The iMac still doesn’t have a T2 chip and was updated with new CPU and GPU choice this spring, so I wouldn’t be stressed out about being locked out if I were to build a Hackintosh. That scenario would be quite a few years down the road.
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MP 7,1 Will Apple offer a "cheap" option for new Mac Pro?
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The iMac still doesn’t have a T2 chip and was updated with new CPU and GPU choice this spring, so I wouldn’t be stressed out about being locked out if I were to build a Hackintosh. That scenario would be quite a few years down the road.
How soon do you reckon they will make the current model obsolete once the updated iMac with a T2 is announced? 2 years, 3 years? It will be sooner than you imagine and will quietly be put on the vintage list for 'technical reasons'.
There's no stressed out here, just amusement at how much Apple is willing to take its customers for a ride. Enjoy your fruit.
Nah, at least 4 years I reckon. Anyway, the T2 chip is NOT about locking the Hackintosh community out, it is a marketing vehicle to sell Macs as computers with higher security levels than the normal Windows box. Not that I personally care much either way,....
Nah, regarding Epyc: the single thread turbo clocks are too low for an all round workstation. The Epyc Rome is absolutely brilliant if you only need multithreaded workloads like 3D rendering etc, but single threaded turbo boost clocks at 3.4 GHz is an issue. Loads of tasks in normal Workstation apps is still single threaded for various reasons.
We will see with threadripper, hopefully those SKU will rectify that to some extent.
Anyway, if you want MacOS, AMD CPU is a pipe dream at the moment for a workstation.
If you are just as happy using Windows/Linux, go ahead and treat yourself!
Single threaded performance? It isn't 2005 anymore.
How do you figure? I'm in the same boat as others in this thread; I used to upgrade every other year. The main reason that I haven't lately (it's been six years) is because of the high prices of the BTO options. For an iMac, a 2TB SSD is under $300, but Apple charges $600 for it. 32 gigs of RAM is under $200 (minus buyback), but Apple charges (again) $600. I don't care how "special" these items become once Apple touches them; they're not worth 2x or 3x what the OEM charges.
Because the components and prices are known. You may have to dig into a large number of threads on these boards to find the info but it's there.
But it's not the same SSD class used in the Mini/MacPro/iMP — which you cannot buy in the aftermarket — so what's your point?
We aren't talking about the iMac here. My comments were based on known pricing by Apple for BTO upgrades on the Mini/iMP and are 100% accurate. The Mac Pro will follow the same structure—no reason it shouldn't.
RAM isn't the only BTO option. CPU and GPU are off the shelf. Apple's RAM prices for that used in the Mini/MacPro/iMP dropped quite a bit recently. Compare it to OWC and it's not as far off as you think.
The Mac Pro was the 1%. The Mac Pro being in the single digits isn't new. Nor was it 'caused' singlularly by the 2013 Model. There is not particularly any 'finger' being given here at all. It more a matching u to what is left over after account for the sales of the rest of the Mac product line up. The folks fixated on form are single digits. Lots more folks just want something that works and is more highly unlikely to break down ( more than form. ).
Additionally folks who primarily just wanted commodity parts pricing left over the last 9 years. Another factor as to why what was left is in the low single digits. Broad market with more cheaper options was there and Apple hasn't been out to dominate that ever since there return of jabs last century.
More revisionist history. Hacintoshes didn't spring to life in 2012-2013. They existed before. It has gotten more scripted and streamlined over time but because Apple doesn't make "everything for everyboard" it has been there for a very long time. It is bigger but the overall Mac market is bigger now also. As long as near sub single digit percentage Apple isn't isn't going to do much.
T2 isn't about hackintoush systems. It is more about hacking (not the systems ) which isn't neutral ( there are bad and good hacks ). If eliminating the tools the bad one use some of the presumed "good" ones will go also. Solid security closes backdoors.
