That would be similar to Mac Studio and Macbook logic board changes if call in for support.
The point is it defeats the whole purpose of modularity and upgradability.
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MP 7,1 Best moment to sell MP 7.1? Now!
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The point is it defeats the whole purpose of modularity and upgradability.
Not at all LOL. My Mac Pro 7.1 DESTROYS the highest end Mac Studio by a 4x margin...not even kidding. To be fair, my 28-Core, 4 GPU Mac Pro is faster than damn near 3 RTX 3090's, so very few systems stand a chance against it on both PC and Apple's sides...but that's kind of the point.
Th 8.1 is going to START at around $6k - $8k and it's highest end will be around $50k somewhere...NOT WORTH AN UPGRADE for anyone with a high end Mac Pro 7.1 Not even close.
There are exactly TWO things and NO LESS that are needed to get high end Mac Pro users to leave our ridiculously comfortable perch...PCIe slots for GPU expandability "and at least enough to cover the GPU's we already have in our Mac Pros", and upgradable Ram beyond our 1.5TB of ram and 64TB of storage "Thank you OWC". Let alone the Octane benchmark on the fastest version of the Mac Studio is 14 seconds...my Mac Pro 7.1 benchmark is...2...as in 2 seconds flat...Literally 700% faster LOLOL.
Mac Studio is awesome for about 90% of things, but if you do daily motion graphics and VFX, it's a complete nonstarter.
I love the Mac Studio, it's an awesome product, but my MacBook Pro is just as fast for editing and lockable alongside the 7.1 and my 7.1 is just a render god, the likes of a Puget system with 3 RTX 3090's in it, which by the way, means it will also be at least as fast as 1 RTX 4090 if not 2 when they drop
What is the point even for a studio like mine to move away from that? And THAT'S Apple's real problem right now...figuring out how to get people like me, to leave beast @$$ machines like this behind.The reality is, they can't. Now without allowing me to bring my ridiculously powerful GPUS, Storage, and Memory with me. Apple vs. Apple...they've come close to cannibalizing themselves before...but this is a whole new ballgame.
Presuming it's unlikely they can make something better than what you have currently, they'll follow the iPhone / iPad strategy, and use OS updates to make your current machine worse, until you're forced to give it up, just to stand still.
The problem is, they already made what we currently have. And, as we have done several times before...we will literally freeze time if they even hint at trying to do so. I'll ride Monterey like it's my wife for the next 10 years if necessary to keep performance as great as it is right now lol. And I'm not alone. Let them try it lol.
hopefully your pro apps don't emulate Capture One, and follow Apple's example of only covering the 3 most recent OS versions.
This right here is the largest obstacle to using an older, unsupported Macintosh. Office 365 has this same requirement which caused me to have to replace my father's perfectly fine 2011 MBA with a newer model.
It's been my observation Macintosh developers tend to drop support for older operating systems with their latest software far earlier than they should.
Apple doesn't back port new developer features to older versions of macOS. Companies like Microsoft will to an extent. But supporting old versions of macOS becomes extremely expensive, and can sometimes make adding new features for new versions of macOS extremely time consuming.
Also: Xcode itself will drop support for building for older macOS versions. And eventually test hardware just dries up. Also Apple doesn't have an easy way to test every version of macOS - which means partitions have to be maintained across all test gear and tested by hand.
Even iOS is a big problem because there is no way to dual boot an iOS device, and no way to downgrade the OS through official channels.
TLDR: Supporting older macOS versions costs a lot of time/money, and Apple does absolutely nothing to make it any easier.
I would have liked to get a 7,1 in the $3000 region. A fairly basic one went second hand AUD$4900, another one with higher specs from a QLD studio was asking more than AUD$12,000.
One bet is to find a base model at the most reasonable price you can find then upgrade it if the normal new prices are too steep. It's a very well done machine. With easy upgrades you have a stupidly powerful computer that should keep going for a very long time. I had to buy new, no other option. I also wanted to get away from the need to have Opencore.
