I do much of my math stuff on linux as well, but remotely logged in from my mac. Do you have a Tesla equipped workstation for CUDA development?
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So, what are you going to do now?
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I do much of my math stuff on linux as well, but remotely logged in from my mac. Do you have a Tesla equipped workstation for CUDA development?
Many memories....
Started my computer days as a PhD student with severe Mac-envy.
My workroom mate had a SE30 while I got a 286 with Dos 3.3, no other program, and was told to make good use of it. Well, I had to start use it for writing a report, with the Dos editor on it, "edline" (line-by-line)...
After that rough start I went through more OSes than I can remember, including win3, OS7, win95, NT, IRIX, BeOS, Linux, on PCs, SGI WS and couple of odd macs (Classic, SI, 7300).
Ended up with a single computer to replace the three home built PCs I had at the time - a new MacPro 2008 with Leopard.
Hands down the best and most flexible computer I ever used. Spent 5 years and lot of money to get a system that included all the pieces I wanted.
Now I am starting to accept that the next one will probably not be a Mac.
Contemplating how to migrate my huge mix of esata, sas, firewire, usb, hdmi, displayport devices into something more easily handled (I had no better alternatives when I started out).
But my MacPro 2008 will always be a fond memory.
Started my computer days as a PhD student with severe Mac-envy.
My workroom mate had a SE30 while I got a 286 with Dos 3.3, no other program, and was told to make good use of it. Well, I had to start use it for writing a report, with the Dos editor on it, "edline" (line-by-line)...
After that rough start I went through more OSes than I can remember, including win3, OS7, win95, NT, IRIX, BeOS, Linux, on PCs, SGI WS and couple of odd macs (Classic, SI, 7300).
Ended up with a single computer to replace the three home built PCs I had at the time - a new MacPro 2008 with Leopard.
Hands down the best and most flexible computer I ever used. Spent 5 years and lot of money to get a system that included all the pieces I wanted.
Now I am starting to accept that the next one will probably not be a Mac.
Contemplating how to migrate my huge mix of esata, sas, firewire, usb, hdmi, displayport devices into something more easily handled (I had no better alternatives when I started out).
But my MacPro 2008 will always be a fond memory.
My MacPro 2008 was by far and away my favourite computer, easy to get into, add stuff, upgrade etc. Okay, not the most portable desktop computer out there but then for me that's what desktops are for. Apple showed their intent when they made an iMac thinner rather than faster or cooler. Who cares how thin a desktop is? When you're sitting in front of an iMac you can't even see that. Faster, cooler, thinner is good but thinness is the last on the list, not first.
I don't know about the video industry but the graphic design industry has pretty much moved on from Mac - to think we were the ones whose loyalty kept them afloat in the 80s. Okay, if they were cutting costs then I can see that the Pro group aren't a good return on investment at the moment but with the infamous cash pile, would it hurt to have a prestige model on the market? What do you any of you consider Apples flagship product to be at the moment? It certainly isn't a 3 year old MacPro... and it ain't prestigious anymore.
Can I be real with you? I'm no graphic designer so I have no knowledge in that area. What is about nMP that you can't do but can do with previous models?
At it's most basic: Make a living! My previous Macs have all been expensive but have given me tools that have boosted my productivity (run photoshop filters faster, run Quark/InDesign smoother etc).
The nMP involves me essentially ditching everything I have and starting again from the ground up. Obviously I've been through hardware revolutions before (SCSI to Firewire etc) but they've all seemed to be progressions rather than break points. This would be almost acceptable if it delivered the performance in graphics packages to allow me to work faster, earn that money back quicker but from all that I've read, for graphics (as opposed to video and hard maths), it doesn't deliver THAT much of an increase. Maybe Adobe don't support the type of hardware in the nMP to the best advantage, maybe Apple could have made the choice of GPU more widely acceptable. Perhaps I've got it wrong but at the sort of money I'd have to lay out it's a major gamble.
I see you got an answer but I'll jump in with my perspective. It's all about the environment in which the Macs are fitting. In 2008 the software environment was very different. We had software which did all the computation on the CPU and the user interaction on the GPU. Back then we needed beefy CPU options and we got them at good prices (specifically dual CPUs)
Now it's different. Apple were moderately smart in that they saw a decline in the role of the CPU, and increasing GPU computation. Graphics software has moved very rapidly to embrace GPU computation. On the face of it Apple made a smart move, but actually they didn't back it up with joined-up thinking. According to our vendors their GPU drivers are the worst in the business. Some of our software's GPU features just don't run on Macs, or nMPs for this reason. They overpriced the nMP with Xeons and ECC RAM which are a waste of money in a single CPU system (IMHO). They gave us no upgrade options, which is just infuriating in a fast moving industry where every client wants double what we delivered six months ago.
