Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I'm not going to play the "what if" game. No use discussing something which doesn't yet exist.
thank dog you're not in the position to be designing computers.. we'd still be using only abacuses & fingers with that mindset.. (well, maybe.. i doubt the abacus would have been invented.. so just fingers)
 
  • Like
Reactions: JesperA
Despite what some have suggested in this thread I believe that DoofenshmirtzEI's post was well thought out and was quite relevant. I believe the following statement is both very true and often overlooked:

The prospect of moving that stuff outside of the box to where you're no longer constrained by space or arbitrary numbers of slots is awesome! Yes, there are teething pains, and yes, stuff is expensive right now. Same thing happened with damn near everything else along that path I laid out.

The situation with external "slots" is not good right now. I suspect that Apple skated to where they expected the puck to be, the pass got intercepted, and the external capability they expected to be there hasn't emerged yet. But it won't always be that way. Can't drop 4 GPU's in a bunch of slots? How about being able to drop way more than you could ever drop into slots into an external enclosure?

External hookups don't have to be ugly or sprawling. If you took the case away from a cMP, and just had all the components sitting there hooked up to each other (I have built computers that way for testing, it ain't pretty), it would be the same. So come up with a "case" around all your components that fits what you need, instead of having a one size fits all cheese grater.

External expansion via Thunderbolt does make a lot of sense for so many different reasons and Apple recognized this. The possibilities for overall system expansion increase exponentially when you move the expansion slots and storage devices off the motherboard and into an external enclosure.

As DoofenshmirtzeEI suggested the hardware to add external PCI slots and the price points to do so just came up short of what was likely Apple's expectation when the hardware was originally planned.

I am not trying to make any commentary on the success/failure of the thermal design or other specific hardware limitations of the nMP but simply to say that the advent of Thunderbolt type speeds for external devices changed their thinking profoundly as to the overall benefit of including internal slots in the Macs that they produced from that point forward. At this point I personally do not see expansion slots ever returning to a Mac.
 
I'm not sure id include the historical storage and ram costs (given theyre currently purchasable new), since they distort the picture - what we're effectively comparing is what we have now in the nMP, vs what we could have had, had the 6,1 been an evolution of the 5,1.

it goes both ways.. if it were currently the grater instead of can, we'd be looking at a 13-14 year old design which was made to house multiple low-capacity/slow HHD and disk trays and whatnot.

personally, i'd most definitely view that scenario as "apple has given up on the pro market" a lot more than i would think that with nmp.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rawweb
External storage expansion make sense if it's TB and (insert some other standard)
[doublepost=1467827403][/doublepost]
it goes both ways.. if it were currently the grater instead of can, we'd be looking at a 13-14 year old design which was made to house multiple low-capacity/slow HHD and disk trays and whatnot.

personally, i'd most definitely view that scenario as "apple has given up on the pro market" a lot more than i would think that with nmp.

The reverse is they could have updated the cMP to to 8 2.5" drives as well a PCI-E SSD and dual graphics.
 
  • Like
Reactions: flat five
I'm not sure id include the historical storage and ram costs (given theyre currently purchasable new), since they distort the picture - what we're effectively comparing is what we have now in the nMP, vs what we could have had, had the 6,1 been an evolution of the 5,1.

It's too reminiscent of the G4 cube, intended to command a premium for being compact and its nifty design, it was responded to as "it's less computer, it should be proportionally cheaper".

2012 vs 2013. We're not talking about a huge time gap. Re-read my CTO spec...Not seeing how you think the picture is distorted? When launched, the system was a great value. Is it today? Of course not. I don't think anyone is debating that. I'm just illustrating to show that the price differences really aren't as wide as certain forum posters would let you believe.

Base MP 5.1 cost 2499$ with 4 core CPU, 6 GB of RAM, 500 GB HDD(!), and HD5770. That is if I remember correctly.

You got for 2999$ in 6.1: quad core CPU, 12 GB RAM, dual GPUs, that were much faster than HD5770, and 256 GB SSD.

When MP 6.1 was announced it was one of the best values you could get for money in professional space.

Currently it is way overpriced. If they would update hardware to latest Intel Broadwell-EP CPUs, latest AMD/Nvidia silicon with HBM/HBM2 then it would have made sense.

Correct on prices:

3GB of ram...psh

Untitled-2.png
 
Despite what some have suggested in this thread I believe that DoofenshmirtzEI's post was well thought out and was quite relevant. I believe the following statement is both very true and often overlooked:



External expansion via Thunderbolt does make a lot of sense for so many different reasons and Apple recognized this. The possibilities for overall system expansion increase exponentially when you move the expansion slots and storage devices off the motherboard and into an external enclosure.

