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Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

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Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#31

Post by blueprint »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #29

Our sound guy is PISSED at the lack of update. Seriously, incredibly pissed. I've honestly never seen him this angry before. He'd been counting down the days till WWDC and a long overdue update. There are three major pieces of software he uses on his Mac that he swears by. It sounds like they have all just released or are about to release Windows versions. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly…

To confirm, what kind of professionals are you talking about for whom a new Macbook Pro isn't going to be fast enough?

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#32

Post by ary »

chrissnell wrote: post #23

The Mac Pro isn't just for those in the A/V industry. It's for anyone who wants a Mac with more than four cores. No other Mac can do 6+ cores. The Mac Pro hasn't seen a case update in at least six years. What other Apple product has been neglected like this?

Neglect on the internals side is objectionable, but what of the the case? It's still just as (subjectively) beautiful today as it was six years ago. Does a product really need to radically look different just to be "new?"

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#33

Post by AndrewNoNumbers »

chrissnell wrote: post #23

The Mac Pro isn't just for those in the A/V industry. It's for anyone who wants a Mac with more than four cores. No other Mac can do 6+ cores. The Mac Pro hasn't seen a case update in at least six years. What other Apple product has been neglected like this?

I'd politely like to ask..

What, besides A/V work, is a 6+ core OS X machine necessary for?

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#34

Post by blueprint »

wmf wrote: post #16
planetguy wrote: post #11

"No Xeon E5 CPUs" I must admit I've lost track of what the latest and greatest CPU is at any given time, so I googled for "Xeon E5" and found this article: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/11/apple_quietly_... So what is it? Have they stuck in an Intel Xeon E5 or not?

AppleInsider is confused. Xeon E5645 is two years old. Xeon E5-26xx is the new hotness.

That's quite a mistake to make!

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#35

Post by verisimilidude »

marquis wrote: post #12
robert_nsu wrote: post #2

I don't get it. Why don't they just discontinue the Mac Pro?

Mac OSX is still solidly used in many industries, such as media and publishing. Recording studios need the Pro to install expansion cards, video production houses the same. I've seen close to riots because a production house wanted to move all their staff to Windows, and as much as you think it might save costs, you don't have to worry about Anti-Virus and Firewall software management, admin permissions etc on top of…

I (still) work in old-world publishing. Honestly, Mac Pros are losing their edge in this industry. My machine was recently upgraded from an old Mac Pro to a new Mac Mini. Even when I spam my machine with a half-dozen Adobe apps at once, I don't really hurt for performance.

Granted, some still need a Mac Pro to drive multiple huge monitors, cut video, add weird device interfaces, etc. Some will demand super expensive hardware for reasons more political than practical. All that said, overall, the publishing industry seems to be hitting a performance-plateau where the old Pro is no longer necessary among many practitioners.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#36

Post by veemjeem »

blueprint wrote: post #31
forrestthewoods wrote: post #29

Our sound guy is PISSED at the lack of update. Seriously, incredibly pissed. I've honestly never seen him this angry before. He'd been counting down the days till WWDC and a long overdue update. There are three major pieces of software he uses on his Mac that he swears by. It sounds like they have all just released or are about to release Windows versions. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly…

To confirm, what kind of professionals are you talking about for whom a new Macbook Pro isn't going to be fast enough?

Probably the ones who have 32gb of memory for their photoshop scratch buffer. There's still quite a few of these types of professionals. You just can't put that much memory in the Macbook Pro. Processor speed is probably less of an issue compared with memory capacity.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#37

Post by luser001 »

blueprint wrote: post #31
forrestthewoods wrote: post #29

Our sound guy is PISSED at the lack of update. Seriously, incredibly pissed. I've honestly never seen him this angry before. He'd been counting down the days till WWDC and a long overdue update. There are three major pieces of software he uses on his Mac that he swears by. It sounds like they have all just released or are about to release Windows versions. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly…

To confirm, what kind of professionals are you talking about for whom a new Macbook Pro isn't going to be fast enough?

You can never have enough processing power when you're editing and re-rendering videos.

Hell, I find lightroom able to use all the CPU I can throw at it when I muck around with ~400 photos that I shoot in a day.

I have no doubt that video work can easily use all the CPU/memory you throw at it: imagine rendering a finished video in five different formats and resolutions in the background, while you're editing/tweaking your next project in the background.

Remember these are professionals.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#38

Post by Bud »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #29

Our sound guy is PISSED at the lack of update. Seriously, incredibly pissed. I've honestly never seen him this angry before. He'd been counting down the days till WWDC and a long overdue update. There are three major pieces of software he uses on his Mac that he swears by. It sounds like they have all just released or are about to release Windows versions. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly…

Except there's not really a premium Windows platform to compete with the overall integration that a high-end Mac and Mac OS X offers.

If you can get the same performance out of, say, the new MacBook Pro plus a couple Thunderbolt displays and a Thunderbolt RAID, the pros can just move in that direction.

Notice that there was no iMac update at all today; Apple might be planning to release a new high-end iMac to better serve the old Mac Pro crowd.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#39

Post by pippy »

The fact is Mac Pro's aren't as profitable as iPads or iPhones. If you were CEO you'd de-prioritise the line as well.

They're not killing off the line altogether probably because it's a less risky market. iPads and iPhones are new, and tomorrow a new phone could kill off iPhone sales over night.

It is pretty shitty to see Apple do this however. I'd love for them to put in the bleeding edge hardware on the line.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#40

Post by Terretta »

millzlane wrote: post #10

This isn't surprising. Look at the product wikis and see the comparison of all the hardware. From the mac pro all the way down to the phone. They have been selling overpriced hardware for a very long time. To be fair.. before the intel switch the hardware was theirs. Now, after the intel switch they're still selling over priced hardware except now it's cheaper for them because they're not using powerpc's anymore, and…

Not overpriced. Nobody could come close to the price of the Macbook Air with fully equivalent hardware, for example, and today's MBP release is the same. When competitors try to meet the specs across the board, without any major compromises, they cost 20% more.

The overpriced thing is a decade old, and used to be justified as a brand positioning (pay more for quality build).

Now, Apple's supply chain lets them offer even higher build quality but at a discount to inferior products.

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