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Mac Pro

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Re: Mac Pro

#251

Post by sliverstorm »

kryten wrote: post #131
ansimionescu wrote: post #71

I love watching people moan about this yet unreleased product. I think the new Mac Pro episode will resemble the iPad one - lots of "ohemgee it's like just a bigger ipod, lol, how stupid do they think we are, kthx?" reactions, when in fact this product will probably push a new paradigm shift in the way workstations are built i.e. moving away from the plastic pieces of shit ubiquitously sold now. Seriously, I dare you…

We reserve our right to moan at consumer junk with the workstation label glued on. Innovation is not something I really want in the workstation market. I want something utterly reliable that works flawlessly for several years and if something goes wrong I can swap the bits out in minutes. If I need more disks, just throw them inside it without playing around with half knackered frayed cables, external enclosures, pow…

People have a low expectation of the term "workstation" these days.

The whole "prosumer" thing has been blurring the lines, typically to the detriment of the "pro" market, except for those "pro" markets that do not overlap with the consumer space whatsoever, e.g. heavy construction equipment.

Re: Mac Pro

#252

Post by Someone »

kryten wrote: post #224
chongli wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple aren't offering ANY of that. I think Apple's philosophy here is to push all the expansion to external devices. The new Mac Pro has 6 thunderbolt 2 ports on it. I'd assume you could probably connect some extremely large and fast storage enclosures with that kind of bandwidth. A regular workstation will always be limited by the space available inside of it. Not with this.

That's absolutely no good for a lot of workstation deployments. Ours are locked into desks so they don't get nicked due to the high value nature of the work that is done on them. Try locking a new Mac Pro, 20 dangling Thunderbolt devices and an iSCSI array into a desk. You're going to end up with this as well: http://i.imgur.com/4dmz6Q3.jpg

I would be disappointed if you could not lock this new Mac Pro and bolt it to your desk.

I also bet someone already is drawing a cylindrical case that holds a few 3GB drives and connects to that Mac using Thunderbolt. Make the cable short and rigid and you get something inspired by the Petronas towers.

And if I had or planned to buy those 20 Thunderbolt devices, I think I would drill a hole in a desk, pull a Thunderbolt cable through, and hang the devices and the cabling under the desk surface

Alternatively, one could build a Cray-1 inspired enclosure by adding a small pedestal with 10 Thunderbolt devices in a circle around it; unfortunately, this machine does not have a thunderbolt connector at the bottom.

And now that I am throwing analogies around: this thing needs a handle on top: http://curta.org.

That 'no connector at the bottom' is a bad thing, by the way. I can't find any picture on apple.com showing this thing with power and display cables plugged in.

Finally, I hope they have tested this thing well for dust intake and overheating in the case people place objects close to it on their desk.

Re: Mac Pro

#253

Post by kryten »

sliverstorm wrote: post #251
kryten wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We reserve our right to moan at consumer junk with the workstation label glued on. Innovation is not something I really want in the workstation market. I want something utterly reliable that works flawlessly for several years and if something goes wrong I can swap the bits out in minutes. If I need more disks, just throw them inside it without playing around with half knackered frayed cables, external enclosures, pow…

People have a low expectation of the term "workstation" these days. The whole "prosumer" thing has been blurring the lines, typically to the detriment of the "pro" market, except for those "pro" markets that do not overlap with the consumer space whatsoever, e.g. heavy construction equipment.

Good point, cleanly described!

Re: Mac Pro

#254

Post by inthewind »

vacri wrote: post #190
ansimionescu wrote: post #71

I love watching people moan about this yet unreleased product. I think the new Mac Pro episode will resemble the iPad one - lots of "ohemgee it's like just a bigger ipod, lol, how stupid do they think we are, kthx?" reactions, when in fact this product will probably push a new paradigm shift in the way workstations are built i.e. moving away from the plastic pieces of shit ubiquitously sold now. Seriously, I dare you…

Come on. If you're getting a customised PC, the items have to interoperate, but you gain flexibility. The Mac Pro customises... how? You're comparing apples and oranges. Besides, while the new design has some interesting features (well... one plus a different look), it's not like you could have built an 'all-in-one' with your dad 20 years ago. Stop with the hyperbole.

