MP 7,1 POLL: The NEW Cheese Grater Mac Pro (nCMP). Hot or Not?

[2bcool]

If apple had made this in mat black, no one would think it looked like a cheese grater. apple just couldn't be arsed to add that final step in design. IKEA handles and legs .. hmmm Johnny must have been spending a lot of time in IKEA!

 

[Thysanoptera]

Im not sure if Steve would or would not have been pleased with the nCMP.

He would not. It was Macintosh, and not two times more expensive Lisa, that created foundation of Apple success, and it was Steve who got kicked out of Lisa project and led Macintosh.

The ironic part is, that in this interview Steve was talking about price increases and introduction of higher priced products after his departure, which almost led to Apple's demise, but the the journalist doesn't get it.

 

[TheSkywalker77]

Can't innovate anymore my ass.

 

[jbachandouris]

At first glance, I did think it was a cheese grater. That being said, if I had the need, and the cash, to buy one, I certainly would.

 

[Dr B]

It's 40 pounds!

And $6,000 USD!!!

Why so low on storage. Still need external drive storage

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Why so low on storage. Still need external drive storage

There is a Pegasus 2 drive bay that fits in the nCMP and holds 2 3.5” drives. See here earlier in this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-ncmp-hot-or-not.2183836/page-5#post-27424675

 

[widEyed]

I agree totally. I feel like they were annoyed with how people kept ragging on the old Mac Pro being design over function and went the other way to a malicious degree to almost send a message.

yeah because Apple develops new product designs in a fit of spiteful whims to dis their own customers. sometimes these things look better in a few months. seriously, why the strong feels about the appearance? most complaints from people who wouldn’t be buying it even if it looked as good as a Renoir by the sounds of it.
[doublepost=1559822138][/doublepost]

Why?.... because Ive and Cook can. They probably consider it a Tax for forcing them to make computers at all. They care 10,000% more about AppleTV and Apple Music.

Apple with Steve Jobs..... insanely great.
Apple without Steve Jobs.... just insane.

the rot set in when Apple appointed Angela Ahrendts (formerly Burberry) as head of retail at a new senior VP position i suspect. Always a marketing led company, Apple was marketing through the mindset and impulses of geek-in-chief SJ (and did poorly while he was learning how to play nice at NeXT). once they released the co-branded Hermes désigner iWatch bands (otherwise known as thin straps of leather with holes and a pin direct from a pre-renaissance workshop) i became very suspicious.

 

[Mac... nificent]

This is the ugliest thing Apple has designed in a long, long time.

That just means that they'll sell a ton of them...

I still remember what people said about the iPads when they first came out

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

[doublepost=1559748593][/doublepost]I found this in a tweet yesterday and cannot find the tweet again to give proper full attribution (View attachment 841024 to the originator), but thought it would be useful here:

Found the tweet and wanted to give the guy proper attribution:

https://twitter.com/jon_alper/status/1136029854590275585?s=12

 

[th0masp]

I saw one of these Youtubers linked throughout the forum here mention their excitement regarding GPU upgrade ability. He seemed very sure that it is possible to plug off-the-shelf GPU's into this machine. I was surprised to hear that because it looks like there's no way to supply a standard one with power in the usual way?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So here is a prediction:
https://twitter.com/StayPuftZombie/status/1136669619543035906

Prediction: The new Apple 6k monitor is so overpriced, many MacPro purchasers will buy cheap new 2017 27” 5k iMacs for 1499 (or less) and use it as 5k @apple branded monitors. For only $500 more than the new monitor stand, you get a free monitor & computer https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod..._imac_with_retina.html/DFF/d10-v21-t1-x825951

 

[alpi123]

I don't get the hate for the design. It's like a retro Apple product. People though the trashcan was so ridiculous and weird but when Apple introduced something that doesn't look modern it was hated again.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I saw one of these Youtubers linked throughout the forum here mention their excitement regarding GPU upgrade ability. He seemed very sure that it is possible to plug off-the-shelf GPU's into this machine. I was surprised to hear that because it looks like there's no way to supply a standard one with power in the usual way?

There is. We covered it earlier in the thread here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-ncmp-hot-or-not.2183836/page-6#post-27425201

 

[th0masp]

That is indeed good news if true. I was under impression you'd be stuck with those custom Radeon's within modules.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

That is indeed good news if true. I was under impression you'd be stuck with those custom Radeon's within modules.

