MP 7,1 Is the new Mac Pro too niche?

[Flaming Gerbil]

‘Don’t quote that click bait artist. Just a few months ago he didn’t even know where the Activity Monitor is. And the other one Dave2d. Or any YouTuber who only use a computer for making videos of themselves talking.

He's a PC guy; but he's not a Mac hater. Thought the iMac Pro was a good value, despite the thermal issues.

I'm impressed by the production quality and thoughtfulness of his work.

It's good to step outside the bubble and get the perspective of people who've used/built similar hardware configs to the 2019 Mac Pro, and can give some estimate of relative value for the base config.

Hopefully he's wrong in his assessment and the base MP won't be a bad value; we'll have to see the exact specs when it's released.

Personally, I think the case design is worth an extra $1000-$1500. Question is: is it work $2000-$2500?

I'd really like to get one, but am unclear about whether it makes $ens$e yet.

 

[Flaming Gerbil]

The entry-level Mac Pro (and Pro Monitor for non-colorists) ...is ... $3k too expensive... and makes no sense. It shouldn't exist at this price point, and leaves an obvious glaring hole, if not an abject middle finger to Prosumers, which feels like a large segment of the market. They should start it at $10k - as an actual Pro device... and then fill the in-between slot with a box, with the 5k iMac monitor as a standalone at $1,999 or what not. This $3-$5k market is non-served at the moment, hence the complaining.

I disagree about the display.

Apple has offered some nice displays in the past, and that was nice...but unnecessary.

The new display looks great, and looks like exactly what Apple needed to do to innovate in the space. It's also something I don't see myself EVER needing.

There are some very good displays you can buy at a lower price point, and Apple is saying as much by offering the LG Ultrafine in the Apple Store.

Mac OS does not require a Mac display to run.
It does require Mac hardware (unless you want the pain and inconvenience of configuring a Hackntosh), so your critique of the MP is (or most probably is) valid.

 

[vaugha]

I’m gonna say this before online configurations hit the web soon - a maxed out Mac Pro will cost around 80g - 90g after tax in Canadian dollars. For this kind of money I could put down a large down payment on a house. We will see in a few months whether I overestimated apple’s greed or not.

 

[ekwipt]

I work in audio post production for feature films. I think the bigger mixing stages would go for 6 cards without hesitation. We have 2 nMP in the smaller tv stage, connected to expansion chassis and HDX3. With the new Mac Pro just one machine would suffice.
But I agree, for an audio edit or a sound designer’s machine you don’t need that much horsepower. With Pro Tools it’s more about the active voices available, not just tracks.
About the PCIe lanes, I could use 5 right now: 2 HDX, 2 UAD, and a Blackmagic Card.
But as I stated before for smaller studios or sound editors a fully spec’ed 5,1 is still enough in most scenarios.
I think I would probably go for the 12 core. It’s hard to say without knowing how it performs an if I would be able to upgrade the cpu myself like it’s been the case with the 5,1 and 6,1.

Looks like you could definitely use the power, but even at 12 Core, you're probably better off with iMac Pro 10 Core 64GB RAM 1tb SSD around $6000, plug in a thunderbolt PCIE chassis and add all of your cards into that.
[doublepost=1561069250][/doublepost]

I disagree about the display.

Apple has offered some nice displays in the past, and that was nice...but unnecessary.

The new display looks great, and looks like exactly what Apple needed to do to innovate in the space. It's also something I don't see myself EVER needing.

There are some very good displays you can buy at a lower price point, and Apple is saying as much by offering the LG Ultrafine in the Apple Store.

Mac OS does not require a Mac display to run.
It does require Mac hardware (unless you want the pain and inconvenience of configuring a Hackntosh), so your critique of the MP is (or most probably is) valid.

I disagree with this, there are barely any screens at all that are 5K (retina dimensions). There are some LG ultra wide 5K, I'm not sure of the quality compared to the iMac 5K screens. It wouldn't be hard for them to literally rip the guts out of an iMac 5K and just give us the screens for $1000 surely the computer parts inside would be worth at least the $799 the base iMac 27" starts at!