So thanks to that, our software vendors say nobody buying nMPs, which makes working through buggy drivers an unprofitable cause for them. A major graphics software vendor (one you have likely heard of) told us they don't even have a Mac Pro to test on. As a result, we get more work done on older iMacs (with nVidia GPUs).
Meanwhile, in the PC world you can pick up cheap boxes with 4GHz i7s and four or more cutting edge GPUs which are actually fully supported by software. Apple thought they were being bold and revolutionary with one CPU and two GPUs but they bungled it, and have been completely leapfrogged by PCs with vastly better performance/price ratios.
Gou
Gpu...it appears Apple is just so superficial...
I wonder who from Apple actually does the hiring and making decisions on how or what specs needs. I don't think Tim Cook knows anything about computers in general otherwise he wouldn't take these actions. Thanks for insight.
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Gpu...it appears Apple is just so superficial...
I wonder who from Apple actually does the hiring and making decisions on how or what specs needs. I don't think Tim Cook knows anything about computers in general otherwise he wouldn't take these actions. Thanks for insight.
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It's been amputated....
I think apple outsmarted themselves with the trash can mac pro. Why couldn't they just do a better design tower mac pro with a bunch of pcie 3 slots? Just make it easy to upgrade. I never understood their stance about using thunderbolt as the only expansion option. Now even that version of thunderbolt is behind the times. The tower mac was such a fun machine to upgrade. People just threw everything at it. Professionals loved it because it was so versatile. The people who did music customized theirs so differently from those that did video or dev work. You could just do anything with it. This is why is still so popular on ebay and craigslist.
Argh, Thunderbolt. It wasn't ready to do what needed to be done to compensate for the cutbacks. OpenCL wasn't ready. The world wasn't ready for weak CPUs. While we all just wanted to get our work done and ease ourselves into the GPU revolution Apple chose to make a forward-looking statement piece instead. Great for showboating, not so great for us.
As a result, like concept cars and sci-fi, it went from 'ahead of its time' to outdated and embarrassing without ever hitting the nail exactly on the head. The damage done by three years of irrelevance might never be repaired. They should have kept the cMP around and left the nMP for those who needed it (eg. FCPX users).
On the other hand I'm intrigued about Sierra's support of eGPUs and the curious return of RAID support. Perhaps there will be a nnMP, and perhaps it will be what the nMP was supposed to be. Might be too little too late though, and that has been Apple's motto recently.
From my limited perspective there is an awful lot of sense being written in this thread (unlike the snipe in other threads).
Unfortunately we seem to be generally agreeing on the demise of Apple as a serious pro computer supplier. I know they may bring out a nnMP that has more general appeal but, to be honest, I don't think their heart is in it any more. Just as a lot of the creative arts have moved on, I fear Apple has moved on. Shame as I think it will bite them hard as the creatives generated the content that made people want to pay top prices for the hardware. I totally agree: Apple these days is too little, too late... and that only goes to one destination. (Never thought I'd write a post with an "Apple is doomed" lean to it!
)
Unfortunately we seem to be generally agreeing on the demise of Apple as a serious pro computer supplier. I know they may bring out a nnMP that has more general appeal but, to be honest, I don't think their heart is in it any more. Just as a lot of the creative arts have moved on, I fear Apple has moved on. Shame as I think it will bite them hard as the creatives generated the content that made people want to pay top prices for the hardware. I totally agree: Apple these days is too little, too late... and that only goes to one destination. (Never thought I'd write a post with an "Apple is doomed" lean to it!
)
Apple will survive because of iDevices, consumer computers and services. It's days as a professional user's go to computer are probably waining. Can't innovate my ass seems to be more about making a point than going in a practical direction. If they really believed that a single CPU and dual GPUs was the future, they could have done that in a traditional form factor and really made a statement that Macs are the tools of today and tomorrow. Somebody at Apple really needs a slap upside the head for this one
I really love Apple's suite of connected apps, Music, Photos, Contact List, Mail, Calendar, Messages, etc. They keep my phone in touch with my Macs. Having a 2012 MP, 2012 MBP and 2012 mini my most recent purchase was an HP workstation.
The HP is so much more usable than the Macs. It has been reliable and it's much cheaper and easier to configure. Sure it's steel and plastic but I'm not one of those who get wet dreams over liquid metal and all that Apple conference BS. My next purchase will be an HP pro-level laptop.
Windows 10 easy on the eye and very easy to work with. Additionally Windows does not get fashion show updated every year causing your apps to require modification. W10 will be steady for many years. Macs are nice computers but their restricted designs, lack of user configuration and lack of a steady OS make them a no go for me. I work on the HP every day while my six-core MP hangs under the desk and does nothing. I am truly back in the windows camp.
