The new Mac Pro - What are your biggest fears?

[ActionableMango]

We will be complaining, unless of course, the robots have an extension cord, so they only get power when plugged in.. That way we can un-plug when they try to kill us.. Putting batteries in ROBOTS is a bad idea, and that's all Elon Musks fault..

Well those self-driving Teslas are going to need really long extension cords then.

 

[Chicane-UK]

I often wonder if I made the right choice burning bridges with Windows. After all, I wasn't able to play Barotrauma with some friends the other day because there's no Mac pros and I couldn't get either the Linux/Windows versions to work.

Them my mom or my sister want me to fix something on their Windows 10 machines, and my aunts and grandmas Windows 7 machines start throwing tantrums as well. And then I breathe a sigh of relief that I burned that bridge.

It sometimes feels like a bit of a catch 22 with Windows, as whilst they've massively improved reliability and such over the years, they have changed quite a lot about how it works making it feel like a bit more of a sealed box and less easy to fix when stuff goes haywire. This is especially so with Windows 10. Sitting here right now wondering why my machine refuses to accept the 1703 patch and just craps out with an error.

That said, largely, my Windows 10 experience has been pretty positive. It's a pretty damn solid product. I'd still be using MacOS as my daily driver if it hadn't been for Apple's stubbornness on producing new hardware though.

 

[JMacHack]

It sometimes feels like a bit of a catch 22 with Windows, as whilst they've massively improved reliability and such over the years, they have changed quite a lot about how it works making it feel like a bit more of a sealed box and less easy to fix when stuff goes haywire. This is especially so with Windows 10. Sitting here right now wondering why my machine refuses to accept the 1703 patch and just craps out with an error.

That's part of my issue with Windows, 7 was pretty much wide-open. You could do a lot with it, so that when it went belly-up there was usually a fix.
Then came Windows 10, which was a lot more stable, but locked down and still buggy.

That said, largely, my Windows 10 experience has been pretty positive. It's a pretty damn solid product. I'd still be using MacOS as my daily driver if it hadn't been for Apple's stubbornness on producing new hardware though.

I myself don't need the latest hardware so much as I need good hardware. Up to this point I had been using Dell laptops that, while decent for awhile, crapped out in ~3 years. Before that Windows would get slow and I found myself doing a lot of maintenance just to keep it chugging along. I tried to stick with Windows 7 as much as I could after testing out 10, but I knew it was a losing battle so I weighed my options and switched.

I know my evidence is anecdotal, but it seems every time I'm about to regret my decision I have to fix something wrong with a relative's Windows machine.

I definitely don't judge people for choosing Windows though, but for my needs MacOS is the superior product.

 

[Cape Dave]

It sometimes feels like a bit of a catch 22 with Windows, as whilst they've massively improved reliability and such over the years, they have changed quite a lot about how it works making it feel like a bit more of a sealed box and less easy to fix when stuff goes haywire. This is especially so with Windows 10. Sitting here right now wondering why my machine refuses to accept the 1703 patch and just craps out with an error.

That said, largely, my Windows 10 experience has been pretty positive. It's a pretty damn solid product. I'd still be using MacOS as my daily driver if it hadn't been for Apple's stubbornness on producing new hardware though.

"as whilst they've massively improved reliability and such over the years, they have changed quite a lot about how it works making it feel like a bit more of a sealed box and less easy to fix when stuff goes haywire."

is true of many tech things these days. Car tech for sure. Great when it works, and it works very reliably, but when needs to be fixed, ouch!

 

[Jack Burton]

My biggest fear is that Apple spends far too long over-engineering (and thus over pricing) what should be a simple, tasteful looking box with good cooling and user accessibility.

My second biggest fear is that Apple strongly misunderstands the role of non-gaming, multi-GPU rigs across multiple fields, especially the fields in which Apple used to dominate.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Biggest fears

1) Apple will invent some non industry standard proprietary nonsense
2) cost
3) soldered parts/ lack of UPGRADABILITY

I have no faith at this point that they'll get it right. If it doesn't have upgradable CPU's, GPU's, memory, and hard drives, it will be another failure.

Exactly.

There's no need for Apple to get crazy with the next Mac Pro. All the components exist already.

We have super-fast SSDs like the Samsung 960 Pro with 3,500MB/s read speed that fit into a standard PCIe M.2 slot. This is a solved problem... no need to re-invent another slot.

We have incredible GPUs like the GTX 1080ti and various Quadro cards that fit into a standard PCIe slot. Again... this is a solved problem... no need to make some custom card that will never get updated.

We have CPUs and RAM that fit into standard sockets. Again... well... you get the idea.

Apple can create a custom case to house everything... but it needs to be based around standard PC components... like... um... the rest of the industry.

I know Apple likes to make "pretty" computers. But this is a workstation.

It needs to work. It's literally in the name.

 

[Unami]

- cost (maybe due to mandatory xeon cpus, eec ram - i guess those things are nice to have for a minority of macpro users, but i'll happily take an 8-core i7 extreme and standard RAM). the price of an imac with maxed out cpu/gpu/ram should buy you a faster and still more expandable macpro - because it needs no freaking throwaway 5k screen or thermally constraint components that fit behind that screen.
- not enough support from apple or third parties (like it took them until sierra to even halfassedly support eGPUs. or they never even updated minor details like going from tb2 to tb 3 or re-adding optical audio i/o. personally i think, the nMP could have worked at a lower price and with more effort by appe - e.g. like courting developers. they just put it out in their infamous "eat or die" manner and that was it. )
- soldered on ssd and ram at ridiculous prices for bto-upgrades.
- a ridiculous form-factor (again) that's not very practical in a production environment. if you don't have the balls to make it rack-mountable (although those xserves were pretty pretty), then at least don't make it round.