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Surely Apple has employees who read these forums...
- Thread starter aaronhead14
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Just off the top of my head:
NVidia cards. (My next purchase - the world runs on CUDA, regardless of what Apple thinks.)
E-Sata cards (Connects my Qx2 backup box)
USB 3 cards (Thumb drives - you may not use them, but others do)
When the nMP came put, I calculated out what it would cost to replace my current MP. To replace missing functionality in the nMP, I'd need the following:
1 4 bay external enclosure to hold my hard drives.
1 4 bay external enclosure to hold my back up system (there were no TB to E-Sata cables at the time)
1 1 bay external enclosure to hold my Blu-Ray player.
1 external dock to connect all of my external devices. (Keyboard, Mouse, scanner, PowerMate, thumb drives, charging adapters for my iPad & iPhone)
1 additional power connector to power all of these external devices.
How many additional points of failure do you see there?
That is an additional $2,000+ to the cost of the nMP - before memory upgrades.
I view the nMP as a TCO fail if you already own a 5,1 cMP.
I wrote they should be putting nVIDIA cards as well, you should read posts more carefully
Useless with USB-C ports. More bandwith, more everything. Every few years you have to adapt, this isn't something you can't control and if you've been around for some time you should have noticed that this is what happens one day or another.
And until here i do understand your concerns, even if you had 4 USB 3 ports and 6 (six) TB ports, but then i read
And i do think you can't be serious, in all fairness. To finish:
Only 1: you being too picky.
It's actually easier to design a system with replaceable parts than miniaturizing everything.
Because I don't want to pay Apple's hyper inflated prices for what has become a commodity item?
Because I want to be able to walk into a store and buy a replacement drive if the internal SSD fails?
Do you seriously believe that the proprietary connector is the reason why the SSD is so fast?
There are other SSD on the market that are just as fast. Some are made by Samsung, who also happens to make a lot of the SSD used in Macs.
Because I don't want an octopus of a system sitting on my desk.
Because some business do not allow external drive for security reasons.
Because external drives are more expensive.
Maybe if you are an amateur.
A GPU card running at full speed.
So, your solution is to plug an external PCI-cage into a USB-C port and run it with reduced bandwidth for an additional expense and cable salad? That's sounds brilliant.
That product is SOOO last decade, can you understand this?
Captain Obvious strikes again
Keep up the good work, kid.
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You sound like MicroSoft from 30 years ago. Really, who needs more than 640k?
I suspect I've been using computers personally and professionally a lot longer than you. Its been my observation that it does no good to upgrade 1 portion of your workflow if the throughput doesn't increase for the entire system.
I upgrade when TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) says there is a reason to, not because someone has released a solution looking for a problem to solve and that is all TB and USB C is at the moment. USB C might be around for a while, but TB has the stench of firewire on it. You remember how firewire was going to change storage issues forever, don't you?
TB & USB-C don't actually improve my workflow - and that is what drives my upgrade decisions. Part of the TCO calculus is determining what technology is a fad, and what is actual progress. That is why I haven't upgraded my iPad 2 or my iPhone 5. Apple hasn't added anything to either product that justifies me buying a newer version (again, based on what I actually use them for). It's also why I added broadcom chips to my 1st Gen ATV rather than waste money on later versions of ATV.
Looking at your sig, my workflow for my hobbies would melt your laptop internals (It certainly melted my MBP, twice). Apple laptops are ok, as long as one isn't doing anything CPU intensive, or anything that needs a lot of memory. But that is why I have a cMP. It would also be risky on a nMP due to the themal decisions that Sir Idiot Boy made. You can peg the CPUs or the GPUs, but not both at the same time.
My cMP is a hobby machine. I don't do anything with it "professionally". But my hobbies require a lot of computer horse power. Power that only a MP can deliver.
I didn't replace my (maxed out) cMP 1,1 until the software caught up to the capabilities of the hardware, which was only about 3 years ago. By your way of thinking, I should have wasted money on a 3,1 which wouldn't have actually improved my workflow.
My workflow is all about cores & ram. Especially when I am running multiple memory and core intensive programs at the same time. I've only got 32 Gb of ram right now (and I am STILL memory constrained), I'll be adding more next month, and each additional month until I am no longer memory constrained, or I max out, whichever comes 1st.
As a side note, I don't grasp why people here think multi-core aware software is still exotic, almost every piece of software I own outside of utilities and legacy apps are multi-core aware, even the free ones.
And then there is that other mission-critical application, iTunes. (1,300+ movies, 1,600+ tv shows, 3,000 CDs fed to a 1st Gen ATV (with a broadcom chip for 1080 goodness) - but I am sure you don't believe that either - when I moved from OS/2 to OSX, the carnival barker running Apple was pushing the theme: Make your computer the hub of your digital lifestyle. I went all in on that, which is why I ignore cloud services - I have my own.)