 

[AidenShaw]

a maxed out Mac Pro will cost around 80g - 90g

I don't think that the "max" is important. One has always been able to CTO systems into the stratosphere with maxing out all of the options. HP adds $60K USD for 1.5 TiB of RAM, and you need a pair of $10K USD "M"-class CPUs to connect that much memory. (I'm ignoring the $8.5K USD 5215M processor because the 2.5GHz base clock is so low.) A Z8 can hit $80K USD just for the addon of the RAM and CPUs.

Instead of looking at "break the bank" configurations, I think that looking at 16 to 24 core, 1 TB SSD, 128GiB to 512GiB RAM configurations with higher end graphics is more meaningful.

 

[flygbuss]

Looks like you could definitely use the power, but even at 12 Core, you're probably better off with iMac Pro 10 Core 64GB RAM 1tb SSD around $6000, plug in a thunderbolt PCIE chassis and add all of your cards into that.

If I would go iMac Pro I would need to extend the thunderbolt connection to that room which is quite expensive via optical cables.
The Mac mini would work but that wouldn't be an upgrade to the nMP 6,1s with 10 and 12 core.

 

[redheeler]

Moving this discussion here because it was off-topic in the other thread.

It's been almost 14 years since the cMP, This isn't same same machine, nor is it made with the same tech or cost considerations for parts etc and has roughly 4x the same expansion options. I don't know if anything short of maybe a classic reissue would ever get something back to that price range. I do think there will be a lower range model at some point if they discontinue the iMP. Maybe half the slots, fewer power subs but that won't be until we see if a refresh happens and if they hit their numbers on the Mac Pro itself.

The cMP was still being sold as recently as 6 years ago. The 6,1 was priced at $2,999 as well. That price point is perfectly doable even using today's components, Apple simply chose to abandon almost an entire demographic by pricing this Mac Pro at $6K and not offering a lower-end model with fewer PCIe slots.

We're going to continue seeing frustration from many current cMP owners, I don't think this new Mac Pro will change that. The situation for these power users and home professionals is no better now than when the Mac Pro was looking like it was going to be abandoned, in fact it's worse as Apple is trying to drop support for the cMP in Catalina at the same time they are making it clear they don't plan to introduce an affordable base model Mac Pro anytime soon.

 

[09872738]

(...) Apple simply chose to abandon almost an entire demographic by pricing this Mac Pro at $6K and not offering a lower-end model with fewer PCIe slots.(...)

I agree. Question is why they abandoned its customers of years prior. I suspect its a mix of greed with heavy disconnectedness from reality.
Apparently Apple is so loaded, they simply have no comprehension of how hard some people (have to) work to earn their money. We don't all have a pile of cash lying around like Apple.
It seems to me they did not abandon mentioned demographic on purpose. They seem to assume all the cMP owners are going to happily throw their money at them. Highly doubt that though...

My assumption is: the megacorps will buy the nMP and sales are going to be very ok initially and once this market is saturated plummet thereafter. The machine is just too expensive

 

[spheris]

Not sure I agree. If you can justify the ROI, I personally believe the base config is very affordable but I don't think the segment you're talking about is in that group. I think they might address that group at some point. After all, the Mac mini didn't come before the iMac. If I'm reading your comments right - that is the option you are hoping for. It could happen but I think it might be a fruitless exercise. People wanted a new Mac Pro in 2013, they got one and it was closer to what you're talking about than not. No one was thrilled with it and it hung in limbo, not addressing the upper or lower needs. That is really the scenario you're talking about.

 

[redheeler]

Not sure I agree. If you can justify the ROI, I personally believe the base config is very affordable but I don't think the segment you're talking about is in that group. I think they might address that group at some point. After all, the Mac mini didn't come before the iMac. If I'm reading your comments right - that is the option you are hoping for. It could happen but I think it might be a fruitless exercise. People wanted a new Mac Pro in 2013, they got one and it was closer to what you're talking about than not. No one was thrilled with it and it hung in limbo, not addressing the upper or lower needs. That is really the scenario you're talking about.

