MP 7,1 Apple has lost the plot on the pro market

[blackadde]

Same as it's been since it dropped:

For getting work done 7,1's make a lot of sense if you can't or won't leave the MacOS ecosystem.

They make very little sense if you're platform agnostic, because the hardware fields are much greener elsewhere - cheaper, faster, and with better end-to-end business support all at once.

This is why most of the favorable comparisons on this forum are by people who only compare the 7,1 MP to other Macs and not the broader desktop computing field as a whole. That will be perfectly valid if all you do is cut footage in FCPX and much less so if you're trying to build VR games in Unreal.

 

[OkiRun]

Has Apple EVER had the "plot" on the pro market? I've been using Apple products, almost exclusively, in my home for over 3 decades. I have a 7.1 Mac Pro today along with a Mac Mini, M1 MB Pro, Intel MB Pro, and over a dozen other consumer level Apple devices...and I fully understand my video/image editing needs could be just as easily met on a maxed out iMac (and within the next year, very probably, on a maxed out MX AS product.)

I've never felt like Apple had a strong focus on the broader "pro" market. Their Pro desktops have always been niche. Am I wrong in thinking they could completely abandon the Mac Pro line, and the "pro market," and the net effect on the company would be like pouring a half-cup of water out of a 5 gallon bucket?

Edit: To be clear, I don't think they will abandon the "pro" market. I'm 100% the evidence there are people willing to shell out the $$$ to have the best products they offer, to continue living within the ecosystem, even if it's more than what I truly need for the work I do.

Sometime please consider adding 7,1 signature specifications and it will be nice to know as I read your posts.

 

[DFP1989]

This is why most of the favorable comparisons on this forum are by people who only compare the 7,1 MP to other Macs and not the broader desktop computing field as a whole. That will be perfectly valid if all you do is cut footage in FCPX and much less so if you're trying to build VR games in Unreal.

Very true, FCP is my editor of choice, and has served me well going on four years.

I was a Premiere Pro user for 8 years, and got fed up with the increasing instability and poor performance, and the switch to FCP was a slight learning curve, but now I can't imagine going back.

I wish I could, as I could have build a crazy system twice the cores at half the price of my Mac Pro, but I can't, so I'm stuck waiting for what Apple does next.

I'm excited about the Apple Silicon Macs as my early experience has been positive, though for my uses I have found even the 16GB models too limiting once projects get bigger. Once a higher-core model with at least 32GB (but ideally 64GB) RAM is available, I'll probably more my 7,1 on.

 

[fuchsdh]

Has Apple EVER had the "plot" on the pro market? I've been using Apple products, almost exclusively, in my home for over 3 decades. I have a 7.1 Mac Pro today along with a Mac Mini, M1 MB Pro, Intel MB Pro, and over a dozen other consumer level Apple devices...and I fully understand my video/image editing needs could be just as easily met on a maxed out iMac (and within the next year, very probably, on a maxed out MX AS product.)

I've never felt like Apple had a strong focus on the broader "pro" market. Their Pro desktops have always been niche. Am I wrong in thinking they could completely abandon the Mac Pro line, and the "pro market," and the net effect on the company would be like pouring a half-cup of water out of a 5 gallon bucket?

Edit: To be clear, I don't think they will abandon the "pro" market. I'm 100% the evidence there are people willing to shell out the $$$ to have the best products they offer, to continue living within the ecosystem, even if it's more than what I truly need for the work I do.

The ultimate argument is that Apple totally exiting the "pro" section (as in "professional", as there's no doubt Apple will continue to offer something in the "pro" as in "most expensive part of our range) would have knock-on effects; that the Mac Pro is Apple's Halo car. There's also a sense of entitlement from long-time customers, but those people just don't understand capitalism.

Direct monetary impact? I absolutely agree they could axe the Mac Pro and miss it on an accounting statement. But I do think they have a point that the more Apple shrinks from niches, it reduces the appeal of the platform as a whole. If someone has to go somewhere else for something they can't get, they lose some of the "niceness" of the Mac platform, and at some point you're going to be paying tons of money for increasingly little benefit since you're going to drift outside the ecosystem. How much that actually matters, no one can say, but it seems like a legitimate concern.

