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Hewlett Packard bash nMP on a web-campaign

Z

Zemzil

macrumors member
Original poster
May 10, 2013
49
0
Geneva, Swiss
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/mac-to-z.html?jumpid=sc_r10048_mac_to_z_march2019


With the same 12 Core CPU E5, same amount of registred RAM, same SSD size and two Fire Pro W7000 (9000 are unavailable), the Z820 cost 3000$ more than the equivalent nMP.

It stay an irrevelant compare as the nMP has a unique form-factor, legal OS X support, 6Gb special Fire Pro and... silence, when Z820 fully charged are not specially.

I'm not sure that HP will convince anyone with such childish advertising, except some uninformed IT financials.:rolleyes:

In movie post-production HP stay the main choice for almost every software editor or hardware manufacturer when they have to certify PC workstation, due to their great hardware quality and support.

So admit that "pro are using mac" as a default choice ("Moving to") is a stupide auto-goal statement like doing such fallacious compare, as PC workstation stay the only choice for some niche domain.
 
I'm not sure it's really "childish". All they've one is made a chart comparing nMPs to their workstation.

They do obviously leave out their cons and the nMP's pros, but every company does that when selling their product. THey'll have a hard time getting serious MP users to switch as they'd have to repurchase all of the software, and be trained on their Windows "equivalents" which can be very costly.
 
You're right, DELL did such advertising when the legacy MP was discontinued in Europe due to some new EU electrical standards.

But even promoted as a charts comparing, it stay an indirect promotion of the nMP on a their website, that is in my opinion a "double-edged" strategy due to the "hype" and curiosity about all the change that the nMP promote and induce in the industry, especially when placing Thunderbolt in good place of their arguments...
 
What a train wreck of an ad campaign. They make it sound like they give you 24 cores for a fraction of the cost of the nMP... but when you actually figure out how to configure the workstation... it's beyond expensive.

I'll say this, for those with massive computing needs, the maxed out HP is impressive... but it will cost over $80,000.
 
Zemzil said:
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/mac-to-z.html?jumpid=sc_r10048_mac_to_z_march2019


With the same 12 Core CPU E5, same amount of registred RAM, same SSD size and two Fire Pro W7000 (9000 are unavailable), the Z820 cost 3000$ more than the equivalent nMP.

It stay an irrevelant compare as the nMP has a unique form-factor, legal OS X support, 6Gb special Fire Pro and... silence, when Z820 fully charged are not specially.

I'm not sure that HP will convince anyone with such childish advertising, except some uninformed IT financials.:rolleyes:

In movie post-production HP stay the main choice for almost every software editor or hardware manufacturer when they have to certify PC workstation, due to their great hardware quality and support.

So admit that "pro are using mac" as a default choice ("Moving to") is a stupide auto-goal statement like doing such fallacious compare, as PC workstation stay the only choice for some niche domain.
Click to expand...

Haha... Good luck with that HP! :rolleyes:
 
They make some fair points, though. Namely, the 3-year warranty they offer compared to Apple's 1-year. That's always been a gripe of mine with Apple.

Nonetheless it's a bull smear campaign and the way they say 'a maximum of 12TB storage compared to Apple's 1TB'. Well, yeah, but ... Is it 12TB of SSD? RAID? PCI-e Flash? SATA 10,000RPM? Frankly it's not about the numbers because Apple's combined hardware and software means most of the programs wi run better on OS X (except for if you spent 80K customising with half a TB of RAM, I guess).

And finally, my personal favourite comparison. Guys, the Mac doesn't come with Windows 7 built in :( who'd have thunk it? (That's enough to make me not want to purchase the HP)

image.jpg
 
If I were an IT manager I would be more tempted by HP than Apple, and not because of cost of hardware but support. HP provide onsite support, does anyone know if Apple provide this? I asked in an apple store when I took a MBP in for repair and just got a shrug. It didn't fill me with confidence.

Personally I'd go for the nMP over the Z820 as I prefer OSX and if I need Windows I can run it in a VM. If I was involved in video production or anything that needed a high-end workstation then I'd have to look at the Z820 as it does scale higher in terms of spec.
 
shaunp said:
If I were an IT manager I would be more tempted by HP than Apple, and not because of cost of hardware but support. HP provide onsite support, does anyone know if Apple provide this? I asked in an apple store when I took a MBP in for repair and just got a shrug. It didn't fill me with confidence.

Personally I'd go for the nMP over the Z820 as I prefer OSX and if I need Windows I can run it in a VM. If I was involved in video production or anything that needed a high-end workstation then I'd have to look at the Z820 as it does scale higher in terms of spec.
Click to expand...

Yes, with Apple Business you get onsite support. Create a business account and speak to your account manager about it, they'll be able to help.
 
keysofanxiety said:
They make some fair points, though. Namely, the 3-year warranty they offer compared to Apple's 1-year. That's always been a gripe of mine with Apple.
Click to expand...

