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Looks like the end of the road for mac pro
- Thread starter pat500000
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You really wouldn't! They were a bxxch to work on. I consulted in those days, and was unfortunate enough to break a client's CRT. Of course I replaced it under my nickel, but you needed to be very careful when inside one.
Lou
Same apparent bucket as the Fire Pro drivers added to the Boot Camp for Windows tool kit. Oddly it is playing into notion that a significant subset of the customer base is booted up into Windows a significant enough amount of the time. Probably partially motivated by some workstation "pro" apps just aren't going to get ported. Either being running VM or if need more graphics throughput via boot camp. The other subset being folks more so "one man band" customers who work during the day in OS X on apps and then reboot into Windows to play games in their spare time. Folks consumed with spec/benchmark porn will pay for Crossfire.... it is just better porn even if it doesn't work sometimes.
As AMD is moving toward doing Crossfire over the main PCIe bus doesn't really make much long term sense to add complexity to the connector.
Dual, non heterogenous GPU support would make sense though. In the Mac product line up almost all of the systems have an integrated GPU. If there is a second GPU inside the system it is probably not from the same vendor ( as Intel doesn't sell any at this time and AMD is not likely getting a CPU core design win in the immediate future. ). So dual yes? Dual homogenous with a proprietary connector? Not so much.
2006 Intel updates .... Mac Pro initial version
2007 Intel bump ... Mac pro bump. ( Intel may have been doing most of work here so perhaps outside the norm but... )
2008 Intel upgrade .... Mac Pro upgrade
2009 Intel upgrade ... Mac Pro upgrade
2010 Intel upgrade ... Mac Pro upgrade ( 3-4 late but well inside the same calendar year and barely more than a single Quarter difference)
....... 2011 dark for both...
2012 Intel major upgrade ... Mac Pro speed bump ( no new board , no new processor, install stuff appeared late 2010 in Intel's catalog)
2013 Intel upgrade ... Mac Pro upgrade. ( release extended apparently as much to get to TB v2 as new Intel CPU stuff).
2014 Intel upgrade ... Mac Pro radio silence. No even 2012 like speed bump on just one component.
2015 Intel (probably nothing) ... Mac Pro (given previous year's silence ... rise repeat. )
Apple has gone to skipping things. They skipped Xeon E5 v1. They have extremely likely skipped Xeon E5 v3. A new plan perhaps ( only like even versions now), but it is different. Drifting the even numbers actually makes it harder to do 12-16 month upgrades because completely out of since with Intel's tick/tock schedule and core I/O chipset schedule for the Xeon E5 + 6xx chipsets life-cycles. Whatever Apple is doing, it is not in synch with what Intel is primarily doing with the workstation components.
Apple expects to make money off of everything they sell for money.
That production is a contract manufacturer. They can be fired at the the end of any run. Apple turned that Sapphire glass disaster into a data center, but they dumped the contract manufacturer under the bus and moved on relatively easily.
The design of the 2013 .... Apple probably has made the money back on that cost outlay. Especially goosing sales over 2 years span. If they sold enough units in numbers that are interesting enough to them ( some validation that they are hitting a targeted market) then they'll continue. However, the notion that Apple "has to keep going" is mostly wishful thinking. Writing off something that didn't work of this scale is just lower tax payments for them. (If Beats doesn't pan out that will be much harder to sweep under the rug.) Similarly, Apple doesn't have to panic if it looks like it will take another year to make the correct refinements to do a better "version 2".
Not exactly. Sure the E3 requires a new board and all that, but the E3-1271 and the E5-1620 are fairly interchangeable from a user stand point. The only real difference as it relates to the Mac Pro and general workstation usage is the GPU situation. The point the guy is making is that if you want a relatively basic workstation Apple forces you into an expensive configuration: Duel GPUs, PCI-e storage, no additional cheap internal storage options. That’s his point. This isn’t about an xMac, specifically (though that would alleviate the problem to a degree). Rather, its about the lack of choice and resulting price tag.
I can configure this system he wants in a Z440 with a E5-1620 rather than the E3-1271, the 512 GB PCIe-FLASH, and minus the RAM, for $2,152 with the ever-present coupon code from HP. The nMP with the 512 GB PCIe-FLASH is $3069. I could even save another few hundred on the Z440 if I bought my own SSD, getting it down to about $1950 (that’s including a $300 allowance for the SSD, which might be $100 too much).
