Larry Jordan believes in a new Mac Pro...

[i make movies]

Especially if you threw in a low powered E3 options with 3-4 HDD bays to make a nice OSX home server system.

Right now, I think that's the major weak point in the Apple Ecosystem. A Mac Pro is just too big and too costly for simple home server needs. The Mac Mini server is a joke with 2x1TB drives at $1000. Even for after-market customization the 2.5 form factor is a problem. If you want bulk storage with back up all internal, its just silly to try to use 2.5" bays.

A Mac Mini Pro or something similar with a low powered E3, 3-4 3.5" bays, maybe a single 2.5" SSD for boot, and your listings above in something video game console sized would be a nice product. And it would a be a great compliment to an Apple TV or future iTV....

I disagree. I don't think the average consumer needs or even wants a home server option you're describing.

I also think there's no way you could fit that into a console sized box. You could make it a little smaller than the MacPro, but it's going to have 5 SATA connections, several USB3 and Thunderbolt ports, a chip with heatsink, and power supply...there's a reason why the MacPro is big.

 

[wallysb01]

I disagree. I don't think the average consumer needs or even wants a home server option you're describing.

I also think there's no way you could fit that into a console sized box. You could make it a little smaller than the MacPro, but it's going to have 5 SATA connections, several USB3 and Thunderbolt ports, a chip with heatsink, and power supply...there's a reason why the MacPro is big.

The Mac Pro needs to fit 8 DIMMs, 2 CPUs and 2 PCIe slots, all needing to cool something that could be pushing out near 1000Ws. Here we're talking 1 CPU, 4 DIMMs, 1 PCIe slot. When configured it will only need to cool at most about 300W. The HP z220 small form factor isn't much different and its nearly as small as an Xbox 360. Certainly close enough to function as a "set-top box." Size really isn't the issue.

As for what people want, I wouldn't say either of us knows any better than the other. I can only speak to my own desires, and personally, if we're going to move to streaming content, I still want my old stuff available from the same device. So, I have 100's of DVDs 'm already starting to move to hard drives, just like what happened years ago with CDs. At 1-25GB/movie its going to add up fast. Then there are home pictures and video.... Its easy to be in the multiple TB range, and as time passes files are only going to get bigger.

 

[wafl iron]

Image
made By Apple. ​

ugh... what a waste of money

 

[Tesselator]

But they were all smaller versions of something else in the Apple range. The Mac Pro is the biggest thing Apple makes for a reason.

made By Apple. ​

ugh... what a waste of money

I bet they turned a good profit from that.

 

[deconstruct60]

Especially if you threw in a low powered E3 options with 3-4 HDD bays to make a nice OSX home server system.

Not really. The Mac mini is overkill for a mainstream home set up. The lowest E3 ( 1220L v2 17W ) wouldn't be much better in a home server set-up than one of the upcoming dedicated server Atoms if sub 20W operating power was a primary objective. The 45W 1265L is right in the mini's range, so not buying much on power or computation "horsepower".

The server options of both mini and Mac Pro are primary supplemental offerings off the basic single user system package. An Xeon E3 would far better fix as "step up" from the standard top iMac. (

If want to expand limited TimeCapsule offering with more than one drive that would be a different story.


[/quote]
Right now, I think that's the major weak point in the Apple Ecosystem. A Mac Pro is just too big and too costly for simple home server needs. The Mac Mini server is a joke with 2x1TB drives at $1000. [/quote]

An Xeon E3 isn't going to push a server into a lower price point than a Mac mini. An Atom solution perhaps, but not a Xeon E3. Price points on Xeon E3 are approximately in line with mainstream Core i5 and i7 products.

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2012/2012020701_Prices_of_Xeon_E3-1200_v2_CPUs.html

The 1220L is $189. The entry Mini's i5 3210M (http://ark.intel.com/products/67355/Intel-Core-i5-3210M-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz-rPGA) is $225. That $36 change isn't going to drive a major price swing in the completed Apple system even if all the other hardware staid roughly the same. Going from a 2 HDD bay system to a 4-5 HDD bay system isn't going to lower costs significantly either.

