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The Mac Pro Lives
- ericcholis 10y agoWorking in a small-ish company, my job responsibilities are relatively fluid, with major shifts coming every few years. First, it was a shift away from Windows to Mac to develop PHP. Recently, I've off-loaded most of my graphic design work, which means I'm less reliant on the Adobe Creative Suite. So, my next shift might just be to Fedora or Ubuntu. Not that I'm not satisfied with Mac OS or Apple hardware. But, they refresh too infrequently. I love the mac mini, my late-2012 is still chugging along nicely. But, I was able to expand the memory and swap the HDD for a SSD. I don't need the retina iMac, I'd rather put the money into more memory and faster storage. For the same reason I'm not a customer for the Pro; I don't need the Xenon or enhanced GPU. So, where do I fit into Apple's product line?
- H1Supreme 10y agoAfter Apple launched the MBP's back in October, I moved to Linux for all my development work (web included). If you're not reliant on Adobe as much anymore, it's an easy transition. I installed Gimp for basic photo editing (cropping, basic toning), and it's really not too bad once you get used to it. I have a long history with Adobe products too.
- simonh 10y agoUnless you're actually allergic to 5K displays, probably the high end iMac. Yes they're expensive, but those industry-leading profit margins and high ASPs have to come from somewhere.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- andy_ppp 10y agoI always assumed that upgrading the Mac Pro was going to by daisy chaining them with Thunderbolt connections. Guess I was wrong, but I'd love 24 cores and 6 graphics cards on my desk even if the price was crazy.
- alexkadis 10y agoAnd Siracusa with the win. "That Mac is our last hope… No. There is another." https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/849229927358636033 https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/849229927358636033 https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/849230093088165888 https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/849230093088165888
- jstapels 10y agoAnd I bet they thought they weren't going to have to talk about the Mac Pro (again!) during the next ATP :).
- ComputerGuru 10y agoI don't get it?
- jlgaddis 10y agoFor me -- and, I suspect, many others -- this is too little too late. Just a few months ago, I spent somewhere around $4500 (all-in) putting together a new workstation. It runs Linux instead of OS X and this has led to me using my (4-year-old) ThinkPad more than my (18-month-old) MacBook Pro (when I'm "on the go"). I actually plan on selling the MBP; I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm sure this is great news -- and long-awaited -- to many people... but some of us got tired of waiting.
- jacquesm 10y agoYou can run linux on the MBP. It's a pretty good combination.
- edraferi 10y agoSure, but why pay the apple tax if you're not going to use the whole package?
- jacquesm 10y agoHe already has one.
- icebraining 10y agoNot selling it is equivalent to choosing to buy (a used) one.
- jakobegger 10y agoFor an economist, yes. For normal human beings, no.
- mikeash 10y agoTransaction costs (both the explicit "we take a percentage" kind, and the hidden ones like the risk of being ripped off) are pretty significant, so no, not really.
- reason_police 10y agoThe 2013 Mac Pro was a disgusting money-grab. Back then I really wanted one, but just couldn't bring myself to pay their outrageous prices.
- pdpi 10y agoI'm not sure what you're talking about. At the time of release, their asking price for the dual D700 system was less than the price of buying just the two equivalent FirePro W9000.
- roadfun 10y agoIf Apple makes upgrading components easier for themselves that will likely mean users and resellers can mod them more easily as well. I wonder how the 'next year' comment fits into the CPU and GPU roadmaps.
- classybull 10y agoThe world would be better served by Apple getting out of the hardware business and just selling OSX, allowing it to run on any x86 architecture without all of the Hackintosh bull. I don't understand who these people are that are spending a 50% premium on components that are two to three years old. I use a MBP regularly, but only because my work buys them.
- jvzr 10y agomacOS would suck if it ran on every kind of hardware. It's because it's all so tightly controlled that it works so great. Windows is not inherently bad. But the premise of it working everywhere means some trade-offs are made. Same for Android.
- frozenport 10y agoit's all so tightly controlled that it works so great. Citation needed
- H1Supreme 10y agoMac OS already runs on lots of different hardware. Just look at the list of compatible hardware for building a Hackintosh. Graphics cards aside, there's a lot of compatible components.
- lexicality 10y agoThat might serve the world, but it wouldn't serve Apple at all
- frozenport 10y agoExcept that the OS X GUI drives a lot of people crazy...
- Recurecur 10y agoActually it would serve Apple very well. Most of Apple's profit these days comes from iOS devices, and more macOS in the hands of users would definitely lead to more iOS adoption. Also, systems would be available to suit power users - Apple currently offers exactly zero in that space. Power users influence many buying decisions beyond their own systems. It would be good if macOS could be seriously used for hard-core science and engineering.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jaimebuelta 10y agoThis is an incredibly weird thing... Inviting a bunch of bloggers into a room and saying that they're sorry, but they have great stuff down the line? It feels incredibly un-Apple.
- strombourg 10y agoVery. I think it speaks to the fear they have over losing this market and the incredibly bad reaction they'd have if they'd simply released the weakly updated Pro without further explanation.
- ntsplnkv2 10y agoGood thing they're opening a dialogue, though. For Apple, that normally is "you're holding the phone wrong."
- ealexhudson 10y agoPerhaps they're realising that they're potentially losing a lot of people, and are a way aways from shipping. Much better to announce some vaporware and encourage people to stick around, especially if they plan to deliver. Before now, people had little hope about either Pros or Macbooks.
- TheRealDunkirk 10y agoThey wasted an entire hardware iteration on the Touch Bar that hardly anyone cares about. That's what put them in this position. If anything is un-Apple about it, it's that they so badly understood the desires of their customers.
- mtgx 10y agoIn my opinion, Apple started losing its way when it started caring more about "fashion", which is not necessarily the same as (and it's often the opposite of) good design.
- buserror 10y agoGave up on the mac pro years ago. I replaced my unkillable 2008 Mac pro with a lovely Fractal Design R5 case, a stonking 5930k overclocked at 4.5Gz on a 'posh' ASUS Mobo with 64GB of DDR. It's a 'hackintosh', sure enough, but it's fantastic. First time in 30 years I don't own a mac, that's telling. Their fault, too.
- strombourg 10y agoHad you built a hackintosh before? Any major negative experiences with compatibility / updates?
- buserror 10y agoYes I had a previous hackintosh running for a few years in parallel with the Mac Pro. It's actually quite simple but it requires a bit more patience, especially during updates. It's mostly a case these days of doing the update, rebooting in 'safe' mode to install the binary third party nvidia driver, then reboot again and voila. Also, some of the original setup requires a bit of tinkering with drivers to start with (especially if you use 'recent' hardware) but it's really not more complicated than installing linux these days (and then fiddle a bit with the settings).
- taude 10y agoIt was the updates, and the time they took, and all the details to remember that eventually led me off of running a Hackintosh after 1.5 years. That and Windows 10 is more than good enough for me, especially as a desktop.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hackerboos 10y agoI've built one before. Updates involved losing sound. To get it back run an installer and restart. Odd kernel panics used to happen once every 3 months. Black text would scroll down the screen and you have to hard reset the system. I would keep a legit backup around but the power/price ratio cannot be beat. I'm looking at building another soon.
- milhous 10y agoWhat are the chances the new Mac Pro will simply be a smaller, higher-density form factor of the cheese grater Mac Pro? Also glad to hear the Mac Mini's not being killed off.
- noir_lord 10y agoNot sure why it would need to be smaller, the Cheesegrater was exactly what I'd expect a Pro level machine to look like and I've never been an apple user, I just love that case. It's a pro level desktop, size (within reason) constraints aren't really an issue.
- milhous 10y agoI agree. Bringing back the old design would immediately solve a lot of problems, but Apple won't do that. Even with a new redesign, I assume the system will still be designed to accommodate standard-sized GPUs and other add-in cards, unless Apple is going to use custom packaging, which is doubtful. That's why I guessed that they could potentially make the new Mac Pro smaller and have it sit on a desk instead of the floor, etc. Instead of the current cylindrical Mac Pro, it would go back to something box-shaped.
