But Apple doesn‘t care nearly as much for their Pro users as they do for their iPhone and iPad users. The markets and sale numbers are very different. So just because they managed to built one of the fastest mobile chips doesn‘t mean they will/can/want to do the same thing for the Mac Pro.
The days of Apple caring about the product are over. And died with Steve Jobs. (For a moment in time...back when Steve Jobs announced those blue and white G3 towers...and actual gpus...for actual sane prices...with John McCarmack on stage...with Quake...and Steve declaring, 'We're going to be the best gaming platform in the world...' Yeah. I almost believed Apple cared back then for 'Pros' and consumers alike with their fruity iMac...and I even still believed it when Steve delievered teh flag ship iPhone and iPads at jaw drop defying prices...)
The clueless debacle over the Mac Pro told us everything. Then they over engineered it and tripled the price over it's former market demographic...and gave it a lame gpu on the 'entry' config'.
YEah...the love the iPhone £££. Whilst the Mac line withered on the vine for the last ten years. Precious few highlights. (Of which the Mac Pro and XDR, from a design point of view...until the WWDC audience saw the price and choked on their gasps...)
'Just because.'
The Xeon's single core performance isn't immutable. Nor are their amount of cores.
A cash poor company such as AMD can do 64 core Thread Rippers and Epyc servers which can...'serve' Intel's az. Intel didn't start getting out of bed until AMD pushed the core count. You can get a 12 core AMD cpu for just about half the price of the 'X' Intel Cascade 12 core.
It doesn't mean Apple 'won't' drive right over Intel's 'so-so' single core performance or steam roll the crap ig in the Mac Mini.
Apple won't do AS unless they can bury Intel and that is on all levels. Consumer and 'Pro'.
Software stack. Core count. Co-processors. These are things that may not be direct raw processing factors...but overall, they're going to add up to better experiences for the consumer and professional alike.
A Mac Mini running 3x 4k streams in Final Cut or working with mucho gig PS layered files...or having better graphics to play games or do 3d workloads. We may find that former 'pro' provinces brought to the frontier of consumer AS Macs.
It's not as if the price difference between a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro is matched by the performance differential.
Azrael.
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Yep it’s a funny situation.....
When I bought my G5 in 2005, I wasn’t part of any forum so was oblivious to the change to intel.
Only upgraded to cMP as my software dropped PPC support.
As they say sometimes ignorance is bliss.
Being a hobbyist, I wouldn’t be happy if I’d spent on a MP and added a £5k Vega 2 duo for Octane use, then find I couldn’t upgrade MacOS in a couple of years..... ?
It’s all a bit vague at the minute.
Apple need to enlighten Pro users a bit more about the transition.
If they switch over to ARM in macpro and MacOS works in both intel/arm then fine.
It will be fine. (Though the pudding is in the tasting... Apple (of course) Crumble for me...)I expect the transition to go much better than the last one. I remember PS working ok with Rosetta. Bit slow. But it worked decent enough. I expect the AS14 to mop up any emulation penalty.
The WWDC2020 Demo's (and they are just demo's...) augured well for the AS future.
Azrael.
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The only reason the 5,1 got such long support was because the 2019 Mac Pro took so long to ship.
5-7 years is the typical. I would not buy any Mac Pro, ARM or otherwise, expecting to get 10 years of updates out of it.
The days of Apple giving you ten years of anything are over.
Azrael.
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I would be surprised if there were 10 years of macOS and third party software updates for a 2019 Mac Pro. My expectation for my BF’s machine from January is that it will last at most 1 year past the 2021 or 2022 Apple Silicon Mac Pro. I would expect to trade it in quickly, towards a new machine. I would not be surprised if Apple offered good deals for doing this.
First, one never knows how “Future-proof” any system is. Things change and we have no really good way to predict them. Second, speaking as someone who just purchased a 2019 Mac Pro in January, completely confident that Apple was moving to its own silicon, I did it because my BF has already had enough productivity gains over his iMac Pro to make it worth it. Some of what it enabled him to do without requiring him to out source work paid for the machine already. I expect others are in the same position. This clearly will not be true for everyone, but it is true for many of the purchases of that machine (being targeted at professionals, not hobbyists). Some pros will not have the same luxury and for them the choice is harder.
Apple always love their new darlings more.
They'll drop Intel Mac as soon as they can. I don't expect any Intel Macs after the iMac Intel drops in the fall. By next fall 2021, the Mac Pro will probably have an AS15 in it that steam rollers the 'so-so' Xeon. Then it's just a ticking time bomb of Apple adding performance exclusives for AS Macs that embarrass Intel Macs and make the Mac Pro seem like the price performance pretender that it is and the consumer Intel Macs tossed into the bin called mediocre.
Anybody who dropped 40k on a Mac Pro. Expect 'no mercy' from the company that sold you it at that price.
Azrael.
