I have a better idea... why not refrain from posting at all? That would have to be better than engaging in attacks on other forum posters.
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Is the new Mac Pro a failure?
- Thread starter ZombiePhysicist
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I have a better idea... why not refrain from posting at all? That would have to be better than engaging in attacks on other forum posters.
While I agree with the spirit of what you're saying I think you're raising a lot of unsubstantiated concerns. For example you state it's more likely a component will fail in a hand-built machine. Do you have any data to support that? Likewise if the PSU failed I assume she, given she built the system herself, would be able to troubleshoot the issue quickly. Other concerns you've raised have little to do with the actual system itself. For example the RAID 0 configuration. What if the OP wants the fastest speed and accepts the risk? How do you know it will take a working day to restore "once you've figured out what went wrong"? What's preventing her from using RAID 5 like you are? And what the hell is "And so on"? That's a useless "example".
Not sure what part of "they could but have likely determined it's not worth the effort given alternatives" is confusing to you.
Here's a suggestion...if you don't like the conversation how about just stop posting? Your condescending, holier than though attitude towards other peoples needs / wants doesn't help support your case.
Prosummer is somebody who use professional application but not for making money, for himself. Think of an amateur photographer using lightroom and photoshop or a digital artist creating stuff for himself but use more advance features that the regular middle of the road software package can give.
A professional encompass the need of the prosummer in a business related case with the need to go beyond what a prosumer needs in some case. This may imply having access to a greater specific hardware configuration and infrastructure that are needed in some field of expertise.
i use professional software in a business environment.. according to this grading system, i'd be in the 'professional user' category..
but homegirl is saying i'm in consumer category.. so i was wondering what her determining factors are.
I think we are getting off track of why the new Mac Pro is not doing as well as it could be. If your cloud drive works for you that is all that matters.
It's no secret Apple wants their computers to be treated more like appliances with the idea that they be throw away devices. This is by definition a consumer device.
Again there is nothing wrong with this. For a Mac Mini, MacBook and iMac this works fine because they generally are built very well and outlive their processing capabilities.
However a Mac Pro used to be a different animal. In it's current form it is still a very capable machine but I dread that the next update will be even worse. The trend of all of their device updates doesn't give me hope. With Tim Cook at the helm Apple is losing its way.
Off the top of my head the first few things that come to mind are:
- Lack of expandability
- the need to be in front of the machine to move the drive from machine to machine in order to access the data from different machines.
- The lack of the ability to access different files on the same drive from more then one machine at once.
- host drive (router or drive that connects over wifi) is slow and not meant for heavy usage.
All configuration have trade-offs inherent to them, somewhere, which is why the informed customer will do an assessment of the Pros/Cons prior to deciding what to do / implement.
For example, take this notional TB external array: yes, it is a "Pro" in that it is easier to swap between systems (nMP, MBP, etc) ... but it also a "Con" at the same time because it costs noticeably more than the same disks thrown into empty internal expansion bays.
Of course, this is now a moot point with the nMP, since external is the only choice...
FWIW, this was also partly why I mentioned 10Gbit Ethernet: it is another potential technology solution to the "how to add storage" question, although since the current 1GBit only offers a theoretical max of only 125 MB/sec ... that's less than the bandwidth of SATA-1 ... to be performance-competitive to TB, the hardware would need to be upgraded from 1Gbit to 10Gbit. True, there's also wireless to consider, but there's more trade space factors to consider with that technology as well, not the least of which being bandwidth competition and security: particularly in a larger office environment, the tendency will be to stick to being hardwired.
-hh
LaCie is expensive whatever interface uses, it's 1tb usb3/tb hdd costs 900$, a year ago your Intel pcie ssd costs more than 1800$, lacie is slower updating prices I see at am French site an tb2 m.2 I don't remember if from akiito soon to arrive to the market at about 150-200$ add a couple of samsung m.2 pcie blades and you get 1 tb ssd for about 850-900$.
A year ago while not cheap this ssd from lacie was competitive.
Professional studios are deploying capture device at separate rooms they edition rooms TB on optic fibre is the technology used for.
I've ever said I power up or down my tb drives? I do that once a day, twice if I migrate it to other machines.
FYI power up an hdd either spinner or ssd it's the Same for an enclosure or an desktop chasis while am speaking specialized enclosure have optimal cooling hdd confined into an pc case haven the same luck and often are poorly cooled.
I don't move drives except when I store them on my safe, the rest of the time there is long enough tb cables to reach my co-workers Macs or my mac mini server (just hanging on my office wall).
