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Let's just wait for them to actually release the damn machine before we talk about the cost. When they release it, people should gather enough allowance money to buy one.
 
my fear is everything!!! Apple has had such a bad track record lately for hardware that works in a professional environment. I know they will probably figure out a way to get a decent GPU in there. PCI-E or something similar as a MODULE. So you will be able to do a single GTX 1080 or something else of your choosing, but what about the other things that need PCI-E.

I have a feeling they will abandon the other PCI-E needs, for example my 5,1 workstation. Like will they skimp on thunderbolt ports?

Fibre --- right new we can do TB3/TB2 using AttoTech, these are ok, gets the job done.
CUDA -- we use CUBIX expanders, these are only PCI-E to CUBIX box. We could maybe use a TB3 to PCI-E, then PCI-E to CUBIX.

I have a feeling Apple will give us one PCI-E, which will be use for a decent GPU, for other PCI-E needs nothing... it will just be TB3..
 
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If Apple releases a truly great new Mac Pro, then there'll be nothing left to complain about, the Mac Pro section will lose its very essence and slowly die. That's my biggest fear.




;)
 
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Let's just wait for them to actually release the damn machine before we talk about the cost. When they release it, people should gather enough allowance money to buy one.

Just found this photo from 2021 - Phil Schiller still has those trademark baggy jeans on

Apple makes me feel like:

7c3.jpg
 
What are your biggest fears about the new forthcoming Mac Pros?

Hopefully Apple are listening.


My biggest fear is Apple may think "they're crying out for 'pro' machines - let's give them what they want - at a price".

Apple, we love Macs, but please don't rip us off and treat us like mugs. Isn't it about time you rewarded your most loyal users? Be smart, be fair.

I figure it will be a "okay" machine with a price that is OUT of THIS WORLD.

Tim will just sit back with a smile thinking about how kids in poor countries and communities will NEVER own such a costly machine. He will be damn proud of himself and what he has achieved and how he has finally out priced even the middle class. Then he will go to protest some BS about nothing...

Probably going to need to edit this post.. went a little off course.
 
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1) too high barrier of entry. Base config should be accessible to a wider market. Not all pros swim in cash. Is it a 1% market because it's expensive, or is it expensive because it's a 1% market??

Competition from AMD may make Intel consider slashing their margin and drop prices.
Intel currently asks for $5,000 USD per 22-core Broadwell E5 Xeon:
https://ark.intel.com/products/96899/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2699A-v4-55M-Cache-2_40-GHz

The iMac Pro will be great for professionals not editing 8K, building VR worlds, or racing for the singularity.
For me, I'd welcome and purchase a 40~50-core Xeon mMP

Sure, it'd be sweet if Apple sold a cheap barebones box to tweak ala homebrew PC - that's not in :apple:'s DNA.
 
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One glimmer of hope is that Phil said that Apple talked to a lot of "pros", asking them what they wanted for a pro computer.
So Apple is very well aware of what we (or at least the people they surveyed) want and he said they were developing something "great" for the next MacPro.

So if "great" is in regards to all the "pros" wishes, maybe we have nothing to fret over.

Apple is very aware of the criticism of the current nMP and its failings. I think we can feel confident that the next one will address all those shortcomings and likely be a really great machine.

Optimism isn't such a bad thing every once in a while. Even on mac rumors.
 
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FWIW, a maxed 2015 27" iMac is $3,999 USD, while starting at $2,299 USD.

I suspect the iMac Pro will start around $2,999~$3,399 and w/ maxed specs will overlap the mMP base price.

Two ways of looking at it:
- The Mac Pro as a status symbol, in which case 3K$ is a natural starting point
- The Mac Pro as picking up where the Mini's capabilities end (going from there all the way to the top), at which case about 1,2k$ would be decent...

RGDS,
 
My biggest fear is that Apple will not learn from it's mistakes and because of their culture of secrecy they will create a Mac Pro that Apple's design team think is 'Pro', but they won't actually talk to any end users. For example they could have produced a fantastic workhorse in the new MacBook Pro if they would have talked to the engineers building their data centres, or even their own development teams...
 
