Nothing wrong with that, but why not adjust ram and hd (or gpu) configurations mid-cycle to current standards? After all prices for these parts go down through a long life-cycle and it's hard to justify margins rising along with the age of a product, as perishable as modern electronics are?
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New MP on May 18
- Thread starter Murray M
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Nothing wrong with that, but why not adjust ram and hd (or gpu) configurations mid-cycle to current standards? After all prices for these parts go down through a long life-cycle and it's hard to justify margins rising along with the age of a product, as perishable as modern electronics are?
You never now. IIRC, Arrandale MBPs and the last iMac updates really had no "Ok guyz, Tuesday is it, for realz" news until Monday evening. Personally though, I think they will wait for WWDC so the MP's "new product halo" can be brightest with all those crowds psyched to do iPhone development.
EDIT: For a few more examples, the 2009 MPs had no warning at all that I remember, and I don't think anybody got word of the last Logic/FCS update until after the store had already gone down.
What's out are Evaluation boards/components, not massed produced just yet and available in the distribution chain. The pricing information was an announcement made by Intel and their development partners that the cost would be kept at no more than $10USD per port on the board. It's been awhile since I've seen it (here's one article on it; EE Times), and there's the likelyhood that the real cost will vary from the announcement information. But it shouldn't be that much, as the chip's are vapor in terms of either design or manufacture (it's been made, and presumably, the design on the evaluation products are finalized in terms of the hardware). Awfully expensive to run enough parts for evaluation and not use them, unless there's a major problem that can't be attributed to poor drivers (and not caught during the design validation testing).
I don't recall information on the cabling, but I wouldn't expect it to be high either. Otherwise it could slow or even prevent the adoption rate.
I also remember a lot of pundits predicting no new MacBook Pros for last year's WWDC. And yet WWDC 2009 had a huge MacBook Pro announcement. One never knows. And if the case for the Mac Pro remains unchanged there may be fewer people in the supply chain seeing any obvious changes to leak.
We getting very close to pulling the budget, purchasing some second hand kit and giving up on the MP for this year and possibly next.
It's absolutely crazy that you can find leak after leak about every other bit of Mac kit, but there's no useful info for those users that really need to do a bit of forward planning and budgeting etc.
It's absolutely crazy that you can find leak after leak about every other bit of Mac kit, but there's no useful info for those users that really need to do a bit of forward planning and budgeting etc.
I think everything boils down to this, but I do see less frequent Mac pro updates and inevitably, a dead end. If only they would simply license OSX out.
There isn't any real gain to Apple in updating those parts. A graphics card update requires an serious investment for engineers, testing, and reducing profit by buying something more expensive and losing purchasing power. As for memory and hard drives, well there is no standard in the workstation arena. It is usually just the lowest working amount, i.e 1 DIMM and a low capacity modern drive. Apple did this with G5s through 2008, just changed in with the 2009s. Really these things aren't going to sway most potential purchasers, so is of little value to Apple to change.
I don't know what is in place these days, but it used to be Intel, graphics card vendors, workstation vendors would guarantee the life cycle being 12 months so companies could buy knowing that for at last some time nothing new was coming.
Maybe somebody in Vietnam can give us a heads up on the MP. They seem to have the inside track on iPhones and MacBooks.
If you go to Cupertino and ask Apple for the tech specs on the upcoming Mac Pro, they will probably give them to you.
If you ask them for the tech specs on the next-generation iPhone, they will kill you right there on the spot.
Maybe somebody in Vietnam can give us a heads up on the MP. They seem to have the inside track on iPhones and MacBooks.
Exactly. There are so many leaks and prototypes of Apples most prized possessions lately including the new iphone, and the last batch of macbook pros and now the new macbook, you would think a little tid bit of info on the lowly mac pro would be easy to come by. Not. That tells me that may be because there is no imminent update period or simply nobody cares enough to leak any info. I hope I'm wrong.
(bleh . . .I'm getting myself all worked up again
)Exactly. There are so many leaks and prototypes of Apples most prized possessions lately including the new iphone, and the last batch of macbook pros and now the new macbook, you would think a little tid bit of info on the lowly mac pro would be easy to come by. Not. That tells me that may be because there is no imminent update period or simpley nobody cares enough to leak any info. I hope I'm wrong.
(bleh . . .I'm getting myself all worked up again
The only real rumour I remember at all was the one about Apple buying up all the 1600MHz 5400 series Xeons.
Granted, that's why I put the gpu in brackets. But RAM? HD Size? That requires no engineering investment whatsoever? 3GB/640GB looks pretty poor compared to cheaper iMacs or PCs. How would that not sway potential purchasers? Even if they don't leave the boat, is it desirable for a company to have it's customers hold their purchase for a prolonged time?
Yeah but its not like someone could just snag a mac pro out of a truck or the factory, Considering the computer weights as much as a vietnamese man I doubt we would see a leak.
Thanks for the levity! This thread (and the wait for the Mac Pro refresh) needs it.
Do we have our pitch forks and torches ready for tomorrow?
(or is it more like sporks and RoHS-compliant LED flashlights?)
Sure it is a good business idea up to a point. The impatient will finally succumb an purchase a current MP - helping clear inventory.
if none come out in say, the next month, how many of you guys would cave and get a current gen? i am trying to start a business and obv dont want to start it on old tech so i will wait as long as i can.
Not here. It's either buy new line or a second hand gap filler (and that could mean skipping the new line).
I resent the idea that as well as being totally ignored as a product sector we can be used to 'mop up' the end of line stock.
Not a chance, nobody here would be willing to waste that amount of money on out of date specified hardware. We always buy top of the line and there is no real top of the line in the current range.
It's not that the current gen is so slow etc, It's just not a good value. Better to go used or refurb if someone can't wait. But I suppose there are those folks who may not even be aware that new models are due/overdue, otherwise I would have expected Apple to lower the current lineups prices already.