6 ms·

A Mac Pro Mini

76 points by mh_ 14y ago

S_A_P 14y ago
Well I dont think that a retina iMac will suffice. I had a mac pro for my home music studio. The point of it was to be a beefy machine that was plenty expandable had lots of disk space and was quiet for the horsepower it provided. Mac pros fit that bill perfectly. it was easy to load them up with fast server class hard disks plug in your audio interface, any DSP boards, dongles or whatever else was required and then you forget about it (that is, until you see your electric bill the next month...) I got the 2008 octocore Mac Pro and did just that and ran both mac os and windows on it until I finally sold it last year(regrettably to help pay for personal circumstances as well as a lack of time for music production) and never had a single issue with it. THAT is what I spend the extra money on, I want a beefy computer that will last me 5 years. That is what the PRO audio crowd wants them for. I would imagine its not much different in the graphics/video arena either.
deleted 14y ago
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themstheones 14y ago
I see it going the other way. Apple needs a bridge product between the iPad and the iMac. They are also getting clobbered by PCs in the business market. I suspect the big announcement will be a mid-range line of macs aimed for large scale roll-outs to corporations and governments. I read an article backing up this viewpoint in Business Week a while back, but alas it was only in the print edition.
- likeclockwork 14y ago
  I don't see that happening. Apple products are luxury items with high margins. They don't need to or want to chase that mass PC money.
  - Legion 14y ago
    > Apple products are luxury items with high margins. They don't need to or want to chase that mass PC money. This reality gets less true every day. It's the same argument people repeated to insist that the iPad Mini would never happen. Or the Mac Mini. Or $0-after-subsidy 8GB iPhones. I don't think it would be surprising at all to see Apple look at business computing as money they no longer wish to leave on the table.
    - ttflee 14y ago
      Oops, but why I always feel that even Mac mini has a substantial margin compared with its Windows counterparts?
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Apple already sell a relatively cheap desktop computer in the mac mini. I don't think they could make anything much cheaper without digging into their margins. Microsoft's value in the business market is their suite of server desktop & cloud products and the integration between those. Adding all of that stuff to OS X would be a big undertaking and would probably take away a lot of the simplicity of the Mac.
- larrywright 14y ago
  I doubt that will happen. The kinds of companies that are willing to give Macs to employees are issuing laptops. The big companies and governments that need desktops (think call centers, account, etc) are just not the market for Macs. They generally have a bunch of applications that only run on Windows, and the cost to switch is just too high.
  - tonyedgecombe 14y ago
    Business has been switching away from desktop applications for years, outside of Office I don't see this as an issue.
- MaysonL 14y ago
  Well, they just announced an i3 version iMac for education - they might extend that to large enterprise orders.
mahyarm 14y ago
I just want a dual or quad socket mac pro with haswell processors. I'm forced to use a Mac for iOS development, and large compile times just get annoying. Hackintoshes are not quite right at times and can screw up builds.
- glhaynes 14y ago
  Are you saying Hackintoshes are known to sometimes generate executables that differ from those made by real Macs? That seems really unlikely to me.
  - drewcrawford 14y ago
    As a person who used a hackintosh as a primary development machine, the problem is more that it is difficult to keep a hackintosh up to date, and due to Apple's aversion to backwards compatibility, this poses a significant problem for generating executables that will be accepted by a toolchain released 30 days ago.
ChiperSoft 14y ago
I see there being basically three types of person in this market niche: - Those who want more storage without external latency - Those who want more than one or two monitors - Those who want addon cards. Thunderbolt is capable of solving all of these problems, and in fact there's already market solutions for them. The problem is that the enclosures cost more than the Mac itself, and that's not including the hardware you want to put into them. Thunderbolt drive enclosures and RAID systems are already starting to fall in price and will continue to fall as TB gains marketshare, but the PCIe cages are still STUPID expensive. If Apple were to release their own bus cage for people to add PCIe cards to their macs at a sane price point, suddenly the MacPro stops being the only Mac with that capability. A chain-able TB display adapter would also go a LONG way to expanding the Mac's capabilities. One DisplayPort output per bus just doesn't cut it for some power users, and the only alternative is significantly slower USB adapters.
