Engadget: Apple finally reveals the new Mac Pro

Vader1975 said:
While I think it looks great. The short NVME and only 2 slots for the entire storage capacity? The selections and specs seem odd but I do understand this design started quite some time ago so intel was sharing with Apple what they "would" be making in the future. It seems so end of generation though. The Xeon's it supports are right at the end of cycle before DDR5 and drops in NM. The Vega II's while still quite fast are right at the end of GCN. It's like this is the last big hurrah for a lot of parts that won't live long and won't replace well. Intel drops socket support like people change Jelly Bean flavors so this socket will die instantly (as for future cpu support.) So an interesting design and build quality. With interesting airflow design that should at least function. With a ton of end of generation parts for the highest pricepoints you can build them for and a max of 4TB. Boy I am just not seeing this as being very Epyc... kinda odd really.

Now the monitor and its stand is very slick. I prefer and am currently using 21:9 but the 6K and the high contrast and color levels are very nice and will make Dell work harder on their 8K monitor to compete. So that is a good thing? I just don't see these being as widely accepted as the Cheesgrater to my left. My 2009 with twin 3.46Ghz 6 cores and 96GB of DDR3 with Vega Frontier and multiple SSD's and 5TB drives just doesn't feel quite retired as of yet. So I'll just have to hack that no upgrading the OS bs and keep rolling the Cheese.
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That is just the base machine, Promise is making an expansion unit for the Mac Pro for spinners and NVMe. Then there is the thunderbolt expansion.
 
idiomatic said:
ProRes Raw, a format used by zero cameras.
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You can record in-camera if you want, and you can record externally.

And even then, these formats are designed to be efficient from the camera more so than for editors. Further, Apple is likely to support all major formats. Doing a RAW transcode by itself isn't as nearly as intensive as just shuttling the data around.

idiomatic said:
The Red Rocket was a similar adapter and recently became obsolete because GPU's are so much more flexible.
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The fastest GPUs on the market today cannot do what Apple is doing with the Afterburner AIC. That is not to say that they couldn't- the software support isn't really there, and the hardware is not likely to be as suitable for the purpose, as useful as they are for performing all kinds of adjacent work.

idiomatic said:
Again, its all very 2014.
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There's nothing 2014 about 3x 8K streams without dropping frames.

idiomatic said:
If you really want an Intel single socket cheese grater doing weird proprietary shit, QNAP's got you Fam.
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Given the limited internal storage available and the connectivity on hand, Apple does appear to be expecting users to be utilizing NAS devices.


I'm as critical as the next enthusiast about Apple hardware- I own zero Apple products- but I do respect them. They make excellent appliances that are tuned for the end-user.

I recommend them regularly for people who want the hardware and software to get out of the way so they can get work done.
 
When you are as big as Apple, you have economies of scale that no one can compe....whaaaaaaaat? $1000 piece of metal stand? Is it Tungsten?
 
Well... To me this is the ugliest computer in the history of humanity... But that is a taste issue so that said, its a real work station/ work horse, and the afterburner card reads truly incredible.
So yeah on this one merits a way to go Apple. Way to go.
I agree with many here, it will sell, it will sell a lot. The trash can was a mistake, it always was.. even more as they left it the same for a long time with the same price.
 
I see they have put handles back on it to make it easier to throw into the skip...... ;)
 
Uvaman2 said:
The trash can was a mistake
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It's that they left it alone, unrefined. Consider that they could go up to at least 18 cores Intel / probably more AMD, dual Radeons, and the Afterburner card in one if they did a modernized take. The only real challenge is that they can already pretty well do that with their Imac Pro, and there's not much reason to step up from one of those unless you're getting the broad flexibility and available brute horsepower of this new Mac Pro, so it really wouldn't have a spot in the lineup.
 
I like the case.

In fact, I like it so much, it gives me hope for the future. A future about 7 years from now, when I can buy an old Mac Pro, gut it, and make a cool PC out of it.
 
What i wonder is if its too late for pro shops to go back to mac. back in 2015-2016ish I saw a few shops still trying to hang on with their ancient macs, buying cheese graters 2nd hand, until they just couldn't hang on anymore and switched entirely to PCs. (They were doing commercials and videos, filming, cg, compositing, etc.)