In 1981 I built an all in one with my Dad:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zx81

(Or rather he built it and I played the games.)

Re: Mac Pro

#255

Post by sliverstorm »

bjustin wrote: post #73
gamache wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it that way at all. The Mac Pro has always been about the top 1% power users. The appeal was twofold: it was a bitchin'-fast machine you could stuff with as many cards and drives as you want, and it ran OS X. This new design removes the former selling point. 12 core max (same as current)?? Four RAM slots (down from eight)?? 1/6th the volume (i.e. space to plug stuff in)?? This offers almost no advantage o…

>This offers almost no advantage over a late model iMac with a Thunderbolt-to-PCIe breakout module (which is what many power users have been doing in the years since the last update). A few big advantages over the iMac: Xeons processors, so more cores & more cache; ECC RAM; and (two) workstation graphics cards. Six thunderbolt ports means up to 36 (!) PCIe peripherals by daisy chaining, which means a lot more expanda…

A few big advantages over the iMac

The features you list are hardly innovation, just market segmentation.

Re: Mac Pro

#256

Post by rsync »

I love this new device. I suspect I will buy one.

But it doesn't solve my "need a new mac pro" problem.

Right now my 2009 octo mac pro, with six displays attached, plays three roles:

- it is my high end desktop workstation, with three primary high resolution (2560x1600) displays.

- it is my HTPC, with one of the six monitors strung into another room entirely.

- it is my office NAS, with four internal 3TB disks

So, three roles all rolled into one device. This is possible because I can expand it internally with 3.5" disks and pcie cards. In fact, my 3x gt120 cards only take up 3 of the 4 slots.

To duplicate this, I think I need to:

a) add an external disk enclosure

b) drive my fourth display via HDMI

c) pray that 3x 4k displays leaves can coexist with 2x 2560x1600 displays as secondary displays, which seems unlikely

d) pray that the disk array doesn't cannibalize enough thunderbolt bandwidth to interfere with the displays

e) another external box for cd ripping and general optical disk usage

... and all the while, with a single physical CPU, and no ability to ever upgrade the graphics cards. Granted, my needs must not be complicated if I can live with gt120s in 2013, but it was nice to know I could upgrade.

Oh, and I have upgraded my SSD boot device three times in the 4.5 years I've owned this system. That was nice.

So again, I actually really like this device - I think it is a very, very cool computer. But as a discriminating mac pro user who pushed the form factor to the limits, it is not at all what I need.

Re: Mac Pro

#258

Post by dman »

rsync wrote: post #256

I love this new device. I suspect I will buy one. But it doesn't solve my "need a new mac pro" problem. Right now my 2009 octo mac pro, with six displays attached, plays three roles: - it is my high end desktop workstation, with three primary high resolution (2560x1600) displays. - it is my HTPC, with one of the six monitors strung into another room entirely. - it is my office NAS, with four internal 3TB disks So, th…

Or you could buy a HP Z820 with liquid cooling, dual xeon processor, a fusion io card, three workstation gpus, and 12 sata drives :)

Re: Mac Pro

#259

Post by jfb »

sliverstorm wrote: post #255
bjustin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This offers almost no advantage over a late model iMac with a Thunderbolt-to-PCIe breakout module (which is what many power users have been doing in the years since the last update). A few big advantages over the iMac: Xeons processors, so more cores & more cache; ECC RAM; and (two) workstation graphics cards. Six thunderbolt ports means up to 36 (!) PCIe peripherals by daisy chaining, which means a lot more expanda…

A few big advantages over the iMac The features you list are hardly innovation, just market segmentation.

And?

Re: Mac Pro

#260

Post by redler »

The design is obviously polarizing and leaves many questions unanswered. But one surprising and promising development is that Cook said this would be a platform for "the next ten years." In the face of fears that Apple would abandon the "pro market", this is one of the most explicit forward-looking statements they've made in some time.

[minor edit for intent]

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