- xymostech 14y ago
  > A chain-able TB display adapter You do know that you can already hook up more than one thunderbolt display to a single thunderbolt port using daisy-chaining, right?
  - ChiperSoft 14y ago
    And if I felt like spending $3000 to replace all my existing monitors, that might be a viable option.
  - krautsourced 14y ago
    Unfortunately a lot of thunderbolt hardware saves the extra cost of a tb-through port. So you're stuck with one or two devices.
  - ptomato 14y ago
    I don't know if other thunderbolt displays (are there any yet?) support it, but Apple's do not support daisychaining a display through another display.
teilo 14y ago
Apple has abandoned any users who need real power. They have abandoned enterprise. They have abandoned video, 3D, DAW. My company, which would love to maintain our Mac fileservers and OpenDirectory, but we are being forced, kicking and screaming into the open arms of Windows Server, Active Directory, and ExtremeZ-IP. We don't need "desktop-lite". We need server-grade multi-core workhorses to run CPU-intensive workflow automation services (graphic arts, print production, high-end color stuff), but can't get them. And their iMacs and Mac Mini's? Yeah, we use them as servers because we have no choice. We actually need Thunderbolt now. But they are buggy as hell. The built-in network interfaces on them drop for no apparent reason, and need to be re-started. Three separate boxes do this: 2 iMacs and one Mini. We have actually resorted to putting SmallTree PCIe gigabit ethernet cards (Intel Pro chipsets) into Thunderbolt PCI express chassis, in order to get a stable ethernet stack. Those never drop on us. How can Apple get something as basic as a stable Ethernet port so wrong? No load testing. No desire to fix their drivers or firmware, whichever is responsible.
- mbell 14y ago
  While I realize its not 'apple approved' it is very easy and cheap to build an extremely powerful 'hackintosh' as long as you pick the correct hardware. See http://www.tonymacx86.com/ http://www.tonymacx86.com/
  - veidr 14y ago
    I am glad that is possible (and tempted to do it at home every time I go to plug in a thunderbolt device into my Mac Pro, and then have to go oh yeah, god dammit...) it is not just not 'apple approved' it is not legal. In most normal business environments where obeying the law is a required practice and bootlegging software is not allowed, building a hackintosh isn't a solution.
    - mwilcox 14y ago
      Not to mention, supporting any more than a few Hackintosh machines would be a nightmare for any serious organisation.
calinet6 14y ago
I couldn't agree less. A retina iMac wouldn't do it. We'll probably see a new mid-size form factor aimed at professionals, slightly larger than the Mac Mini but with more horsepower and expandability. It'll be called "Mac" straight up. It'll be a throwback to the old Mac G4 Cube that designers and graphic artists loved, with marketing to match. No reason to have a retina display integrated iMac—it's just not that exciting. What you'll see is the Mac Pro re-imagined for the modern world; one in which the existing Mac Pro makes no sense. At least, we can hope.
- wtallis 14y ago
  The form factor will have to be significantly larger than any Mac Mini in order to accommodate a real workstation-class GPU. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see the PCIe x16 slot as the only expansion slot on the motherboard, with all the PCIe 2.0 lanes routed to Thunderbolt. That would enable the motherboard to be only slightly larger than mini-ITX for single-socket single-GPU systems.
- gfodor 14y ago
  Retina iMac is inevitable, do you really think we'll be staring at pixelated fonts on any product in the Apple Store in 3 or 4 years?
jarjoura 14y ago
A Xeon class CPU is quite a bit different than the mobile/desktop class CPU Apple puts in their other systems. I think Macro is being a bit dramatic in that a stagnant Mac Pro means the end of an era and I call bullocks! Intel's Xeon chips do not advance at the same pace and have themselves stood still. Look at what Dell and HP are selling, they're basically the same CPUs (albeit you can buy one generation newer). What the Xeon workstation/server architecture provides is a fat I/O pipe that's still extremely important to music and video professionals who rely on near zero latency. Even photoshop cringes when working in print media scale designs that take up a couple gigabytes in a document. Besides, Apple tends to move slowly when a product isn't front and center, usually milking a design for all it's worth. Tim Cook said they're working on a pro device that will be out this year and I believe him.
- veidr 14y ago
  No bullocks. The Mac Pro introduced at WWDC last year was the most pathetic upgrade since the Mac Pro's debut. It's not just the CPU. The "Pro" not only lacks Thunderbolt, it doesn't even have USB 3! In fact the only port that my brand new retina Mac laptop and my Mac Pro have in common is the headphone jack. I even need a new one -- but I just can't. I would feel like such a jerk if I bought the lame-ass Mac Pro that Apple's offering. (However, IIRC from his now-defunt podcast, after bitching just like I am doing, Arment eventually did just grit his teeth and buy one.)
