I put this in another thread, but it's even more relevant here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE&t=0m58s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE&t=0m58s
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If you had to choose: Thunderbolt Vs Upgradeable GPU + PCIe slots?
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Yup, that sums up Apple really well. If you (the customer) are into that sorta thing then Apple is for you - for sure.
I guess most of us are here because we are or were - into that sorta thing. I guess it's pretty close to routing for the underdog. The funny part is I don't think Apple is an underdog any longer.
Like, don't they own half the world now or something? 
This was my understanding as well--but again, it's not 12GBps, it's 6--that's all I was saying. Well, that and the fact that maxing out the 6GBps array would effectively neuter all remaining devices on the thunderbolt busses (apart from displays, as you pointed out).
You haven't actually been to a larger Apple Store lately? The subset of Thunderbolt drives are in the same section as the other external drives.
For example:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/HA384ZM/A/lacie-1tb-rugged-usb-30-thunderbolt-series-hard-drive
On that page, go to the "check availability" and plug in a zip code in a major city/area (e.g., 94301 for Palo Alto store) . You can walk into a store and buy one.
The Palo Alto store has at least 3 TB drives models in stock right now.
Yup, that sums up Apple really well. If you (the customer) are into that sorta thing then Apple is for you - for sure.
I guess most of us are here because we are or were - into that sorta thing. I guess it's pretty close to routing for the underdog. The funny part is I don't think Apple is an underdog any longer.
I meant that link very specifically, too.... OpenDoc is PCIe card slots. Yes there are advantages, but how does it fit into the overall picture? See whatta mean
Well on my mac pro I have upgraded the video card 3 times, and added a PCIe Sonnet Tempo SSD and could add USB 3.0 which would essentially make my mac pro current to todays standards. Without PCIe slots that would not have been possible. The new mac pro has a very short shelf life.
I guess you were not like me. I was in charge of Mac hardware at an interactive design agency, and when Pismo PowerBook chucked SCSI in favor of firewire, I was left calling all Apple retailers in the country (and neighboring countries) to try and source a dozen Lombard PowerBooks (we had a lot of SCSI-gear back then).
Incidentally, this is also why I never had a Pismo, but man, did I love that Lombard...
RGDS,
I've got a better idea. JUST STOP READING IT. Your problem is hereby SOLVED.
It constantly amazes me how people whine about threads they don't like going on and on and yet the unsubscribe button makes it just disappear like magic.... Maybe some of us actually like the thread. Oh, but it's just about you, I know.
\Oh, but it's just about you, I know.
All threads should have a poll on whether or not to close it. If "yes" gets one vote, it should get locked and buried.
Of course, at that point some clever individual would probably vote "yes" on all the threads just on principle.
I just started a new poll on get a life or keep wasting time:
I voted for you by proxy.
I've got a better idea. JUST STOP READING IT. Your problem is hereby SOLVED.
It constantly amazes me how people whine about threads they don't like going on and on and yet the unsubscribe button makes it just disappear like magic.... Maybe some of us actually like the thread. Oh, but it's just about you, I know.
I voted for you by proxy.
I agree:
When you get someone talking about a 13 year old Pismo PowerBook its time to close the thread.
When you get someone talking about a 13 year old Pismo PowerBook its time to close the thread.
Not really, no. I didn't get that relationship till you mentioned it I mean.
But SJ's answer was basically: Apple isn't about "better, faster, cheaper" technology incrementalism like other PC manufacturers are. Doing that forces Apple to compete on a price-point basis. Instead Apple is all about the candy - or in SJ's own words, "User Experience", and supporting the underdog.
And that's the part which registered with me. That's basically what Apple customers are doing - supporting these ideas with their pocketbooks.
The problem is... When one looks objectively... MS has caught up with the Candy. And Apple is no longer an underdog.
When I take a good look at Win8 and compare it to OS X 10.8 I see almost no differences. For every gadget, API, and convention in OS X there is the equivalent one in Win8 and with just a tiny bit of hackery you can get either one to look and act IDENTICALLY to the other. So that's a wash. Then of course Apple thru iTunes, iStore, and iPhone I think maybe is now bigger than MS - so the underdog thing is gone too. And finally the idealism which used to exist at Apple, no longer does. They willingly comply with all NSA requests and this is especially bad (IMO) when Apple's devices are so sealed up.So what's a user to do?
What are we really supporting with our dollars these days? A way that no longer exists? Or just a GUI usage pattern we're familiar with? Regardless how one answers these questions we have to face the facts that Apple has never been about delivering cutting edge technology in the better, faster, cheaper annual increments others deliver - so it's not really reasonable to expect that now and pretty strange to start criticizing them now for a 40-year-old policy they have always adhered to - under Jobs.And even with all that said, I still think 3 controllers and 6 ports of TB2 plus 4 dedicated USB3 ports and two fast GPUs in a 12-core box is going to offer a lot more dynamic configurability and expansion than most people here seem willing to admit - or that they're able to comprehend (case by case). The way it works out on my calculator and by my experience it'll be able to beat the best (DT/WS) systems from any other vendor currently available. And that's true either way - whether it's 20Gb/s per port or per controller - either.