The 2013 Mac Pro is not close to the 2012 and earlier Mac Pro, or expandable tower form factor I'm talking about. Instead, it was a repeat of Apple's earlier mistake with the Power Mac G4 Cube, which put form over function and heavily compromised expandability + upgradability to squeeze everything into a tiny form factor. The expandability + upgradability is a big reason cMP buyers went with a base model cMP instead of something else like an iMac, and Apple really should've known better than to repeat a notable R&D disaster from 13 years earlier. Today Apple has the iMac Pro and repositioned (pro-focused) 2018 Mac mini, which I would consider to be the 2013 Mac Pro's succeeding products. Both of these also put form factor over expandability + upgradability, and neither one has any PCIe slots. But the iMac Pro offers a built-in 5K screen and the Mac mini offers a much lower price, so at least there is some logic with these products that wasn't there with the 2013 Mac Pro or Power Mac G4 Cube.

 

[deconstruct60]

Moving this discussion here because it was off-topic in the other thread.

The cMP was still being sold as recently as 6 years ago. The 6,1 was priced at $2,999 as well. That price point is perfectly doable even using today's components, Apple simply chose to abandon almost an entire demographic by pricing this Mac Pro at $6K and not offering a lower-end model with fewer PCIe slots.

We're going to continue seeing frustration from many current cMP owners,

Only a subset of the owners. The subset that bought new upper 25% prices systems new back in 2010-first three quarters of 2013 and have high coupling to Logic and FCPX probably will.

The current cMP consists of who though? A substantive subset of the current cMP owners are really the xMac crowd who bought into their cMP from the used , off-lease , and possibly refurbished market. Only the last of those has any direct connection to Apple. So they are not high value customers. If you are in camp of extremely likely not paying a business then not really a customer. Or at least a customer that is going to get high priority on the R&D budget allocation.

The current cMP users also consists of the folks who haven't bolted off to Windows/Linux systems ( or off to Hackintosh) for their primary system. Apple isn't chasing all of those who did bolt off to other systems for their primary system. . The mid-high end perhaps, but the lower half at the entry prices who are more price sensitive they aren't. That latter group's high price sensitivity is often what motivated them off.
The number of folks who have left is probably substantively large relative to the folks who stayed.

Apple also have current cMP users who have moved off much of their active work to other newer Mac systems that are more capable( than the relatived models from 10+ years ago). For those folks who need to grow and step up the new Mac Pro won't be a problem.

I don't think this new Mac Pro will change that. The situation for these power users and home professionals is no better now than when the Mac Pro was looking like it was going to be abandoned,

There are some upsides. With the bar raised higher on the Mac Pro, Apple will be more inclined to fill in the rest of the line up into the older historical Mac Pro performance space. Apple push on Thunderbolt PCI-e card enclosures actually has synergies with this new Mac Pro ( there is a bigger total target market for PCI-e add-in-card vendors if bundle the TB enclosures with the Mac Pro than on either one as the sole singular market. )

Is it a total cheaper "box with slots" solution? No. But it will bring some more function 'down budget' in the whole product line up.

in fact it's worse as Apple is trying to drop support for the cMP in Catalina at the same time they are making it clear they don't plan to introduce an affordable base model Mac Pro anytime soon.

That shouldn't be a surprise. The Mac Pro 2019 model went onto the Obsolete list years ago at this point. The 2010 was put on Vintage list last year. The 2012 model went onto the Vintage list this year (April-May) prior to the new Mac Pro announcement.

6 years + 2013 is 2019. That should in no way be a surprise ( 2009:2010+7 = 2017 , 2010:2012+6=2018 . 6 not 7 for this last because Apple 'burnt' 2 years slope factor in the gap between bumps. ) It is all laid out in the Vintage and Obsolete policies.

The probably is far more on the demographics of folks who keep pushing the notion that because the Mac Pro costs more than Apple's support window is longer. It isn't. Standard PCI-e slots magically extent support past the documented policy. Nope. That macOS software updates is completely decoupled from the hardware support. Nope. That the stop gap kludges last year was an commitment by Apple to push the older Mac Pro well past the standard policies. Nope ( it was a kluge to get to this year. )

 

[theluggage]

(Not actually sure who originally wrote this...)
The current cMP consists of who though? A substantive subset of the current cMP owners are really the xMac crowd who bought into their cMP from the used , off-lease , and possibly refurbished market. Only the last of those has any direct connection to Apple. So they are not high value customers.

