The new Mac Pro - What are your biggest fears?

[zephonic]

The thread title is interesting from a psychological perspective. For years there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth here about the supposed demise of the Mac Pro. Now that Apple has confirmed there will be a new one, we can't rant about its demise anymore, so now we have a thread discussing in what ways Apple could disappoint us with the next Mac Pro? Really...

The glass will always be half-empty for some folks...

 

[jjjoseph]

The thread title is interesting from a psychological perspective. For years there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth here about the supposed demise of the Mac Pro. Now that Apple has confirmed there will be a new one, we can't rant about its demise anymore, so now we have a thread discussing in what ways Apple could disappoint us with the next Mac Pro? Really...

The glass will always be half-empty for some folks...

I think the people who have been waiting for a new MacPro replacement, it has been half full for a while.

 

[Chancha]

I think the people who have been waiting for a new MacPro replacement, it has been half full for a while.

It is more like an empty glass at this point. The fear is instead of beer we get a cupful of hot piss.

 

[Larry-K]

are you sure about that?

Certainly would be the best way to acommodate me.

 

[flat five]

First one to throw an insult is the one who looses their grip, but I think Braveheart is more of a compliment.


Did you not write this??

it's meant as a compliment.. if we were talking about living and dying by something other than some geek tech.

and yes i wrote it. and yes, i feel the widest variety of professional use cases would be covered by a laptop.

that's very much different than if i said "every professional could use a laptop for their work"... which is, for whatever reasons, what you seem to be reading it as.

 

[Larry-K]

The thread title is interesting from a psychological perspective. For years there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth here about the supposed demise of the Mac Pro. Now that Apple has confirmed there will be a new one, we can't rant about its demise anymore, so now we have a thread discussing in what ways Apple could disappoint us with the next Mac Pro? Really...

The glass will always be half-empty for some folks...

Apple has to start shipping glasses first.
[doublepost=1492109279][/doublepost]

It is more like an empty glass at this point. The fear is instead of beer we get a cupful of hot piss.

What? You think Apple would heat it up for us?

 

[namethisfile]

My 2 cents...

The film/video industry do not care, if, the Mac Pro comes in the classic tower, or the trashcan. I think the discontent is that the trashcan has not been updated, yet.

The only people (I think) who cares about towers are budget-limited people, who want to use their old SATA drives, or expand their SATA drives (SATA drivers are cheaper), use their current PCIE components and use 3rd-party GPU's, albeit, reliant on Nvidia for web drivers on some of their GPU's, and/or, Apple not bricking current AMD Polaris cards in future MacOS updates.

I don't think VFX houses and film industrial complexes care if they daisy-chain a mile long of external Thunderbolt SSD drives for their projects. They can afford it.

The only gripe they might have as I mentioned before is that the trashcan Mac Pro didn't get any CPU or GPU updates, for so called VFX/Film Industrial complexes to swap their 2013 nMP's with. Again, they can afford it.

end of my 2 cents....

PS--And, the apology that Apple ppl said about not updating the Mac Pro is not because of design, I think. I think it was cool of Apple to take the blame. But, I think, they're waiting on AMD Vega parts, which is not even released, yet. And, even if it is released later this year, Apple still has to wait for yields and stuff and also customize it for the Mac Pro. Unless, of course, they go back to PCIE slots, which I don't think they will. Or, maybe, they would just to shut people up. But, I think, I am hoping for more from Apple with the upcoming Mac Pro than just bringing back PCIE slots...

 

[LorenK]

The film/video industry do not care, if, the Mac Pro comes in the classic tower, or the trashcan. I think the discontent is that the trashcan has not been updated, yet.

The only people (I think) who cares about towers are budget-limited people, who want to use their old SATA drives, or expand their SATA drives (SATA drivers are cheaper), use their current PCIE components and use 3rd-party GPU's, albeit, reliant on Nvidia for web drivers on some of their GPU's, and/or, Apple not bricking current AMD Polaris cards in future MacOS updates.

