Apple Working on “Completely Rethought” Mac Pro and Pro Display

Megalith

Megalith

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Apple has found the courage to admit that their “trash can” Mac Pro is, in fact, garbage. The company’s SVP of worldwide marketing suggested his company had plenty of creative juice left by quipping “can’t innovate any more, my ass!” when he debuted the bold, clever design in 2013. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until years later that their designers realized a cylindrical design might not have been the best idea.

“We designed ourselves into a bit of a corner,” admits Apple’s Craig Federighi, who looks after software engineering and regularly appears on stage at Apple events to demonstrate OS improvements. “We wanted to do something bold and different. What we didn’t appreciate completely at the time was how we had so tailored that design to a specific vision that in the future we would find ourselves a bit boxed in — into a circular shape.” Apple’s unusually honest admissions about the Mac Pro come at a time when the company is being accused of abandoning the Mac and macOS.
 
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Sorry, but I quite liked the cylindrical idea. What limited it was their unwillingness to say put lower-marked (though maybe higher end) GPUs and regular i7's in there to keep the cost in check while making it viable for gaming. If the GPUs could be teamed...
 
IdiotInCharge said:
You're clueless if you think that the case is defined by its shape. I'd like to see anyone else put two GPUs and a workstation CPU in an enclosure and cool it that quietly and effectively.
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Does it really matter? A traditional case shape/design is probably OK by most people. Cost, performance, features, and software (since it is Mac OS specific) is what counts.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
You're clueless if you think that the case is defined by its shape. I'd like to see anyone else put two GPUs and a workstation CPU in an enclosure and cool it that quietly and effectively.
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I'm not convinced it's such a huge engineering marvel. Lots of work and money spent on design, sure, but nothing technically innovative. It seems to me like the whole product was designed as form-over-function, i.e. "let's make a cylindrical workstation, because it looks cool. I'm sure the engineers can make it work!"
 
Ihaveworms said:
Does it really matter? A traditional case shape/design is probably OK by most people. Cost, performance, features, and software (since it is Mac OS specific) is what counts.
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Does going from EATX to a tiny footprint matter? Because that's what Apple did. While upping the power. While keeping it quiet.

Complain about the looks, it may very well be ugly- but from a size, thermal, and noise perspective, it's elegant. Regardless of what software you run on it.
 
Mohonri said:
I'm not convinced it's such a huge engineering marvel. Lots of work and money spent on design, sure, but nothing technically innovative. It seems to me like the whole product was designed as form-over-function, i.e. "let's make a cylindrical workstation, because it looks cool. I'm sure the engineers can make it work!"
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They flipped the motherboard around and stuck the CPU and GPUs directly to a triangular heatsink that had one large exhaust fan- that's innovative.
 
And I'm sitting here wondering, 'why can't they just update the parts and expand the range?'. Where's the consumer-grade stuff?

And if they're willing to put a pair of 1080Ti-class GPUs and wire SLI up- why not sell it as a compact, quiet, and portable high-end gaming rig? Maybe work with Razor to get the branding cred and ship with Win 10?
 
Ihaveworms said:
Does it really matter? A traditional case shape/design is probably OK by most people. Cost, performance, features, and software (since it is Mac OS specific) is what counts.
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A traditional case is preferable by most people.
It's cheaper and easier to upgrade, cool and maintain.
But that's not the apple way.

Let them slowly innovate themselves into oblivion.
 
Cobra said:
It still looks like an office garbage can.
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and when it first came out and my old work got one, it was sitting on the desk for testing when someone who didnt know macs walked by and threw away some paper into it. it was turned off.
 
HP's version.

Is this innovation too?


38390_hppavilionwave04032017-06.PNG
 
IdiotInCharge said:
And I'm sitting here wondering, 'why can't they just update the parts and expand the range?'. Where's the consumer-grade stuff?

And if they're willing to put a pair of 1080Ti-class GPUs and wire SLI up- why not sell it as a compact, quiet, and portable high-end gaming rig? Maybe work with Razor to get the branding cred and ship with Win 10?
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See if it was "reasonably" priced I might buy that
Probleminfected said:
HP's version.

Is this innovation too?


38390_hppavilionwave04032017-06.PNG
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What case is that?
 
You folks do realize that Apple designed it to look like a trash can/ashtray to purposely disguise it in case someone wanted to steal your stuff, they would see it and not steal it. :whistle:
 
IdiotInCharge said:
You're clueless if you think that the case is defined by its shape. I'd like to see anyone else put two GPUs and a workstation CPU in an enclosure and cool it that quietly and effectively.
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Take the word "innovative" off the table for a minute. Let's look at the word Professional. If you are a professional looking to get work done, you don't buy this thing. If something breaks, instead of sending it to the IT guy for repair who can have it fixed in a few hours, you now have to send it across the country.

