MP All Models Mac Pro X,Y…WHAT IF…

[mattspace]

I don't understand the apple strategy about "macs"

They're making the Mac, and the Mac's business model into that of an iPad.

The 2023 Mac Pro might as well just be a studio with a thunderbolt chassis, but aside from that machine, the rest of the range is either iPad in paradigm, or literally iPad hardware in a different case.

 

[prefuse07]

Nice to see this thread is still going!!! Hilarious (and quite sad) to see the kool-aid, as usual, but nice nonetheless.

 

[MacHeritage]

So despite having 25% less bandwidth the initial numbers look like m3Max is equivalent of m2Ultra.

M3 Max benchmarks show M2 Ultra performance in a MacBook

Initial Geekbench scores for the M3 Max place the 16-inch MacBook Pro on par with the Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

appleinsider.com

Kind of makes their cadence annoying. You barely get the M2ultra out only to have a laptop chip smoke your 'Mac Pro'. Lame.

I am actually wondering if that is the whole reason there was no Extreme chip and they could have moved to M3 being the ticket on that front. M3 could technically bring an Extreme chip introduced with the the new Ultra just like they just introduced three new chips at once. The consumer chips and then the pro chips come next year.

I am glad these M3 perform as good as they do because people have been hyping it up for a long time now. Shrinks don't happen every year and the next one isn't slated until 2025 at the earliest. I remember back in the day when Apple would introduce new chips with the Mac sometimes every 6 months, totally changing everything, boom, just like that. No one complained that I remember.

We have become used to stale computing with almost no major speed upgrades for years at a time with Intel. We are going back to being closer to the G3-G5 days of rapid (every year or 1.5 year for these days) chip updates that can sometime obliterate what you purchased a few months ago. I personally like it.

It also makes the used market a little more viable for people who can't afford the latest and greatest.

 

[jimmy_john]

So despite having 25% less bandwidth the initial numbers look like m3Max is equivalent of m2Ultra.

M3 Max benchmarks show M2 Ultra performance in a MacBook

Initial Geekbench scores for the M3 Max place the 16-inch MacBook Pro on par with the Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

appleinsider.com

Kind of makes their cadence annoying. You barely get the M2ultra out only to have a laptop chip smoke your 'Mac Pro'. Lame.

Looking forward to the M3 Ultra/Exxxxxtreeme!

 

[Harry Haller]

I don't understand the apple strategy about "macs"

I don’t think Apple understands their strategy about desk

 

[Harry Haller]

I don’t think Apple understands their strategy about desk

What I meant to say before I was rudely interrupted was desktop computers.
The mobile offerings are excellent offerings regularly updated while the desktop computers sometimes languish multiple years without updates and many times are never meaningfully updated and become de facto abandon ware like the iMac Pro and 6.1 and 7.1 Mac Pros.

The regression of the iMac from amazing 27” 5K to 24” 4.5K and the $3K more expensive 14.8 Mac Pro with the same performance as the Mac Studio are other perplexing desktop choices on Apple’s part. The zig zag journey from brilliant 5.1 to absurd 6.1 to epic 7.1 to hilariously poor value 14.8 is the technological equivalent of watching a drunk navigate a sidewalk.

 

[Boil]

I just want to see a Mn Extreme Mac Pro Cube...

 

[Harry Haller]

I just want to see a Mn Extreme Mac Pro Cube...

The Studio/Cube might be the future of the Mac Pro going forward if the 14.8 isn’t a success for Apple.
The lack of 14.8 posts in a Mac Pro forum might be a clue of what’s to come for Cheesegrater 2.0.
Such a brilliantly engineered case.
What a shame.

 

[dgdosen]

I just want to see a Mn Extreme Mac Pro Cube...

M3 Extreme would sport (92 * 4) 368 billion transistors. Less than a couple of doublings to 1 trillion.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

The Studio/Cube might be the future of the Mac Pro going forward if the 14.8 isn’t a success for Apple.
The lack of 14.8 posts in a Mac Pro forum might be a clue of what’s to come for Cheesegrater 2.0.
Such a brilliantly engineered case.
What a shame.

Unfortunately they would take the wrong lesson from it.

"Hey, everyone hates this machine that we made full of obvious compromises and limitations like no 3rd party video cards. We didn't make a self fulfilling prophecy of a machine that drove people away, it must be because they don't like that kind of machine anymore!"