I am one of those budget-minded people and, while I understand why the Mac Pro has always been so expensive, I also understand that it didn't need to be. I am glad Apple recognized that it had boxed itself into a corner with the design, if only that it might bring the down the price on entry level machines that can be made better with non-Apple parts. The 5,1 seemed to be a pinnacle of sorts in that it had all the requisite flexibility, if only they had built it at current (2012) standards.

My hope is that Apple takes best of the 5,1, dual processor sled (though make it so both single and dual , pciE slots, and max memory, bring it up to date with whatever proprietary tricks Apple wants to add, TB3 ports, USBc slots, the MacBookPro task bar, and any other tricks they may have up their sleeve, in addition to meeting current industry standards for RAM, SATA, etc. And if they're concerned about heat, then design new cooling systems that are scalable.

The cheese grater seems like a bigger and heavier box than it needs to be, so there seems to be room to lose, but even if it stays the same size, for us whiny types, we would love the return back to flexibility and, hopefully, a lower cost.

 

[Mago]

hopefully, a lower cost.

You are at Cuppertino where Cap. Cook decide and dont care about how do you behave past year, not the North Pole Where Santa's cares you behave well to give you what you want.

Being realistic, I understand budget minded people, I used to think the same way, I purchased my MP only with D700 GPU, ad 4core cpu and 12gb ram, then I upgraded it to 8 cores and 128gb ram, It's Ok, and believe Apple wont prevent you to do that again (me too), with one exeption: GPUs, for two reasons: high powered PCIe devices are more prone to electric short when in a DIY upgrade scenario, not the same as the ram, even the CPU statistically its much less prone to cause MB shorts in DIY upgrades, also add to that a technical reason Apple needs to re-reoute the DisplayPort Output to the Thunderbolt 3 controller, current ISA gpu provides 4 DP 1.4 ports, good to feed 4 TB3 controllers (8 tb3 ports), as its projected the next Intel Skylake-W PCH to allow 44-48 CPU PCIe3 lines good for 2 GPUs and 3-4 NVMe or 3-4 TB3 Controllers, also there are 20 extra PCIe3 lines from the PCH to add extra TB2 controllers (maybe 4), 10GbE, WiFi/WiG etc to the Mix, dont expect to see any Sata drive support, neither DVD/BD-RW driver support, also given Intel has commented Xeon Skylake-W will be offered as single socket for workstations and Skylake-P for servers/compute applications on 2/4/6/8 Socket configurations, also accoutn how many cores it has (32 as latest leak) even the same socket/chipset allows Xeon Phi 2xx upto 72 cores, I dont believe Apple will mess with dual socket support which will translate on cheapo upgrades and very rare dual socket systems being ordered, its not the case as the RAM (wich Xeon Skylake-W allows 6 channels, easy for 96GB on cheap 16GB modules, or 192GB on 32GB quite expensive modules), also Apple may give the same on the Storage, allow M.2 NVMe std instead proprietary, since it has economical sense to save few R&D $ on something doesnt worth to protect from commoditize, but they also may re-cycle NVMe from the iMac and keep storage propertary, but at least unlikely it will be soldered.

About how the next Macintosh Pro will look (phil 'my ass' schiller also give us the hint: it will be proudly named Macintosh again, read the transcripts), its less meaningful, but it dont need to be a Under-Desk Monster, while it certainly wont be as minimalistic as the TrashCan, but sure will look good at the the desk along the Keyboard and other peripherals.

 

[jjjoseph]

My 2 cents...

The film/video industry do not care, if, the Mac Pro comes in the classic tower, or the trashcan. I think the discontent is that the trashcan has not been updated, yet.

The only people (I think) who cares about towers are budget-limited people, who want to use their old SATA drives, or expand their SATA drives (SATA drivers are cheaper), use their current PCIE components and use 3rd-party GPU's, albeit, reliant on Nvidia for web drivers on some of their GPU's, and/or, Apple not bricking current AMD Polaris cards in future MacOS updates.

The film industry does care, they care about everything every step of the way.. The trashcan was never a viable solution for VFX companies reliant on central storage for production. No studio I have ever worked for has artists use local hard drives for production. All assets and elements are accessible from all work stations at all times. Internal storage is just for Mirroring or Local caching all rendering is done via a farm back to that network storage. The trashcan never worked because it didn't have PCI-E. Which FibreCards and 10GBE require. Their are some TB3/TB2 to these network types, but they are new and not as great as PCI-E and you have a bottleneck with ThunderBolt.

