Is the new Mac Pro a failure?

[AidenShaw]

Well, every single one of the teams at work uses them....an extremely large video/audio/magazine company that you all know.

But why?

Seriously. If you want a supported OSX desktop, there are only three choices.

1. An Imac all-in-one. If you don't like all-in-ones for all of their faults (max quad core, 16GiB or 32GiB memory limit, baby and bathwater), scratch this one. (And before the 5K Imac, the non-retina version might have been rejected.)
2. A Mini-mac. Dual-core only, integrated graphics only, 8 or 16 GiB RAM that is soldered in. Lame. (One friend bought four of the quad-core Minis as soon as the dual-core only lineup was announced.)
3. An MP6,1.

The point is, are these purchases resounding endorsements of the MP6,1 design - or merely choosing the least of the evils? If there were a #4 that was a single socket xMac, and a #5 which was an updated dual socket cMP - which would be chosen?

(And BTW, is it one MP6,1 per team - or one per team member?)

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Well, to be fair, there is a large number of users here who like/own/use the nMP. But they don't post as much as the detractors, for whom this forum seems to be the primary outlet for their grief and disenchantment.

So I'm taking the results of your poll with a pinch of salt. (I haven't voted btw, I don't think it's either).

Right, you've done a scientific study that nMP users tend to be too shy or too busy compared to the low brow extroverted cMP users. Man there has been an overproduction of sour grapes somewhere in this thread.

Right, taking the results of the poll with a pinch of salt in a NOTORIOUSLY mac fanboy apple friendly forum. The fact that there is this much negativity in a normally overly pro-Mac/Apple forum should speak volumes on this issue alone.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Right, you've done a scientific study that nMP users tend to be too shy or too busy compared to the low brow extroverted cMP users. Man there has been an overproduction of sour grapes somewhere in this thread.

Right, taking the results of the poll with a pinch of salt in a NOTORIOUSLY mac fanboy apple friendly forum. The fact that there is this much negativity in a normally overly pro-Mac/Apple forum should speak volumes on this issue alone.

Statistically, a poll on a single mac site is a very small sample size to the overall majority of Mac users in general. Even smaller still are from the pro/scientific community. A grain of salt is needed. Apple rarely, if ever, is going to gage users decisions based on unverified users on an internet forum. More accurate data such as from Apple store Genius bar, feedback from the official Apple website, sales records, repaired/returned/referbished Mac Products ect. These are more highly accurate information then from your average armchair technicians who may or may not actual own or use these products.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Of course it's not statistically accurate. However it is relevant that on a traditionally fanboy site, that there is a negative result. You want to avoid that more than fair inference, you're free to do so, but it says more about wanting to be contrarian than open to reasonable inference.

 

[maxsix]

I use a Mid 2010 8-Core Mac Pro as the backbone of my personal Apple ecosystem.

My Trash Can Style Late 2013 12-Core Mac Pro is used in a free standing environment, with it's own dedicated NAS, it's just for resource intense work and experimentation.

While far from a failure, it's an odd duck that in no way holds the same place in my hierarchy as the 2010 Mac Pro does.

That's my take on it.

 

[MacVidCards]

Of course it's not statistically accurate. However it is relevant that on a traditionally fanboy site, that there is a negative result. You want to avoid that more than fair inference, you're free to do so, but it says more about wanting to be contrarian than open to reasonable inference.

Man are you ever articulate !

I don't suppose you'd consider running for President?

 

[superdx]

Every thread about the nMP 2016 is a flame war, what the hell

 

[AidenShaw]

Man are you ever articulate !

I don't suppose you'd consider running for President?

He'd have to run as a Democrat - critical thinking and articulate speech would disqualify him from the GOP side..

 

[AidenShaw]

Every thread about the nMP 2016 is a flame war, what the hell

You're three years in the future - the MP6,1 is a 2013 model.

 

[linuxcooldude]

Of course it's not statistically accurate. However it is relevant that on a traditionally fanboy site, that there is a negative result. You want to avoid that more than fair inference, you're free to do so, but it says more about wanting to be contrarian than open to reasonable inference.

It stopped being a traditional Mac fanboy website long ago.