Over time security problems will get worse if system don't implement better security. Folks who want to exploit system are buidling increasing better tools all the time. That isn't going to stop, the future is highly likely to be filled with more exploits and better breaches for systems that are sitting around with 1990s (or earlier) view of the world.
More handwaving hooey. the majority of currently deployed Macs don't have T2 chips. So macOS not running on those is not an options for the whole Vintage/Obsolete countdown clock to run out into the future. That isn't a short amount of time. So "won't run" is simply is straight up hooey.
Yeah in 5-6 years time those current non T2 systems will be old. Guess what the current T2 systems will be just about as old. Apple will be dumping both sets as they age out in the policy they told everybody up front. That has diddly poo to do with hackintoshes. Some older hackintohses will be dying of by side effect too at that point as Apple dumps obsolete drivers. Old is old. Hackintosh isn't going to make the system completely immune from that.
The 2009-2010 Mac Pro was in the $2K range. It is only revisionist hand waving that is putting that in the "mid range". It wasn't then and really isn't now.
Used Mac Pros have fallen deep into the mid-range zone. But who is walking away from whom there isn't clear. Apple isn't primarily selling used Mac Pros. So it really shouldn't be a shock that they don't care about customers they didn't have.
The Mac Pro has been in the higher end since before the 2013 system. That they have climbed much farther into the high end with this new system isn't a major change for the mid-range offerings directly in terms of "new systems" sold by Apple. It will change the tickle down into the used market.
There is a change to the "entry" segment of the high end. Apple will get some incrementally better coverage at the 2019 Mac Pro systems this year filter back to the use/refurb market over the enxt 2-3 years. if Apple gets on a 2-3 cycles of updates and many corporate folks keep a 3 year or so depreciation cycle that will triage that segment somewhat.
A company not offering a product in a certain segment is not even close to a FU. If it doesn't make a business case for them then it doesn't. It isn't a personal attack . It is delusional to cast it that way. Just because Apple doesn't want to slavisly copy the business model of Lenovo, Dell, and HP doesn't mean they are trying to issue 'FU' to folks.
This whole 'FU" thing often seems to be an echo off of the supposed Apple "MP total, complete failure' meme that was sold on the Internet. The April 2017 meeting wasn't a complete capitulation to off the shelf commodity parts and generic box with slots. Apple outlines that there were folks moving from older Mac Pro to MBP, iMac , MP 2013. ( the whole general market has been moving to more integrated systems and longer service lifetimes. ) . Yes Apple is missing a segment here with the new Mac Pro but that has been a relatively shrinking segment for them. There was much posturing by some that when they said 'jump' , Apple had to answer "how high'. Folks were going to ditctate specs to Apple and they had to comply. this new Mac Pro isn't a "FU" to that. It is far more a "put your money where your mouth is" to some and to several others ... it is more a reality check never had that kind of leverage in the first place. The latter isn't a 'FU' than resync with reality ( but it that too needs to be Apple's fault so it is classified as a 'FU').
The pricing will probably get incrementally better over time as AMD pulls Intel back at the top end of the high end workstation CPU package pricing scale. that should trickle down through Apple. There is a fair amount of smoke coming out of Apple that $6k for 8 cores high Turbo "has to be $6, just look at the super expensive models with Xeon Gold SP processors in them". That's is a fig leaf Apple isn't going to be able to hide behind for years ( if not months ). Apple holding onto that fig leaf for a very long period of time will do far more damage to their Mac Pro product space than any Hackintosh is going to do. The non competition in workstation CPUs is over ( should be obvious enough for even Apple to see at this point if they aren't delusional. ). The new Mac Pro's pricing is coached in 2016-2017 pricing info.
It won't slide back to the mid-range but Apple has arrogantly leaped too far even for the folks they are targeting.
My apologies. I didn't know that they charged fair prices for BTO options on other devices. Since I got priced out of the Mac Pro (after the cheese grater), I've been buying iMacs and Mac Minis. But I guess if you spend $6000 on a computer, the least they can do is not to gouge you on the add ons.