It's an interesting topic. Because the apple modules take up 2 double slots. You could get a Radeon 9100x and it will only take up a single double wide slot. So if you need a LOT of slots, you might want to go the PC card route. Of course, without an apple blessed card you wont see the mac boot screens.

The reality is I think you get a 5 PCI card machine. Because the first 2 slots are taken up by the apple supplied video card, and then slot 8 is taken up by peripheral ports. So only 5 slots are free after that. But that's still great.

If you are trying to maximize slot use, I suppose getting a single vega Duo card makes sense as it is effectively 2 vega cards, and then it takes up 2 slots, and somewhat maximizes the slot usage that way.

Although we do not know this for sure, you could pull and not use the card apple supplies you and use your own, and thereby use only one of the 2 slots normally used by apple's cards.

 

[th0masp]

I was mainly thinking long term - GPU advances over the years will probably make Apple's offerings seem rather uninteresting in a few years time assuming they stick with their track record of not updating the MP hardware all too regularly.

The potential to e.g. put in a new generation of AMD cards (or even *gasp* a certain competitor's products) in something like four years time sounds awesome ... well, by current-day Apple standards.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So here is a prediction:
https://twitter.com/StayPuftZombie/status/1136669619543035906

Apparently this would only work with iMacs from 2014:
https://twitter.com/StayPuftZombie/status/1136676342047678464

Aye, apparently the 2017 iMacs no longer support Target Display Mode. You’ll have to find a 2014 iMac! support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592

 

[Quu]

yeah because Apple develops new product designs in a fit of spiteful whims to dis their own customers. sometimes these things look better in a few months. seriously, why the strong feels about the appearance? most complaints from people who wouldn’t be buying it even if it looked as good as a Renoir by the sounds of it.

I just think it doesn't look very good. There is a lot of things they could have done to improve the outward appearance. I mean it literally looks like a cheese grater including the top handles. The old PowerMac G5 design from 2003 looks better than this.

Now I know it sounds crazy for me to say, oh Apple did this maliciously. But the fact Jony Ive's design video for it wasn't even shown at WWDC (only on YouTube after the show) like it has been shown for every other product he has ever designed for them says to me that he's not proud of this thing. He doesn't want his name attached to it. But that's just my opinion, I'm not saying I'm right.

NVIDIA's DGX-1 has a nice fabric over it to hide the enormous intake vents. Looks really nice. Some fabric covering over this similar to the home pod would have really classed it up in my opinion.

Here is a photo of the DGX-1 in its tower and rackable cases:

 

[developer13245]

But the fact Jony Ive's design video for it wasn't even shown at WWDC (only on YouTube after the show) like it has been shown for every other product he has ever designed for them says to me that he's not proud of this thing.

I agree it doesn't look good. It's WAAAY "Over designed". If the structural "space frame" is so strong, then why does it need such a rigid enclosure? I understand the space frame forms the structure for 360 degree access. So poor Jony would be hurt if he couldn't stroke his "form and function" design ego. So I'm sure the little twit whined and cried until he could come up with something that meets his personal need to feed his ego.

This is why his video was excluded from WWDC. It comes off as "The Onion"-like when you consider buyers will be paying $2000 more to satisfy his maniacal ego.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I think the design is brutalist rather than elegant. Brutalist makes sense for this product.

You guys are missing the real culprit in price gouging here. Intel.

They want $7500 for a 28 core 14nm chip when amd is selling a 32 core 7nm chip for about 2000. So for 300% more intel is offering 87% of the horsepower.

Apple stuck with intel because they are locked to thunderbolt.

 

[Quu]

I think the design is brutalist rather than elegant. Brutalist makes sense for this product.

You could say this about a lot of their products and yet they always made them look nice. The iMac Pro for example. The old XServes, the old Mac Pro's (both cheese grater and trash bin designs).

Fact is, this machine is a steep departure in looks. All they had to do really was make the front nicer and change its feet, maybe change the handles a little. That would have given it form and function. Right now it is as you said brutalist, but it didn't need to be at all. The inside is a work of art etc the mainboard is really nice.

Now I'm not saying it'll hurt sales haha people who need this much power would buy it even if it looked even worse than this. It's the only modern Mac with PCIe slots and what it looks like doesn't really matter.

