This is a very interesting and educational discussion. However, aren't sales of desktop towers decreasing? I believe it is. So isn't that the market (in some ways the most democratic institution) is saying? People are voting with their money AGAINST having internal drive bays and easy internal expansion.
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No storage--Apple may have done you a favor!
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By the same logic they are also voting against keyboards, mice, and everything else that isn't on an iPad. (including external TB storage)
Not a good argument.
Strongly agree. People can shoot their mouths off in forums and many will. But people who put money down did in fact cast their vote of support in doing so.
Tesselator said:
Yup! I ran mine on a 333MHz Dec Alpha cpu with T-Base100 ethernet (around 100MB/s - bidirectional) and it all just worked - never a problem. I guess if someone is getting slow speeds it's a configuration issue - i.e.. pilot error.Either network configuration or collisions caused from routing arrangements.
In the drama department
I don't really see why the adversity to freejazz-man and opinions similar to his. I can totally see his point. Koolaid to me means the acceptance and belief of something that's untrue for and of the public promotion of the untruth. So that doesn't seem to fit in his case at all. Who can honestly engage in the denial of the facts surrounding the unit sales and popularity of external storage systems such as
Network Attached Storage (NAS),
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS),
USB Attached SCSI (UAS),
External SATA (eSATA),
USB3 Direct Enclosures,
FireWire (although not popular and now dead)
and so on and so forth.
Companies like DROBO, INC. have been able to rip off (err, profit from) thousands due to the wild popularity of and demand for robust external storage. And the Xserve type file servers he mentioned are just plain common-sense good practice. Every sizable sane artist pool on the planet configures like that - with the exception of the comp and edit bays. About a 265GB SSD and a 100 or 1,000 base network connection is pretty typical from what I've seen. Employed home or "DeskTop" artists and content creators seem to almost always emulate this model as well but instead of the Net Storage being shared with a pool of other artists in the company it's exclusive to their personal work environment - which allows then to select other interfaces - which more aptly scale for their needs and budget.
I thought this was all very well known? It's been the norm as I've seen it for the past 4 or 5 years at least. So why call the guy a Koolaider? I don't get it. <shrug>
Just considering Video and Still workflow
Pay attention to where the Ref and Managed files live.
Dude, you have run off the tracks and up the hill
nobody is saying that there is anything wrong with whatever geekazoid external storage anyone chooses to use
nobody gives a DAMN about that
look at title of thread
What we are saying is that REMOVING internal storage to FORCE EXTERNAL STORAGE isn't "Apple doing us a favor"
thanks for the lengthy diatribe, but staying on point might help
What? There's a point to these threads on this site? No way!! Say it isn't so...
Yup, exactly.
And as far as voting for no keyboard or mouse that applies too. But ya also need to consider those are different devices with a different purpose. So buying a sports car is not really voting against having a trucke-bed.
It will be funny if the next update to the new Mac Pro includes hard drive bays as a feature.
Personally, I expect this thing to cost a lot, given the workstation class graphics cards, high-end CPU, fancy case and it being made in 'merica. I was holding out for it but now I think that the iMac would be better value and just as expandable
Personally, I expect this thing to cost a lot, given the workstation class graphics cards, high-end CPU, fancy case and it being made in 'merica. I was holding out for it but now I think that the iMac would be better value and just as expandable
Actually, no. Growth has largely stalled. What are approaching constant number of devices sold which means shifting to primarily selling to fixed group of folks with about zero innovation needed in the form factor.
There was a period where the Mac desktop stalled, but by transitioning to Intel and gradually improving the iMac with more "desktop level" components sales returned to going back up over time. (not always up but not cratering either ).
[ this is dated by shows the 'turn around' http://gigaom.com/2010/11/05/the-ongoing-decline-of-the-desktop-mac/ ]
By 2010 Apple was selling more desktops than desktops and laptops combined in 2001. However, relatively speaking to all 2010 Macs sold, it was a much smaller percentage.
From the "box with lots of slots" viewpoint the sales are much more flat. If want to toss all-in-ones like the iMac out then overall PC desktops sales are much more flat. (and the Mac desktop sales without the iMac are down right dismal.) The highest growth sector in desktops is all-in-ones.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-pc-growth-far-exceed-102011146.html
Expansion in the notion of increasing the number of devices yes. The real force here is the user workloads do not have requirements ( not "nice to have" but real hard requirements ) that outpace the increases in technology. The storage available in a laptop is good enough for many. Supplemental external storage expands coverage to a dominate group.
There are also a continuing growing set of users at the very high end whose storage requirements are going faster than technology. Any fixed number of storage bays for them is not going to meet their requirements so they have moved outside. [ Completely non-news in the enterprise, big-iron market. Storage moved outside the main CPU box decades ago at this point. This is yet another one of those "PC market discovers the wheel and declares it a new phenomena" moments. ]
So the group is being pressed from two sides.