Even for after-market customization the 2.5 form factor is a problem. If you want bulk storage with back up all internal, its just silly to try to use 2.5" bays.

Internal back-ups are far more questionable than 2.5" drives for storage.
Any 'bad outcome' ( theft, damage, power overload , etc.) is inflected on the back-up as much as the primary system. That isn't going to be a back-up in the broader sense of the term.

A Mac Mini Pro or something similar with a low powered E3, 3-4 3.5" bays, maybe a single 2.5" SSD for boot, and your listings above in something

My 10GbE features above was far more to help support a "> top iMac standard config pricing" far more than to push it into the sub $1000 range. Good luck finding multiple 10GbE sockets on a card at less than $500.

Apple has a hole in the $1800-2500 range with standard configs on "desktop" solutions. They could plug that with an E3 offering.

video game console sized would be a nice product. And it would a be a great compliment to an Apple TV or future iTV....

Video game console size with multiple HDDs is driving toward a 2.5" drive solution. Multiple 3.5" drives aren't going to fit in that form factor.

Besides Time Capsule I don't think Apple is going to try to get into the home NAS box business. I think the Time Capsule (TC) would be better with multiple drives if only because they could be used for some RAID redundancy (RAID-1 or some redundancy). The major failure point on TC systems now is the HDD. Removing the HDD with an SSD isn't practical. Shipping all the data back to Apple data centers isn't wanted by user (otherwise would have flipped on iCloud for back-ups).

Minimally, tweaking the TC so that it had a USB 3.0 port and making it so AppleTV and/or iTV would stream off some externally mounted HDD box is probably sufficient for those who want to cobble together a solution for multiple TB home media library.

The simple, smallest box to fit into A/V system console is just to continue with the AppleTV and iTV solution which is to place all of those big complicated ( redundancy , back-ups , HDD failure replacement/service, etc.) inside of Apple data centers.

 

[goMac]

As for what people want, I wouldn't say either of us knows any better than the other. I can only speak to my own desires, and personally, if we're going to move to streaming content, I still want my old stuff available from the same device. So, I have 100's of DVDs 'm already starting to move to hard drives, just like what happened years ago with CDs. At 1-25GB/movie its going to add up fast. Then there are home pictures and video.... Its easy to be in the multiple TB range, and as time passes files are only going to get bigger.

I doubt the intended user of the Mac Pro is the media collector anyway. These are creation workstations, not archival workstations. I'm sure you could fill that void with a Thunderbolt device anyway.

 

[wallysb01]

Not really. The Mac mini is overkill for a mainstream home set up. The lowest E3 ( 1220L v2 17W ) wouldn't be much better in a home server set-up than one of the upcoming dedicated server Atoms if sub 20W operating power was a primary objective. The 45W 1265L is right in the mini's range, so not buying much on power or computation "horsepower".

But I'm not going for ultra low power, rather to have something in the 30-50W range be an option. So you could scale this all the way from the L version at 45W to high powered 87W versions for Ivy Bridge. Thus roughly matching the low power of the current Mac Mini or matching the computational power of the top end iMac. All in a box with at least 3 HDD, and about 2.5X the size of a Mini.

The server options of both mini and Mac Pro are primary supplemental offerings off the basic single user system package. An Xeon E3 would far better fix as "step up" from the standard top iMac. (

Exactly, and that's what this could be. I'd just like to see a low power offering as well, for those of us with less CPU needs and more data storage/serving needs.

If want to expand limited TimeCapsule offering with more than one drive that would be a different story.

Bingo, why not have both in the same box?

An Xeon E3 isn't going to push a server into a lower price point than a Mac mini. An Atom solution perhaps, but not a Xeon E3. Price points on Xeon E3 are approximately in line with mainstream Core i5 and i7 products.

I'm not trying to bring the price <$1000.

Going from a 2 HDD bay system to a 4-5 HDD bay system isn't going to lower costs significantly either.

Right, it will increase it.

Internal back-ups are far more questionable than 2.5" drives for storage.
Any 'bad outcome' ( theft, damage, power overload , etc.) is inflected on the back-up as much as the primary system. That isn't going to be a back-up in the broader sense of the term.