Same questioning I ask you, what happens if you need to transfer a 20GB folder of some important project? Do you can travel with you cMP or even travel only with the disks and plug in seconds?
Can you walk across an airport with your cMP disguised as an sport bag?
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Not as much as you trying to tell people what is and isn't professional.
Condescending much? I soldered together my first computer in the seventies, wrote a compiler when I was 15 and worked in IT for the first 24 years of my career. I have hand built every one of my games PCs. I used to write for one of the biggest IT news sites. I was invited to the launch of the Athlon 64 by AMD. Used to go drinking with guys from Intel UK. Etc, etc.
My point was pretty simple. You spent $5500 on a machine with 2x970s but it would still have been less than $6000 with 2x980s.
No, it is a professional mind set. I know how much it costs if any one of us in the office cannot do their work. If one of us doesn't work for a week, that's the price of base-level nMP in lost revenue. And I still have to pay that person's wages. And explain to the client why the finished work is going to be late. Or put someone else on the job and stiff a different client. Or I can just borrow a replacement workstation from the engineer and restore from the NAS. The borrowed workstation might not be as fast/good as the one that's being repaired but I lose less money and no clients.
No hard data just 20 years of hand building PCs for myself and friends.
A bust PSU can be a bugger. I've had several where particular rails have died rather than the whole thing. So all the lights come on, the drives and fans spin up but nothing else happens. Looks like a motherboard fault. But that gets away from the point. If Daisy can fault find her systems, that's great. However, it's not what her clients are paying her to do. So every moment she spends fault finding is lost revenue.
RAID 5 gives you the same performance with vastly reduced risk. As Daisy says the machine is mostly for PP and rendering, that's potentially an awful lot of footage and assets. I don't know any professional who would consider 6TB of lost business data an acceptable risk let alone 16TB.
I know because that's roughly how long it takes push that much data over eSATA back onto the RAID. Daisy might be able to use RAID 5 if her motherboard supports it but it will mean rebuilding the RAID. (If you're reading this, Daisy, whatever your thought of me, do the rebuild if you can.)
No confusion at this end. You keep saying, "they could" in some form or other including in the quote above. No. They couldn't.
The only reason I put that note on the end of my post was because some friends here kept calling me names whenever I proved them wrong and I was letting them know that it's not being taken personally. If you're taking it personally, maybe it's time to grow a thicker skin. After all, these are the intertubes and there are far nastier people than me in them. Block me or ignore me. Whatever. The only reason I'm posting is because I'm the only one in the office this week and there's no work on.
Also, pretty certain that when someone provides a huge example of amateurishness, tells everyone that it's professionalism and someone else calls them on it, it doesn't count as an attack. But I guess YMMV.
Some what I mention this earlier, that as long 10GbE becomes mainstream will have more sense to centralize files on a Nas than using local storage (either internal or external, either usb sata NVMe or Thunderbolt), our setup now is at middle way, we use a couple of ds1515 mostly for backup and other services then for production, and we have few Thunderbolt enclosures for our local time machine and for production data cache while processed, on 10GbE we could only use the NAS and only occasionally use the Thunderbolt enclosures (Mostly to move huge amounts of data)
She didn't say that. This is what YOU understood.
The cMP and nMP are suposed to target both the prosumers and the professionals except it is a bit lacking for the professionals who have to go beyond the prosumers when it comes to hardware configurations.
I saw that Daisy81 commented on this already, but I'll offer up my own shot.
First, on the little big disk SSD ... LaCie's website says $1269 for a pair of 500GB's for ~1200MB/sec. Two variations on an alternative that I'm currently using in a cMP would cost ~$400 or ~$500 respectively, with the difference being one or two $57 PCIe OWC Accelsior "S" cards, depending on if one is satisfied with 1TB at 500MB/sec or RAID0'ing two 500GB's for ~1000MB/sec. Frankly, this is cheaper than I was expecting this exercise to come out to, but I see that Newegg has the SAMSUNG 850 EVO retailing today for $180 (500GB) and $338 (1TB) .. but such is the nature of price dynamics for IT. Nevertheless, the prospectus is a $750 per seat savings potential.
Similarly, the LaCie 2Big Disk. I'll assume the midline 8TB version at $750 ... which gets compared against two empty 3.5" bays in the cMP which would be filled with either a pair of $200 WD Black or $200 HDST Enterprise grade drives, for roughly $400 in total ... a $350 per seat savings potential.