I'm wary of cherrypicked benchmarks from Apple. A presentation is nice, but it really comes down to what people are using the machines for, and the older machines might still be faster. We've seen 5,1 machines with 6900XT GPUs out-performing Mac Studios.
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Fortunately they don't. In fact, the beauty of my workflow for ALL of our production work can jump around to any Mac OS and any version of ALL of our workflow softwares...I keep every version of every plugin specifically for that reason.
Workflow for me goes for pre, Final Draft to Previs Pro, (then for production a bunch of proprietary softwares I've made for filming process) then in post, to AVID/FCPX/PREMIERE depending on the client, then branch off, for sound to Logic Pro/Pro Tools depending on client, for color, Davinci Resolve/FCPX dependent on client, for VFX, ZBrush for character modeling, Marvelous Designer for clothes design and clothing sims, Substance for Texturing (although as soon as Quixel can match them in ease of use, switching for sure), Cinema 4D for CG modeling, rigging, animation, and lighting (some of my artists use Maya, I personally stay inside of C4D, they both translate well with each other), Octane Render tends to be our final export for 100% CG sequences before sending to AE for compositing and adjustments, as of about 5 months ago, UnREAL 5 has become a part of the workflow as well...shockingly it flies in realtime on the Mac Pros...not so much on the old 2020 5k iMacs, so depending on the shot and who's working on it, that's a part of the process, Realflow for liquid Sims, X-Particles for sims, Houdini for explosion sims and liquid sims, Mocha Pro for planar tracking, 3D Equalizer/PF Track for 3D tracking, After Effects for compositing (currently transitioning our workflow to Nuke though...After Effects just crashes too damn much and tired of adobe refusing to make use of our ridiculously powerful GPUS), Logic Pro X for ADR, Voice Over, Sound Design, Foley, and Music Composition, and Resolve/FCPX for final timeline export and final deliverables. If any of this or even any of the 100's of plugins piped into all of them were ever updated to NOT work...wouldn't matter...I have literally 5 copies of this system on multiple SSD's frozen in time and I keep iterating with every update to everything. If it EVER stops working, I revert to previous iteration and shut down all updates lol.
I guard this as if it's the master sword in A Link to the Past lol.
I know what you mean, and $3,000 is my sweet spot as well -- that's what I would be willing to pay for a base 8-core model (NOT used, i'm tired of buying used); but yeah, I will probably end up buying one soon, especially since i'll be able to transfer my rx6800xt over to it, which will be an awesome upgrade, then all that's left are the processor and RAM, but those can be done over time.
Honestly, I am waiting to see if the 8,1 gets announced in September, and also if that has any effect on the pricing of 7,1's, as I am sure many other 5,1 owners are as well.
Cheers!
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yeah that won't work on any Intel or Apple Sillicon Mac because unlike iDevices we can upgrade or downgrade the macOS as we please and we can also install macOS on a different SSD partition to try it out.
Plus with macOS using Terminal so we can see compare performace behaviour between the old macOS and new macOS. Plus we have trusty GeekBench to test the speed.
I know it's fun to be jaded and to suggest Apple slows downs macs but the Apple community will react very harshly with Apple and it will backfire on apple and it will cause a huge backlash.
Apple will think twice before pulling that stunt again on iphones and ipads because they are still getting lawsuits from the battery slowdown issues on iDevices.
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I am done with Mac's. Sadly, because of Apple sillcon. My last Mac Pro will be the 7,1 and then I will be moving to a Windows workstation. In the future I also want faster CPU.
Will you leave even if they come out with an 8,1 that has 8 slots, can use PC (eg video) cards?
No. If 8,1 supports AMD gpu then no I won't leave. 8,1 will have very fast cpu no doubt about that. It's that I can't trust Apple only gpu mac.
Agreed. If their Mac Pro doesn't have multiple PCI slots that support common PC Cards, then the 7,1 will be my last Mac. If it doesn't have that, it's DOA.
Now if Apple made their dGPU with pcie slot capability I would consider the base model. I will be sad with no AMD support but I just don't want a SoC based GPU on a Mac Pro.
But if no Apple dGPU at thr very least then I am done with Mac Desktops.
I will still continue to buy MacBooks though.