Well, yes, of course they're not big Apple customers because, since about 2011, Apple hasn't been offering them a product. Initially, by mistake - even Apple have admitted that the trashcan was a mistake) but, since the MP announcement, by design. Remember, even the last (2012?) update of the classic Mac Pro was a disappointment (and was actually discontinued in Europe long before the trash can arrived).

That latter group's high price sensitivity is often what motivated them off.

Not wanting to pay $3000 to infinity for a 2012 design that even Apple have admitted was a mistake is not exactly "price sensitivity"... Meanwhile an iMac Pro is actually excellent value, but only if you want your workstation built in to a $1000 prosumer monitor and don't need PCIe slots.

The people still using cMPs or building Hackintoshes are doing so because they're Mac enthusiasts at heart (even if they've currently got a Tim Cook dartboard) and they really should be the low-hanging fruit when it comes to selling a new "Pro" Mac. Many of them will be Mac/iOS developers. Most of them will be the pre-YouTube equivalent of "influencers" who, in the past, would evangelise Macs to their friends, colleagues and relatives. They're the sort of people who will put up resistance when their bean-counter boss wants to make everybody use Dells and tell their co-workers how to set up Mac Mail for MS Exchange.

I think the thread title could be expanded to all of Apple's current Mac range - each machine seems to be targeted at one particular user (who's probably got a name and a fake dossier somewhere in Apple's flying saucer). If its exactly what you want it's great, and not necessarily bad value - but, otherwise, forget it.

In the case of the new Mac Pro the target seems to be the CTO of some 'unicorn' media firm in the Goldilocks zone where they're rolling in venture capital and don't need to ask the price but they're not big enough to be commissioning truly 'bespoke' equipment. (I don't imagine that the likes of Dreamworks will be surfing the web and weighing up off-the-peg or even al-la-carte Mac Pro vs. HP Z8 options when they're filling the racks in their render farms... - the huge hardware advantage that PC offers over Mac is being able to configure a system to your exact needs from the motherboard and CPU up) Actually, come to think of it, in the short term, that might not be a bad business strategy if you're not looking beyond the next quarter...

Of course, long-term, there's nothing substantial in the Mac Pro hardware-wise that won't be available on PC in a few months. For those who didn't get the Memo: Apple didn't just invent an innovative way of making computers with 8 PCIe slots and 1.5TB RAM - Intel just released 3000-series Xeon W chips that support that sort of capacity without resorting to multiple processors. Not showing up on BigBoxCorp's online configurator just yet, but you can't order a Mac Pro yet, either...

 

[apolloa]

He's a PC guy; but he's not a Mac hater. Thought the iMac Pro was a good value, despite the thermal issues.

I'm impressed by the production quality and thoughtfulness of his work.

It's good to step outside the bubble and get the perspective of people who've used/built similar hardware configs to the 2019 Mac Pro, and can give some estimate of relative value for the base config.

Hopefully he's wrong in his assessment and the base MP won't be a bad value; we'll have to see the exact specs when it's released.

Personally, I think the case design is worth an extra $1000-$1500. Question is: is it work $2000-$2500?

I'd really like to get one, but am unclear about whether it makes $ens$e yet.

Your kidding right? Linus doesn’t even know as much about computers as he claims sometimes. I’ve seen him two rubbish before that was wrong!
He is a click bait typical You Tuber that is not a Pro, has more money then sense.
Actual Pros for whom time is real money are who you should watch for opinions on the new Mac Pro, it’s target audience..

 

[cram501]

Your kidding right? Linus doesn’t even know as much about computers as he claims sometimes. I’ve seen him two rubbish before that was wrong!
He is a click bait typical You Tuber that is not a Pro, has more money then sense.
Actual Pros for whom time is real money are who you should watch for opinions on the new Mac Pro, it’s target audience..

I like his channel and consider him to be pretty even handed. I don't agree with everything he says but then again, I don't agree with everything most reviewers write including the Apple "Actual Pros".

I'm pretty sure he makes a living off his channel which, by definition, makes him a Pro of some sort.

 

[danwells]

It's actually not overpriced for what it is. The problem is that the base configuration is meant for massive expansion - you're paying for a $500 power supply, a $1600 motherboard (look up the Asus Dominus Extreme - this is significantly more sophisticated) and something close to $1000 in case and cooling before you stick a CPU in it, let alone, RAM, storage and a GPU.