This is for people who want to look cool or important, that's it. They will charge $4000 for what anyone can build for $2000. If I saw this on someone's desk whom I was doing business with, I'd question their choice of how they are running their business. At the end of the day it's intel hardware in a fancy proprietary box. That's not innovation.
 
Krazy925 said:
What case is that?
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http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-pavilion-wave-desktop---600-a020xt-v9b01aa-aba-pc

Even apple is apologizing for the trash can;
"senior vice presidents Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi admitted Apple’s mistakes with the design (“The current Mac Pro … was constrained thermally and it restricted our ability to upgrade it.”) and engineering (“I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you will.”), and straight-up apologized to users still hoping for a major upgrade. As they explained, Apple is “completely rethinking the Mac Pro” with a new modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and GPUs..."
 
Apple designs their pro line to sell to the CEO who has zero clue about technology but knows he wants his office to be hip and with it.

Their cubes and cylinders and spheres and whatever else will come are the epitome of why I haven't owned a Mac since the 90s....I have zero problem with the OS and they do some good stuff, but give me the same damn experience in a normal computer for $1000 less and maybe, just maybe I'd look at it. Offer your weird contraption computers as an "upgrade" to idiots that care what a workstation computer looks like, and a nice plain rectangle for people who have budgets and real work to do.
 
Pusher of Buttons said:
Apple designs their pro line to sell to the CEO who has zero clue about technology but knows he wants his office to be hip and with it.
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Yeah, because Mac Pros are overflowing in office environments. Just absolutely everywhere. You can't escape them. Sure.

What is it about Apple that leads to such dumb posts?
 
I always thought the design was inappropriate for the their model aimed at pros looking for top end CPU/GPU power. Buyers in this space really need more modular designs, to help the keep the computing power nearer to the leading edge.


Though with a single GPU and desktop CPU and more affordable price, it would have been a very nice headless Mac for home/office users.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
They flipped the motherboard around and stuck the CPU and GPUs directly to a triangular heatsink that had one large exhaust fan- that's innovative.
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When they failed to update a single piece of it in 5 years... that's not innovative.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
They flipped the motherboard around and stuck the CPU and GPUs directly to a triangular heatsink that had one large exhaust fan- that's innovative.
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And they did that while pricing it out of reach, limiting it's perfromance compared to the market at the time, and also apparently painting themselves into a corner regarding future revisions.

That's some insane level of innovation there.

It was a clever packaging exercise with too many drawbacks, and should have gotten an D. Instead it wasn't some idea in an industrial design class, but an apple project, so it got green lit and tanked.

Like the apple products I own, but it was stupid as hell and deserved to fail.
 
Terpfen said:
Yeah, because Mac Pros are overflowing in office environments. Just absolutely everywhere. You can't escape them. Sure.

What is it about Apple that leads to such dumb posts?
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Thankfully most real office tech purchases aren't controlled by CEOs....but go check out small to medium sized advertising and design firms....
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
A funny shaped case isn't innovation. If you think it is, you really can't innovate anymore.
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It's always worked for them in the past.

My guess is that the display will be wireless, with proprietary connectivity, have no back-light, and be sold separately.

In tiny, tiny numbers.

Courage.
 
If Steve Jobs was still alive, he would have never admitted that Apple screwed up and instead insisted that the world is stupid for not embracing such game changing design.
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
A funny shaped case isn't innovation. If you think it is, you really can't innovate anymore.
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Actually the thermal core design is quite revolutionary when it comes to computer cooling. MSI tried to shamefully rip it off and failed of course. Sharing a thermal mass is a great idea as you generally offload processing to either the CPU or GPU. Apple did it first, everyone else including HP just tried to rip it off.

I personally love the design of it, just wish it was cheaper.

You wont see NVIDIA in mac for a long time, they keep pushing CUDA and it doesnt work well in the Apple ecosystem.

Apple are pushing towards using their own silicon now anyway. The iPhone processors are already stupid fast for what they are and with better cooling / parallel chips, they could easily take on Intel.
 
aokman said:
Actually the thermal core design is quite revolutionary when it comes to computer cooling. MSI tried to shamefully rip it off and failed of course.

I personally love the design of it, just wish it was cheaper.
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It's a really nice design for a home user if it had cheaper components/pricing.

Pros really need a more modular design.
 
Snowdog said:
It's a really nice design for a home user if it had cheaper components/pricing.

Pros really need a more modular design.
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I think that about sums it up. It's too expensive for home users who are relatively more concerned about appearance and price, and lacked modularity for the professionals willing to spend the money on it, and who don't care as much about how it looks.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
You're clueless if you think that the case is defined by its shape. I'd like to see anyone else put two GPUs and a workstation CPU in an enclosure and cool it that quietly and effectively.
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It was a great idea... but not quite up to the task of having (or cooling) high end gpus, with many limitations. They are planning to address this in the rebuild, apparently. Here's a better article from Anandtech. Also, here's a cool thing that's tiny and way cooler (in both senses of the word: the Corsair One.
 