- nek4life 10y agoI wouldn't mind a slightly smaller cheese grater truth be had. It's a heavy beast of a machine and takes up a fair bit of space. Although it doesn't really move much and I don't notice it too much sitting next to me. Top specs and upgradability are my top feature requests.
- sparkling 10y agoToo late. Hackintosh is up and running.
- Tepix 10y agoA new Mac Pro that can be upgraded by the user is great news for the Hackintosh community as well. There will be more drivers for more components.
- sjwright 10y agoMy impossible dream is that Apple would simply release a microATX motherboard containing all of the "Mac goodness" and bundled with a license for macOS.
- H1Supreme 10y agoOr just sell a copy of the OS, and write a few drivers.
- emptythought 10y agoi would settle for a barebones machine with the basic CPU, onboard graphics, and like 4-8gb of ram but the ability to add in whatever cpu(s) and GPU i wanted, under $2000. Preferably around the price of the base imac.
- mwill 10y agoReally hanging out for the nvidia Pascal drivers for my almost perfect pci passthrough VM system. I can run GPU accelerated Windows and Linux apps at (near) native speeds without rebooting, if Pascal drivers drop I'm off to the races with MacOS as well.
- Keyframe 10y agoCan you go into a bit more detail? You're running Windows and Linux on Mac in a VM with graphics acc. at almost native speeds? Or on Linux running Windows, and possibly MacOS when (big IF) Nvidia releases Pascal drivers? If it's on Linux running Windows - I'm all ears.
- agravier 10y agoAssuming you can run another OS than OS X (meaning that you have some Linux, Windows or BSD mileage and are confident about administrating such a machine), then look around you on the refurb market, get your hands dirty and you can build a _great_ workstation at prices that are much less than Apple's. I have done so and I do not regret it at all.
- eddieroger 10y agoFor those who can run another OS besides macOS, then Apple hardware has rarely been the best option, and never the cheapest. The point for many, like me, is the combination of both the hardware and software.
- ThomPete 10y agoWhat an incredible unprofessional move, this would never have happened under Steve Jobs. Apple has been known for having the patience to wait with introducing things until they got them right. I guess this really is the Scullyfication of Apple. Desparate moves rather than just putting your heads down and come out with something new when you have it.
- jvzr 10y agoDidn't downvote. But maybe it's just a matter of them realizing that they have to announce something because they know releasing when it's ready means next year... and last year was already late. The company has changed in a lot of ways since 2011, some in a bad way, some in good. Times are changing too. Get on with it.
- ThomPete 10y agoThey dont have to do anything. They can just come out with things when they are ready. The Pro line is such a specific usecase that they wont be missing that many people and even if they loose some they will come back if what they come with really are as great as they claim. If they really wanted to put out the words that they are working on something they should hint at it instead.
- Eric_WVGG 10y agoSecrecy has plenty of benefits, like keeping plans secret from competitors, dominating the news cycle, and delighting customers. None of those things speak to a hemorrhaging segment of users whose needs are performance and expandability. It's a show of strength for the modern era of Apple that they are willing to switch strategies when necessary.
- ThomPete 10y agoIf they were really serious they would make an open letter or they would write out to their Mac Pro users personally. That way their "openness" would actually make sense and they would show they really cared. Pushing this to a little elite group of bloggers is just an amateurish move on Apples part.
- guinness74 10y agoIf Apple seems intent on making things right with its high-end desktop consumers, I wonder what that means for those of us pining for the return of the esc key on the MacBook Pro.
- brandur 10y agoFans of the Mac Pro have been waiting four years for this announcement, and are likely to be waiting another one or two for any real movement on the problem. The Touch Bar seems like a pretty apparent failure in that even most of the "until death" apologists can't or won't defend it, but Apple's not going to give up this quickly. I think you'll get your wish, but not soon.
- slantyyz 10y ago>> Fans of the Mac Pro have been waiting four years for this announcement, and are likely to be waiting another one or two for any real movement on the problem. The troublesome thing with this article is that even if Apple put out a Mac Pro with the latest and greatest guts in the old cheese grater chassis today, pros would be extremely happy. FWIW, I still think the cheese grater chassis is a great design. Sure, design matters, but the livelihood of pros depends on their ability to get sh!t done. Just giving them access to "less pretty" hardware that does what they need today is better than making them wait another year or so. Of all the Macs, the Mac Pro is probably the easiest to design. What people basically need are modular-PCs that can run OSX on the latest hardware and gives the user choice with respect to GPU manufacturer. There's less of a need to make it the smallest possible computer, because smaller makes it harder to do upgrades.
- Eric_WVGG 10y agoI'm sure it's been pointed out to you before, but there's a system-level option to map the Caps Lock key to Escape. It took me about a day to adjust, never looked back.
- lolsal 10y agoSome folks already commonly map CapsLock to Ctrl for dealing with `screen` bindings and other things.
- jccalhoun 10y agoIt is really interesting to read the articles from the other people who were there (links in the daring fireball article) and see the little differences in what each of them put in or left out.
- IBM 10y ago>Mac sales were up in 2016, once again outpacing the PC industry as a whole, and the new MacBook Pros are a hit, with sales up “about 20 percent” year over year. Brutal to all the MBP hot takes from this fall. Here's a good running list of them. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-pros-and-the-state-of-the-mac/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-pros-and-the-...
- intoverflow2 10y ago>Brutal to all the MBP hot takes from this fall. Not really, what are people supposed to do? Move their entire ecosystem to Windows? Just because it sells doesn't mean it's a great product. Balmer's reign is testament to that so I'm getting pretty tired of (non-shareholder) people pointing at spreadsheet numbers to justify Tim Cook doing a good job.
- IBM 10y agoWhether it's a "great product" or not in your opinion doesn't really matter as long as the people who bought them are happy.
- simonh 10y ago>Just because it sells doesn't mean it's a great product. How about if the people it makes those record sales to love it? "According to Brand Keys’ 2017 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, Apple delivers a best in class user experience across every single category in which it competes, from smartphones to music streaming." http://bgr.com/2017/01/20/apple-user-experience-customer-satisfaction/ http://bgr.com/2017/01/20/apple-user-experience-customer-sat...
- valuearb 10y agoIf the new MBPs weren't well received, people would hold off purchases, and yes, some would move to Windows. Sales are proof they nailed it.
- gurkendoktor 10y agoThat's true for people who want 32 GB of RAM, a Nvidia GPU, a touchscreen etc. - I'm sure they haven't bought the MBP 2016. But what about people who are fine with the specs and just don't like the details? You really need to have bought an MBP to know whether you like the Touch Bar and the flat/loud keyboard, or how well the battery works for you (given that the benchmarks are all over the place). I'd love to see the percentage of returned machines instead.
- tambourine_man 10y agoThe original iMac, you never would’ve thought as remotely touching pro uses. Not true at all, it was G3 almost as fast as Apple's then PowerMac. The only "problem" was that USB was slow compared to SCSI. But I used it for PRO work for years. Great value for the money
- LordKano 10y agoWhen the iMac was introduced, I worked at an Apple dealer. I can still remember one client who used to do video production work on an iMac. There may have been others but I distinctly remember one.
- doppel 10y agoI am really curious what Apple feel constitutes "pro" apps. "Software development" is mentioned, but the general sentiment from Hacker News and developers I have talked to seems to be that Apple do not understand their "Pro" audience, at least when it comes to the Macbook Pro (granted, it's a different beast than Mac Pro).
- TheRealDunkirk 10y agoFTFA: > Apple’s research shows that 15 percent of all Mac users use at least one “pro” app frequently. These are apps for things like music creation, video editing, graphic design, and software development. > Schiller, on Apple’s own pro apps: “I just want to reiterate our strong commitment there, as well. Both with Final Cut Pro 10 and Logic 10, there are teams on those software products that are completely dedicated to delivering great pro software to our customers.
- teekert 10y agoMaybe they'll update aperture (one can only hope for good, not so expensive photo editing software that allows one to put pictures into folders and projects...)