Apple made the 7,1 when they could have just gone with the iMac Pro and been done with it. Obviously they seem to realize that the product still has some value to them.

 

[jameslmoser]

If only...... one could install Mojave....

if you only want to run Mojave the 4,1 and 5,1 machines are fantastic for that.

 

[OkiRun]

Is Youtube the largest global employer now? /s
If so, then any mac computing device may have some market to appeal to...

My neighbors daughter didn't take PC or Mac Air to college, she took iMac. Even no printer. Prints at library on campus to save money. She uses phone for a lot of other things to do. Since iMac is not mobile, would she waited to get the AS Mac Pro? Her dad says that type tower isn't for liberal arts major, even if smaller size. And it won't come with monitor.

 

[Abazigal]

Regrettable but totally understandable.

 

[KeesMacPro]

if you only want to run Mojave the 4,1 and 5,1 machines are fantastic for that.

Absolutely.
For now and hopefully a few years more, Mojave still does the job for me.
Comparing different OS there always have been fluctuations in terms of stability .
Let's see what e.g. Monterey brings...

 

[macguru9999]

Sometime please consider adding 7,1 signature specifications and it will be nice to know as I read your posts.

On the note of pro apple machines, The mac pro 1,1 -> 5,1 , and the g5 towers that preceded them would have to be the high point of apples pro journey. Sure there are some snags, like the water cooled g5 models and the limitations of the 1,1 firmware, but this series will continue to serve pros and semi pros for years to come. Perhaps not for top end video work, but for cad, amateur photography and general use.

Also some of the g4 towers, apart from the wind tunnel model, were good in their day (20 years ago)

The 6,1 with its lack of upgradability, the 7,1 with its overpriced obsolesence ... not so much. (with apologies to real video pros who are making money with their 7,1 in the present and will pay it off quickly). And in the past, the cube ? with its thermal problems... The x-serve that few companies would have bought ... so overall they have had as many hits as misses i guess....

 

[rondocap]

On the note of pro apple machines, The mac pro 1,1 -> 5,1 , and the g5 towers that preceded them would have to be the high point of apples pro journey. Sure there are some snags, like the water cooled g5 models and the limitations of the 1,1 firmware, but this series will continue to serve pros and semi pros for years to come. Perhaps not for top end video work, but for cad, amateur photography and general use.

Also some of the g4 towers, apart from the wind tunnel model, were good in their day (20 years ago)

The 6,1 with its lack of upgradability, the 7,1 with its overpriced obsolesence ... not so much. (with apologies to real video pros who are making money with their 7,1 in the present and will pay it off quickly). And in the past, the cube ? with its thermal problems... The x-serve that few companies would have bought ... so overall they have had as many hits as misses i guess....

I think people will still be using the 7.1 Mac Pro 10 years from now - yes, initially it is priced higher, but I also think it has a much higher performance potential than previous Mac Pros over time.

CPU at 28 cores is great for quiet a while - and being able to upgrade with PCIE will keep it running a long time, plus newer graphics cards as they are supported. Prices should go down in time as well as it gets older.

I think Apple will update it at least once during the next year though, I would guess the new Intel 3rd gen SP Xeon CPUs up to 40 cores, and W6800x MPX modules - only thing the current Mac Pro would not be able to upgrade is past the current 28 cores, as the new Xeons likely required a new motherboard, but the MPX will work.

 

[macguru9999]

I think people will still be using the 7.1 Mac Pro 10 years from now - yes, initially it is priced higher, but I also think it has a much higher performance potential than previous Mac Pros over time.

CPU at 28 cores is great for quiet a while - and being able to upgrade with PCIE will keep it running a long time, plus newer graphics cards as they are supported. Prices should go down in time as well as it gets older.

I think Apple will update it at least once during the next year though, I would guess the new Intel 3rd gen SP Xeon CPUs up to 40 cores, and W6800x MPX modules - only thing the current Mac Pro would not be able to upgrade is past the current 28 cores, as the new Xeons likely required a new motherboard, but the MPX will work.

