Was Steve Jobs involved in any early nMP design?

[Mac Gus]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but I'm curious if anyone has any insight or thoughts on this. I realize that Steve Jobs died in October of 2011, and the nMP was just now released, but I've wondered if Steve Jobs had any involvement or input or at least signed off on early conceptual designs and parameters for the nMP. Does the nMP have any direct connection at all to Jobs, such as it's form factor or the philosophy of using TB2 verses PCIe cards, dual GPU concept etc.

Is the nMP a completely post-Jobs era creation or does it have early design influences from when Jobs might have still had a voice in its development?

We know that Jobs was fond of the small form factors G4 Cube design, so it makes one wonder if he was what lead the direction to the small canister of the nMP.

 

[ActionableMango]

I can't find it now, but I believe it was stated somewhere that he had his hand in planning products about 4-5 years into the future, so I'd say he at least had some initial input.

 

[WMD]

I don't have any inside info, but philosophically, the nMP definitely seems like a Jobs creation, or at least a Jobs idea. Heck, I would say that even if he hadn't designed it, he would approve of the result.

 

[deconstruct60]

I realize that Steve Jobs died in October of 2011, and the nMP was just now released, but I've wondered if Steve Jobs had any involvement or input or at least signed off on early conceptual designs and parameters for the nMP.

Given the lack of substantively new Mac Pro products in 2011-2012 he would have certainly have not have signed off on getting something done in that time period. Nuking the old Mac Pro design is coupled to the new design and approach. If the old design was still active this one probably wouldn't have evolved.

Likewise the "bet the farm" decision to move to the whole Mac ecosystem to Thunderbolt. Jobs highly likely had input on that. The jihad against ODD? ... Jobs fingerprints all over it. Leveraging Flash drives to toss SATA HDD drive(s)... ? again not a particularly new Mac design constraint.


As to specific sizes and shapes... highly doubtful.

There are several aspects that aren't Jobs like:

Invoking the Obsborne effect in 2012 over a year in advance.

The 3 different aspects of launch... "sneak peak" , "cancel old but not ship" , and "ship".

The huge EU market availability gap.

Those three point this product management was not part of some 3-4 year long "master plan". They are winging it.

Çrossfire primarily to enable gaming on Windows?