electricCoder 14y ago
The iMac isn't a developer machine. It looks on paper like a developer machine, but when put to the test of compiling large C/C++ projects day in day out it fails. We see more failures in iMacs than any other desktop we have at work. Way more hdd failure and gpu failure than our dells or other mac machines.
- Turing_Machine 14y ago
  Why are you still running spinning metal drives on your developer machines?
spinchange 14y ago
I thought I had seen it speculated that Apple's "Made in the USA" efforts would be for the next Mac Pro.
rjd 14y ago
And why not just by a Mac mini and thunderbolt expansion chasis? achieves the same goal doesn't it? e.g. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Mercury_Helios http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Merc... , http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t , http://www.sonnettech.com/product//thunderbolt/index.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product//thunderbolt/index.html
- stevejb 14y ago
  It does not, because you are still stuck with i5/i7 processors, whereas workstations, especially those in high performance applications, would be much more suited to a Xeon. I run a linux workstation with dual 6 core Xeon Sandy Bridge-EP's, with 64 GB of RAM. Being on an i7 would be limiting.
Bud 14y ago
Sounds like what is needed is a modern version of the SE/30. Let's call it the iSE/30!
smoyer 14y ago
I have the rMBP with 16GB RAM and a giant SSD. Add the 27" Thunderbolt monitor and I think I have the new Mac Pro. The power consumption is great and the performance is top-notch too.
- krautsourced 14y ago
  But try rendering a large 3D or video sequence over night, and watch it melt through your desk.
  - krautsourced 14y ago
    Oh, and 16GB is nothing when working with e.g. After Effects.
  - smoyer 14y ago
    It doesn't get that hot, even while running full-bore. I don't render video or graphics, but I do simulations and run a lot of VMs for various test modes. I suspect that fully loaded CPUs are going to hit a maximum temperature regardless of the application that is running. And yes ... I can't expand the RAM beyond that 16GB (it's actually the limiting factor for my VM count).
- stevejb 14y ago
  16GB of RAM is not a lot in workstation applications. I have simulations that use matrices which take 30GB of RAM. This is for one large matrix, where 24 threads are accessing different parts of it simultaneously. Your MBP is physically not capable of doing this.
krautsourced 14y ago
For 3D/VFX work you get so much more bang for the buck with a PC and Win/Linux these days. We're a mixed environment shop, but the Mac Pros lag so far behind the new PCs bought recently, for a fracture of the price. It's not even funny any more. Then there's the network - I don't know what it is, but all PCs in our network are about 50% faster than all the Macs. Personally I just use my MBP these days for some developing and personal stuff, that's it. Everything else has moved to PC entirely, and I can't complain. Apple would have to come out with an insanely compelling product to sway me back.
Udo 14y ago
The one reason people (like me) still want to keep the Pro alive, the one thing that no other Mac can do, is support for more than two screens. Now, Apple already made it abundantly clear what they think of multi-screen desktops when they designed, and then failed to fix, the native full screen feature of OS X. I love my Mac Pro mainly for this one reason, but honestly, like many other Pro customers at this point I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm not going to have different platforms as my laptop and desktop, so if the Pro goes that's it for me and Apple - if by that time there is no real alternative to achieve the same thing. This is a hugely depressing thought. I hopped on board when OS X came out and never looked back to the Linux desktop since. For me, it has never been about the hardware, but OS X which always felt like home.
- Simucal 14y ago
  What platform would you move to then?
  - Udo 14y ago
    I'm not sure. Windows is actually looking pretty good these days, but I never really used it so I don't know what lurks beneath. I'd also give the Linux desktop another chance, but I'll probably run into the same old huge issues within the first few minutes (it's still my favorite server OS, though). There's not much else out there, that's why I said it's a depressing train of thought.
- gambiting 14y ago
  You can connect 3 external screens even to the cheapest 11" MacBook Air. You can do that with Retina MacBook Pros as well. I am not sure if you can with iMacs though.
  - Udo 14y ago
    The newest MBAs can power 2 external screens, as can the higher-end iMac (which isn't so bad since you can use the iMac itself as a 3rd). My "normal" 15 MBP can power one external (non-TB) screen, and I think the Retinas can power two TB + one HDMI. A lot of this assumes I'm buying Apple's expensive Thunderbolt displays, however. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/new-macbooks-can-manage-many-many-monitors/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/new-macbooks-can-manage...
