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New 2011 Macpro date and specifications

nanofrog said:
I'm not sure what you're getting at here...

In terms of why there hasn't been a new model yet?

Or do you mean in terms why they would/wouldn't put Thunderbolt on the next MP?
Click to expand...

Sort of, I know there are no appropriate processors available right now, but I'm wondering whether Apple is gonna let their Mac Pro go through an entire year of Thunderbolt-hoopla, without getting an update including Thunderbolt.
I'm not questioning whether Apple is gonna implement Thunderbolt, I think that is very obvious, but that's a completely different discussion.
 
Apple seemingly can't even get their flagship iphone 5 best seller out on time this year, so I doubt the MP update has much importance to them right now.
 
xgman said:
In my mind the "supposed" performance leader should always get the newest speed updates first and then trickle down.
Click to expand...

You don't make Intel product policy. So whatever alternative reality you choose to imagine yourself in that is a perfectly fine expectation. Out in the real world, Intel doesn't believe that. They somewhat followed that approach several years ago. For the last couple they do not. Therefore, it is a dubious and grossly outdated expectation to layer onto Apple products.

The upper end processors always come out second now. They are larger and more complicated so do better with slightly longer cycles. The pricing on mainstream processors has stabilized so they are profitable ( no need to push out $2000 ) and with larger wafers Intel/AMD can get more product per run. So the profitablity isn't necessarily substantially less. They don't need stratospheric margins on high end processors to cover up loss leaders. So there is less of a reason they need to come out first to provide profit aircover.


It is not a quarter by quarter game to lead the synthetic benchmarks. There are going to be a bit a leap-frog from time to time where the next gen Intel arch comes out on the mid-range processors gets out in front of the the higher end stuff that releases later.
 
Metal Dice said:
... but I'm wondering whether Apple is gonna let their Mac Pro go through an entire year of Thunderbolt-hoopla, without getting an update including Thunderbolt.
Click to expand...

Apple isn't going to release a new product just to put a single I/O port or some singular feature 53 onto the product.

There is little return on putting a single doo-dad onto a Mac Pro. Or any PC. There are lots of PC vendors who tweak they boxes every 6 months. That is largely because what they are offering are undifferentiated commodity. There is little to no difference between Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty's PC so they have to resort to putting "blue spinners with flame decals" on the boxes to spin the claim there is. They are all in search of some part or doo-dad that their competitors haven't added yet and stumble to push it out quicker. There is no notion of added system value. Just another gimmick.

Just like it was not worth a singular USB 3.0 tweak last year, there is no large wroth in adding TB to last year's board. That's not a deep refresh nor does it max margin.
 
xgman said:
Apple seemingly can't even get their flagship iphone 5 best seller out on time this year, so I doubt the MP update has much importance to them right now.
Click to expand...

Apple has no need to hurry iPhone 5. It's not like the sales numbers for iPhone 4 have fallen off the earth. The same will be for iPad 3.

Apple might as well wait for the Ivy Bridge for the Mac Pros.
 
Metal Dice said:
Sort of, I know there are no appropriate processors available right now, but I'm wondering whether Apple is gonna let their Mac Pro go through an entire year of Thunderbolt-hoopla, without getting an update including Thunderbolt.
I'm not questioning whether Apple is gonna implement Thunderbolt, I think that is very obvious, but that's a completely different discussion.
Click to expand...
In terms of adding a TB chip to the current systems (without a new CPU/chipset combination), unfortunately it's not going to happen. It's just too expensive.

To make it financially viable, Apple will have to wait to include it when a new socket and chipset are being implemented.
 
Einz said:
Apple might as well wait for the Ivy Bridge for the Mac Pros.
Click to expand...

The projected arrival date for Ivy Bridge workstation class CPU packages is now at Q1 2013 (minimally late Q4 2012). So no, that would be a very bad idea.

Ivy Bridge is sliding backwards in time as much as these Sandy Bridge Xeons are. Punting to the next revision just moves things back a whole year. Mac Pro can't wait a year and be viable.
 
Apple is going back to the "Classic" desktop approach. Bring back the good old 68k and giving us wonderful SCSI and NuBus once again.

This will be called the "Macintosh IIIfx, yes, the THREE FX" -- and it will be coming out on January 24th, 2012, and it will look like this:

macintosh_iix.jpg


Retail price for the entry-level model will be $12,700 and it will blow you away with it's auto-eject floppy disk drive and wonderful startup sound.

More details to follow.

/endjoke.
 
WardC said:
Apple is going back to the "Classic" desktop approach. Bring back the good old 68k and giving us wonderful SCSI and NuBus once again.

This will be called the "Macintosh IIIfx, yes, the THREE FX" -- and it will be coming out on January 24th, 2012, and it will look like this:

Image

Retail price for the entry-level model will be $12,700 and it will blow you away with it's auto-eject floppy disk drive and wonderful startup sound.

More details to follow.

/endjoke.
Click to expand...
OMG! it's Teh Awesome!!!! I just knew good things would happen when Steve officially stepped down.

I hope it doesn't have a fan though, I hate fans. They're loud. It's better to lift up the computer and drop it on your desk to re-seat the chips every month or so, when they get too hot and expand, going <poink!> out of their sockets.

I miss the Apple ///. Not really. The ][ was awesome. The Mac Pro is the current ][ of Apple's lineup, the dinosaur they'd like to kill, and just neglect instead. <sniffle>

Don't worry though, the new former-Mac Pro's, will be stackable, rack-able, made out of legos, and running on Atom's instead of Xeon's. Yay! Yay apple.

