Is the new Mac Pro a failure?

[cerberusss]

Its about 40-50% faster for me, so thats all that matters.

For me, it's the same. Most clients give me a rMBP, and I use a 2013 MBA for my little private projects. The hardware nowadays is just so fast, so light and robust... Last year was an exception in the sense that compiling Swift took too long, but they've fixed about 80% of the speed problems.

Same goes for Linux, really. I remember I got my first dedicated server (Dell something with a Pentium D) in a datacenter, which I virtualized in four separate VMs. These were too slow to even run XFCE. And now I don't have to care about speed; I rent a very cheap VPS and remotely run XFCE without thinking.

 

[-hh]

hmm. yeah.. i've clarified at least 5 times now to multiple people what i meant in that post.. (even though to me, i still think i said it clearly enough in the original)

it seems to me, you're not actually interested in what i had to say and instead, would rather continue on with trying to tell me i meant something else other than the very thoughts in my head.

so.. let's squash it.. ok?

Is that a formal retraction of your prior claim that the housing of the nMP costs ~3x more to manufacture than the cMP's...yet?

But since you want to look inside and more holistically...

* boards ... smaller, which is cheaper.

* basic assembly's parts count ... down, significantly. As per iFixit's teardown photo, the nMP has 16 major pieces (including CPU & RAM), whereas a cMP service manual shows 25+. More, if it is a dual CPU cMP.

* custom internal parts ... fewer, but rolled up under parts count.

* wiring interconnects ... fewer, and they weren't counted in the above parts count; the nMP has a couple of pigtails on assemblies, while cMP has 13 stand-alones.

From a manufacturability standpoint, each of these considerations point to lower fabrication costs. Having all of them (plus the case) screams a slam-dunk.

And granted, what's not included in the above is a comparative analysis of each component, such as high value CPU. This exercise can be done, although it will also have to be appropriately benchmarked to chronologically their prices for when the cMP and nMP models under comparison originally shipped, not today's prices. I'll leave that exercise to you.

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do you see a 'use rich text editor' option underneath your reply window?

No.

But if I blindly click on the far right side of my top toolbar (which is grey and has no icons) where your image shows that there should be wrench icon, the screen updates ... and the top toolbar (where I clicked) disappears and the it then does say "Use Rich Text Editor" below the screen's bottom left corner.

If I then click on the now-visible "Use Rich Text Editor" text, said text disappears again and the screen returns to the first view, including the blank-for-me grey (no icons) toolbar.

Overall, it looks to me like I'm defaulting to the Rich Text Editor mode, but because the toolbar's images are blanked out, I'd have to blindly poke at the toolbar to find stuff. And in post-submission edit mode, it looks like there's no obvious way to toggle back & forth.

 

[linuxcooldude]

For me, it's the same. Most clients give me a rMBP, and I use a 2013 MBA for my little private projects. The hardware nowadays is just so fast, so light and robust... Last year was an exception in the sense that compiling Swift took too long, but they've fixed about 80% of the speed problems.

Same goes for Linux, really. I remember I got my first dedicated server (Dell something with a Pentium D) in a datacenter, which I virtualized in four separate VMs. These were too slow to even run XFCE. And now I don't have to care about speed; I rent a very cheap VPS and remotely run XFCE without thinking.

To me it just as important to use software optimization then just hardware performance. One of the reasons I like Macs. I use Wirecast for broadcasts and I had it going 80% load with everything running. They did some major updates and moved to x264 encoding I now run at 12% load. Just as an example.

 

[bogg]

To me it just as important to use software optimization then just hardware performance. One of the reasons I like Macs. I use Wirecast for broadcasts and I had it going 80% load with everything running. They did some major updates and moved to x264 encoding I now run at 12% load. Just as an example.

I was thinking about that just today. Software vs. Hardware optimizations. On Windows 2000 Microsoft recommended 4MB of VRAM for a resolution of 1280x1024 and 24bit colour depth, that'd equal to ~25MB VRAM for a 4K display.
Due to GUI "improvements" over the years with cool effects and so on, it is more or less required according to most people to have 2GB of VRAM for 4k resolutions on computers...

