New Mac Pro • Hacker News Board

Re: New Mac Pro

#471

Post by chaostheory » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #44

bluedino wrote: post #17

The thing the Mac Pro does is magically make the price of every other computer look that much better. $6000 for a computer? Johnson, that's insane. What about $4999 for an iMac Pro? It comes with a display. Great, order it! What about $2499 for a Mac Mini with 32GB and 1TB SSD? Great, order it! What about $2499 for a Macbook Pro? Great, order it!

The 1987 Mac II released at $5,498, $12,125 adjusted for inflation. Granted, that included a monitor. IMO these things are designed for companies like Pixar, Disney, and aerospace, the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" world.

The 2006 Mac Pro Cheese Grater model was $2,499. $3,124 adjusted for inflation. Earlier G models were even cheaper.

Re: New Mac Pro

#472

Post by Rebelgecko » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:49 PM UTC

rkho wrote: post #181

aczerepinski wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Upgrade and repairability

Re: New Mac Pro

#473

Post by sorenjan » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:51 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #69

aczerepinski wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many Hollywood media makers are there? As an Apple shareholder should I be excited to learn that they made a specialty computer for this demographic?

How many Corvette owners are there? As a GM shareholder should I be excited they made a car just for mid-life crises?

Corvettes are good value when compared to the competition.

Re: New Mac Pro

#474

Post by Rebelgecko » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

banachtarski wrote: post #83

internobody wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D modelers want NVIDIA cards, not Radeon, as NVIDIA supports CUDA. This has been a longstanding issue with 3D folks; the old trashcan Mac Pro had NVIDIA GPUs even with otherwise-outdated internals. When rumblings came of new Mac Pros a few years ago there was excitement that they could get some fast machines again; alas this appears not to be the case.

MacOS does not support vendor-supplied drivers which has been the bane to every graphics engineer's existence. Supporting mac for games as a result, is a completely inane task we avoid like the plague. To me, because of the GPU, this machine is a giant paperweight.

Nvidia's web driver works for pre-Mojave macs

Re: New Mac Pro

#475

Post by bscphil » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #432

noir_lord wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, that's cool, but that's comparing Apples to Linux-Oranges, I guess. I do have a Linux box with a fast Intel CPU and it's nice and fast, but a Mac it ain't. I'm happy to pay more for a Mac machine, if only for the fact that I get an OS with working copy/paste in all applications. I won't be buying the Mac Pro anytime soon, though, I'm not willing to pay that much. But there are people who are and I'm glad there…

>if only for the fact that I get an OS with working copy/paste in all applications

That's such an oddly specific reason to require MacOS. Can you say more? I can't say I've ever had a problem with copy/paste in Linux, in any application.

If this issue were serious enough to me to consider doubling my computer's price tag, I'd at least first look at Hackintoshing, which tends to be pretty solid these days when you can pick out specific hardware in advance.

Re: New Mac Pro

#476

Post by sbov » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

madengr wrote: post #445

jrockway wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, so... plenty of software engineers are making $500k a year. That is total compensation; you should expect half of that to come from non-salary things like stock options and bonuses. Maybe some people are lying, but that seems about right to me for actual senior people (leading projects, maybe managing people). My last year at Google, my W2 income was in the area of $300,000. I was a "level 5" with good performa…

There is also much software that is complete garbage. If the ones with $500k TC are writing decent software, then those making $100k may be writing the garbage.

Depends a lot on where they're working. I know more than one person that had 15+ years experience that was making around 100k/year, then moved to a FAANG and hit > 500k total compensation in just a 2-3 years.

Re: New Mac Pro

#477

Post by imagetic » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:55 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #363

imagetic wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every machine I've worked on, bought or built has had 256 or 500gb. We only run the OS/apps on the main drive. Then a second drive for scratch disk and then SAN/NAS storage for the media. It's VERY normal.

I've found that 256G is 'not quite enough', so my old Macbook has 256G and I moved my media folder to one of those flush-mount microSD card adapters. It's read-mostly so who cares about write cycles?

We only store the OS and apps, so anytime the storage is full it's usually cause someone hasn't emptied their downloads folder or they're incorrectly caching the the OS drive.

Re: New Mac Pro

#478

Post by shagie » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

macNchz wrote: post #414

seltzered_ wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were even higher in the early 90's. In 1993 the Power Macintosh 8100 (one of the first ppc computers) started at $4200 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_8100

I found the invoice a while ago for the professional desktop publishing setup that my parents bought in 1993...a Quadra 800 mac, upgraded video memory, a flatbed scanner, b&w laser printer, a 20" monitor, a 14400 modem and some kind of fancy magneto optical drive or something for FedExing large files. Total price was $13k at the time.

Toss that $13k into an inflation calculator and sigh loudly. http://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1993?amount=13000

It's about $23k in 2019 dollars.

Re: New Mac Pro

#479

Post by Sophistifunk » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

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…

No, no you won't. Xeons and boards that will run 2TB of ram cost a bloody fortune. Just because it's not for you, doesn't mean it's not a valuable product for others. I'll certainly be getting one (not for a while, but eventually) because I want an upgrade path, and dev tools and Docker can put to good use every GB of ram I can afford.

Re: New Mac Pro

#480

Post by imagetic » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

erdewit wrote: post #264

1.4 kW power supply... the next Apple accessory will be diesel generators.

that's really just to support multiple GPU's if a user decides to add them. At the base model, it's nowhere near that.