There are 2 primary types of back ups. The "Oops, did I just delete that" kind and the "F, my house just burnt down" kind. The external hard drive sitting right next to your computer is in many ways worse than an internal backup. Typically, the single external HDD is of very low quality compared to internal drives, with much higher failure rates. Its also a lot easier to steal, if you're worried about that, than the whole computer. Its usually one disk. In a multi-HDD set up, it could easily be part of a RAID1. Its slow for large amounts of data. So, if you have the regular off site back up, there is really no reason to have an external backup sitting next to your computer. Its more clutter and it has as many disadvantages as advantages as the internal.

My 10GbE features above was far more to help support a "> top iMac standard config pricing" far more than to push it into the sub $1000 range. Good luck finding multiple 10GbE sockets on a card at less than $500.

Really not sure why you think I was going for sub $1000....

Video game console size with multiple HDDs is driving toward a 2.5" drive solution. Multiple 3.5" drives aren't going to fit in that form factor.

They already do.

The simple, smallest box to fit into A/V system console is just to continue with the AppleTV and iTV solution which is to place all of those big complicated ( redundancy , back-ups , HDD failure replacement/service, etc.) inside of Apple data centers.

That's a terrible idea. It limits the user to streaming every piece of media data they own. So, you don't have direct control over potentially thousands of dollars of media. It also doesn't solve moving legacy DVDs or home picture/video to HDDs for streaming to Apple TV.

----------

I doubt the intended user of the Mac Pro is the media collector anyway. These are creation workstations, not archival workstations. I'm sure you could fill that void with a Thunderbolt device anyway.

But this isn't the Mac Pro, nor a replacement of the Mac Pro. What I'm suggesting is likely for a user without a Mac Pro, but rather an iPad/Macbook and an Apple TV or future iTV.

As for Thuderbolt, yes, I'm sure you could slap something like this to a Mac Mini, but with sufficient size and redundancy it would cost about $1000 in itself.

 

[FluJunkie]

ugh... what a waste of money

I bet they turned a good profit from that.

My primary thought was "Ah, the glory days, when apple.com/science didn't produce a Page Not Found error".

 

[goMac]

But this isn't the Mac Pro, nor a replacement of the Mac Pro. What I'm suggesting is likely for a user without a Mac Pro, but rather an iPad/Macbook and an Apple TV or future iTV.

And for those users, Apple's answer is iCloud, or a Time Machine.

I mean, it all seems pretty clear. I don't keep movie or TV content around any more, or even need to, because my AppleTV can just stream it. Why do I need to archive 4 seasons of The Office that I will probably never watch again when iCloud can do it for me and probably save me 10-20 gigs in the process?

Having large drives full of all your media is kind of an old school hoarder mentality.

 

[handsome pete]

And for those users, Apple's answer is iCloud, or a Time Machine.

I mean, it all seems pretty clear. I don't keep movie or TV content around any more, or even need to, because my AppleTV can just stream it. Why do I need to archive 4 seasons of The Office that I will probably never watch again when iCloud can do it for me and probably save me 10-20 gigs in the process?

Having large drives full of all your media is kind of an old school hoarder mentality.

While I certainly don't buy as many movies as I did years ago I still want a copy. There are things that I'll probably not watch as often, but that's why I've stopped buying as much. But for the items I do watch more often, I don't want to be dependent on the reliability of an ISP. When I own a copy I'm able to watch it whenever and wherever I please.

 

[wallysb01]

And for those users, Apple's answer is iCloud, or a Time Machine.

I mean, it all seems pretty clear. I don't keep movie or TV content around any more, or even need to, because my AppleTV can just stream it. Why do I need to archive 4 seasons of The Office that I will probably never watch again when iCloud can do it for me and probably save me 10-20 gigs in the process?

Having large drives full of all your media is kind of an old school hoarder mentality.

Unless you have the physical disks you don't want to deal with anylonger, I would agree in part. If its TV content that is nearly always only watched once, no I don't want it soaking up HDD space. But music, movies and personal media I'd all like to have locally.

And I'd say not trusting Apple or your internet provider to be there when you want access to your property is plain smart. Call it hording if you like, but I simply want control over the things I buy...