Hopefully people will be able to upgrade their 7,1s to 28 cores when those cpus prices drop, the way the 5,1s can now buy the 5680, 5690 xeons cheaply.

 

[rondocap]

Hopefully people will be able to upgrade their 7,1s to 28 cores when those cpus prices drop, the way the 5,1s can now buy the 5680, 5690 xeons cheaply.

I think that time is here already - I upgraded two 7.1 Mac Pros, starting with the base 8 core W3223 - one got a W3565M 24 Core Xeon, and the second a W3575M 28 core Xeon - all for under $2k each, the 24 core was closer to $1400.

Works perfectly, no issues - and are still retail CPUs and not engineering samples. So it can be done for a decent price, and it took me less than 30 mins.

Compare that to the build to order price on these cpus, and it's very afforadable to do. My geek bench scores are even higher!

I am not sure how long it will take to get these cpus down to the mid and low 100s, but eventually they will. they are priced decent right now compared to what they used to cost, and they are still fairly modern cpus too.

 

[VelNZ]

I think people will still be using the 7.1 Mac Pro 10 years from now - yes, initially it is priced higher, but I also think it has a much higher performance potential than previous Mac Pros over time.

CPU at 28 cores is great for quiet a while - and being able to upgrade with PCIE will keep it running a long time, plus newer graphics cards as they are supported. Prices should go down in time as well as it gets older.

I think Apple will update it at least once during the next year though, I would guess the new Intel 3rd gen SP Xeon CPUs up to 40 cores, and W6800x MPX modules - only thing the current Mac Pro would not be able to upgrade is past the current 28 cores, as the new Xeons likely required a new motherboard, but the MPX will work.

You're right that the hardware should be solid and upgradeable, but do you think macOS will continue to support Intel CPUs for 7 years (+2-3 years of security updates)?

 

[rondocap]

You're right that the hardware should be solid and upgradeable, but do you think macOS will continue to support Intel CPUs for 7 years (+2-3 years of security updates)?

I think so, keep in mind Apple may still release one last update to the current Mac Pro, which would push that date in the future ahead. Definitely a few more years, look at the 2013 Mac Pro, that’s still being supported even in the next operating system, and that’s going to be close to 10 years old soon.

 

[Schismz]

I think it'll take a minute before Apple stops supporting Intel on Mac Pro. I don't think it's going to support a lot of the toys and eye candy that show up for Apple Silicon moving forward with further OS iterations ... but until Apple focuses a lot of time and resources on an extremely niche edge-case to resolve GPU and slots in some manner, they need a slot-box for high-end graphics cards.

I don't think a timeline of 7 years is unreasonable. (And, by year 3, you may no longer care because something amazing actually showed up. Who knows. Apple's newfound dedication to the Mac Pro remains to be seen.)

 

[macguru9999]

I think so, keep in mind Apple may still release one last update to the current Mac Pro, which would push that date in the future ahead. Definitely a few more years, look at the 2013 Mac Pro, that’s still being supported even in the next operating system, and that’s going to be close to 10 years old soon.

I think thats a good point. If the next mac pro is still intel as rumoured and uses Monterey, with driver support for recent radeon cards, then at least 1 version of macos after that, or more decently like 2 after Monterey should have intel code.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^Since BS 11.4 Big Navi (Navi 21 chip) has been supported. So, already done by Apple.

Lou

 

[MacPoulet]

Same as it's been since it dropped:

For getting work done 7,1's make a lot of sense if you can't or won't leave the MacOS ecosystem.

They make very little sense if you're platform agnostic, because the hardware fields are much greener elsewhere - cheaper, faster, and with better end-to-end business support all at once.

This is why most of the favorable comparisons on this forum are by people who only compare the 7,1 MP to other Macs and not the broader desktop computing field as a whole. That will be perfectly valid if all you do is cut footage in FCPX and much less so if you're trying to build VR games in Unreal.

I actually tried moving from a Mac to custom built PC for my last feature. Due to the pandemic, we were down a 6,1 Mac Pro (physical location closed, couldn't get to it) and our producer, a PC guy went and built a fairly powerful system for Adobe Premiere.

