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Is the new Mac Pro a failure?
- Thread starter drnebulous
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There's certainly still demand for a machine like the Mac Pro, enough to sell them... but a lot of markets that needed the Mac Pro don't any more.
It used to be if you were a Photoshop user, semi-pro or pro video editor, developer, or doing anything serious you needed a Power Mac, and that simply isn't true any more.
These days, I'd actually take a Haswell iMac or Macbook Pro over the 4 core Mac Pro for those sorts of uses. They're actually better machines. At this point, a Mac Pro for Photoshop isn't necessarily the best use of money, again, even an iMac is not only just as good but probably better for that work. Same is true of video editing. If you're only working in 1080p, an iMac or a Macbook Pro is going to be beyond what you need. It's even getting to the point where a Macbook Air could be a perfectly serviceable editing machine (close at least, but not quite there.)
It's really gotten to the point where computing power is so cheap, the Mac Pro is really reserved for those pushing their machines as far as they can. 4k or 5k editing, high end special effects, really serious developers... The Mac Pro for the last 3-4 years has been a waste of money for someone who just wanted a machine they could stick 4 hard drives into because they had a lot of MP3s and two displays, and I think the reality is just finally starting to catch up to that.
Honestly, for most people I just recommend the Mini now. If you don't play games or need a strong GPU, the quad core config is a great little box.
I just saw a professional studio get configured, not a Mac Pro in sight. All Mac Minis. They simply don't need them for the work they do any more.
It used to be if you were a Photoshop user, semi-pro or pro video editor, developer, or doing anything serious you needed a Power Mac, and that simply isn't true any more.
These days, I'd actually take a Haswell iMac or Macbook Pro over the 4 core Mac Pro for those sorts of uses. They're actually better machines. At this point, a Mac Pro for Photoshop isn't necessarily the best use of money, again, even an iMac is not only just as good but probably better for that work. Same is true of video editing. If you're only working in 1080p, an iMac or a Macbook Pro is going to be beyond what you need. It's even getting to the point where a Macbook Air could be a perfectly serviceable editing machine (close at least, but not quite there.)
It's really gotten to the point where computing power is so cheap, the Mac Pro is really reserved for those pushing their machines as far as they can. 4k or 5k editing, high end special effects, really serious developers... The Mac Pro for the last 3-4 years has been a waste of money for someone who just wanted a machine they could stick 4 hard drives into because they had a lot of MP3s and two displays, and I think the reality is just finally starting to catch up to that.
Honestly, for most people I just recommend the Mini now. If you don't play games or need a strong GPU, the quad core config is a great little box.
I just saw a professional studio get configured, not a Mac Pro in sight. All Mac Minis. They simply don't need them for the work they do any more.
A product that is not selling is deemed a failure. The MP6,1 is selling like hot cakes so it cannot be called a failure.
The predictions I've read say Apple will likely sell a little over 1 million MP6,1s in 2014.
A product that sells at the rate of 2740/day is IMO selling like hotcakes.
Don't lump G5s with G4s, Different animals. My G5 was as fast or faster doing the same tasks where they weren't optimized for Intel than Intels were for several years.
The Power PC Consortium just never had critical mass, and who laments the mighty Altivec Processor?
The last time I compressed video, there was no H264.
If you're referring to FCP X, Apple never said that, and it's not true. FCP X's "most native" format is still ProRes. It does, however, do a pretty bang-up job of actually making inter-frame H.264 editable, especially on newer machines which have hardware decoding support for it. Which is handy, because a lot of cameras shoot that way, and it was always sort of silly to transcode H.264 to ProRes files 5x the size just to get better editing performance.
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The predictions I've read say Apple will likely sell a little over 1 million MP6,1s in 2014.
A product that sells at the rate of 2740/day is IMO selling like hotcakes.
That number seems a little crazy. The whole workstation market is only something like 400K/year.
Nope... When saving in the same format video redo doesn't recompress. It just read the source up to the cut, skip over the cut and continue reading and writing the data stream hence why it does it in five minutes instead of 4 hours. You should try it.
