Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#71

Post by jsheard » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #68

jsheard wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple showed a lineup of compatible PCIe cards, with a variety of accelerators and I/O hardware but conspicuously no GPUs. https://i.imgur.com/28J1KfN.jpg The Apple Silicon transition ended support for external GPUs, so I think it's safe to assume they won't support internal ones either.

The product page specifically touts the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo.

The product page hasn't been updated yet, it's still describing the Intel model.

If it were current then they'd have something newer than the years-old W6800X Duo.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#72

Post by delfinom » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

jasonjamerson wrote: post #38

jonwinstanley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it's all pre-recorded and edited together

You're right. I thought this was a live event, but the people watching it live are just watching a video, just saw a live photo from twitter. Makes a lot more sense!

Ever since COVID, many companies have basically switched to these "fake live" announcements.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#73

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

zbowling wrote: post #52

chillbill wrote: post #41

The best thing about this whole event is that they didn't mention AI even once, all they're saying is ML. Which is what it is. AI is a hype word.

ML is subset of AI. AI that is inclusive of other concepts and it's not a buzzword. It's valid to call anything ML as AI. Sure there is a lot of AI hype but it's not some made up marketing jargon.

You're technically right that AI is a superset. But, at least in a computational context, "AI" is hardly ever being used to refer to cognitive science and other AI subsets that are not directly related to ML. So ML is usually the more precise terminology. But I've pretty much given up on that one.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#74

Post by mk_stjames » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

I'm surprised they kept the cheese grater case for the new Pro. It is one of my least favorite case designs of any high end mac. I'm really surprised they didn't go with something simpler and more like a tall, scaled up Mac Studio. It's strange that given it is such a big architecture change on the inside isn't mirrored with a physical change on the outside.

Mostly I hate the juxtaposition of the chrome legs/handles with the aluminum case. It's very mixed-material. The chrome reminds me of the early iPhones with the chrome bezels.

Meanwhile the Mac Studio design is clean and monolithic in comparison.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#75

Post by tiffanyh » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

roughly wrote: post #5

I’d been wondering how they were going to handle expandable memory with the M chip, since the integrated memory seemed pretty central to the design - seems like the answer is, “they’re not.” Be interested to see if PCI expansion is sufficient to satisfy the Max Pro market.

Mac Pro = Mac Studio + Expansion Cards

I have to imagine this will be a huge disappointment to some, because 192GB of shared memory is way less than the 1.5TB of RAM available on the "old" Mac Pro.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#76

Post by jeffbee » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

$7k starting price. High but compared to? Just glancing at the new HP Z6 G5, which may be a fair comparison, with a 16-core CPU, 8x16GB of memory (the lowest configuration that populates all 8 channels of that CPU), minimal storage, and a parts bin GPU that nobody wants, $6k. To get 8 thunderbolt ports like the mac pro you'd have to fill each and every one of its add-in card slots with a HP dual TB4 card.

Edit: The HP 340L1AA TBT4 card is only compatible with one expansion slot in that machine, so what I suggested is not even possible. Perhaps the Mac Pro is the only workstation you can get with 8 Thunderbolt4 ports.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#77

Post by cdelsolar » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #45

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend a whole bunch more time at my Mac than I do in a car, and gain much more value from it too, so that doesn't seem unreasonable...

Cars don’t usually become obsolete and borderline worthless after 5 years.

i still use my 2013 macbook pro and it still works great and fast

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#78

Post by 0xcde4c3db » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #71

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product page specifically touts the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo.

The product page hasn't been updated yet, it's still describing the Intel model. If it were current then they'd have something newer than the years-old W6800X Duo.

Sorry, you're right. I thought I saw a mention of an M2 spec, but it must have been something else.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#79

Post by rch » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #17

lemetr0l wrote: post #10

For the modest price of 77k dollars!!! I will use vectorization and multithreading instead, thanks!

Are you off by one order of magnitude? Or does this cost as much as a couple quite nice cars.

I was looking at a six figure workstation last week, including GPUs. The goal is to replace 2-3 loud servers in my home lab with something more compact and quiet.

Re: Apple unveils new Mac Studio and brings Apple Silicon to Mac Pro

#80

Post by ttfkam » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #62

justinator wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF I had the Macbook from 2015 before I felt like upgrading to the M1 in 2021. You usually buy Macs every year?

I did get an Apple Silicon MacBook 18 months or so ago but my 2015 MacBook Pro is still fine for pretty much everything except ML and video/image processing.

Or anything that requires a quieter, fan-noise-less environment that doesn't burn your lap on direct skin contact. But yeah, the 2015 MBP was a truly great model that precedes soldered RAM and USB-C-only port selection.