You don't need that kind of cooling, power and motherboard expansion to support an 8-core CPU, a single low-end graphics card, 32 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD.

You do need it to support a 16-28 core CPU, multiple Vega II GPUs, 256 GB or more of RAM and 48 TB worth of SSDs (on PCIe cards).

Apple made the Mac Pro to support that kind of components - the reason they sell it with the base configuration is that not every "perfect Mac Pro user" needs all of the upgraded components - every user they are trying to sell it to needs at least some of them, but a musician might not care about GPUs, wanting CPU and RAM instead, while a 3D modeler might not care about CPU since all the heavy work goes to the GPUs.

Apple has never (at least since Steve came back - some of the Power Mac 7200s and the like were close) made a modular machine they could avoid making. They've always made all-in-ones as the only choice up to a power level where an all-in-one won't work, then they make a tower above that. When the classic Mac Pro came out, they couldn't get a serious desktop processor into an iMac, so they made a tower that started right where the iMac left off.

Like it or not, the iMac has gotten much more powerful, and the Mac Pro has stayed in its traditional position relative to the iMac. The problem for people who don't like iMacs is that Apple prefers iMacs for reasons both technical and financial, and they now have an iMac available for almost all photo workloads, almost all development workloads - really, they have an iMac for pretty much everything except some high-end video and animation workloads.

The technical reason Apple loves the iMac is support - it's much easier to support a computer that comes in tens or hundreds of configurations than one that has millions of configurations. They have a very, very stable AMD graphics driver, and neither Apple nor NVidia has been both able and willing to write a stable driver for NVidia GPUs. They don't have to put game-supporting APIs into the operating system - any open Mac at a lower price would attract (among other users) gamers - and game support is one of the major reasons Windows is less stable than MacOS (another important one is huge numbers of hardware configurations).

Apple also loves their margin on upgrades. Since the iMac Pro is a pain to add RAM to, most users are going to give up and buy marked up Apple RAM.

I'd love to see an upper mid-range Apple desktop or tower (I'm a photographer), but I'm willing to buy MacBook Pros and iMacs because I like the stable, color-managed OS. I know that Apple comes as a package - their closed-off hardware comes with the stable OS (and over the years, has allowed them to develop the stable OS).

 

[AidenShaw]

and game support is one of the major reasons Windows is less stable than MacOS

Links?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I don't think that the "max" is important. One has always been able to CTO systems into the stratosphere with maxing out all of the options. HP adds $60K USD for 1.5 TiB of RAM, and you need a pair of $10K USD "M"-class CPUs to connect that much memory. (I'm ignoring the $8.5K USD 5215M processor because the 2.5GHz base clock is so low.) A Z8 can hit $80K USD just for the addon of the RAM and CPUs.

Instead of looking at "break the bank" configurations, I think that looking at 16 to 24 core, 1 TB SSD, 128GiB to 512GiB RAM configurations with higher end graphics is more meaningful.

Why would you buy apples garbage 1tb ssd and not get a pci nvme ssd that will be way larger, cheaper and faster, and get minimum ram. Agree that 24core is config you want as it gives you 12 ram slots

 

[ekwipt]

Why would you buy apples garbage 1tb ssd and not get a pci nvme ssd that will be way larger, cheaper and faster, and get minimum ram. Agree that 24core is config you want as it gives you 12 ram slots

I doubt the Apple SSD is going to be garbage! Dual SSD in some form RAID 0 on the T2 chip for Security (not in the base config though, really think it should've started at 1TB or maybe 512Gb personally).

 

[goMac]

Why would you buy apples garbage 1tb ssd and not get a pci nvme ssd that will be way larger, cheaper and faster, and get minimum ram. Agree that 24core is config you want as it gives you 12 ram slots

Uhhhh what? Garbage 1 TB SSD? It's actually an SSD RAID with two NVMe class SSDs.

Although interestingly enough the 256 TB configuration is not RAID'd.

 

[Chancha]

I am more concerned with the T2 related kernel panics and audio interface issues, than it being a fast SSD controller or not. Even with the latest macOS build, macs with T2 are still getting reports with those, including the MBP 2019.