- intoverflow2 10y ago> seems to be that Apple do not understand their "Pro" audience As a few people have noticed (Recall Arment and possibly even Gruber pointing this out) for a while now almost all their Pro user footage used in advertising and announcements has either been photographers, directors or people sketching down ideas on iPad Pros. Kinda seems to be ignoring the intersections of creativity and computing that the original Mac pioneered.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- markdog12 10y agoI shudder to think of the price of the iMac Pro.
- ynniv 10y agoa pro machine that demanded placement on your desk, not under your desk ... and that's how Apple lost the professionals. The desk is a clean space for a huge monitor / keyboard / mouse, and MY work. It's good to make a workstation that looks nice, but it's ten times as good to make one that's flexible and powerful. The only people who want that workstation on the desktop are the designers at Apple, and stroking your own ego isn't on the path to making a great product. Every great designer knows that form follows function.
- simonbarker87 10y agoI wouldn't take that too literally, firstly those are Gruber's words and secondly, there isn't anything stopping you putting the Mac Pro on the floor so long as the cables reach.
- hugi 10y agoYou're refusing to accept the simple reality that professionals couldn't figure out how to put a computer on the floor. And that's how Apple lost an entire market!
- intoverflow2 10y agoWell not sure the air inlets taking the dust and fluff in off the floor is a great idea for it.
- rodionos 10y agoI have read quite a few confusing things about new MBPs. I'll probably stay put for another year before bailing out of the Apple ecosystem (aka distortion field).
- stephen_g 10y agoMy brother has one - it's quite a nice machine and the touch bar is way cooler than I thought it would be (whether it will be really useful is probably yet to be seen over the long term). He's mostly using it for video editing (4K/5K) and it screams along in Final Cut Pro X.
- throw2016 10y agoApple should not lose focus of their roots. They need to remain committed to desktops and laptops. With Ryzen there are now tons more options. While the iPhone and iPad businesses are solid, they can be cyclical and nowhere near as robust as their core faithful mac users who have stuck with them for decades. Few professionals are going to muck about with a hackintosh and I mean no disrespect to those who muck about. I have done it myself, and its great as a curiosity and to learn but at a point you just need to get things done and have proper seamless hardware support for all the peripherals for pro level work.
- teekert 10y agoI though it was gonna take Adobe saying: "We are working on CS for the latest Ubuntu LTS" before this was going to happen.
- MarHoff 10y agoGranting it took Adobe about 10 years to switch from old classics API on mac to cocoa, don't expect CS on Ubuntu before 2050 if they start working on it today...
- DoofusOfDeath 10y agoI'd love to see a market analysis regarding how many people stick with OS X only because they (a) need Adobe CS and (b) can't/won't use Windows.
- chefandy 10y agoI do.
- samdoshi 10y agoThis feels very reactionary to me. That fact that the new Mac Pros will not be out till next year makes it sound like they've only started working on it quite recently, perhaps in response to the furore over their treatment of their professional users.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y agoThat was my initial reaction as well. But after parsing their quotes a little more carefully, I don't see anything implying that they just started.
- markdog12 10y ago> One of the good things, hopefully, with Apple through the years has been a willingness to say when something isn’t quite what we wanted it do be, didn’t live up to expectations, to not be afraid to admit it and look for the next answer. Not sure Apple fits the description here.
- brandur 10y agoYep. What a silly thing for them to say as long as the Touch Bar exists. But seriously, Apple has a history much closer to the opposite of that. Never admit fault. If something really isn't working, pretend that it is right up until a replacement is launched. Just like PowerPC to Intel. Just like the Mac Pro until today. Just like the Apple Watch and Touch Bar (admittedly these last two are a little more speculative on my part, but I think it'll happen).
- cletus 10y agoSo Apple is completely rethinking the Mac Pro for a 2018 release 5 years after their last complete rethink of the Mac Pro? Does this mean it'll be another 5 years of no upgrades while they completely rethink it once more? This is the problem: Apple has just lost user trust with this one. All they ever needed to do was have something like the pre-cylinder Mac Pro: something PC-like. A case with replaceabl parts and lots of expansion slots. That's it. Have any Mac Pro users long since moved on to Windows (or even Linux) or gone down the hackintosh route? Who is going to trust the Mac Pro at this point?
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoEvery company comes out with dud products once in a while. Remember the G4 cube? Apple's had a bad run when it comes to desktop machines, but you've put your finger on exactly what they need to do next: pre-cylinder Mac Pro revamp. They've done exactly that before, I don't see why they wouldn't again. Of course, if the 2018 Mac Pro turns out not to fit this particular vision, I'd guess it's pretty much game over for all but the most niche of their pro desktop customers.
- okket 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect The Osborne effect is a term referring to the unintended consequences of a company announcing a future product, unaware of the risks involved or when the timing is misjudged, which ends up having a negative impact on the sales of the current product. This is often the case when a product is announced too long before its actual availability. This has the immediate effect of customers canceling or deferring orders for the current product, knowing that it will soon be obsolete, and any unexpected delays often means the new product comes to be perceived as vaporware, damaging the company's credibility and profitability.
- mikeash 10y agoI don't think they care about this. Mac Pro sales aren't large enough to be important to the company's bottom line. It's far more important for them to keep pro customers from abandoning the Mac altogether.
- stephen_g 10y agoThis is completely irrelevant to this situation. Their Mac Pro sales have surely already reduced to a trickle, and they will know that they will not sell a huge amount of the updated bridging model. The iMac update has been expected for a while so they're not changing much mentioning that's coming later this year either. It's not like killing the current Mac Pro sales is exactly going to put Apple in trouble - they're raking in money from the iPhone and MacBook (Pro) lines. This is a carefully thought out plan from Apple for sure, unlike Osborne's blunder.
- valuearb 10y agoThey just refreshed the Mac Pro though. That's curious timing with the announcement.
- jzl 10y agoI would guess that the only people buying Mac Pros at this point are people who need to for infrastructure compatibility reasons, and/or who need something more powerful than a MBP but absolutely can't go with an iMac for whatever reason. These are mostly people who probably would have been buying more even without the bump. So the bump is just a nice bonus and tip of the hat from Apple to hang in there. Example of what I'm talking about? Check out this Mac Pro server rack setup: http://photos.imgix.com/racking-mac-pros http://photos.imgix.com/racking-mac-pros
- tomelders 10y ago> For examples of the type of software that the current Mac Pro isn’t well-suited for, Federighi mentioned VR: “Those can be in VR, those can be in certain kinds of high end cinema production tasks where most of the software out there that’s been written to target those doesn’t know how to balance itself well across multiple GPUs, but can scale across a single large GPU.” Interesting that VR get's a mention there. Federighi chooses his words carefully, and they're aware of the rumours surrounding Apple and VR.
- vlozko 10y agoI'm not sure Craig meant to say that. Tim Cook has stated he's not crazy about VR but thought there were quite a few applications with AR. Perhaps that's what he really meant?
- MBCook 10y agoDoesn't necessarily mean Apple is working on VR, he could simply be referring to people making VR content (like video games) on a Mac where the current Mac Pro isn't up to the task.
- tmsldd 10y agoWell noticed. Seems that Apple finally realized that their lines are not in phase with VR requirements.. both for content production and use. I'm not sure whether because they are working on a iVR .. if so MacBook Pro also need a good care as well.. more memory, gpu and a modular update strategy would be well come.
- threatofrain 10y agoWhile people purchasing in bulk for enterprise contexts may have a different situation, on the individual level, I am financially bothered by the idea of a pro machine I cannot maintain, or am locked out of. I hope the situation is not that the market of pro individuals have moved to the point of just throwing the whole machine away on an upgrade. The Gruber article hints that Apple might have human manual maintainability / upgradability on a priority list, but I wonder what that means.
- mtgx 10y agoI'm hoping the next Mac Pro will feature an AMD 16-core "threadripper."
- highpass 10y agoI would like to point out that their research seems lacking. The industry is not "moving to one big GPU". The industry has already moved to 4, 6, or 8 "big" GPUs per station/node.
