Two things. First, what is 'reasonable' ( "within reason") is just like the listening issue. There are two sides that need to have a common understanding of the base words/concepts under discussion for there to be a shared understanding.
For lots of folks in these discussions "pro" means "what I and some close cohorts do" is professional and those other folks are not 'real' pros. If you throw "reasonable" into that kind of context then "reasonable" is "whatever feature I want". Chasing that kind of "everything and kitchen sink" is a problem. You are not really coming to a shared notion of "reasonable". It is basically a try to make everyone happy by offering everything.
Reasonable is but a word, I appreciate that, and common ground hard to find .
I'm using the term within the context of the discussions in this and the Waiting thread .
Also, I don't have the patience, nor good enough a command of the English language, to get every posting perfectly right .
Big fan of your postings, btw .
As for the second issue, "third party compatibility". That is not magically decoupled from volume. The smaller market the 3rd parties see an opportunity, the less likely they are going to spend resources, money, and time trying to jump into the Mac Pro market. Chasing narrow niches can pay off in the general workstation because Dell and HP sell in the range of 800+ K workstations a quarter.
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In short, Apple listens to the 3rd party vendors too and if they say "that's too small for me to make money, I'll pass" that is very real too.
I'm mainly talking about GPUs , RAM , internal storage and such ; products that exist and are perfectly usable out of the box .
In that area, Apple has been creating niches with proprietary solutions, not chasing them .
Arguably, that approach costs them more than using standardized parts, even figuring in expenses for GPU drivers / support, which they will likely share with the manufacturers anyways .
It is simply not true that number of slots is linearly going to get more users. 1-2 slots will probably cover the bulk. 3 would be only incrementally more. 4 only an even smaller incrementally more. An incremental niche of 2K folks may not be viable for a $30 card which only has $1-2/card to spend on driver development for that small a group.
What Apple needs to come up with is a reasonable number of slots in a new Mac Pro among PCI-e and drives. Some compromise, but not necessarily a complete flop of mindlessly copying the from of a HP Z6 or Z8 without any regard of how to fit into the rest of the Mac ecosystem.
I strongly disagree, with the bolded part in particular .
One slot more than whatever imaginary percentage of users will ever need - doesn't matter, doesn't cost much, doesn't need much space .
Most importantly - no complaints .
I put that
reasonable number of slots at 4 .
Too few slots ( assuming there will be PCIe slots to begin with ) - and the next MP will be percieved as restricive and uncompetitive on even the most basic level .
Keep in mind that the MP will most likely come in one version only, unlike HPs and such which can offer different models with varying degrees of expandibility .
There is also listening and being high priority. I'm sure Apple knows some folks won't like some of the design constraint choices.
I'm fairly certain Apple only have the faintest idea on just how many folks are fed up how much with their recent Mac design choices .
No limitation of any kind matches up with reasonable? Slapping a universal generalization on something usually isn't a concrete sign of being reasonable. that's typically done to overly simply the world as oppose to accurately describe it for what it is.
The Mac Pro doesn't have to work for everybody. The whole Mac lineup doesn't have to work for everybody either. Apple has 7% of the classic PC market. How to optimize that is different from trying to manage 20-40% of the market.
No limitation, in the context of this discussion .
Again, GPUs, storage, Ram, PCIe slots, ports, things like that .
I do believe Macs have to work for as many people as possible .
Especially because of their low market share - they can't afford to become even more
niche by further limiting the hardware side of things .
This isn't the 90s anymore, when the PC market was developing, being different was a virtue , and there was still a chance of having multiple competing OSs .
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I think 10gbit ethernet is the modern equivalent of internal 3.5" drive bays. Data on spinning rust doesn't need to be internal any more. Put it in the server closet where you don't have to hear it, keep it cool, or power it with the workstation power supply. Even a giant multi-platter NAS isn't going saturate the network.
Multiple M.2 slots (and enough PCI lanes to drive them) is the new target for workstations.
I completely forgot about the server closet ; got to call the IT guy to tell me where to put the new enclosure .
Kidding aside, internal storage is still a thing ; most of my files are external, but having a bunch of current stuff on high capacity HDDs inside my cMP is very convenient .
Especially since I'm my own IT guy and the server closet is a ratty table in the next room .
