can keep saying they did the 7,1 but that's not quite as compelling a statement of direction as it was 3 years ago. It's feeling an awful lot like 2012 here right now.
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That’s very fair, and I think it’s fair to speculate that apple will not do what pros really need. Frankly it’s also fair to speculate on pros’ reaction, but to me it’s clear, if the grunt isn’t there on the graphics side, it’s over.
I can think of one circumstance that might change things On both counts.
So not having 3rd party cards is generally seen as a non starter for pros. But why? Because apple lies about how good its GPUs are in their apple silicon machines. They lie/cherry pick some bs benchmarks to advance the narrative that they are better than top end 3rd party GPUs. Those are blantant lies IMO that hurt them because their own metal benchmarks show mid level 3rd party graphics cards destroying even the top end studio graphics output.
However, what if apple releases its own graphics card with say 1024 cores on it and that card truly would outperform say a 3090/4090 card by 100%? Well, now pro’s would have some real decisions to make. On the one hand we got what we need to work, on the other hand, do we trust a lock-in world with no other options where we have to rely on apple to stay at least current with 3rd party gpu competition.
Tough decisions, and I could see different pros going different ways.
Also, not clear, could apple produce that powerful of a gpu, and would they bother for such a small market? Isn’t that more costly to do that than just support 3rd party GPUs? I’m not sure.
Yeah and then 2019 happened. So please.
This is why I believe the next Mac Pro will continue to use the 7,1 chassis and enclosure. There would surely be no point redesigning it if they’re going to support MPX cards - which they’ve aggressively kept up to date and spent resources developing with AMD - and potentially stock AMD cards.
During a worldwide production and distribution capacity collapse, that is not the achievement it may seem.
It needs to as as cheap as a 4090 card and perform at 2X. A clear strategy from Apple to provide cost efficient ASI compute is also needed as software adaptions is the hurdle. It is not that NVIDIA is better regarding vendor lock-in.
It is funny that “Real Pro” often are referring to gaming cards. Are the real pro cards to expensive? The debate would be more constructive if arrogance such as referring to Mac book Air as a diaper and real pro needs 3:rd party GPU is left out. I understand your frustrations but belittle other peoples professions by excluding them from what a “real pro” needs in terms of compute does not encourage debate. A real pro knows how much compute they need and buy computers accordingly and that can range from an Air to a supercomputer.
Not so hopeful we will see external GPU support though. MPX could be for expansion using ASi.
Feel free to drink some cold water if you’re virtuously offended. You have every right to be and I have every right not to give a damn.
I am not particularly offended but I just giving you a tip how to make a higher impact in a discussion.
Back to the discussion proper:
I cannot see why Apple should support a small group of people (compared users of laptops, AIO, iPads, iPhones, smaller desktops) with features such as third party GPU if Apple do not have any strategic value of the work that group is doing. Therefore I am pessimistic.
I would like to see a Mac Pro tremendous cost-efficient ASi compute just because they can and can afford it. No chance there will be ROI in short term and hence the need for a strategic pull. This is also why I get so confused over the 7,1 in 2019. The 7,1 in 2013 would have made sense but now? Why do so much excellent engineering supporting Intel/AMD something that by all indication is on the way out? If the OP leaks are correct it is not a replacement for compute scalable systems like 7,1, which is really bad. It makes more sense with a 7,1 with scalable number of Ultra using the MPX modules with faster busses.
Edit: Sense and Apple is not always an association you can do!
This is basically option 1 of the three options of next generations of Mac Pros described in this post. I believe option 1 is less likely than option 3 in the longer prospect (say the next Mac Pro after the immediate 8,1).
The immediate 8,1 appears to be very likely option 2 given what's leaked in various sources. Though I believe a little variation of option 1 is possible. Instead of clustering at SoC daughterboard level, a cluster of 8,1 boxes sound a way out for bigger/wealthier customers.
Yeah I didn't get that sense. If we know how to do anything in the Mini forum it is complain. World class. Not otherworldly like on the Mac Pro or MBP forum, but we can hold our own, haha. My personal beef? Being told on mini forums that I don't really need the 64 GB thats in my Mac mini 2018 and that 16 GB AS Mac mini ought to be enough for anyone. We're not even asking for a lot we just want AS to be as capable as the outgoing models.
Ok..then why does the AS MacBook Pro offer 32 GB? No Comment.
Ok then why does the AS Mac Studio go up to 64 GB? Uhhh sorry no comment.
Its one thing to try and justify Apple's reasoning for certain things, I understand that all day and love to see it.
Its another thing to attack anyone who points out stuff that's dumb and don't make sense. This is how Apple gets away with its most egregious design choices. The AS Mac Pro could be less performant than the 2019 Intel Mac Pro, and you would have people tripping over themselves to justify how the Intel Mac Pro was simply "too much" and "no one could ever use that much performance in their lifetimes" and fight with anyone who disagrees. it's sick.
M1/M2 has 128-bit wide memory bus
M1 Pro has 256-bit wide memory bus
M1 Max has 512-bit wide memory bus
Apple buys LPDDR chips in huge quantity with similar densities. Hence, we could expect the maximum supported capacity of each SoC is tiered by design.
I believe there will be a M2 Pro Mac mini with 48GB unified memory. Fingers crossed. I reduced my hope down from 64GB because other sources seem to think higher density LPDDR5 won't be available in bulk for customers like Apple.
It’s a good question on the ROI. Whether that is recouped or not the value is to keep the top most pros/creatives/enthusiasts on the platform as they are the taste makers, the halo users that are outsized influencers. The ones that break in and figure out new uses and new markets. There is an intangible value to such halo users beyond the immediate ROI.
Basically those were the users shoving apple into movie cameos when apple was near death. They helped save it and get it beyond bankruptcy with unquantifiable amounts of exposure during a time when apple literally could afford to advertise their machines anywhere near to such levels of exposure. Such intense love from its creatives was greatly what helped apple get past such hard times. What was the value of that existential life line? Literally it was everything.
The crazy ones, the enthusiasts were the bridge that apple used to cross past their near bankruptcy and save the company. And one thing apple should learn is you don’t burn bridges. You never know when you may need to pass over them again. Most companies would kill to have such fervent fans, and blowing it with them, is basically reckless corporate waste imo.
As for making sense of the 7,1 after the 2013 is easy. The 2013 trashcan Mac failed SPECTACULARLY among pros, many of which left the Mac and didn’t come back. Apple literally went on an unprecedented apology tour to reassure the Mac pros still hanging on to their ancient 5,1s that they learned their lesson and to stick it out with them. And then they delivered on what the pros have been asking for. Slots! expandability, REAL modularity an not the thunerbolt joke of the trashcan.
And those that don’t know history and ignorantly laugh at it are doomed to repeat it, which seems just and right.
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What are you even talking about? The MBP goes up to 64GB and the Mac Studio up to 128GB. It takes one second to research that.