- intoverflow2 10y agoI found that comment bizarre, someone correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I've seen in my own experience and other people in my field (3D CG) multi-GPUs seem to scale ridiculously well. Seemed more of a case that no one wants to actually code for OpenCL on AMD...
- glenneroo 10y agoDepends on the tools. RedShift for instance told us right after 10xx Nvidia cards came out that if we have lots of vertices (> 1 or 10 million - I don't remember exactly), you benefit from more RAM so get a Titan X. If you want to render anything with less, get more GPUs since you can't share RAM anyways, but the number of cores will help you.
- karpodiem 10y agoThis is a well honed Apple bullshit technique called 'clouding' - http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/06/there-is-no-spoon.html http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/06/there-is-no-spoon.html
- mikhailt 10y agoWhich industry are you talking about? I have not seen a single workstation with more than 1-2 GPUs. You are talking about 8 * ~250W common pro GPUs, 2KW that is going to be absolutely nightmare to cool/quiet in a normal workstation case. I am absolutely curious as to what you're talking about because I have never seen this before, please correct me because I want to learn more. Apple is talking about prosumers, not the rendering firms that need such massive GPU workloads. They'd be better off using server farms to render that much work. No one is going to work next to a noisy workstation with fans that has to disperse 2,000 watt worth of heat at full load.
- nek4life 10y agoGreat. Now they need to reintroduce a MBP with top of the line specs and without the stupid touchbar. Snark aside, I have a mid 2010 mac pro at home that is still going strong (due to upgrades, SSD, more RAM.) However, I would like to get a new GPU for the machine, but I'm not about to spend $500 on a better, but ancient GPU that's compatible with a 7 year old machine. I've been wondering what my upgrade path would be. No way in hell I'm buying a trashcan mac without any upgradability. And I'm certainly not going to buy a MBP with the touchbar (I need a real escape key) and under powered specs. I'm really hoping this is true, otherwise in the next year or two I'm going to be seriously considering building a PC like I used to and deal with Windows 10. The rest of my family uses apple and it makes support for their devices easier being on the same platform, but I need better performance for photo editing and audio production.
- Razengan 10y agoSpeak for yourself. The Touch Bar is actually very nice and definitely speeds up some tasks once you get used to it and customize. I certainly don't want to go back to a keyboard without a Touch Bar now. As for a "top of the line" MBP, the 2016 15" is already the fastest MBP ever overall, even if you count the few benchmarks which put it slightly behind 2015 models in one or two metrics.
- Razengan 10y agohttp://www.computerworld.com/article/3136714/data-storage/apples-new-macbook-pro-may-be-the-worlds-fastest-stock-laptop.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/3136714/data-storage/ap... The damning benchmarks seem to be related to AMD vs. Nvidia. I don't know much about that but I'd put it down to optimization issues in a few apps. The 2016 15" definitely plays all games better than any MacBook before it.
- arh68 10y agoWhy $500? Mac Pros do not, strictly speaking, require the official stock "Mac Pro ATI Radeon &c &c" with the mounting bracket and everything. I had a HD4870 running strong until a couple months ago it died. I replaced it with a GT 640 I had on hand; it works fine. Your mileage may vary.
- bane 10y agoTl;dr Theatrical announcement of minor spec bump followed by undescribed future replacement product in the next 18 months, for a widely disliked and stale product makes front page of hn.
- ianwalter 10y agoI wish there was more info on the Pro Display. I thought Apple was "out of the display game". I wonder if the UltraFine issues played a part in this.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y agoSerious question: What room is there for improvement and innovation in displays for MacPro's target users, aside from price-reduction? I can see how photographers want faithful color reproduction with a wide gamut, good image consistency across the whole display, good resolution, and a decent size (maybe 32" tops?) But AFAIK, monitors with those qualities are already available. The only thing I can think of that would make them better suited for professional work is to bring their prices down. (Because even pros have a budget.)
- nik736 10y agoJust put out a 27" 5K Display with a competitive price (say $1000 - $1200) and they would earn a lot of money with it instead of not even competing.
- valuearb 10y agoSomehow when they released it, it was cheaper than Dell's 5K monitor. And somehow they've sold so many of them that they are the worlds most profitable PC business. Imagine what they'll do if they ever started competing?
- ianwalter 10y agoThere doesn't seem to be a monitor that offers a large display (27-32"), 5K resolution, and USB-C ports with enough power to charge a 15" MacBook Pro while using it like a "Pro". The 5K UltraFine comes just short of this but I also worry about it's build quality. Other nice to haves would be 2 thunderbolt 3 inputs so you could for example use 2 displays through daisy-chaining. Maybe GSync and HDR for gamers and game developers.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
- mcculley 10y agoEvery time the topic comes up of Apple ceding the high performance market, I wonder: What are developers at Apple using? Some in-house hackintosh?
- whatusername 10y agoMaybe I'm not doing enough development.... As a development machine - what is a top spec iMac/MBP missing that you would need a hackintosh?
- michaelbuckbee 10y agoThe biggest thing is greater than 16GB of RAM.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoThe 27" iMacs are all configurable up to 32GB RAM.
- splintercell 10y agoThe new 27" 5K iMac is upgradable to 64GB
- blktiger 10y agoIf they are all developing with Xcode I bet they also have a server farm for distributed builds. That said, why would OSX devs need more that 16GB of RAM? It's not like they are going to be running virtual machines/docker images. Xcode isn't _that_ much of a memory hog.
- mcculley 10y agoWhat are they building Xcode server farms out of?
- 10y ago
- rcarmo 10y agoI honestly don't care much about the Pro (since even with the speed bump it's still not that much better value for money) or the iMac (which is nonsensical for me given the form factor and my need for multiple displays) but am glad to hear about the mini still being alive, especially because my old Mini has just hit seven years. Like many others, I put together a decent "tiny" Hackintosh (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/12/17/1840 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/12/17/1840), but ended up converting it to a Linux workstation because it turned out it was more useful to me as a VM host. So I'm still using my ancient mini as an instant-on desktop (can't quite beat Apple's BT keyboards, really), and am looking forward to upgrading it - I just hope Apple realizes that it serves "semi-pro" uses well enough to gift it with at least as much CPU and RAM as the current MacBook Pro range...
- make3 10y agokind of off-topic but we need a MBP with an NVIDIA GPU
- redsummer 10y agoWhat do they mean by a 'modular system'? Like the old Mac Pro, with the side door? Or like hifi separates, with a separate GPU, CPU, box of ports etc?
- CPLX 10y agoI would hope it has the standard meaning, ie you can buy one now in one configurations, and change or upgrade single components of it to achieve a different configuration in the future.
- SippinLean 10y agoI understand the consumer market for, say pre-built Dell desktops with an i3 you get your mom for surfing the web. What graphics professional isn't assembling their own rig though? $3k is a LOT of money to spend on a desktop. I'm old enough to remember dedicated SGI workstations, and a decade ago I felt OSX had some advantages in graphics, I can't think of any of those that exist today, at least to justify such a huge markup on parts I could buy myself. I'm generally curious, I feel like I'm missing out, people that would consider paying $3k for a computer made out of easily-obtained components, why is it worth it to you?
- DoofusOfDeath 10y agoMy wife has a photography business. Photoshop and Lightroom are essential tools for her. Right now she uses Windows 7 Pro. We can't stay on it long-term because of security (and eventually driver) issues. Migrating to Windows 10 (non-enterprise) isn't an option because the forced updates are an unacceptable risk to downtime, especially at certain points in her business calendar (e.g., highschool yearbook photo season). We may end up migrating to a new Mac Pro, but it won't be because the hardware is awesome. Truth be told, it will likely be overkill for her needs, and definitely overpriced. We'd migrate her business to a Mac Pro because OS X doesn't have Windows 10's problems, and because we can probably recover from a hardware failure quickly due to the system's expected modularity.