As DoofenshmirtzeEI suggested the hardware to add external PCI slots and the price points to do so just came up short of what was likely Apple's expectation when the hardware was originally planned.

I am not trying to make any commentary on the success/failure of the thermal design or other specific hardware limitations of the nMP but simply to say that the advent of Thunderbolt type speeds for external devices changed their thinking profoundly as to the overall benefit of including internal slots in the Macs that they produced from that point forward. At this point I personally do not see expansion slots ever returning to a Mac.
I have no idea, how I missed your and DoofenshmirtzEI's post. Great posts. Summarize perfectly what I was saying to people on this forum for months.
 
Despite what some have suggested in this thread I believe that DoofenshmirtzEI's post was well thought out and was quite relevant. I believe the following statement is both very true and often overlooked:



External expansion via Thunderbolt does make a lot of sense for so many different reasons and Apple recognized this. The possibilities for overall system expansion increase exponentially when you move the expansion slots and storage devices off the motherboard and into an external enclosure.

As DoofenshmirtzeEI suggested the hardware to add external PCI slots and the price points to do so just came up short of what was likely Apple's expectation when the hardware was originally planned.

I am not trying to make any commentary on the success/failure of the thermal design or other specific hardware limitations of the nMP but simply to say that the advent of Thunderbolt type speeds for external devices changed their thinking profoundly as to the overall benefit of including internal slots in the Macs that they produced from that point forward. At this point I personally do not see expansion slots ever returning to a Mac.
You forgot to qualify that with "for me". You like external expansion? Fine. Why do you think everyone else should hold the same opinion? Furthermore the cMP did not preclude the use of external storage. If you wanted to use external storage with the cMP nothing was/is stopping you. The opposite cannot be said of the nMP...want to use internal storage...you're out of luck.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Hank Carter
You forgot to qualify that with "for me". You like external expansion? Fine. Why do you think everyone else should hold the same opinion? Furthermore the cMP did not preclude the use of external storage. If you wanted to use external storage with the cMP nothing was/is stopping you. The opposite cannot be said of the nMP...want to use internal storage...you're out of luck.

Seems you like to speak on everyones behalf, for things they never said. He never said everyone should hold the same opinion. He's giving his thoughts on using external expansion rather than internal.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rawweb
Seems you like to speak on everyones behalf, for things they never said. He never said everyone should hold the same opinion. He's giving his thoughts on using external expansion rather than internal.
To the contrary my statement is not applicable to everyone...unlike statements from the pro-nMP advocates. Maybe a color analogy will help you understand my objection to his statement:

The color yellow does make a lot of sense for so many different reasons and Apple recognized this. The possibilities for overall happiness increases exponentially when you move from blue to yellow.​

nMP advocates seem hell bent on convincing people the color yellow is the only color that people should prefer.
 
To the contrary my statement is not applicable to everyone...unlike statements from the pro-nMP advocates. Maybe a color analogy will help you understand my objection to his statement:

The color yellow does make a lot of sense for so many different reasons and Apple recognized this. The possibilities for overall happiness increases exponentially when you move from blue to yellow.​

nMP advocates seem hell bent on convincing people the color yellow is the only color that people should prefer.
Nobody tells you what to prefer. Everyone of the "pro-nMP advocates" tells you to change platform if it not feeds your preferences.

That is "slight" difference.

Its been 3 years, yet people still rumbling on...
 
Nobody tells you what to prefer. Everyone of the "pro-nMP advocates" tells you to change platform if it not feeds your preferences.

That is "slight" difference.

Its been 3 years, yet people still rumbling on...
nMP advocates do. The conversation goes something like this:

cMP user: I dislike the nMP
nMP advocate: Why?
cMP user: Because it doesn't permit internal storage.
nMP advocate: TB offers external storage expansion.
cMP user: I want internal storage.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.


The refusal of the nMP advocate to acknowledge the want for internal storage expansion as a valid preference demonstrates their unwillingness to accept others preferences. If they did the discussion would go like:

cMP user: I dislike the nMP
nMP advocate: Why?
cMP user: Because it doesn't permit internal storage.
nMP advocate: TB offers external storage expansion.
cMP user: I want internal storage.
nMP advocate: External storage offers everything internal storage does.
cMP user: Except I have to have a bunch of stuff on my desk.
nMP adovate: Fair enough, it sucks Apple doesn't offer a suitable pro system for you.
 
From imposing your preferences on others, now you came into imposing your point of view on others.

