Unless you work for Apple and are freely admitting that you have insider info that anyone else doesn't, the party line is all any of us have to go off of.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MP 7,1 Mac Pro 8.1 - WHAT IF...
- Thread starter maikerukun
- Start date
-
- Tags
- 7.1 mac pro next generation
- Sort by reaction score
I hope they do not manufacture a AS mac pro only to facilitate the video editing of some youtubers who will say "wow it's great my export is done in 3 minutes instead of 3 minutes 30 !!!! amazing"
I'm waiting for a mac os workstation able to run 3D, ML, UE ... and a lot of great softwares
I'm waiting for a mac os workstation able to run 3D, ML, UE ... and a lot of great softwares
I do sympathise and I hope they won’t gimp it, but making fun of people who do not need 3D/Raytracing monster of a computer to use it professionally is uncalled for, really.
Basic logic, and an understanding of manufacturing timelines is plenty to go off. Granted, if you don't have that, sure you might believe a PR exercise designed to shape a narrative that Apple was failed by their technology partners (Intel & AMD) rather than the truth - Apple's executives made a stupid decision to create a statement computer, because they are vain little men who were butthurt at people laughing at them, and they should probably have been on the receiving end of a shareholder lawsuit over it.
It is simply not a credible scenario to believe that the iMac Pro, an entirely novel design that shared almost nothing with the rest of their product range, had so much time and effort invested in it to be just a one off interim throwaway product.
They stuck with the butterfly keyboard, a known faulty product that trashed their reputation and resulted in huge class action payouts, for 3-4 years because they couldn't lose the ROI in an unplanned update to their multiyear tooling and designs any faster, but sure they designed a whole top of the range computer from scratch to be a single-generation "interim" product.
A far simpler explanation, one that fits with the known timelines for Apple's product development, is that the 2013 Mac Pro showed itself to be a market, technology, and reliability failure right around when the 5k iMac was introduced (Oct 2014). At this time, Apple lacks a technology to do a non-janky connection for an external 5k display on a headless machine, so Apple's clearest strategy forward is to make a Pro version of the iMac, and replace the Mac Pro entirely. Nice clean desktop product range - Consumer iMac, Pro iMac. But then as the years of development on the iMac Pro pass, it becomes apparent that the criticism of the 2013 Mac Pro is primarily in comparison to the slotbox design of 2012 model. Given the iMac Pro is yet another iteration of Thunderbolt as a strategy, and Thunderbolt as a strategy is what the market largely rejected, a new slotbox design is rushed into production. This still takes over 2 years from when it's announced.
Again, if you want to believe that Apple intended to keep the Mac Pro as a product when they started planning and designing the iMac Pro, and that the iMac Pro was only intended to be an interim product, that's on you.
I'm not making fun of some people. Audio or video aren't the only uses for a workstation. And I'm not sure that "audio pro" (on Cubase for example) could run on low specs workstation
Last edited:
For audio, low specs (iGPU or SOC GPU) graphics is OK, everything else - the more, the better:
single core and multi core performance, max RAM size, ability to use PCI cards and expand storage internally, lots of ports.
Graphics: as long as one can use few (2-3) high resolution displays without hiccups, all is well.
For virtual instruments, single core speed is of highest importance, hence why some multi core Xeons were actually faring much worse than for example i7/i9 Macs (talking about Intel's era, of course).
Last edited:
Then use a slotbox Mac Pro with a low end graphics card.
Not at you specifically, but I cannot wrap my head around this mindset that there is anything laudable about designing a machine that locks in lower specs and a transcan / Studio paradigm so as to suit people who don't need expandability, rather than just making a generic expandable chassis populated with lower-spec components.
It is better that people who don't need expandability are forced to buy un-needed expandability (even though they can buy a studio, which is confusingly both "good enough" for pros that pros shouldn't demand expandability, but not good enough that the studio advocates can't bugger off to Studio-Forum Land), than people who need expandability are forced to go without it.
Because no matter what happens, the machine won't be made cheaper for losing the expansion, and I think there are people who are clinging to this idea that a non-Xeon Mac Pro won't have the "Xeon Tax", or that by removing PCI slots, there won't be a "slot tax", and that's just not going to happen. The Mac Pro's price is its market segmentation, not a reflection of what it costs Apple. The next one will start with an entry price at least USD$1k higher than the current one, probably closer to USD$2k higher.