(I work in audio related field, the iMac 2019 becomes #1 on our company's purchase list exactly due to its lack of T2 so it is free of potential issues on that front)

 

[cram501]

The technical reason Apple loves the iMac is support - it's much easier to support a computer that comes in tens or hundreds of configurations than one that has millions of configurations. They have a very, very stable AMD graphics driver, and neither Apple nor NVidia has been both able and willing to write a stable driver for NVidia GPUs.

I don't believe the issues with NVidia have anything to do with stability. I used the Nvidia drivers, while they worked on my hackintosh, with no issues. I'm not sure what the issue is between NVidia and Apple, but stability isn't the issue.

They don't have to put game-supporting APIs into the operating system - any open Mac at a lower price would attract (among other users) gamers - and game support is one of the major reasons Windows is less stable than MacOS (another important one is huge numbers of hardware configurations).

Windows CAN be less stable because it supports so many possible hardware combinations. I don't believe it has anything to do with gaming and everything to do with flexibility as you stated. I'm not sure why gaming was even mentioned.

None of my windows machines have stability issues. Stability issues tend to be a bad configuration/driver. Although the flexibility can cause issues with some hardware, it is a huge strength for Windows. I don't consider the stability of MacOS any better with its limited hardware (although it can well on hackintosh configurations) than my gaming Windows PC.

 

[amedias]

The multitude of hardware options available that give that flexibility also open scope for conflict and poor hardware and software, as you rightly say most instability is caused by config/drivers but the sheer variety of hardware and drivers available means the chance for an issue or conflict between third party HW and SW is greater.

There is some truth in the idea that support for gaming has made the situation worse, in that the market for PC gaming drove a lot of new and rapidly changing hardware and software that entered the market very quickly to a degree that professional and enterprise needs never would have, and certainly with less testing and verification.

It's not a 'Windows' issue but an issue of any OS that supports a free-for all on what hardware you run it on and can't enforce validation of that hardware and the drivers to run it. Windows is rock solid stable on hardware with good support and good drivers, but throw something odd, new or just plain poor into the mix and that can change. This is less likely on a strictly controlled platform, it also means when you do decide to accept new kit into that platform that the possible permutations to test against are smaller, and as the controller of the platform YOU can do that testing, rather than hoping that the external third parties play nicely and follow the rules.

Any system that can accept add on HW or SW from Dodgy Developer Dave is open to that risk, strict HCL and/or signing are the only ways to enforce against this but that comes with it's own set of issues and of course still doesn't necessarily guarantee stability, but hopefully gives greater control and scope for testing prior to getting approval.

I don't necessarily agree with the concept outside of Enterprise use, but HCL and validation are required in some settings where stability is paramount and the more permutations and flexibility you have to support the more scope there is for instability.

 

[filterdecay]

I work in audio post production for feature films. I think the bigger mixing stages would go for 6 cards without hesitation. We have 2 nMP in the smaller tv stage, connected to expansion chassis and HDX3. With the new Mac Pro just one machine would suffice.
But I agree, for an audio edit or a sound designer’s machine you don’t need that much horsepower. With Pro Tools it’s more about the active voices available, not just tracks.
About the PCIe lanes, I could use 5 right now: 2 HDX, 2 UAD, and a Blackmagic Card.
But as I stated before for smaller studios or sound editors a fully spec’ed 5,1 is still enough in most scenarios.
I think I would probably go for the 12 core. It’s hard to say without knowing how it performs an if I would be able to upgrade the cpu myself like it’s been the case with the 5,1 and 6,1.

once you get into doing big conforms protools turns to expletive on a 5,1 macpro. I agree its probably more power then needed but the older machines are missing out on so much new tech at this point.

 

[gugy]

It wouldn't be hard for them to literally rip the guts out of an iMac 5K and just give us the screens for $1000 surely the computer parts inside would be worth at least the $799 the base iMac 27" starts at!

Yes, I would love that.
The only rationale I can see why Apple is not doing that is due the fact it will canabalize sales of the 6K display. It's a shame. I would buy two or three 5K displays in a heartbeat if they were around $1k.
I love the 6K display but it's just too much considering the stand and nano tech that is a must for anyone working outside of a totally dark environment.

 

[filterdecay]

apple isnt going to make a budget pc. Clearly its never going to happen. And once t2 chips are in all the macs that are on the compatibility list goodbye hackintosh.