Mac Pro Rising

[pat500000]

when a response begins: "This should be nominated for the worst argument award".. pretty much every human is going to read that as an insult regardless of author intent (fwiw)


apple's whole schtick is based around good looking products.. none (as in zilch) of their products look geeky..
not sure why you think slots and expansion circuit boards are still in their design language ?


heh.. my dream computer would have zero ports.. none.. no wires of any kind.. be about the size of a pea.. and reside in my body..
(just saying)


this one?

View attachment 638032

..you're joking, right?


(hint.. that's not a photograph and it's been bouncing around the interwebz since before the nmp was even released)



if you use apple computers then yes, they actually are out of the market.. do people really not realize this? does anybody actually believe apple is going to bring pci slots back to a mac?

all of you who think they will if you yell loud enough should take it to the next level.. organize a hunger strike.. none of you eat until apple makes another mac with pci slots.




because their potential customer base increase tenfold.. probably more.
intel gpus are, i'm guessing, the most popular gpus being used in personal computers today.. not nvidia or amd.. with egpu, many/most of these users could choose to buy nvidia if they so desire.. (as well as mac users who have dedicated graphics.. they could opt to buy nvidia if they want)

Hahahhaa that Mac Pro picture was funny.

 

[tralfaz]

I think my frustration is as much over the idea that Apple could have done much more but decided not to. The only "Pro" apps they're interested in are Final Cut and Logic and they built themselves a computer to keep those apps competitive. Even so, they're losing ground on video to Adobe.

According to some on the forum, this is part of an intentional plan. Maybe they are right, I don't know. We can continue the circular conversation but right or wrong, it doesn't change the fact that Apple is not building a computer for those of us who want internal expandability and/or upgradeability. Any upgrading is done externally which, to me, pretty well defeats the idea of a small elegant computer for limited workspaces. There is little chance they are going to go back to the pre 2013 design. This is their concept for the next decade of computing and if that's the case, they are going to continue making computers smaller and lighter which will make it harder and harder to have anything powerful due to size and heat constraints.

Like it or not, the point of making a choice that none of us longtime users want to make is approaching. It might be more productive to discuss the choices at this point than the reasons for making them.Something to seriously think about...

Well I'm certainly on the precipice. The only thing keeping me from making the jump is seeing what they manage to correct in the 6,1 design in the 7,1. The 6,1 is fine if your use cases only require short term sporadic loads. Otherwise that joke of a heat sink will fail under sustained load, and if your lucky it will throttle CPU/GPUs, if not it will burn itself out. Really they should just rename the Mac Pro to "Final Cut Pro Mac". It is really only designed to run a handful of applications used by the kind of users that Apple cares about. Apple cares about artistic and creative user types, and not at all about engineering or scientific types. Apple simply has a complete disdain for "techo-nerds", and really does not want them as customers. They complain about technical deficiencies, and are just too difficult to satisfy.

I have little hope Apple will alter course, and have been playing around configuring HP Z workstations. If it wasn't for the pain trying to turn one of these into a hackintosh I wouldn't bother waiting for the 7,1. That, and my 3,1 just keeps on working. And yes all the PCIe slots are filled, and all drive bays too. When they finish screwing up the MBP with that stupid function key strip, I'll have to decide if its worth picking up a previous gen MBP on the cheap, or just cut bait and move on. Oh yeah then there's that no headphone jack on their phone. Ugh, I really need to undergo a de-Apple-fication. And this from someone that couldn't tolerate MS so much, they ended up with a disease with the same initials. Irony.
[doublepost=1467083787][/doublepost]

heh.. my dream computer would have zero ports.. none.. no wires of any kind.. be about the size of a pea.. and reside in my body..

A less adult of version of myself might have made a comment similar to this one:

"I think we can all guess what part of your body that would reside in."

Thank goodness I have matured beyond such puerile behavior.

 

[deconstruct60]

Nope. Metal is also the replacement for OpenCL.

https://developer.apple.com/metal/

A somewhat limited replacement .......

OpenCL Dataypes ...... double ....
https://www.khronos.org/registry/cl/sdk/1.2/docs/man/xhtml/dataTypes.html

"Metal does not support the double, long, unsigned long, ....."

https://developer.apple.com/library...s.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014364-CH2-SW1


Very highly skewed toward computational shaders, but more general purpose computation has some holes in it.

Compute only is still supposed to be Metal from now on. You can use the compute features without the graphics features.

