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New Mac Pro

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Re: New Mac Pro

#691

Post by andreasley »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #249
andreasley wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what people asked for – a work horse, designed to be fast, reliable and reasonably quiet. They've tried the "beauty first" approach on the 2013 version and it was a disaster.

They can accomplish all that, just without the tasteless design. The stainless steel frame contrasts with the shell, and not in a good way. The ventilation holes are really weirdly proportioned and still manage to look cramped with that inner baffle. And finally, that apple logo on the side stands out a bit too much, on the old cheesegrater it was a darker gray and a bit smaller. The old G5 chassis was an understated…

I agree in principle.

However, design is always about compromises. The G5 had more beautiful handles, but they had sharp edges and weren't nearly as ergonomical as the new ones. And I wouldn't be surprised if the weird holes in the new Mac Pro allow for twice the airflow. Both are tradeoffs that I, personally, welcome.

Re: New Mac Pro

#692

Post by rhinoceraptor »

bscphil wrote: post #496
wlesieutre wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>for movie studios You have to wonder how many you could reasonably expect to sell that way, though. Everyone in this thread is talking about some upper-elite of pro computer users (above your ordinary multi-six-figure developer salary on HN), but at only $6k per, that's not any way to make money. If that's really the target market, I would worry about making my design money back, let alone making a profit. So I have…

Even if they doubled the price they'd still make peanuts compared to iPhones.

Re: New Mac Pro

#693

Post by rhinoceraptor »

bluedino wrote: post #145
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Back in 1999, the original Cinema Display was $1299 and the G4 Tower was $2499

That's $2000 and $3800 in today's dollars

Re: New Mac Pro

#694

Post by imagetic »

sixothree wrote: post #369
bayindirh wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multimedia professionals do not store their data in internal/primary drives. They generally have RAID boxes with either Ethernet or thunderbolt connection. Most video editing/rendering is done on big storage arrays anyway. So 256GB storage is more than enough for most serious multimedia professionals.

I'm not entirely sure my Lightroom cache would fit on this drive...

I'm not sure a Mac Pro is the best use-case for Lightroom users, if you're working on something that requires that kind of speed/power you're probably on something like Photo Mechanic Plus and/or Capture One Pro.

Re: New Mac Pro

#695

Post by imagetic »

manigandham wrote: post #521
ianhowson wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of cheap NVMe SSDs that can push 3.5Gbytes/sec (Samsung 970, Adata XPG). Even with dual 10Gbe NICs, you can't match that, nor the low access times of local storage. But I do agree that SAN storage is the norm here.

It's usually direct-attached storage, not network-attached. They use USB-C or Thunderbolt cables to join to a RAID storage device, and then backup/archive to a network based storage pool later.

I rarely see direct attached storage anymore. It's too cost effective from a media management standpoint to just to right to 10Gbe RJ45 or fiber network storage. The only direct storage I see is if speed is absolutely critical and that's very rare, mostly just high end 3D stuff.

Re: New Mac Pro

#696

Post by imagetic »

programd wrote: post #581
thinkmassive wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbolt 3 can beat that though

A typical product aimed at mid-range video producers, the G-Speed Shuttle SSD, can do up to 2800MB/s. That's 32TB of local Thunderbolt 3 attached SSD storage. Mind you, you'll pay $15K for it, but if you're in that business you can well afford it even if you're not a top tier Hollywood production shop. Given that your storage array costs that much, the fully loaded Mac Pro price (somewhere in the $20K range?) is not…

Prices have dropped then, cause the G-Speed shuttle I use is 96TB and doesn't cost half that much. I've also used almost every model and in the real world and you don't ever get close to advertised speeds for R/W on those. Plus when the volume gets full it will drop to They are popular though. I see them a lot, but I have had very little success with them over the years.

Re: New Mac Pro

#698

Post by imagetic »

TomVDB wrote: post #345
wayoutthere wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would if you had a storage appliance on a SAN, as the SAN is almost certainly faster than a single SSD. This is an extremely common setup for video production, so it’s not out of the target market at all.

I know nothing about SAN, but I'm still surprised that it would be faster than a PCIe connected local SSD?

It's more about size and stability.

I can have a 100TB volume for under $10,000 that multiple editors can R/W to over 10GbE. We probably average about 400-600mb/s to a client on a simple setup in real world situations, which is fast enough for a few editors to work on multiple streams depending on the server. It's easier to backup/archive from an IT standpoint.

Most people working solo don't need to access hundreds of TBs though. They're fine with local or thunderbolt attached storage devices.

Re: New Mac Pro

#699

Post by imagetic »

duskwuff wrote: post #307
jimbokun wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or is this meant to be the "I just want to buy my own disks separately model", with 256GB drive just there to allow OS to be pre-installed? EDIT: I see now there are only two internal drive bays, so that would mean tossing the 256GB that comes with it if you wanted to max out the internal storage.

You can't buy drives separately. Storage is almost certainly raw flash, exposed as NVMe through the Apple T2 controller.

They didn't mention storage expansion. This was a big red flag. While 250gb is fine for an OS drive, should I ever want to upgrade, what is the catch?

Re: New Mac Pro

#700

Post by bayindirh »

sixothree wrote: post #688
coldtea wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightroom allows to move the cache on another drive... Besides, perhaps you're the user that needs the multi-TB version. Others, e.g. video professionals wont have huge tens-of-TB source files in their main system drive.

I guess the point is for $6000 it should have another drive.

It should, but with a 24MP camera you can create ~50GBs of compressed RAW files per session pretty easily so, a TB of storage won’t do.

If you add a high performance spinning disk its performance won’t be enough and it will be noisy even when idle.

In the end, it’s better to not add anything and let professionals bring their own storage into the mix.

At the end of the day this won’t be sold to new beginners with no files. The buyers will have their resilient storage and the internal drive won’t be used much anyway.

Unless it’s configured as a developer workstation, but it’s generally MacBook Pro’s role.

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