bashinator 14y ago
I have the perfect name for this product that would sit between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro: The Mac Plus. rimshot.
- supercoder 14y ago
  Not Mac MiniS ?
- MaysonL 14y ago
  Don't you mean the Mac SemiPro?
davidroberts 14y ago
I wonder, since Apple is obviously abandoning this market, why is Microsoft trying so hard to alienate the power desktop user market with Windows 8 instead of aggressively trying to bring this group of Mac Pro users over to them. Of course they would have to improve Windows into a high-quality OS that works for them and find OEM's to partner with who are willing to find out what hardware these users want and provide it. Maybe it's a forlorn hope, but it's better than flailing after the tablet ship that sailed past them two years ago.
- bishnu 14y ago
  Because this strategy is making a shit-pile of money for Apple and Microsoft would rather chase this shit-pile of money rather than take Apple's table scraps?
  - davidroberts 14y ago
    That would make sense if they had any chance of getting that money with Windows 8.
- actf 14y ago
  I agree completely. Lately everyone seems to be convinced that we're witnessing the death of the desktop computer, but I wonder if this could be partly due to the lack of options in this market. Apple and Microsoft have both dropped the ball here. Apple has eliminated hardware options that power users are looking for, while Microsoft still doesn't provide a decent POSIX environment or even a passable terminal. I honestly wonder what the world would look like if Microsoft were to suddenly switch focus and deploy a version of windows with full POSIX support built in, a decent terminal, a first class package manager, and a decent app store. Instead they are removing features like the start button that confuse existing users, and adding a Metro UI that power users don't want. Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical, but I think we would be witnessing stronger desktop sales if Apple and Microsoft were providing options that users actually wanted.
  - ubercow13 14y ago
lutorm 14y ago
It's kind of ironic that Apple seems to be leaving the graphics professionals, which are about the only group to never abandon them during the tough times.
larrys 14y ago
"A few power users will complain, but most won’t care: by that time, most former Mac Pro customers will have already switched away." This is a statement that is general and without any basis at all. Where does the OP come off writing "most former Mac Pro customers" I can almost guarantee that this is simply pure conjecture with nothing to back it up. "There’s even less of a reason to buy the Mac Pro today than I expected." I run 3 monitors off a Mac Pro (24/30/24). I don't believe there is any way to do that on anything but a Mac Pro. I could run six with the two video cards I have now but can't fit them on my desktop. And I'm not using it for video editing or anything like that. I just like to work with as much screen space as possible.
- bobidden 14y ago
  The retina MBP can easily run 3 monitors, and more with a USB graphics card. I have 4 (24/27/24/23) running off mine right now.
  - larrys 14y ago
    Thanks. Which usb graphic card do you use and are you happy with it?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
protomyth 14y ago
If someone were to design a Mac Pro Mini, then it really needs both the memory and hard drives easily replaceable. I can even handle all flash if it mSATA and not some funky connector. It needs two (4 would be awesome) thunderbolts, usb3, and two (working, solid) ethernet connectors (one for network, one for storage). HDMI is nice (I would like an added input). I need 32GB of RAM on the minimum side. Core i7 and NVIDIA GPU would be fine. Include an iSCSI initiator. If the next Mac Pro is any good, I predict a huge buy on its first day due to two years of pent up demand.
jpxxx 14y ago
To put a needle fine point on what market is not being served here: content producers and editors who need all of the CPU, GPU, disk space, pixels, and I/O they can possibly get in a relatively price-insensitive business environment. Homebrews, file serving, enterprise, SOHO, and those with nostalgia for DIY home desktop are non-factors now. The creators need a no-compromise beast with a flawless Adobe and Avid story. If Apple won't provide it, they're throwing their crown jewel customers in the trash.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Maybe the answer is just to sell a version of OS X that is licensed to run on commodity X86 hardware, then just charge $1000 for it.
ksec 14y ago
I wanted, MacPro in Cube Shape. Dual CPU ( Not Xeon Only, ) and up to 64GB of Memory, Dual Geforce GTX Titan, Dual Thunderbolt, SSD in Raid. Because the Margin of SSD and Geforce GTX is much larger, Apple could make their own SSD and Buying Geforce GTX Titan at discount price. Making the New MacPro as similar pricing if you have built it up yourself.

