What is there's no new MacPro announced on 27th October ?

[Crosscreek]

I would say Apples pipeline is constipated. Needs a good flushing from the top down.

 

[tuxon86]

Tim cook is the new Scully

 

[JimGoshorn]

Apple has thrown OpenCL under the bus - it's time to go full CUDA.

And that's an example of why it is getting harder to depend on Apple: they just drop things in favor of something they consider the next big thing. That's a good way to cripple dependability

 

[Bubba Satori]

Tim cook is the new Scully

A pimp for brown sugar water morphs into a magical foolbar clown.
Sounds about right.
Apple has come full circle...a circle on the tech inferno.

"It's the best computer we've ever made."

 

[goMac]

...and assigned as many engineers as possible to make Apple the best CUDA platform around.

Apple would never put themselves at the mercy of a third party vendor. For Apple, it's open standards, Apple standards, or GTFO. And it's a smart thing to do. If Nvidia really didn't care about using CUDA as a tool to bully everyone else out of the market, they'd make it an open standard. No reason CUDA couldn't run on AMD GPUs.

Good on Apple for standing up to the bully. It would only be a matter of time before Nvidia turned CUDA into a stick to beat Apple with too.

And if you like CUDA, you have no leg to stand on about complaining about Metal being a proprietary standard. It's just as proprietary as CUDA.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

In response to this news I just ordered a Radeon 7970 for my 2009 cMP... and earlier this week I installed a CalDigit USB 3.1 PCIE card. I'm gonna keep the old beast running awhile longer...

Hope you didn't pay more than $75 for it.

Thunderbolt is here to stay. It's even getting faster with Thunderbolt 3.

the 2013 Mac Pro is not upgradeable like the old Mac tower (which I bought used this year to upgrade from a mid-2010 15" MBP for video editing. Can't afford used 2013 MP or thunderbolt devices). But, the GPU's in the nMP is still viable today, I think. There's also two of them. And, with Thunderbolt 2, I think ppl can add Nvidia GPU's in Thunderbolt enclosures for CUDA operations.

Why would you replace your 2013 MP, say, a year from now if you bought it this year when it doesn't slow down because a new GPU is released or a new CPU is released?

Are you like one of those guys who measure stuff congruent to the specs of their computers?

Although, I do agree that if you bought say, a 2013 MP today and then Apple releases a new Mac Pro early next year with faster CPU, GPU and Thunderbolt 3 that you'd be like, I want to get that. But, if you can afford a 2013 MP, you can probably afford a new Mac Pro when it comes out next year, let's say. Or, you can sell your nMP to get the newer one. Let's just say....

The problem is this: Intel demonstrated eGPU on Light Peak years ago. There's no technical hurdle except the ones Apple has artificially introduced. We can't upgrade our nMPs with faster GPUs! Because Apple decided to take the ball away and go home. And they still haven't said anything official with Sierra and TB3 Macs.

Yes, you're guessing. Given the versatility of HP's Z-series (you think an unsupported 128GB of RAM is impressive? The Z840 can officially support 2TB of RAM) I'd be surprised if the nMP outsold the Z-series line (there are several models to fit everyone's needs).

There are probably more HP Z8xx in the Gulf states alone than there have been nMPs sold worldwide - probably in Texas alone. There are massive energy corporations here that issue them like candy.

 

[Mac Gus]

Hope you didn't pay more than $75 for it.

Show me where I can get a mac flashed one for that cheap? I'm gonna sell my 7950 to offset the cost. Should hopefully be a wash.

 

[deconstruct60]

Apple would never put themselves at the mercy of a third party vendor. For Apple, it's open standards, Apple standards, or GTFO.

Well, pragmatically open standards in the case of the x86 ( a very competitive duopoly is enough to play one vendor off against another. )

And if you like CUDA, you have no leg to stand on about complaining about Metal being a proprietary standard. It's just as proprietary as CUDA.

Slippery slope but Metal actually runs on multiple implementations, PowerVR, AMD , and Nvidia. The hardware is "open" the software gate is monopolized by Apple. Apple doesn't want it to be restricted to one hardware implementation. CUDA is a one trick pony when it comes to hardware implementation.

Both are chokeholds from the perspective of the user. The debates are more about which chokehold the user wishes to ignore.
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If I were in Tim's shoes, a couple of years ago I would have called a top-level meeting with the agenda "the internet has exploded with complaints that the MP doesn't support Nvidia cards - why?".

...and I would have fired most of the people who bad-mouthed Nvidia

" Nvidia is trying to sue and take a slice out of iPhone revenues" ...... you want to fire someone for that? Chuckle.... you have been looking at your profile picture too long.