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we are talking about a pro workstation, that has it's price
for me every apple product is priced reasonable and actually worth it, the more it costs, the more it resells, and apple products really keep their value like nothing else.
i'm fine to pay a premium for a premium product

but its nice if a somewhat cheaper model is available in the product line.
not everyone needs the premium features of workstation graphic cards or the capabilities of a Xeon cpu.

thinking over it, most users would actually buy a cheaper i7 8 core/gtx 2080 mac pro.
it should be possible to include the option to choose between workstation cpu and gpu.
i don't think we will see a ryzen mac pro, because it's just not "that" good really, and intel will blow it away anyway.
for me apple should just leave AMD completely because nvidia and Intel is better in literally any category other then price, and apple never cared about the price, they always wanted to "build the best computers on the planet".
 
we are talking about a pro workstation, that has it's price
for me every apple product is priced reasonable and actually worth it, the more it costs, the more it resells, and apple products really keep their value like nothing else.
i'm fine to pay a premium for a premium product

but its nice if a somewhat cheaper model is available in the product line.
not everyone needs the premium features of workstation graphic cards or the capabilities of a Xeon cpu.

thinking over it, most users would actually buy a cheaper i7 8 core/gtx 2080 mac pro.
it should be possible to include the option to choose between workstation cpu and gpu.
i don't think we will see a ryzen mac pro, because it's just not "that" good really, and intel will blow it away anyway.
for me apple should just leave AMD completely because nvidia and Intel is better in literally any category other then price, and apple never cared about the price, they always wanted to "build the best computers on the planet".

I'm not asking for or expecting "cheap". I'd just like to see competitive pricing in relation to what Dell, HP, etc charges for similarly specced systems.
 
I think my fears go in a couple of different directions.

1. Schedule ... the promised timeframe of "maybe 2018?" is too little, too late. Historically, the G4 "Yikes!" went from zero to on sale in 9 months - - which means that with today's resources at Apple we really *should* be able to have a new Mac Pro by Christmas. Yes, THIS Christmas.

2. The ego .. this one is how much of Apple's time - attention - resources are going to be diverted into the distraction of just how the blessed thing is packaged (the box). If the delivery schedule slips 15 days because they believe that they can't "revert" to something that works like the Cheese Grater ... the VP who made that decision should be thrown to the Lions ... and then to the guillotine.

3. The 'modularity' comment .. this one screams "PROPRIETARY for PROFITS". The real reason why the 3rd Party markets exist in the first place is because Apple's culture is to make an initial hardware sale (with rude mark-ups) but has effectively zero interest in ever selling incremental hardware upgrades ... and even when they occasionally do, it is late to market and still overpriced. The consumer wants to get value from their investment, which traditionally means buying Industry Standard components ... SATA, PCIe, etc. Apple simply has to decide *how* they're going to support the consumer, which is in reality limited to either giving up this follow-on business to the 3rd Party aftermarkets, or by competing in it by actually doing a respectable job in being timely to market at a competitive price on upgrades.

4. 'Modularity', part II .. I'm afraid that the neglected Mac Mini is part of their hairbrained scheme -- the Mac Pro effectively evolves into a cluster of mini's. This may not necessarily be a horrible idea in of itself, but if it is the ONLY path forward, its got issues (and again, is Apple Being Tone Deaf).

5. Price ... but of course. Apple's culture is that every product line must make a killing margin on every product, and that will continue to be an obstacle here.

6. Ecosystem .. it does me no damn good to have new hardware if there's not relevant software (ecosystem) for my workflows - - and with Apple's track record of systematically killing off entire lanes of 'Pro' applications (eg, Aperture), if one is going to move to Lightroom, that's an OS-Agnostic App, so the justification to buy Mac is undermined.