76 points by mh_ 14y ago

S_A_P 14y ago

Well I dont think that a retina iMac will suffice. I had a mac pro for my home music studio. The point of it was to be a beefy machine that was plenty expandable had lots of disk space and was quiet for the horsepower it provided. Mac pros fit that bill perfectly. it was easy to load them up with fast server class hard disks plug in your audio interface, any DSP boards, dongles or whatever else was required and then you forget about it (that is, until you see your electric bill the next month...) I got the 2008 octocore Mac Pro and did just that and ran both mac os and windows on it until I finally sold it last year(regrettably to help pay for personal circumstances as well as a lack of time for music production) and never had a single issue with it. THAT is what I spend the extra money on, I want a beefy computer that will last me 5 years. That is what the PRO audio crowd wants them for. I would imagine its not much different in the graphics/video arena either.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

themstheones 14y ago

I see it going the other way. Apple needs a bridge product between the iPad and the iMac. They are also getting clobbered by PCs in the business market. I suspect the big announcement will be a mid-range line of macs aimed for large scale roll-outs to corporations and governments. I read an article backing up this viewpoint in Business Week a while back, but alas it was only in the print edition.

likeclockwork 14y ago
I don't see that happening. Apple products are luxury items with high margins. They don't need to or want to chase that mass PC money.
- Legion 14y ago
  > Apple products are luxury items with high margins. They don't need to or want to chase that mass PC money. This reality gets less true every day. It's the same argument people repeated to insist that the iPad Mini would never happen. Or the Mac Mini. Or $0-after-subsidy 8GB iPhones. I don't think it would be surprising at all to see Apple look at business computing as money they no longer wish to leave on the table.
  - ttflee 14y ago
    Oops, but why I always feel that even Mac mini has a substantial margin compared with its Windows counterparts?
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Apple already sell a relatively cheap desktop computer in the mac mini. I don't think they could make anything much cheaper without digging into their margins. Microsoft's value in the business market is their suite of server desktop & cloud products and the integration between those. Adding all of that stuff to OS X would be a big undertaking and would probably take away a lot of the simplicity of the Mac.
larrywright 14y ago
I doubt that will happen. The kinds of companies that are willing to give Macs to employees are issuing laptops. The big companies and governments that need desktops (think call centers, account, etc) are just not the market for Macs. They generally have a bunch of applications that only run on Windows, and the cost to switch is just too high.
- tonyedgecombe 14y ago
  Business has been switching away from desktop applications for years, outside of Office I don't see this as an issue.
MaysonL 14y ago
Well, they just announced an i3 version iMac for education - they might extend that to large enterprise orders.

mahyarm 14y ago

I just want a dual or quad socket mac pro with haswell processors. I'm forced to use a Mac for iOS development, and large compile times just get annoying. Hackintoshes are not quite right at times and can screw up builds.

glhaynes 14y ago
Are you saying Hackintoshes are known to sometimes generate executables that differ from those made by real Macs? That seems really unlikely to me.
- drewcrawford 14y ago
  As a person who used a hackintosh as a primary development machine, the problem is more that it is difficult to keep a hackintosh up to date, and due to Apple's aversion to backwards compatibility, this poses a significant problem for generating executables that will be accepted by a toolchain released 30 days ago.

ChiperSoft 14y ago

I see there being basically three types of person in this market niche: - Those who want more storage without external latency - Those who want more than one or two monitors - Those who want addon cards. Thunderbolt is capable of solving all of these problems, and in fact there's already market solutions for them. The problem is that the enclosures cost more than the Mac itself, and that's not including the hardware you want to put into them. Thunderbolt drive enclosures and RAID systems are already starting to fall in price and will continue to fall as TB gains marketshare, but the PCIe cages are still STUPID expensive. If Apple were to release their own bus cage for people to add PCIe cards to their macs at a sane price point, suddenly the MacPro stops being the only Mac with that capability. A chain-able TB display adapter would also go a LONG way to expanding the Mac's capabilities. One DisplayPort output per bus just doesn't cut it for some power users, and the only alternative is significantly slower USB adapters.

