MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

[fuchsdh]

Jony Ive is not a good designer, or rather, the design culture he has fostered does not produce good design. It produces very attractive, highly ornamented design, which almost universally performs much more poorly than an alternative, which concentrates less on the decorative ornamentation of thinness and minimalism, would perform.

You may not like the choices they've made, but "ornamental decoration" describes absolutely nothing about Apple's design aesthetic. Ive is thoroughly a modernist-cum-functionalist that eschews ornamentation. If he wasn't, we'd have computers that looked like this (which I'd be down for, but c'est la vie

 

[thevault]

Jony Ive is not a good designer, or rather, the design culture he has fostered does not produce good design. It produces very attractive, highly ornamented design, which almost universally performs much more poorly than an alternative, which concentrates less on the decorative ornamentation of thinness and minimalism, would perform.

• The overheating trashcan mac pro, that is Jony Ive design.
• The bent iPad, and bendable iPhone, that is Jony Ive design.
• The mouse that can't be used while recharging, that is Jony Ive design.
• The multiple generations of failing and unreliable macbook keyboards, that is Jony Ive design.
• The macbook that is unrepairable, except in giant expensive clumps, which has no way to physically remove and recover its storage if the path between it and the data socket is damaged, that is Jony Ive design.

Jony Ive design represents the sacrifice of utility, in the name of ornamental decoration.

 

[edgerider]

a very fast, reliable connector exist it is called epcie 16x and it is made by molex, I use it every single day.
just slap a box with a mobo, 10gbe , 4 t3 port and 4 pciex16 gen 3 connector and let other do expension box.
4x16gen3 pcie port is all the bandwith we will need for the next 10 years on mac.

 

[barmann]

Thumbs up. Phil "my ass" and the other amigos are flailing (failing?).

An ARM-based Mac Pro will be Apple's admission that they have failed as a computer company and are only interested in OSX as an Ios development platform. When they move Ios development to Ios - then OSX is dead.

Is an Ios MacBook anything more than a 15" Iphone?

Hear, hear .

What worries me, Apple might actually believe that casual users, a bunch of iOS developers and some imaginary Mac to iApps converts can support the Mac line .
Even in the real world, some people still seem to forget just how far apart iOS and OSX are .

 

[mattspace]

You may not like the choices they've made, but "ornamental decoration" describes absolutely nothing about Apple's design aesthetic. Ive is thoroughly a modernist-cum-functionalist that eschews ornamentation. If he wasn't, we'd have computers that looked like this (which I'd be down for, but c'est la vie

It's a common misinterpretation that Minimalism is inherently Modernist, it's not. Minimalism is the first stage of Post-modernism that reaches its peak in design with Memphis furniture.

Minimalism as a goal, is decorative in nature, it's about how something looks. Modernism's central tenet is to remove decoration - for the form to be true to, and to reveal the function, and for the function to be maximised - the most of the best to the greatest number for the least, as Ray & Charles Eames would say.

Ive's designs (both in hardware and software) compromise function, in order to prioritise appearance - so arguably by definition, not Modernist.

Ive is in fact a post-modernist, who seems to have this cargo-cult like need to appear Modernist, where he's so fixated on emulating the superficial style of Modernist design, that he's lost sight of its actual rationale - it's like the 14th century Catholic who believes they're doing "good" by burning someone at the stake, because they're being the most Catholic they can be.

Ive's designs (especially without Steve to say "No") are not Form Follows Function in nature, they are Form Dictates Function, the very antithesis of Modernist design rationale.

When Ive says they design things for the way they work, and the appearance flows from that, sorry but I think that's just flat out a lie (or at least a delusion). An iMac with a back that had accessible components, and large areas of shaped cooling fins, would be a more functional, and more Modernist design than the "make everything fit in this slim curved shell" Minimalist design Apple offers.

To take the example of the magic mouse - a modernist design would put the recharge socket on the front, so that when plugged in and charging, it would still be usable. Modernists would own that lightning socket, even make it a feature of the way the mouse looks, the way modernist architecture reveals the skeletal structure of a building. Ive hides the socket, like a dirty secret, making the mouse unusable while recharging. He hides an aspect of a fundamental truth of the thing (that's it's battery powered and needs recharging), to meet a decorative appearance goal of a single unbroken surface. It's illusion and pantomime, theatre - ergo, post-modernist.