And one more thing.....
Steam (Plus Steam Link, Controller & yet another Cat6 cable joining the collection running through the house; 1 for Steam Link, 1 for each Apple TV - wireless doesn't cut it for either one.). Yes, I game on my computer too.
Long term, I am just like all the other people using a MP. I am planning an exit strategy; from where I sit, Apple is on a slide. They are putting all of their eggs in the iToys basket, which means that with 1 misstep, Apple becomes a much smaller company.
What is your issue with me having a Blu-Ray player in my cMP? I like Blu-Ray. Digital delivery isn't an option here, especially when physical media is half the cost of the product in the iTunes store (or less - sometimes A LOT less). Not to mention that not all of us live in teeny-tiny countries where the local phone service can lay fiber throughout the entire country in a year.
From John O'Groats to Land's End is 876 miles. The same distance as from my home in El Paso Texas to Texarkana Texas.
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Personal opinion. A lot of people with a trashcan like to make excuses for having a lame non-expandable tissue dispenser that can't compete with the previous generation cheese grater. They will apologize to the cows come home, but their machine will remain lame. That kind of device is destined to be frozen in time, and is SOOO lame. Deal with it.
It isn't necessarily lame, it depends on how they use the product. For some things, it was great (and would be in 2017 if they simply updated it). If all of your peripherals are already TB, you don't use CUDA, and you are storing large data sets in a different location (a server room, for instance) then it is pretty good. The farther one moves away from those requirements, the poorer the product is.
Which is the problem in a nutshell. The nMP isn't a well rounded workstation. It can only do a few things well, whereas the cMP could do a lot of things well.
You want to know how lame it is. My old cMP is faster and better in every way than our nMP. I just upgraded the video card. See, instantly superior. My cMP is better performing than the top of the line nMP now. I actually gave up my nMP for my cMP as the nMP just couldn't cut it for my needs. Of course, I'm sure there is some overly rationalizing segment that wants to apologize to itself for overspending on the nMP that "it's just right" for their micro-niche within a micro-niche of needs (i.e., I *NEED* a small 12core machine in a black aluminum housing to match my desk accessories and furniture), yea, for them, there is no substitute. For everyone else, it's an unupgradable overpriced failure of a machine the likes of which makes the old G4 cube look like a market segment leader.
As always, YMMV.
In 25 words or less, the best description of why the trash can is a failure for so many people.
The MP6,1 isn't a bad system - it's a nice upgrade to the Mini Mac. Apple's mistake was not that it created the MP6,1 - it was that Apple dropped the MP5,1.
Can we get back on topic please? You can use the PM system to argue over which model MP is the best.
Personal opinion. A lot of people here like the trash bin. Deal with it. They're not going to have a tower-like design again -EVER-. That kind of device is SOOO last decade.
User upgradeable part would be nice, yes. Difficult to happen though.
Considering the fact that this is a desktop and they don't necessarily have to feed us the low power consumption optimization fairytale i personally agree.
Why, when their SSD is the fastest on the market? Why can't you plugin into USB-C ports all the SSDs you want? Pushing hw (as a user) INSIDE the case is SOOO last decade, deal with it.
And what would you put in PCI-E slots that can't be plugged into USB-C ports?
That product is SOOO last decade, can you understand this?
Captain Obvious strikes again
Ok.
To quote the OP:
This is all I'm asking for:
- A Mac Pro with a tower-like design (similar to the the pre-2013 Mac Pros).
- Up to 128 GB RAM (and user-upgradeable)
- GTX 1080 or Titan Pascal graphics card options
- A non-proprietary SSD, and plenty of room to add my own SSDs later
- PCI-e slots for expandability
However, in 2017, the memory requirements are a bit low - I'd go with 512Gb myself as a Max.
Definitely need a user replaceable video card, and since the world runs on CUDA, I'd prefer the 1000 series of Nvidia cards. OTOH, if I wasn't wanting to run CUDA applications, I'd probably prefer the AMD cards.
I would also prefer the ability to add industry standard SSDs along with HDDs. My current box has 5 HDDs & a Blu-Ray player.
I would also like PCI-e slots - I like four myself.
Replace the USB 2.0 jacks on the front with USB 3.1. Replace the Firewire connectors in the back with 1 each of TB & E-SATA.
Of course, we aren't going to get this.
If we get anything, I'd bet on TC renaming the 27" iMac the Mac Pro, with a similarly neutered set of specs compared to the iCan. Sir Idiot Boy will make it thinner and much more likely to fail due to thermal issues, and Phil will call it valiant (or some other word from Synonyms.com).
