The oMP has handles. Handles are associated with portability. The nMP lacks handles. Applying your "logic" the oMP was designed for portability whereas the nMP was not.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Is the new Mac Pro a failure?
- Thread starter drnebulous
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
Yes. Well almost. It's more of a coincidence.
Once Apple had dumped internals that weren't compatible with the direction of the machine, there was no reason to ship a giant empty box.
Really? I couldn't tell.
That's not most kids. And having money shouldn't be confused with the need for a Mac Pro. Or even it being a good idea. If you want a portable editing station, the Macbook Pro is still a far better solution, no matter how much money you have to burn.
All of which would have required a workstation in 2001.
You don't need a Mac Pro for any of that. A 3 year old Macbook Air could handle keying a green screen.
This is the modern era. A Macbook Pro can do that all without breaking a sweat. I'm going to guess that school didn't need to buy a bunch of Mac Pros to do that work, right?
I know a lot of video professionals who use Macbook Pros as their daily drivers.
They did, and a just as capable Macbook Pro is still smaller.
When do you need more than 16 gigs with Final Cut Pro X? On 1080p compressed video?
It sounds like you bought a bunch of stuff but you aren't entirely aware of what you're actually using out of it.
Once again. Just look. We have to pretend that computer engineers aren't even thinking about size here for the sake of discussion. In a field that measures everything. Making this thing smaller snuck up on them and was a mistake.
Once again. Just look. We have to pretend that computer engineers aren't even thinking about size here for the sake of discussion. In a field that measures everything. Making this thing smaller snuck up on them and was a mistake.
Please stop misrepresenting what everyone is saying. No one said the size was a mistake. They said it was a by product of other decisions.
I live in a nice neighborhood as well, and was also lucky enough to have grown up to parents who would encourage and provide for such talents. Shelling out 3-5 grand on a computer is still not a common occurrence among such people. And on what planet is baseball expensive? You should have picked hockey if you wanted to make an example. And even then, a good share of sports expenses are subsidized through various means.
If anything, the emerging video market is going in the opposite direction, as it has been over the past 2 decades. Cheaper, more affordable. Kids capturing and editing video on phones and tablets. I teach a few courses at one of the most expensive universities in the country, so money is not a huge hurdle to these students, and none of them own workstations. They all have laptops.
There's no doubt there are going to be kids who convince their parents they need a Mac Pro. I would have tried that as a kid myself. But I have a hard time believing this would ever become a significant demographic any more than it has ever been.
What does this even mean? Flooded by what? What is "HD technology?"
They mention the size of it just as much as they mention multicam. Once.
Nobody buying these cares what you think about the cost or needs. So Apple won't be selling a lot of them in your neighborhood. Doesn't mean they won't in mine. Let's see what happens at Christmas.
The point is all you have to do is expose them to the technology.
Sounds like you want to take it to nobody but me and my buddies really use these things. Also sounds like your current bracket has you worrying about cash a lot. Maybe there's a correlation to be found.
----------
LOL. Not everything that weighs 10 pounds needs handles. Maybe that's why marketing left out the portability. Didn't want the more challenge folks trying to move it without getting hurt.
But you do acknowledge handles prove something was designed for portability...right?
But see... this is what we keep getting back to.
You're talking about buying a Mac Pro because you can afford to build a house out of them apparently. The rest of us are talking about it as a tool to do a job with. Nobody is saying it's wrong to buy a Mac Pro because you're wealthy. We're just saying your idea on who Apple is intending to sell the Mac Pro to is badly misinformed.
Heck, if I had a billion bucks and I wanted to buy a portable editing rig, I'd still buy a Macbook Pro. What I can afford doesn't factor into it at all.
Really? You're going to play the "I'm richer than you are card?"
I don't have any problems affording a Mac Pro, thank you very much. I just don't think your post makes very much sense.
I use my Mac Pro as a tool. It's a very nice tool. But it means I know what it's capable of, I know what it's good at, I know what it's not good at, and I know what Apple is intending the Mac Pro to be for. I know all the performance profiles I'm talking about, and I know the software we're talking about in this thread. I've probably worked with more kids editing their iPhone videos than you have. This is what I do.
Again, it comes down to the same thing that's been said in other threads. If you want to buy a Mac Pro because you simply have the money, please, go ahead. No one has a problem with that. That doesn't make it a smarter purchase, and it doesn't give you some sort of insight into Apple's marketing plans. You seem to play the "everyone is just jealous because I can afford a Mac Pro!" card a lot. It doesn't get you far. Everyone else in this thread can afford a Mac Pro (and usually own one themselves) too. Heck, I used to have two. It's not impressive.
If the Mac Pro is so portable, do you think maybe I should stop carrying around a Macbook Pro and just carry around a Mac Pro? Does that seem reasonable to you?
Nothing in engineering at this level is a mistake or accident. Not something like size of an actual product. Geez. If the data would have said bigger is better. They would have went bigger. The fact of the matter is they went this way intentionally. That's it. We don't need any proof. It happened. They went smaller intentionally. Which means more portability.
The size of the box is related to what's in the box. With Thunderbolt, there is a lot less in the box.
There's no marketing conspiracy here.
It's not like if marketing had decided "bigger" for no apparent reason there would be room for anything more. The PCI-E lanes were pretty much used up. Again, another technical limit.