I don't think VFX houses and film industrial complexes care if they daisy-chain a mile long of external Thunderbolt SSD drives for their projects. They can afford it.

No VFX companies daisy chain any SSD's, HDD's or any external drives. No storage is local, its all network storage. Also have you ever been into a VFX house? It is pretty crowded with lots going on. Artists have to switch workstations all the time.. Computers go down etc.. Local storage is not an options, so you don't have room to daisy chain anything.. If you loose data your loose more than your job.. Also you don't understand the economy of film. I have been in meetings where a VFX producer is arguing with a major studio over a $300 overage. The studios make the money, because they write the checks and finance the films. VFX studios are always struggling, they have high overhead and demanding deadlines and sometimes they loose money on projects. Also GOOGLE Rhythm and Hughes and Life of Pie. The film VFX studio went bankrupt after winning an oscar.

http://gizmodo.com/life-of-pis-vfx-team-explains-whats-wrong-with-the-in-1531864103

The only gripe they might have as I mentioned before is that the trashcan Mac Pro didn't get any CPU or GPU updates, for so called VFX/Film Industrial complexes to swap their 2013 nMP's with. Again, they can afford it.

Again, you don't understand the film economy. Everything has to do with price, and what you can't afford the most is something that doesn't work. OIL companies make more than film companies.. So they can afford to buy thousands of oil tankers and let them sit without being used? The trashcan MacPro failed in a lot of different ways, the un-upgradable GPU is just one aspect. I would say the lack of PCI-E is the most heinous. Also ATI GPU's haven't worked for high end VFX, aside from some random workstations, in a while.

end of my 2 cents....

Yes that is right.

 

[namethisfile]

The film industry does care, they care about everything every step of the way.. The trashcan was never a viable solution for VFX companies reliant on central storage for production. No studio I have ever worked for has artists use local hard drives for production. All assets and elements are accessible from all work stations at all times. Internal storage is just for Mirroring or Local caching all rendering is done via a farm back to that network storage. The trashcan never worked because it didn't have PCI-E. Which FibreCards and 10GBE require. Their are some TB3/TB2 to these network types, but they are new and not as great as PCI-E and you have a bottleneck with ThunderBolt.



No VFX companies daisy chain any SSD's, HDD's or any external drives. No storage is local, its all network storage. Also have you ever been into a VFX house? It is pretty crowded with lots going on. Artists have to switch workstations all the time.. Computers go down etc.. Local storage is not an options, so you don't have room to daisy chain anything.. If you loose data your loose more than your job.. Also you don't understand the economy of film. I have been in meetings where a VFX producer is arguing with a major studio over a $300 overage. The studios make the money, because they write the checks and finance the films. VFX studios are always struggling, they have high overhead and demanding deadlines and sometimes they loose money on projects. Also GOOGLE Rhythm and Hughes and Life of Pie. The film VFX studio went bankrupt after winning an oscar.

http://gizmodo.com/life-of-pis-vfx-team-explains-whats-wrong-with-the-in-1531864103



Again, you don't understand the film economy. Everything has to do with price, and what you can't afford the most is something that doesn't work. OIL companies make more than film companies.. So they can afford to buy thousands of oil tankers and let them sit without being used? The trashcan MacPro failed in a lot of different ways, the un-upgradable GPU is just one aspect. I would say the lack of PCI-E is the most heinous. Also ATI GPU's haven't worked for high end VFX, aside from some random workstations, in a while.



Yes that is right.

Just because, let's say, a VFX house doesn't use a 2013 nMP doesn't mean the 2013 nMP sucks... (you didn't say this. but, it sounds like if a trashcan MP doesn't work, which you do mention, then, they're using another kind computer with a different OS altogether since they wouldn't want to use something that doesn't work for them)....

We know about network storage.... but, I'm sure VFX workers only use network storage for backup and the actual project they're working on are stored on their local machines because, because of because....