I also expect Apple to be a much smaller company in 5 years. It will happen at some point & Apple won't have another division to pull the company through any hard times.
The thread is obviously a haters fest that refuse everything (and needs to be dodged), but this is the only thing that needs an answer because we are dealing with a true badass here.
Asking this because i'm only in my 40s and in order for your assessment to be true you must have worked in Unix/SunOs/Linux as BE/FE/software developer and be an IT manager somehow because guess what, all the rest i've written above is what i've done for a living! Always happy to meet someone better than me!
Other than this:
I wasn't much happy when the nMP came out for reasons that i do share with you guys and i do have expectations for the refresh that hopefully will arrive this year but honestly... You're way beyond the zealot level in terms of "religion".
And as we all know religion was invented for those who couldn't understand science.
Have a nice day.
So you MUST BE in your 50s and you MUST HAVE WORKED on Win, OS, Unix, Linux, SunOs & Irix doing desktop publishing + BE/FE development + software developer + IT manager + 3d and video compositing/editing, correct? You did ALL these, right?
Asking this because i'm only in my 40s and in order for your assessment to be true you must have worked in Unix/SunOs/Linux as BE/FE/software developer and be an IT manager somehow because guess what, all the rest i've written above is what i've done for a living! Always happy to meet someone better than me!
Other than this:
I wasn't much happy when the nMP came out for reasons that i do share with you guys and i do have expectations for the refresh that hopefully will arrive this year but honestly... You're way beyond the zealot level in terms of "religion".
And as we all know religion was invented for those who couldn't understand science.
Have a nice day.
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I am actually in my 50's and I was one generation ahead of you in the IT world. I was there for the days of the wild, wild west in corporate IT. You missed a lot of fun stuff. Glad to know I could make you happy.
Let's see.
Started out with IBM Dos 3.3, moving quickly to DrDos 5 & worked my way through almost every Dos Gui released - I preferred GEOS - much more useful than Windows 2. Back in those days, we used whatever we wanted as far as computer applications (you (office) purchase, you install, you support - it was awesome - the ability to purchase and use the right tool for the right job as opposed to today - 1 size [doesn't fit] all).
In my directorate alone we had 5 different word processing programs (Multimate, WordPerfect, Ami Pro, a couple of folks running Word Star, and me running Describe (OS/2). Spreadsheets was mainly Lotus 1-2-3, but there were a few Quattro Pro users. (I added Lotus Improv when it was released - incredible program - pity it didn't make the transition from Next to OSX), Presentation Software was Harvard Graphics 3.0, and Databases were done in DBase III and Paradox. I was the only person using project management software (CA-Superproject), which was why my office got things done on time and within budget.
Notice no MS applications - they were judged and found wanting.
Dos - I started here.
Windows - In my career I supported it from 3.0 to Windows 7.
OS/2 - My favorite OS. It has never been surpassed in either reliability or capability. I supported a lot of those boxes when I worked internal tech support for IBM - easiest job I ever had. They only went down when a piece of hardware failed. Otherwise the uptime was measured in years. I miss that, along with the workplace shell (which is what the OSX shell wants to be when it grows up.)
Unix - Coherent Unix - great learning experience, but was glad to let it go.
Linux - When I first started playing with that was the pre 1.0 kernal. Fun time learning. And it still isn't ready for prime time.
SunOs - yep, had a number of those pizza boxes to support. And develop databases on.
And then there were the DoD mainframes I worked with for a number of years back in the '90s - mainly running some variant of OS/360.
Databases - everything from DBIII to FoxPro to the 1st version of Access (what a PoS), and a number of custom databases residing on mainframes at the Pentagon.
DTP - I've done a bit of that - mainly in writing software user manuals.
Software development? No - scripting out the wazoo though, mainly Rexx, but also SQL & Java. Dabbled a bit in programming - Borland C++, after dealing with IBM's Tools C++ suite.
IT manager - yep did that too.
Video - no, didn't do that.
But I was heavily involved in writing and developing distance learning products for the US Army.
In retirement, 3d Art is where I am at now. Current workflow includes Blender, ZBrush, Poser, Vue, Daz Studio, Photoshop, Acrobat, & 3DMax.
Oh, and the crack about religion? Wrong again. Religion was what people used to understand the world around them before the scientific method was developed.
My disappointment with the nMP isn't based on zealotry - it is that the nMP isn't a general purpose workstation, it is an appliance for Final Cut. And an overpriced one at that. Because it was designed as an appliance, as opposed to a general purpose workstation, I'm having to look at jumping platforms again.