I thought that was the most compelling part of this chart, I might have put it right under the processor count.

keysofanxiety said:
Nonetheless it's a bull smear campaign and the way they say 'a maximum of 12TB storage compared to Apple's 1TB'. Well, yeah, but ... Is it 12TB of SSD? RAID? PCI-e Flash? SATA 10,000RPM? Frankly it's not about the numbers because Apple's combined hardware and software means most of the programs wi run better on OS X (except for if you spent 80K customising with half a TB of RAM, I guess).
Click to expand...

Well the advantage to a PC case with internal storage is you can throw four SSD SATA drives in there, RAID-0 them together, and have the same space and more speed than upgrading to a 1TB drive in the nMP from 256 (and pay less).

It's so common on here to say "hey look! the PC we're comparing it to doesn't have this one feature exactly the way the nMP does, therefore it's invalid!" What about what the PC has that the Mac doesn't?

Nobody disputes that the specific hardware in the nMP is difficult to match for the same price on the PC side. However, as far as price/performance, that is extremely dependent on the specific tasks you perform.

If all you use is FCP, the price/performance of a PC is a "divide by zero." If you do any CUDA work, the price/performance of the nMP is a "divide by zero."

The biggest advantage a PC has over a mac is that you have choice. If you don't use OpenCL, if you use CUDA, if you need HD capacity over speed, if you don't require OS X specifically, a PC (maybe not always HP, but certainly a DIY) will absolutely demolish the nMP in price/performance much of the time.

If you buy a nMP, you have no choice but to buy the specific video cards Apple wants you to--and you have to buy two of them. You're also stuck with PCIe storage, and forced to externalize everything else. This can be an advantage if you really wanted those features, but forcing people to buy stuff they don't need and/or have a lower value for does not make the nMP a good bargain. It's not as if I can buy a nMP, sell the D300's for a single card, sell the 256GB PCIe storage for a single SSD, and use the extra money for software and beer. They have no ability to be resold, so if I'm not using them/can't use them, they have almost no marginal utility to me.


keysofanxiety said:
And finally, my personal favourite comparison. Guys, the Mac doesn't come with Windows 7 built in :( who'd have thunk it? (That's enough to make me not want to purchase the HP)
Click to expand...

I'm sure there are some people thinking of buying the nMP to use it in Windows. The nMP has some extremely significant advantages in Windows with its FirePro cards.

I prefer OS X, a lot of pros use software that either works better in Windows or doesn't have an OS X counterpart. Not everyone uses FCPX for a living :)
 
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I use those HP workstations at work. They're nice, pretty quiet too, and relatively easy to pull apart and upgrade. Funny HP should compare to Apple, or not so funny, they've been emulating Apple on many products. In fact, when the state of a replacement Mac Pro was up in the air, I was seriously considering whether I'd just buy a HP workstation and give up on the OS X line. I wanted a real machine, no stupid Mini or iMac. Anyhow they came out with the new Mac Pro which was close enough.

I'll say that I'm quite happy to have the nMP instead of the HP workstation. It's small and can fit on my desk, and is much quieter. Not as configurable though!
 
slughead said:
It's so common on here to say "hey look! the PC we're comparing it to doesn't have this one feature exactly the way the nMP does, therefore it's invalid!" What about what the PC has that the Mac doesn't?
Click to expand...

That's true, but the way HP said it was really misleading. They should realise that most pros know the difference between PC and Mac, in addition to its advantages and disadvantages -- and that they've already made their choice for good reasons.

Apple could very well reply to this campaign with advantages and disadvantages.

  • Does it have OS X? No.
  • Can you carry it with one hand? No.
  • Is it as economical on electricity? No.
  • Is it quieter? No.

It's Apples and oranges -- we've all heard the arguments and we all know what's what. Personally what annoys me is when OEMs (in this instance, HP), decide to bring up the old customisability/upgradability arguments, even though these have been dead-and-buried a decade ago. They're not adding anything new. And as a previous poster said, the top-specc'd HP comes to about $80,000, whereas the nMP is considerably cheaper than that.

Hey, if specs are all that matters, let's compare the HP workstation to the most modern Cray Supercomputer! The Cray has much better processing, and can support WAY more RAM. Okay, it's not as portable, but that's not an argument we need to worry about, because HP neglected to mention that. And the Cray is WAY more expensive -- but again, HP neglected to mention that, so that's not a problem. The Cray is WAY bigger to accomodate those extra CPUs -- but HP neglected to mention that too, so who gives a damn.

I'm not saying one's better than the other. I'm just saying OEMs shouldn't patronise or shame their consumers into picking one over the other. Pros know what they need, and they buy what best suits their needs.
 
keysofanxiety said:
Yes, with Apple Business you get onsite support. Create a business account and speak to your account manager about it, they'll be able to help.
Click to expand...

Thanks that's good to know. My company is too small to take advantage of it - there's only me - but it's nice to see that they do take business users seriously.
 
keysofanxiety said:
That's true, but the way HP said it was really misleading. They should realise that most pros know the difference between PC and Mac, in addition to its advantages and disadvantages -- and that they've already made their choice for good reasons.
[...]

I'm not saying one's better than the other. I'm just saying OEMs shouldn't patronise or shame their consumers into picking one over the other. Pros know what they need, and they buy what best suits their needs.
Click to expand...