Nvidia won't give us the best price. Nvidia won't license Pro name for a embedded-custom part. Nvidia is blowing up OpenCL. fire folks for that too?

Apple has thrown OpenCL under the bus - it's time to go full CUDA.

Several folks tossed obstacles into the road for OpenCL. Nvidia dragged their feet on implementations ( 1.2 rolled out how long after AMD and Intel?). Microsoft dragged it down ( just like OpenGL ). Android was 'hating' on OpenCL for a while (Renderscript). Apple didn't particularly execute well on their end either ( more seed money for more vendors probably would have helped. Not sure why Apple didn't try to make macOS the leading light in OpenCL development. ) Khronos political issues.

20/20 hindsight might have been better to drop a more fully complete working implementation on the Kronos standards process like Mantle/Vulcan.

If Vulkan can get some traction then OpenCL will come back. It is just going to take longer.
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Sooo... no new MacPro today, only MacBook with last year's Skylake CPU... /QUOTE]

Actually, pragmatically that is largely this year's Skylake CPU. While Intel "announced" iris 540 in 2015. Configs with clean TB v3 and free of other issues didn't appear for other system vendors until 2016. The Iris Pro stuff also was announced and didn't really appear until later.

The equivalents to 540 and up ( Iris Pro) in the generation 7 ( Kaby Lake) line up are not out yet. if they follow the same "soft, slow" roll out as their predecessors, then Apple waiting on those is somewhat suicidal. What Intel has in debugged, volume shipment ready is generation 6 for MBP class CPU packages.


If Apple is thinking of taking the "every single port has to be TB v3 " mentality to the Mac Pro then they have painted themselves into a corner. That's kind of loopy dogma. There were little to now creditable rumblings about a Mac Pro so not sure why folks. Some indications of desktops in roughly the Q1 '17 timeframe.

What was extremely lame was leaving the MBA dangling. Could have done a speed bump to move to Gen 6 also and just kept it simple/affordable with same case and ports.

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I think you took that too literally. MS is generating "excitement" in a way that Apple used to but doesn't anymore.

Really? Then why are shipping dates sliding on MBPs

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/27/macbook-pro-shipping-estimates-begin-slipping/

and don't appear to be on Surfacebooks?

I agree about its pricing, but curious what that even means anymore about pissing off their partners? I would understand it with something like their once nascent (and now essentially dead) phone OS, but really, what are partners going to do if Microsoft pushes the envelope on price?... stop selling Windows computers?

Like Apple, a single vendor like Microsoft can't fill all the various niches that 94% of the market wants. If walked away then they whole ecosystem collapses. Android and iOS is already blunting Windows. It is better for MS if those companies keep their limited R&D budgets focused on Windows ( as opposed to running for the exits ). For example, the HP Elite X3 is a better phone project than HP spending the same amount of money, time, and effort on an Android solution.

... Dell, HP, etc, are content to sell the same boxes as they always have - they couldn't give a jack about pushing the industry forward.

MS needs to tiptoe a line in which add enough spark to get them going but don't suck all the profits out of the ecosystem so others can't reasonably survive.

Apple's relatively small 6% pond is pragmatically too small to do lots of sharing in.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Show me where I can get a mac flashed one for that cheap? I'm gonna sell my 7950 to offset the cost. Should hopefully be a wash.

You'd have to flash it yourself, but I see them going for $60-80 on eBay, Craigslist all the time. Also, the performance delta between 7950 and 7970 wouldn't be worth the hassle in my opinion.

 

[justinkaisse]

We all feel your pain and are waiting...

If no mention of the Mac Pro on Thursday, I will have to take the plunge and go with an HP Workstation.

I priced an acceptable 7th gen i3 laptop, keyboard/mouse and RAM upgrade this past week on our company HP website. Under u$600. Hook 'it up to two monitors I have hanging around and good to go.

I have an old Mac Mini for email (Mail is quite nice); VPN into it for that. Otherwise, WoT on w10 (ack), openSuSE in VM. Good to go. Jan is my deadline. Donate the mid-2011 27" iMac and done and done until Apple gives us some new hardware that's acceptable. MBP won't do it for me for that price. Ideally, a Mini that's even close to recent (i3 6 gen is fine) and at least 16G of RAM.

I use windows at work, each and every since before nt 3.1. Been a Mac fan since the beginning, waited for the 2nd Mac, the Fat Mac. Had one since as my main computer.

Don't get me wrong; Mac OS is the best its ever been. But, its locked into the hardware, and the hardware is too long neglected. That Mac Pro? Droool... but its ancient and refurb from 2013 is $2500. There are ones ton the Apple site for almost $8000.