This is purely Apple marketing speak for...

"The next Mac Pro will be multi-core ARM based with Apple designed GPUs inside, but it's errr a bit later than we expected"

I fully expect Apple's 'modular' unreleased Mac Pro to be separate stackable GPU, CPU and Storage units. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a choice of ARM or intel (or maybe even AMD) based CPU 'modules' all connected via thunderbolt 4.

You read it here first peeps because we're all [H].
 
This whole thing was a silly idea. Yes, in 2013, workstations this size were uncommon or just flat didn't exist. Most were at least ATX, more commonly EATX or some type of SSI. Apple made it smaller, congratulations. The question is...who cares? How often does someone look at their dual Xeon/4x Quadro workstation and say "gee, I sure wish this was the size of a tin can!"

I'll grant that Apple is great at making things smaller. But, some things just don't need to be made smaller. This was a product that didn't address any need or segment of the market.
 
Terpfen said:
Yeah, because Mac Pros are overflowing in office environments. Just absolutely everywhere. You can't escape them. Sure.

What is it about Apple that leads to such dumb posts?
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Forgive him. He's just mistaking all the office cubicle garbage cans for Mac Pros.
 
thingi said:
This is purely Apple marketing speak for...

"The next Mac Pro will be multi-core ARM based with Apple designed GPUs inside, but it's errr a bit later than we expected"

I fully expect Apple's 'modular' unreleased Mac Pro to be separate stackable GPU, CPU and Storage units. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a choice of ARM or intel (or maybe even AMD) based CPU 'modules' all connected via thunderbolt 4.

You read it here first peeps because we're all [H].
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They will adapt the OS to utilise their own silicon such as the A11. They already have the grunt for laptop usage with excellent power efficiency. They just need to scale it up.
 
Personally, I liked the design. Airflow is much better in a cylinder than a box, that's just physics. I wouldn't purchase one, way too expensive for my needs, you can't game on those GPUs. It's clearly a machine for graphic designers. I did have a mac pro back in the day though at my old job and it was a beast.

People need to stop the apple hate, it makes no sense. The OS is amazing, the product synergy in the apple ecosphere is better, more polished and easier than anything open source or microsoft could possibly accomplish. Is it expensive? Yes! Do people pay for it? I sure don't! I get my company to buy my Apple products for me :)

Hell, show me a 7 year old Apple product and the damn thing still works.

What people don't like here is the fact that they can go build some super beast of hardware that blows away an apple machine for half the price... too bad you put an absolute garbage operating system on it. It's like buying $5,000 worth of rims for your $500 beater. You guys are just hoodrats, sorry to tell you.
 
People seem to forget that you arent just paying for the hardware, you are paying for the build quality, software and seamless ecosystem. Something Android and Windblows can only dream of.

It is well known thst Apple punches well above the sum of its parts and specs (how many windows laptops do you still see kicking from 2010.

Macs have their place but not for the kiddy gamers and fat nerds who just want bigger numbers on a spec sheet.
 
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Fuzzy Logik said:
Personally, I liked the design. Airflow is much better in a cylinder than a box, that's just physics. I wouldn't purchase one, way too expensive for my needs, you can't game on those GPUs. It's clearly a machine for graphic designers. I did have a mac pro back in the day though at my old job and it was a beast.

People need to stop the apple hate, it makes no sense. The OS is amazing, the product synergy in the apple ecosphere is better, more polished and easier than anything open source or microsoft could possibly accomplish. Is it expensive? Yes! Do people pay for it? I sure don't! I get my company to buy my Apple products for me :)

Hell, show me a 7 year old Apple product and the damn thing still works.

What people don't like here is the fact that they can go build some super beast of hardware that blows away an apple machine for half the price... too bad you put an absolute garbage operating system on it. It's like buying $5,000 worth of rims for your $500 beater. You guys are just hoodrats, sorry to tell you.
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I have never, ever, experienced tha 'magic' that people rave about with macOS.

I have had mac books, the old mac clam, two mac pro towers (including the last mac processor model) and my dad has the all in one screen model.

I did professional film and photo editing to put myself through university on the mac eco system, and in doing so i learned to loath macs. They crashed all the time during compiling.

Want to customize something that mac does not thing you should? Fuck you pleb, apple says no.

Want to upgrade the system? Same answer.

How about trouble shooting your own problems? Pretty tough too, better take it to apple to fix and wait two+ weeks.

MacOS is awful imho, i still hate it today and it takes to much time to do even basic control panel level shit with it. Yes it can do most things a windows computer can, but with more steps and work involved.
 
The magic is that it works...unlike Windows.

I tried coming back to Windows 10 briefly and holy shit what a pile of crap... since when did ads become acceptable in a OS? Oh and it bricked itself after an update and Microsoft demanded I buy another copy because aparently putting in a new mainboard = new PC
 
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