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The Mac Pro Criticism

I'm totally hearing both side on the new Mac Pro and I need a new machine myself...but in the whole realm of things, isn't it really just a faster Mac Mini with better graphics and more thunderbolt ports? It's totally understandable that they could make it smaller taking away all expansion bays...really an advanced Cube but cylindrical.
 
There are far too many people on this site who are unable to see beyond their own needs. If it's not suitable for them, it's not suitable for anyone. Talk about myopic. Unfortunately this seems to be a characteristic of MacRumors and the people who post here.

The thing isn't even out yet, and already people are slating it. Apple has a track record of completing re-inventing something, people calling it rubbish and it selling like there's no tomorrow. If you asked me who's right, Apple or MacRumors, I'd say Apple, every time.
 
Lol....I'm the other way...2x 2011 iMacs, one only like 5 months old...love them, but I'm already trying to figure out if I can get like $10k together! I want it and I want it as fully spec'd as I can make it.

Mind you, whilst I didn't own one, I also think the Cube was an amazing design, and thought of it when I saw the presentation of this Mac Pro.
 
The very fact that this is a single CPU machine indicates it's not a pro level workstation.

Sure it may be 12 core, but it COULD be 24 core.

Basically it's the desktop headless mac that people have been asking for for years. It's not a disaster, but the limited upgrades (only 4 memory slots and 1 CPU) clearly indicate it's not a pro level workstation.

Forget the thunderbolt vs. internal crap, the above is not upgradable outside the box.

I am however glad that they at least put effort into developing it, and the engineers came up with some cool stuff, I just hope in the future they will go bigger for performance.

It's not what it will be (faster ram performance, bandwidth, etc) compared to now, it's what it COULD have been if they had gone dual CPU, more memory slots, etc.
 
pprior said:
The very fact that this is a single CPU machine indicates it's not a pro level workstation.

Sure it may be 12 core, but it COULD be 24 core.

Basically it's the desktop headless mac that people have been asking for for years. It's not a disaster, but the limited upgrades (only 4 memory slots and 1 CPU) clearly indicate it's not a pro level workstation.
...
Click to expand...
Ignore the number of memory slots, how much RAM would it have to support to be a "pro level workstation"? 64GB? Quite easily done now. 128GB might be possible.

As for the number of cores, it depends on what the system is being used for.

I suspect that the next iteration (next year?) might have a dual cpu option.
 
macpro2000 said:
I'm totally hearing both side on the new Mac Pro and I need a new machine myself...but in the whole realm of things, isn't it really just a faster Mac Mini with better graphics and more thunderbolt ports? It's totally understandable that they could make it smaller taking away all expansion bays...really an advanced Cube but cylindrical.
Click to expand...

I also had the same notion that it's a Mac Mini with higher specs and different design. I think maybe pro users were expecting new technology but a design not too radical.
 
comatory said:
i think once the price is revealed and someone gets to test the machine (benchmarks), it will feel more approachable and I think it will find its target audience. i also think that GPUs will be expandable to some degree (probably via Apple only) and if they add Nvidia chip, it might get a lot of support.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was cheaper than the current model.

PCIe attached storage is outrageously expensive because the current vendors say: "pay and swallow, dude". But there's no reason for it to be so expensive.

Moreover, Apple is maybe the heaviest buyer of flash memory and they use to place huge orders in advance, negotiating very good prices. Apple must be buying flash memory much much cheaper than, say, OCZ.

The chassis is amazing, but not necessarily more costly than the current Mac Pro. Probably it's easier to manufacture, uses less raw aluminum, maybe it's easier to machine and easier to assemble.

Of course the GPUs can add to the cost. But that they can also buy cheaper than, say, Dell. They will order an enormous amount of units of a single reference (or maybe three at most) instead of a Christmas tree of all the models offered by AMD and NVIDIA. Same with the CPUs.

I would bet it's going to be the same prices as the latest Mac Pros, or even cheaper.

----------
Macsonic said:
I also had the same notion that it's a Mac Mini with higher specs and different design. I think maybe pro users were expecting new technology but a design not too radical.
Click to expand...

Probably you don't remember the times when small and even cute Unix workstations were much more powerful than clunky and crappy peecees.

Have a look at a SPARCstation IPX or a SPARCStation 10 or 20, and compare them to the peecees available at that time.
 
about RAM: maybe there will be 32GB chips common one day, lets say three years from now. Then, it will be easy to fit machine like this with 128GB of RAM (as long as chipset supports it).
 
Glen Quagmire said:
There are far too many people on this site who are unable to see beyond their own needs. If it's not suitable for them, it's not suitable for anyone. Talk about myopic. Unfortunately this seems to be a characteristic of MacRumors and the people who post here.
Click to expand...

I think it's perfect even for people who are currently unaware of it. I remember all the denial when de iPad was introduced. I still have good laughs at that.

Hard disks are obsolete. That little thing has an outstanding disk I/O bandwidth. You will be able to edit several layers of 4K video in the box, without resorting to expensive, fancy, complex and failure prone disk I/O subsystems.

And flash storage will be getting cheaper and cheaper. Disks are following the way of the venerable tapes. And note that I still have a DDS3 tape unit to keep copies of audio recordings. ;)
 
Bergante said:
Hard disks are obsolete. That little thing has an outstanding disk I/O bandwidth. You will be able to edit several layers of 4K video in the box, without resorting to expensive, fancy, complex and failure prone disk I/O subsystems.

And flash storage will be getting cheaper and cheaper. Disks are following the way of the venerable tapes. And note that I still have a DDS3 tape unit to keep copies of audio recordings. ;)
Click to expand...

But how? Do you realize that one hour of 4K footage takes up around 14TB?
 