It's almost as if what would have been perfect, is if Apple made a single pro machine that could have either a Core processor, Or a Xeon that the user could spec based on their workflow... like the HP Z6.
Last edited:
That’s what I want from new Mac Pro, default SOC GPU for us, audio guys, which you, 3D guys, can switch off, put in dGPU in PCIE slot and we all will be happy.
Yeah. We can dream. I really do not want stronger Mac Studio as my next computer. I want slotbox, I’m just going to be OK if it doesn’t work with dGPUs, that’s all. I will be much more upset about the lack of expandable RAM, for example.
Last edited:
The rubber will hit the road at that point - I don't believe a slotted Mac Pro that can't use discreet display GPUs has a sufficient market, after shedding the dGPU folks, that Apple would bother making it, rather than telling folks to buy a studio, with TB expansion chassis for their audio / network / whatever cards.
Well, everything points to them making it (Mac Pro), so I hope you are right in regards of dGPU support.
I do plenty of motion graphics work professionally and VFX more habitually in addition to video editing, but I am simultaneously not on the bleeding edge (I work at a nonprofit so we're shooting and streaming 1080p C100 footage or backstage feeds, not trying to deal with the hassle of ingesting 4K everything, and we don't have the time or reach to justify doing fancy rendered graphics for every project) and also feel far more constrained on a day-to-day basis by my software than hardware. Adobe has finally been making some progress recently but Premiere and After Effects feel very much like the decades-old software they are.* I don't see the performance benefits from my new hardware translated directly into those programs, so it's always more incremental than the on-paper upgrades would suggest. You have a non-GPU accelerated plugin, the whole render pipeline is going to chug because of it, etc. And network effects mean outside of a few cases where I can use Logic to do a mix or similar, I'm mostly stuck with Creative Cloud and its limitations because that's what everyone is using.
So I think you are alone, or just in the minority, as even among professional use cases, the people who need or at least can afford massive $50K rigs is an even smaller wedge of a small wedge, and speaks to why despite the outsize purchasing power of people and orgs like you it doesn't feel like Apple cares much.
*If only Apple had rethought its FCPX launch and made it a beta for a year or two to get input and the featureset where it needed... I rarely use it and I think it was simply too alienating a shift in NLE thinking too early for most, but it absolutely is blazing fast, and Motion is very limited in comparison to After Effects, but also again so. much. faster. I used to do keys in it and bring them into After Effects because it was faster and looked better with fewer tweaks than doing it all in AE. Davinci is starting to give Adobe more competition, but for all this talk about Apple's pro hardware (which is valid) I think their biggest stumbling block is really still the lack of pushing their software harder.
I'm not on that list. I need it, most simply, to support a DAMN 8K display! And here is the thing, eventually apple's Mac mini closed boxes will support 8, but I may be building something new, that will require 10k, 16, etc., so I need the flexibility to build what I need to build. Secondly, I need slots. Lots of slots. For video cards and random stuff. I'm always making, building or testing or working on some 'new thing' and I need the flexibility. Yes, I dabble and do a touch of all those things here and there, video work etc., but I need and will pay for the flexibility.
I proudly consider myself a non-pro. I'm more accurately an 'enthusiast' and I need the flexibility of a system that is not a closed pile of **** box like the studio/Mac mini.
That others are cozy and fine in their closed box is fantastic. Yay for them. I've lit sparklers. What is amazing to me is I can be happy for their choice, but they all feel the need to convert me to their way of thinking. Only room for one world view over there in closed box land, apparently.
Last edited:
I don’t want closed box, otherwise I would have bought Studio Ultra already, with 128GB Ram and 4TB SSD.
I agree with a lot of the above.
I disagree with one of the premises youre responding to. That this needs to be a niche of a niche machine. Apple has painted itself into a 'high price corner' and the thought that it MUST be that way because the last leg on our greedy algorithm searching back shows the 7,1 was that way, is just bad thinking. Expanding the greedy search back just a touch will show that the 5,1-1,1 and power Mac towers before it were WIDELY sold and loved.
Apple absolutely CAN make a slot box to attract a wider pro/enthusist market. It's a function of will and actually making and releasing the damn product.
Consider yourself lucky. I bought a maxed out one. The machine will end up a glorified upgrade box for my secretary.
