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What is your biggest disappointment with nMP?

M

MattDSLR

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 23, 2011
326
0
Canada
Its a question and not the war :)

So, for now we have:
Price
Expandability
Storage
Internal Bays
Video Cards (or luck of some features build into cards for gaming)
Multiple CPU options
Ram limitation do to single CPU (4 vs 8 slots)
Looks (well I like the looks less the power button it should be somewhere more accessible)
Luck of displays with TB2
Luck of apple storage options and not 3rd party(it would be amazing to have apple customer support)
CPU speeds much slower comparing to current models (iMac, rMBP and MP5.1 are faster in allots of cases).
The computer will use less power but all the external storage will consume more power the the existing 5.1 MP, so there will be no savings in power usage.

What are yours?
 
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Lack of internal storage space for user installed SSDs
4 Internal SATA SSD slots would have been child's play to add with very minimal impact on size. The additional power is almost negligible and heatsinking is close to trivial.
 
Lack of internal expansion, lack of upgradability, only one storage drive, only single CPU option but dual GPU's whether your workflow demands them or not.
 
I think the biggest thing we are getting is video and drives expansion
I do agree adding two extra 2.5" bays would be great as well an extra PCIx drive option
 
The lack on internal expansion and the resulting need for external cables ...
The beauty of the nMP will be wrapped in TB cables to get the required storage.

And an option for DP would be nice too.

----------

Oh, and no black keyboard and Magic Mouse (yet)
 
Oh brother I got a litany of dissapointments even though personally I love the new design. As a practical person who does a lot of work with heavy video and networking I am kind of disappointed in the general form over function approach. This is supposed to be a workstation but it is not very well designed for a production environment. It will be stellar for SOHO users. The small form factor kills it in that area. But the lack of kensington lock slot, and why is the power button on the back again? Oh yeah all the plugs are in the back!
This means it is going to either sit sideways so I can hookup incoming drives or I will rig up some USB/TB/firewire extensions with velcro so they poke out of my desk someplace handy. Still, not as easy as a firewire and usb port on the front. And neither of those solutions are very elegant.
And it is really odd to me that there is no SD card slot.
Those are my professional opinions.

I know minor quibbles...
But as said above by a more succinct guy, the most major personal gripe is NO black keyboard to match.
I hate hate hate the white key keyboard.
It just gets grimy fast and the keys arent as nice as the MBP keyboard.
Just give me the same exact keys as the MBP with a numeric keypad and I am happy. Space grey anodized would be nifty too.
 
There is a spot for a second SSD port on the second video card but they chose to leave that port off. A professional who cares about using a Xeon with ECC RAM would understandably also see purpose in a mirrored hard drive for redundancy. 1 TB of professional work disappearing in a "flash" when the SSD burns up. Even if you run backups, you'll lose days to weeks by taking the Mac into Apple to get the proprietary replacement part.
 
fixmdude said:
There is a spot for a second SSD port on the second video card but they chose to leave that port off. A professional who cares about using a Xeon with ECC RAM would understandably also see purpose in a mirrored hard drive for redundancy. 1 TB of professional work disappearing in a "flash" when the SSD burns up. Even if you run backups, you'll lose days to weeks by taking the Mac into Apple to get the proprietary replacement part.
Click to expand...

I had Apple swap out my Retina MacBook Pro's screen under warranty a few months back (for a very minor defect that I was surprised they even gave me a replacement for). Took literally an hour from the time I left after dropping it off until I got the e-mail saying it was ready for pickup.

The SSD looks like it can be swapped in about thee minutes, and the new Mac Pro will be a hell of a lot easier to cart off to the store. This is also an officially user-replacable part — they might just send you a new one. (Maybe; they might want to troubleshoot themselves to verify it's really a hardware issue first.)
 
Biggest disappointment?

The lack of power. The super slow clock speed of the 12-core. The crazy prices for 8-core and 12-core when their clock speed is lower than the 6-core, which makes the 6-core a faster computer. Makes no sense at all. Oh and dual graphic cards, for me it´s an overkill, I just need one.

deluxeshredder said:
The fear of getting an iOS7-style OS X.
Click to expand...

That too.
 
Its too BIG! I thought it was a nice compact machine. But it is an as big mofo doorstopper as it ever was. And it is hard to glue under the table. I'll look into gluing 3 mini's under the table now and hope to find a nice way to distribute render tasks.
 
mac-pro-estimate-2013-2012-mc.png


I see both the 12 and 8 core beating the 6 core.
 
ApplesAOranges said:
In multicore yes, but not in single core. Which is crazy!
Click to expand...

Which is the only reason you buy a 12 core.

The 8 beats the 4 and the 6 (which are tied, as they have the same single core turbo boost). The 8 has a larger L3 cache I think, giving it a slight edge, although they all turbo to the same Ghz.

mac-pro-estimate-2013-2012-sc.png


Only the twelve is lower due to the lower turboboost. Again, you buy a 12 core because you can use all the threads.

As for what chips Apple could have used, have a look at the below page. Scroll down to the end for a listing of all IvyBridge socket 2011 chips. There you can see the trade offs between base Ghz speeds, turbo speeds, number of cores, and Thermal TDP. It's quite interesting all the permutations.

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/Intel-Xeon%20E5-1680%20v2.html
 
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Sure, it is a beast. But this machine will only cover the video editors around here, and maybe someone here and there that can use the power. But for the rest of the graphic world, this machine is losing interest big time. So, the question for me rises, is this machine for PRO users, or for VIDEO users. If there where more options availble to configure the machine more to their needs, than it was a PRO machine for me. I have seen some benches now around, and it looks like that for me, hardcore Photoshop user, the CTO iMac kicks ass vs this nMP compared bang for your bucks. :confused:
 
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