Sometimes it feels like most OSes today are just built with the idea that performance is cheap so why not utilize it for crap like cooler effects when closing windows...

 

[MacVidCards]

because me saying cmp didn't have fans like this one means i'm worshipping the computer?

you project and exaggerate what others say far too much for them to have any sort of conversation with you.. like, i couldn't even talk about something as simple as a fan with you because you'd be too busy reading me as saying 'everything apple designers make are amazing and i love them so so much and nobody else in the world could design this and all other fans suck'.

They're fans.

They blow and suck. Simple devices.

 

[996085]

I was thinking about that just today. Software vs. Hardware optimizations. On Windows 2000 Microsoft recommended 4MB of VRAM for a resolution of 1280x1024 and 24bit colour depth, that'd equal to ~25MB VRAM for a 4K display.
Due to GUI "improvements" over the years with cool effects and so on, it is more or less required according to most people to have 2GB of VRAM for 4k resolutions on computers...

Sometimes it feels like most OSes today are just built with the idea that performance is cheap so why not utilize it for crap like cooler effects when closing windows...

I can't agree with this enough. Having been using computers for decades I can't say any of the GUI changes have resulted in any form of tangible productivity increases. My productivity, wrt the GUI, on Windows 2000 was just as high as it is on Windows 10. My productivity, wrt the GUI, on OS X El Capitan is just the same as it was with Cheetah.

 

[wallysb01]

I can't agree with this enough. Having been using computers for decades I can't say any of the GUI changes have resulted in any form of tangible productivity increases. My productivity, wrt the GUI, on Windows 2000 was just as high as it is on Windows 10. My productivity, wrt the GUI, on OS X El Capitan is just the same as it was with Cheetah.

Count me in on this too. I feel like a lot of stuff on the software side has just been moving sideways for a while now, certainly at least the last 5-8 years. My specific scientific software is getting better, but gosh, OS X's basic functions, finder, safari, what have you? Not really. Same goes for microsoft programs and OSs. All that microsoft ever seems to do is introduce a new learning curve where you just need to relearn how all the same functionality is organized. This goes for the social media nonsense too. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, you're all the same as you were pretty much forever ago relative to those company's lifetimes. Who needs developers for this stuff anymore?

This tech bubble is going to burst, and soon....

 

[flat five]

Count me in on this too. I feel like a lot of stuff on the software side has just been moving sideways for a while now, certainly at least the last 5-8 years. My specific scientific software is getting better, but gosh, OS X's basic functions, finder, safari, what have you? Not really. Same goes for microsoft programs and OSs. All that microsoft ever seems to do is introduce a new learning curve where you just need to relearn how all the same functionality is organized. This goes for the social media nonsense too. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, you're all the same as you were pretty much forever ago relative to those company's lifetimes. Who needs developers for this stuff anymore?

This tech bubble is going to burst, and soon....

I think the problem isn't so much with GUI.. more about I/O devices.
it's the mouse and keyboard and flatpanel which is slow.. you can't really do much more with a GUI to overcome the limitations of a mouse&keyboard.

fwiw, some OS based things which have improved my productivity over the past decade are tags, autosave, versions, cloud drives, time machine.. and the like.. things which generally happen in the background or have simplified my duties of a file manager and allow me to avoid dealing with UI

(edit)
I believe side benefits of new tech such as VR will accelerate the replacement of mouse/keyboard/flatpanel.. out of necessity.

 

[tuxon86]

Silly as it may sound, I miss the old skumorphic look of the older version of OSX apps, when an agenda looked like a real agenda. Now everything is so bland and flat...

 

[996085]

Count me in on this too. I feel like a lot of stuff on the software side has just been moving sideways for a while now, certainly at least the last 5-8 years. My specific scientific software is getting better, but gosh, OS X's basic functions, finder, safari, what have you? Not really. Same goes for microsoft programs and OSs. All that microsoft ever seems to do is introduce a new learning curve where you just need to relearn how all the same functionality is organized. This goes for the social media nonsense too. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, you're all the same as you were pretty much forever ago relative to those company's lifetimes. Who needs developers for this stuff anymore?

This tech bubble is going to burst, and soon....