 

[jeanlain]

Apple has already done an ultra high bandwidth connector, that's easy to align, connect, lock in place, and looks elegant - the processor to backplane connector in the 4,1/5,1.

They also use some custom connector for the GPUs of the trashcan Mac Pro. A connector of this size wouldn't look elegant on top of a module, IMO

The processor module could be as big as a full-size GPU accepting eGPU, "like a mac mini" may not mean a box literally the same size - look how big the processor section of a cheesegrater is, which arguably has better design for airflow and cooling than the trashcan

Yes, but if the main module is already a third of the size of a cheese-grater Mac Pro, it kind of defeats the purpose of the lego-brick Mac. These modules are supposed to be relatively small.

Macs used to come with passthrough power supplies, so you'd plug your monitor's power cord into the power out port on the mac. Cables which have a logical flow, for example loopback cables to mux video into a thunderbolt bus, are very elegant. Complicated internal circuitry requiring software control to route things is the rube-goldberg option.

Using power cables to connect modules to each other would not be more elegant than connecting them to a power strip. The chief interest of stackable module is avoiding cables.

"ProLink" it'll just be a PCI extender ribbon, in a different form-factor. On the Mac Pro it can be a set of pins and a socket, on a heavy-duty laptop it can be a cable (with an adapter that plugs into the module pin-ins). "It's External Graphics (because Apple avoids the term eGPU) on Steroids"

Though it might never come to a portable due to being a cold-plug only option.

Apple will most certainly keep thunderbolt on laptops, that's why I don't think they'll develop a Mac Pro-specific module. The targeted audience is just too small.

 

[mattspace]

Apple will most certainly keep thunderbolt on laptops, that's why I don't think they'll develop a Mac Pro-specific module. The targeted audience is just too small.

I would be unsurprised, IF Apple built this thing, if they only produced the brain module, and left everything else to 3rd parties.

 

[MacZoltan]

If Apple build any new Mac Pro the only concern they will have in mind to milk all the users who would buy it.
The whole modular thing with proprietary ports is to make sure only Apple will be able to offer any upgrade for their Mac Pro if it happens at all. Practically all module will be unreparable by third party unacceseable and not upgrade able by third party. Just like all their hardware, all will be soldered in a box. I hope I am wrong but...
So forget about modularity on a scale like the 2012 / 2010 / 2009 and before.

 

[AidenShaw]

You may not like the choices they've made, but "ornamental decoration" describes absolutely nothing about Apple's design aesthetic. Ive is thoroughly a modernist-cum-functionalist that eschews ornamentation. If he wasn't, we'd have computers that looked like this (which I'd be down for, but c'est la vie

Love that Art Deco computer!

Here's a great design for a companion WiFi router:

 

[ekwipt]

I have no idea if it's a real source or clickbait, but...



Apple has already done an ultra high bandwidth connector, that's easy to align, connect, lock in place, and looks elegant - the processor to backplane connector in the 4,1/5,1.


There are easier ways to lock things, for example, a half-circle cam on each top corner, that sits within the volume of a "top" module, but which rotates up into the body of a module placed on top of it - have it mounted physically on the outside, so it's visible at a glance if it's locked.


The processor module could be as big as a full-size GPU accepting eGPU, "like a mac mini" may not mean a box literally the same size - look how big the processor section of a cheesegrater is, which arguably has better design for airflow and cooling than the trashcan



Macs used to come with passthrough power supplies, so you'd plug your monitor's power cord into the power out port on the mac. Cables which have a logical flow, for example loopback cables to mux video into a thunderbolt bus, are very elegant. Complicated internal circuitry requiring software control to route things is the rube-goldberg option.



"ProLink" it'll just be a PCI extender ribbon, in a different form-factor. On the Mac Pro it can be a set of pins and a socket, on a heavy-duty laptop it can be a cable (with an adapter that plugs into the module pin-ins). "It's External Graphics (because Apple avoids the term eGPU) on Steroids"

Though it might never come to a portable due to being a cold-plug only option.

Personally, I think some sort of full-fat pci socket on a cable, perhaps a locking cable the way a BNC connector locks, is more likely than a stack with passthrough pins, but all the same...