On paper, it blew the Mac Pro out of the water, but it was SO flakey. It would crash a couple of times a day, to the point where I had to step in with my 2009 Mac Pro and finish the project. My head editor was contemplating switching to Windows, and the experience pushed them further to the Mac camp...

The moral of the story: Adobe programs are universally bad no matter what platform. Now I use Resolve and am much happier.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I actually tried moving from a Mac to custom built PC for my last feature. Due to the pandemic, we were down a 6,1 Mac Pro (physical location closed, couldn't get to it) and our producer, a PC guy went and built a fairly powerful system for Adobe Premiere.

On paper, it blew the Mac Pro out of the water, but it was SO flakey. It would crash a couple of times a day, to the point where I had to step in with my 2009 Mac Pro and finish the project. My head editor was contemplating switching to Windows, and the experience pushed them further to the Mac camp...

Custom built by you / your team? If so, I'll stop you right there. Custom built for production environments is a bad mistake. Buy from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. and have them provide a custom specced system and you'll end up with a rock solid workstation.

You will encounter the usual Windows/Linux bugs, but the same can be said for macOS on a MacPro. Make sure you communicate with them and tell them what you want/need and what software you're planning to use to avoid running into issues. I had a bit of trouble with Dell and Arch Linux that took me a while to figure out, while Ubuntu worked out of the box.

And if you're a returning business customer, you will get attractive discounts (Apple does that too). I bought 7 $45k retail each workstations for my research group from Dell not too long ago and ended up paying under $16k for each (but buying 7 to 8-figures from Dell each year, so discount is better).

Of course this is not giving you macOS and if that's your decision factor, there's no way around Apple. No one is doing Hackintosh in production environments.

 

[Moonjumper]

Very true, FCP is my editor of choice, and has served me well going on four years.

I was a Premiere Pro user for 8 years, and got fed up with the increasing instability and poor performance, and the switch to FCP was a slight learning curve, but now I can't imagine going back.

I wish I could, as I could have build a crazy system twice the cores at half the price of my Mac Pro, but I can't, so I'm stuck waiting for what Apple does next.

I'm excited about the Apple Silicon Macs as my early experience has been positive, though for my uses I have found even the 16GB models too limiting once projects get bigger. Once a higher-core model with at least 32GB (but ideally 64GB) RAM is available, I'll probably more my 7,1 on.

Relying on software to keep the Pro users on Mac is a risky option. Video editing is not core to my my work as a game developer, but I do need to make promotional videos. I found DaVinci Resolve to be the best option for me as someone stepping up from needing more than iMovie could offer (even than the old iMovie that was more powerful than it is now). DaVinci Resolve is cross-platform, and seems stronger than anything else I tried.

The ultimate argument is that Apple totally exiting the "pro" section (as in "professional", as there's no doubt Apple will continue to offer something in the "pro" as in "most expensive part of our range) would have knock-on effects; that the Mac Pro is Apple's Halo car. There's also a sense of entitlement from long-time customers, but those people just don't understand capitalism.

Direct monetary impact? I absolutely agree they could axe the Mac Pro and miss it on an accounting statement. But I do think they have a point that the more Apple shrinks from niches, it reduces the appeal of the platform as a whole. If someone has to go somewhere else for something they can't get, they lose some of the "niceness" of the Mac platform, and at some point you're going to be paying tons of money for increasingly little benefit since you're going to drift outside the ecosystem. How much that actually matters, no one can say, but it seems like a legitimate concern.

Apple made the 7,1 when they could have just gone with the iMac Pro and been done with it. Obviously they seem to realize that the product still has some value to them.

Apple is a niche, and niceness was a part of choosing it. The niceness has largely gone, but so has the niche part. If Apple want to retain the premium image, it needs to remain at the premium end of the market. Being the best premium laptop is not enough, especially as it is far from the dominate player is used to be there.

I like Apple, but it is not the Apple I loved. I hope it can return.

 

[MacPoulet]

Custom built by you / your team? If so, I'll stop you right there. Custom built for production environments is a bad mistake. Buy from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. and have them provide a custom specced system and you'll end up with a rock solid workstation.