By way of agreement, I am confused as to whom this advertising campaign is directed to exactly. However, I will say there are quite a lot of people in this world with variable amounts of tech knowledge. Clearly this HP ad was designed to capitalize on the initial opening of the nMP and provide some kind of response to people who may not fully understand what the nMP is and is not. Obviously they're a bit misleading, as I'm pretty sure HP isn't selling a 24 core computer with 512GB of RAM for < 3,000.

However, Apple does the same thing when they say things like "Up to 7TFLOPS [...] starting at $3,000" as I've seen in at least one ad of theirs--clearly the 3 grand machine wont buy you 7TFLOPS. Also, the marketing of the Dx00 series was deceptive to say the least. Schiller got up and said "oh, these cards justify the price!" and gave zero frame of reference. Schiller also called the nMP "the most expandable Mac ever!" which is quite debatable (requires definition of the word "expandable").

In the same way that HP doesn't advertise what strengths the nMP actually has, it's not as if Apple advertises what weaknesses the nMP has.

I totally agree: More than ever, people need to start with what they're looking for in a machine and what tasks they perform before judging the price/performance of a machine. For many tasks, the nMP is the best on the market. For others, the HP is vastly superior. For others still, a DIY solution or different builder is going to do the job better and cheaper.
 
How is this ad any different than the Mac Pro, G5, G4 etc ones that Apple has been running for the last 20 years?
 
Where this ad fails is in not recognizing that the most important difference between Apple and HP workstations is NOT the hardware... But the OS and software.
 
beaker7 said:
PHP:

Quieter is nice. Portable is irrelevant. Power consumption is mostly related to single CPU selection and down-clocking GPUs, nothing magic.
Click to expand...

Portable is far from irrelevant. Portability is extremely relevant. You can't get a more powerful computer the size of a nMP. People used to say "well, if you want a computer, you should be ready to dedicate a room to house it in!" It's a silly idea looking back, but people simply couldn't imagine powerful computers being small. It's still the same mentality. Huge specs does not have to equal a huge, heavy computer -- stop being afraid of change.

Mark my words, this will revolutionise the Pro industry. In 5 years, OEMs in the Pro market will have smaller and smaller professional computers to try catch up to the nMP. They're terrified.
 
keysofanxiety said:
Portable is far from irrelevant. Portability is extremely relevant. You can't get a more powerful computer the size of a nMP. People used to say "well, if you want a computer, you should be ready to dedicate a room to house it in!" It's a silly idea looking back, but people simply couldn't imagine powerful computers being small. It's still the same mentality. Huge specs does not have to equal a huge, heavy computer -- stop being afraid of change.

Mark my words, this will revolutionise the Pro industry. In 5 years, OEMs in the Pro market will have smaller and smaller professional computers to try catch up to the nMP. They're terrified.
Click to expand...

It's like all the other aspects of the nMP, its perfect if you want exactly what it has as advantages (portability, size, OSX), not so much if the tradeoffs to achieve those advantages are not worthwhile.

Number of times we've needed to move a workstation in my studio once installed in the last 15 years: 0.

So for us, yeh sure, a smaller workstation box? Awesome. But the size reduction is not at all worth everything you give up to get it smaller.
 
VirtualRain said:
Where this ad fails is in not recognizing that the most important difference between Apple and HP workstations is NOT the hardware... But the OS and software.
Click to expand...

In which way? The amount of software available for Linux and Windows is so much greater than what's available on OS/X that it makes any mentioning of OS/X exclusivity a moot point. And if we are talking about any professional use (and in this case we obviously are) then we are talking about engineers/designers who spend countless hours using their applications. Sure occasionally they use some OS features too (when they need to copy a file or something) but it is a very small part of what they use their computers for.
 
keysofanxiety said:
Mark my words, this will revolutionise the Pro industry. In 5 years, OEMs in the Pro market will have smaller and smaller professional computers to try catch up to the nMP. They're terrified.
Click to expand...

beaker7 said:
It's like all the other aspects of the nMP, its perfect if you want exactly what it has as advantages (portability, size, OSX), not so much if the tradeoffs to achieve those advantages are not worthwhile.

Number of times we've needed to move a workstation in my studio once installed in the last 15 years: 0.

So for us, yeh sure, a smaller workstation box? Awesome. But the size reduction is not at all worth everything you give up to get it smaller.
Click to expand...

Terrified?

Terrified that people won't buy traditional workstations because 8 to 24 DIMM slots aren't useful? That PCIe slots aren't useful? That significant internal storage expansion at only the cost of the bare drives isn't useful?

HP already has a SFF Xeon workstation that's just a bit more than twice the volume of the new Mini Pro. Even at that size, it supports two internal 3.5" drives, Quadro PCIe x16 video, three additional PCIe slots, and an optical drive. Not only that - but its power switch is on the front.

"Terrified" is laughable.
 
Comparing an hp z820 and a Mac Pro is the same as comparing a macbook and an hp laptop. There is no point to doing so. Only thing comparable is that they are computers with hardware that is similar.
 
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