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Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

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Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#91

Post by petercooper »

brunorsini wrote: post #70

If you're into home recording (who isn't, these days?), this is a huge blow. When your Pro Tools/Cubase/Logic project has 40+ tracks of high resolution audio files and several high quality real-time plugins processing each one of them you really need a lot of CPU power. I purchased a Thunderbolt display just a couple of months ago. I wanted to use it with my Macbook Air while waiting for the Mac Pro to be updated, fe…

I might be wrong, but you can still use the display with a current Mac Pro using DisplayPort, right? (You just won't get to use the other connectors.)

I have a 2008 Mac Pro and was looking into doing this, but I'd need to buy a graphics card with DP first.

UPDATE: Thanks! Yes, I was wrong ;-) Another source: http://store.apple.com/us/question/answers/product/MC007LL/A...

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#92

Post by petercooper »

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…

Is the future of professionals going to be Windows?

Which itself is going super-consumery with Windows 8..

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#93

Post by EvanKelly »

ams6110 wrote: post #71
lwat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a product is still profitable, why discontinue it?

Perhaps they would save more by discontinuing the line than they make in profits on it.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. Any profit, however small, will exceed any savings you get.

I guess maybe we have different assumptions about what "profit" means. I'm assuming that when someone refers to a line of products as profitable, they are taking into account all administrative costs as well.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#94

Post by justindocanto »

If I used your logic last year when they did soft bumps to the MacBook Pro after not having a major upgrade since 2010, I would've been shitting my pants thinking they would be dropping the MacBook Pro and only going consumer... which, as we learned today, is not the case.

The Mac Pro is a necessary part of their line for professionals and aren't going anywhere. My guess is next upgrade will be a big overhaul. It will also probably come with Mac Mini upgrades & a complete thunderbolt display selection (which I am waiting for).

EDIT: the upgrade I'm referring to is April 2010 when the MacBook Pro's started using the Intel Core i5 and i7 processers, removed the express slot, etc. That's 2 years and 2 months between major updates AND you could say the 2009 was really the last time it was upgraded THIS much. So 3 years? and you're complaining about 2 which is not abnormal by any means.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#95

Post by vacri »

nirvana wrote: post #53
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…

I think it's funny that Apple markets itself as simplifying and reducing wires and reducing clutter... but boy, they like adaptors!

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#96

Post by gonzo »

jes5199 wrote: post #62
AndrewNoNumbers wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd politely like to ask.. What, besides A/V work, is a 6+ core OS X machine necessary for?

some of the iOS developers at my work use them just so they can compile faster.

then they're doing it wrong.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#97

Post by brunorsini »

petercooper wrote: post #91
brunorsini wrote: post #70

If you're into home recording (who isn't, these days?), this is a huge blow. When your Pro Tools/Cubase/Logic project has 40+ tracks of high resolution audio files and several high quality real-time plugins processing each one of them you really need a lot of CPU power. I purchased a Thunderbolt display just a couple of months ago. I wanted to use it with my Macbook Air while waiting for the Mac Pro to be updated, fe…

I might be wrong, but you can still use the display with a current Mac Pro using DisplayPort, right? (You just won't get to use the other connectors.) I have a 2008 Mac Pro and was looking into doing this, but I'd need to buy a graphics card with DP first. UPDATE: Thanks! Yes, I was wrong ;-) Another source: http://store.apple.com/us/question/answers/product/MC007LL/A...

I wouldn't count on that, because I actually had to update my macbook air just to get the Almighty Thunderbolt Display to work. In fact, my previous MBA (2010 generation, display port)didn't even power the thing up (it's powered exclusively over thunderbolt).

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#98

Post by robomartin »

This illustrates the issue I highlighted in another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097141

The fact that Apple keeps hardware and, increasingly, software, so tightly controlled leads to a situation like that of this "new" Mac Pro. If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways. Performance would go up and prices would come down.

There are lots of use cases where the user couldn't give a crap about a nice and polished enclosure. You are paying dearly for design you don't need. If you want to pay for design, fine, do so, but to a lot of us it means nothing.

Case in point: We have several workstations setup for Finite Element Analysis of heat and fluid flow. They are dual quad core i965 Extremes. They run overclocked at 4.0GHz with memory overclocked to 2.0GHz. They have 64GB of DDR3. All fluid cooled. Tons of storage as well. They also have dual NVidia graphics cards and sport three 24 inch 1920 x 1200 LCD monitors. Total cost, about $3,500. Including the three monitors and the OS hard drive.

These are monster machines in terms of performance and they still cost less than a Mac Pro. We have three Mac Pro's as well.

I would really like to see Apple open it up. A lot of interesting things could come of it.

Because their hardware is not subject to competitive forces, we will now be stuck with a less-than-desirable incremental update for probably three years, if not more.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#99

Post by ken »

chrissnell wrote: post #60
ary wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Marco actually wrote a nice article about this: http://www.marco.org/2011/11/02/scaling-down-the-mac-pro

Personally, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Apple was just keeping the Mac Pro alive long enough for third-party Thunderbolt accessories to catch on. Once you can plug in all the expansion you needed over Thunderbolt, what's the point of the Mac Pro? Just faster CPU and more RAM -- so maybe they'll release a special Mac Mini that's like a normal Mini but with Xeon processors and a ton of memory.

They have a "Mac mini server" today, and they've had an "Xserve cluster node" in the past, so it wouldn't be completely out of line for Apple to release a special version.

A lot of us wouldn't find it ideal, but it could be an answer to the "I need a Mac with 32GB of RAM" question, and Apple does seem to prefer all-in-one boxes that users plug their own external accessories into.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#100

Post by sillysaurus »

robomartin wrote: post #98

This illustrates the issue I highlighted in another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097141 The fact that Apple keeps hardware and, increasingly, software, so tightly controlled leads to a situation like that of this "new" Mac Pro. If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways. Performance would go up an…

Which monitors did you buy? How did you get them so cheaply?
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