I fully expect the above bs rationalization from the derps left working in the husk of apple. And i'm sure some 'daring' lackey press will lick those boots, in addition to telling us what a 'success' the new system prefs are. 🙄

 

[mattspace]

And i'm sure some 'daring' lackey press will lick those boots, in addition to telling us what a 'success' the new system prefs are. 🙄

It takes courage to be such a lackey in public.

 

[avkills]

I am finally getting used to the new system prefs, but yes what a goat ****.

 

[ggCloud]

Its easy to find Apples lackeys but among the Mac community there are users who don't bend the knee for Apple.

I would say it's easy to find who the lackeys are, it's also them who are less technical in their reviews. There is a market for that sure but when it comes to Pro Macs such mediocrity of reviews should not be accepted and thus it's best to wait for real third party reviews.

 

[ggCloud]

Happy to see this, in between RX 6900 XT and Rx 7900 XT in Cinebench Redshift renderer.
No where near Nvidia but still much better than previous M2 Max. The GPU should be under 100watys so that's a great score.

Looks like the RT cores are doing work, not bad for first gen RT but needs catching up to Nvidias still. That was to be expected.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1721547784795639915

Here's a comparison of all GPUs in Cinebench:

Cinebench 2024 Scores [CPU & GPU] (Updated Results)

The new Version of Cinebench, 2024, benchmarks CPUs and GPUs in the popular Redshift render engine. We benchmarked all modern CPUs and GPUs and list them in our score overview.

www.cgdirector.com

 

[Harry Haller]

Impressive. Looking forward to the M3 Ultra Studio results.
4070-4080 performance would be very welcome.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Its easy to find Apples lackeys but among the Mac community there are users who don't bend the knee for Apple.

I would say it's easy to find who the lackeys are, it's also them who are less technical in their reviews. There is a market for that sure but when it comes to Pro Macs such mediocrity of reviews should not be accepted and thus it's best to wait for real third party reviews.

This is interesting topic. Something has gone on with the press and market.

Im basically down to 2 mac websites. Macrumors and Appleinsider. I’ve cancelled 9to5 (and their entire network) because they have gone too political. We used to have dozens of Mac sites back in the day. All with interesting non-frisbee tech analysis. We’re down to 2 or 3 depending how you count.

So we had a lot more sites when the market was way smaller, but the market had a lot of think different enthusiasts. Now we have orders of magnitude more Mac users and there are almost no good Mac sites left. What the heck happened.

I suspect the think different enthusiasts abandoned Apple. You see a lot more technical depth and interesting sites and work in the retro computing space than you do in the Mac space these days Imo.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Impressive. Looking forward to the M3 Ultra Studio results.
4070-4080 performance would be very welcome.

Im kind of crossing my fingers hoping for an extreme version too.

 

[ggCloud]

This is interesting topic. Something has gone on with the press and market.

Im basically down to 2 mac websites. Macrumors and Appleinsider. I’ve cancelled 9to5 (and their entire network) because they have gone too political. We used to have dozens of Mac sites back in the day. All with interesting non-frisbee tech analysis. We’re down to 2 or 3 depending how you count.

So we had a lot more sites when the market was way smaller, but the market had a lot of think different enthusiasts. Now we have orders of magnitude more Mac users and there are almost no good Mac sites left. What the heck happened.

I suspect the think different enthusiasts abandoned Apple. You see a lot more technical depth and interesting sites and work in the retro computing space than you do in the Mac space these days Imo.

Mac sites these days are are bad. The Mac YouTubers do a better job and even PC YouTubers who review Macs do a better job than Mac sites.

There's still a lot of Mac faithful on youtube and other sites but the Mac sites like MR, Mac world and 9 to 5 Mac are more your typical mainstream news, these sites don't go in depth

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Mac sites these days are are bad. The Mac YouTubers do a better job and even PC YouTubers who review Macs do a better job than Mac sites.

There's still a lot of Mac faithful on youtube and other sites but the Mac sites like MR, Mac world and 9 to 5 Mac are more your typical mainstream news, these sites don't go in depth

Could you share a few you like. I'm desperate to find a few decent sources.

 

[ggCloud]

Could you share a few you like. I'm desperate to find a few decent sources.

Currently for M3, there's only 2 that go in depth.

Has English subtitles

iPhoneDo is good. No fluff

There's bound be more later for non-first party reviews. The ones above are from Apple seeded units but they don't sugar coat stuff.