You can have more than one PCI slotted gpu in a row - that's all this stack concept will be, a stretched set of PCI slots.
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"good design has no need of clean lines, they are a form of decorative ornament"

Jony Ive is not a good designer, or rather, the design culture he has fostered does not produce good design. It produces very attractive, highly ornamented design, which almost universally performs much more poorly than an alternative, which concentrates less on the decorative ornamentation of thinness and minimalism, would perform.

• The overheating trashcan mac pro, that is Jony Ive design.
• The bent iPad, and bendable iPhone, that is Jony Ive design.
• The mouse that can't be used while recharging, that is Jony Ive design.
• The multiple generations of failing and unreliable macbook keyboards, that is Jony Ive design.
• The macbook that is unrepairable, except in giant expensive clumps, which has no way to physically remove and recover its storage if the path between it and the data socket is damaged, that is Jony Ive design.

Jony Ive design represents the sacrifice of utility, in the name of ornamental decoration.

the pencil that comes out the bottom of the iPad Pro! at least they've fixed that one!

 

[mattspace]

the pencil that comes out the bottom of the iPad Pro! at least they've fixed that one!

I might be in the minority on that, because I thought that was a great, practical solution to the options available at the time - quick recharge for a couple of minutes plug time, without needing any adapters or cables etc. I think a lot of people thought you were supposed to use that all the time to charge the pencil, when it's just an emergency option.

 

[0388631]

Love that Art Deco computer!

Here's a great design for a companion WiFi router:
View attachment 823383

Jony Ive can go sit on that if the Mac Pro is a dodgy turnout.

 

[edgerider]

anything that ignore 19 inch rack standard and pciex16 standard is dead before it is born.
does not need to be a « rackmount » thing, but it would have to respect industry standards « front to back » airflow, and possess either internal or external pcie x16 ports.

they could do a very smart move with a proprietary « thunderbolt pro » conector and cable squeezing 16 pcie3 lane.

the new monitor could be integrating the gpu, power suply and all that.

yes people would chime that it’s not all in one cheesgrater but they would sale a **** load of machine with lets say a 18 core xeon, and 4 of those ports.

then you would buy the screen because it would have all the connector on the back « ala imac » ... usbc , 10gbe, gpu etc...

for the one who would not buy the screen, a 500$ pcie expension box with regular i/o and one 16x slot or a 2000$ 19 inch 4 u rack with a slide-in slot that conect all the pcie lane to 5 double width slot for whatever you want to install and power rails to plug individual power supply for each slot.

once they have pciex16 output you dont need to have several models that range from 3000$ to 50000$...

you just gang 3000$ computer by pcie conexion, just like the did with mac minis and 10gbe.

there is very diminishing return with 1 cpu and 56 core unless you do virtualization. same with GPU : most of the time a high end gaming gpu will do as good as a 3 low power high end pro gpu. just because all what data center care about is electricity and virtualization, and that is what high end server grade processor are about : be the most efficient at virtualization...

for video and 3d it is all about massive parallelisation, not about virtualization.

therefore in video editing and creative work , 99,99% of the time an 70k$ 56 core xeon server with high end server gpu will be crushed by a
18 core i9 with a high end gamer gpu.
that is just how it is...

 

[Peace]

Come on guys the Mac Pro isn’t supposed to be a rack server

 

[mattspace]

Come on guys the Mac Pro isn’t supposed to be a rack server

but rack mounting has always been a common way to set them up, even for non-server duty.

 

[barmann]

they could do a very smart move with a proprietary « thunderbolt pro » conector and cable squeezing 16 pcie3 lane.

the new monitor could be integrating the gpu, power suply and all that.

yes people would chime that it’s not all in one cheesgrater but they would sale a **** load of machine with lets say a 18 core xeon, and 4 of those ports.

then you would buy the screen because it would have all the connector on the back « ala imac » ... usbc , 10gbe, gpu etc...

for the one who would not buy the screen, a 500$ pcie expension box with regular i/o and one 16x slot or a 2000$ 19 inch 4 u rack with a slide-in slot that conect all the pcie lane to 5 double width slot for whatever you want to install and power rails to plug individual power supply for each slot.

once they have pciex16 output you dont need to have several models that range from 3000$ to 50000$...

you just gang 3000$ computer by pcie conexion, just like the did with mac minis and 10gbe.