 

[whodatrr]

Been thinking about this a bit, as I'm noodling over my own workstation refresh, with Black Friday looming (more on that later).

Last night, I was messing around and almost did a very bad thing. There was a 30% off sale, on the Dell Outlet, and I started to play. before I knew it, I had put an Alienware system with: 6-i7 3.8 cores, 512G SSD, 32G DDR4, 4TB 7200, NVIDIA 880 w/6GB DDR5, liquid-cooled, empty slots and drive-bays galore, etc, etc.... in my cart. It was a monster system, and way more than what I needed. With the Outlet coupon, combined with normal outlet discount, the thing added up to just shy of $2,000, including tax.

Bit alas, i'm an adult with kids to feed and a mortgage, so I figured I'd sleep on it. Woke up this morning and that unit was no longer available, and the 30% off sale was over. Duuuuh! Wondering if not buying it was a good or bad thing?

But the more salient point is, I now find myself seriously considering a Windows workstation again. While the pro in me could certainly make do with an iMac or MacBook Pro, the Power User in me is wanting more. Five years of iMacs have been OK, but I'm getting over the whole rip and replace thing, and it's really bugging me that they're so hard to do maintenance on - with even the small stuff being a PITA to fix. For example, the stand just broke on my late 2012 iMac (it now flops down, if I don't wedge something underneath it to prop the screen up). Even though it's still covered under AppleCare (expiring in a couple months), fixing that would cost ~$400-500 if it wasn't covered. And getting it fixed will likely mean at least a week, without my main system. For a $1 plastic part that snapped in the stand.

With a PC Tower, a broken component usually represents a component upgrade opportunity - with an iMac, a broken component is an inflection point (trash it, or spend more than 50% of what it's worth to make it work exactly as it did before).

I totally get how the current Mac Pro is appealing to Creative professionals that need lots of horsepower. I'm sure you pros already have big external RAID arrays and such floating around anyhow, so external connectivity is a good way to go. And your company is probably OK with just refreshing every couple years, as they do with laptops already. So, that approach makes perfect sense. But for a simple Power User, like me, I just find myself wanting more upgradeability and options.

Biggest reason I resisted leaving Apple, up to and including moving from earlier Mac Pro to iMacs, was the Apple ecosystem. But now that Apple is pretty much strong-arming me into putting much of that into iCloud anyhow, that's no longer such a big issue. (I literally just received my monthly iCloud bill, as I was typing this... LOL).

Still kind of wishing I had bought that discounted system... LOL

 

[zephonic]

Right, because your sample size is the right one. And an entire forum dedicated to Mac Pro usage is an irrelevant data point when 2/3s views it as a failure.

Right, you've done a scientific study that nMP users tend to be too shy or too busy compared to the low brow extroverted cMP users.

This is what I don't get about you and many of the others disenchanted folks here, you guys take this sooo personal.

Did I talk about a scientific study? No. Did the other guy talk about his sample size? No.

That is all you, putting words in our mouths. Why? Is having a divergent view so offensive to you?

Man there has been an overproduction of sour grapes somewhere in this thread.

Funny, seems to me sour grapes are the exclusive domain of the haters here.

Right, taking the results of the poll with a pinch of salt in a NOTORIOUSLY mac fanboy apple friendly forum. The fact that there is this much negativity in a normally overly pro-Mac/Apple forum should speak volumes on this issue alone.

That negativity isn't specific to the nMP. Yes, it is an Apple fan-site, but EVERY new Apple product attracts more criticism than praise from the fans here. Most people just have a natural aversion to change, and it takes a while for most to come around.

And a lot of folks here that do like/use/own the nMP stopped posting about it. It's the disillusioned ones that keep harping on about it. They care more, I guess.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

This is what I don't get about you and many of the others disenchanted folks here, you guys take this sooo personal.

Did I talk about a scientific study? No. Did the other guy talk about his sample size? No.

That is all you, putting words in our mouths. Why? Is having a divergent view so offensive to you?




Funny, seems to me sour grapes are the exclusive domain of the haters here.




That negativity isn't specific to the nMP. Yes, it is an Apple fan-site, but EVERY new Apple product attracts more criticism than praise from the fans here. Most people just have a natural aversion to change, and it takes a while for most to come around.