- SippinLean 10y agoI'm not here to sing Windows' praises, Win10 has had it share of annoyances for me, but I've just set it (non-enterprise) to have to prompt me for updates, there are no forced updates. If that is the big feature that has you prepared to spend a hefty premium you might look into it further. > Photoshop and Lightroom are essential tools Those are in the cloud now, and performance is mostly based on your GPU. >Truth be told, it will likely be overkill for her needs, and definitely overpriced. >We'd migrate her business to a Mac Pro because OS X doesn't have Windows 10's problems This is insightful, thank you. >because we can probably recover from a hardware failure quickly due to the system's expected modularity Every hand-built PC will be just as or more modular though. If that's your concern, look at, say the Mac Minis with the RAM soldered in, I love Apple industrial design but don't like how hard it is to upgrade the hardware, generally.
- pier25 10y agoMany people have already moved to Windows, Linux, and hackintosh. If Apple wants to win them back it will need to offer something really good in specs, features, and specially price.
- strictnein 10y ago> "with a modular design" Why? Just bring back the cheese grater case and call it a day. No pro needs or wants these fancy designs.
- paulrpotts 10y agoIf I could upvote you 100 times I would. I just want an updated 2008 Pro. It doesn't even have to be the absolute fastest CPUs out there. It just needs to be reliable and fast and ideally quiet too.
- simonh 10y agoWasn't the Cheese Grater a modular design?
- strictnein 10y agoIt was sort of, but you also had pretty direct access to 3 PCI Express slots, 4 pretty standard drive bays (with pretty enclosures), and 4 or 8 memory slots (depending on 1 or 2 CPUs). I'm just guessing by modular design they're talking about something much more complex and unique.
- dgreensp 10y agoThis. Can we remember that Apple is making a box with fans and a motherboard? It takes them five years because they have to be inspired with some original concept that marries form and function, and then deliver something novel and daring -- not just a new computer, but a new kind of computer. This is not in customers' interest, and they are right to be upset.
- saturdaysaint 10y agoGiven Apple's uncertain "Pro" roadmap, I've been on a beefy Windows workstation for a few years for some digital hobbies, but it occurs to me that I'll happily take a look at jumping back. The transition to Windows got me in the habit of relying most heavily on crossplatform software, so it would be a smooth transition back. Unfortunately, I'm anticipating something with an outrageous design premium and so hyperspecced at every turn that it won't make much sense for me. It's a shame - shouldn't the company able to make a $300 iPad be able to make a dream $2500 workhorse for the amateur musician/videographer? I've been reading these kind of wishful rants since the 90's, so I know not to expect much.
- dade_ 10y agoBrand loyalty is silly. It does mean I need to avoid platform lock-in, but it is completely worth it. I buy the best machine available for me at the time. When it was time to replace my MacBook Pro 2011, it wasn't a machine from Apple. I bought a Surface Pro 3 and thought that I'd switch back to Mac when Apple sorted out whatever their problem is. Vapour Race 2017: Next Gen MacBook Pro or Surface Pro 5. It would be nice to have a real GPU again....
- slantyyz 10y agoIt is indeed silly. My own mentality is that I'm "Post-OS". I'm at the point that I could use whatever OS I want for my work stuff, including Windows. They all hit the bar of "good enough". I happen to use Windows today, because it runs the most apps that I want to run (in particular, some Steam stuff not available on Linux or Mac), but with the help of dual boot, I could just as easily be on Linux or Mac (all other things being equal, I'd prefer single booting). Personally, I left Mac after a bad experience with the 2011 MBP and not liking the design direction of Apple hardware, but I still consider Apple hardware (for the most part) to be the gold standard in build quality. Macs may not suit my use case, but thankfully there are plenty of other fish in the sea.
- umanwizard 10y agoSome people are basically forced to be on Apple machines because they develop iOS apps.
- timdavila 10y agoHow do you like the Surface Pro 3 for software development? Do you have an external monitor/keyboard setup?
- dade_ 10y agoI think it is great, all the usual Windows items apply. Specific to the SP3 Pro: use the SP4 keyboard, it is much better and is completely compatible; the dock is expensive and worth it: 2 display port connectors so I have the surface display, 4K monitor + 1K monitor attached working at the same time - Also wired Gigabit Ethernet; Magnet connector for the dock/power is super convenient; Power adapter has USB charging; I use the new Surface Ergonomic keyboard and a Logitech MX Master Mouse at home and the Surface foldable mouse on the road (best portable mouse I have used). I keep the surface on my desk so I can use it with my pen, I just flip the keyboard underneath it. On the road: the MicroSD provides all the extra storage I need (movies on the plane), and it has a real USB 3 port, battery life is around 5 hours, but better if you are only using it to watch movies or reading. Runs VMs effortlessly with i7 processor. Biggest problem is power, sometimes it sleeps and won't wake up. Happens far more often than it should, but I haven't heard the same complain from people with Surface Pro 4s. Hope that helps.
- chrismealy 10y agoIf they want to demonstrate their commitment to pro apps they could start by bringing back Aperture.
- protomyth 10y agoApple has “great” new iMacs in the pipeline, slated for release “this year”, including configurations specifically targeted at large segments of the pro market. This just fills me with dread. It just seems like Apple continually doesn't get it and the "iMac is a pro computer" is the canary in the coal mine. We already switched to Adobe for all video editing after the Final Cut Pro fiasco, and if this crud keeps up I can see some serious pressure to just move to Windows boxes. I'll hate it, but I'll understand.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago> large segments of the pro market Lots of different types of 'pro' user; there was mention in the post of xcode developers being either the largest market, or the largest growing one. As a developer who currently uses a 2014 MBP (mainly docked), I am very, very likely to be in the market for either a new iMac later this year, or a Mac Pro next year. I'm glad Apple is, finally, looking to address this issue.
- protomyth 10y agoI can see the MBP (only portability option, I use one myself) or the Mac Pro, but the iMac has turned into such an unexpandable machine, it troubles me that anything Pro is associated with it. It serves too many masters at this point. I hope the new Mac Pro is good.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago> What struck me about this is that Apple was framing a discussion in which the big news — the whole point, really — was their pre-announcing a “completely rethought” next-generation Mac Pro by emphasizing that most of their pro users use MacBooks and most of the rest use iMacs — and that they have big plans in store for the pro segment of both of those product lines. It’s exactly what I would have expected Apple to say if they were breaking the news that the Mac Pro was going away: We’re dropping the Mac Pro because its time has come and gone — all but a small percentage of our pro users have their needs met by MacBook Pros and high-end iMacs. It is also exactly what you would think Apple would say if they know this is going to be an extremely expensive device. Much more so than the current Mac Pro.
- blacksmith_tb 10y agoThe current Pro can be configured to cost a cool $7,200. I am sure the 'completely rethought' model won't be cheap, but I wouldn't expect it to cost much more than the current line. Which is still too much for most of us to buy for home use (I am running a 2010 Pro with a hex-core Xeon, raided SSDs and an nVidia 750 Ti which cost me about $1K to put together, and it benchmarks evenly with the current Pro), but the market for the Pro has tended to be institutions, or audio / video / photo professionals who could write off the purchase or charge it to their clients.
- csomar 10y agoAm I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a hardware problem) and then try to debug it. Good luck searching online for a resolution. I never had success with Linux. My Macbook pro has had its shares of problems (Wifi issues that later resolved with a system update) but it's nowhere my experience trying to install Linux and battling the drivers issue. Anyone figuring out the Linux/Laptop problem is re-inventing the Macbook Pro/OS X. Here are things that I'd pay $1,000 on top of the current Macbook Pro model: - Thiner/Lighter - Longer Battery Life (5+ hours) - 32/64GB RAM For OS X: - Less cluttering (ie: remove all Apps and let the user decide what to install, like Siri and crap). - Native Package Manager That's about it. I'd be buying the new Macbook Pro in a month. But if Apple releases something like the above, I'm more than happy to drop 5-8k usd into it.
- SippinLean 10y ago>I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X Specifically? People typically point to the telemetry and forced updates, but I've managed to disable both, using what were admittedly much-too-difficult procedures or third-party software. It's annoying, but not that annoying. I really like Finder and Spotlight, but not enough to be tied, via licensing, to any specific hardware. Less cluttering--I can uninstall apps on windows Native package manager-- I guess Windows has Chocolatey and I use npm for dev work.
