The new Mac Pro's expandability advantages

[wildmac]

Hey, if you want to be spoon fed what you need, that's fine. I'm not even arguing that. It's just silly to try and argue that the new design is anywhere near as modular as the old design. Especially when the market for external thunderbolt devices is so thin and a portion of the argument lay with the concept that "if you build it they will come." A lot of people just aren't okay with that. It's just different strokes for different folks.

Never said it was that modular.. but am saying, how many need that?

Heck, we could very well be looking at another system that Apple doesn't upgrade for 3 years again.

The funny thing with the fuss over the video cards is that we've have crap for selection of video cards for years, and only with 10.8 did we have the option again for industry cards, with some work.

But, much will be settled here once we start getting the real-world benchmarks.. hopefully some start showing up this weekend.

 

[Derpage]

Never said it was that modular.. but am saying, how many need that?

Heck, we could very well be looking at another system that Apple doesn't upgrade for 3 years again.

The funny thing with the fuss over the video cards is that we've have crap for selection of video cards for years, and only with 10.8 did we have the option again for industry cards, with some work.

But, much will be settled here once we start getting the real-world benchmarks.. hopefully some start showing up this weekend.

How many people need sata and pcie ports? I do. I'd wager a lot of other people do as well.

 

[slughead]

How many people need sata and pcie ports? I do. I'd wager a lot of other people do as well.

They wouldn't need SATA or PCIe if they were Professionals!!*

*As defined by me.

 

[nanofrog]

Edit: You got one thing right though: this is a great prosumer/enthusiast machine, as evidenced by many of the posts in the "Why are you buying one" thread--many hobbyists, amateur photographers, etc. Heck, I'm now in that group (though my hobbies/part time work require a different machine). It's a wonderful machine for this group, how far out it ventures from that use-case is what we're discussing.

Which is the market Apple targeted in the first place to help increase the sales volume, and ultimately, the ROI on the model.

The classic market has been shrinking, thus declining the ROI on this particular market segment. Had they been able to do such a thing with the Xserve, it would likely still be around in whatever new format they conceived for it. Reality didn't work out that way however, and it was axed.

There's simply a larger market when they include the enthusiasts, as they're willing to pay substantial sums to get whatever it is they're after. So Apple made sure they recaptured this group, with I suspect, an increase in gross margin as well (higher sales volume combined with higher sticker prices). Definitely the type of move business execs favor, and Apple has pursued with fervor from what I've seen.

Hence a shift from the classic workstation design to an appliance.

They wouldn't need SATA or PCIe if they were Professionals!!*

*As defined by me.

Blasphemy!

Take away my PCIe, and I'll be chasing someone down with a tire iron. How else am I supposed to run FC, Infiniband, or SAN systems without choking them to death?

 

[bplein]

I for one am thoroughly intrigued and tempted to buy this, but realistically I won't ever use the GPU horsepower, and should stick with my 27" iMac instead. So my lust is tempered by realistic needs.

However, if the nMP had one or two PCIe slots, I'd be on board. I have PCIe SSD (Fusion-io) that I could use in it. Today they are in my Mac Pro 5,1 running ESXi. I don't want a noisy TB-PCIe expansion chassis sitting on my desk.