In some instances I think they've taken a step back. One example is the scroll bars which auto hide when not in use. I tend to place the mouse pointer in the scroll area and tap it when it's time to scroll the page up / down. While I'm reading a page the scroll bars auto hide and I have to move the mouse pointer to get them back. Maybe this wouldn't be as much a problem is developers could program their applications to properly scroll a page with the page up / down keys.

Leave it to developers to "improve" something that wasn't broken to begin with.
[doublepost=1452736439][/doublepost]

I think the problem isn't so much with GUI.. more about I/O devices.
it's the mouse and keyboard and flatpanel which is slow.. you can't really do much more with a GUI to overcome the limitations of a mouse&keyboard.

fwiw, some OS based things which have improved my productivity over the past decade are tags, autosave, versions, cloud drives, time machine.. and the like.. things which generally happen in the background or have simplified my duties of a file manager and allow me to avoid dealing with UI

Yet they still try...and fail. As you said...there's not much they can do but move, reshape, alter, and what-have-you. The basic functionality of the GUI hasn't changed in decades. Yet each new release (and possibly update wrt Windows 10) has to change what doesn't need changed.

 

[AidenShaw]

I can't agree with this enough. Having been using computers for decades I can't say any of the GUI changes have resulted in any form of tangible productivity increases. My productivity, wrt the GUI, on Windows 2000 was just as high as it is on Windows 10. My productivity, wrt the GUI, on OS X El Capitan is just the same as it was with Cheetah.

Count me in on this too. I feel like a lot of stuff on the software side has just been moving sideways for a while now, certainly at least the last 5-8 years. My specific scientific software is getting better, but gosh, OS X's basic functions, finder, safari, what have you? Not really. Same goes for microsoft programs and OSs. All that microsoft ever seems to do is introduce a new learning curve where you just need to relearn how all the same functionality is organized. This goes for the social media nonsense too. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, you're all the same as you were pretty much forever ago relative to those company's lifetimes. Who needs developers for this stuff anymore?

Because I don't use Apple OSX, I can't comment on changes there. But in fact I have found that the Windows GUI has advanced in ways that *do* increase my productivity.

Two (of many examples):

• Jump lists. Incredible time saver. The system intelligently learns what you are doing (weighted by both recency and frequency), and gives you shortcuts to access those files and applications in your workflow.
• Pervasive immediate search. Instead of traversing hierarchal menus (and file managers) to find something, just start typing a few letters of the target into the system or application search text box. As you type, a dropdown list appears of matches, and refines with each additional letter that you type (again, weighted for recency and frequency). Want to launch WinZip? I type "w" into the "magnifying glass" text box on the taskbar. "WinZip Desktop Application" pops up as the second entry. (I upgraded to WinZip 20 over the weekend, so its "recency" weighting is high.) It's rare that more than two or three letters are needed to find the file, app or website if you've accessed them.

We are a corporate Microsoft partner, so we get access to the "nightly builds" (not exactly nightly, but much more frequent than MSDN or public betas).

During the Vista alpha/beta days, the value of jump lists and the recency/frequency information really struck me - because upgrading to the latest build always flushed your jump lists and the recency/frequency database. Ouch - that hurt. I had to re-train the system as to how I worked.

 

[bogg]

• Pervasive immediate search. .

For me the most used feature added to any OS the past 10 years Atleast the most used _obvious_ feature, it might be that I use other features without thinking about it, but not a day goes by without me using either windows search field or spotlight in OS X to start applications and get immediate access to files/folders.

I've always been bad at sorting files in folders and this really helps as I can put any file where I please and still have access to it.

 

[996085]

Because I don't use Apple OSX, I can't comment on changes there. But in fact I have found that the Windows GUI has advanced in ways that *do* increase my productivity.

Two (of many examples):

• Jump lists. Incredible time saver. The system intelligently learns what you are doing (weighted by both recency and frequency), and gives you shortcuts to access those files and applications in your workflow.
• Pervasive immediate search. Instead of traversing hierarchal menus (and file managers) to find something, just start typing a few letters of the target into the system or application search text box. As you type, a dropdown list appears of matches, and refines with each additional letter that you type (again, weighted for recency and frequency). Want to launch WinZip? I type "w" into the "magnifying glass" text box on the taskbar. "WinZip Desktop Application" pops up as the second entry. (I upgraded to WinZip 20 over the weekend, so its "recency" weighting is high.) It's rare that more than two or three letters are needed to find the file, app or website if you've accessed them.

