MP 7,1 Most won’t be able to afford a new Mac Pro

[Onelifenofear]

When I was a 3D jocky at my previous job, I lived in Cinema 4D all day & all night for years. At the time, I had a 12 core cMP with a good graphics card and a mini render farm at work. I remember thinking very often (like every day) that there is, and never will be a computer fast enough to keep up with what I needed to accomplish. If I had a mythical workstation with 180 cores and 12 GPUs (which doesn't exist) I'd still be waiting on crap.

In my opinion, a maxed out 2019 mMP is STILL a slow dog for 3D jockeys and fast forwarding 20 years from now, the next Mac Pro loaded to the gills will STILL be slow. (for 3D stuff).

Thankfully I'm no longer a slave to that software or 3D content creation, but having lived in that world, I can say with utter conviction, that no computer, present or future will be "fast enough" to rip through a big project effortlessly. The waiting will always exist.

Well you mythical computer does exist - Mine has 5000cpu cores and thousands of GPUs

Most people and companies I know use farms for the actually final renders... Even on my 14K PC workstation with multi 2080s takes days or weeks to render 1000s of frames... send it off to a farm and it literally takes hours - 1 cpu per frame - most of the time it takes longer to download than it does to render.

In 20 years I would be highly surprised if this stuff is not cloud based. When we have 5tb 6g connections - everything will be server based. CPU and GPU speed will be redundant. We’ll all have access to supercomputers dependant on need. A home/office computer will just be a screen / AR / VR and internet link.
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Releasing a seemingly overpriced replacement for the already-six-years-old and overpriced Mac Pro 2013 was the “second stupidest” thing I think Apple could have done, ensuring very low sales for a new model. The “first stupidest” thing they could have done was not produce a replacement at all, ensuring very NO sales for a new model.

But still, prior to announcement, there was no guarantee that most wouldn’t be able to afford it...mainly (to me) because I wasn’t convinced we’d even see a new one.

All these comments (not just yours) about the 2013 and 2019 being expensive should have a massive IMO in front of them. I’ve done very very well out of using mine to make money in the past 6 years and the 2008 I had before that. Made about 20 TV ads in 6 years. Lots of TV show titles and corporate stuff. It entirely depends on how you use it. And the massive benefit of buying Apple if it goes wrong I can either buy a new one same day or get it fixed within a couple of days (Both these have happened - I drowned a 2013 cos It was near a open window so bough another then same day and claimed on insurance - 2008 went in for repairs - PSU blew - and came back then next day) . None of my other PC workstations have remotely have that benefit. I had a dell MOBO go on me and took 12 days.... that would have been 12 days not working. Potentially screwing a client over etc.

This thing WILL sell like hot cakes purely because of Apple Business service

 

[Zellio]

This thing WILL sell like hot cakes purely because of Apple Business service

LMAO.... I hope you aren't serious, if you are I hope you aren't the one giving others advice... Not even the 2013 mac pro sold well or even decently

 

[thevault]

This is not the 2013 MP

 

[Frong]

I delayed buy the trashcan MacPro hence the price was already less good as components was older and price not lower. With extensions/options I still bought it 6.2K€ but with 1Tb SSD for example. As expected it revealed had all the troubles I anticipated, the pointless double GPU, problems for extensions had regularly device connected not starting/mounted probably because too many, Im' stuck with the D700 graphic card which is often an efficient upgrade after some years, I wanted upgrade from 16Gb RAM to 32 and gave up because of the lack of ease of use to do it, I had problems with the Thunderbolt 2 ports that Apple made obsolete quite fast.

Now I cant say I regret, I knew most of it when I bought it, and the trashcan design has some adventadge for me.

So the new Mac Pro too expensive, for me eventually not, but frankly a starting price with a 256Gb SSD is a bit ridiculous. And yeah the starting price is a shock.

Now the design of imac is ok for a first computer, dumb otherwise, I still use my Apple 30" this is saying all.