And a lot of folks here that do like/use/own the nMP stopped posting about it. It's the disillusioned ones that keep harping on about it. They care more, I guess.

Yea, people that argue for the sake of arguing, that try to turn the exception into the rule, because it's some annoying tick in their personality, yea, that personally annoys me. I suspect I'm not alone, as per your non-personal assertion about my character being such a fragile personality. Your deep objective insight put great light upon those dark shadows of my personality.

Wow, your arguments above amount to a total of 'un uh'. You are jumping into a semantic tangent, either because you quickly respond to 'squirrels' or because you want to avoid the spirit of a point. Either way, it's a sign of hyperbole and a losing argument.

And I have poll here with real opinions from apple and mac pro enthusiasts that you readily discount, because because. But apparently someone voted you as historic scribe of sentiment here and your decree that it's normal for apple fans, incredibly notorious for being 'koolaid' drinkers, really, all this time have been misunderstood, and in fact, secretly, on this site have been more negative than positive about apple products.

 

[h9826790]

The thing is that one of the reasons of the Mac Pro was the PCI ports and you could have extra internal drives. Today you do not need PCI ports anymore, all the ports that I have in my Mac Pro have no use anymore. Instead I am using USB or Thunderbolt.

It would be fun to have the new Mac Pro with capacity for internal drives but that would be it.

I believe that the new Mac Pro can be different but is not a failure, a failure is Apple Watch. Still today I have seen more nMac Pros around and still no a single Apple Watch... and I live in Miami with the most shallow and show off people in the entire U.S. and not a single Apple Watch. Probably in N.Y. or who knows. But the nMac Pro has a use, Apple Watch does not.

??? I guess Apple sell more Apple Watch (in last few months) then nMP (since 2013), and make more money via AW then nMP. Interestingly, I am in a total different environment. There are plenty of Apple Watch users around me, and zero nMP user. It seems for you, apart from the nMP, everything is useless. PCIe is useless, Appke Watch is useless. Or just you have no idea how to use them? A tool is only useful when you know how to use it and use it properly.

Anyway, the AW is a communication tool and notification centre, etc, not a work station. If you compare it's processing power to the nMP, and want to use it for rendering, of course it's a failure and completely useless.

 

[NT1440]

But why?

Seriously. If you want a supported OSX desktop, there are only three choices.

1. An Imac all-in-one. If you don't like all-in-ones for all of their faults (max quad core, 16GiB or 32GiB memory limit, baby and bathwater), scratch this one. (And before the 5K Imac, the non-retina version might have been rejected.)
2. A Mini-mac. Dual-core only, integrated graphics only, 8 or 16 GiB RAM that is soldered in. Lame. (One friend bought four of the quad-core Minis as soon as the dual-core only lineup was announced.)
3. An MP6,1.

The point is, are these purchases resounding endorsements of the MP6,1 design - or merely choosing the least of the evils? If there were a #4 that was a single socket xMac, and a #5 which was an updated dual socket cMP - which would be chosen?

(And BTW, is it one MP6,1 per team - or one per team member?)

They were purchased because, news flash, only the computer literate give a flying **** about these things. A normal business says "hey our three year lease on Mac Pros is up, time to buy new ones."

I have no idea where in the world anyone is talking about core counts, if the last generation worked, the new one is more powerful and all these people care about is getting their work done.

 

[poematik13]

And to expand a little on my point above: when I freelance in medium and large facilities, there is no media storage in any edit suite, ever. It's all stored centrally on a server.

ah yes, someone that actually does work. the internal expansion thing is for gamers and hobbyists, who coincidentally make up the majority of this site and are inclined to make ignorant threads like these.

 

[zephonic]

Yea, people that argue for the sake of arguing, that try to turn the exception into the rule, because it's some annoying tick in their personality, yea, that personally annoys me. I suspect I'm not alone, as per your non-personal assertion about my character being such a fragile personality. Your deep objective insight put great light upon those dark shadows of my personality.

Wow, your arguments above amount to a total of 'un uh'. You are jumping into a semantic tangent, either because you quickly respond to 'squirrels' or because you want to avoid the spirit of a point. Either way, it's a sign of hyperbole and a losing argument.

