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The Mac Pro Review

anandtech.com

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Re: The Mac Pro Review

#111

Post by Watabou »

protomyth wrote: post #93
Watabou wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bugs have you found? Have you reported them to Apple? I haven't found any since the 10.9.1 update. They fixed the quicklook slowness bug which was my only complaint. Mavericks is one of the most polished OS X release I have used, behind Snow Leopard.

(not op) I have 4 reported to Apple about Mavericks and one (Quicktime) was fixed with 10.9.1. The other 3 are on the Finder, first appeared in 10.9, and were not fixed in 10.9.1. Mavericks has the buggiest Finder I have seen on a 10.x release. It is a pain to have to restart Finder multiple times a day.

I would agree with you if Apple hadn't released 10.9.1, but honestly, Apple has fixed the Finder issues for me.

Quicklook is still slower compared to Mountain Lion for me, so I hope they make it faster still.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#112

Post by leephillips »

yapcguy wrote: post #85
coldtea wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like Anandtech but they have come into criticism recently, from some of their long-time readers, for fawning over Apple products. Which, instantly, should be reason enough to understand that said criticism is BS. Apple products are among the best in the industry, period. Not just from the industrial design part of it, but overall: coherence of product vision, attention to important characteristics for the target…

Rob Pike wrote a blog post "Thank you Apple" (sarcasm) because of the problems he was having with his iMac and Apple's software. http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/09/thank-you-apple.ht... Linus Torvalds is said to be using the ChromeBook Pixel as his primary machine. http://www.geek.com/chips/linus-torvalds-is-making-the-chrom... As for Miguel De Icaza, he's eating his own dog food, as he now makes his money sel…

From now on when people ask me why I use Linux instead of OSX and why I refuse to install closed-source, copy-protected software, I'm going to send them to Rob Pike's eloquent description of his self-inflicted torture.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#113

Post by wtallis »

morganherlocker wrote: post #73
thearn4 wrote: post #5

Do a lot of folks here generally like Mac desktops? I've grown to like Macbooks because I do like working on a portable UNIX-y platform, and have had generally bad luck with Linux laptops in the past. On desktops though, I'm willing to put more effort into settling software update issues/device conflicts, since I probably have to do that anyway to write performance-optimized code (depends on the exact purpose of the…

I use a MBPr for general development, have an imac close to top specs and have a beefy windows/linux box. Of the 3, my imac gets the least use, and I will probably be retiring it fairly soon. For development, I really do not need a power house machine. I code with a focus on TDD and small unit tests, so even though I do mostly statistical computing work, my development tests use small amounts of data and low computin…

Your iMac is not producing any more heat per unit of computational work than your other machines unless it is significantly older and thereby less efficient. The iMac doesn't conduct the heat away from the processors and into the room as quickly as a larger desktop would, so the chips operate at higher temperatures under load. This does not have any effect on the actual amount of energy dissipated into the room over the long run.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#114

Post by corresation »

rsynnott wrote: post #101
corresation wrote: post #57

The one strange assumption that most Mac Pro reviews start with is a baseline of two compute cards -- that the Mac Pro is competitive when compared with other machines with two high-end compute cards. But I don't want two high-end compute cards, and I suspect that many who are trying to convince themselves that they'll benefit from it will gain no value from it. For many, many workloads, modern compute still represen…

> But I don't want two high-end compute cards In which case, do you want a Xeon workstation of any sort? As mentioned later on in the review, you make significant sacrifices for Xeon (startlingly expensive, last-gen cores), and, besides the option for more cores than you can get on an iX, the main thing you get is extra PCIe lanes, which are not actually that useful for most things; one of the few things they _are_ u…

do you want a Xeon workstation of any sort?

ECC memory is a big one. Usually getting a Xeon workstation comes with SMP, though not on the new Mac Pro. Big memory support. Lots of PCI lanes. Usually lots of space to drop in extra storage, a couple of 10GbE ports (the Mac Pro has just 1Gbps ports which is another oddity).

There are a lot of traditional reasons a so-called workstation features a Xeon.

Worth noting that there is a couple of Haswell (therefore AVX 2.0 supporting) Xeons -- the E3 v3s. Unfortunately they're the baby ones so they have ridiculous low max memory, no SMP, and max out at 4 cores. Hopefully the E5 v3s are out soon.