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Again, no. It's a linear editor, not a multi track editor. You just selected the spot in the binary stream that you don't want. Again, don't knock it until you've tried it
I'm in the process of researching shared storage solutions for high-end post production. Presently leaning toward a building a DIY ZFS system and sharing out over 10GBase-T, but I'm reviewing all the well known off-the-shelf solutions as well.
Facilis, the company that makes the TerraBlock, a rather popular shared solution solution in the industry, presently has this posted on their landing page:
The fact that they're bothering to support FCP X and mention it like that suggests they're seeing some interest in it from the sort of post production customers that buy $30K+ storage systems. That doesn't exactly mesh with with the narrative some folks push with respect to FCP X and the Mac platform in general in a lot of these forum discussions.
Facilis, the company that makes the TerraBlock, a rather popular shared solution solution in the industry, presently has this posted on their landing page:
The fact that they're bothering to support FCP X and mention it like that suggests they're seeing some interest in it from the sort of post production customers that buy $30K+ storage systems. That doesn't exactly mesh with with the narrative some folks push with respect to FCP X and the Mac platform in general in a lot of these forum discussions.
We're not discussing other products.... and yes compared to 300 million it's small potatoes.
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If I recall, it was a prediction my Motley Fool...
Nope... When saving in the same format video redo doesn't recompress. It just read the source up to the cut, skip over the cut and continue reading and writing the data stream hence why it does it in five minutes instead of 4 hours. You should try it.
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Again, no. It's a linear editor, not a multi track editor. You just selected the spot in the binary stream that you don't want. Again, don't knock it until you've tried it
To which editor are you referring?
Interesting thread
From my perspective in the audio industry, I have to rate the NMP as a 'fail'. For the first time in a couple decades, I'm stuck not knowing how to upgrade my current MacPro. I'd love to buy the new model, but:
1) I have 3 PCIe cards that I need to keep using for at least a couple more years. There are no Thunderbolt alternatives, and buying an expansion chassis for them will cost me an additional $1000.
2) I have 4 internal drives of at least a TB each. Again, adding more external boxes to house them will cost another few hundred bucks.
3) all the added external gear will add more fans, more unreliable cables, and pretty much negate the 'quiet, portable' selling points of the new machine.
In my case, upgrading would cost about $3000 more than usual I'm seriously looking into the Hackintosh route, but that feels like a pretty risky gamble as well. I realize everyone's situation is different, but as a pro who's been using Mac desktops for decades, I can't believe that for the first time I'm in a position to buy a new machine and Apple has nothing reasonable to offer.
From my perspective in the audio industry, I have to rate the NMP as a 'fail'. For the first time in a couple decades, I'm stuck not knowing how to upgrade my current MacPro. I'd love to buy the new model, but:
1) I have 3 PCIe cards that I need to keep using for at least a couple more years. There are no Thunderbolt alternatives, and buying an expansion chassis for them will cost me an additional $1000.
2) I have 4 internal drives of at least a TB each. Again, adding more external boxes to house them will cost another few hundred bucks.
3) all the added external gear will add more fans, more unreliable cables, and pretty much negate the 'quiet, portable' selling points of the new machine.
In my case, upgrading would cost about $3000 more than usual I'm seriously looking into the Hackintosh route, but that feels like a pretty risky gamble as well. I realize everyone's situation is different, but as a pro who's been using Mac desktops for decades, I can't believe that for the first time I'm in a position to buy a new machine and Apple has nothing reasonable to offer.
If you have a MP4,1 it has some good option for being upgraded. If it's a dual processor MP4,1 you can 'max' upgrade it to be a 5,1 with up to 12 cores running at 3.46 GHz. Add 1333 MHz memory and your Geekbench 3 multi core score could easily reach 33000. The 12core MP6,1 is also at around 33000.