But Metal is tightly coupled to the ImaginTech GPUs. Again likely to see a continued skew toward games, 16 bit approximations , and video.

Vulkan , like OpenCL, has a wider hardware implementation target....

"
Float64 shaderFloat64 "
https://www.khronos.org/registry/vulkan/specs/1.0/xhtml/vkspec.html#spirvenv-capabilities

 

[antonis]

when a response begins: "This should be nominated for the worst argument award".. pretty much every human is going to read that as an insult regardless of author intent (fwiw)

Hardly an insult, more likely a big disapproval of the choice you made trying to justify apple's decisions. Well, I guess written language does that, sometimes. Apologies if you still think this was an insult.

Back to topic, workstations are not supposed to become un-upgradeable just because the internal parts do not "look so good" or fashionable. You see, that's where you (but most importantly apple) should try harder to see the difference between an iwatch and a workstation.

apple's whole schtick is based around good looking products.. none (as in zilch) of their products look geeky..
not sure why you think slots and expansion circuit boards are still in their design language ?

If you deprecate something from a professional market, you have to replace it with something better (hint: not something better-lookind). How's the upgrades to the nMP gone so far ? Right. Now these ugly PCI upgrades don't look that bad anymore.

heh.. my dream computer would have zero ports.. none.. no wires of any kind.. be about the size of a pea.. and reside in my body..
(just saying)

Yup, mine too. But let's discuss this in 20 years from now, shall we ? Until then, a farce of a laptop that mimics how the computers will be in the future without being relevant in the present does not interest me.

this one?

View attachment 638032

..you're joking, right?


(hint.. that's not a photograph and it's been bouncing around the interwebz since before the nmp was even released)

Of course I'm joking. As much as you did. I know this is not a photo, that's why I called it "pic". It's the same level of argument, though. Pretty low for my taste.

if you use apple computers then yes, they actually are out of the market.. do people really not realize this? does anybody actually believe apple is going to bring pci slots back to a mac?

all of you who think they will if you yell loud enough should take it to the next level.. organize a hunger strike.. none of you eat until apple makes another mac with pci slots.

I don't know if apple decides to get relevant to the professional market, ever again. Why should this stop anyone from making criticism for a company's decisions ? People have invested in apple products, in the ecosystem, why should we get the "shhh...things won't change, so shut up" attitude ? Are we supposed to applause apple no matter what ?

because their potential customer base increase tenfold.. probably more.
intel gpus are, i'm guessing, the most popular gpus being used in personal computers today.. not nvidia or amd.. with egpu, many/most of these users could choose to buy nvidia if they so desire.. (as well as mac users who have dedicated graphics.. they could opt to buy nvidia if they want)

Yes, in some markets. In some others, though, performance is of highest importance so unless PCI is replaced by something better/faster, I don't see it being deprecated (and it is certainly not deprecated for 15 years now, as you suggested). Usually, people buying iGPUs are not interested in a fast gpu anyway. I don't see why they'd choose to get an expensive external enclosure to boost their graphics all of a sudden. I can see, though, why a nMP owner would do that. If I hadn't sold my nMP, I would crave for a solution that will bring my GPUs from 2011 to 2016 era. But that's a very small market for anyone to get interested in.

 

[G-News]

all of you who think they will if you yell loud enough should take it to the next level.. organize a hunger strike.. none of you eat until apple makes another mac with pci slots.

maybe we should, because Apple under Cook has certainly done more for human rights and minority movements than for the MacPro.

 

[pat500000]

Mac Pros need equal rights too! Mac Pro had to struggle during civil right...they weren't allowed to use public gpu so they used degraded gpu. Mac Pro been mistreated by being packaged in a black rectangular shapes box. They had to be shipped with no keyboard...that's abuse. They got memories that could be upgraded but they had bad memories of fried gpu like Kentucky fried chicken.

 

[OS6-OSX]

Isn't it true you have been falsely presenting yourself as a "Pro" machine?

 

[sigmadog]

Mac Pros need equal rights too! Mac Pro had to struggle during civil right...they weren't allowed to use public gpu so they used degraded gpu. Mac Pro been mistreated by being packaged in a black rectangular shapes box. They had to be shipped with no keyboard...that's abuse. They got memories that could be upgraded but they had bad memories of fried gpu like Kentucky fried chicken.

Mac Pro Lives Matter?

 

[rawweb]

Mac Pro Lives Matter?