Any ideas or speculation on how much this bad boy could potentially cost? Your best guesstimate...? I'm thinking an entry level price point of $2500, and all that includes is just the bare minimum specs.
 
comatory said:
about RAM: maybe there will be 32GB chips common one day, lets say three years from now. Then, it will be easy to fit machine like this with 128GB of RAM (as long as chipset supports it).
Click to expand...
There are some 32GB memory DIMMs available now. Very expensive and not what would be used by the new Mac Pro. However, Apple could have memory made for them. So who knows what the max ram will be on the Mac Pro when it ships.
 
comatory said:
But how? Do you realize that one hour of 4K footage takes up around 14TB?
Click to expand...

In ProRes?

If ProRes encodes 4K at roughly 900 Mbps (bits per second)

that is 112 MB/s (bytes), and an hour would take 405 GB.

Or maybe I'm terribly wrong?
 
tdar said:
But what if "Microsofts recent innovation regarding used games" is truly innovation? What if they know something that you don't. What if they can see the whole picture while you only see a small piece of it. Same with this new MP.
Click to expand...

Not the same ... actually completely different. The new Mac Pro can be a great computer, time will tell its price and available options. Imo we don't know enough about it to be excited or to start bitching all over the place.

"Microsofts recent innovation regarding used games" is just to shut them down so they can make more money. Period. There is now "innovation" there except trying to see how far they can push it, and I'm sure enough idiots are going to buy the new xbox.

Not everything is good just because it's new and some company labels it as "innovation". That's pure marketing bs and users have to put criticism where it belongs.
 
Simplybetter said:
Are you scared of change? Scared of innovation? Scared of computers that are not box shaped? Or are you just so caught up in your own view of the world that you fail to see what is truly in front of you? Apple is showing you what you want, that's their job, you just don't know it yet.
Click to expand...

Why is it that every time Apple introduces something that looks goofy, or deletes commonly used technology the New Paradigm Crowd has to come out urging us to accept and move on.

It's usually the same worn out theme about how we're afraid or stuck in our ways. Apparently the only way to move on is to reach around the iMac and jab for the once easily found SD card slot or to buy inferior iTunes HD movies instead of superior Blu-ray.

OK, innovators. You're cool (and some of us are not).
 
Once you go black....

I'm digging the casing of this MP. Piano elegant, but goes in a different direction of the past.

Will this be the next direction of Apple? Going black, I mean.

I've always pondered how the lineup would look if the color options were like the iPhone's.

Anyhoot, I like the changeup they did w/ MP.
 
All I see is people bringing this 4K video editing. What about CUDA? What about 60 day renderings at 100% CPU power all smacked in that tiny box?
 
this exactly. single cpu kills it for me :( and 4 ram slots is just not doing it for me. the lenovo and dell workstations should be a bit more os x friendly...


pprior said:
The very fact that this is a single CPU machine indicates it's not a pro level workstation.

Sure it may be 12 core, but it COULD be 24 core.

Basically it's the desktop headless mac that people have been asking for for years. It's not a disaster, but the limited upgrades (only 4 memory slots and 1 CPU) clearly indicate it's not a pro level workstation.

Forget the thunderbolt vs. internal crap, the above is not upgradable outside the box.

I am however glad that they at least put effort into developing it, and the engineers came up with some cool stuff, I just hope in the future they will go bigger for performance.

It's not what it will be (faster ram performance, bandwidth, etc) compared to now, it's what it COULD have been if they had gone dual CPU, more memory slots, etc.
Click to expand...


----------

CUDA is gone, blackmagic switches to open cl, adobe probably too.
http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8898

Grohowiak said:
All I see is people bringing this 4K video editing. What about CUDA? What about 60 day renderings at 100% CPU power all smacked in that tiny box?
Click to expand...

60 day renderings? render farm is the answer, or Deadline.
 
Mac Pro is traditionally the "modifiable Mac". What we have here is a supped up iMac without a monitor...

Tim Cook doesn't know the first thing about his business.
 
lots of people spouting off about what "pro" means.

to people in video and audio, it means support for future *and* legacy things that people and companies have dumped tens of thousands of dollars into.

I like this mac pro as a design exercise. However, i'd like to see some additional hardware *from apple* that can leverage their buying power and expertise to expand Raids, JBOD's and PCIe cards.

I'm interested to know the geekbench score of this machine vs a 2x x5690 chipped 2009-2012. Obviously the "bus/qpi" and ram will be much faster. And video.

For those on the Avid fence of native tb vs the PCIe cards.. the cards still have lower latency.

Regardless, it's not like the 2010/2012 mac pros simply stop working when the new one comes out. Could be an interesting transition. Or not.

YMMV.
 
Bergante said:
In ProRes?

If ProRes encodes 4K at roughly 900 Mbps (bits per second)

that is 112 MB/s (bytes), and an hour would take 405 GB.

Or maybe I'm terribly wrong?
Click to expand...

I think RED raw footage has 14TB per hour. But of course it makes more sense to do offline in ProRes. Render farm should probably be used to do online renders. But still, at current SSD prices I can't imagine having internal SSD for all the data. Maybe graphic designer could fit few projects onto 512GB-1TB SSD but video editors hardly.
 
I will be buying one if it can take in upgradeable GPUs, even if they have to be "transformed" by Apple. I mean, it's not the best solution, but I've lived those times and it was alright.

However, everything else in the machine, makes me wow. When I was younger I couldn't afford the Cube even though I loved that thing. Now that I can pay for it, I will certainly buy one, even if it's just to support a beauty like this.

But I keep my fingers crossed for 3rd party GPU market, hopefully enough people buy these to at least provide a top consumer GPU each year concurrently with it's PC counterpart.
 
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