I'm just saying, objectively it looks like crap externally, that perforated front looks so bad. I'm just purely talking about the appearance, I'm not making any claims like Apple has lost its way, it won't sell or any of that stuff.

I think the design is brutalist rather than elegant. Brutalist makes sense for this product.

You guys are missing the real culprit in price gouging here. Intel.

They want $7500 for a 28 core 14nm chip when amd is selling a 32 core 7nm chip for about 2000. So for 300% more intel is offering 87% of the horsepower.

Apple stuck with intel because they are locked to thunderbolt.

You can get Thunderbolt on X399 motherboards. The titan ridge thunderbolt card works with Gigabyte, Asrock and Asus X399 motherboards (Threadripper, AMD).

And Intel opened the Thunderbolt standard. There are also X570 motherboards at Computex which launched with Thunderbolt 3 support baked right in. These are also AMD powered using Ryzen 3000 series CPU's.

Apple could totally do it and go AMD on the Mac Pro. But if they do that they'll lose AVX2 and AVX-512 instructions which significantly (and I mean significantly) speed up H.264 and H.265 encoding.

Keep in mind where Thunderbolt is concerned, the Cascade Lake chips that Apple is using in these new Mac Pro's do not have Thunderbolt built into them or the platform controller hub. It's a separate chip. Just as it would have to be if Apple chose to use AMD's Threadripper or EPYC CPU's in the Mac Pro.

And although Intel's retail pricing for the 28 core 2TB of RAM supporting XEON is $7,500 I suspect Apple is paying half that and that is why they are still exclusively on Intel even while AMD offers better performance and value.

The whole point of those MPX card slots is to provide an extra x8 PCIe 3.0 interface for Thunderbolt to be routed over graphics cards. On Threadripper 3 and EPYC 2 they support PCIe 4.0 which would double overall bandwidth and not need MPX at all (when it comes to data, the added power delivery MPX currently provides would still need some kind of custom interface)

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Thanks @Quu. It’s interesting that you think they will get the part for around $3750. If they price it around there it will be in the realm of tolerable.

The worry of course is the list price they show on the other 28core part sells for over list on the market.

As for the faster h.265 encoding doesn’t the T2 chip and their new fcp board provide acceleration? So perhaps the intel chip wasn’t that needed?

 

[Quu]

Thanks @Quu. It’s interesting that you think they will get the part for around $3750. If they price it around there it will be in the realm of tolerable.

The worry of course is the list price they show on the other 28core part sells for over list on the market.

As for the faster h.265 encoding doesn’t the T2 chip and their new fcp board provide acceleration? So perhaps the intel chip wasn’t that needed?

I think although Apple will be getting a good deal on the CPU's they won't pass that on to us and I think the deal is across all the Intel CPU's that Apple uses. I don't think they get 50% off on everything but it probably equates to that level of discount once you normalise all their discounts across the full range of processors, chipsets and thunderbolt chips that Apple is buying.

It's not uncommon for Intel to give rebates or discounts to OEM's that don't use AMD parts. They famously gave Dell billions of dollars in rebates to keep them an Intel exclusive shop.

As for the T2, it does enable hardware acceleration of H.265 video encoding. But to what degree I'm not sure and usually software only encoding can give better results due to the constant quality enhancements added to the encoder (x265 in this case) which is why people choose not to use the hardware based H.265 encoders present in NVIDIA GPU's - Quality vs Speed. The AVX2 and AVX-512 instructions are perfect for software as they're just ways to do specific math operations very quickly and simultaneously.

It's all very interesting. Also that FPGA based accelerator card they released, that is very interesting. With it not being an ASIC they can add deep functionality over time. Heck it could even become a H.265 encoder if they wished it and they could keep upgrading its quality over time with software updates as it's not fixed function like an ASIC based card would be.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Does anyone know where the nCMP will be made? My guess is the Austin TX site that made the trashcan mac will be making them. But do we know for sure? Could that be adding to the expense of this model?

 

[Ph.D.]

It may not be beautiful, but it looks good enough for an industrial design that has to be rack-mountable as well as floor standing (except for those duck-feet).

I even appreciate that they made the cheese grater even more of a cheese grater. It's like they said "OK, you want a new cheese grater? Fine! We'll give it to you in an unmistakable way! Here!"