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Pot calling kettle black. The iPad has little to no relevancy here. If the iPad and Mini weren't vastly different Apple wouldn't let there prices overlap. the MBA is much closer to the transition that iPad represents. It has no mouse.
At the core motivations though, the iPad is a more affordable PC that is good enough that doesn't make crappy trade-offs. That actually is why there is substantive movement. It isn't because people downsized the imporant of keyboard or mice. It is that a keyboard or mouse was not the primary reason to use the computer. Most people use computers to get stuff done. Not to tinker at the hardware with the power off. You appear to be lost deeply in the swamp on non relevant aspects of what is driving market forces.
For some odd reason there is a tower-shaped area built into my desk. Net space a tower would take up: zero. In fact I would gain space since I was planning on moving a drive that is currently an external into an internal when I upgraded. Oh, and no, having a pile of things on top of the cpu is not an option. Not only would that stack be just waiting to fall it would block the heat from the trashcan. Oh, and if I did I would not be able to just slide out the machine to swap out a drive or access the back of it.
It will be funny if the next update to the new Mac Pro includes hard drive bays as a feature.
Personally, I expect this thing to cost a lot, given the workstation class graphics cards, high-end CPU, fancy case and it being made in 'merica. I was holding out for it but now I think that the iMac would be better value and just as expandable
Yeah, I had originally eliminated the iMac from contention for my next machine but now am looking at it again since the reason for the MP was internal expandability. A loaded iMac would probably be less expensive than the expected cost of the MP and all that you would need to add to it. Some back-of-the-envelope estimations put it that if the mid-range base model was any more than 1499 a top-of-the-line iMac would be more cost effective.
I would LOVE to be able to jump to linux. Unfortunately some things in my workflow do not make that possible right now.
Here, I updated that graph for you because it was missing the last two and a half years - making it completely irrelevant.
And what the title of the topic is say that apple MAY have done us a favour. And yes for some they actually did and for some they obviously didn't. The latter are the most vocal atm and trolling the forums. In the end the machine has to do the tasks you are buying it for.
What we are now seeing is that storage is more external either via NAS, SAN, some sort of DAS or even in that mystical thing called "the cloud". Companies with more than 1 employee usually have something called centralised storage. They need to store everything on that so others can get to the data as well. In some countries you have to because of privacy laws (they don't allow you to access the users data/profile even after they left the company, you need the users permission...try getting that when you fired somebody...). It makes absolutely no sense for these scenarios to have local storage. That's why in the past these scenarios almost never had any local storage and when they did, it caused lots of problems (like the aforementioned legal issues).
If these scenarios make up for the majority of Mac Pro users it makes sense for Apple going that route. And for that majority Apple is indeed doing them a favour. For others, they may not. For some it makes them reconsider their storage strategy (yes "strategy" because storage is a very complex thing) but others will (strongly) dislike it. To each their own. If you disagree then buy something else. If you do agree then by al means buy it.
The discussion is not about whether it is a favour to you as a person or, in your case, as a businessman. Unfortunately that's where this "discussion" has headed. This discussion lacks any form of respect. There will be people here with a different point of view as you can see here.
It also helps if you put aside your grieve because Apple is threatening your graphics card business with the new Mac Pro that seems to have custom made graphics cards. At the moment it is more trolling than actual discussion and staying on point. So do practice what you are preaching here and start showing some respect to others.
What does it have to go on top of Mac Pro? Mac Pro has a bottom too.
A device like this Mini stack is actualy wider than the Mac Pro:
http://www.newertech.com/products/ministackmax.php
7.7in x 7.7in.
But of course that actually solves the problem................
The current Mac Pro is 20" tall. Anyone who build as 8" x 8" cube (fits in same base as current Mac Pro) to stack the 2013 Mac Pro onto will still be 3" inches below the old height.
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Here, I updated that graph for you because it was missing the last two and a half years - making it completely irrelevant.
Whatever.
Wasn't in the mood to dig through 10Ks and 10Qs looking for the total 2011 and 2012 numbers. But since going to throw out bogus numbers...
End of FY 2012
http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-12-444068&CIK=320193
"...
Unit Sales by Product: ( 2012 / delta / 2011 /delta / 2010 )
Desktops (a) 4,656 0% 4,669 1% 4,627
Portables (b) 13,502 12% 12,066 34% 9,035
Total Mac unit sales
___________________ 18,158 9% 16,735 22% 13,662
.... "
Desktops are flat, but there are millions being sold ( even with the Mac Pro being updated... Mac Pro isn't going to change things much for desktops let alone total Mac sales. )
That's why when Apple effectively withdrew the iMac from the market from end Oct-mid Dec 2012 the numbers tanked for both totals (desktop and total Mac ). At 700-1,200K per quarter the iMac is the bulk of desktop sales.