 

[amedias]

Most people and companies I know use farms for the actually final renders... Even on my 14K PC workstation with multi 2080s takes days or weeks to render 1000s of frames... send it off to a farm and it literally takes hours - 1 cpu per frame - most of the time it takes longer to download than it does to render.

Indeed, the case for a monster under your desk does still exist, but it's getting smaller and smaller when you can either run jobs on a remote cloud, or a local cluster in the same building on the end of a 10gig connection.
If it's a render job or a big number crunch it's arguably better handed off to dedicated compute, so you can get on with something else while it runs. The only real use cases for big workstations like that are when you need to interact with something heavy in real-time like video or real-time VR, or if you can't offload due to some geographic or security implications.

I mentioned this in another thread but my' work' laptop is a lowly i5 with 'some' ram. But if I need actual power there's (several) clusters available, and the great thing about it is other people can make use of them too rather than having beastly machines under everyones desk, so we all get stuff done quicker, and if we need more you either schedule or expand the cluster rather than having to mess about with (small) upgrades to individual machines.

^ And they are small local farms which are dwarfed by proper cloud compute.

Also worth noting they're up for replacement next year, and we'll probably be able to significantly reduce the number of physical machines and keep the same capability, or increase capability massively with the same number of hosts. Those clusters are built out of mostly 8 core CPUs, but some shiny new 20+ core CPUs will be a welcome replacement and may even reduce the power bill again The bottom cluster may even be able to drop to just a pair of hosts soon!

 

[bpeeps]

As with the other poster I replied to, I think you’re missing the point I was making. Yes, Apple did SAY that...TWO YEARS ago. And then said...nothing. At all. For a long-ass time in the computer world. The engineering on the new machine looks pretty great, but still, taking FOUR YEARS to admit they screwed up, then TWO MORE years pass without so much as a follow-up mention— when something quick and barely more than a Hackintosh would’ve thrilled most “waiters” — it’s NOT confidence-inspiring. It’s kinda like the phone support person telling you they’d be back after a brief hold, then 14 min later you’re like, “Uh, are you still there?” You know what they SAID, but you can’t help but wonder if the call has been dropped, or if their shift ended and you didn’t get picked up by someone else...

It's Apple. They're quiet about everything for a reason. We all saw what happened when Apple pre-announced Airpower. I'd rather them show up to dinner with a completed product than to discuss how long it took to cook in the meantime.

 

[fhturner]

It's Apple. They're quiet about everything for a reason. We all saw what happened when Apple pre-announced Airpower. I'd rather them show up to dinner with a completed product than to discuss how long it took to cook in the meantime.

Except when they don’t show up at all and you’ve gotten everything ready and have been planning for the meal all week... and you would’ve rather known that they WERE actually cooking *something* or that they had gone out of town instead and you needed to pick up food yourself.

The overly secretive crap that Apple giddily clings to about everything is not always the best way to do things. Fun sometimes, but after four/six years of waiting, just dumb.

 

[th0masp]

I wanted upgrade from 16Gb RAM to 32 and gave up because of the lack of ease of use to do it

On the 6,1? Slide off the shell, pop out the RAM trays, replace memory, reassemble - not easy enough?

 

[fhturner]

I find it more concerning that Apple waited until their back was literally against the wall before they decided to fix the issues the 2013 Mac Pro caused for their Pro users. Even if the answer had been to simply update the internals of the 2009-2012 Mac Pro and continue selling that system with FireWire and eventually, USB 3.0 and PCIe 3.0, they could have added Thunderbolt 1/2 via a PCIe card (oh, the irony of the 2019 Mac Pro) but the lack of ANY updates to the 2013 Mac Pro (CPU, GPU, chipset, cooling system, PCIe bandwidth, SSD, 10GbE) during its six year lifespan just drives me absolutely bonkers.

Me too. And that worries me about ALL Apple— well, red-headed stepchild Mac— products, even and especially this new Mac Pro. We cannot say right now whether Apple is “back” with the Mac, despite the long-awaited revisions to MacBook Air, Mac mini, and Mac Pro, until we’ve had another revision for those products that hasn’t taken 4+ years while they’ve withered on the vine.