Sure working from the nMP to the comparable Z workstation is fairly even. But if you live outside the exact needs the nMP is suited for, its very easy to configure a different workstation that works for you for much, much less.
You have a point here. If you need OS X, you need OS X and that’s that. When it comes to doing professional work, $1000 or so isn’t a whole lot more to pay if it really makes your life easier or is just absolutely necessary. But its also enough to get you to think a little harder about how much you really “need” OS X...
I admit..i was like...WHOA...but then you brought this point up...that's true. Why build US manufacturing for one use..
And when that happened, Apple's only income was generated by Macs.
Today's income is generated by Ios and iTunes store.
Regarding IBM, i can't believe that so many here are so deep into apple's behind that they didnt know that IBM was a gigantic hardware company and that they sold their desktop, laptop and server business to Lenovo.
Others here still swear that their beloved and magical Macs dont use the same components are regular PC's.
No, people, they are not sprinkled with magic water, fermented on Job's corpse, so get over it.
Also, people seems to forget that the planet population is almost 8 billions and maybe half of those dont have a personal computer, so the opportunity is there.
the problem is, to reach those people, apple either cut prices (which will never happen) or sell you a cheap copy of OSX for your own hardware.
Lastly, for the naysayers, if OSX runs so well now on hackintoshes, without apple's blessings, imagine how great it would be if they approved it.
I know, i know, the blind fanatics would never accept osx on a non aluminum case not produced by apple.
Just move on like the others and go the Windows route. My nMP is now a ProRes only Encoder, while my Windows WS runs the rest. It's just the way things work now.
Not that I disagree with a lot of that, but why are you so angry and insulting about it?
I chuckled too at the irony that there are Apple geeks here who don't know that IBM essentially invented the "office" PC that many thought would put Apple out of business, and that Apple fanboys back then equated IBM with the evil empire.
However, I also know that the vast majority of forum users are twenty-somethings and teenagers, and really even anyone under the age of 35 or so might not have been old enough to remember those days when a PC = IBM (Times magazine put the IBM PC on the cover of it's 1982 "Man of the Year" edition... and that was a big deal back then). IBM may have sold off it's PC business only a little while ago, but really after the '80's, IBM itself was a non-factor, especially amongst non-corporate users. Also, lots of forum users here from places other than the US.
I really encourage anyone who's geek enough to hang out here but doesn't know their IBM PC history, read up on it - it's really an amazing story on so many levels, starting with the opening line about how the PC as we know it almost didn't happen, and just for good measure, how Microsoft might have been relegated to a long list of long forgotten software developers without it.
You are right, I shouldn't be this angry at certain people's posts.
It is just that so many apple fans really believe that apple's devices are really magical and use components made exclusively for them.
They dont do research, they dont bother in looking for alternatives when apple dont provide a product they need.
For example, I provide Mac support for a multi billion company and the "creative" dept just upgraded from cMP 3.1 and 4.1 to "new" nMP and the amount of hardware lost due to the lack of PCI slots is staggering, just because the "artists" would prefer to leave the company before accepting being moved to windows workstations. Several RAID and SAS cards were abandoned because of this and they are actually good working parts that could be migrated to a windows or linux workstation.
Macs, iphones, windows, etc, are tools, not divine items and you should adapt to what is out there.
More and more, apple seems to be moving away from the pro market, so what we should do is pay them with the same coin and indeed move somewhere else, where they are willing to provide us with those tools and proper equipment, instead of making excuses and moving to non serviceable nor expandable iMacs and mac minis.
Couldn't those cards work in a ThB enclosure? Or too expensive?
While I understand your point about discarding perfectly functional hardware, reality is we do it all the time. Anybody still on Ultra-SCSI here? NuBus? AGP?
Btw, putting the word artists between quotation marks comes across as derisive.
I think that's the point, as well as "creative".
Anyone who has dealt with a "multi billion company" probably feels the same way.
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I'm an Apple fan... only because I've been using them from the first "128k".
Lately I'm bummed that they have abandoned the pro/desktop market.
The flagship 2013 was a major disappointment for me.
I'm on a 2010 that is working fine, but sure wish they had continued to develop the big box Mac Pro.
Converting to Windows would be too many months for me.
Are Hackintoshes really up to snuff for rock solid everyday professional platforms?
I'll probably have to do something in the next year or so.
Lately I'm bummed that they have abandoned the pro/desktop market.
The flagship 2013 was a major disappointment for me.
I'm on a 2010 that is working fine, but sure wish they had continued to develop the big box Mac Pro.
