I want to preface this post that I say the following with all due respect to the various forms of 'pro' users out there. This is purely my opinion, but I am trying to look at this situation realistically.
I see a lot of fear of change in many people. Times change. Floppies have gone. CD drives have gone. They were jarring changes that many of us found hard to adjust to. But we have.
I can appreciate that many of you have worked a particular way with a particular system for a long time. And I appreciate that perhaps with the nMP, your workflow and setup may need to be different. But is it worse? Really, is it worse? If your main argument is that you can no longer stuff everything INSIDE your Mac Pro, then that's fine. Sure it's nice to have everything in the one box - but it makes little difference for those who rarely move their Mac Pro which is stuffed under their desk.
With the nMP, you can now totally replace and reorganise your entire storage, peripheral and add-on cards without having to get inside your Mac Pro.
It's just different. Not worse. And in many ways, better.
I run a boutique design studio. So I design things and code things. I am also a DJ by night, and I also produce music. So I use my Mac Pro for design, coding, virtualisation of various flavours of Windows, running Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Espresso, Logic Pro X, Ableton LIVE, Various Soft Synths, Final Cut Pro X, some 3D environment design/rendering and a whole swag of other things.
I like to think I use the Mac Pro for a pretty wide variety of 'pro' level tasks, except perhaps scientific ones. The new Mac Pro suits me to a tee. We run a server Mac Mini with 24TB of DAS for storage of the large amounts of media and projects. I just need a workstation with 500 - 1000GB of storage for current projects and my personal music and photos libraries. I'll still be running my Apogee external audio interface. So there's no difference there. And I'll still be running my external Time Machine backup.
For me personally, the new Mac Pro is a fantastic pro machine, that simplifies things, reduces footprint, frees up space under my desk and gives me more power.
Being a 'pro' doesn't mean things have to be 'complex'. If Apple can simplify things, even if it appears to be 'pro-sumer' in appearance. It doesn't matter. Simplification is good if it isn't at the expense of the end result possible with the software/hardware. I honestly do feel for those who were left with missing features when FCPX first came out. That did suck. But Apple has shown that they are committed to the pros by following up with updates. Not only this, they have completely redesigned the concept of a 'tower' computer. There's been a tonne of R&D and time spent in developing this nMP, and my hat goes off to Apple for committing to it, when they simply could have left the Mac Pro to die completely.
So it's nice to see that Apple has remained loyal to pros AND prosumers. Ultimately, if Apple can bring the power of Pro software and hardware to the consumer and prosumer, then the world is a better place. Power, speed, and features shouldn't be just for the few, but for as many people as possible. I'm grateful that Apple finds ways to simplify things so that more people can use and experience software and hardware that was formerly for the 'pro' users only.
Change is hard. But one of the greatest skills we have is the ability to adapt and change.
Scottie