 

[vinegarshots]

It didn’t take long for me to want one after trying it. It’s really quite remarkable. Even if you only use it as a Mac monitor it is a great value for what it is, relative to a $4000 XDR.

It's not close to an XDR equivalent, though. The thing with headsets is that you can put a "4k" resolution on each eye, but you're not actually seeing the same pixel density as you would if you were sitting in front of a 4K monitor. It's actually more like using a 1080p display (on paper, and according to reputable tech reviewers), due to the magnification of the pixels and the distance to your eye. To get a 4k monitor equivalent (retina display density), you actually need something closer to an 8K resolution per eye.

 

[mattspace]

It's not close to an XDR equivalent, though. The thing with headsets is that you can put a "4k" resolution on each eye, but you're not actually seeing the same pixel density as you would if you were sitting in front of a 4K monitor. It's actually more like using a 1080p display (on paper, and according to reputable tech reviewers), due to the magnification of the pixels and the distance to your eye. To get a 4k monitor equivalent (retina display density), you actually need something closer to an 8K resolution per eye.

Pimax is going to be at 6k per eye in the near future, which is about the best in consumer headsets - and they're doing camera OR lighthouse tracking, with eye tracking, and standalone OR tethered to a real GPU.

This is interesting topic. Something has gone on with the press and market.

The fawning lackey to Apple Employee train has been well established - and though it doesn't happen a lot, it happens often enough that it's changed the market dynamics. Also with Apple destroying the 3rd party market for storage, ram etc, there's far fewer small advertisers, so smaller budget media loss its funding etc.

Hell even Ric Ford of Macintouch, which is probably the longest-standing mac-specific website just got burned by Apple, I imagine he'll retire soon.

 

[jimmy_john]

It's not close to an XDR equivalent, though. The thing with headsets is that you can put a "4k" resolution on each eye, but you're not actually seeing the same pixel density as you would if you were sitting in front of a 4K monitor. It's actually more like using a 1080p display (on paper, and according to reputable tech reviewers), due to the magnification of the pixels and the distance to your eye. To get a 4k monitor equivalent (retina display density), you actually need something closer to an 8K resolution per eye.

I definitely recommend trying it for yourself.

I believe the stores will have demos next year.

 

[ggCloud]

Hell even Ric Ford of Macintouch, which is probably the longest-standing mac-specific website just got burned by Apple, I imagine he'll retire soon.

Yeah I read that. Apple can easily make the SSD modules user removable like the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. That's so stupid, luckily in Commonwealth countries/Europe that crap would not be tolerated and consumer laws would come into effect. You basically have the right to ask for a new machine and none of that refurbished boards.

Backup your drives and encrypt them if on a Macbook, iPhone and iPad.

Pimax is going to be at 6k per eye in the near future, which is about the best in consumer headsets - and they're doing camera OR lighthouse tracking, with eye tracking, and standalone OR tethered to a real GPU

It's vapourware till it's released, it's still not out yet despite being announced last year. Just like the Vision Pro. I don't like the fact these headsets get announced 12 months before launch.


Primax can make promises, we have to see how it holds in real world testing.

 

[mattspace]

Yeah I read that. Apple can easily make the SSD modules user removable like the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. That's so stupid, luckily in Commonwealth countries/Europe that crap would not be tolerated and consumer laws would come into effect. You basically have the right to ask for a new machine and none of that refurbished boards.

Damn right - it would be a simple "can you replace this right now with the equivilent machine? No? Well money back, right now, thankyou."

Even the removability on the Studio and Pro is dubious, because you need a whole other Mac to reinstall them.

Frankly DFU restore should be an iPhone app.

It's vapourware till it's released, it's still not out yet despite being announced last year. Just like the Vision Pro. I don't like the fact these headsets get announced 12 months before launch.

Sure, but Pimax does an upgrade pricing thing where if you buy the one that's available now, its full retail price is deducted from the upgraded model when it is released and you exchange.

So you can get the best they currently have, and your investment in that is carried over to when the best improves.

Primax can make promises, we have to see how it holds in real world testing.

Sure, and that will be the critical thing - I expect the way it will wash out is PC-centric VR will be a lot better at 3D immersive things, and Vision Pro will be nicer for polish. In other words, the things you don't need immersive 3D for (floating 2D iPad screens in space), will seem more pleasant when done in immersive 3D on the Vision Pro, but the things you really need immersive 3D as the point of the task will be better in proper tethered headsets.