I have not seen anyone here telling to you what you should prefer, only your PERCEPTION of it is telling you this. Whether you can see this illusion is up to you. Everyone tries to tell you that the problems you make with MP 6.1 because of the way you perceive it, can be done through workarounds.

Then, there are people who see the possibilities that MP offers. And yes, design of MP offers possibilities, despite the fact that you don't see them, or don't want to see them. You argue with them, and ridicule their point of view, because of your own preferences.

Stop making yourself more important than others. Talk about technicalities, not preferences. Your preferences and self defense make you think everyone tells you what to prefer.

Thank you ;).
 
From imposing your preferences on others, now you came into imposing your point of view on others.

I have not seen anyone here telling to you what you should prefer, only your PERCEPTION of it is telling you this. Whether you can see this illusion is up to you. Everyone tries to tell you that the problems you make with MP 6.1 because of the way you perceive it, can be done through workarounds.

Then, there are people who see the possibilities that MP offers. And yes, design of MP offers possibilities, despite the fact that you don't see them, or don't want to see them. You argue with them, and ridicule their point of view, because of your own preferences.

Stop making yourself more important than others. Talk about technicalities, not preferences. Your preferences and self defense make you think everyone tells you what to prefer.

Thank you ;).
LOL! You just proved my point! The lack of internal storage expansion in the nMP is not my perception...it is fact. The fact they're telling me there are workarounds demonstrates they're unwilling to accept my preference. If I tell you I don't like the nMP because it doesn't offer internal expansion and you try to tell me there are workarounds you are unwilling to accept my preference. Otherwise you wouldn't tell me about the workarounds (unless said workaround is an internal expansion). Sheesh!
 
LOL! You just proved my point! The lack of internal storage expansion in the nMP is not my perception...it is fact. The fact they're telling me there are workarounds demonstrates they're unwilling to accept my preference. If I tell you I don't like the nMP because it doesn't offer internal expansion and you try to tell me there are workarounds you are unwilling to accept my preference. Otherwise you wouldn't tell me about the workarounds (unless said workaround is an internal expansion). Sheesh!

Lets put it in words that even you will understand: Its my preference not to be attacked for having my own opinion that is not meant for anyone else.
 
  • Like
Reactions: koyoot
Lets put it in words that even you will understand: Its my preference not to be attacked for having my own opinion that is not meant for anyone else.
You're not being "attacked" for your opinion. You're being "attacked" because you refuse to accept others opinions.

If I say I prefer the color green telling me there are alternatives demonstrates an unwillingness to accept my preference. As a preference I don't need to hear about alternatives. Telling me about them serves no purpose other than an attempt to convince me some other color should be my preference.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tuxon86
I have no idea, how I missed your and DoofenshmirtzEI's post. Great posts. Summarize perfectly what I was saying to people on this forum for months.

It seems more independent contractors prefer internal storage and medium to large prefer more network storage solutions that allow for more collaboration.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Asking for more SSD slots I can understand. Anyone who is asking for 3.5" drive bays is doing it wrong. If you want that, seriously, get an external. It doesn't make any sense to include that as an internal drive, especially when to get any sort of pro performance out of them you have to RAID a bunch together.

I wouldn't be surprised to see 3.5" drives to start disappearing from PC workstations as well, and motherboards to start shipping with less and less SATA connectors. Complaining about internal 3.5" drives is like complaining about the lack of internal floppy disk drives in 1999.

Asking for 3.5" drives is like asking for a fast car with that is hauling a semi trailer behind it. Why bother buying such fast hardware to run it off slow drives that will bottleneck everything?
 
cMP: 1-6 internal SATA bays for industry standard devices; PCIe-based drives; external drives; local network attached storage; and the cloud.
nMP: 1 custom PCIe-based drive, external drives, local network attached storage, and the cloud.

The nMP design is a reduction in storage capability and flexibility. It compromises many use cases, hence the frequent complaints.

Maybe not your use case, maybe not the use case for every single person you've ever met in your entire industry, but there are 7 billion people in this world and many of us are bound to have significantly different needs and preferences.

------------------

If in 2013 the Mac Pro 6,1 was revealed to be a cMP with Thunderbolt, no Mac Pro owner's use case would have been upended.

There wouldn't be long threads with tons of people saying that what we all really need is a Mac Pro with reduced number of CPU options, reduced number of memory slots, forced-dual-custom GPUs with a dead-end future, no PCIe 3.0 slots, no SATA3 bays, questionable heat management leading to hardware throttling, and a $1000 price increase. In fact when I say it that way, the whole thing seems goddamn absurd.
 