Apple.....
had to make compromises to develop and design the nMP. And the trends in design of new Apple hardware shows they are not liking expansion attempts. But would be better to add some features off the box as USB 3.0 and maybe two more options on the GPU side. Price anyways is a factor, as in most new products. I think we would wait a year or a year and half, with data about sold units to qualify the nMP either as a success or a failure.....
had to make compromises to develop and design the nMP. And the trends in design of new Apple hardware shows they are not liking expansion attempts. But would be better to add some features off the box as USB 3.0 and maybe two more options on the GPU side. Price anyways is a factor, as in most new products. I think we would wait a year or a year and half, with data about sold units to qualify the nMP either as a success or a failure.....
I just feel that thunderbolt hasn't developed. I need at least 9 USB ports and I hate hubs, that would be a step backwards. I just don't think that this will work with audio. It least not now.
Seems like a beta product.
Seems like a beta product.
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Yep, which is why there were discussions to get rid of the product line and it received a radical re-design. The previous model's sales were in tens of thousands in the last year.
So according to you the Old Mac Pro was a failure as well? It didn't have 9 USB ports without an expansion card or hub.
Both systems have wires coming out of them, all system do for peripherals and external devices so what's the issue?
Woe is me, I can visibly see 4 wires on the desk! 2 From charging items, 1 for a keyboard and the other barely in the shot being headphones.
It seems the work environment is ruined!
Underneath is a little rack for wire management, that's been used since my old 2009 Mac pro, as it also had copious amounts of wires coming out the back and front from all USB ports, and a 4 port USB3.0 expansion card.
I really don't see the issue for expandability, the only would probably be user replaceable GPU's.
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But you have an incredibly basic setup. PCI cards for USB are full powered unlike hubs. If you do real work, then you been more than a keyboard and headphones! I know there are wires on a Mac Pro 5.1, but they all contained at the back. With the new Mac Pro you have to have all your gear spread everywhere. I can't even find a thunderbolt nas which doesn't have its own disks.
All connected:
LG Thunderbolt display,
Focusrite Scarlett 2i4
Elgato Powered Thunderbolt dock,
7 Port Powered USB 3.0 Hub
TB Lacie HDD
USB 3 WD external HDD,
USB 3 Seagate external,
LG external dvd writer,
Samsung external SSD in USB3 dock, often exchanged with HDD for quick transfer for folks,
USB webcam,
USB mouse,
USB keyboard,
360 wired controller,
never mind bluetooth items.
Even so thanks to the monitor I have 2 unused USB ports, 1 thunderbolt port, 3 more USB 3.0 ports on my Hub, 2 unused USB3.0 on my TB dock, and 3 unused TB ports on the Mac Pro.
It's nice having TB ports and devices daisy chain and I'll be doing that with the next few Lacie TB devices I get.
You're argument over not enough USB ports is a joke at best as the original Mac Pro has the same issue, it had 1 more USB 2 port and easily just as many cables everywhere that you have to tuck away and manage.
Saying they're all contained at the back is a lie, if you wanted to use all the firewire and USB ports you Have to use the ones at the front as well.
With the nMP ALL the ports are at the back, so they're all contained at the back. So what's the issue?
You can Easily buy 2-4 port TB chassis from OWC or an EU reseller that don't cost much more than Drobos.
I also do games testing and work with up to UHD video, so yeah I guess I don't do any "real" work at all.
The '+' part of that $30K+ was significant. Prices go up rather a lot from there. More to the point... has the discussion really evolved from "FCP X is at best a prosumer app" to "OK, sure, maybe some medium sized facilities are using FCP X, but it hasn't been adopted by Technicolor or Deluxe yet" without FCP X's detractors admitting their characterizations were wrong anywhere along the way? That's some pretty serious goalpost shifting.
If they've said this lately, they haven't been paying attention. There were some things about the way FCP X handled media storage that were annoying (though not impossible to overcome) in shared storage environments. They mostly went away with 10.1, and 10.1.2 just eliminated the last of them.
Fair enough.
I just can't find many thunderbolt peripherals. However, in a year or two that may change. I can only find nas servers that include their own hard drives - I'd need a nas server which has no hard drives inside so I could put my own in. Also, I really need full powered usb.
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