- phyrex 10y agoIt's terrible to script, you cannot make use of the billion unix command line utilities (and there is no equivalent eco system either), you need to use the mouse too much, and it's awful to program with in any but a small number of sanctioned programming languages.
- yokohummer7 10y ago
- adw 10y agoThis might be too little, too late. They should do what they did with the Intel transition; start selling PCs which can run Mac OS X as an interim measure. Why might they not do this? a) makes them look bad b) well... is there a CPU architecture transition coming up? Last time there was this performance block, it was time to move from PowerPC.
- forgottenacc57 10y agoI'll believe it if Apple maintains up its commitment to keeping Mac relevant, over the long term. Easy for a relationship abuser to quickly "fix" the problems then go back to their old ways.
- tmaly 10y agoI bought a macbook pro back in the summer of 2015. It is still running strong despite the coffee I split on it. I am hoping for a serious memory upgrade when every they get around to it. I am curious what others are using for external storage? I did not splurge on a big internal drive, but I am finding any video work really consumes a ton of space.
- leonroy 10y agoLaCie Thunderbolt 2big here for high def and 4K projects - works great. Then a Synology NAS for long term storage - also contains my entire iMovies library since gigabit is plenty fast for SD video.
- paulrpotts 10y agoThis is a combination of vaguely encouraging, and vaguely maddening. Perhaps I'm just a Luddite, but what I really want from my desktop Macs is, basically, what I already have in my 2008 Mac Pro and my very ancient Mac Mini, just updated, because those machines won't last forever. The 2008 Mac Pro has the giant aluminum case. It has four drive bays. That machine has been an absolute warhorse for me. It's pretty much been running every day since 2008. I've produced a lot of video clips and multi-track songs using Logic. The only things I haven't liked about it have been (1) Snow Leopard was more reliable for audio, on this box, than later releases, (2) Apple has gradually walked away from things I wanted to do with the server subsystem, like maintain a usable current version of Apache in the OS distribution, and (3) the box is quite loud for use in a recording studio. With the Mac Mini I am actually planning to buy some newer refurbished Mac Minis with SSDs. These machines are almost perfect for use in recording situations. Apple is so obsessed with design -- the tin can design of the modern Pro, whatever "modular" design they are cooking up with the future Pro design -- that it doesn't sound like they will consider that the old Pro had an industrial design that was almost ideal, with the exception in my view of the noise level. A honking big case with a lot of thermal mass and big fans and a lot of room for hot memory and drives is in fact perfect. It is beautiful to me because it is so simple and reliable. It doesn't need to be tiny. Another option would be a rackable version. And that's it. That's all I need from a high-end computer. For the low-end utility machine like the Mini I want it to be small and _silent_. The iMac probably has enough CPU but I don't think it is quiet or expandable enough and I need 4-16 terabytes of storage right in the box and an easy way to back it up _to physical drives in my own house_, not the cloud. I'm still resentful of the thousands of hours of work I put in to Aperture projects. Tens of thousands of photos, many with a lot of delicate editing, which don't even render on the screen correctly anymore. I'm still resentful of all the projects I had built in iMovie which don't work in later versions because of the features that Apple jettisoned. If Apple has a solution for the two big needs I've got -- the small ultra-quiet media "capture" capability (for audio), and a big honking _simple_ Pro for editing and production, _and_ it appears they are serious about maintaining Logic, then I'll stay with them and probably buy more Macs. If Logic goes, I'm gone. (Mac user and on-and-off developer since 1985... Apple user since 1977...)
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
- _ph_ 10y agoBest Apple-related news I have heard in a long time. Of course its outrageous, that they didn't listen to their customers earlier and reacted quicker, but it is great that they finally do, and also, that they are not shy admitting via this interview, that they changed their course. Based on how long a product takes to bring to market in a large company, it might have well been the public reaction to the MB Pro release last autumn which woke them up. Just todays spec-bump of the Can takes like 6 months of preparation and planning. And it would fit to the true renewal being about 1 year in the future from today. It might be to late for some, but I am so glad this is happening. Apple can make great hardware, if they are trying, and this sounds that they are trying again, so I am very curious what they can create.
- dbbk 10y agoWhy would today's spec bump require 6 months of planning? They didn't introduce new components, just moved the price points down a level.
- _ph_ 10y agoWhen I wrote my comment I was under the impression that there were slightly improved graphics chips involved which would have meant at least organizing the supply chain and producing enough stock in advance, but in the meantime I read that it is just a price bump - which would cut down the necessary time to just a few weeks for writing the new price lists :).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Shivetya 10y agoI think the reason to keep the Mac Pro above all else is to have a halo product for their Mac OS line. Yeah they don't expect large sales but it should be the best that Apple can do with the technology, a preview of stuff to filter down with appropriate early adopter tax.
- VelNZ 10y agoWow, what a torrent of negativity on this thread, I didn't see a single positive comment reading through the top level. This is excellent news, I'm chugging along on a 2010 Mac Pro and was very disappointed when the Apple Displays were cancelled last year. They are a staple of the lineup and always look gorgeous compared to what's on the market. I will definitely be buying the new Mac Pro and 2 displays to go with it. There is absolutely no way I will ever use Windows and having to downscale to an iMac or, worse, a MacBook Pro, when my Mac Pro is finally too old was filling me with dread. By the sounds of things, they are working on making it modular and expandable, also very good news as I like to keep my workhorse computer for a long time. Overall very excited to see what Apple announce next year!
- klum 10y agoYep, great news indeed! For me, not regarding the Mac Pro especially, but that Apple is concerned about pro users, and that they are willing to talk about future plans. Deciding on using Macs for your work is not only about the devices themselves -- you're buying into the whole Apple ecosystem. That's not something that's easy to change in a heartbeat according to which vendor currently has the best offering. And the more concerned you are about the future of Apples products for professionals, the more tempting it is to look long and hard at Windows or Linux, even if Apples current devices fill your requirements just fine.
- gkya 10y ago> Wow, what a torrent of negativity on this thread, I didn't see a single positive comment reading through the top level. This is a thing many comments nowadays capitalise on. First, I'd rather read criticism than lodes, to see for myself if all the good in sth. is eliminated by criticism or not. Second, your statement is false, as there are as many positive comments as negative ones. If the negative ones are higher up, that means people upvote them, i.e. agree those negative comments, a right to which they're entitled.
- zeveb 10y ago> There is absolutely no way I will ever use Windows and having to downscale to an iMac or, worse, a MacBook Pro, when my Mac Pro is finally too old was filling me with dread. There is a third choice: Linux. I've been using it as my desktop for 18 years now, and it really is wonderful. With a tiling window manager (no GNOME, no KDE, just X11) the UI gets out of my way and lets me work. Yeah, I do kinda sorta wish that there were lighter or prettier laptops around, but on Linux I can get work done: on macOS or Windows my productivity is severely hampered.
- pavlov 10y agoThe current Mac Pro, as we’ve said a few times, was constrained thermally and it restricted our ability to upgrade it. So, when creating the 2013 Mac Pro, they knew they had to make a choice: either an upgradable system or a thermally constrained one that might look cool on the desk. What kind of market research suggested that Mac Pro customers wanted the latter? Or were they expecting to capture some new kind of pro customer base that only buys sleek desktop cylinders?
- __david__ 10y ago> So, when creating the 2013 Mac Pro, they knew they had to make a choice: either an upgradable system or a thermally constrained one that might look cool on the desk. No, that's not what they said at all. They said the choice they made was dual GPUs because they thought that was the road everyone was going to take. That turned out to be incorrect and the cylinder suffered because of that decision. They weren't talking about field upgradability.
- pavlov 10y agoThe question stands regardless of who is doing the upgrading: why did Apple design a thermally constrained system for the pro market? What was the point? My experience with the 2013 Mac Pro is dismal. They suffer from a widespread GPU overheating problem that leads to crashes on heavy workloads. It's probably the worst Mac ever.
