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Mac Pro cheese graters going away was a bad move and a missed opportunity by Apple, today they already lost the power pro users and they had them for a while.

Mac Pro cheese graters going away was a bad move and a missed opportunity by Apple, today they already lost the power pro users and they had them for a while. Most Mac Pro users have moved back to PC, or iMac's/minis just for iOS/macOS related dev, with most work being done on PCs. Apple had a window where developers needed a heavy Pro Mac for iOS, nix development like python/ruby/etc, even Unity dev back when it was only on Mac (2007-2010 ish), it was also great to have a Mac after the 2006 Intel processor move as it was the sexiest nix and great for developers from 2006 on, but those days are over. Somewhere in 2013, they just moved on from the cheese grater and Pro market that included developers and content creators. Now they want to regain it? There was so much momentum squandered here and hearing Tim Cook repeat "Post-PC" and Apple messaging that desktops were like trucks, only developers need them, caused them to move on, so did the pro users and developers. Apple even watered down their developer laptops and Macbook Pros, 17" screens were relegated to being 'lapzillas' and Apple went only mainstream. Content creators and programming were not something they focused on anymore after the iPhone took over, eventhough those influencers were always the focus. I thought they would use the iPhone and iOS/macOS platforms to get more people on their desktops as well, instead they went the other direction. We used to be Mac Pro heavy now we just have iMacs/minis for the last mile or iOS/macOS export and testing with performance heavy beefy PCs for most of the day to day work. Additionally, taking your jet engine/trashcan new Mac Pro or iMac to the mall for repairs instead of just popping in a new video card or drive also sucks. Developers can get two performance PCs for the price of one Mac Pro. Usually you can get more power out of both as well since Mac Pros from 2011 on were 1-2 years behind. There is no getting back pro users such as devs/game devs that had switched over and have now gone back to Windows/PC.