This was just a couple shops so I have no idea on the rest of the industry, but i would guess the very high end of the market that the new mac pro is aimed at may simply have stopped using macs in their workflow years ago.
 
I just don't see it. Most OEM's like HP, Dell, etc, all now offer solutions that are superior and also offer same/next-day on-site warranty/repair options as well.

The only places still buying Apple for a work environment are those basically buying the computers as office decoration for higher-end staffs and the big wigs that do nothing more than use Outlook but want the computer to 'look nice' for when VIP's are escorted past the front-office staffers.

Apple still does have a few large contracts out there with fairly large numbers buying Mac Pro's, but I can't imagine these arrangements lasting forever given the current state of things.
 
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^ I don't imagine this Mac Pro is going to be much of a profit center for Apple relative to their iPhone profits. I think they're doing it more for vanity and tradition and halo effect. That doesn't mean the engineers tasked with creating it didn't take the job seriously though.

There are tons of factors that go into the sales & marketing calculus that wouldn't be apparent to people outside of that sphere. Things like PR and brand damage of being perceived as abandoning one of their traditional market segments being more costly than the money they may lose sustaining a low volume halo product for another generation.
 
Mchart said:
I just don't see it. Most OEM's like HP, Dell, etc, all now offer solutions that are superior and also offer same/next-day on-site warranty/repair options as well.

The only places still buying Apple for a work environment are those basically buying the computers as office decoration for higher-end staffs and the big wigs that do nothing more than use Outlook but want the computer to 'look nice' for when VIP's are escorted past the front-office staffers.

Apple still does have a few large contracts out there with fairly large numbers buying Mac Pro's, but I can't imagine these arrangements lasting forever given the current state of things.
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No one has a solution to compete with this Mac Pro, there isn't a PC on the planet that can do simultaneous 8K streams without proxy data. That is before we get to things like the 6K display that is going to be groundbreaking for budget minded people looking to break into high end workflows and proofing.
 
higher-end staffs and the big wigs that do nothing more than use Outlook but want the computer to 'look nice' for when VIP's are escorted past the front-office staffers.


I see this at my office. Only people with Mac's are those exact people.
 
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5150Joker said:
Apple really must hate AMD to choose Xeon over TR/Epyc. And that design is fucking atrocious, those of you who find it aesthetically pleasing need your eyes checked.
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Fixed that for you.
 
I wonder how they can hate AMD, and simultaneously use AMD GPUs... Do they hate AMD more than Intel, but less than Nvidia?

In any case, the price delta here isn't that big of a deal, and with the amount of offloading they're doing for parallel work, higher single-core performance in a Xeon might make sense. Thunderbolt connectivity probably factored in too.
 
They are locked into Intel with Thunderbolt and the Afterburner card which is just a commonly available Intel FPGA PCI-E card w/ Apple programming.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I wonder how they can hate AMD, and simultaneously use AMD GPUs... Do they hate AMD more than Intel, but less than Nvidia?

In any case, the price delta here isn't that big of a deal, and with the amount of offloading they're doing for parallel work, higher single-core performance in a Xeon might make sense. Thunderbolt connectivity probably factored in too.
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It is simple, Apple use Intel in their mobile laptops so they use them for desktops also. It is a hell of a lot of work to rework the kernel for AMD and fragments the OS which Apple will never do as they want to keep OSX lean and mean. There is also the thunderbolt issue which Apple are deeply invested in.

Xeon has the name that many corporates want and only people on a budget buy AMD. People on a budget are not buying this Mac Pro.
 
No Nvidia: no machine learning workflows. These boxes are only for people who do video editing and little else.
 
AVT said:
No Nvidia: no machine learning workflows. These boxes are only for people who do video editing and little else.
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They will support anything up to Titan Xp or 1080ti.
 
aokman said:
No one has a solution to compete with this Mac Pro, there isn't a PC on the planet that can do simultaneous 8K streams without proxy data. That is before we get to things like the 6K display that is going to be groundbreaking for budget minded people looking to break into high end workflows and proofing.
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Yeah, that's because this new Mac Pro is using parts that aren't even on the market yet.
 