Last edited:
Yes, internal storage bays don't preclude using external storage. But as in the example of our massive SCSI array, once you get outside the box, the box becomes annoying, which is why we didn't put some of the drives in bays in a case, and the rest in our semi-enclosure outside. If you're doing maintenance, you don't want to run into, "oh, that particular drive is inside the case, okay we have to shut down and open the case, and pull the drive". At that point a large case becomes an impediment, and we wanted to get rid of it. A huge tower case with only four bays is not attractive to most professional users who need mass storage any more. The drive sleds in the cheese grater were a godsend back in the day, but they're not enough for the future.

Liking internal bays is not an invalid choice. But not realizing that the future of high-end professional computing lies in getting rid of them, and insisting that Apple maintain that choice for you in the face of evidence that they're becoming dinosaurs, isn't realistic. I know people who still use DIPs in their work or hobbies, it makes sense for what they're doing. But they sure don't grouse about the fact that manufacturers who mass produce computers no longer use DIPs. No grumbling about "cain't replace individual memory chips no more". I'm happy to banish the DIP extractor from my tool bag. Happily looking forward to a future without arbitrary limits on bays or slots. I'm quite sure there will be niche manufacturers accommodating those who want or need older options, but don't expect mass producers to do it.
 
Asking for more SSD slots I can understand. Anyone who is asking for 3.5" drive bays is doing it wrong. If you want that, seriously, get an external. It doesn't make any sense to include that as an internal drive, especially when to get any sort of pro performance out of them you have to RAID a bunch together.

I wouldn't be surprised to see 3.5" drives to start disappearing from PC workstations as well, and motherboards to start shipping with less and less SATA connectors. Complaining about internal 3.5" drives is like complaining about the lack of internal floppy disk drives in 1999.

Asking for 3.5" drives is like asking for a fast car with that is hauling a semi trailer behind it. Why bother buying such fast hardware to run it off slow drives that will bottleneck everything?

Some people need to take their machine on location. I work in the movie business. Have you ever tried packing a nMP with all it's external expansion into an anvil case and operating it on location? It's very easy to do with a 5,1 where many items can be packed into a neat package and all you need to add is a rack mounted RAID.

Some companies do not allow external drives for security reasons. They don't want people walking off with a few terabytes of confidential data. Hence internal drives (and yes, RAID)
 
A huge tower case with only four bays is not attractive to most professional users who need mass storage any more.

Right. What are you going to get out of four drive bays? You could RAID four hard drives together to start getting close to acceptable speeds, but then you'll lose redundancy. I get maybe you want a large drive to store your iTunes Store movie connection, but this is a pro machine.

I just don't get pros asking for slow drives. For portable situations, the space you save haul along an external RAID array. They make portable ones. Problem solved. At your desk just shove it in a drawer or put it on the floor. Or put it on the network. There are a bajillion ways to solve this problem instead of demanding slow internal 3.5" bays.
 
Yes, I'm going to put my foot in it again.

I've been using computers for a long time. I learned to program on a refrigerator sized minicomputer that had to have the boot sequence keyed in from the front panel. I've lived through a huge array of different storage methods. The aforementioned minicomputer used terminals that had paper tape punches for storing user programs on. 8 inch floppies, disk packs, 80 column punch cards, 9 track tape, 5 1/4 inch floppies, Bernoulli drives, mini tape drives, plus all the more modern stuff. I've programmed on several different types of mainframes and minis, plus Atari 800, Apple II, original IBM PC, and so on. I've stuffed 100's of different types of cards in slots, from OEM stuff to custom boards to support bespoke lab equipment.

I say all that so that when I say that those who are holding on to the internal drive bay or internal slots are like those old car buffs who lament that everything is computerized these days, I know what I'm talking about because I have the same experience with computers that those old car buffs have with cars. I don't lament those old days though, because I really like the fact that the mechanic no longer has to spend several days tinkering with my car to figure out what is wrong.

I can't count the number of times we ran out of bays or slots trying to support some university project. The prospect of moving that stuff outside of the box to where you're no longer constrained by space or arbitrary numbers of slots is awesome! Yes, there are teething pains, and yes, stuff is expensive right now. Same thing happened with damn near everything else along that path I laid out.

Drive storage is expensive because of Thunderbolt. It won't always be that way, and the cost right now is pretty much irrelevant to most professional setups, which will eventually drive prices down for everybody else. I love the fact that when software/OS needs to be upgraded, IT can just upgrade a generic "can", and then just unhook the old can and drop the new can in, everything the developer needs that is for that individual developer is on external storage. The savings in developer time from not having to twiddle thumbs while stuff updates pays for the external stuff. Something goes down, IT just swaps it out, without time consuming pulling the computer out to test individual components.