jjeaff 9y ago
But how in the world are you going to manage without ecc memory? You might have a bit get flipped by a cosmic ray once every 5 years of 24x7 computing.
- gruez 9y ago
  intel xeon e3 or amd
- cullenking 9y ago
  Switched to a threadripper 1950 and used ecc memory and an nvme drive. Fastest computer I could build at the moment, cost less than half of a worse Mac,even with a 34 inch curved widescreen. Plus I got to go back to awesomewm. Finally I don't hate my dev environment. Feels good to get back to my pre-2013 roots.
- protomyth 9y ago
  An article of frequency of errors http://lambda-diode.com/opinion/ecc-memory-2 http://lambda-diode.com/opinion/ecc-memory-2
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    There are plenty of papers that put the error frequency orders of magnitude lower than. But even if true, so what? What are you doing on a workstation where a bit flipped every 3 days is going to cause a problem? Anything critical is going to have a software check. I just have never seen any legitimate argument for needing it in a workstation.
    - com2kid 9y ago
      Having worked on system where we had a crc on almost all data structures, let me tell you that bit flips happen more often then you want to know. Not everyone crcs 100% of their structs. If they don't, data is being slowly corrupted.
      - jjeaff 9y ago
        How do you know they were bit flips? And if they were, how do you know they were soft errors that could have been corrected with ecc and not hard errors that would have happened either way?
        com2kid 9y ago
        Because we had insanely good crash reporting and we root caused every crash report we got in that had more than half a dozen hits in the wild. Hardware was at fault. Turns out suppliers push the truth a bit here and there about their chips, what is supposed to be an identical part # isn't always identical, parts from different manufacturers that are supposed to be interchangeable aren't, and technical manuals aren't always the best. We had (what we thought was) rigorous memory testing in place at the factory, but under certain extreme conditions there was a 100% reproducible flip of a few bits in RAM. It was almost always the same bits, thankfully, that made it possible to track down!
- tnorgaard 9y ago
  According to this IBM study [2]/Wiki article [0], the probability is much higher - per the study with 128GiB of memory it is every 1h 25min. There was an anecdote[1] about a Power Mac cluster at a university, which basically couldn't get past boot because the memory errors was so frequent. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray#Effect_on_electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray#Effect_on_electroni... [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/how-to-kill-a-supercomputer-dirty-power-cosmic-rays-and-bad-solder https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/how-to-kill-a-s... [2] http://www.pld.ttu.ee/IAF0030/curtis.pdf http://www.pld.ttu.ee/IAF0030/curtis.pdf
wilsonnb 9y ago
How many game devs actually used Mac Pros instead of Windows machines?
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Not a ton, but for iOS games you have to export at least on an Apple machine. At our studio most people had PCs but people working on iOS/Unity games had Mac Pros and iMacs solely or in addition to PCs. There was also a window where Unity was only available on Mac from 2007-2010 where lots of Macs were purchased by game devs. Also making Linux/Apple/web games there was a little blip for a while where Macs were making inroads especially after going Intel processors. OSX is arguably the sexiest nix compatible machine and is quite fun/efficient for development. Overall game devs have always used PC as the main for desktop, but with mobile and iOS taking over handheld gaming in 2007, game studios all had to buy them. Now, most end up just getting a few iMacs or Mac Minis to export on and debug otherwise much of the game dev work is done on PCs. Apple truly lost game devs, but also other content creators like video editing/production, graphic designers, photographers, audio production and more. These professionals were always the focus of Apple, amazing they just let those people wander off as they are also influencers. I even see lots of devs going from Macbook Pro to Surface Pros now because their main machines are back to PC, that could eventually start causing people to switch from iPhone to Android/Samsung/Google as well.
stiGGG 9y ago
>caused them to move on, so did the pro users and developers Wasn't there a statistic from github recently, that 75% of the PRs created in 2017, were done from Macs? They are bigger in the market for devs then ever before, the thing is, that the majority of this peer group is totally fine with a MBP. I see this whole new MacPro story more as a marketing campaign, the driving factor behind this is not the demand from the market, it's only for their long-term reputation.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  "fine", yes, but it could be a lot better still. I'd sacrifice the small size and touch bar and such for a faster cpu, or a docking station (like the plan they had for a new display, which included its own discrete graphics card to help power the 5K display - actually there was an article recently saying Apple now supports external gpu's, so that might still be a thing), or a better keyboard, bigger screen, etc. (and personally, yes I'm stuck with a laptop due to work atm. Wouldn't mind having an office or fixed work place with an imac pro though)
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Yeah Apple still owns the laptop market but even their latest Macbook Pro wasn't really, more mainstream. Mac is still a better development environment because it is nix based for most things webdev related and iOS appdev mobile related. At far as desktops though, even creative/advertising agencies are moving to PC for 3d, photography, graphic design, audio production, video production and more. These were always the target market of Apple but they lost many. Apple iPhone lost ground to Android and laptops may also do so starting with development. I see many devs that went from Mac to PC desktop go from Macbook Pros to Surface Pros but that is just starting. Eventually it could also start switching people from iPhone to Android/Samsung/Google hardware as well as the hardware has caught up. Apple being a hardware company, it is strange they did not take more advantage of the desktop inroads they were making in 2006+ with Intel and iOS development.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    > At far as desktops though, even creative/advertising agencies are moving to PC for photography, graphic design, audio production, video production and more. These were always the target market of Apple but they lost many. I don't think this is really true, all the creative agencies I'm aware of are still firmly mac shops. Do you have a citation or anecdotes to back up your assertion?

jjeaff 9y ago

But how in the world are you going to manage without ecc memory? You might have a bit get flipped by a cosmic ray once every 5 years of 24x7 computing.