7. The overall product .. what Apple will probably refuse to recognize is that the 7,1 Mac Pro does NOT need to be the greatest thing in all ways since sliced bread - - but only **if** they deliver something soon. If they could deliver something by this July 4th, it merely needs to be "less bad" than the Trash Can. Their current strategy of a vague, very future delivery date is setting themselves up for a second failure.

The facts of the matter are that a literal return to the Cheese Grater would be 98% just a new Motherboard that's been populated with specification modernizations - - SATA-3, some M.2 slots, etc ... and could be sold everywhere in the world except for the EU (because of a fan grate safety problem) with effectively zero other changes. And to do that within 60 or 90 days would be a good thing. But culturally, Apple won't do that - - and that's a Leadership problem.


Well, that's a start.

-hh
 
we are talking about a pro workstation, that has it's price
for me every apple product is priced reasonable and actually worth it, the more it costs, the more it resells, and apple products really keep their value like nothing else.
i'm fine to pay a premium for a premium product

Cheese-grater Mac Pros were priced at a premium, but worth the cost (well, maybe not G5 models with the glass-jaw motherboards!).

The 2013 nMP pricing was outrageous. Period.

//
 
Cheese-grater Mac Pros were priced at a premium, but worth the cost (well, maybe not G5 models with the glass-jaw motherboards!).

The 2013 nMP pricing was outrageous. Period.

//

Well...I'm not saying the current nMP is particularly a "great" deal, but: in 2013 a 12-core 5.1 was more than $5K canadian dollars. A 6-core trashcan is currently $3.5K.
 
Well...I'm not saying the current nMP is particularly a "great" deal, but: in 2013 a 12-core 5.1 was more than $5K canadian dollars. A 6-core trashcan is currently $3.5K.

Any 12-core will cost the price of a small car.

Compare the (much) more common 6 core 2012 vs 2013 in price. :cool:


//
 
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3. The 'modularity' comment .. this one screams "PROPRIETARY for PROFITS". The real reason why the 3rd Party markets exist in the first place is because Apple's culture is to make an initial hardware sale (with rude mark-ups) but has effectively zero interest in ever selling incremental hardware upgrades ... and even when they occasionally do, it is late to market and still overpriced. The consumer wants to get value from their investment, which traditionally means buying Industry Standard components ... SATA, PCIe, etc. Apple simply has to decide *how* they're going to support the consumer, which is in reality limited to either giving up this follow-on business to the 3rd Party aftermarkets, or by competing in it by actually doing a respectable job in being timely to market at a competitive price on upgrades.

4. 'Modularity', part II .. I'm afraid that the neglected Mac Mini is part of their hairbrained scheme -- the Mac Pro effectively evolves into a cluster of mini's. This may not necessarily be a horrible idea in of itself, but if it is the ONLY path forward, its got issues (and again, is Apple Being Tone Deaf).
Now see, I think these fears don't have any merit based on a few things.
1. The trashcan would have been the platform for the "PROPRIETARY UPGRADE" path, since all of the parts were, in fact, removable by the user. The upgrades just never materialized for reasons that we all know. Since Apple did not refer to the nMP as "modular" I think we can assume that a proprietary upgrade system isn't in the works.

2. Selling a cluster of Mac Minis would introduce latency issues (assuming they were all connected by thunderbolt, or anything that's not PCI-e), and introduce another problem; What's stopping people from buying a bunch of Mac Minis and using them? Also, this would mean that they would either have to include graphics chips in the Mac Minis themselves, or try to use the 2nd Mac Mini's processor as a graphics processor (bad idea). And for multi-processor support they'd have to include Xeons in the Mini's themselves. All of which is far more complex for worse performance than a standard tower.

3. Rumor has it that Apple themselves helped Nvidia with the drivers for the Macs. Assuming that's true means that Nvidia would have incentive to sell a Titan GPU (which is only a boon to hackintoshes currently, something Apple makes no money from) would point to a standard PCI-e port in future Macs (the most likely being the mMP).