You will encounter the usual Windows/Linux bugs, but the same can be said for macOS on a MacPro. Make sure you communicate with them and tell them what you want/need and what software you're planning to use to avoid running into issues. I had a bit of trouble with Dell and Arch Linux that took me a while to figure out, while Ubuntu worked out of the box.

And if you're a returning business customer, you will get attractive discounts (Apple does that too). I bought 7 $45k retail each workstations for my research group from Dell not too long ago and ended up paying under $16k for each (but buying 7 to 8-figures from Dell each year, so discount is better).

Of course this is not giving you macOS and if that's your decision factor, there's no way around Apple. No one is doing Hackintosh in production environments.

Oh I totally agree with you regarding the custom builds, and that wasn't my choice. I didn't do the build myself, I just sent along the team's requirements. It was more of a time-crunch situation and we couldn't get something fast enough from Dell's corporate side (it was just one unit). I included the anecdote because I often hear "I could build XYZ PC and it's cheaper and better than a Mac Pro in every way" and well, my team did exactly that, and my head editor had to endure a stupid light show from the PC case for four solid months.

At work (faculty at a university teaching media production), our labs are all Dell Xeon workstations and for the most part, they're solid machines for the most part (aside from their older 30" displays, those things had a 20% faillure rate and with 100+ workstations, it was painful) and most issues are software-related (getting production machines to work nicely with a big university's IT infrastructure is a challenge). Other departments have iMac labs, and those machines work pretty well too, but have their own software gremlins, so in the end it doesn't matter what platform you choose, there will always be issues.

We get a pretty good discount with Dell too but our purchase is more like $500K every three years because of our lifecycle.

Personally, would not use a Hackintosh for anything mission critical, but I've got friends who do. They're more daring than me I guess.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Jobs was letting the Mac Pro wither when he was alive; people were talking about the Mac Pro getting canned and whether Apple was committed to the machine in 2010. Jobs was alive and involved in the FCPX debacle. This really isn't a Tim Cook problem, it's an Apple problem.

Yea, that's wrong. First, the 2010 machine, the 5,1 was a meaningful upgrade. It may be the most beloved Mac Pro of all time. Second, jobs had that tiny little problem of dying during that time, so his not being fully on it, is not exactly on point. But yet, despite dealing with dying around 2010, they still released, again, perhaps the most beloved Mac Pro of all time.

The FCPX killing FCP7 was bad marketing, but it has squat to do with the Mac Pro getting canned. This is warped view of the time, to which you are entitled to think was the reality.

 

[arche3]

The moral of the story: Adobe programs are universally bad no matter what platform.

Lol... I had to laugh. Its sort of true. We have all been there.

 

[fuchsdh]

Yea, that's wrong. First, the 2010 machine, the 5,1 was a meaningful upgrade. It may be the most beloved Mac Pro of all time. Second, jobs had that tiny little problem of dying during that time, so his not being fully on it, is not exactly on point. But yet, despite dealing with dying around 2010, they still released, again, perhaps the most beloved Mac Pro of all time.

The FCPX killing FCP7 was bad marketing, but it has squat to do with the Mac Pro getting canned. This is warped view of the time, to which you are entitled to think was the reality.

he died October 2011 and was still heavily involved in the company until his death, including their upcoming products. There is no way he didn’t know about the cylindrical Mac Pro—and let’s be honest, it’s a Jobs product through and through. Apple made the G4 Cube because it appealed to Jobs, the 6,1 Mac Pro is just the Cube 2.0.

and yeah, people were worried about the Mac Pro back then, too. They were slow to update the product, even to Nehalem in 2009.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

he died October 2011 and was still heavily involved in the company until his death, including their upcoming products. There is no way he didn’t know about the cylindrical Mac Pro—and let’s be honest, it’s a Jobs product through and through. Apple made the G4 Cube because it appealed to Jobs, the 6,1 Mac Pro is just the Cube 2.0.

and yeah, people were worried about the Mac Pro back then, too. They were slow to update the product, even to Nehalem in 2009.

Thanks for missing the point. in 2010 he was super sick. Yea, he had a year to get all his affairs settled. Your off, but keep walking down the path and over the cliff, I won't stop you.