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Other than that nonsense, I pretty much agree with Most of what you wrote. I expect that the base model will get better over time rather than ever drop in price.
The first hackintoshes came out with the first Intel Macs in 2006. Every Apple engineer I know built one. It was these that convinced Apple to adopt Bootcamp but people were already doing it both ways before then. I know engineers on the assessment team that recommended switching to Intel—next time we have dinner, I'll ask but I'm pretty sure it was happening before the August 2006 release.
The base price of the 2009 Mac Pro was $2,499.
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/...-quad-core-2.66-early-2009-nehalem-specs.html
The 7.1 Mac Pro is competing with high end Win10 AV rendering boxes used in the film industry that are currently priced in the $8k – $150k range. The Tech Crunch article—only one with input from Apple—told us this. Why aren't people believing it?
Since the MP coming out next month can't use Intel's 56 Core solutions (yet?) those $150k Win boxes have no competition unless you tie two or more together through the T2 chip to crunch single files. You know, exactly like the 5–20 Mini arrays that Apple displayed last year. Apple will need a different motherboard to run any of Intel's current 28x2 solutions in one box.
The only surprise for me is the $6k start price. I was expecting $9,995.00. I was also expecting a better GPU and more storage in the base model so $6k is about right.
Everybody I know in film, AV and music production wants one. I do, too, but having bought a 14 core iMP with a Vega 64, I do not need one. If that changes, the project will have a budget that allows me to buy one.
That's what all the doubters and whiners are missing. Except for wealthy hobbyists, those of us who are in the market are using these to make our living. They're tools. We know the competition and it's been out there for over 3 years running Windows.
The 8–10 Core iMac Pro left the little trashcan in the dust 2 years ago.
As venom600 says, it's a small market that insists on expandability. I also suspect they want to leave part of it to Windows, because of high support costs. They know that a large part of the market for expandable towers below the big Mac Pro (not all of it, there are photographers, indie video folks and others in there as well) consists of gamers.
Supporting high-end gaming means two things that Apple doesn't want to do. One is stability compromises to the OS (for everybody, including non-gamers) because of how games need lower-level access to hardware than other applications. A lot of Windows malware slides in through hooks meant for games. The second is supporting a wide range of hardware configurations, including "clocked to within an inch of its life and not as stable as it could/should be".
Apple has deliberately said, for stability's sake (and it's largely worked) that they won't support the extreme low end ($500 laptops), they won't support a ton of configurations, and they won't support games that won't run like regular applications. If you want those things, there's Windows. This has always been true.
A midrange modular tower would open them up to two of the three things they don't want - really diverse hardware configurations and games.
While I'd love an xMac (I'm a landscape photographer driving a big ol' printer with images from a 50 MP camera), I realize why Apple isn't doing it. They don't want the support costs or the instability. They deliver sealed boxes that work for most things and, sometimes, one tower for edge cases who will pay any cost.
The Mac Pro is not even overpriced for what it is - it's just that "what it is" includes a 1400 watt power supply, the ability to run 28-core processors, a terabyte of RAM and custom video accelerators, etc. If you don't need that level of expansion, plenty of things are cheaper.
Supporting high-end gaming means two things that Apple doesn't want to do. One is stability compromises to the OS (for everybody, including non-gamers) because of how games need lower-level access to hardware than other applications. A lot of Windows malware slides in through hooks meant for games. The second is supporting a wide range of hardware configurations, including "clocked to within an inch of its life and not as stable as it could/should be".
Apple has deliberately said, for stability's sake (and it's largely worked) that they won't support the extreme low end ($500 laptops), they won't support a ton of configurations, and they won't support games that won't run like regular applications. If you want those things, there's Windows. This has always been true.
A midrange modular tower would open them up to two of the three things they don't want - really diverse hardware configurations and games.