 

[jjjoseph]

d

Just because, let's say, a VFX house doesn't use a 2013 nMP doesn't mean the 2013 nMP sucks... (you didn't say this. but, it sounds like if a trashcan MP doesn't work, which you do mention, then, they're using another kind computer with a different OS altogether since they wouldn't want to use something that doesn't work for them)....

We know about network storage.... but, I'm sure VFX workers only use network storage for backup and the actual project they're working on are stored on their local machines.... because, because of because...

I find it strange that your claiming authority in an industry you don't work in, and obviously have no understanding of.. Your not SURE of anything because your just making stuff up. All Projects live on Network storage. For example, a lot of VFX shots are handed from one artist to another sometimes 4 different compositors all with diff skills. Why would you store your files local when 4 artists have to open in the same day on different machines and yes sometimes different OS's?

 

[Kcetech1]

jjjoseph, I have to back you here on the network aspect, I worked one project where a pair of VFX/editors lost their jobs for having their data locally and not accessible to the rest of the team when it was needed, and they weren't there to shift it immediately.

EVERYTHING including what I do at home is done on network as well, you NEVER, NEVER NEVER trust local non redundant storage for any serious work.

 

[namethisfile]

d


I find it strange that your claiming authority in an industry you don't work in, and obviously have no understanding of.. Your not SURE of anything because your just making stuff up. All Projects live on Network storage. For example, a lot of VFX shots are handed from one artist to another sometimes 4 different compositors all with diff skills. Why would you store your files local when 4 artists have to open in the same day on different machines and yes sometimes different OS's?

Well, it makes sense to work on a composition; save it on your local machine; then save it to the network... for redundancy... then the other person will import that from the network and work on it on their machine; save their progress on their machine as they work on it; then, put back to the network again once they're done and so on an so forth...

i am not claiming authority. and i don't have to work in some industry to know the process. if, they're using computers, the process is the same, no matter what industry you work in.

you can also save it to the network and your local machine at the same time. Like, say, you're working on a composition and you wanna save it, you save it both to your local machine and the network, at the same time.

 

[jjjoseph]

i am not claiming authority. and i don't have to work in some industry ..

I was gonna explain why your workflow doesn't always work, but I realized your response here is all the answer we need. The next time you walk into a VFX company telling them how to run their business remember to start your sentence with those words..

 

[namethisfile]

--deleted--

 

[jjjoseph]

jjjoseph, I have to back you here on the network aspect, I worked one project where a pair of VFX/editors lost their jobs for having their data locally and not accessible to the rest of the team when it was needed, and they weren't there to shift it immediately.

EVERYTHING including what I do at home is done on network as well, you NEVER, NEVER NEVER trust local non redundant storage for any serious work.

I have seen it all people yelled at, people fired, people even sued or had lawsuits against them. When a lot of money is at stake to get something delivered properly, people get irate when that doesn't happen.

Also in my case doing VFX for film. On CG intensive movies or TV shows you have TerraBytes of Assets, with revisions being updated by the minute, or every half hour.. Can you imagine copying Terabytes of Data Local every half hour.. You wound't get any work done. OH another revision, well let me start copying... OH here's another update... let me copy that.. You simply can not work that way. Working Locally for VFX just doesn't work.

 

[Kcetech1]

agreed, most don't see how much data we shovel. I was working on some animation and light VFX for some educational videos today, I shifted just over 17TB of data on those little projects in the last 11 hours in my HOME lab.

 

[namethisfile]

I have seen it all people yelled at, people fired, people even sued or had lawsuits against them. When a lot of money is at stake to get something delivered properly, people get irate when that doesn't happen.

Also in my case doing VFX for film. On CG intensive movies or TV shows you have TerraBytes of Assets, with revisions being updated by the minute, or every half hour.. Can you imagine copying Terabytes of Data Local every half hour.. You wound't get any work done. OH another revision, well let me start copying... OH here's another update... let me copy that.. You simply can not work that way. Working Locally for VFX just doesn't work.

I, obviously, don't work in VFX nor dream to. So, I could be wrong whether or not VFX ppl use network storage or local storage. I don't really care, TBH.