 

[Tesselator]

My primary thought was "Ah, the glory days, when apple.com/science didn't produce a Page Not Found error".

Hehehe...

According to the accompanying description those particular blades are G5s.

 

[FluJunkie]

Hehehe...

According to the accompanying description those particular blades are G5s.

Yep, I believe so.

 

[goMac]

While I certainly don't buy as many movies as I did years ago I still want a copy. There are things that I'll probably not watch as often, but that's why I've stopped buying as much. But for the items I do watch more often, I don't want to be dependent on the reliability of an ISP. When I own a copy I'm able to watch it whenever and wherever I please.

And if you really do want a local copy, a Thunderbolt RAID array or a NAS fills that perfectly. No need to drag an actual computer into this.

 

[yoak]

Personally I want and need something big with a lot of space.
We had to build a PC now for editing our latest project shot on RED EPIC and Canon 1DC (the 1DC eates through 248GB pr hour when shooting 4K, the Epic a little less)
The PC will have about 40TB internal storage.
I'm not expecting that from he next Mac Pro, but to fit 5-6 hard drives would be nice and a few different cards as well.
I need speed and power and would love to get a new Mac Pro

 

[brand]

Hehehe...

According to the accompanying description those particular blades are G5s.

I don't recall Apple ever making any Apple servers that were in a blade/chassis form factor. The only two form factors that I am aware of are the 1U and 3U enclosures.

 

[Tesselator]

I don't recall Apple ever making any Apple servers that were in a blade/chassis form factor. The only two form factors that I am aware of are the 1U and 3U enclosures.

The image above shows what are Apple's Server Blades. The term "Blade" itself is somewhat subject to usage. In general it just means a thin unit meant to be (or capable of being) placed into a rack-system. My EDIROL UA-1000 for example is an "Audio Interface Blade". A "Server Blade" would be any server grade computer in such a form-factor.

Audio Interface Blade
​

I realize this may be a little different definition than the hot-swapable blades in a Blade Server as first introduced about 15 or so years ago but I blame the geek sub-culture who came up with the terms (Server Blade and Blade Server) in the first place.

Dang geeks!

.

 

[Snowshiro]

I don’t think Apple is willing to cede the high-end creative space to a different platform.

Apple is a company, more than most, that strives to remember its past and use that past to inform its future.

Is Larry Jordan Apple's new PR man? What utter twaddle.

If they remembered their past and respected it, they wouldn't have left high end creatives languishing with 5 year old technology.

They wouldn't have shafted Final Cut users with some ridiculous "prosumer" edition of the software.

They wouldn't keep moving engineers from OS X to iOS.

They wouldn't leave first gen Mac Pro owners unable to run the latest OS, when they have machines perfectly capable of doing so with ease.

Jobs said it best: "Apple is a mobile device company". This is no longer Apple Computer. It's Apple Inc.

Desktop machines, especially at the high end have been little more than an afterthought almost since the first iPod rolled off the production line.

 

[goMac]

I'm not expecting that from he next Mac Pro, but to fit 5-6 hard drives would be nice and a few different cards as well.
I need speed and power and would love to get a new Mac Pro

Not to sound like a broken record, but...
http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?m=192&region=en-global&rsn1=40&rsn3=47
http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?lang=en-us&sn=862&c=355&sc=526&t=691&n=9905

I'm not sure why Apple would ever build a Mac Pro with mass drive bays when it's such a niche issue that's easily solvable by external or network storage. Most organizations that need that usually have a NAS or server with tons of storage on the other end of a fiber channel card or ethernet.

 

[Tesselator]

Not to sound like a broken record, but...
http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?m=192&region=en-global&rsn1=40&rsn3=47
http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?lang=en-us&sn=862&c=355&sc=526&t=691&n=9905

I'm not sure why Apple would ever build a Mac Pro with mass drive bays when it's such a niche issue that's easily solvable by external or network storage. Most organizations that need that usually have a NAS or server with tons of storage on the other end of a fiber channel card or ethernet.

But the same was true when they released the first MacPro and for the G5 systems just prior to that. Those systems came with dual 1000Base-TX connections capable of 1Gbps when drives at the time were less than or about half that - and fast network storage was available then too. OK, so now we have TB at 10Gbps and current drives are only about half to one third that. What's changed?