- iansowinski 10y agoI personally would go for Linux, but lack of adobe apps for me is the biggest pain and reason to use macOS in 2017...
- draw_down 10y agoBut who would buy this? Especially given the track record? Sorry but Apple's handling of this market sector is mystifyingly bad.
- cdbattags 10y agoCurious how many of y'all have seen Casey Neistat's workbench explainer vids and his comments about the Mac Pro... In so many words he uses it as a data management interface for his many TBs of external hard drives and that's about it. This struck me pretty hard in framing my opinion of what the Mac Pro really is to those who have it.
- ZFH 10y agoToo little too late. It's telling that they sell so few Mac Pros that they can ignore the Osborne effect of soft announcing a new model at least one year away in favor of some fluffy PR. It's strange they don't understand that doing nothing but keeping the Pro up to date spec-wise would've signaled mild disregard already. Keeping it frozen for four years is a clear, prolonged, 'we don't care about you' message to pros. And everyone could've told them the trashcan design made no sense, and in fact did when it debuted. No need to wait four years for that. Probably Ive really really liked it and nobody managed to stop him.
- hypertexthero 10y agoExcellent news! I'm looking forward to being able to land on moons in Elite Dangerous Horizons in VR on a Mac at some point. In the meantime I got a Zotac EN1060, a machine the size of a Mac Mini that runs any game I throw at it at 60 frames per second, which makes booting into Windows tolerable. Graphic design and coding work remains in the realm of a 2014 Macbook Pro.
- hedora 10y agoI think it is funny they are scrapping the entire line because of GPU thermals. A big chunk of their pro market just wants a pile of ram and cpu cores. They could offer that now with an intel integrated gpu for $1-$3K. Also, it wouldnt surprise me if intel gpus can already drive 5K, so you'd be able to actually plug it into the nice LG mac monitor (unlike the thing they are shipping). If not, they could sell a high end, but single gpu config, which is still a waste of a gpu, but at least it could drive current apple-approved monitors. Also, delaying the entire line 12+ months for a heatsink is madness. Surely they could slap together a water cooler or something for a single high end gpu config.
- Cacti 10y agoThey admit that there are thermal limitations, but it's not really in the context of GPUs so much as the entire package. What they do admit specifically about GPUs is that their entire prediction for the market was wrong, that multi GPU systems are not as important as the highest end single card on the market, and these cards simply can't fit in their current design dimensions. In other words, GRAM sizes, and max single card speed are the driving factors in GPU adoption. Which makes sense, because you only get the large increases in GPU speed if you can fit everything in memory, and throughput is not high enough yet to ignore the cost of copying data to GRAM. This is a tacit admission that Pro users are increasingly _not_ concerned with RAM capacity or CPU speed, but with GPU power. The other mistake made was their assumption that Thunderbolt would allow nearly unlimited peripheral expansion, which turned out to be a complete bust. Neither of things is solvable without completely changing the dimensions/specs of the Pro.
- gnicholas 10y ago> We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do. So perhaps starting in 2016, or 2015, or 2014 would have been a good idea?
- exabrial 10y agoI hope they don't remove all the ports and give it wireless charging... :D J/K This is great news. I <3 OSX, but lately the hardware has been heading into reverse innovation
- kuon 10y agoToo late, I moved away from Apple. My current setup is Windows as desktop and I log in to linux for dev via X11. I am still testing the setup, but so far it has been a very positive experience. I'll share my complete setup on my blog when I consider it stable.
- Entangled 10y agoThree years is excessively too much time in any modern measure and that's an unacceptable excuse. Lack of vision is a more acceptable excuse. I'd take the Mac Mini form factor and make a whole range of pluggable computers from AppleTV-size for $99 to MacPro-size where you can buy as many as you want and use them for the simplest (IoT) or complex tasks (Video editing) while adding more cores, gpus, ram or anything you want is as easy as opening the hatch and installing them. Vision, not excuses, and looks like Tim Cook doesn't have it.
- clapinton 10y ago"The second would be to bite the bullet and tell the world what your plans are, even though it’s your decades-long tradition — a fundamental part of the company’s culture — to let actual shipping products, not promises of future products, tell your story." Interestingly enough, they also broke secrecy in 2013 when they gave a sneak peek of the new MacPro at WWDC, which would only ship later that year. They probably only announce products when they're ready to ship to not hurt sales of the existing models, but I'm guessing that won't make much of a difference with the current MacPro.
- jrs95 10y agoIt'd be pretty awesome if this came w/ Ryzen. Official ECC support ought to be a thing by then. Given that they already have a relationship with AMD for graphics cards it doesn't seem impossible.
- yuhong 10y agoI wonder why they didn't even update the current design to Haswell-E/Broadwell-E and DDR4. I don't think it would be that hard, right?
- barelyusable 10y agoMan, am I the only one who needs to stick my eyeballs out to really read this little, little, tiny font?
- dolguldur 10y agoThis is excellent news. Even if you don't end up using one, I think it's motivating if a powerful upgradable Mac Pro exists. Something to aspire to. Depending on your area you might at some point have to do lengthy computations or you start working with deep neural nets and then want to have Nvidia hardware. I think it's great if you can stay on your favorite platform and have everything on one system. Also: continuous integration for iOS. If these machines will be reasonably priced it will result in faster test build times for many engineers out there. So I'm very happy about this unexpected announcement.
- jbigelow76 10y agoHere is my gut prediction. What Apple says is coming: new Mac Pro and branded external display sometime in the future. Updated, prosumer level iMacs coming this year. What I think will happen: 2017 - Apple releases updated prosumer iMacs 2018 - Apple releases external monitor, also perfect for use with MacBook Pros. Claims to still be working on Mac Pro Late 2019 - Apple updates prosumer iMac again, says Mac Pro isn't needed anymore, weathers the twitter/blog rage of the single digit % of Mac Pro users that hung on from 2017 edit: formatting
- samcat116 10y agoAm I the only one that thinks of this [1] concept when reading this article? [1]- http://www.cultofmac.com/463288/mac-pro-concept-is-the-perfect-desktop-apple-wont-make/ http://www.cultofmac.com/463288/mac-pro-concept-is-the-perfe...
- iddqd 10y agoSo, they'll have a decent pro desktop available in more than a year. Do they seriously expect anyone to wait for them after years of silence?
- e12e 10y agoI admit I only skimmed this (my only wish for Apple is for them to release a set of build tools for Linux that allows building ios apps, and (more importantly, really) support the installation and purchase of OS X for running on non-apple hardware, and in VMs -- I don't think either of those will happen) -- however -- I caught this: > We think it’s really important to create something great for our pro customers who want a Mac Pro modular system, and that’ll take longer than this year to do. That's silly. They could take their previous generation Mac Pro chassis, stuff it with a dual Xeon board, 128gigs of RAM, a pair of SSDs and a pair of Nvidia 1080s - and after some nominal quality testing/driver tweaking sell it at their regular ridiculous mark-up. Those old cases are so convenient, I've considered buying a used one just for a regular pc workstation build. Easy to get to the internals, nice airflow. Roomy. Looks perfectly fine: http://www.ebay.com/itm/APPLE-MAC-PRO-2008-3-1-3-2GHZ-8-CORE-32GB-RAM-2TB-HDD-ATI-5770-OSX-/302135371829?hash=item4658abe835:g:6g4AAOSwTM5Y05xa http://www.ebay.com/itm/APPLE-MAC-PRO-2008-3-1-3-2GHZ-8-CORE...
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- ShirsenduK 10y agoThey have world's top engineers, designers and dollars! And they use reporters send out an apology. Can't even do it directly to its users/fans. Reading the content it feels like a damage control PR. Apple has lost its way. Their support has become horrible if not arrogant. Their updates keep bricking devices more often than not. Their hardware fails more than it used to. If they thought the Mac Pro was a mistake, how is the MacBook Pro a success? Can't innovate anymore, my arse, you bet you can't!
- BonoboIO 10y ago"The Mac is a $25 billion business for Apple annually, and according to the company there are 100 million people in the active Mac user base worldwide." ... and they treat it like sh*t. Harsh words but 3 years to update a pc?