gruez 9y ago
intel xeon e3 or amd
cullenking 9y ago
Switched to a threadripper 1950 and used ecc memory and an nvme drive. Fastest computer I could build at the moment, cost less than half of a worse Mac,even with a 34 inch curved widescreen. Plus I got to go back to awesomewm. Finally I don't hate my dev environment. Feels good to get back to my pre-2013 roots.
protomyth 9y ago
An article of frequency of errors http://lambda-diode.com/opinion/ecc-memory-2 http://lambda-diode.com/opinion/ecc-memory-2
- jjeaff 9y ago
  There are plenty of papers that put the error frequency orders of magnitude lower than. But even if true, so what? What are you doing on a workstation where a bit flipped every 3 days is going to cause a problem? Anything critical is going to have a software check. I just have never seen any legitimate argument for needing it in a workstation.
  - com2kid 9y ago
    Having worked on system where we had a crc on almost all data structures, let me tell you that bit flips happen more often then you want to know. Not everyone crcs 100% of their structs. If they don't, data is being slowly corrupted.
    - jjeaff 9y ago
      How do you know they were bit flips? And if they were, how do you know they were soft errors that could have been corrected with ecc and not hard errors that would have happened either way?
      - com2kid 9y ago
        Because we had insanely good crash reporting and we root caused every crash report we got in that had more than half a dozen hits in the wild. Hardware was at fault. Turns out suppliers push the truth a bit here and there about their chips, what is supposed to be an identical part # isn't always identical, parts from different manufacturers that are supposed to be interchangeable aren't, and technical manuals aren't always the best. We had (what we thought was) rigorous memory testing in place at the factory, but under certain extreme conditions there was a 100% reproducible flip of a few bits in RAM. It was almost always the same bits, thankfully, that made it possible to track down!
tnorgaard 9y ago
According to this IBM study [2]/Wiki article [0], the probability is much higher - per the study with 128GiB of memory it is every 1h 25min. There was an anecdote[1] about a Power Mac cluster at a university, which basically couldn't get past boot because the memory errors was so frequent. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray#Effect_on_electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray#Effect_on_electroni... [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/how-to-kill-a-supercomputer-dirty-power-cosmic-rays-and-bad-solder https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/how-to-kill-a-s... [2] http://www.pld.ttu.ee/IAF0030/curtis.pdf http://www.pld.ttu.ee/IAF0030/curtis.pdf

wilsonnb 9y ago

How many game devs actually used Mac Pros instead of Windows machines?

drawkbox 9y ago
Not a ton, but for iOS games you have to export at least on an Apple machine. At our studio most people had PCs but people working on iOS/Unity games had Mac Pros and iMacs solely or in addition to PCs. There was also a window where Unity was only available on Mac from 2007-2010 where lots of Macs were purchased by game devs. Also making Linux/Apple/web games there was a little blip for a while where Macs were making inroads especially after going Intel processors. OSX is arguably the sexiest nix compatible machine and is quite fun/efficient for development. Overall game devs have always used PC as the main for desktop, but with mobile and iOS taking over handheld gaming in 2007, game studios all had to buy them. Now, most end up just getting a few iMacs or Mac Minis to export on and debug otherwise much of the game dev work is done on PCs. Apple truly lost game devs, but also other content creators like video editing/production, graphic designers, photographers, audio production and more. These professionals were always the focus of Apple, amazing they just let those people wander off as they are also influencers. I even see lots of devs going from Macbook Pro to Surface Pros now because their main machines are back to PC, that could eventually start causing people to switch from iPhone to Android/Samsung/Google as well.

stiGGG 9y ago

>caused them to move on, so did the pro users and developers Wasn't there a statistic from github recently, that 75% of the PRs created in 2017, were done from Macs? They are bigger in the market for devs then ever before, the thing is, that the majority of this peer group is totally fine with a MBP. I see this whole new MacPro story more as a marketing campaign, the driving factor behind this is not the demand from the market, it's only for their long-term reputation.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
"fine", yes, but it could be a lot better still. I'd sacrifice the small size and touch bar and such for a faster cpu, or a docking station (like the plan they had for a new display, which included its own discrete graphics card to help power the 5K display - actually there was an article recently saying Apple now supports external gpu's, so that might still be a thing), or a better keyboard, bigger screen, etc. (and personally, yes I'm stuck with a laptop due to work atm. Wouldn't mind having an office or fixed work place with an imac pro though)
drawkbox 9y ago
Yeah Apple still owns the laptop market but even their latest Macbook Pro wasn't really, more mainstream. Mac is still a better development environment because it is nix based for most things webdev related and iOS appdev mobile related. At far as desktops though, even creative/advertising agencies are moving to PC for 3d, photography, graphic design, audio production, video production and more. These were always the target market of Apple but they lost many. Apple iPhone lost ground to Android and laptops may also do so starting with development. I see many devs that went from Mac to PC desktop go from Macbook Pros to Surface Pros but that is just starting. Eventually it could also start switching people from iPhone to Android/Samsung/Google hardware as well as the hardware has caught up. Apple being a hardware company, it is strange they did not take more advantage of the desktop inroads they were making in 2006+ with Intel and iOS development.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  > At far as desktops though, even creative/advertising agencies are moving to PC for photography, graphic design, audio production, video production and more. These were always the target market of Apple but they lost many. I don't think this is really true, all the creative agencies I'm aware of are still firmly mac shops. Do you have a citation or anecdotes to back up your assertion?