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Mac Pro

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61–70 of 571 posts

Re: Mac Pro

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting the Mac Pro ever had mass appeal? This strikes me as the opposite, abandoning the 'actual' professionals in favour of a weird mass market design.

I don't see how this is a mass market design. It's a bunch of Xeons cores paired with ECC RAM, stupid-fast storage, and way more GPU power than any reasonable person can use. And probably priced to match. Weird industrial design != mass market.

I assume he is referring to the strange decision to make the thing so small (and beautiful) at the expense of any internal expandability. So professionals are going to have all sorts of hard drives and external graphics cards and optical drives etc hanging off this thing.

Re: Mac Pro

#62
post #6

This page is a fantastic example of great development skills used in a way that is utterly infuriating to use. I don't want it to animate when I use my scroll wheel. I want the page to scroll. Off topic, but were this and the Air the only product announced? If so, I'm disappointed- I was hoping to pick up an updated Macbook Retina 13". Oh well.

I had to enable JS to find out what you're talking about. The result was 200 megs of memory consumption and the realization I may be using a different kind of internet than most people when using NoScript. (I'm surprised they have a non-JS version.)

Re: Mac Pro

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting the Mac Pro ever had mass appeal? This strikes me as the opposite, abandoning the 'actual' professionals in favour of a weird mass market design.

I don't see how this is a mass market design. It's a bunch of Xeons cores paired with ECC RAM, stupid-fast storage, and way more GPU power than any reasonable person can use. And probably priced to match. Weird industrial design != mass market.

But, coupled with zero internal expansion, no spinning disk bays, and a small number of RAM slots.

I can't really tell to whom the product is targeted, honestly. If I were buying a Mac Pro for work, I'd want the expand ability. If I were a consumer buying a desktop, I'd get an iMac or mini.

Re: Mac Pro

#65
post #6

This page is a fantastic example of great development skills used in a way that is utterly infuriating to use. I don't want it to animate when I use my scroll wheel. I want the page to scroll. Off topic, but were this and the Air the only product announced? If so, I'm disappointed- I was hoping to pick up an updated Macbook Retina 13". Oh well.

I imagine they designed it for trackpads, not scroll wheel mice. It works pretty well on a trackpad.

Re: Mac Pro

#66
post #29

The design seems pretty ugly to me, but it is functional. It's essentially a wind tunnel with all the circuit boards placed against it.

It's a pure cylinder. How can a basic form be ugly? I'm pretty impressed that they didn't slap a logo on the front.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid

Re: Mac Pro

#67
post #30

Is someone seeing something more on this page than me? I am using a the Rockmelt browser on a Mac Mini, and I am seeing only the trashcan thing... The page has some secret trick or something to have more info???

Doesn't seem to work on some browsers. Not on the latest Firefox but works on Chrome and Safari.

I'm using Firefox 21 on top of Debian Wheezy. Works fine for me.

Re: Mac Pro

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting the Mac Pro ever had mass appeal? This strikes me as the opposite, abandoning the 'actual' professionals in favour of a weird mass market design.

I don't see how this is a mass market design. It's a bunch of Xeons cores paired with ECC RAM, stupid-fast storage, and way more GPU power than any reasonable person can use. And probably priced to match. Weird industrial design != mass market.

This is just blind speculation (I am not apple [power] user, nor have I owned the new mac pro):

Maybe (sacrificing customizability[?] for portability) + (somewhat superficial/look change maybe for change's sake) + (lack of (water cooling, cd/dvd/bluray%, power surge supply/protector thingy%, raid%)) != professional market?

% = if you want these, there goes some of the portability/simplicity. (unless apple monitor usually has cd drive?)

I might be off the mark, feedback welcome. Maybe this is enough for most creative professionals? Video/3d/gaming/some programming/some engineering might be somewhat infinite in appetite for processing power and all, I would think.

Re: Mac Pro

#69
post #29

The design seems pretty ugly to me, but it is functional. It's essentially a wind tunnel with all the circuit boards placed against it.

It's a pure cylinder. How can a basic form be ugly? I'm pretty impressed that they didn't slap a logo on the front.

Good point, I haven't seen any logo. Maybe it's still in the works and will later.

Re: Mac Pro

#70
"Okay, we COULD just label the ports with regular high color contrast paint. Say, white paint on a black background or black paint on a white background. But that would be TOO EASY and the panel would then really 'pop' against our otherwise monolithic clean design. Which would be distracting."

"But during actual use the ports are going to be on the BACK of the device (so you won't see it) and will have random stuff plugged into some of the ports, which ALSO would disturb the pure clean lines of the thing, so who cares?"

"No, no, we've got to label this thing with black labels on a black background, so it blends in."

"How will people be able to see the labels?"

"Easy. We'll add LED backlighting!"

"How will people TURN ON the LED backlighting, without the button to do THAT destroying our perfect design?"

"Simple - there's no button for it - you just move the machine to turn on the backlight!"

"What if you want the backlight to STAY on for a while, longer than the default?"

"Just keep shaking the machine. Or duct-tape a vibrator to it."

"That's PERFECT!"

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