The HP is so much more usable than the Macs. It has been reliable and it's much cheaper and easier to configure. Sure it's steel and plastic but I'm not one of those who get wet dreams over liquid metal and all that Apple conference BS. My next purchase will be an HP pro-level laptop.
Windows 10 easy on the eye and very easy to work with. Additionally Windows does not get fashion show updated every year causing your apps to require modification. W10 will be steady for many years. Macs are nice computers but their restricted designs, lack of user configuration and lack of a steady OS make them a no go for me. I work on the HP every day while my six-core MP hangs under the desk and does nothing. I am truly back in the windows camp.
It has yet to be seen how Microsoft is going to handle updates to Windows 10. They share a similar thought process with Apple on having a regular (annual?) upgrade cycle.
I think the largest complaint I have with the Macintosh is not with Apple but rather third party application developers. A 2009 Mac Pro does not become unusable at the point Apple discontinues OS support for it. It becomes "unusable" when application developers write software which requires the newer OS version which is no longer supported. This exists with any platform but OS X developers seem to move on faster than those for other platforms. Whether this is a good thing or bad thing is debatable.
I got my 2009 Mac Pro because Adobe dropped support for the Mac I had at the time. It is a vicious circle: Better hardware -> better software -> requiring better hardware.
Ive started moving some systems towards Windows.
Already replaced a mini with "older" windows hardware running W10 and its been a very positive experience thus far. (8months). As the rMBP come up for replacement i will look at potentially changing those and i wont be replacing the iPads at all.
Already replaced a mini with "older" windows hardware running W10 and its been a very positive experience thus far. (8months). As the rMBP come up for replacement i will look at potentially changing those and i wont be replacing the iPads at all.
Everything is going too fast. Maybe Apple and third party companies should slow down on upgrade requirement.
We know exactly how Windows 10 will handle updates because there has been a major update already in November and a beta program that runs all year round with no need for secret NDAs. The big beta updates are blogged almost every two weeks.
One update does not a pattern make. In fact one could consider the update equivalent to a Service Pack. The same can be said if you've decided to take advantage of the fast ring of updates.
At this time Windows 10 is too new to know how it will be handled over the long haul. Will Microsoft be releasing Windows 11 soon? Ever? Or Windows 10 be the final release and it will become something entirely different than it is today? I imagine the former will be more likely than the latter. If so how often does Microsoft plan to release a new OS? Every year? Three years? Five years? Microsoft is certainly more transparent than Apple but there are things we still don't know.
May I ask what config you got (other than dual 6's)? I am researching a single 6 but all those options get my head spinning at times. Too used to Apple's limited options
Sorry for the late reply, Jim (heavy work week). I use the computer for neuroscience lab data crunching, medicine and for photography. I could have sprung for a Quadro card option but I bought a GTX 980Ti instead later on (really for some gaming even though I don't get a chance to play often). I ordered the system with minimal RAM and no video card. I ordered the 1150W PSU version for scalability. I subsequently upgraded to 128GB RAM from Crucial. I stuck in a 3rd party drive caddy for SSDs in one of the 51/4 floppy bays. Oh, I bought the liquid-cooled CPU option.
The system is okay, except that it is noisier than the Westmere Mac Pro. That's my main complaint. On the plus side, the CPU and HDDs run a full 10 to 20 degrees cooler than the Mac Pro had them running at. The HP BIOS is a bit complicated to wade through (and you WILL need to wade through it to optimize your system). Some people prefer the Dell Precision systems over the HP for that. I would have sprung for the Dell but the prices were higher. I haven't had cause to use support but there is, of course, on-site tech support available should something happen. I would have killed for that when my Mac Pro developed an Ethernet issue once.
Ah, yes, software lock-in will be a problem for some folks. In my case I used DevonThink Pro Office extensively on the Mac (also Curio) but I managed to find alternatives to them (kinda). Let me know if there's anything else you would like to know.
I thought the Performance Advisor was there to optimize your system for the applications you have installed. So why would you have to go into the BIOS (which would make me very uneasy)?
Yes I have a Dell 7910 workstation 2x12c@3GHz water cooled with a Tesla K20 GPU. I prefer to sit at the computer I code with and run my code, and therefore I sit at the linux workstation and remotely run Mac, via VNC. My ambition is to phase out Mac from my Work and only use Mac at home. I am no fan of mixing OS's and apple is to unpredictable (both hardware and software-wise) to use and invest for work. By using Linux I know that I can do frequent hardware updates, choose any graphics card, spend less money for better hardware and install the programs I need with little or no hassle. The overall user experience is however superior in Mac, no contest.