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New Mac Pro

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Re: New Mac Pro

#181

Post by rkho »

aczerepinski wrote: post #174
PascLeRasc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new Mac Pro, like Mac Pros always have been, is for music/TV studios and design agencies that bill their time starting at $500/hour. It's really not for individuals, and that's ok. Apple made a computer "just for the pros", like HN begs for in every butterfly keyboard thread. I'm thrilled about it even though I know I'll never touch one. It's for people who don't know what a CPU core is but know how to produce a…

I disagree that it’s always been this way. I bought a G4 tower when I was in college and it sure as heck wasn’t $6,000 back then. This is the only traditional desktop computer that Apple sells, so it’s disappointing that everybody outside of movie studio employees has to fall back to an iMac or a Windows/Linux machine.

The new Mac Minis are really powerful. What doesn't it have that you're hoping for?

Re: New Mac Pro

#182

Post by TimTheTinker »

duskwuff wrote: post #51
Shivetya wrote: post #23

I know being expandable is important here but I am stunned by the fact that an iMac Pro actually comes with better SSD and Video Card for less money and you get a screen to boot! 256g SSD is shameful, I don't care what they were thinking. No Nvidia support mentioned so I know a few that just wrote it off for that oversight alone. They will probably hold out just to be sure but that was the hope for them and others. W…

The first step up from 256GB is 2x512GB, and there's configurations up to 2x2TB. My guess is that the 256GB configuration is meant for users that work primarily with data that's kept on network storage.

If you're a developer on a large (multi-GB) codebase, a beefy multicore system can be great for quick compile times, but hefty storage may not be a necessity.

Re: New Mac Pro

#183

Post by strmpnk »

threeseed wrote: post #139
old-gregg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, 580X is old (it's the same hardware as RX 480 from 2016) In fact, everything in that machine is old: the Xeons they use are rocking the Skylake core form 2015, with all of the recently discovered side-channel vulnerabilities. The upcoming AMD Threadripper 3 CPUs with PCIe4 would be a much better Pro offering. Clock-for-clock they are beating Skylake now, rumored to have up to 64 cores. Also, PCIe4-based RAID 0 a…

Don't forget that Apple can see AMD and Intel's future roadmaps. AMD definitely has a superior offering with Threadripper 3 but we haven't seen what Intel is going to offer in comparison. And switching CPU manufacturers is never trial.

I'm not sure why they'd consider Threadripper for the Mac Pro. This machine fits into Epic's target cases and could possibly live up to the asking price of the whole package at that point. Given how the rest of the mac ecosystem is going, I'd only expect the most stubborn of professional communities pick this up (film editing folks seems to still buy the Apple hype).

Re: New Mac Pro

#185

Post by wlesieutre »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #50
vbezhenar wrote: post #2

That price is just absurd. I waited for Mac Pro announcement to decide whether I'll stay with Windows or jump to macOS. Macbooks are not for me, but I hoped for a remotely reasonable priced computer, something like $2000 with another $1000 to expand with more memory, etc. But $6000 for 8-core CPU, 256 GB SSD, GPU that is less powerful than my old $200 NVidia 1060? It's just laughable. Otherwise seems like a good mach…

The new Mac Pro, like Mac Pros always have been, is for music/TV studios and design agencies that bill their time starting at $500/hour. It's really not for individuals, and that's ok. Apple made a computer "just for the pros", like HN begs for in every butterfly keyboard thread. I'm thrilled about it even though I know I'll never touch one. It's for people who don't know what a CPU core is but know how to produce a…

On the developer side of things, the 2018 Mac Mini update is a much lower priced computer with an option for a 6-core i7. If you really need a dedicated GPU, you can add one with a Thunderbolt enclosure.

The new Mac Pro is for movie studios and maybe very large machine learning models.

Re: New Mac Pro

#186

Post by llampx »

duskwuff wrote: post #51
Shivetya wrote: post #23

I know being expandable is important here but I am stunned by the fact that an iMac Pro actually comes with better SSD and Video Card for less money and you get a screen to boot! 256g SSD is shameful, I don't care what they were thinking. No Nvidia support mentioned so I know a few that just wrote it off for that oversight alone. They will probably hold out just to be sure but that was the hope for them and others. W…

The first step up from 256GB is 2x512GB, and there's configurations up to 2x2TB. My guess is that the 256GB configuration is meant for users that work primarily with data that's kept on network storage.

There's no professional that would buy a machine with 256GB of storage. Let's call it what it is - a throwaway configuration meant to hit a price point.

Re: New Mac Pro

#187

Post by threeseed »

deckar01 wrote: post #164
FigBug wrote: post #14

I think they took the name cheese grater too literally, it actually looks like one now.

This vent is uncharacteristically ugly for an Apple product. I have a hard time believing that this sphere pattern is really optimal for performance. Maybe optimal for minimizing the number of machine operations required to produce it... Those holes are just comically large.

Of course they are large. It's designed to let air in.

Re: New Mac Pro

#188

Post by 8draco8 »

sdan wrote: post #105
mcphage wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3D modelers want NVIDIA cards, not Radeon, as NVIDIA supports CUDA What do 3D modelers use CUDA for? I know it gets used for machine learning, but I'm not familiar with what else.

I've heard that CUDA can help decrease render times on Adobe Premiere Pro and several other programs. I'm guessing that includes 3D modeling software like Fusion 360 or something to help with various molding and simulation features.

tin foil hat thoughts what if CUDA on MacOS allows Adobe products to outperform Final Cut rendering times and Apple don’t want to jeopardize it’s offering?

Re: New Mac Pro

#189

Post by seanmcdirmid »

aczerepinski wrote: post #174
PascLeRasc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new Mac Pro, like Mac Pros always have been, is for music/TV studios and design agencies that bill their time starting at $500/hour. It's really not for individuals, and that's ok. Apple made a computer "just for the pros", like HN begs for in every butterfly keyboard thread. I'm thrilled about it even though I know I'll never touch one. It's for people who don't know what a CPU core is but know how to produce a…

I disagree that it’s always been this way. I bought a G4 tower when I was in college and it sure as heck wasn’t $6,000 back then. This is the only traditional desktop computer that Apple sells, so it’s disappointing that everybody outside of movie studio employees has to fall back to an iMac or a Windows/Linux machine.

I don't think there is much demand anymore for a Mac tower in the consumer space; actually, I don't think towers have been a popular option in the consumer space for a long time for any platform.

Re: New Mac Pro

#190

Post by _ph_ »

jwr wrote: post #140

Those of us who are slightly older may still remember how much real workstations (as in a Sun SparcStation or an SGI Indigo) cost back in the day, and are less shocked by the pricing :-) Computing has really been democratized over the last 25 years.

And look how great Sun and SGI are doing with their workstations today :). The list of companies, who are willing to spend 10k or more on the workstation of a single employee is growing short. And some of those still need NVidia graphic cards.
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