And I think this rumor has validity, since it wouldn't make a lot of business sense to develop and release drivers just for the Hackintoshers (which is a very small market). It would make sense that Apple would have assured them that future Mac will be able to use their cards to incentives their release.

4. It would be far far easier for Apple to sell "certified upgrades" to the Macs through their online store, like they do with many 3rd party products already.

If this is true, they're likely devoting a lot of time to acquiring 3rd party support right now, just to make sure everything they sell works perfectly.
 
Now see, I think these fears don't have any merit based on a few things.
1. The trashcan would have been the platform for the "PROPRIETARY UPGRADE" path, since all of the parts were, in fact, removable by the user. The upgrades just never materialized for reasons that we all know. Since Apple did not refer to the nMP as "modular" I think we can assume that a proprietary upgrade system isn't in the works.

I think the characterization used on the nMP was "expandable" (or to that effect) with Apple's point being that anything that a customer might want to add was just a Thunderbolt-connected external box away.

And the basic observation that no post-initial-purchase upgrade kits came along for the nMP from Apple feeds into my point about how little Apple cares for the post-initial-sale hardware market.

In any case, my point here is really that I'm going to be concerned (if not paranoid) about just what Apple really means when they say 'Modular' until Apple either (a) clarifies that this is open standards, and/or (b) ships.

2. Selling a cluster of Mac Minis would introduce latency issues (assuming they were all connected by thunderbolt, or anything that's not PCI-e),

Agreed, but which may (or may not) be a problem for certain types of Pros.

...and introduce another problem; What's stopping people from buying a bunch of Mac Minis and using them?

Since this means increased product sales with *fewer* hardware manufacturing assembly lines - just why would Tim Cooke as a supply management optimization expert consider this to be a problem?

Also, this would mean that they would either have to include graphics chips in the Mac Minis themselves, or try to use the 2nd Mac Mini's processor as a graphics processor (bad idea). And for multi-processor support they'd have to include Xeons in the Mini's themselves. All of which is far more complex for worse performance than a standard tower.

True, there's lots of technical in-the-weeds problems ... but looking at it without giving a damn if there's better solutions, a strategy which results in more sales from an even smaller product line certainly sounds like a desirable feature from Apple's perspective, does it not?

3. Rumor has it that Apple themselves helped Nvidia with the drivers for the Macs. Assuming that's true means that Nvidia would have incentive to sell a Titan GPU (which is only a boon to hackintoshes currently, something Apple makes no money from) would point to a standard PCI-e port in future Macs (the most likely being the mMP).

And I think this rumor has validity, since it wouldn't make a lot of business sense to develop and release drivers just for the Hackintoshers (which is a very small market). It would make sense that Apple would have assured them that future Mac will be able to use their cards to incentives their release.

Understood, but personally, I suspect that this was more likely the result of what I'll call a single (or small) "Rogue" Apple group, not a top-down Apple Corporate Leadership deliberate decision. So if it was as a bottom-up, it lacks foundational institutional support to become a formal policy.

4. It would be far far easier for Apple to sell "certified upgrades" to the Macs through their online store, like they do with many 3rd party products already.

Yes, it certainly would ... but they've had hardware products in place which would benefit from doing just this sort of thing for a long time - - since at least the PowerMac 7500 from 1995 - - so then why has it never happened?

If this is true, they're likely devoting a lot of time to acquiring 3rd party support right now, just to make sure everything they sell works perfectly.

Unfortunately, a lot of Apple's attention to 3rd Party solutions is limited to those solutions were said 3rd Parties must incorporate some Apple-proprietary widget (component and/or license) which gives Apple control over them. Ultimately, its not really as much about control for excellence in Customer Experience, but a financial cut of their sales, along with the option to exert emergency control to cut off a particularly bad player.