And I have poll here with real opinions from apple and mac pro enthusiasts that you readily discount, because because. But apparently someone voted you as historic scribe of sentiment here and your decree that it's normal for apple fans, incredibly notorious for being 'koolaid' drinkers, really, all this time have been misunderstood, and in fact, secretly, on this site have been more negative than positive about apple products.

I applaud your literary talent.

But again what's with the acrimony and sarcasm? Almost as if you're trying to prove my point for me.

Anyway, this is not going anywhere good, so I'll retire from the thread.

Party on, oh ye disgruntled.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I applaud your literary talent.

But again what's with the acrimony and sarcasm? Almost as if you're trying to prove my point for me.

Anyway, this is not going anywhere good, so I'll retire from the thread.

Party on, oh ye disgruntled.

The level of hypocrisy is impressive. When you question someone in a unflattering light, we're supposed to take it like a sunny day "This is what I don't get about you and many of the others disenchanted folks here, you guys take this sooo personal" and when you get called on it, your butt hurt, passive aggressive.

Pay more attention to your delivery, and dont be surprised when it gets dished back in kind.

ah yes, someone that actually does work. the internal expansion thing is for gamers and hobbyists, who coincidentally make up the majority of this site and are inclined to make ignorant threads like these.

At least youre not judgmental, belittling and know how things really are.

 

[OS6-OSX]

Every thread about the nMP 2016 is a flame war, what the hell

What flame war?

 

[throAU]

I think the form factor is great. PC modification over the past 25 years has shown me that if you try and fit everything in the one box you inevitably end up with cooling, power or other sorts of space problems, and unless you're going to fill the box with stuff, you just end up with a big box of empty space in the way.

Not to say there aren't currently a few complaints regarding stuff on people's desks and the cost of thunderbolt cables, but those are problems that can be fixed. If i'm not mistaken, thunderbolt can run up to 100 feet away or something, so there's no reason the disk array needs to be on your desk.

 

[996085]

I think the form factor is great. PC modification over the past 25 years has shown me that if you try and fit everything in the one box you inevitably end up with cooling, power or other sorts of space problems, and unless you're going to fill the box with stuff, you just end up with a big box of empty space in the way.

Not to say there aren't currently a few complaints regarding stuff on people's desks and the cost of thunderbolt cables, but those are problems that can be fixed. If i'm not mistaken, thunderbolt can run up to 100 feet away or something, so there's no reason the disk array needs to be on your desk.

Perhaps with a home built PC cooling can be an issue. However if you purchase a true workstation class system from HP or Dell cooling and power shouldn't be a problem.

The nMP is a nice system and useful for those who can benefit from its capabilities and aren't hindered by its limitations. The problem is there are a lot of people for which its limitations are an issue. It is these folks who are upset because Apple needlessly chose form over function with the nMP. I think even more concerning is the nMP hasn't been updated despite the fact there are newer technologies available. If I were someone dependent on it for my living I would be examining alternatives.

 

[AppleDroid]

Right, you've done a scientific study that nMP users tend to be too shy or too busy compared to the low brow extroverted cMP users. Man there has been an overproduction of sour grapes somewhere in this thread.

Right, taking the results of the poll with a pinch of salt in a NOTORIOUSLY mac fanboy apple friendly forum. The fact that there is this much negativity in a normally overly pro-Mac/Apple forum should speak volumes on this issue alone.

No pretty much anyone who isn't the in the "Post negative things about the nMP in every forum thread" has given up on this forum.

 

[greenmeanie]

I owned one and can say the only failure is the price. I also found the price of a replacement SSD to be crazy so sold it off.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

No pretty much anyone who isn't the in the "Post negative things about the nMP in every forum thread" has given up on this forum.

So where are your negative things to say about the nMP then.

 

[nerdynerdynerdy]

Not really sure how some of you can claim that its not for "pros" when your definition of "pro" seems to be computer nerds who are into their tools rather than those that just use the damn tool and let the IT guys (like me) worry about said tools....

Have to agree with this. This forum obviously does attract a larger proportion of nerds and tinkerers than would be represented in the Mac's market share.