Guys, I'm pushing 80. I started out with a pencil and a quill pen
Lou
Lou
Guys, I'm pushing 80. I started out with a pencil and a quill pen
Lou
You're absolutely awesome. Many more years of good health to you!
Chapeau. But you were sure to hit an angry kid in his late 20s from the tone you had. Not the case.
Impressive background. Really impressive. Respect.
Here i start to be a bit skeptic but hey, i might be wrong. Let's go on with the reading:
This is the moment in history when the Titanic hit the iceberg, the Hindenburg LZ129 burn in a nanosecond, the Exxon Valdez collided with the blight reef and Trump won the elections, happening all together.
ACROBAT. Holy Macaroni...
Look, you have an impressive IT background but you're far from the user that should be using such machine. I (could) school you here, not the other way round. I would have accepted Corel, but meh... Acrobat...
You're speaking to someone that has done more 3D for a living (like on SGI machines running Irix as os) than what you do in retirement because you're bored, and currently uses on daily workflow all of the key Adobe apps (Ae Pr Ps Ai and An), and has been doing almost everything Visual Design-wise (from desktop publishing to web to video editing to compositing) for the past 15+ years, like when Dw and Fl were still Macromedia.
I've always built myself custom pcs for work and even soft and hard modding GeForces into Quadros to save money and you speak TCO concept to me. Chapeau.
The only field where you utterly outperform me is being unhappy at the nMP and potentially the direction Apple is taking in the next future.
To go back to topic: yes i'm unhappy as well of the current state of the nMP. Put in a nice Quadro card (and understand FCPX is not good anymore as it used to be and stop insisting, it's a mainstream app now, not a pro one), some "expandability" (controlled, not savage), and we might be in a decent spot. IMHO.
Have a nice day.
P.S. You might want to try more serious and hw-hungry 3d software.
Is there a better, more supported tool for creating and modifying PDF files? (And I'm not referring to the simpler task of "print to PDF", that's often part of the base system.)
Even if the did, they are so tightly wound up in "non-disclosure" agreements they can't repeat anything they find so Apple never hears about it.
I agree, if I was doing this for a living, I would be using more "industrial" strength software (Adobe CC along with Maya & upgrading to Vue Extreme). But it's just a hobby. Modify content with Blender and/or Zbrush, create images in Poser & Vue, touch up in Photoshop & then assemble the final PDF with Acrobat (assembly & adding chapter bookmarks). I'm about 1/3 of the way through 2 graphic novels. Not to mention it was a life saver when retypesetting the MegaTraveller RPG rule books.
I'm unhappy because I see a platform shift in my future - like a lot of folks here, I don't want to move to windows, but I may not have a choice in the matter if TC and Sir Idiot Boy keep dumbing down the Mac side of the house. Every time they whack something (the AE being the latest), they weaken the entire ecosystem. The leadership (such as it is and what there is of it) doesn't seem to grasp that each time they do it, they weaken the strength of their iToys. Like a lot of other folks, if I have to shift, I won't be buying any more Apple products; I (and the rest of my extended family) will move to Android for phones, something else for tablets, and PCs. I liked the ecosystem - It Just Works was a major selling point - Apple seems to have forgotten about that.
The reason I moved to Apple was because I simply didn't have the time to build new machines (not to mention the Power Macs were better designed than anything I could do), I was ready for a change and it was easier to transition from OS/2 to OSX than moving to Windows XP. The Unix underpinning and reliability is what sold me on moving to Apple. The GUI was a letdown from OS/2's Workplace Shell, but Aqua was a lot more consistent than the Windows interface.
Depends on the task. If i have to do 1 to let's say 4 pages documents or dedicated vector graphics with very few portions of text i use [Ai]. In the case of a small booklets or brand guidelines or manuals aka something that requires more robust text "managing" (different text styles etc., something you can't properly do inside Illustrator) than vector art/raster images [Id] is the choice.
Editing is a different story though, because much depends on the content: i was once forced to use Acrobat Pro to help a friend editing a pdf because for some reason it was impossible for me for properly edit text, and no it wasn't converted to curves as i could still select rows in the same way you do in a word file. Actually part of it was converted to curves and some other wasn't. Very odd.
After having used it only few hours in an afternoon to help such friend (just editing and save as, didn't even see the export options as i wasn't really interested) i do think it is a decent desktop publishing software that combines some features of Ai and Id in a very easy to learn & use solution that actually meets the demand of Prosumers.
Truth is, i fear i can't help you much on the answer because i was never in the need to look for alternative tools, other than sharing my experience. There might be a plethora of PDF editing softwares around all of them with pros and cons, but i've never had the need to look outside Adobe.
I'm done! 10/10 for the picture thoughGuys – please!
You are right that cMP is better until cMP is no longer being supported.