If the nMP is form over function, so was the old Mac Pro. It only had dual sockets. Why not 4 sockets? If it had a bigger case, most certainly they could have put in 24 cores back in 2010.
So I think we can all agree that the number of core counts can always grow, the only important thing is where you draw the line. So we should all drop the single socket vs dual socket argument.
About everything being proprietary I agree though. They could have put in standard GPU boards so we could upgrade them as long as they fit the thermal envelope and keep the size exactly the same.
No, it's a perfectly valid argument. It's not so much form over function as it is form versus function. As with any device, you make tradeoffs. Apple chose the form path of its new design, knowing that a tradeoff would be going to a single socket design. In their estimation, that was acceptable. Of course they could have also offered a quad socket system in the past, but that certainly would have pushed the bounds of size, cooling, power, etc. .
Neither of you, valid arguments. Going from dual to quad sockets takes you to an entirely different architecture. It wouldn't be an option, it would be an entirely different computer. And the CPUs double and then some in price each and then you double the amount of them. Then the operating system would need a redesign to match this new architecture. You also can't run regular Microsoft Windows on those CPUs either. It's a special version of Server only, for 4 CPUs:
https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/M...-R2-Datacenter-license-and-media/3119329.aspx $10K plus.
Okay, yes, not impossible, but what you are we talking about here, a Mac Pro with a base price of $20,000? Something like that. Is that how you defend Apple making what they made for the 2013 Mac Pro (avaiable in 2014)?
And lets clarify something here. I doubt most people are claiming the 2009/2010 machine were perfection. They were not. They were disappointing in lots of ways. So many things would have made those better: one more PCIe slot (I could use it), 6 RAM slots per CPU (the optimum configuration), offer the better CPUs that Intel sold (the ones with faster buses, more cache, faster RAM controllers, and simply more speed), make it rack mount friendly (those sharp edged handles were far less practical than the ones on the G4 machines the idea was appropriated from). Apple was also late in passing on large price drops from Intel's and and they could have brought at least on new round of video cards to those poor systems. That would have been a nice gesture, a sign that they cared at all. Something other than that pair of old cards that never saw a price drop for the 4 years that Apple touted them.
And what did our patience by us? The Mac Pro X. USB3 (but at slower speeds than on all the other Macs) and Thunderbolt ports, that do nothing for our infrastructures built around PCIe and FireWire. Did you know that the FireWire 1600 spec was fully ratified in 2008, it used the same connector as 800. Wouldn't that have been an amazing thing to see in the 2009 machines? FireWire 3200 was already being developed at that time as well. CPU dependent USB3 would have been so less interesting if those had come to be (and thunderbolt as well, $50 cables).
And the fundamental issue here is that Intel stopped making workstation CPUs. The last round of Xeons are optimized for servers more than ever before. Plus, every drop of performance gain that could possibly be coaxed from them comes with an increase in cost. This makes the 2010 3600 and 5600 series Xeons the best bang for the buck out there. So I'm mad at Intel, sure. But I'm mad at Apple for the silence and indifference. They could have done some something in those intervening years. We never got the best possible with that architecture or form factor.
So then, I can get a powerful Mac Pro X for all of $8000 or I can sink that money into three 2009 machines and their upgrades. Sure, it wont be exactly as fast (at running benchmarks) as the new machine, but I have 3 of them. And we don't use any of the 3 pieces of software that are optimized on the new machine so they do a very admirable job or it barely even matter as I have entire extra machines that let us split up tasks and efforts. 3 machines that work with any of my dozens of FireWire drives and PCIe cards and library of archives and backups residing on 3.5" drives that have dedicated sleds already attached to them.
And blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, we are just not impressed with the more expensive but not really faster mini Pro that doesn't have enough RAM slots, that abandoned most existing interface standards in favor of something that is practically still in beta but that is expandable because you can change out the CPU for, the same CPU? Yup, the next round of updates from Intel will be on a new architecture. So maybe the 2014 Mac Pro will be the one to buy, in 2016 as a used machine that I upgrade to the newest processors. We'll talk then.