#TooSoon

 

[pat500000]

Mac Pro Lives Matter?

Lol not really.

 

[ActionableMango]

Here's a photograph of what it takes to get your slots and bays back.

Note that if you want easy access to the power button, headphone jack, and a USB port for thumbdrives or whatnot, that you need to have the cable clutter facing you.

In my case I'd also have to add an external Blu-ray drive, because I still use physical media like some sort of barbarian. Yes I know I'm probably in the tiny minority on this one point.

 

[lowendlinux]

Here's a photograph of what it takes to get your slots and bays back.

Note that if you want easy access to the power button, headphone jack, and a USB port for thumbdrives or whatnot, that you need to have the cable clutter facing you.

In my case I'd also have to add an external Blu-ray drive, because I still use physical media like some sort of barbarian. Yes I know I'm probably in the tiny minority on this one point.

Nope I use Blu-Ray as well as good old DVD's every day

 

[antonis]

Mac Pros need equal rights too! Mac Pro had to struggle during civil right...they weren't allowed to use public gpu so they used degraded gpu. Mac Pro been mistreated by being packaged in a black rectangular shapes box. They had to be shipped with no keyboard...that's abuse. They got memories that could be upgraded but they had bad memories of fried gpu like Kentucky fried chicken.

It is very fortunate that nMP is not a person, then. Otherwise Tim would be charged for crimes against humanity. Now he can only be charged for crimes against professionalism

Disclaimer: I'm just kidding.

 

[pat500000]

It is very fortunate that nMP is not a person, then. Otherwise Tim would be charged for crimes against humanity. Now he can only be charged for crimes against professionalism

Disclaimer: I'm just kidding.

Crime vs consumers lol

 

[Demigod Mac]

All the clues seem to point to a modular workstation design. Maybe not unlike those concept Mac Pros - perhaps something other than a stackable tower. Lego-like joinable cubes?

That is, if our mysterious visitor is credible. The return to RAID config in Sierra when Apple was previously making a beeline towards simplicity is certainly interesting.

 

[iMcLovin]

The return to RAID config in Sierra when Apple was previously making a beeline towards simplicity is certainly interesting.

Grasping at straws...one minor change of something apple never should have removed in the first place doesn't make a new Pro Desktop of what people actually needs more likely. I think Apple is done in the Pro business tbh. They dont sell servers anymore, they dont make displays anymore, they dont update the Pro anymore, and rumors about a long term of apple going away from Intel Processors all points towards Apple converting into a light weight consumer brand. Apple wants to make products of high production cost because of materials and craftmanship, not because of hardware and versatility - I think if it wasn't for the fact that Apple need to thread carefully, they would have stopped selling for the pro market a long time ago.

 

[koyoot]

Grasping at straws...one minor change of something apple never should have removed in the first place doesn't make a new Pro Desktop of what people actually needs more likely. I think Apple is done in the Pro business tbh. They dont sell servers anymore, they dont make displays anymore, they dont update the Pro anymore, and rumors about a long term of apple going away from Intel Processors all points towards Apple converting into a light weight consumer brand. Apple wants to make products of high production cost because of materials and craftmanship, not because of hardware and versatility - I think if it wasn't for the fact that Apple need to thread carefully, they would have stopped selling for the pro market a long time ago.

What defines pro business? Isn't Pro business earning money from films you create, music you create, apps that you code?

 

[ITguy2016]

What defines pro business? Isn't Pro business earning money from films you create, music you create, apps that you code?

Not this again!!!

 

[iMcLovin]

What defines pro business? Isn't Pro business earning money from films you create, music you create, apps that you code?

Well, then the iphone can be called Pro... I meant in the sense of what Apple once called Pro hardware. But, that term has become quite convoluted (much thanks to apple), but I think you understand what I mean...What everyone here is missing from Apple: high demanding hardware machines, not a piece of furniture. which you can customize for your needs, if that is either 3d rendering, audio production, high res motion editing (outside FCPX), Photoshop high res image editing or artwork.

 

[JimGoshorn]

Why is this starting to remind me of John Lennon's Watching The Wheels?

 

[rGiskard]

People here come up with all sorts of nonsense ideas and conspiracy theories when the plain truth is staring them in the face. Can we all agree Apple likes to make lots of money? And if we are rational about this, isn't it obvious that if Apple was making lots of money on the cMP, they would have been regularly updating it, and wouldn't have replaced it overnight with something almost exactly the opposite? Seriously, can we agree on that? Because it's kind of a litmus test for being able to have rational discussions.