Where you see marketing conspiracies everyone else sees known limits to the Mac Pro's design. You can't make a Mac Pro bigger than what they did. There aren't enough PCI-E lanes. Even if they wanted to build it bigger they couldn't because Thunderbolt ate all the PCI-E lanes. Marketing had no choice either way here. There is no choice on size to be had.
There's no choice for anyone to make on size. There just isn't. Marketing never had a choice here. You don't need to be an Apple insider here. Just look at Intel's specs. They had limits to what they could do.
You're the one pretending this is some type of end of the world purchase at $2999. It's not at all unheard of for a parent to spend money on their kids. Private schooling costs thousands every year. The nMP has educational benefits. For all you know an iMac won't give little Billy the same confidence like a nMP.
Safest to assume he's either trolling or so far gone so as to make coherent conversation impossible at this point...
You're obviously a troll, but I'll bite anyway because I'm at work with nothing better to do.
1. Thunderbolt 2 is more than enough bandwidth for most tasks, unless you're one of the few people who run external GPU's or something.
2. It has 4 and 2 extra on the wired keyboard, so that would be 5 effectively. Which is more than enough for most people.
3. Not true. The CPU is replaceable, the SSD is removable/replaceable, and the GPU, while in a format that isn't widespread in the market, is removable. Not to mention the RAM being replaceable obviously.
4. That's good. It mean they designed it well. The average PC with nMP-class specs is incredibly loud and requires multiple massive fans. Not to mention it gets so hot you can cook an egg on it.
5. Yes it is. There are 3rd party solutions for this. Again, your ignorance is showing.
6. The base model is 2999 vs. 2499 for the previous base model. Hardly an "extreme" increase.
I don't see marketing conspiracies. Fact is you think they had to go with thunderbolt which had to make it smaller. I don't see it that way. It could just have as easily been a market size requirement thus making thunderbolt the only option. Fact is we don't know.
But think about this...Are more people going to buy this for the thunderbolt technology or it's small size.
No. You're the one pretending to know what everyone wants and needs. I'm really trying to discuss more or less the corporate strategy.
I don't think a lot of people are inclined to buy it either for Thunderbolt or the small size.
Thunderbolt is a political decision. Apple has decided Thunderbolt is going to be their next connector of choice. The Mac Pro not getting Thunderbolt was never really an option. When Apple decided that 4 or 5 years ago, it changed all their products.
Thunderbolt was probably aimed much much more at laptops than desktops. But once Apple decided to move all that expansion to be external, you didn't need room for it in the case. Again, that was driven much more by laptops not having room in their cases.
The great irony here is that once you add back in all that expansion via Thunderbolt, the Mac Pro becomes less portable, not more. Now you're carrying around a bunch of different boxes with a bunch of different wires. Not to mention, no matter how small the Mac Pro is, you still need to carry a display and a power source with you. Again, not so portable.
Plus, Apple already has a much more portable desktop in the Mac Mini, which is again more than adequate for editing multi cam 1080p.
----------
Why should I trust you as a source of corporate strategy over what I hear from Apple themselves?
I think you're wrong. And you could have stopped right there.
You don't have to trust me. Don't really want or need your trust. I'm just stating what I think is obvious from the websites to the actual products design, to the overall products success.
The nMP isn't a threat to me. Or the thought of getting these to as many consumers as possible. So I guess I can think outside the box here while others can't on this board.
That wasn't your original claim. Your original claim was they focused on portability.
----------
I suspect he has no idea what you mean by this.
----------
I see no evidence from him on the former and I see no supporting evidence from you for the latter.
----------
Some will buy it for the latter, most will buy it for its technical capabilities.
No one even knows how successful it is or who is buying it besides Apple themselves. How do you know this?
...I don't think it's a threat to anyone here?
You keep going back to this, that either everyone is scared of the nMP, or we all can't afford one. I'm not sure either one of those is true for most people in this thread. It's not really a good point.
Look, if every consumer bought these, I would be ecstatic. That doesn't change this isn't a machine even optimized for consumer uses. It's not even optimized for iMovie. A consumer buying one of these things would get a worse experience than an iMac.
That's the weird thing about this entire thread. For 1080p multi cam, you know an iMac would actually run better, right? An iMac is Haswell and has a better GPU.
That's the bizarre thing. I'm not just saying that the Mac Pro is too much power for consumers. I'm saying for most consumer things it's actually a worse machine. It benchmarks slower on a lot of consumer tasks. It doesn't run Word faster. It doesn't do 1080p editing faster. It plays games slower.
Why would consumers buy a machine that costs more money that is slower for the things they do?
I don't get how you can understand everyone's needs or wants. You pretend to it's all about power, performance and need. And it's not. Nothing in marketing works that way.
Why does anybody need it? What 4k monitors do you own? How many 4k streams you running? How much did your 4k camera cost?
So your point is basically that Apple is tricking people into buying a machine that is worse for what they do and costs more money, and that's a good thing?
That's also not exactly playing into your credibility as an expert here, given that you're possibly a victim here.
If you're a collector or enthusiast with money to burn, sure, whatever. But if you can't see that's a different category than a normal consumer... I'm not even sure where to start.
No buyers remorse here.
What kind of 4k monitor are you using again? You work for Pixar or do you film weddings? I doubt Pixar guys are complaining about cost.
- Status