I wouldn't completely rule it out because thunderbolt 3 is coming n external GPU solutions will be officially supported by Intel. They can be little more flexible in configurations since GPU can be had outside of box without having to release their own solution for it.
A man who understands how things work.
Last night, for the first time outside of an Apple or Nvidia, lab I got nMP 6,1 that started life with 2 @ D300 boat anchors to cross boot from OSX to Windows with a Titan.
Finally the fast CPU wasn't being dragged into obsolescence by the crappy, low end consumer grade GPUs.
In fact, I am being overwhelmed with the desire to get a screwdriver out and pry the sluggardly little PCBs out, they are of little use now with modern cards possible. We had all hoped that Apple would offer replacements, but obviously that is never happening.
One thing that remains is for users to wrap their mind around that. There is no reason for the machine to use the original GPUs as the backbone of its existence anymore. In can still grow and become a better machine as time moves forward.
I decided that maybe a better CPU could unlock more power. I got the entry level 6,1 because, well, they're CRAZY expensive, and I'm cheap. (My car just turned 10 years old)
I looked at a chart at anand or ars that explored the CPU options. Became obvious what a horrible, limiting choice the single CPU was. It is the definition of compromise in what is supposed to be a serious machine. The 6 and 8 cores keep higher clocks much longer then the single (nose bleed expensive) 12 core.
So, make the core out of copper instead of al, and redraw the triangle. Put 2 @ 6 or 8 cores that can keep the petal to the metal longer then the 12 and a minimal GPU on third side. BINGO ! With TB3 bringing eGPU to the masses a whole new world of possibilities.
And before anyone says "redrawing triangles costs too much" I read yesterday that Apple has more money then the next two companies COMBINED (Google & someone else) parked in overseas banks that they can't bring home. $181,000,000,000.00 of profits sitting around in various accounts, much of it in Ireland. Used to make some MPs at a facility in Cork. So paying a few engineers to do some engineering there should be falling-out-of-bed easy.
It's all about how serious they are. I'm sure they know that 6,1 wasn't the run away hit they wanted, but here is their chance to fix it and show everyone they aren't just a gadget company.
As far as cloud based storage, never going to be the be-all, end all. Some movie or other recently hit torrent sites before theaters. Producers cried about losing tens of millions of $$$$$ since fat lazy Americans didn't want to leave home to watch and now didn't have to.
Imagine the conversation:
Editor: Well these TB drives are so expensive that we have decided to save a few thousand dollars and keep all your Terminator 9 files in the cloud.
Producer: I spent $500,000,000.00 to shoot it and you're too cheap to buy a few more hard drives?
Editor: Ahh, but the cloud is the future, haven't you heard? Everyone's saying it.
Producer: You're fired.
Cloud may work for YouTube editors or cereal box designers but high value productions aren't going to risk it. With data breaches happening faster then the weekly mass shootings, why risk it? I imagine some Sony execs could explain it better.
Mac Pro, I would totally make a 2nd backup of everything to Amazon Glacier or Apple or whatever if my upload speeds would support it. I had to ditch my cloud backup after a year because I realized that there would be no way of ever catching up until Google Fiber or better comes to the 'hood. And that's an inconvenient truth: Buying new drives and rotating them out and about is just more feasible.