While I'd love an xMac (I'm a landscape photographer driving a big ol' printer with images from a 50 MP camera), I realize why Apple isn't doing it. They don't want the support costs or the instability. They deliver sealed boxes that work for most things and, sometimes, one tower for edge cases who will pay any cost.
The Mac Pro is not even overpriced for what it is - it's just that "what it is" includes a 1400 watt power supply, the ability to run 28-core processors, a terabyte of RAM and custom video accelerators, etc. If you don't need that level of expansion, plenty of things are cheaper.
The Mac Pro IS overpriced for what it is - it isn't 2016 anymore. Epyc crushes Intel at every level of performance on the high end - Ryzen crushes them in the low end, and Threadripper will do the same in the middle.
Have ANY of you looked at AMD's road map and compared it to Intel's map? If you need that level of performance (or a whole lot more) there are also plenty of things that are much cheaper than any of Intel's offerings. 56 cores, PCIe 3.0, TDP 400 watts, and a 5 figure price vs 64 cores, PCIe 4.0, and a TDP of 225 watts at $6,500.
Stick a fork in 'em, Intel is done for the next few years.
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The Mac Pro IS overpriced for what it is - it isn't 2016 anymore. Epyc crushes Intel at every level of performance on the high end - Ryzen crushes them in the low end, and Threadripper will do the same in the middle.
Have ANY of you looked at AMD's road map and compared it to Intel's map? If you need that level of performance (or a whole lot more) there are also plenty of things that are much cheaper than any of Intel's offerings. 56 cores, PCIe 3.0, TDP 400 watts, and a 5 figure price vs 64 cores, PCIe 4.0, and a TDP of 225 watts at $6,500.
Stick a fork in 'em, Intel is done for the next few years.
Apple has big contracts for Intel CPUs, and can't leave them for one reason - notebooks. Yes, Ryzen could make sense for the mini and iMac, Threadripper for the iMac Pro. and either high-end Threadripper or Epyc for the Mac Pro. Even there, it's not as obvious as AMD-promoted benchmarks make it seem.
Puget Systems, who are pretty trustworthy, and sell both Intel and AMD machines, are sticking to Intel recommendations for a lot of the creative apps Apple is targeting. Puget has benchmarked the newest Ryzens in Photoshop and a number of video apps and found them neck-and-neck with comparable Intel CPUs (the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X is very, very close to the Core i9 9900K - a few percent one way or the other). Certainly no advantage either way sufficient to cause a company the size of Apple to switch CPU suppliers.
If Apple's product line were composed entirely of desktops, AMD would certainly be worth a serious look, though. The problem is that the majority of Apple's product line isn't desktops (something around 2/3 of Mac sales are notebooks), and of the four types of notebook CPUs Apple uses, AMD is only at all competitive in one of them.
AMD really doesn't have decent options at all in the 5 watt realm occupied by the MacBook - which Intel is rapidly updating to Ice Lake. Yes, Apple recently discontinued the MacBook and hasn't yet announced its replacement - but the replacement will almost certainly be Ice Lake, unless Apple jumps straight to ARM on that model.
There are AMD options in the power range used by the MacBook Airs, but they are generally inferior to what Intel has in that range, as I understand it. At least I don't see premium low-power Ultrabooks flocking to AMD... That's also the very heart of Ice Lake, where Intel has just released important new chips...
Didn't AMD just release some new and competitive Ryzens in the 15-28W range, suitable for the 13" MacBook Pro? That's also where the top of Ice Lake is positioned, and I haven't seen any comparative figures, but if AMD is going to compete anywhere in Apple's notebook line, the 13" MBP is it.
AMD doesn't have any notebook part with more than 4 cores, nor any with more than a 35W TDP, and even those 35W parts are using much of that power on the integrated GPU - they are probably semi-equivalent to Intel 15W parts, plus a much better GPU. The 15" MBP uses a 45W CPU PLUS a GPU that can draw more than the CPU. An integrated CPU/GPU package would have to be around 100W TDP to compete, and it would have to be an 8 or even 10 core Ryzen.