Combined, that's a $1100 difference ... let's take $100 off for touch labor differences and it is still a $1K delta.
Sure, but let's also not forget that for your particular use case example, that portability convenience set you back an extra $1K/seat...
...and for any use cases who don't need portability convenience, there isn't any alternative, so they just get hammered for the extra $1K/seat with zero upside.
There are way too many cases for you to make such a sweeping statement. With that said I'm not aware of any cooling issues with the cMP form factor.
Why do you feel the cMP form factor somehow prevents it from utilizing external storage?
I think a better question is: Is this really important to the majority of nMP buyers? Every nMP I've seen sits on a desk and has never moved. I'm sure there's appeal to the small form factor but I think more people repeat this Apple marketing bullet point than actually utilize it.
This isn't directed at pl595 per say, but just a starting point for a few things for people to consider...
You seem to see alternative view points as "dismissive". I don't see a whole lot of nMP enthusiasts telling other users around here that they're an idiot for wanting more internal drives or newer hardware, etc. I don't see them calling the cMP a "toy" or "garbage", like the "haters" do. I don't see them constantly insulting people or products like so many haters around here do.
Here's the issue with nMP enthusiasts... they get BORED talking about the same issues that nMP deniers are still talking about two years later. The internal drive bays and expansion slots are long gone and never coming back. Yet these type of threads go on for 50 pages. So the "normal" people who've gotten their share of all this BS go away, take a break, don't post frequently, etc. Who are you left with?
Daisy signed up yesterday and wants to discuss. She's going to explain what she thinks are the limitations of the nMP and why she put together the rig she did, and likely in a way that suggests these things haven't already been listed and discussed a thousand times before. And there's nothing wrong with that - just because she wasn't around for the previous thousand exact same discussions doesn't mean she missed her opportunity - it may be a new discussion to her. She should be aware of the context, but all the regulars that read every post of a 50 page thread also need to understand that (and recognize that maybe you need a break from that thread/forum if you're bored with that topic).
Then there's someone like F5 who just wants to hang out and shoot the **** with anyone wanting to talk shop. He doesn't set out to insult people or products. He questions lots of points and ways of thinking, or plays devil's advocate. Most of the time it has as much merit as what anyone else is talking about. I can see as much as anyone else that he occasionally stretches things to make connections, and I can totally understand why that comes off as kind of trollish. And the same folks who egg him on then complain about it. Seriously folks, I see a lot of BS around this forum every day, and F5 seems like a pretty decent guy who just likes to talk computers. If you don't like having discussions with him, try not replying to him? Just because he replies to your post doesn't mean you have to reply back. But you all just look like immature playground bullies when you try to submarine him with potshot insults, and take what he's saying out of context, and worst, just pretend he said something that he didn't, and argue about it as if he did.
Then you have a few obvious borderline loons. I don't know what to do about them other than suggest people ignore them and hopefully they go away. What I know is a bad idea is to continue to have topic discussions with them (this is one of the exceptions where it's proper to focus on the behavior rather their arguments which will only go around in circles). People keep arguing with them and then complaining that their replies don't make sense. For the most part, people should know better, but I think some like to argue with loons because they can feel good about themselves by picking apart someone who isn't playing with a full deck.
And frankly, these are the type of discussions where you seem to go off the rails. I don't know what to make of it... for a few posts you seem smart and reasonable, and then you're going off for pages at a time irrationally obsessed about iMac throttling and TB expansion cards, and escalating every opposing view into some sort of attack or challenge or insult.
Here's a forum tip EVERYONE posting here should think about (and I'm by no means perfect on this score, but I think it goes for about 98% of my posts): don't post anything you wouldn't say if you were face to face with the person(s) in the same room (I like to imagine an office conference room or a college classroom). Use the same words and tone that you would use if we were all hanging out in person.
And if you're replying in anger or with contempt, etc. give yourself a timeout to cool down before pressing the "post" button. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes to reconsider that what you're posting isn't productive. And there's really no rush - if you feel pressure to beat someone to the punch, that should be a red flag.
If everyone followed that, this would be a LOT more friendly and pleasant place, and people might find they get more out of it to boot.
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I like this kind of debate, logical founded on evidence than speculation an personal saga. Thanks for give this thread a bit of good taste.
Now, fight ¡
What you accounts it's true and fair, I'm paying an extra 1000$ for what could cost much less on a cMP at same performance, I assumed this cost for the same reasons, on the nMP you don't have options for a 2nd internal ssd (which would replace the little big disk at a competitive cost also paying Apple 's tax and save about 400$ and have a more solid system.
