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New Mac Pro

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351–360 of 731 posts

Re: New Mac Pro

#351

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…

My dad is a graphic designer who got his start doing desktop publishing on a Macintosh II using QuarkXPress. He's faithfully stuck with the Mac since the '80s and currently has a trash can Mac Pro, with which he is mostly happy. He's never billed anywhere near $500/hour as most of his work is for small print periodicals ( Currently, his only outstanding need is for better render times on Final Cut Pro (rendering vide…

It obviously doesn't fit everyone's needs, but the plain old iMac is quite reasonably priced for what it is.

Re: New Mac Pro

#352
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No prevalent stack AFAIK, but add Synology and WD Nas to the list.

The kinda places I see these going in would not touch either of those products. They are both seen as the most entry level of storage devices

are we talking about workstation nas here? we have nothing but praise for synology performance and reliability. software is stable, tiering works flawlessly, expansion is inexpensive, web ui is good, ssh gives you a proper shell - do whatever operations on your nas locally, faster.

Re: New Mac Pro

#353

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…

In addition to computing I also dabble in woodworking, where there are tools in the 'corvette or porsche' classification that everyone drools over, and those guys can spend way more money on tools at a lower salary than I do for 'fancy' Macbooks. Of course, their tools last 3x longer if taken care of, but the outlay can still be breathtaking.

"A good craftsman doesn't blame his tools" isn't a warning against complaining. It's a warning about picking bad tools in the first place and scapegoating them instead of accepting that it was your decision all along.

Re: New Mac Pro

#354
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 used to develop professional 3D tools and CUDA is used to accellerate features in 3D software including: scene manipulation, simulation, real time rendering, ray tracing, rendering shader effects and video encoding etc.

What does CUDA support that Metal 2 cannot do? Recently I've been implementing some 3D mesh algorithms in Metal 2, and it was quite easy to do.

Re: New Mac Pro

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 but know how to produce a platinum album, get an Oscar nomination, or bring a revolutionary industrial design to market. Wait, what? When I say "for pros" I mean able to support latest specs. Something that had the latest NVIDIA cards, or could at least USE the latest N…

So you're saying that what everyone meant by "for the pros" was "for me"? Shocking.

I'm pretty sure "for the pros" in this case means "for the suckers"

Re: New Mac Pro

#356
post #186

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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.

I never use the OS drive for storage, and unless its a requirement to run, I dont load apps on the system drive either. I normally have at least 3 drives on my computer. OS/Apps/Data. With imaging software, replacing one piece of the 3 is damn simple, and there is a better chance of ransomware not taking out your data. So I would definitely use and keep the 256GB drive.

Re: New Mac Pro

#357

$1000 for a monitor stand is the pinnacle of arrogance from a brand.

That is the one that really got me. I expected the Mac Pro to start at a ridiculous price and I wasn't shocked by the monitor but $1000 for a monitor stand is crazy

Re: New Mac Pro

#358

For developers, there's another constraint in investing in the Mac Pro: the increasingly high likelihood Apple will move to ARM: > Mac Pro + display coming in at $11,000 a year or so before a switch to ARM is a hard nope from me. It's a little freeing, so I can now actually get a Mac mini https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/11356329822896537...

The is wild, baseless speculation.

Re: New Mac Pro

#359
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…

And what 27" 4K HDR monitors are you using? I've been looking for something similar for a while and haven't seen much with those base specs...

Re: New Mac Pro

#360
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 but know how to produce a platinum album, get an Oscar nomination, or bring a revolutionary industrial design to market. Wait, what? When I say "for pros" I mean able to support latest specs. Something that had the latest NVIDIA cards, or could at least USE the latest N…

Music, graphic design, video have been the core Apple "Pro" markets since forever. Developers focused on anything other than the Apple ecosystem are a relatively new addition to that lineup, and one that Apple hasn't _really_ ever catered to.

Federighi said on stage that developers are their biggest pro users group.
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