Ok, you wanted a rational discussion, well here you go:

Please provide empirical evidence of you assertion that Apple didn't make enough money on the cMP. Furthermore, provide empirical evidence that the Tube sells better than the cMP.

What's that? Oh, you don't have any evidence? Ah, so the rational thing to do is admit you're wrong. It's the litmus test for a rational discussion.

 

[fusionid]

wrong thread

 

[edanuff]

Please provide empirical evidence of you assertion that Apple didn't make enough money on the cMP. Furthermore, provide empirical evidence that the Tube sells better than the cMP.

This always comes up, but if you go and do a bit of searching you can find some interesting data. By the end of 2014, IDC was reporting a little over 1M Mac Pro units sold from the 1,1 to the 6,1. Although Apple didn't release specific unit numbers in their mid 2014 quarterly report, Apple did attribute part of their increase in Mac net sales and unit sales as being "due to sales of the new Mac Pro which became available in December 2013". Vague, but material enough that Apple made mention of it. More interesting was that AMD had an increase in market share in 2014 that was attributed to the Mac Pro, and backing out the data led financial analysts writing in Forbes to estimate that a quarter million Mac Pros would be sold in 2014. There's more such data out there that can be found via Google, but the sum of it as has led people to assume that nMP sales in 2014 were up to 2X that of the cMP on a typical year. The counterpoint that is sometimes made is that the GPU estimates might have been due to pre-buying of Apple of the AMD parts and that's the reason we don't see updates, because there's a substantial amount of inventory left. Also, a spike in sales in 2014 doesn't mean that sales were sustained in 2015. In any case, the picture that emerges is that the Mac Pro as a product line has never sold particularly well and that the nMP represented a last ditch effort to invigorate the product line.

 

[zephonic]

This always comes up, but if you go and do a bit of searching you can find some interesting data. By the end of 2014, IDC was reporting a little over 1M Mac Pro units sold from the 1,1 to the 6,1.

............

In any case, the picture that emerges is that the Mac Pro as a product line has never sold particularly well and that the nMP represented a last ditch effort to invigorate the product line.

Interesting perspective. So, in spite of all the noise here, maybe Apple didn't drop the ball, and folks just never bought MacPros as much as they think they did

 

[flat five]

Hardly an insult, more likely a big disapproval of the choice you made trying to justify apple's decisions.

i'm not trying to justify anything.. i'm just saying the way it is.. pointing out the complete obvious.

macs no longer have traditional pci-e slots and haven't for quite some time now..
certainly long enough that someone claiming to need that in a computer would have moved on by now..
when i hear gripes of no pci slots around here these days, it comes off as a bunch of hot air..
ship or get off the pot.. it's been far too long to take this type of gripe seriously anymore.

Back to topic, workstations are not supposed to become un-upgradeable just because the internal parts do not "look so good" or fashionable. You see, that's where you (but most importantly apple) should try harder to see the difference between an iwatch and a workstation.

when i said 15 year old perspective, i was referring to your view on what a 'workstation' is or what type of computers are needed by most of the professional computing world.

times have changed.. computers are better now.. way better.. software is better..

whatever field you're claiming to work in, i bet you $5000 there is someone in that field much more skilled than yourself producing much better content than you're capable of and they're doing on computers you claim to suck for your particular usage..
you're in music, right? do you really think there are no studios using current generation macs for high end production?

(assuming you'll agree these studios exist)... so what do you expect me to believe? that apple computers are no good for professionals?

I don't know if apple decides to get relevant to the professional market, ever again. Why should this stop anyone from making criticism for a company's decisions ? People have invested in apple products, in the ecosystem, why should we get the "shhh...things won't change, so shut up" attitude ? Are we supposed to applause apple no matter what ?

huh? things are changing.. recognize the changes, see if the products still suit your needs, if they don't then get the ones that do.
simple.

it's the constant barrage of negativity... over and over and over.. day after week after year.. that leads me to realize "hmm, most of these people aren't even trying to find a solution to their problems and instead, just enjoy griping..".. i mean, yeah, criticize a company for making moves you disagree with.. that's fine and can even be healthy on occasion..
but look at the other side of the coin.. how do you expect someone to feel about these critics when the griping happens every single day for years on end?
do you really expect someone to think "oh, hey.. antonis has a great point.. the mac pro doesn't have internal pcie slots"
?