But the external 2big (I've the 6TB Version) is meant for continuous time machine, also having the choice to have those two spinners inside the Mac our choice is to use it externally, since in the event my nMP passes away on is stolen (that's why I store this on a safe) I'll restart my work in just minutes from where I left ASAP I got an replacement workstation.
I am trying to understand your vision on this. This is how i catch your comment on this. Please correct me if i am wrong:
When something dies in your nMP, there are some real problems there. U can not replace a part easy yourself and you can not drive to any computer store to buy the broken part. You are depending on Apple to fix or replace your machine in a few days. That means that you have to bring your 7000 euro machine to a store or send it away. Plus, u really have to pay some damm extra 249 euros again for apple care, on top of your all-ready quit high priced (old) machine.
I dont know how much your hate / love relationship is with Apple, at-least we can all agree that with a PC, you have tons of options to replace a part within a hour or two in every modern city. You don't have to be a rocket-scientist to do this.
I know plenty of ppl with an Mac machine that run intro trouble by failure. And i know tons of ppl who are using a PC without any problems and doing there job, pushing there machine daily. I think you give the Mac to much credit. It all are computers with printplates
I'm working with Gigabit at the moment and dealing with a max data transfer rate of 125MB per second. A 20GB data transfer from one machine to another would take ~2.75minutes. Although unless it is all one large file you can start working with the first GB worth of data in ~8 seconds.
I don't make a habit of taking five grand worth of equipment to the air port with me. What if you drop the bag or it is stolen? It's a big risk. I would simply take my laptop and use it as a terminal to access my workstation over the internet via VPN. I would still be very upset if something happened to my MacBook Pro but it cost me $1158 with tax and as such is much more expendable then the workstation.
Agreed, I see that as the future as well - - the Devil is in the details as to just how far away that is on the timeline. Given how 10Gbit wasn't deployed on the nMP back in 2013 ... nor am I seeing 10Gb replace 1Gb link aggregation yet (probably because 10Gb switches/hubs are still pricey), it doesn't appear to be particularly immanent. Add to that how 10Gb will be a logical/natural competitor to TB for high performance bandwidth, and I smell some market force motivations too.
Keyword being "other than for production". I was given a Synology DS a couple of years ago, which we set up for data backups, but its bandwidth performance was quite underwhelming. Again, the theme seems to be that we're being pushed into using TB instead of 1Gbit Ethernet if we want decent performance.
PS: saw your subsequent note on the LaCie prices. As I alluded to, my look at SSD retail prices this morning was quite an eye-opener: I'll probably be rethink some of my 2016 plans accordingly.
Perhaps not directly. But they do indirectly (i.e. comments to the effect of "Thunderbolt is more than sufficient") is an example.
Then don't! Yep, it's that easy. Avoid threads titled "Is the new Mac Pro a failure?" and you will no longer be BORED.
I'm watching this too, also at some point I could consider to switch the spinners inside the 2big For a couple of 2tb Evo's, for hardware my plans for the next year only includes the upd nMP and the regular iPhone upgrade, I'll move the older nMP to my home, depends what we see before WWDC.
I seem to have struck a nerve. I think you need to take a moment to calm down. If you like the new Mac Pro that is your opinion. My opinion is that it is crap. It is out dated and selling old processors as new for top dollar and forcing expansion to be external. If they update the current one with new processors it wouldn't be crap but it would remain disappointing in my opinion.
There are clear reasons for external expansion and all of them are valid except for the people who have external drives sitting on their desk making noise looking like a mess taking up space and making clutter. The people using drive arrays on different floors where not restricted from being able to do this in the classic Mac Pro. In fact I am not arguing that the new Mac Pro shouldn't have thunder bolt. It is a high end machine and even in the old form factor I would expect at least four of them to provide the option. For a pro device it is all about configurability. Taking options away is never good.
Yeah, see, that's an example of escalating alternative views up to insults. Crazy people do that.
I do totally get it - at a certain point, it feels antagonizing (especially in this thread), and I agree it's fair to call that out occasionally. But it's been a two-way street. And then add to that the vocal group of nMP haters who hurl the insults.
Yeah, agreed. People need to keep in mind what thread they're posting in. I think some posters in this thread have occasionally lost sight of that. However, my point was kind of along the lines of "what do you expect?" There's only so many ways to state the same things, and some folks start to get a little creative and loose with reality (on both "sides").
