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Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#491

Post by eitally »

BeetleB wrote: post #470
utopiah wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...making the perfect hardware for home inference machines. I really don't get why anybody would want that. What's the use case there? If someone doesn't care about privacy, they can use for-profit services because they are basically losing money, trying to corner the market. If they care about privacy, they can rent cloud instances in order to setup, run, close and it will be both cheaper, faster (if they can affo…

> If they care about privacy, they can rent cloud instances in order to setup, run, close and it will be both cheaper, faster (if they can afford it) but also with no upfront cost per project. This can be done with a lot of scaffolding, e.g. Mistral, HuggingFace, or not, e.g. AWS/Azure/GoogleCloud, etc. I'm a somewhat tech heavy guy (compiles my own kernel, uses online hosting, etc). Reading your comment doesn't soun…

To your second issue/question, all the cloud provide CMEK services/features (for many years now).

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#492

Post by m132 »

SwtCyber wrote: post #368

It totally makes sense. Mac Studio basically ate the Mac Pro's lunch. But it's still kind of sad. The Mac Pro used to represent this idea that Apple cared about the absolute high-end, no-compromises workstation crowd

Yup, exactly my thoughts.

To me, this discontinuation is less about the product and more about making a statement. The M2 Mac Pro was a dysfunctional product of an internal conflict of interests, but it cast a ray of hope that the M series would develop past the current scaled-up-but-still-disposable phone/embedded SoCs and that Apple had some interest in bringing them closer to the offerings of the competitors from the workstation/server market. Now, with this move, they've made it clear that they would rather give up an entire segment than make at least a narrow part of their ecosystem open enough for the PCIe slots of the Mac Pro to find any serious use.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#493

Post by pchristensen »

embedding-shape wrote: post #415
kaashif wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is not catering to minimum salaries in poor countries. Does this really need to be explained? $3499 is definitely enthusiast compatible. That's beefy gaming PC tier, which is possibly the canonical example of an enthusiast market. This isn't tens of thousands of dollars for top tier Nvidia chips we're talking about.

Seems I misunderstood what a "enthusiast" is, I thought it was about someone "excited about something" but seems the typical definition includes them having a lot of money too, my bad.

$3.5k is a lot of money, but not a ton by American hobby standards. It's easy to spend multiples, even orders of magnitude more than that on hobbies like fishing, wine, sports tickets, concerts, scuba, travel, being a foodie, golf, marathons, collectibles, etc.

It's out of reach for lots of people, even in developed countries. But it's easily within reach for loads of people that care more about computing than other stuff.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#494

Post by traceroute66 »

bigyabai wrote: post #485
traceroute66 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So pretty comparable. The Mac Studio almost certainly uses at least half the power (educated guess, I'm too lazy to go look at all the spec sheets and run the numbers)

It's actually reversed. The GB10 chipset has a TDP of 140w, whereas M2/M3 Ultra pulls over 250w from the wall: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102027

> It's actually reversed. The GB10 chipset has a TDP of 140w, whereas M2/M3 Ultra pulls over 250w from the wall

Come on mate ... I think you and I both know I was talking about complete system here, not discrete components.

I'm pretty sure your total package (Dell Pro Max + GB10) will pull more from the wall.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#495

Post by eitally »

cudima wrote: post #268
QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do those workstations cost? All of the different manufacturers links on that page lack pricing info and you have to contact them for pricing.

$4000

$4k is for GB10 (DGX Spark reference design). $90-100k is for GB300 (DGX Station reference design).

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#496

Post by jayd16 »

jasoneckert wrote: post #120

As someone who came from the SGI O2/Octane era when high-end workstations were compact, distinctive, and sexy, I’ve never really understood the allure of the Mac Pro, with the exception of the 2013 Mac Pro tube, which I owned (small footprint, quiet, and powerful). For me, aesthetics and size are important. That workstation on your desk should justify its presence, not just exist as some hulking box. When Apple relea…

I hope this is satire.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#497

Post by aaronblohowiak »

bigyabai wrote: post #488
mjburgess wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Upgrades" havent been a thing for nearly a decade. By the time you want to upgrade a machine part (c. 5yr+ for modern machines), you'd want to upgrade every thing, and its cheap to do so. It isnt 2005 any more where RAM/CPU/etc. progress benefits from upgrading every 6mo. It's closer to 6yr to really notice

That's news to me. I see Mac Minis with external drives plugged-in constantly; I bet those people would appreciate user-servicable storage. I doubt they bought an external drive because they wanted to throw away the whole computer.

External drive is workaround to apple’s pricing scheme, often purchased at same time as computer.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#498

Post by darkwater »

embedding-shape wrote: post #449
darkwater wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enthusiast in the hobby space is by definition someone willing to pour much more money that someone else not that enthusiast in whichever hobby we are talking about.

Well, and also has a bunch of money, not just willing. I guess locally we don't really have that difference, as two other commentators here went by, that's why I had to update my local understanding of "enthusiast". Usually we use it for how engaged/interested a person is, regardless of how much money they can or are willing to use. Learned something new today at least, so that's cool :)

In a hobby where there are (strong) HW requirements, it mostly takes for granted you have money to shell out for your hobby, indeed.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#499

Post by saltyoldman »

traceroute66 wrote: post #437
jiwidi wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tell me what pc with an nvidia gpu can you buy with same memory and performance. I never liked apple hardware, but they are now untouchable since their shift to own sillicon for home hardware.

> tell me what pc with an nvidia gpu can you buy with same memory and performance. And power consumption ! The performance per watt of Apple is unmatched.

I've owned some beefy computers in the past and this tiny little m4 mini on my desk blows them all out of the water easily. It's crazy.

Re: Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

#500

Post by bigyabai »

traceroute66 wrote: post #494
bigyabai wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually reversed. The GB10 chipset has a TDP of 140w, whereas M2/M3 Ultra pulls over 250w from the wall: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102027

> It's actually reversed. The GB10 chipset has a TDP of 140w, whereas M2/M3 Ultra pulls over 250w from the wall Come on mate ... I think you and I both know I was talking about complete system here, not discrete components. I'm pretty sure your total package (Dell Pro Max + GB10) will pull more from the wall.

I'm pretty sure you need to look up what you're talking about instead of making a guess.

The Dell Pro Max PSU + enclosure is only rated for 240w, it literally can't pull more than 250w from the wall without shorting itself.

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