-hh
 
Since this means increased product sales with *fewer* hardware manufacturing assembly lines - just why would Tim Cooke as a supply management optimization expert consider this to be a problem?
He probably wouldn't, but he's not the only one that makes the decisions.
True, there's lots of technical in-the-weeds problems ... but looking at it without giving a damn if there's better solutions, a strategy which results in more sales from an even smaller product line certainly sounds like a desirable feature from Apple's perspective, does it not?
I doubt it would increase sales considering it'd be a major cluster**** if they tried it. They apologized in response to pros leaving, and as delusional as Apple can be, I think this was a wake-up call to them.
Understood, but personally, I suspect that this was more likely the result of what I'll call a single (or small) "Rogue" Apple group, not a top-down Apple Corporate Leadership deliberate decision. So if it was as a bottom-up, it lacks foundational institutional support to become a formal policy.
Convincing a major company to spend resources developing support for a product that currently doesn't exist would take some major leveraging I think. I doubt that a small "rogue" team would've managed to convince Nvidia to do this.
Yes, it certainly would ... but they've had hardware products in place which would benefit from doing just this sort of thing for a long time - - since at least the PowerMac 7500 from 1995 - - so then why has it never happened?
Dunno, times change and so do products. People are building PCs more than ever before, and the reaction to a completely-locked down form factor was highly negative. Maybe they've had the idea before and thought "people don't upgrade their Macs anyway" until the massive outcry recently. Maybe they drank Steve's "vision" kool-aid a little too deeply and followed his "non-upgradeability" philosophy a little too close to the letter and now they're seeing that ol' Steve might've been wrong.
Unfortunately, a lot of Apple's attention to 3rd Party solutions is limited to those solutions were said 3rd Parties must incorporate some Apple-proprietary widget (component and/or license) which gives Apple control over them. Ultimately, its not really as much about control for excellence in Customer Experience, but a financial cut of their sales, along with the option to exert emergency control to cut off a particularly bad player.
That really hasn't stopped 3rd party support before, and maybe Apple's now offering them a better deal than they previously have. We have no way of knowing until the mMP is released, but I'm being optimistic about it.
 
my fear is everything!!! Apple has had such a bad track record lately for hardware that works in a professional environment. I know they will probably figure out a way to get a decent GPU in there. PCI-E or something similar as a MODULE. So you will be able to do a single GTX 1080 or something else of your choosing, but what about the other things that need PCI-E.

I have a feeling they will abandon the other PCI-E needs, for example my 5,1 workstation. Like will they skimp on thunderbolt ports?

Fibre --- right new we can do TB3/TB2 using AttoTech, these are ok, gets the job done.
CUDA -- we use CUBIX expanders, these are only PCI-E to CUBIX box. We could maybe use a TB3 to PCI-E, then PCI-E to CUBIX.

I have a feeling Apple will give us one PCI-E, which will be use for a decent GPU, for other PCI-E needs nothing... it will just be TB3..

This is also my exact fear. There is other uses for pcie besides gpu. I need pcie for my hdx card and my uad octo card. Breakout boxes are nice but too expensive/unreliable and perform worse...
 
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This is also my exact fear. There is other uses for pcie besides gpu. I need pcie for my hdx card and my uad octo card. Breakout boxes are nice but too expensive/unreliable and perform worse...

TB3 to PCI-E is so so very limited. Example the RAZER CORE using TB3 has a external TB3 for other devices, well when gaming for doing CUDA rendering the BUS is Maxed out. If you have other decides connected to that TB3... Drives, or anything else, they drop down to un-usable levels.

Now finally as Nvidia GTX 1080 drivers are being released for MacOS, and their are MacOS supported eGPU and ePCI-E, like the products from AKITIO, its the same problem. Your TB3 is maxed on a decent GPU or a high bandwidth PCI-E card.. ALSO a lot of PCI-E cards might have limited or sketchy support because of the reduced bandwidth coming from onboard PCI-E to ePCI-E via TB3. Think about high speed raids or something similair.

So on the TRASH can MacPRO 6,1 only has 3 true TB2 busses split by 6 connections. So technically you could only have 3 ePCI-E devices in a similar 7,1 build...

So long story short, for us to have a TRUE pro machine we need some PCI-E, IMHO. Honestly, I don't see that happening.
 
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