It also concerns and confuses me that, on the one hand, Apple acknowledged the Mac Pro 2013 problem and seemed to want to correct it to resuscitate that segment, but on the other hand, has priced it so high that I doubt it will sell much better than the years-old 2013 has been. So why attempt to rejuvenate a segment of buyers that already have been leaving in droves by making the product to lure them back incredibly expensive. Just more bone-headed decision-making at Apple if you ask me.

I’ll concede that the old days of $1999 and $2499 starting prices are gone; the 2013 took care of that. But I don’t see anything that makes a $2999 base completely out of the question (however unlikely); and I think $3999 should absolutely be doable for Apple with quite a bit of margin retained for them. Doubling the traditional price point to $6K is just stupid.

 

[Zdigital2015]

Me too. And that worries me about ALL Apple— well, red-headed stepchild Mac— products, even and especially this new Mac Pro. We cannot say right now whether Apple is “back” with the Mac, despite the long-awaited revisions to MacBook Air, Mac mini, and Mac Pro, until we’ve had another revision for those products that hasn’t taken 4+ years while they’ve withered on the vine.

It also concerns and confuses me that, on the one hand, Apple acknowledged the Mac Pro 2013 problem and seemed to want to correct it to resuscitate that segment, but on the other hand, has priced it so high that I doubt it will sell much better than the years-old 2013 has been. So why attempt to rejuvenate a segment of buyers that already have been leaving in droves by making the product to lure them back incredibly expensive. Just more bone-headed decision-making at Apple if you ask me.

I’ll concede that the old days of $1999 and $2499 starting prices are gone; the 2013 took care of that. But I don’t see anything that makes a $2999 base completely out of the question (however unlikely); and I think $3999 should absolutely be doable for Apple with quite a bit of margin retained for them. Doubling the traditional price point to $6K is just stupid.

the MacBook Air is the product that wouldn't die, however, Tim Cook stated that Intel was the cause of the delay in getting the new one released sooner. The Mac mini and the Mac Pro were both Apple's least profitable products, one low margin, one low volume. Apple let them take a back seat while the iPhone and the iPad were their profit drivers. The lack of attention to both in the interim is inexcusable, the mini more so given the low engineering effort that would have been needed to keep it up to date using the 2014 internal layout. The Mac Pro was more problematic due to the failure of the 2013 Mac Pro. Neither really stood a chance of getting proper attention as Apple had to focus on the iPhone. If I had to make an excuse, it is that I think Tim Cook knew he had to ride the iPhone wave as hard and as high to get the cash reserves overflowing because we all know the wave eventually crests and starts to crash.

The flip side is that the MacBook Pro, MacBook and iMac continued to get timely updates during those interim years.

I think Apple realizes just how far they pushed things now, and with Catalyst, they are poised to grow the Mac business for themselves and developers. It really does seem as though they are beginning to understand that the iPad cannot be a replacement for the Mac as I believe some actually thought. I guess we will see moving forward.

The $3000 expandable Mac (Pro) is a thing of the past. The Mac Pro is the future...and oriented towards PRO.

 

[nerdynerdynerdy]

I'll start with that at least this argument is better then calling everyone poor, saying that this is no longer the product for people who bought the same product, comparing the prices to old macs, or comparing the mac with its anemic 580x or even Vega 2 to a sgi workstation. With that said...

Okay then, why does he need to spend $45,000+ to do something that building your own xeon yourself could be had for cheaper? At what point does the core count outweigh productivity?

You know that company overspendature is the quickest way to company death? How did Telltale Games die again? Buying too many companies too quickly and lower quality.

You guys wanna act like spending $45,000+ is going to automatically give you some sort of net benefit without any kind of drawback, but then shout down anyone else who simply wanted an Apple desktop. Running a business doesn't work like that. If it did millionaires could easily become billionaires overnight.

Anyway, I'd love to know how many of you defending Apple and making these crazy comparisons were actually planning on buying this? 5 of you? 10? Because I certainly could considering I have an 18 core processor I recently bought:

Seeing as this post is largely about my situation:

1) I would never build my own computer - I don't have the skills (although I'm sure I could learn), I rely on things to work out of the box with decent warranty support and also I'm simply not interested.