My company has a support contract with a local Apple dealer. Can't remember how much it costs but it's not a lot. Something just over £100 per annum. In return, they'll have an engineer on site within 4 working hours. If my machine (a cMP not nMP) cannot be fixed on site, they'll loan me a machine while it's away (though that costs extra).
I love Apple like they love me, i.e. not at all
The problem with going out part hunting is that you can't work at the same time. If something goes wrong in the office and there's no work for me to do, I'm all over it. But it takes all my strength to avoid fault-finding if there's work on. I love tinkering so have to keep reminding myself that it's much cheaper for an engineer to spend a few hours on it.
I briefly worked for an Apple dealer 25 years ago and they also sold PCs. There were far fewer Mac failures. But that was a long time ago. These days, you're probably right and it's simple luck of the draw.I know plenty of ppl with an Mac machine that run intro trouble by failure. And i know tons of ppl who are using a PC without any problems and doing there job, pushing there machine daily. I think you give the Mac to much credit. It all are computers with printplates
<grin>
Well....to play a little Devil's Advocate off the bat - - if your desktop machine were a bit bigger/chunkier, perhaps you wouldn't have to worry as much about it being stolen <g>.
But actually a bit more seriously, from a security standpoint, the cMP (and its internal contents) are more readily secured than a lightweight nMP, particularly when we then have to include each external component as well. The difference (and nuance) is when we go to very high levels of security where we're talking about literally locking up the data every night in a literal safe ... and in this regards, I know that my local IT would rule that the internal SSD blade of the nMP would have be included in this too, which means a safe drawer to drop the whole thing in each night in addition to external drives. In contrast, the old cMP's four 3.5" tray design would be just as quick & easy ... and take up less room in the safe.
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Moving on, for putting an SSD into a cMP, there's IMO pragmatically 3.5 options. The first is a 2.5" adaptor to use it on one of the 3.5" trays .. but this is a poor choice because its interface is only SATA-2. The second would be to use the spare optical bay (or both), but same SATA-2 limitation. The third is via PCIe card(s), where the payoff is performance. I'm currently using one OWC Accelsior (dual blades), but I also picked up in 2015 the much cheaper/flexible Accelsior "S" card, which is basically just a single port SATA-3 onto which one mounts a single 2.5" onto (HDD or SSD). And Sonnet makes a similar style card, as well as a long card which can mount a pair of 2.5" drives. I've also seen an mSATA PCIe adaptor board being sold now too...OWC, if memory serves.
Finally, the remaining "0.5" is something I can recall seeing once awhile back - - it was an adaptor bracket from which one could hang four 2.5" drives off of internally, which would then be paired with a PCIe SATA card to provide the four interface ports. Can't recall who made/sold it.
In any case, what I can easily envision as quite feasible in the design of a notional future cMP would be not only SATA-3, but other modernizations as well, and I think it is quite reasonable to get a space claim on the motherboard for having some SSD blades, primarily for the boot drive. Bonus points here would be to double this up so that one could have a {boot + mirror of boot} configuration ... see comments on the rationale for having a boot mirror by Digital Lloyd (MacPerformanceGuide).
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Next, onto Time Machine.
My current cMP configuration is two of my 3.5" bays occupied by a pair of HDDs in RAID0 (2 * 2TB = 4TB), as my primary work space...they're turning at ~230MB/sec, which is okay (my benchmarking on the Accesior "S" PCIe card is ~500MB/sec). Given that these drives are now 3 years old, they'll need to be retired soon (reliability), which with the declining prices of SSDs may be changed over ... I'm not sure right now if I'd RAID0 the SSDs or not for the performance boost or not (I'm not doing 4K yet to really benefit)...
Bays #3 and #4 each have their own 6TB drive, with each one allocated separately into TM for backups. OS X automatically alternates between the two 6TB drives.
Finally, I use externals for my off-site backups. These are currently a few remaining USB externals but primarily a bunch of bare internal hard drives (a few of which were pulled from service early, due to being "small" capacity): rather than installing these into new cases, I use a "Drive Dock" (see: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTech/Voyager/Hard_Drive_Dock ). While cost started as the motivation, the real benefit came from organizational streamlining: it sidesteps the hassle, mess & time of needing to keep track of a dozen different brand power supplies, since the power plugs on external hard drives aren't standardized.
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Hope this helps reveal some of the rationale of my current setup, and what its eventual replacement implications are going to be.
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