xymostech 14y ago
> A chain-able TB display adapter You do know that you can already hook up more than one thunderbolt display to a single thunderbolt port using daisy-chaining, right?
- ChiperSoft 14y ago
  And if I felt like spending $3000 to replace all my existing monitors, that might be a viable option.
- krautsourced 14y ago
  Unfortunately a lot of thunderbolt hardware saves the extra cost of a tb-through port. So you're stuck with one or two devices.
- ptomato 14y ago
  I don't know if other thunderbolt displays (are there any yet?) support it, but Apple's do not support daisychaining a display through another display.

teilo 14y ago

Apple has abandoned any users who need real power. They have abandoned enterprise. They have abandoned video, 3D, DAW. My company, which would love to maintain our Mac fileservers and OpenDirectory, but we are being forced, kicking and screaming into the open arms of Windows Server, Active Directory, and ExtremeZ-IP. We don't need "desktop-lite". We need server-grade multi-core workhorses to run CPU-intensive workflow automation services (graphic arts, print production, high-end color stuff), but can't get them. And their iMacs and Mac Mini's? Yeah, we use them as servers because we have no choice. We actually need Thunderbolt now. But they are buggy as hell. The built-in network interfaces on them drop for no apparent reason, and need to be re-started. Three separate boxes do this: 2 iMacs and one Mini. We have actually resorted to putting SmallTree PCIe gigabit ethernet cards (Intel Pro chipsets) into Thunderbolt PCI express chassis, in order to get a stable ethernet stack. Those never drop on us. How can Apple get something as basic as a stable Ethernet port so wrong? No load testing. No desire to fix their drivers or firmware, whichever is responsible.

mbell 14y ago
While I realize its not 'apple approved' it is very easy and cheap to build an extremely powerful 'hackintosh' as long as you pick the correct hardware. See http://www.tonymacx86.com/ http://www.tonymacx86.com/
- veidr 14y ago
  I am glad that is possible (and tempted to do it at home every time I go to plug in a thunderbolt device into my Mac Pro, and then have to go oh yeah, god dammit...) it is not just not 'apple approved' it is not legal. In most normal business environments where obeying the law is a required practice and bootlegging software is not allowed, building a hackintosh isn't a solution.
  - mwilcox 14y ago
    Not to mention, supporting any more than a few Hackintosh machines would be a nightmare for any serious organisation.

calinet6 14y ago

I couldn't agree less. A retina iMac wouldn't do it. We'll probably see a new mid-size form factor aimed at professionals, slightly larger than the Mac Mini but with more horsepower and expandability. It'll be called "Mac" straight up. It'll be a throwback to the old Mac G4 Cube that designers and graphic artists loved, with marketing to match. No reason to have a retina display integrated iMac—it's just not that exciting. What you'll see is the Mac Pro re-imagined for the modern world; one in which the existing Mac Pro makes no sense. At least, we can hope.

wtallis 14y ago
The form factor will have to be significantly larger than any Mac Mini in order to accommodate a real workstation-class GPU. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see the PCIe x16 slot as the only expansion slot on the motherboard, with all the PCIe 2.0 lanes routed to Thunderbolt. That would enable the motherboard to be only slightly larger than mini-ITX for single-socket single-GPU systems.
gfodor 14y ago
Retina iMac is inevitable, do you really think we'll be staring at pixelated fonts on any product in the Apple Store in 3 or 4 years?

jarjoura 14y ago

A Xeon class CPU is quite a bit different than the mobile/desktop class CPU Apple puts in their other systems. I think Macro is being a bit dramatic in that a stagnant Mac Pro means the end of an era and I call bullocks! Intel's Xeon chips do not advance at the same pace and have themselves stood still. Look at what Dell and HP are selling, they're basically the same CPUs (albeit you can buy one generation newer). What the Xeon workstation/server architecture provides is a fat I/O pipe that's still extremely important to music and video professionals who rely on near zero latency. Even photoshop cringes when working in print media scale designs that take up a couple gigabytes in a document. Besides, Apple tends to move slowly when a product isn't front and center, usually milking a design for all it's worth. Tim Cook said they're working on a pro device that will be out this year and I believe him.

veidr 14y ago
No bullocks. The Mac Pro introduced at WWDC last year was the most pathetic upgrade since the Mac Pro's debut. It's not just the CPU. The "Pro" not only lacks Thunderbolt, it doesn't even have USB 3! In fact the only port that my brand new retina Mac laptop and my Mac Pro have in common is the headphone jack. I even need a new one -- but I just can't. I would feel like such a jerk if I bought the lame-ass Mac Pro that Apple's offering. (However, IIRC from his now-defunt podcast, after bitching just like I am doing, Arment eventually did just grit his teeth and buy one.)

electricCoder 14y ago

The iMac isn't a developer machine. It looks on paper like a developer machine, but when put to the test of compiling large C/C++ projects day in day out it fails. We see more failures in iMacs than any other desktop we have at work. Way more hdd failure and gpu failure than our dells or other mac machines.