My response (#161) was basically trying to defend 2013 nMP because of my idea that the 2013 nMP is a viable machine in industries including VFX houses. And, my comment about daisy-chaining TB drives was a comment about professional production houses being able afford to do so since external TB drives are still price-y for normal people. But, to professional production houses, "expanding" the 2013 nMP via external TB drive is no biggie.

That's it.

I'm done.

 

[Logix1]

This is probably the last chance to revive the mac pro.
It should be pretty easy to satisfy the pro market, it's written all over the internet.

2 PCIe slots is a MUST (not including a GPU)

2-3 internal SSD drives (PCIe drives if possible)

Other than that we will have to wait and see what new technology will be on the market as for CPU, GPU, Thunderbolt version, USB version etc...



At this point, i'm desperate for a proper mac pro and if Apple will do it right, it could be a computer for the next 10 years, so i really think it's worth the premium price we pay for the mac pros.. i used to buy a new PC every 2 years.

I really don't want to go back to Windows but if the next mac pro will not be what we expect, i'm sure many will move to either Windows or Hackintosh.. until then, i stay with my cMP.

 

[ActionableMango]

i feel the widest variety of professional use cases would be covered by a laptop

This is unquestionably true. No gut feelings or speculation is required. Apple said so during the Mac Pro event.

Apple defined what a Pro user is. They told us how many Pro users there are. They told us the breakdown in notebook/desktop sales. They told us what hardware Pro users buy. They told us what percentage of Mac sales were Mac Pros (granted this last one was answered in a vague way).

I am surprised nobody is talking about this. The Mac Pro forum has been arguing and theorizing about this stuff for a long time. Now it's been handed to us on a platter--a very unprecedented platter, considering how secretive Apple usually is.

For anyone who missed all this:

What is the overall split of Mac notebooks and desktops:
80/20

How many Macs sold are Mac Pros:
“a single-digit percent”

What does Apple consider to be a "Pro" user:
Basically anyone that uses a performance intensive application. Apple feels 30% of its users are Pro users. 15% of Mac users use software like this "frequently" and another 15% "at least a few times per month".

Which Macs do these "Pro" users buy:
Notebooks by far. In second place are iMacs. The Mac Pro is third.

 

[AidenShaw]

EVERYTHING including what I do at home is done on network as well, you NEVER, NEVER NEVER trust local non redundant storage for any serious work.

I NEVER, NEVER, NEVER trust anything but RAID-60 (or RAID-6) with hot spares.

And you didn't say it, but I assume that your NAS devices use some kind of parity-based redundancy or equivalent.

 

[Kcetech1]

I NEVER, NEVER, NEVER trust anything but RAID-60 (or RAID-6) with hot spares.

And you didn't say it, but I assume that your NAS devices use some kind of parity-based redundancy or equivalent.

for damn certain, an HP 2040 Array went in in November. again R60 here for now and all the error checking and redundancy options on ( even if it does slow it down a little bit ). identical offsite mirror at my husbands workplace's data vault.

 

[jjjoseph]

I, obviously, don't work in VFX nor dream to. So, I could be wrong whether or not VFX ppl use network storage or local storage. I don't really care, TBH.

My response (#161) was basically trying to defend 2013 nMP because of my idea that the 2013 nMP is a viable machine in industries including VFX houses. And, my comment about daisy-chaining TB drives was a comment about professional production houses being able afford to do so since external TB drives are still price-y for normal people. But, to professional production houses, "expanding" the 2013 nMP via external TB drive is no biggie.

That's it.

I'm done.

Yes I could see the MacPro 6,1 VIA Gig Ethernet, into an input passthrough type switch, that then goes into a real 40GigE or 16G Fibre, could work for some applications, but in VFX nothing with massive CG integration, maybe composting or roto or paint work.. As long as the actual network is way faster than Gig Ethernet. The problem with Gig Ethernet is your bandwidth is 40x less than what you can setup now, and your Gig Ethernet won't really get that much faster down the road and you TB2 to Fibre or 40GigE or 10GigE is a huge bottleneck..... Also don't get my started on why ATI GPU's are a dead end.

But honestly I feel like we are talking about two different things here.

That's it for me too.. i'm done on this topic.

 

[pat500000]

At this point, i dont think apple have any idea what they want to do with nrmp. this is probably why they are discussing at this time.