- hkmurakami 10y ago"Overall, the split between notebooks and desktops in Mac sales is roughly 80/20. (Personally, I’m a little surprised desktops account for even 20 percent of sales. I would have guessed 85/15, and wouldn’t have been surprised to hear 90/10.)" Is this because some companies are running rendering farms on a whole bunch of Mac Pros?
- fumar 10y agoReposting my comment from a duplicate thread: This is an interesting PR approach, non-Apple process. They took time to talk to their top journalist connections in order to halt the the "apple doesn't care about pros anymore" articles. I applaud the additional transparency, smart. What I am not convinced about is that they are building the right solutions. How did their product teams miss this gap several years back? If Apple saw the "developers" as a growing user base, why did the new Macbook launch with a touch strip? They should know what device (laptop vs desktop) developers prefer. Did the Macbook and Mac Pro leadership change? Was it personnel issue? Overall an interesting situation I would love to better understand. If all revenue and growth projections are positive, why appease a vocal minority? I assume they do believe their "early adopter developer creative types" are a vocal minority that can sway a large consumer base's brand perception.
- ksec 10y agoPleasantly Surprise that Mac Pro is still alive and getting a remake. Not only are they not killing it, they are also Pre-announcing it. Both action seems very Un-Apple. My guess is that, Mac Pro, no iMac update, and Macbook Pro with touchbar had many pro users worried and start freaking out. And Apple think they needed to do something fast because they dont have anything to shown in the short term. I also wonder why touchbar wasn't questioned in the Interview if they think it was a mistake. TouchID is great, Touch bar is not. In 5 years time, by 2022 we are very likely to get 7nm from Intel and 5nm from TSMC. There is no reason why, within the same thermal budget, we cant fit a 16 Core CPU, a GPU that is equal or faster then today's Top GPU, 128GB RAM, and PCI-E 4.0 SSD. I.e This iMac will be faster then many of the Mac Pro sold today, and likely to cover majority of the Pro uses. That is why I am surprised at Apple continue to support the Mac Pro. It is highly likely the numbers of Mac Pro sales will continue to shrink. I hope Apple look at Rack usage as one of the factor in its design. I see Mac Pro in Severs Rack as one of the potential to greatly increase its sales.
- alkonaut 10y agoWow. I don't know what the time scales are when companies like Dell or Zotac spit out one of their bespoke desktop towers, but "not this year" for something they obviously already worked on for a while seems long. Obviously the trash can was a huge design effort and I get the feeling they want to be just as revolutionary this time if they spend so much time, when they are obviously in a hurry. Shouldn't they just be making a new 2 socket cheese grater tower? As simple as possible? The USP of the Mac is Mac OS, not that it uses a custom power supply.
- twblalock 10y agoThis may be too little, too late. As the article points out, Apple felt the need to make this announcement even though the new Mac Pro won't be released until next year, because they don't want more pro users to abandon the platform. That's a pretty sorry state of affairs. I don't know if there are good statistics about this, but I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few users have already abandoned Macs for Windows. Microsoft is making a big push to attract creative professionals, who are heavy Mac users as far as I know.
- ianai 10y agoThis is why monopolistic companies suck. It literally does not matter what Apple does. They're the only vendor of MacOS and Mac hardware. So what if you hate their ancient Mac Pro line? If you're tied to their ecosystem you have to pay up. And because you pay up they can claim their way "won". But your original demand for a good is still unmet. You've just found a way to settle for what the monopolist will grant you. That should really piss people off. /caffeinated rant
- gdubs 10y agoInteresting - buried in there was the bit of strategy on the part of Apple, expecting software to take advantage of parallel GPUs, and that not really panning-out in the high-end film production apps.
- tcfunk 10y agoUnless you're locked into OS X, Corsair maybe just beat them to the punch.
- ksec 10y agoNo one ask the question, why is an 2017 Mac Pro still with 22nm CPU, 28nm GPU, no USB 3.1. None of these has anything to do with Thermals. I am betting Apple will switch to AMD's Ryzen CPU in their next iMac.
- rdl 10y agoI've given up on OSX except as an iOS dev platform. I'm using chromebook hardware (high end, but $200-500) for daily use most of the time, for reasons which will be clear in a while. (I still use iOS for mobile, though.) For high-end computing, I just got an Acer Predator 17X "gaming" laptop (it was a toss up between that and a Dell PWS 7720). $2850, 32GB/512GB SSD/1TB, 17" 4K screen, GTX 1080, great keyboard, external mouse, 1-3h of battery life under hard use. Add 2 more NVMe SSDs and 32GB RAM (64GB total), with Linux/Win10 dualboot. It's pretty amazing. The alternative Dell PWS was about $4500 for a similar config and a tiny bit better in some ways.
- drawkbox 10y agoThe Mac Pro was a problem when it went away from the cheese grater tower. It was a good clean accessible tower that looked good. I do always need a macOS machine around to build iOS apps but the current Mac Pro is too expensive and limited for what it is, non customizable or upgradable really. I also want a pro machine that isn't an iMac, which really is what you have to settle for now, because I want a separate screen that I don't have to toss or I can donate when the iMac dies in 3-4 years. A major problem is that Apple doesn't even make their cinema displays anymore, they were once the best screens and beautiful. LG is their monitor seller now. Why? Apple is just missing the Pro users that like to customize their machine and modernize it. I have since moved back to custom PCs for my main power/pro machines and just do iOS builds on the Mac Pro 2012 now. The worst part is the next couple versions of macOS might not even run on that Pro because they are force EOL the hardware in the OS, not because of the lack of power as their hasn't been much progression there at all, just to EOL hardware when there isn't even a good new one to move to. I also feel a little disappointed in the new Macbook Pros. Some people I know are back on PC and just bought Mac Minis to compile their iOS apps. macOS really is a great unix backed OS out there and the best looking for dev. Macs became so useful in 2006ish when they went intel and started creating the software around that and new web tech (canvas,webkit/webgl/khronos funding) that revolutionized. Unity on Mac pulled me into the Apple world again, for a time Unity was Mac only. Great things were happening after 2006 including the iPhone pushing dev to more macs. Apple has squandered that. They just seem apt to kill all that now and go totally proprietary and machines that are one block. That isn't going to attract Pro users or developers like it did a decade ago. They are losing their developers and pro creative/video/interactive users, that should be scary to them. Pro users are saying to Apple, "we'll believe it when we see it, for now we'll be over here".
- untangle 10y ago838 points later and this post is only the 2nd reply directly to the OP? And much of the commentary to date is about command line tools on Windows? Wow. Blasphemy. OK, I'll bite. I'll talk about the Mac Pro news. First, I'll state the obvious and applaud Apple for conducting a "Mac State of the Union" with a Congress of the Apple press. Bravo. Looking at the details, I think we should be careful when assessing the use of iMacs, laptops, and Mini's by the pro user base. Specifically, were these folks running to the pro merits of these other devices or running away from the lack of a viable Mac Pro option? I think the latter. I'm a Mac Pro user (2009 5.1) and devotee. I also own a top-line 5K iMac. I'd much rather do heavy computing on the Pro. For one thing, even something as simple as playing a 1080p video on the iMac wreaks thermal hell and sends the fans into overdrive. My oldish (and well-liked) Macbook Pro did similar things. But what I truly like about the Pro is its easy expandability. In fact, I wish that it had more slots! Mine are always full (and I still lack a fast flash disk card). So I am very, very psyched about the announcements. I am hopeful that the 2018 offerings are not outrageously priced. Finally, as an aside, those who just can't wait until 2018 have an option. Very decent Mac Pro towers can be had used in the $1K-$2K price bracket. Maybe less if you mine Craigslist. If I were in the market for a non-laptop Mac, that's what I'd do. Note that I am not trying to criticize non-Pro Macs. I just wanted to contrast them with the Pro, hopefully highlighting the latter's merits.
- saijanai 9y agoApple should go beyond trying to woo back their "power users" and design something to impress non-Mac users so that they’ll want to buy the new Mac Pro just so they can run Windows or Linux.
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