Pardon me, had to get that all out. Every time I become depressed, I just check my AAPL stock and watch it continue going up, as the rest of the world economy tanks, and feel better about things. At least I can afford to buy good drugs.

Seriously, I dunno. I find the current Mac Pros to be quite wonderful in getting work done. Spending a lot of time worrying what will come next.. I've stopped bothering. If there's a new Mac Pro, great, if there is instead Mystery Product X which now fuses together whatever was left of the Xserve and Mac Pro client base, into some other thing you can keep adding CPUs to, in order to makes iPhone, iPad, iTunes, work with your fridge and coffee-maker instead, oh well, it's time to switch platforms for getting work done, when the 2010 12 core no longer suffices.

I hope this is not the case, I really hope there will be a refreshed "Mac Pro" but what I've been hearing for the past 6-8 weeks is that the end of the 60lb tower of aluminum which also acts as a space heater and is bulletproof, draws nigh.

We'll all find out, eventually.
 
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Expect any refresh to take place in 2012.. Maybe mid Winter to Early Spring we should see a new mac pro by then.. if not, then maybe the MP is not on Tim's "todo" list.


Schismz said:
OMG! it's Teh Awesome!!!! I just knew good things would happen when Steve officially stepped down.

I hope it doesn't have a fan though, I hate fans. They're loud. It's better to lift up the computer and drop it on your desk to re-seat the chips every month or so, when they get too hot and expand, going <poink!> out of their sockets.

I miss the Apple ///. Not really. The ][ was awesome. The Mac Pro is the current ][ of Apple's lineup, the dinosaur they'd like to kill, and just neglect instead. <sniffle>

Don't worry though, the new former-Mac Pro's, will be stackable, rack-able, made out of legos, and running on Atom's instead of Xeon's. Yay! Yay apple.

Pardon me, had to get that all out. Every time I become depressed, I just check my AAPL stock and watch it continue going up, as the rest of the world economy tanks, and feel better about things. At least I can afford to buy good drugs.

Seriously, I dunno. I find the current Mac Pros to be quite wonderful in getting work done. Spending a lot of time worrying what will come next.. I've stopped bothering. If there's a new Mac Pro, great, if there is instead Mystery Product X which now fuses together whatever was left of the Xserve and Mac Pro client base, into some other thing you can keep adding CPUs to, in order to makes iPhone, iPad, iTunes, work with your fridge and coffee-maker instead, oh well, it's time to switch platforms for getting work done, when the 2010 12 core no longer suffices.

I hope this is not the case, I really hope there will be a refreshed "Mac Pro" but what I've been hearing for the past 6-8 weeks is that the end of the 60lb tower of aluminum which also acts as a space heater and is bulletproof, draws nigh.

We'll all find out, eventually.
Click to expand...
 
WardC said:
Apple is going back to the "Classic" desktop approach. Bring back the good old 68k and giving us wonderful SCSI and NuBus once again.

This will be called the "Macintosh IIIfx, yes, the THREE FX" -- and it will be coming out on January 24th, 2012, and it will look like this:

Image

Retail price for the entry-level model will be $12,700 and it will blow you away with it's auto-eject floppy disk drive and wonderful startup sound.

More details to follow.

/endjoke.
Click to expand...

Nubus oh man
 
Metal Dice said:
I have a question.
Is Apple prepared to let their pro machine, go through the entire year of 2011, without having their, heavily marketed, Thunderbolt technology?

I know that the Mac Pro is capable of high speed data transfers, however it seems like Apple is promoting Thunderbolt as their, the-future-is-now technology. This makes me wonder, would Apple really let their pro machine go through this?
Click to expand...
Thunderbolt: A port that only lets you connect to other Macs and really expensive external hard drives.

Yeah, that sounds like a great future. :rolleyes:
 
Metal Dice said:
Sort of, I know there are no appropriate processors available right now, but I'm wondering whether Apple is gonna let their Mac Pro go through an entire year of Thunderbolt-hoopla, without getting an update including Thunderbolt.
I'm not questioning whether Apple is gonna implement Thunderbolt, I think that is very obvious, but that's a completely different discussion.
Click to expand...

thunderbolt is still in it's infancy, there are not a lot of peripherals - so im sure apple is in no hurry with the MP - especially since there is no processor yet. That rumor in july was one hell of a false start though.

I prefer the MP for capturing on set, my capture program sucks up a lot of memory, although im sure a newer MBP would do better (mine is 2006 intel)
 
Now that "clouds" have past and iPhones are updated, hopefully they will focus on Macs.

Or is AppleTV next? :/
 
puckhead193 said:
i'm down but i prefer the term "late 2011" :p
my future mac pro was supposed to be my birthday present from my parents back in July :eek:
If it wasn't for my matrox mini w/ max I would be screwed :mad:
Click to expand...

Thats funny! The upcoming Mac Pro was also supposed to be a birthday present from my parents back in July. :D
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; nl-nl) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

... tapered design
 
Does the 12-core usually ship in 2-4 business days?

That's what it says now... the others say next day available.
 
DisMyMac said:
Does the 12-core usually ship in 2-4 business days?

That's what it says now... the others say next day available.
Click to expand...

the 2.93 usually ships in 2-4 days, the 2.66 used to be same/next day.
so nothing unusual. (unfortunately)
 
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