Personally, I think the thing looks ugly as sin. Oh well, as long as it works well, I suppose it does not matter.
 
odditory said:
I'm traditionally and lovingly an Apple basher, but that looks pretty damn cool to me. And I'm glad Apple isn't abandoning desktop computing and going 100% mobile like was speculated.
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I would say they have given their only desktop solution is a workstation with a price point and configuration that would only be purchased by insane people or professionals and businesses.
 
rudy said:
I would say they have given their only desktop solution is a workstation with a price point and configuration that would only be purchased by insane people or professionals and businesses.
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Yeah, the thing looks like an old fashioned cheese grater that I would have used as a kid.
 
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:eek:
 
Lakados said:
I would have preferred to see a pair of SFP+ ports, better compatibility and there is actually support for it. I am not a fan of 10G Base-T, let it die.
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10G Base-T is much more usable on the desktop/laptop due to it's backwards compatibility with GB Ethernet.
 
Ocellaris said:
Some of y’all are acting like a bunch of scrubs living in a basement. When you have graphic designers and artists making around $100K / year, $6K on a desktop they will use for a few years and work faster is easy money. Even getting those people a machine they are “happy” with can pay for itself in months. These are work PCs for a specific market, not PCs for forum enthusiasts.
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Is that the market that was fine running a 6 years old workstation? Or has that market probably moved on in that time? I'm sure the 0.001% of the marked this will have will be thrilled with their purchase.
 
A couple comments to add to the price discussion.

I don’t believe the afterburner card is included in the base price.

The complaints about the price are totally justified imo. If you compare to the iMac Pro. If you build the iMac pro components it basically adds up to $5000, same as the iMac Pro.

Another way to look at it - compare the Mac Pro to the iMac Pro.
iMac Pro has same CPU, same RAM, 4x SSD, better GPU, and included a 5K display all for $1000 less.

Personally the monitor is more appealing than the computer - there is no equivalent alternative from apple or anyone else.
 
odditory said:
You left out a bunch of stuff, and the Apple pricetag also covers an overengineered computer where everything inside has been designed to gel and fit perfectly with an emphasis on cool & quiet, far nicer than some generic case with a bland Smicro motherboard. But the thing is that Apple isn't actually asking DIYers to care or see any point. We're not the target market. So "I can build it cheaper myself" isn't shining a light on anything unknown.

Even though Macs have never been my thing, I remember being very impressed with how well thought out the internals of the older Mac Pro towers were, while upgrading one for a friend.
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https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup/videos


odditory said:
That and with the Mac Pro you're getting turnkey, you're getting bulletproof, you're avoiding incompatibility issues of disparate components from different manufacturers, you're avoiding Windows 10 random updates hosing drivers or deleting data, and you're getting bumper to bumper warranty. And you don't need any tech staff to support and maintain, just plug in. If anything goes wrong for any reason, Apple deals with it. In a production setting, time is money, and there's no time for troubleshooting shit.

Sure, the Dell, HP and Lenovo's offer something loosely similar as far as prebuilts, but not at Apple's level of custom integration, industrial design, and precertification for the intended pro applications. Not even close. Again, I'd never buy one, but gotta give credit where it's due as a fan of technology.
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So, you get close to zero flexibility and upgradeability for predictability. Fair enough, but that is a price to pay.

Apple does deal with problems, by overcharging you for repairs.
 
nutzo said:
10G Base-T is much more usable on the desktop/laptop due to it's backwards compatibility with GB Ethernet.
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SFP+ can do anything 10G Base-T can do, you need it over copper, there are transceiver modules for 10, 5, 2.5, and 1 G speeds as well as modules for 1 to 10G over your choice of SM or MM fiber, the fiber itself rated for upwards of 40G and all of which is Plenum rated which makes it cheaper to retrofit into buildings in most places.
 
Lakados said:
SFP+ can do anything 10G Base-T can do, you need it over copper, there are transceiver modules for 10, 5, 2.5, and 1 G speeds as well as modules for 1 to 10G over your choice of SM or MM fiber, the fiber itself rated for upwards of 40G and all of which is Plenum rated which makes it cheaper to retrofit into buildings in most places.
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If I'm already using Cat6, why would I go with SPF+ and separate transceivers? I though I got rid of transceivers when I got rid of all that old 10mb ethernet stuff.

Beside, if you connect your servers with SPF+ and your main switch goes down, I hope you have a spare SPF+ switch around.
With 10G Base-T you could simply plug the cables into some spare 1GB ethernet ports and be back up & running until you can replace the 10GB switch.
10G Base-T makes much more sense for smaller companies.
 
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