I don't need a Mac Pro capable system for this need but I need a Mac Pro capable system for my virtualization environment. With Apples history regarding the Mac Pro since 2013 I don't trust them for such a platform and so I purchased a Z840 instead.
Oh, I don't mean to say that Apple can't, but it's niche insofar as Apple's overall business, where it's making beaucoup bucks on massive categories that make their smaller pie slices look tiny. Taken on its own I'm sure the Mac Pro business by itself is small but profitable, and arguably the whole problem we're dealing with is that Apple has gotten so big it's harder to keep focus on those smaller segments. I would argue Apple was never a professional user's company, at least with any intent: they happened into the desktop publishing game and then education and that kept them afloat in the lean years, but taking their history as a whole I'd say the early 2000s Final Cut/Logic/Shake era of clever towers and software was the aberration rather than the rule, it was just their consumer products finally had runaway momentum and the increasing power of computers meant that other products beyond the pro ones could do real work, which is how Apple ended up briefly thinking an iMac Pro would be enough to satisfy enough of its customers.
And I agree with you, I think the best option for Apple is to broaden the possible use cases of the Mac Pro. My point is that I feel bad for Maikerukun, because even among prosumers or professionals, who are a small number of the total customers Apple serves, the people who can afford or want a Mac Pro is a small portion. Most "pro" work by pure numbers is probably being done on MacBooks, since notebooks have been the best selling category for years and years now. I do a lot of my work on a iMac (we're now getting Studios in to replace the old ones.) If they went back to a $3K or $4K or even $5K starting price (hell, you could throw in an M2 Pro instead of Max!) and let the machine be the endlessly configurable Mac, that to me seems like a better strategy than what they wound up with in 2019, which was to make a high-end tower while leaving people who needed expandability but didn't need it wrapped up in ULTIMATE PERFORMANCE FOR ULTIMATE PRICES high and dry.
In some ways I feel like Apple's track record here leaves me incredibly confused as to where they would go. With the Mac Studio (a new desktop computer category from Apple for the first time in, what, coming up on nearly two decades?) there's more of a need for an expandable machine than there is a powerful machine, outside the high-end users like Maiker who can absolutely use whatever power is thrown at a task and crave more. I guess the question is would Apple consider being flexible enough that it could capture those different market segments? (certainly the $6K price is partially a function of everyone paying for the capability to expand their machine to ludicrous levels, but if you don't need that you've got a massive upcharge from jump.) And if they don't want to deal with even the high-end workstation setup under Apple Silicon... why did they make the 7,1 Mac Pro in the first place? Why put all that effort into rethinking stuff like MXM modules if they were creating a computer that had no future at Apple?
So what. Porsche 911 is a niche to Porsche that lives on sales of its Cayenne SUV. But if you kill the 911 halo, the entire company goes down the toilet. People buy the SUV because of the 911 halo.
Apple is regarded as a pioneer. If they don't have a halo to serve that 'performance' niche, the rest of the company starts to look like GM making boring SUV boxes... (sorry for the mixed analogy, but hopefully you get the gist).
My point is they better be flexible enough to make a true halo product, that they need it to sell their closed boxes more than many people suspect.
The old mac pro was priced in line with other pro workstions from dell / hp at launch.
apple did not lower prices each year or bump up / ram / disk / cpu / video.
Mac pro 7.1 had an high base price that could or been an little lower to be like other pro systems.
Now apple needs to price the starting point of there new mac pro like other pro systems and not OVER price ram or storage.
Right now apple storage is like X2 or more the price of other m.2 ssd disks.
I feel like this whole topic has been diluted so much that people are picking at straws.
To me it's pretty simple - the Mac Pro will offer internal expandability (based off of the cards they touted in 2019, from Sonnet to RED to Avid) as a differentiator from the Studio. Without that single feature the Pro may as well not exist. And that's the thing; will it exist?
If Apple does retire the Pro then they need to provide a solution to or explain how users can transition from the aforementioned cards to a Studio setup. Alternatively, investing in another Pro means that Apple sees a big enough market and views cards as having an important place in Macs beyond GPUs. I would find it strange that Apple goes from touting a case filled with Avid cards, Pegasus RAIDs and internal HDD caddies to in 4 years telling customers that this is no longer the vision. History would be repeating itself again...
But one thing that's clear is that this isn't 2013. Back then many customers were reliant on 'workstation' computers to achieve things that, today, can be accomplished on a MacBook Pro. The issue with 6,1 was less to do with the thermal constraints of the hardware and more the fact Apple didn't give customers a choice of either a tower or a trashcan, with both in their product line-up. At that time, both were relevant to users.