Puget Systems, who are pretty trustworthy, and sell both Intel and AMD machines, are sticking to Intel recommendations for a lot of the creative apps Apple is targeting. Puget has benchmarked the newest Ryzens in Photoshop and a number of video apps and found them neck-and-neck with comparable Intel CPUs (the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X is very, very close to the Core i9 9900K - a few percent one way or the other). Certainly no advantage either way sufficient to cause a company the size of Apple to switch CPU suppliers.
If Apple's product line were composed entirely of desktops, AMD would certainly be worth a serious look, though. The problem is that the majority of Apple's product line isn't desktops (something around 2/3 of Mac sales are notebooks), and of the four types of notebook CPUs Apple uses, AMD is only at all competitive in one of them.
AMD really doesn't have decent options at all in the 5 watt realm occupied by the MacBook - which Intel is rapidly updating to Ice Lake. Yes, Apple recently discontinued the MacBook and hasn't yet announced its replacement - but the replacement will almost certainly be Ice Lake, unless Apple jumps straight to ARM on that model.
There are AMD options in the power range used by the MacBook Airs, but they are generally inferior to what Intel has in that range, as I understand it. At least I don't see premium low-power Ultrabooks flocking to AMD... That's also the very heart of Ice Lake, where Intel has just released important new chips...
Didn't AMD just release some new and competitive Ryzens in the 15-28W range, suitable for the 13" MacBook Pro? That's also where the top of Ice Lake is positioned, and I haven't seen any comparative figures, but if AMD is going to compete anywhere in Apple's notebook line, the 13" MBP is it.
AMD doesn't have any notebook part with more than 4 cores, nor any with more than a 35W TDP, and even those 35W parts are using much of that power on the integrated GPU - they are probably semi-equivalent to Intel 15W parts, plus a much better GPU. The 15" MBP uses a 45W CPU PLUS a GPU that can draw more than the CPU. An integrated CPU/GPU package would have to be around 100W TDP to compete, and it would have to be an 8 or even 10 core Ryzen.
Don’t - the Mac mini had a soldered on SSD, making it impossible to upgrade, and thus a total non-starter. Seriously idiotic decisions from Apple, especially since they made a huge deal about the ‘socketed and expandable RAM’ while saying nothing about the SSDs. The whole thing sounds like a Jony Ive or Phil Schiller decision...
This is an issue with whatever brand RX580 you installed. I have the Sapphire Pulse RX580, and it’s nice an quiet, even under full load.
There are a LOT of AMD powered Laptops out there. All the major players make them -Lenovo has a $400 Ryzen that outspecs a Macbook. Asus makes a gaming laptop that uses desktop components. For $400 less than the price of a base 15", I can get an HP Ryzen 7 w/64gb ram, 2Tb storage, Vega 10 graphics, and as an added bonus - ports.
If you actually need horsepower, you probably aren't using an Apple of any type. I'd also point out that not every workflow is based around Adobe products.
That is the problem from my perspective - I actually do real work that will push a computer. I killed my Macbook Pro, and after Applecare replaced every board in the laptop, it died again less than 6 months later. Turns out that you can't actually push a cpu and a gpu in those. OTOH, the netbook ($200) I bought to tie me over while the MacBook Pro was in the shop is still crunching SETI blocks 24 hours/7 days a week 9 years later. Go figure.
You cite a $400 laptop (a market Apple's uninterested in) - it may outspec a Macbook, but it probably weighs 2-3 times as much... And it is massively less powerful than a MBP around the same weight. There are also big gaming laptops that, as you say, often use desktop parts.
I found the HP Envy you're talking about - with a medium-speed quad-core Ryzen 7 processor and a maximum of 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD, it's competitive with a lowish-end 13" MBP. Despite having a 15" screen, its screen (only option) is lower resolution than any current Apple laptop. It's a downspecced 13" MBP, except that not only is it 1.5 lbs heavier than the 13" MBP, it's heavier than the 15" MBP with 8 cores, twice the GPU, up to 4 TB of storage and 32 GB of RAM.