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Just wait until you've owned it for 2 years and would like to have the latest generation in video card. You'll wish you had the configurability of the 2012 model. The W9000 is a great card, two of them would be quite awesome! However, it's overpriced and yes, will eventually be obsolete. NVidia's Titan and GTX780 are already significantly faster than the W9000 at a fraction of the cost. Six months from now, who knows? What kind of card will be available in January of 2015? At 1 year old, the "new Mac Pro" is going to really start to show its age in the GPU arena.
We're also not even sure if Apple's dual GPU design will even do crossfire in OS X yet; if not, it will basically be at "mid-range" performance out of the box, at untold thousands of dollars!
I'll grant you that 36 devices is unique and better than the vast majority of workstations. You ignoring, however that many of these low-bandwidth devices would work just fine with USB 3 or Firewire which can obviously run over PCIe. With a PCIe controller for firewire/USB3 and/or on-motherboard firewire/usb3, I can run as many low bandwidth devices as I could possibly want (firewire does 63 devices, if I remember correctly and there are 12 port USB 3.0 hubs available). I'm not seeing the advantage of thunderbolt in that case. You're saying PCIe is an overkill for bandwidth for your cherry-picked devices, fine. However, for those same devices, how many would not have any benefit from Thunderbolt 2 over USB 3 or firewire?
That's not to mention the 2GBps limit--you simply cannot have a controller or device that does more than 2GBps with Thunderbolt2. I keep bringing up 3GBps PCIe SSD, multi-port SAS controllers, GPUs--that's because these are important to some people as well. Apple has effectively shut these products out of the Mac market entirely. When you factor in the limitations of each device (no more than 2GBps, a total bandwidth cap of 6GBps for all devices combined), it does seem like it's got some planned obsolescence.
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It'll work just fine. In fact much better than the 2012 MP because I'll be able to add not just one or two of them but 24 of them. But my style will be different becuase i don't game much. I'll be wanting to add 12 to 24 GTx680 cards which in two years will be about $100ea. Even in two years time I'll still be able to blow any DT/WS system off the planet and into outer space - unless they start adding TB2 or TB3 ports to their designs too that is.
Doesn't matter to me much. I think the idea is that the standard configuration (without expansion) has one fast GPU (historically good for about 5 years) for GFX and one for OpenCL and etc. The OpenCL can be used from both cards at the same time with or without crossfire. Crossfire AFAIK is only really useful for games and if I want games I'll go to a Windows box where the environment is much richer (for games)! And of course there will likely be GPU upgrade options available from Apple long before two years have passed.
Firewire, no! USB3 tho ya, some would. But you still can't get that many connected up through USB3 or through PCIe expansion boxes as there's not enough native PCIe slots in the host after also placing two WS-Grade GPUs in.
All - of course.
There's a bunch the 2012 MPs can't use either. And? NP, I don't care. That drive you keep bringing up doesn't even exist yet. When it does (if it does) it'll cost as much as the 2013 MP itself. Not interested! Don't care. If I want 2.8GB/s I'll just get two 1.4GB/s units for less than half the price and have twice as much capacity for less total cost.
All systems do. But the nMP doesn't look too bad to me. At current pace it ought to be good for 6 to 8 years with just a little stretching and one Apple GPU upgrade.
But my question to you is why do you keep asking and saying the same things over and over? Maybe I should ask myself the same question tho. How many times do we have to keep saying the same things over and over? You ask, I answer, you disagree and ask again, and answers, repeat without rinsing - forever?
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Non sense. You can run multiple devices at the same time.
Depends upon what aggregating. 20-40 bulks storage disks? It probably will work pretty well if there is any random/multiple streaming going on. Pretty good chance even if not. 20 6Gb/s top of the line SSDs? No.
Are the ports additive ? No. never were. The new Mac Pro will offer the solution of aggregating the controllers. So it is controllers and not ports... big deal. As long as aggregation is possible it can be applied to solving problems. Ports don't matter as much as actually solving the problem. Well, at least to those who prioritize solving the problem as oppose to protecting sunk costs and preconceptions.
The notion that this Mac Pro doesn't cover a wide variety is workloads is comical. Finding extreme high end corner cases doesn't make the market the Mac Pro is targeted at significantly smaller.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the technology, which was the point before. There is no reason why scsi and firewire can not exist on the same machine.
"Along with the other external drives on the gondola to the left of the Genius Bar."
I got mine at the Easton store. Walked in, asked an employee, we found the LaCie d2 (3TB), paid, went home.
Well that would be the case on the current v1 Thunderbolt, two 10Gb/s ports backed by four PCIe v2 lanes. So shouldn't the answer be, yes, always have been.