I'm not sure I got all of that for some reason , but I think the numbers just wouldn't add up .
Upgrade and update cost for the consumer would be prohibitively high, and compatibility across the industry/ PC market very limited .
And that's assuming a reasonable entry price .

As for Apple displays - in the Mac Pro market, they don't matter .
Making them part of a modular system or an upgrade option would make both them and the MP even more irrelevant .

 

[shaunp]

Come on guys the Mac Pro isn’t supposed to be a rack server

If it's going to be competing in the pro workstation market then it could have options for both desktop and rack. Dell do this with their workstations. It means you can then use a KVM and just have a monitor, keyboard and mouse on desks, and put the workstations in an air conditioned data centre, with redundant power and sufficient cooling. They can then be connected to shared storage too.

 

[Ifti]

If Apple build any new Mac Pro the only concern they will have in mind to milk all the users who would buy it.
The whole modular thing with proprietary ports is to make sure only Apple will be able to offer any upgrade for their Mac Pro if it happens at all. Practically all module will be unreparable by third party unacceseable and not upgrade able by third party. Just like all their hardware, all will be soldered in a box. I hope I am wrong but...
So forget about modularity on a scale like the 2012 / 2010 / 2009 and before.

100% this.
Each 'module' will probably be a self contained, fully soldered, unit that cant be upgraded within itself.

I also do not see a 'lego brick' type design, nor a rack design. I'm expecting more cheesegrater type tower, albeit smaller, which can be easily opened from the side and the 'modules' slide straight in....

 

[edgerider]

Come on guys the Mac Pro isn’t supposed to be a rack server

no computer except « servers » are ment to be rackable... but except custom built gamer pc , 100% of deskop work pc can be placed in racks with ventilation from front to back ... simple comon sense : air flow HAS to go from front to back otherwise your computer would blow hot air in your face...

and no « desktop computers » is wider/higher than a 19 » rack because 19 » is a standard in server but also in a lot of desk furniture... simple facts...

designing a computer that ignores those two standard requirements is just dumb, and in no way innovative.

now, if you want a desktop machine to have a resonably fast cpu, somewhere around 8 memory slot, 2 m2 slot,the ablilty to host 4 drives, a standard high end gpu or even two you are looking at a 1200w PSU and watercooling if you dont want that thing to thermothrottle or sound like a freaking jet fitghter at take off... and all this to make internal upgrade possible for the 2 % that dont even have the cash to buy such a machine...

external expension is the way to go as long as you have the true 16x bandwidth...

i personally own 3 epcie 16x expender: one has 2x2 16xport (tesla 1 u chassis) one is a 5 slot X16x16x8x8x8 in a sc646 chassis with 2 areca 1880 x24 sas drive, the last one is a 10 slot 2x16x + 8x8x in a modified G5 chassis and believe me you aint gona run 4 GPU or a true raid card internally in a single desktop anytime soon.

the tesla is 980w just for gpu
the sc846 needs dual 1200 power suply
and the custom G5 chassis have two 1200w silent gaming psu...

m2, thunderbolt, and fancy gpu are cool, but when you start working on projects that are 20/40 Tb only pciex16 will work. this is not an opinion this is fact.

editing h264 4 k video from a lumix can be done very well on a imac 5k.

once you start playing with 8k raw footage, or 600 000 raw photo timelapses, a single usb3 drive wont work.

like someone say : it is cool to open a planel and swich component, but once you started pulling trays to switch components in servers, and just have your mouse/screens/keyboard/palet on your desk it is even cooler trust me...

you absolutely dont want to be anywhere near a computer that has 4gpu and a 24 bay servergrade storage attached to it, not fun at all...
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I'm not sure I got all of that for some reason , but I think the numbers just wouldn't add up .
Upgrade and update cost for the consumer would be prohibitively high, and compatibility across the industry/ PC market very limited .
And that's assuming a reasonable entry price .