2) which leads into point #2, which is that buying something similar from a good high-end PC manufacturer like HP also comes at a high cost - a lower cost than Apple granted, but I'm familiar with the Mac environment, and there is a cost to me in re-learning a whole load of technical details. I don't make any money out of getting up to speed in Windows and transitioning lots of software and projects; that process actually comes at a significant cost. Business expenses don't stop at purchasing physical items.

3) as I mentioned in another post, there are benefits beyond raw performance. Clients like coming to businesses like mine and seeing interesting computers and cool furniture. They don't come in thinking "this guy overspent on computers, he must be over charging" - trust me on this.

4) I may or may not buy the Mac Pro, I'll wait and check out the details when all pricing is set out in detail. However I most probably will buy the display to run through the Blackmagic Terranex pending reviews.

This is my situation. Others will have a different view and different priorities. But my type of business is and has been Apple's bread and butter for decades. And for me, I think this is a well judged product.

Of course we'd all love for it to be cheaper. But it's not.

 

[masterbaron]

The $3000 expandable Mac (Pro) is a thing of the past. The Mac Pro is the future...and oriented towards PRO.

I beg to differ ... the future is doing more with less - in this regard, I feel satisfied because I'm not doing less with my Mini vs my old setup - I'm doing more. That 600hp Bentley (MacPro) doesn't phase me because I have no roads suitable to drive on.

 

[William Payne]

3) as I mentioned in another post, there are benefits beyond raw performance. Clients like coming to businesses like mine and seeing interesting computers and cool furniture. They don't come in thinking "this guy overspent on computers, he must be over charging" - trust me on this..

I’ve seen this first hand. My brother works high end retail. Appearance matters in those places, even if it’s rustic. Rustic is funny it’s a style I like which humorously people will pay more for.

 

[Analog Kid]

Not even the 2013 mac pro sold well or even decently

How many did they sell?

 

[nerdynerdynerdy]

I’ve seen this first hand. My brother works high end retail. Appearance matters in those places, even if it’s rustic. Rustic is funny it’s a style I like which humorously people will pay more for.

On-set is another area where image matters. These days certain DSLR/mirrorless camera setups generate stunning footage. But these guys sometimes run into problems where the agency/client question why they're paying big bucks for a crew running a camera that looks like the one they have at home.

Lay people and clients often have pre-conceived ideas of what should be in a studio, even if it's not critical to creating the end product.

 

[fhturner]

The $3000 expandable Mac (Pro) is a thing of the past. The Mac Pro is the future...and oriented towards PRO.

While I agree w/ other points you've made, I strongly disagree here. It just simply does not require a $6000 computer to be "Pro". It hasn't for the past 2 decades up until June 3, 2019, and despite the laughably high price tag, it still doesn't take $6000 for a proper computer "oriented towards PRO". The summations of the components used in the Mac Pro (such as LTT did) that total around $3000, as well as other Hackintosh or PC solutions, prove that. Just because Apple is making the dick move of overcharging the hell out of its Mac Pro customers does not mean that it now takes a $6K machine to be a "Pro".

 

[th0masp]

I'll start with that at least this argument is better then calling everyone poor, saying that this is no longer the product for people who bought the same product, comparing the prices to old macs, or comparing the mac with its anemic 580x or even Vega 2 to a sgi workstation. With that said...

You seem to have forgotten about the o2 and Indy, both starting at around 5000 USD if memory serves, both entry level machines in the mid 90's, built to not the least compete with PCs and the Mac, easily outclassed on a student's budget unless you went into the five digits territory. Common reason to get: be able to run apps on their OS without totally wrecking the bank.

In the case of the MP an established product with some expectations attached was first turned into some kind of hipster's youtuber impractical idea of a workstation, then abandoned and now brought back - moved upmarket as a different class of machine.

 

[Gudi]

As someone who has been priced out of upgrading my 2009 iMac, 2010 MBP and even 2012 Mac mini, I find it amusing that people who used to buy the most expensive Mac Pro now think it’s too much money at $6000.