I honestly don't get how the Mac Pro hasn't gotten more mainstream criticism. It solves a problem that I don't remember anyone ever having (honestly a garbage can form factor seems like more of a nuisance than the flexible cubes we're all used to), while bringing a ton of problems to the table, and being a massive sunk cost for fixed hardware that is going to be outdated very, very quickly.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#115

Post by corresation »

gress wrote: post #92
yapcguy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, it's not just me sitting here complaining. http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2270612 Pretty much every review of Apple gear has people moaning about bias in the comments. I'm not saying there is any favoritism, but certainly the perception amongst Anandtech readers is that there might be. At the end of the day, there's no reason why the writers at Anandtech would be any more immune to access journali…

Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of Apple products. You are actually saying there is favoritism. It's dishonest to claim otherwise. You've just suggested that Anand has succumbed to access journalism. Why not just be honest about what you think, rather pretending to be disinterested reporting on the views of others? Let's also note that the commenter accusing AnandTech of bias…

Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of Apple products.

Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of any product. If someone likes Google Glass, four hundred comments by people calling you a glasshole and telling you that you must like Google stealing all your data. Positive reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note got huge criticism among the Apple sphere, everyone agog over how anyone could possibly like something so big (must be payola). And on and on and on.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#116

Post by gress »

corresation wrote: post #115
gress wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of Apple products. You are actually saying there is favoritism. It's dishonest to claim otherwise. You've just suggested that Anand has succumbed to access journalism. Why not just be honest about what you think, rather pretending to be disinterested reporting on the views of others? Let's also note that the commenter accusing AnandTech of bias…

Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of Apple products. Those kinds of complaints can be seen anywhere there is a positive review of any product. If someone likes Google Glass, four hundred comments by people calling you a glasshole and telling you that you must like Google stealing all your data. Positive reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note got huge criticism among the Apple spher…

Quite so for most of these cases, but Samsung has been convicted for paying shills, so let's not use this as an excuse to whitewash them.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#117

Post by corresation »

Watabou wrote: post #78
gress wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is iOS insecure?

I would ignore him. He clearly has no idea what he's saying. No one I've talked to has called Mavericks "buggy as hell".

Mavericks is absolutely a regression. My Mac Mini i7 (2013), for instance, will regularly recover from sleep with a black screen. Now if you are careful you can log in (hope the context is in the password box, type your password and return), but this has been there since Mavericks release. Many people have reported it. Still there. It is among a long list of bizarre oddities and system quirks that simply didn't happen pre-Mavericks.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#118

Post by ericd »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #28

Interesting they compared the new Mac to a workstation. Older workstations these days are a lot more affordable and can easily be upgraded. Most MACS you're stuck with what you get. Case in point, I just purchased an HP 8400 workstation for a friend. $320 for a dual proc 2.6GHz quad core Xeon, 16GB RAM, Two 320GB SAS drives in RAID config and ATI Fire V7350 1GB video card. Sure its a pig and isn't the quietest PC in…

It doesn't shred anything with an SSD, though...

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#119

Post by josephagoss »

bfrog wrote: post #37

A 1 year warranty is such a joke for this much money. I think this and the new mbp where should anything break you need a full replacement basically, need to have some serious warranty coverage changes. 3 years minimum in my mind. Just another way to nickle and dime you on something like an almost required extended warranty. Apple, your stuff is mostly nice. Fix your product warranty and maybe I'll open my wallet.

I think Australians get 2 years free as per the legal requirements. However I suspect they increase the overall price to compensate so we are not really better off.

Re: The Mac Pro Review

#120

Post by brudgers »

smackfu wrote: post #48
brudgers wrote: post #43

What I found interesting is that the system used for all the benchmarks is significantly more expensive than the systems listed on the first page - 12 cores, 32gb Ram, and a 512gb SSD prices out at $7699, nearly double the cost of the more expensive of the two configurations listed on the first page, and it's still 10% more expensive than the "Most Expensive Configuration Upgrade Path" on page two - which means your…

The systems listed on the first page are the advertised base models from Apple. The unit they benchmarked for the review is presumably a review unit that they had no choice about. OTOH, it's a little surprising that Apple gave out 12 core review units, since the 8 core seems to be better at benchmarking.

The author chose what to write and the editor chose what to edit and the publisher chose what to publish. Likewise, Apple chose what to send AnandTech, and chose to send the influential publication an $8300 machine rather than a more common model for benchmarking.

In light of the fact that much less expensive machines often performed better, it seems obvious that the favorable conclusion of the review ought to provide some rational case for being so.

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