The concept of 6,1 was sound, but it was stupidly naive for Apple to think that they could dictate the market overnight when the 5,1 Mac Pro had already languished for some time.
Today however, the Studio fulfils a lot more of those customers needs as 'professional' jobs themselves have changed significantly in that time, in addition to a far larger market of accessories and support for widely accepted standards such as USB-C.
This still doesn't make the concept of a tower archaic, but my point is that it is gradually becoming less of a requirement to achieve results many people want. Win-PCs have almost infinite PCIe support whereas the Mac does not. This is a fact whether sad or not, and Apple has to establish the value of this feature.
And given that a Studio with the Ultra chip starts from $3,999, a Pro tower will surely start at $4,999 minimum, which like the Pro Display XDR will be targeting the highest end customers, not the hobbyists.
My prediction: the Mac Pro will have limited expansion, but also an 'Extreme' chip even if contrary to the latest report.
To me it's pretty simple - the Mac Pro will offer internal expandability (based off of the cards they touted in 2019, from Sonnet to RED to Avid) as a differentiator from the Studio. Without that single feature the Pro may as well not exist. And that's the thing; will it exist?
If Apple does retire the Pro then they need to provide a solution to or explain how users can transition from the aforementioned cards to a Studio setup. Alternatively, investing in another Pro means that Apple sees a big enough market and views cards as having an important place in Macs beyond GPUs. I would find it strange that Apple goes from touting a case filled with Avid cards, Pegasus RAIDs and internal HDD caddies to in 4 years telling customers that this is no longer the vision. History would be repeating itself again...
But one thing that's clear is that this isn't 2013. Back then many customers were reliant on 'workstation' computers to achieve things that, today, can be accomplished on a MacBook Pro. The issue with 6,1 was less to do with the thermal constraints of the hardware and more the fact Apple didn't give customers a choice of either a tower or a trashcan, with both in their product line-up. At that time, both were relevant to users.
The concept of 6,1 was sound, but it was stupidly naive for Apple to think that they could dictate the market overnight when the 5,1 Mac Pro had already languished for some time.
Today however, the Studio fulfils a lot more of those customers needs as 'professional' jobs themselves have changed significantly in that time, in addition to a far larger market of accessories and support for widely accepted standards such as USB-C.
This still doesn't make the concept of a tower archaic, but my point is that it is gradually becoming less of a requirement to achieve results many people want. Win-PCs have almost infinite PCIe support whereas the Mac does not. This is a fact whether sad or not, and Apple has to establish the value of this feature.
And given that a Studio with the Ultra chip starts from $3,999, a Pro tower will surely start at $4,999 minimum, which like the Pro Display XDR will be targeting the highest end customers, not the hobbyists.
My prediction: the Mac Pro will have limited expansion, but also an 'Extreme' chip even if contrary to the latest report.
Last edited:
It's a "what if" thread so it's fine that it meanders around IMO. 4999 would not be a bad price for enthusiast/hobbyists IMO. Adjusted for inflation this many years out, the 2799 starting point of 2010 is probably somewhere around 4999. I think it would sell to a FAR wider audience with just that one change. Make it 4799 and youd really have a hit.
4900 for the for base 24 core/56 gpu with 6 slots please. And option of apple gpu cards. Starting with 64 gig vram and 38 cores for 2000$ or 76 cores and 128 gigs for 4000. Basically ultras without the cpu. Possible to expand ram with 8 slots.
That sounds expensive but like a reasonable solution.
Everything on 5nm but with RT cores.
Would this be technically possible?
That sounds expensive but like a reasonable solution.
Everything on 5nm but with RT cores.
Would this be technically possible?
Or what if the cpu/gpu card (up to ultra) was on a daughter card and there were 4 SoC slots? Connected to a center connector fanning out like a cross to keep distances short. InfinityFusion. Transparent to apples apis. So fully loaded we would have 8 x m2 max chips 😂
Seriously, this is the level it has to be on in order to beat the best on the PC side
Seriously, this is the level it has to be on in order to beat the best on the PC side
I was thinking on the lines of in-house MPX modules. That way they (Apple) could kill two birds with one stone; offer different levels of performance from their own GPUs and still offer expansion for other cards.