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Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

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Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#51

Post by icegreentea »

Bud wrote: post #38
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…

I really doubt you can get the same performance out of a MacBook Pro. Professional media software (audio or video) takes a -lot- of power. Trying to run through a big multi-track synth setup would probably bring a MBP to it's knees.

I mean for one thing, despite all the awesomeness that is Ivy-Bridge, I still do not think that Intel can cram in the same level of performance into a 35W chip that use to go into a 90W platform just 2-3 years ago.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#52

Post by Bud »

millzlane wrote: post #42
Bud wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, except they aren't overpriced, as evidenced by the fact that nobody can undercut the Air or the iPhone or the iPad on price yet. And they aren't reaping the benefits of using PC hardware, either; other than Intel CPUs, Apple is custom-building all its motherboards and parts. So basically, you have no valid points at all and are just posting an anti-Apple rant.

You only named 3 devices. All of which have only been on the market less than 5 years. It won't take the industry long to surpass those. Intel chips are the brain of the computer. Therefore the rest of the device benefits from it. And you can't argue that Apple didn't benefit greatly from the switch. Or else they wouldn't have rewritten their entire OS for them. So maybe 1/3 of my points are invalid.and I'm not anti…

I don't need to name more than 3 devices. You said the ENTIRE LINE was overpriced. You were wrong about that.

You're also wrong about "the industry" not taking long to surpass the devices in question; they have had 4-5 years to surpass all the devices I named. Ultrabooks still haven't surpassed the Air or beaten its price point, and Android phone hardware hasn't surpassed the iPhone or beaten its price point, etc.

You're just wrong. Own it. I own the latest MacBook Pro and used to work there, too, btw. :) I didn't accuse you of being anti-Apple. I said you posted an inaccurate, anti-Apple rant. Which you did. Peace.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#53

Post by nirvana »

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…

I read recently that the Mac Pro accounts for less than %2 of Apple's Mac sales.

Since thunderbolt basically is a PCI express cable, there's nothing to stop people from building external cases that can hold PCI express cards, like the Mac Pro can. Since thunderbolt is becoming prevalent across the line, I can't really see a need for the Mac Pro so much anymore.

True it is nice in some situations to put all your hard drives and all your PCI cards in one box, but at %2 of the total sales (by units) the big old tower is less relevant these days.

The other thing the Mac Pro had was the highest end of Intels CPUs. If the sales aren't making the engineering effort worth it, then the answer Apple's intending people to take may be a high end iMac.

I edit a lot of HD in Final Cut X on my 2 year old Macbook Pro, and background rendering seems to have no trouble keeping up. I've not really felt CPU constrained in awhile with HD.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#54

Post by Osiris »

pippy wrote: post #39

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.

My problem with that line of reasoning is that the company has (had) over $100 billion in the bank. They have no reason to de-prioritize any area of the business that's making a profit. They have enough resources to pump into all their profitable lines of business and more.

Is the potential of pissing off dedicated customers worth the money they'll save? What will they do with the money they save? Add it to their unimaginably large mountain of cash?

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#55

Post by forrestthewoods »

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?

Video game audio. He does all of our audio work. Sound effects, voice over, music composition, etc. I asked him what audio he used and his answer was Pro Tools, Digital Performer, and Peak. He's got a super top of the line Mac Pro that's only 2 years old and he's been salivating at the prospect of an upgrade for a long time.

He was extra pissed that the new machines don't even have Thunderbolt. He has many hundreds of gigabytes of audio libraries on a variety of external storage devices and just having Thunderbolt would be a pretty decent productivity improvement.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#56

Post by eddieroger »

I was bummed, too, but I can also see why Apple doesn't put as much effort in to the Pros anymore. First off, those machines are meant to have longer lifecycles given their bumped hardware. So when you take that in to account, the biggest piece of tech I can see missing is Thunderbolt, but the Pros are meant to be hooked to bigger things with fibre cards and other Ethernet connected SANs. As for video, being the expandable machine means it will probably have extra GPUs with their own, non-Thunderbolt video cards in, so it's completely erroneous. As for the software updates, Mountain Lion will run just fine, as will the updated versions of the pro apps.

I'd love an update as much as the next guy, but I take solace in the fact that my machine is a little less outdated than it can be, and understand that Apple is smart enough to know where their bread is buttered these days, even if it sucks.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#58

Post by veemjeem »

millzlane wrote: post #42
Bud wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, except they aren't overpriced, as evidenced by the fact that nobody can undercut the Air or the iPhone or the iPad on price yet. And they aren't reaping the benefits of using PC hardware, either; other than Intel CPUs, Apple is custom-building all its motherboards and parts. So basically, you have no valid points at all and are just posting an anti-Apple rant.

You only named 3 devices. All of which have only been on the market less than 5 years. It won't take the industry long to surpass those. Intel chips are the brain of the computer. Therefore the rest of the device benefits from it. And you can't argue that Apple didn't benefit greatly from the switch. Or else they wouldn't have rewritten their entire OS for them. So maybe 1/3 of my points are invalid.and I'm not anti…

I don't think they had to rewrite the entire OS when they switched to intel. It only took 1 person over a span of 6 months to do the "conversion", and that 1 person was just doing it for fun. It wasn't until he finished that Apple decided to use his secret project as part of something bigger. I believe the wife briefly talked about this story on Quora. You can probably find the story if you google "marklar"

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#59

Post by Osiris »

I'm curious, why is it not possible to buy pre-configured, off-the-shelf dual or quad CPU PC systems?

I know that you can get dual CPU server motherboards and build your own system, but as far as I know no one sells a pre-built desktop system that looks anything like the Mac Pro (spec-wise).

EDIT: Looks like I was mistaken. You can get high-end PC workstations.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#60

Post by chrissnell »

ary wrote: post #32
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?"

Well, for one, it's huge. I'd love to see a smaller package that could still hold as many internal drives and PCIe cards. Something that could sit comfortably on top of a desk or be easily rack-mounted would be nice.
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