Turing_Machine 14y ago
Why are you still running spinning metal drives on your developer machines?

spinchange 14y ago

I thought I had seen it speculated that Apple's "Made in the USA" efforts would be for the next Mac Pro.

rjd 14y ago

And why not just by a Mac mini and thunderbolt expansion chasis? achieves the same goal doesn't it? e.g. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Mercury_Helios http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Merc... , http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t , http://www.sonnettech.com/product//thunderbolt/index.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product//thunderbolt/index.html

stevejb 14y ago
It does not, because you are still stuck with i5/i7 processors, whereas workstations, especially those in high performance applications, would be much more suited to a Xeon. I run a linux workstation with dual 6 core Xeon Sandy Bridge-EP's, with 64 GB of RAM. Being on an i7 would be limiting.

Bud 14y ago

Sounds like what is needed is a modern version of the SE/30. Let's call it the iSE/30!

smoyer 14y ago

I have the rMBP with 16GB RAM and a giant SSD. Add the 27" Thunderbolt monitor and I think I have the new Mac Pro. The power consumption is great and the performance is top-notch too.

krautsourced 14y ago
But try rendering a large 3D or video sequence over night, and watch it melt through your desk.
- krautsourced 14y ago
  Oh, and 16GB is nothing when working with e.g. After Effects.
- smoyer 14y ago
  It doesn't get that hot, even while running full-bore. I don't render video or graphics, but I do simulations and run a lot of VMs for various test modes. I suspect that fully loaded CPUs are going to hit a maximum temperature regardless of the application that is running. And yes ... I can't expand the RAM beyond that 16GB (it's actually the limiting factor for my VM count).
stevejb 14y ago
16GB of RAM is not a lot in workstation applications. I have simulations that use matrices which take 30GB of RAM. This is for one large matrix, where 24 threads are accessing different parts of it simultaneously. Your MBP is physically not capable of doing this.

krautsourced 14y ago

For 3D/VFX work you get so much more bang for the buck with a PC and Win/Linux these days. We're a mixed environment shop, but the Mac Pros lag so far behind the new PCs bought recently, for a fracture of the price. It's not even funny any more. Then there's the network - I don't know what it is, but all PCs in our network are about 50% faster than all the Macs. Personally I just use my MBP these days for some developing and personal stuff, that's it. Everything else has moved to PC entirely, and I can't complain. Apple would have to come out with an insanely compelling product to sway me back.

Udo 14y ago

The one reason people (like me) still want to keep the Pro alive, the one thing that no other Mac can do, is support for more than two screens. Now, Apple already made it abundantly clear what they think of multi-screen desktops when they designed, and then failed to fix, the native full screen feature of OS X. I love my Mac Pro mainly for this one reason, but honestly, like many other Pro customers at this point I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm not going to have different platforms as my laptop and desktop, so if the Pro goes that's it for me and Apple - if by that time there is no real alternative to achieve the same thing. This is a hugely depressing thought. I hopped on board when OS X came out and never looked back to the Linux desktop since. For me, it has never been about the hardware, but OS X which always felt like home.

Simucal 14y ago
What platform would you move to then?
- Udo 14y ago
  I'm not sure. Windows is actually looking pretty good these days, but I never really used it so I don't know what lurks beneath. I'd also give the Linux desktop another chance, but I'll probably run into the same old huge issues within the first few minutes (it's still my favorite server OS, though). There's not much else out there, that's why I said it's a depressing train of thought.
gambiting 14y ago
You can connect 3 external screens even to the cheapest 11" MacBook Air. You can do that with Retina MacBook Pros as well. I am not sure if you can with iMacs though.
- Udo 14y ago
  The newest MBAs can power 2 external screens, as can the higher-end iMac (which isn't so bad since you can use the iMac itself as a 3rd). My "normal" 15 MBP can power one external (non-TB) screen, and I think the Retinas can power two TB + one HDMI. A lot of this assumes I'm buying Apple's expensive Thunderbolt displays, however. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/new-macbooks-can-manage-many-many-monitors/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/new-macbooks-can-manage...