We are a corporate Microsoft partner, so we get access to the "nightly builds" (not exactly nightly, but much more frequent than MSDN or public betas).

During the Vista alpha/beta days, the value of jump lists and the recency/frequency information really struck me - because upgrading to the latest build always flushed your jump lists and the recency/frequency database. Ouch - that hurt. I had to re-train the system as to how I worked.

My objection isn't to improvements in the OS. My objection is "improving" upon things which don't need to be improved. Changing the appearance, moving things, changing the behavior, etc. Adding Jump Lists or system wide search to, say, the Windows 2000 interface could have been done without making all the other interface changes which came after Windows 2000.

Having said that it's my opinion just about every operating system interface change does not improve a users productivity because operating systems are a platform upon which to run applications. Unless one spends the majority of their time in an OS any improvements are likely to be negligible. Even the change from Windows 7 to Windows 8 didn't really alter my productivity. While I disliked the Start Screen it was something I rarely, relatively speaking, interacted with.

 

[JoSch]

Are you referring to Mac product line as a whole or just the nMP?

The whole Mac product line.

There comes a point when you say something like this to so many people that you should be asking yourself if you're the problem and not them.

Definitely them.

 

[996085]

The whole Mac product line.

I seem to recall the 2008 Mac Pro was cutting edge and a great value. Is my memory failing?

Definitely them.

 

[star-affinity]

In some instances I think they've taken a step back. One example is the scroll bars which auto hide when not in use.

You know about the setting to always make them visible, right?

System Preferences > General

”Show scroll bars: Always”

 

[tuxon86]

You know about the setting to always make them visible, right?

System Preferences > General

”Show scroll bars: Always”

The hidding of basic functionnality should be optional, not the default. In other word there should be an option to hide them if you want but it shouldn't be the default.

 

[996085]

You know about the setting to always make them visible, right?

System Preferences > General

”Show scroll bars: Always”

This particular example was for Windows. My apologies for not having specifically stated as much.

 

[bogg]

The hidding of basic functionnality should be optional, not the default. In other word there should be an option to hide them if you want but it shouldn't be the default.

I personally haven't used scroll bars in apps since I got my first mouse with a scroll wheel, so for me atleast visible scroll bars isn't basic functionality, it is archaic

 

[koyoot]

Now we got awkward. Discussion about scroll bars.

Does it make Mac Pro a failure?

 

[wallysb01]

I personally haven't used scroll bars in apps since I got my first mouse with a scroll wheel, so for me atleast visible scroll bars isn't basic functionality, it is archaic

You don't deal with very long documents then.

 

[996085]

I personally haven't used scroll bars in apps since I got my first mouse with a scroll wheel, so for me atleast visible scroll bars isn't basic functionality, it is archaic

Scroll wheel doesn't go page by page. With the scroll bar I can place the pointer in the scroll bar "track" and then, with a single mouse click, scroll up / down one page. The scroll wheel tends to go line by line.

 

[bogg]

You don't deal with very long documents then.

Oh, yes i do (just today worked in a 500+ pages document), I just scroll once and move my mouse cursor to were the scroll bars are and use them, most applications for really long documents also make sure the scroll bars are always visible (like word)

But I see your point

 

[wallysb01]

Oh, yes i do (just today worked in a 500+ pages document), I just scroll once and move my mouse cursor to were the scroll bars are and use them, most applications for really long documents also make sure the scroll bars are always visible (like word)

But I see your point

Right, its not that big of deal, but hiding them introduced an extra step. And all for what, saving 4mm of screen space that you wouldn't miss? I don't get it.

 

[996085]

Oh, yes i do (just today worked in a 500+ pages document), I just scroll once and move my mouse cursor to were the scroll bars are and use them, most applications for really long documents also make sure the scroll bars are always visible (like word)

But I see your point

I'm confused. Earlier you said:

"I personally haven't used scroll bars in apps since I got my first mouse with a scroll wheel..."

The bolded text implies you still use them.