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New Mac Pro

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Re: New Mac Pro

#311

Post by slantyyz »

reaperducer wrote: post #295
slantyyz wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It seems evident that Apple views the "pro" market as movie studios, large corporations, and media entities that need serious computing power. If Apple is going to price out people who had purchased Mac Pros in the past (the lowest point of entry for the new model is -double- the price of the lowest late 2013 model), I don't really have a problem with that group complaining about the price. For that particular gro…

the lowest point of entry for the new model is -double- the price of the lowest late 2013 model 2x the price for what multiple of performance? 5x? 10x? 100x?

You can make an argument about performance multiplier, but I would bet that there are people who owned the trash can Mac Pros who want access to the new -form factor- at the $3-4K price point.

I'm sure the number crunchers at Apple (and you) are OK with losing those people, but it's a slippery slope, IMO.

Re: New Mac Pro

#312

Post by timc3 »

walterbell wrote: post #244
smogcutter wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NAS in any reasonably sized shop.

Is there a prevalent vendor/stack, e.g. Netapp, QNAP, FreeNAS, Unraid?

Stornext. The poster above mentioned NAS, but I reckon it would be seen more often as not connected to a SAN.

Re: New Mac Pro

#313

Post by pfranz »

buckminster wrote: post #269
pfranz wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I'm not talking about this Mac Pro in particular, but things like the Boxx or Mac Pro. You would get something like this instead of consumer hardware because man hours cost real money. At a previous job they wanted a VR PC, so someone speced out a bunch of high end parts and a case with flashy lights. A couple days of my salary went to putting it all together. That was the first time I had to RMA a mothe…

There is a vast middle ground between build it yourself and buy it from Apple.

Yep and there is a vast middle ground of use-cases. The parent asked about consumer grade hardware versus something like Boxx. I gave 3 separate reasons. A lot of people in this thread are wondering why Hackintoshes aren't an option so I wanted to bring it up.

Honestly, Apple wasn't what I had in mind when I was replying. Personally, I've had to deal with HP z-series workstations compared to various cobbled together machines. Having machines where the series will be in production for a decade, data sheets are readily available, fewer tools needed to open it and install stuff saves so much time and allows less downtime and faster turnaround.

Re: New Mac Pro

#314

Post by Nelson69 »

pfranz wrote: post #256
Nelson69 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just need some sort of minitower, a mac mini with a couple slots, a couple m.2 connectors and room for 64GB of removable memory.. I don't know why but I've thought something like that would almost be an ideal vehicle for xeon-d type parts.

They've been purposefully avoiding the mini-tower market for decades. For whatever reason (prestige, cannibalizing other product lines, etc) they're not interested.

I know, and I get it. Maybe "mini-tower" is the wrong description. It should be a maxi-cube. I'm not holding my breath for it though, the things they sell huge numbers of aren't terribly configurable or expandable and it gives them an edge that way.

Re: New Mac Pro

#315

Post by EugeneOZ »

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…

> Apple made a computer "just for the pros", like HN begs for in every butterfly keyboard thread.

> It's for people who don't know what a CPU core is

We were talking about different kind of "Pro", lol.

And issue is not in butterfly keyboard - humans can adapt to different things. Issue that keyboard breaks too often.

Re: New Mac Pro

#316

Post by auggierose »

shoo_pl wrote: post #257
threeseed wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

256GB SSD and base video card is fine. I would definitely look at a Mac Pro for software development (every minute counts) and if you're in that group there is simply no need for more storage or decent graphics.

That's silly to be honest. I am a developer myself and I can tell you Mac Pro or iMac Pro is a waste of money in every way imaginable. Look up barefeats benchmarks. Unless you have very specialised needs (like video editing) there is visible penalty when you increase the number of your cores. For every day usage 6-8 cores is what you should be aiming at, and preferably with highest clock speed possible. The more core…

iMac Pro is super silent, and I like it like that. I heard the iMac is a bit noisy ...

Your imagination is probably just not that big ;-)

Re: New Mac Pro

#317

Post by JBorrow »

noir_lord wrote: post #234
jwr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For development, I'm actually perfectly fine with 256GB SSD. And I don't care about the video card much at all. Still, I don't see this as a developer machine — I think an iMac Pro is a much better value proposition for developers, and in my case, where I really mostly care about single-threaded performance for interactive development in Clojure and ClojureScript, I'm looking at the iMac.

On the flip side over in Linux land I built an 8 core 16T desktop with 64GB of RAM and two 27” 4K HDR monitors for less than half the price of the base Mac Pro. Oh and it has an RTX2080 which beats an RX580 so badly it’s practically attempted murder. I bet the apple tax I really do (typing this on a 5th gen mini) but the base model is hilariously expensive and in a world where I can buy a 12 core/16T for 499 that bea…

Not to come out over-defensive, but your base configuration (I guess?) doesn't include a GPU, I bet your caches are significantly smaller, and also no ECC ram. I also bet your storage is considerably slower.

Re: New Mac Pro

#318

Post by ken »

knicholes wrote: post #255
jahnu wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who and/or how many engineers are making $500k a year!?

Download and install the app "Blind" to be shamefully informed of how many there are. Seemingly there is either a very large amount, or there are lots of SWEs who like to lie. Lots of it seem like stock options from FAANG and Uber.

I've been on the internet. I know people lie. The OKCupid blog found that "There are consistently 4x the number of people making $100K a year than there should be" [1]. They also lie about their height, and what they look like.

What reason should I have for trusting anonymous self-reported data in a category where people are known to exaggerate?

[1]: https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-big-lies-people-tell-in-onli...

Re: New Mac Pro

#319

Post by eMSF »

jandrese wrote: post #247
llampx wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those workstations were substantially different (and faster) than commodity x86 hardware at the time. Today you can buy a latest-gen 8-core CPU for $300 or so.

The sad truth is they really weren't that much faster. Sun workstations were using the same 68k processors that Macs were using. There is a reason the Unix Workstation market didn't survive. That said, this Mac is not as overpriced as it appears on the surface. A server class motherboard with ECC RAM support and an 8 core Xeon aren't cheap components. I'm guessing they aren't using the bottom of the barrel SSDs eithe…

When I last checked, ECC RAM was hardly more expensive than non-ECC RAM. 8-core Xeons have a huge price range.

I would be quite surprised if the BoM of the base model was even half of that.

Re: New Mac Pro

#320

Post by asaph »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #223
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…

Everything about the base specs are just good enough. I’m not defending it per se, but if you spec’ed the machine for any given purpose, whether software dev, or rendering, it’d probably raise the cost by at least $1-2k, and then you’d have the “real” machine. So, the reason the price looks egregious is because most of it is just base cost. This is a computer made for the engineers who’ve already “made it,” who are m…

> This is a computer made for the engineers who’ve already “made it,” who are making that $500k a year and are looking for a Porsche over a Corvette.

What about an EV such as a Tesla?

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