bashinator 14y ago

I have the perfect name for this product that would sit between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro: The Mac Plus. rimshot.

supercoder 14y ago
Not Mac MiniS ?
MaysonL 14y ago
Don't you mean the Mac SemiPro?

davidroberts 14y ago

I wonder, since Apple is obviously abandoning this market, why is Microsoft trying so hard to alienate the power desktop user market with Windows 8 instead of aggressively trying to bring this group of Mac Pro users over to them. Of course they would have to improve Windows into a high-quality OS that works for them and find OEM's to partner with who are willing to find out what hardware these users want and provide it. Maybe it's a forlorn hope, but it's better than flailing after the tablet ship that sailed past them two years ago.

bishnu 14y ago
Because this strategy is making a shit-pile of money for Apple and Microsoft would rather chase this shit-pile of money rather than take Apple's table scraps?
- davidroberts 14y ago
  That would make sense if they had any chance of getting that money with Windows 8.
actf 14y ago
I agree completely. Lately everyone seems to be convinced that we're witnessing the death of the desktop computer, but I wonder if this could be partly due to the lack of options in this market. Apple and Microsoft have both dropped the ball here. Apple has eliminated hardware options that power users are looking for, while Microsoft still doesn't provide a decent POSIX environment or even a passable terminal. I honestly wonder what the world would look like if Microsoft were to suddenly switch focus and deploy a version of windows with full POSIX support built in, a decent terminal, a first class package manager, and a decent app store. Instead they are removing features like the start button that confuse existing users, and adding a Metro UI that power users don't want. Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical, but I think we would be witnessing stronger desktop sales if Apple and Microsoft were providing options that users actually wanted.
- ubercow13 14y ago

lutorm 14y ago

It's kind of ironic that Apple seems to be leaving the graphics professionals, which are about the only group to never abandon them during the tough times.

larrys 14y ago

"A few power users will complain, but most won’t care: by that time, most former Mac Pro customers will have already switched away." This is a statement that is general and without any basis at all. Where does the OP come off writing "most former Mac Pro customers" I can almost guarantee that this is simply pure conjecture with nothing to back it up. "There’s even less of a reason to buy the Mac Pro today than I expected." I run 3 monitors off a Mac Pro (24/30/24). I don't believe there is any way to do that on anything but a Mac Pro. I could run six with the two video cards I have now but can't fit them on my desktop. And I'm not using it for video editing or anything like that. I just like to work with as much screen space as possible.

bobidden 14y ago
The retina MBP can easily run 3 monitors, and more with a USB graphics card. I have 4 (24/27/24/23) running off mine right now.
- larrys 14y ago
  Thanks. Which usb graphic card do you use and are you happy with it?
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protomyth 14y ago

If someone were to design a Mac Pro Mini, then it really needs both the memory and hard drives easily replaceable. I can even handle all flash if it mSATA and not some funky connector. It needs two (4 would be awesome) thunderbolts, usb3, and two (working, solid) ethernet connectors (one for network, one for storage). HDMI is nice (I would like an added input). I need 32GB of RAM on the minimum side. Core i7 and NVIDIA GPU would be fine. Include an iSCSI initiator. If the next Mac Pro is any good, I predict a huge buy on its first day due to two years of pent up demand.

jpxxx 14y ago

To put a needle fine point on what market is not being served here: content producers and editors who need all of the CPU, GPU, disk space, pixels, and I/O they can possibly get in a relatively price-insensitive business environment. Homebrews, file serving, enterprise, SOHO, and those with nostalgia for DIY home desktop are non-factors now. The creators need a no-compromise beast with a flawless Adobe and Avid story. If Apple won't provide it, they're throwing their crown jewel customers in the trash.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Maybe the answer is just to sell a version of OS X that is licensed to run on commodity X86 hardware, then just charge $1000 for it.

ksec 14y ago

I wanted, MacPro in Cube Shape. Dual CPU ( Not Xeon Only, ) and up to 64GB of Memory, Dual Geforce GTX Titan, Dual Thunderbolt, SSD in Raid. Because the Margin of SSD and Geforce GTX is much larger, Apple could make their own SSD and Buying Geforce GTX Titan at discount price. Making the New MacPro as similar pricing if you have built it up yourself.