 

[Analog Kid]

I'll start with that at least this argument is better then calling everyone poor, saying that this is no longer the product for people who bought the same product, comparing the prices to old macs, or comparing the mac with its anemic 580x or even Vega 2 to a sgi workstation. With that said...

Okay then, why does he need to spend $45,000+ to do something that building your own xeon yourself could be had for cheaper? At what point does the core count outweigh productivity?

You know that company overspendature is the quickest way to company death? How did Telltale Games die again? Buying too many companies too quickly and lower quality.

You guys wanna act like spending $45,000+ is going to automatically give you some sort of net benefit without any kind of drawback, but then shout down anyone else who simply wanted an Apple desktop. Running a business doesn't work like that. If it did millionaires could easily become billionaires overnight.

Anyway, I'd love to know how many of you defending Apple and making these crazy comparisons were actually planning on buying this? 5 of you? 10? Because I certainly could considering I have an 18 core processor I recently bought:

https://imgur.com/UMmbhYX

The person suggesting that a design house build their own computer is lecturing others on business practices?

And are you saying people won't buy a computer because Telltale bought a company and now they're out of business? As hard as I try I can't find a logical thread to pull through that argument...

The quickest way to company death is trying to excel at things beyond your core competence. Building your own machine is for hobbyists. You have a certain number of hours in the day-- if you could make more money building up computers than producing creative content you're in the wrong business. Put a shingle out and start making computers for people.

If your business depends on your hardware running, you buy a reliable pre-packaged machine in a known configuration with rapid support contracts from dependable suppliers. If you need frequent upgrades to your hardware, you lease it, return it, and replace it with the new hotness on a regular basis without having to risk taking your hardware offline with an errant static shock or bent pin or improper thermal relief.

Want to go out of business quickly? Hire high quality talent and leave them under their desks trying to figure out which component failed in their hackintosh.

 

[flygbuss]

The person suggesting that a design house build their own computer is lecturing others on business practices?

And are you saying people won't buy a computer because Telltale bought a company and now they're out of business? As hard as I try I can't find a logical thread to pull through that argument...

The quickest way to company death is trying to excel at things beyond your core competence. Building your own machine is for hobbyists. You have a certain number of hours in the day-- if you could make more money building up computers than producing creative content you're in the wrong business. Put a shingle out and start making computers for people.

If your business depends on your hardware running, you buy a reliable pre-packaged machine in a known configuration with rapid support contracts from dependable suppliers. If you need frequent upgrades to your hardware, you lease it, return it, and replace it with the new hotness on a regular basis without having to risk taking your hardware offline with an errant static shock or bent pin or improper thermal relief.

Want to go out of business quickly? Hire high quality talent and leave them under their desks trying to figure out which component failed in their hackintosh.

Exactly. I prefer to create content and work on my projects instead of fiddling around with drivers.
I’m not getting paid for it.

 

[Reality4711]

Exactly. I prefer to create content and work on my projects instead of fiddling around with drivers.
I’m not getting paid for it.

A reason beyond all others for those who use computers as 'tools'!

If it don't work, dump it. Don't fix - dump it.

AND

Find something that works damned quick or go out of business.

Completion of contract/order is the goal. All of the 'seconds are money' stuff is mute when the screen is blank!

Function - reliability - form - ergonomics. All contribute to sucessful completion with happy client and happy production people.

To get an idea out there is a lot harder than having the idea, from experience - knowing the cupboard full of ideas (as a young man) was emptied over time without one being turned into a worthwhile result. I believe that one result would have led to the next so for you still producing good ideas the equipment/method and standards you work with are probably; in my opinion, of greater value than the idea itself.

Latterly I have seen many of "my ideas" turn up in shops, on the the TV, on Amazon etc. but I of course did not get that idea to bare fruit (my loss). In other words making good decisions about how and with what I produced my ideas was a basic weakness - so take a hint from one who knows. "Use stuff that works; use it to produce your ideas; do not let it use you to keep it working"...