Of course I'm with you... I think if there is to be another MacPro it doesn't need more than a motherboard mSATA socket or two but just saying... The dynamics in ratio between how it was 8 years ago and now haven't changed - so maybe not a reason Apple would change either?

 

[yoak]

Not to sound like a broken record, but...
http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?m=192&region=en-global&rsn1=40&rsn3=47
http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?lang=en-us&sn=862&c=355&sc=526&t=691&n=9905

I'm not sure why Apple would ever build a Mac Pro with mass drive bays when it's such a niche issue that's easily solvable by external or network storage. Most organizations that need that usually have a NAS or server with tons of storage on the other end of a fiber channel card or ethernet.

Well, I have a 12TB NAS at home and I can tell you that a NAS is useless for video editing. It couldn't handle HD, let alone 4K or 5K It's way too slow.
A fiber card is a very expensive solution for a small company.
TB is from what I understand not faster than internal storage.
At the moment I have filled up my mac Pro, I have the 12TB NAS (that I find to slow even for copying my media files to as I usually come home with around 100-200gb after a days shoot (it's a readynas pro 6, one of the fastest NAS at the time last year)
Ontop of this I have 8 different 2-4TB hard drives on my desk.
Remember the Ma Pro should cater to Pros and some prefer a lot of internal storage

 

[deconstruct60]

Well, I have a 12TB NAS at home and I can tell you that a NAS is useless for video editing.

NAS is a general class of storage device. NAS isn't useless. Your implementation (probably network infrastructure and NAS box ) is too slow.

A fiber card is a very expensive solution for a small company.

Fiber is not particularly necessary nor the fastest solution if looking for bandwidth. Nor would it particularly work well for NAS. SAN perhaps but not NAS.

Whether NAS (or SAN) is effective or not for a smaller company is really more motivated by how much data would have to be duplicated so that multiple folks could work concurrently on overlapping projects.

Small enough workers working on non-overlapping projects in the same location can work with sneaker net of external drives from workstation to workstation.

 

[wallysb01]

Small enough workers working on non-overlapping projects in the same location can work with sneaker net of external drives from workstation to workstation.

I think ideally you'd have a large NAS connected to your workstations connected by 10GbE or maybe thunderbolt. At least for the guy that needs 40TB of space. No product from Apple is going to tackle that problem, at today's storage capacities, you'd need at least 20 drives in RAID10 to serve that.

But for smaller home use, where you need maybe 4TB of space, but don't want a full mac pro, I don't really see a reason you can't accomplish that internally. 4 drive bay form factors are plenty small to double as an HTPC, and can even be used as moderate computational node, if you're offloading from a Macbook.

This box could be something very flexible. With an E3-1270 or above, ECC RAM, 3-4 HDDs, etc, it would be a nice step up from an iMac. Or could serve as an additional node to a Mac Pro in a professional setting. With the E3-1265L it could double as an HTPC/Home server.

 

[echoout]

Well, I have a 12TB NAS at home and I can tell you that a NAS is useless for video editing. It couldn't handle HD, let alone 4K or 5K It's way too slow.
A fiber card is a very expensive solution for a small company.
TB is from what I understand not faster than internal storage.
At the moment I have filled up my mac Pro, I have the 12TB NAS (that I find to slow even for copying my media files to as I usually come home with around 100-200gb after a days shoot (it's a readynas pro 6, one of the fastest NAS at the time last year)
Ontop of this I have 8 different 2-4TB hard drives on my desk.
Remember the Ma Pro should cater to Pros and some prefer a lot of internal storage

I get 350MB/s READ, 854MB/s WRITE on my QNAP NAS. Not too bad.

 

[goMac]

I think ideally you'd have a large NAS connected to your workstations connected by 10GbE or maybe thunderbolt. At least for the guy that needs 40TB of space. No product from Apple is going to tackle that problem, at today's storage capacities, you'd need at least 20 drives in RAID10 to serve that.

Apple used to be very interested in that problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve_RAID

These days they've farmed that out to third parties. But there was a time where Apple's answer to mass storage was definitely "Go buy network attached storage."