Converting to Windows would be too many months for me.
Are Hackintoshes really up to snuff for rock solid everyday professional platforms?
I'll probably have to do something in the next year or so.
the majority of creatives in film, photo, fashion, design, etc are still on mac and aren't going anywhere. the nMP is selling very well among boutique post production / creative houses and such. only people that post on forums switch(ed) to windows, and those people aren't necessarily the ones who are employed in the aforementioned creative fields. you're either actually doing work or you're just on here making threads about how mac pro is doomed because it doesn't have whatever flavor of the week outlandish tech spec.
When I went to Art School in the 90s, Apple was all about the artist. They catered to the prosumer. Now it's all about the iPhone and the average consumer. Nothing wrong with that or with the huge profits that come with appealing to the masses, but Apple shouldn't abandone its original base, the creative professionals. The artists, filmmakers and photographers. I know you can do many creative things on the iMac, but it'd be a sad day and the end of an era if Apple discontinues the Mac Pro desktop. I think it's important for Apple to continue to cater to the pro user and to future pro users out there. To not just exclusively become this huge tech giant for the masses.
The problem for the old Mac Pro is that not many "artists" have that sort of leverage with their employers and the arguments for buying a big box'o'slots from Apple versus a cheaper big box'o'slots from Dell or HP are getting pretty thin. Once upon a time, Macs really were better than PCs in fundamental, technical ways, and the best creative software was Mac-only. Those days are long gibe. These days, its more a matter of preference, there's possibly a better range of software for PC and, if you spend all your working day neck-deep in Avid or Photoshop it doesn't make much difference whether the underlying OS is OSX, son-of-Unix or Windows daughter-of-VMS.
Anybody can make a cheap PC workstation by throwing together whatever the best-value components are this month - safe in the knowledge that the individual component manufacturers have sorted out the Windows drivers - and, frankly, they're not having an easy time of it at the moment. Apple can't compete with that: they could have gone on selling the cMP to a steadily eroding market for a few more years, but the writing was on the wall.
The nMP, like it or loath it, was an attempt to produce a new class of machine that might find a new niche in a changing world. The underlying principle of a big box'o'slots was that any storage or other device needed to be inside the box because it needed a big, bulky bus no more than a few inches long to connect it to the CPU. That's no longer true - indeed, your storage might be on a network and your render farm might be out in the cloud somewhere. Your specialist digitiser doesn't need to be locked up in one person's workstation - it can be easily moved between workstations or hooked up to a laptop for field use. If every nMP in your workplace is linked to its own 8-bay RAID array, you're probably holding it wrong.
So, if they belonged to you, you'd put them on eBay.
Of course, in a large company, odds are that they were on a 4-year lease along with the cMPs and/or had come to the end of their support contract or were otherwise valueless 'because accounting practices' (money in a corporate environment doesn't work like your personal finances - the actual cost of hardware is negligible compared to the other costs of doing business).
An interesting assessment. Not sure if Apple is willing to give up total control of the software/hardware synergy they pride themselves on so conspicuously, but you are right on the money about Apple's evident obsession of late with maximizing profits vis-a-vis putting their loyal customers first.
For 'Think Different' 1980's Apple enthusiasts, a dismal and depressing prospect really.
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Sorry, but last time I checked, the cMP 4.1 uses PCIe slots, are those already obsolete?
Tech support staff are tools, not divine policy & decision-making enablers, and they should adapt their attitudes to the needs for their users, whatever they may be, to create the work toolset that makes those users most happy, and therefore productive.
Corrected it for you.
A disrespectful attitude is always a good reason to nerf an employee, unless they're so productive that it's more efficient to tell support to cowboy up and live with it. Like I said, I've worked both sides of it. Tech support don't do what the company does to earn. Designers often do, ergo tech support is called "support" and not "tech management" for a reason.
As for RDF, ha. I think the nMP is a crap design that perfectly demonstrates how a lack of diversity, in this case diversity of wealth, amongst Apple decision makers has distorted their products, and made them worse for some users.
That doesn't change the fact that working in OSX is generally considered more pleasant than in Windows or Linux, and if your designers factor that into their "what does working here get me?" decision, then the nMP is the only option if they need a desktop and can't use an iMac. It's really no different to getting a good ergonomic chair.
Personally I think the iPad Pro will make a lot of that irrelevant, and will do to established pro software of all varieties, what iOS did to people who specialised in designing in Flash.