Another stab at Mac Pro is far more a defensive stab to smooth out some of the hiccups in desktops that a growth move. It will either fill the bumps or they'll quickly move on to something else that will or put the desktops back on positive path.
you wouldn't have to stack, the depth is less than half of the old pro, you could put a raid behind the Tube pro in the same tower shaped area. Seems to be a lot of creative pros here that don't know how to be creative. No one is forcing you to put this new tower on top of your desk.
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You guys don't know how to interpret data. How many of those people bought notebooks because of that? The advantages outweighed the disadvantages for enough of them. If you could shoehorn more storage into the existing notebook models, do you think they would somehow object? There's always some external due to the need for backups, but the move to mobile solutions isn't a vote against internal storage. It's just a limitation imposed by form factor.
I don't know about the OP, but I have seen a LOT of noobs posting since Apple's "sneak peek" of the trash can, and its definitely not a coincidence.
There seems to be an Apple presence trying to extol the virtues of "external everything".
Personally, I won't touch that trash can with a 50-foot pole. Once I get some free time, I am going to build a Hackint0sh with all the INTERNAL storage I want, all the PCI-E cards I want, with the video card I want, and probably more than one CPU (once we get our hands on the trash can kexts for speedstep/sleep, graphics)
Personally, I won't touch that trash can with a 50-foot pole. Once I get some free time, I am going to build a Hackint0sh with all the INTERNAL storage I want, all the PCI-E cards I want, with the video card I want, and probably more than one CPU (once we get our hands on the trash can kexts for speedstep/sleep, graphics)
It would have been funnier if you said you wouldn't touch it with a 50-foot optical thunderbolt cable.
Yes, a rather sad commentary that Apple feels bad enough to unleash this squad of moles to sway opinion. They know horse poop when they see it
Yup. I don't want to pay extra for a bunch of extra SATA controllers I'm not going to use. I'm going to have an external box either way. I'm glad Apple is keeping it simple.
I also think it's funny that the same people who wanted to keep the storage internal because they don't want the clutter, are criticizing Apple for their design choice with the new Mac Pro. If you ever used a PCIe card, you had a bunch of cables sticking out, so using Thunderbolt doesn't really change anything. Plus this gives you the option of putting storage in another room, keeping your room quiet.
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I thought any Mac user would be used to this, Apple has always been the ones to remove items with others following years later. The floppy, then CD drive, now the internal storage drives. Really how much "less" are they giving you, a sata component is worth about 50 cents to manufacture, if they want to be lazy they can just keep giving you 6 sata ports in a PC tower as we've been use to for over 20 years. To accuse them of trying to make more profit by removing a 50 cent component proves theres always going to be someone wanting to complain.
I have PC workstations that I build myself and purposely removed floppy and then cd rom drives on purpose around the same time as Apple started to leave them out of their new machines. So far I've never felt "oh damn I shoulda put that $20 cd rom drive in" Last year I got a Synology NAS set up and all my machines have drives mapped to it over gigabit LAN. No more storage drives on machines now even though they are packed with sata ports.
As with any consumer product, you can choose not to buy it.
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I don't know about the OP, but I have seen a LOT of noobs posting since Apple's "sneak peek" of the trash can, and its definitely not a coincidence.
There seems to be an Apple presence trying to extol the virtues of "external everything".
Personally, I won't touch that trash can with a 50-foot pole. Once I get some free time, I am going to build a Hackint0sh with all the INTERNAL storage I want, all the PCI-E cards I want, with the video card I want, and probably more than one CPU (once we get our hands on the trash can kexts for speedstep/sleep, graphics)
whatever presence that is it aint as strong as the trolls on this APPLE/MAC themed forum where their 50 foot pole rule on everything Apple everything except discussion forums.
It would have been funnier if you said you wouldn't touch it with a 50-foot optical thunderbolt cable.
LOL.
Yeah, but then someone would probably jump on debating the thunderbolt signal degradation percentage in cables 50 feet or greater.....
Yes, I am really annoyed at those people that hold a gun on me if I connect an external device to a tower.
whatever presence that is it aint as strong as the trolls on this APPLE/MAC themed forum where their 50 foot pole rule on everything Apple everything except discussion forums.
Yes I want a trash can as my avatar, and post all day in a thread about said trash can. The trolls are strong in this one. But they always die.
Umm, that's like ... ummm.... a HUGE FREAKING LIMITATION! i.e a complete dealbreaker.
File speeds over gigabit ethernet are pathetic.
I agree, a single power cord and 1 thunderbolt cable to hook up a raid is nothing compared to some video I/O breakout cables:
http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/5278922/connections.jpg