The situation with external "slots" is not good right now. I suspect that Apple skated to where they expected the puck to be, the pass got intercepted, and the external capability they expected to be there hasn't emerged yet. But it won't always be that way. Can't drop 4 GPU's in a bunch of slots? How about being able to drop way more than you could ever drop into slots into an external enclosure?

External hookups don't have to be ugly or sprawling. If you took the case away from a cMP, and just had all the components sitting there hooked up to each other (I have built computers that way for testing, it ain't pretty), it would be the same. So come up with a "case" around all your components that fits what you need, instead of having a one size fits all cheese grater.

As for those who think the MP is going to get EOL'd, what do you think Apple is going to build its own operating systems on if they do that? Any developer who does not at least compile release versions on a machine with ECC memory is playing Russian Roulette. Sure you can do some work on a Macbook/Mac Mini/iMac, but unless you're building toy apps, you've got to grunt it out on a MP for reliability. Unless Apple starts supporting building code on Windows/Linux, there has to be a MacPro.

My one beef with the nMP is that second GPU. It's completely useless to a developer unless they're writing apps specifically for that second GPU. It just costs money and burns electricity. For me personally, the option for a second CPU would be nice (full test suite would finish before I come back from lunch), but my work doesn't need the extra memory that a second CPU can bring to the table. Ironically, some of my hobby work (my personal machine is a 2010 5,1) could sure use some extra memory, but I do have the option of buying a dual CPU tray for it and pushing more memory in it. I'd been hoping to be able to buy a dual CPU 7,1 instead of expensive parts for a computer that has no warranty coverage and will run up against EOL eventually. Maybe they'll release one this fall?

I love my 5,1. It's a great hobby/enthusiast machine. But I don't think that Apple should be holding back from moving forward with better options for professionals just to suit hobbyists/enthusiasts. No more than car makers should be making cars without OBD to suit the old car buffs.

You may now commence the flaming and telling me I don't know what I'm talking about.

Despite what some have suggested in this thread I believe that DoofenshmirtzEI's post was well thought out and was quite relevant. I believe the following statement is both very true and often overlooked:



External expansion via Thunderbolt does make a lot of sense for so many different reasons and Apple recognized this. The possibilities for overall system expansion increase exponentially when you move the expansion slots and storage devices off the motherboard and into an external enclosure.

As DoofenshmirtzeEI suggested the hardware to add external PCI slots and the price points to do so just came up short of what was likely Apple's expectation when the hardware was originally planned.

I am not trying to make any commentary on the success/failure of the thermal design or other specific hardware limitations of the nMP but simply to say that the advent of Thunderbolt type speeds for external devices changed their thinking profoundly as to the overall benefit of including internal slots in the Macs that they produced from that point forward. At this point I personally do not see expansion slots ever returning to a Mac.

another one of these threads. but I must post. about this whole, "external is good so you should stop just it" or whatever it is you are trying to convey. here's the thing as I see it.
#1. Thunderbolt is slower than PCIe. Thunderbolt has gotten faster, you just have to throw away all your existing cables, and buy a Windows box (Thunderbolt 3, USB C connector...). Where is Apple on that? but overall, Thunderbolt is still slower than PCIe (and PCIe continues to get faster).
#2. selling point: Thunderbolt. it allows you to keep adding more, more than you could ever fit in the cMP. that is true, as long as you are willing to spend thousands on external chassis that either want to be rack mounted (which the nMP does not) or they sprawl across a desk connected with a bunch of unsecured cables. and to point 1, this works as long as your total bandwidth needs are met by Thunderbolt and the port/lanes assignment architecture of the machine.
#3. Selling point: the nMP. it's much smaller, lighter, basically portable... and the collection of external drive enclosures PCIe expanders does what to that?
#4. even in a networked environment. even in a incredibly well networked environment backed by tons of high capacity, high speed storage, even there, local storage is nice. nice for a lot of reasons: media caches, test files and renders, temp holding, reference material, nice for graphic designers that download half the internet as inspiration at the start of every new project...

So, think, feel, believe, what you want. some people will think, feel, believe, differently.

Sure, someday, SSDs will be 8TB and the size of a postage stamp (ditto for 512GB of RAM). someday the equivalent of 7000 CUDA cores will be the size of a thumb drive. someday the interface for 8K HD-SDI will fit in the connector of a USB cable. And all that stuff will use 10% of the power it does now. But until that day, I'm gonna want some flexibility in my machine. I hope you don't mind.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.