Nuff Said & Rant over

 

[Zellio]

The person suggesting that a design house build their own computer is lecturing others on business practices?

And are you saying people won't buy a computer because Telltale bought a company and now they're out of business? As hard as I try I can't find a logical thread to pull through that argument...

The quickest way to company death is trying to excel at things beyond your core competence. Building your own machine is for hobbyists. You have a certain number of hours in the day-- if you could make more money building up computers than producing creative content you're in the wrong business. Put a shingle out and start making computers for people.

If your business depends on your hardware running, you buy a reliable pre-packaged machine in a known configuration with rapid support contracts from dependable suppliers. If you need frequent upgrades to your hardware, you lease it, return it, and replace it with the new hotness on a regular basis without having to risk taking your hardware offline with an errant static shock or bent pin or improper thermal relief.

Want to go out of business quickly? Hire high quality talent and leave them under their desks trying to figure out which component failed in their hackintosh.

Spare me the BS and quit twisting my words, building a PC takes 30 minutes. I wasn't suggesting a hackintosh either, as that's software related and definately something I wouldn't suggest for a business.

And no, the Telltale argument was against buying too much too fast without making enough to justify it.

I didn't buy my 18 core machine for ***** and giggles. I would've easily paid $15,000-$25000 or so for my 18 core machine but I put it together in 30 minutes and paid less than $4,000 and you wanna tell me that this is BAD BUSINESS?

 

[amedias]

building a PC takes 30 minutes.

Only if you already have the knowledge and experience to do it.

If you don't then you already need to sink hours into research and reading. And even if you do have the experience that doesn't mean you won't need to spend time researching new components to make sure they play nice together and will physically interface. Even when you've done all your research and get things that should play nicely together that's no guarantee that you won't have issue with bugs to iron out or uncover something after the fact.

Its not something that most people want to be dealing with in a commercial environment, you want pre-built, verified compatible and supported.

I'm more than happy to build, rebuild and hack anything together, but I wouldn't be doing that for any system that I need to do billable work on.

 

[Zellio]

Only if you already have the knowledge and experience to do it.

If you don't then you already need to sink hours into research and reading. And even if you do have the experience that doesn't mean you won't need to spend time researching new components to make sure they play nice together and will physically interface. Even when you've done all your research and get things that should play nicely together that's no guarantee that you won't have issue with bugs to iron out or uncover something after the fact.

Its not something that most people want to be dealing with in a commercial environment, you want pre-built, verified compatible and supported.

I'm more than happy to build, rebuild and hack anything together, but I wouldn't be doing that for any system that I need to do billable work on.

It's literally the same parts. I've built my own pcs for over 20 years, made software on them, done all kinds of stuff, sure it's a hassle if something goes wrong and you have to find it, but there's error codes that put up in led lights in bioses nowadays that make finding the problem a snap.

Also if there's a problem you gotta send your entire pc in or wait for a technician to come to your house/cubicle/office. How is that any better then just taking out the faulty part and inserting a new one? Unless of course it's the motherboard...

As long as you buy quality....

 

[amedias]

It's literally the same parts. I've built my own pcs for over 20 years, made software on them, done all kinds of stuff

Me too, and I'm also adept at sorting issues, the point is other people aren't and it's not a skill they are inclined to acquire.

Also if there's a problem you gotta send your entire pc in or wait for a technician to come to your house.

Remember we're talking about commercial environment here, most will have on-site support, and if too small for that a support agreement with a local company, yes you may have to wait for them to come on site but the chance of an issue (note issue, not necessarily failure) with a verified and supported setup is lower in the first place.

How is that any better then just taking out the faulty part and inserting a new one?

So now we're also assuming that not only do they have the skills to diagnose the issue, but they have to keep a stock of spare parts for their self-assembled machines? Or are they having to wait for new parts in the post or travel to a store to get them (and hoping they diagnosed correctly)?

This kind of things i fine for a hobbyist or a techy, it is not fine for a commercial setting. Building and supporting your own machines is great, but it's not a productive use of time or money in this environment for anyone except the edge cases.