What I am still yet to see is a true premium-class AMD laptop of any type (if there is one, I'd expect it to be similar to a 13" MBP - a thin, light quad-core). There are plenty of value-oriented AMD laptops out there. I just searched newegg for all AMD laptops, and there were only a few models above $1000. If there was a premium model, I'd expect it to be toward the top of the price scale. Every single Ryzen laptop topped out at a 1920x1080 display and general specs below the 13" MBP, let alone the 15" MBP. The closest is an HP Elitebook that is a legitimate MBP 13" competitor in its highest configurations.
There's nothing that competes with Apple's ultralights, and there's nothing that competes with the 15". Before Apple gives AMD CPUs a serious look, they'd need both 5-15 W CPUs suitable for the ultralights and a mobile workstation class CPU for the 15".
I found the HP Envy you're talking about - with a medium-speed quad-core Ryzen 7 processor and a maximum of 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD, it's competitive with a lowish-end 13" MBP. Despite having a 15" screen, its screen (only option) is lower resolution than any current Apple laptop. It's a downspecced 13" MBP, except that not only is it 1.5 lbs heavier than the 13" MBP, it's heavier than the 15" MBP with 8 cores, twice the GPU, up to 4 TB of storage and 32 GB of RAM.
What I am still yet to see is a true premium-class AMD laptop of any type (if there is one, I'd expect it to be similar to a 13" MBP - a thin, light quad-core). There are plenty of value-oriented AMD laptops out there. I just searched newegg for all AMD laptops, and there were only a few models above $1000. If there was a premium model, I'd expect it to be toward the top of the price scale. Every single Ryzen laptop topped out at a 1920x1080 display and general specs below the 13" MBP, let alone the 15" MBP. The closest is an HP Elitebook that is a legitimate MBP 13" competitor in its highest configurations.
There's nothing that competes with Apple's ultralights, and there's nothing that competes with the 15". Before Apple gives AMD CPUs a serious look, they'd need both 5-15 W CPUs suitable for the ultralights and a mobile workstation class CPU for the 15".
What is more important - looks or performance? I mentioned the Lenovo because it will outperform a $1,300 Macbook. You are paying $900 for the looks - that is more than I am willing to pay for looks (and Intel integrated graphics).
The Envy I looked at had 64Gb of ram. (Hint: Amazon.com - ryzen laptop - over on the side, select 64Gb of ram - it also has a 1920 x 1080 screen, Vega graphics, and can go to 4TB of storage - if you are willing to pay almost what a base MacBook Pro goes for - $3,000 is a lot of money for 4 more cores and half the ram in my opinion.
If a few ounces of weight are a problem, I'd suggest a gym membership.
The Envy I looked at had 64Gb of ram. (Hint: Amazon.com - ryzen laptop - over on the side, select 64Gb of ram - it also has a 1920 x 1080 screen, Vega graphics, and can go to 4TB of storage - if you are willing to pay almost what a base MacBook Pro goes for - $3,000 is a lot of money for 4 more cores and half the ram in my opinion.
If a few ounces of weight are a problem, I'd suggest a gym membership.
To me, a 4-5 lb, low-resolution (lower resolution than ANY Apple laptop) machine in the Macbook power range is unattractive. I carry a 4+ lb laptop, but it's a Macbook Pro 15", not a Macbook.
There are people who prioritize cost over all else, and want a low-resolution, heavy, slow notebook under $500. Apple's never been interested in that market.
For Apple to consider AMD, they'd have to offer decent options for laptops in the 2 lb range, plus an 8-core for the 15" MBP.
There are people who prioritize cost over all else, and want a low-resolution, heavy, slow notebook under $500. Apple's never been interested in that market.
For Apple to consider AMD, they'd have to offer decent options for laptops in the 2 lb range, plus an 8-core for the 15" MBP.