As for Apple displays - in the Mac Pro market, they don't matter .
Making them part of a modular system or an upgrade option would make both them and the MP even more irrelevant .

not at all, because it would be a « supermacmini » just a cpu, memory small boot storage and basic I/O.

if they can built a macmini base model for 900$ they can built this for less that 3000$ with a 10 core.

even if the cable is 200€ and a gpu expension chassis is 500€ it would still be below 4000€ for a quite powerful machine .

the same machine could use 28 cores cpu and be priced 8000€...

 

[barmann]

not at all, because it would be a « supermacmini » just a cpu, memory small boot storage and basic I/O.

There already is a Mac Mini , that can be connected to overpriced external things .

And an MP based on external modules won't fly .
I love the idea, but there is just no way to make it work - be it connectors, packaging, cooling or pricing .
Not to mention that Apple hasn't exactly been avant-garde with Macs in recent years ; and where they tried, it was a bit of a failure .

 

[Joe The Dragon]

100% this.
Each 'module' will probably be a self contained, fully soldered, unit that cant be upgraded within itself.

I also do not see a 'lego brick' type design, nor a rack design. I'm expecting more cheesegrater type tower, albeit smaller, which can be easily opened from the side and the 'modules' slide straight in....

it needs m.2 and sata ports not $800 for 1TB of pci-e storage when m.2 cards cost $250-$350 (higher end) for the same size.

 

[joebclash]

To take the example of the magic mouse - a modernist design would put the recharge socket on the front, so that when plugged in and charging, it would still be usable. Modernists would own that lightning socket, even make it a feature of the way the mouse looks, the way modernist architecture reveals the skeletal structure of a building. Ive hides the socket, like a dirty secret, making the mouse unusable while recharging. He hides an aspect of a fundamental truth of the thing (that's it's battery powered and needs recharging), to meet a decorative appearance goal of a single unbroken surface. It's illusion and pantomime, theatre - ergo, post-modernist.

That magic mouse revealed so much about apple design. If Microsoft came up with that exact design everyone would jump all over them. Because apple did it, we are ok with it. This is the design direction going forward for apple I think...

 

[handheldgames]

You may not like the choices they've made, but "ornamental decoration" describes absolutely nothing about Apple's design aesthetic. Ive is thoroughly a modernist-cum-functionalist that eschews ornamentation. If he wasn't, we'd have computers that looked like this (which I'd be down for, but c'est la vie

Hmm. that design looks familiar...

 

[barmann]

That magic mouse revealed so much about apple design. If Microsoft came up with that exact design everyone would jump all over them. Because apple did it, we are ok with it. This is the design direction going forward for apple I think...

The magic mouse was an utter failure back then ; in the meantime , we have had the tcMP, touchbar MBPs, the MB, all of them rejected in their respective markets .
It's not true Apple gets away with their inferiour MAC products, they are struggling .

The iProducts are managing for now, even though they are no longer competitive either due to high price or being obsolete.

 

[PeterJP]

I was also the thinking the stackable module idea makes no sense. It's been tried by several vendors in the last decades and it always failed. There's a number of reasons for it:

• When you design a proprietary interface, you have the maintain it. Suppose it's 'just' a more rugged version of TB3. Then when TB4 comes out, you have to update your proprietary system, making sure that it's backward compatible. Companies underestimate how much effort goes into that.
• You launch a 'brain' and two modules. So you test brain alone, brain+A, brain+B and brain+A+B. When you add module C, you have four more possibilities. The number of combinations effectively doubles each time you add one module. That's called exponential. It's completely impossible to test all combinations as soon as you have four or five. And that's where support hell starts: I have brain + this combination and it doesn't work! It only gets worse when you daisy-chain them and the order is important: “You should always plug your GPU module in first, then add storage after that” (or vice versa).
• Instead of having 1 machine to keep up-to-date, you have as many as you have modules. And then there's choice: you may want the fanciest super duper GPU, but for me, middle of the road may do. Is Apple going to make a wide range of modules and keep them all up-to-date?

With eGPU over Thunderbolt, Apple has an easy way out of this hassle. They just support the interconnect and let other vendors take care of the enclosure and the GPU cards. I cannot believe they would lock themselves into a completely proprietary ecosystem with support hell like this. Rather, stackable components connected by Thunderbolt. I see some merit in that idea. But it would involve quite a lot of cables at the back.

And no, I don't think an19” rack model is likely, either. Apple is a consumer company, not an IT company.