Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Mac Pro Tech Specs

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 497 posts

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#181

Post by kbumsik »

aseipp wrote: post #153
lliamander wrote: post #49

Slightly off-topic, but who here uses a HEDT (high-end desktop) or workstation computer for software development? Does it make a significant difference in comparison with a standard business laptop?

Yes. I work on a Linux distro, and the amount of time my 1st gen 32 core Threadripper has saved me is truly mind blowing. It made it possible to do changes I wouldn't have dreamed of. As an example, I worked a bunch on our PostgreSQL infrastructure, but we support 5 years of versions. So you have to CI/integrate your changes and test them across all 5 versions, every time you test. My machine could do this on the ord…

How's kernel support and VM support such as QEMU lately? I'm thinking to buy i7 for embedded OS dev but that sounds very tempting. I heard AMD CPUs had some breaking issues last year.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#184

Post by tlobes »

lliamander wrote: post #49

Slightly off-topic, but who here uses a HEDT (high-end desktop) or workstation computer for software development? Does it make a significant difference in comparison with a standard business laptop?

My HEDT at home serves as my VR development machine and doubles as a gaming rig. I generally save basic research, design, and sandboxed coding for my MacBook Pro at a coffee shop.

If I had a similar performing laptop that could replace my desktop in terms of GPU performance and compatibility with the devices I use, my HEDT would start collecting dust.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#185

Post by hombre_fatal »

baroffoos wrote: post #100
chrisseaton wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These devices use so little charge that they basically need no charging. You can literally do it once a month for a couple of minutes. The justification is not having any messy cables on my desk, where space is a premium and mess distracts me.

The problem is you forget every time so once a month you are in the middle of doing something and you have to stop, turn your mouse upside down and then wait.

The only way you can run into that is if you have a three-day meth burner (so, no breaks where you can charge the mouse), ignore the three days of low battery warnings, and then use it right up until failure yet be outraged that you don't have 5min to spare (meth will do that).

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#186

Post by oldmanhorton »

kbumsik wrote: post #145
_bxg1 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woof. I wasn't aware compilation times got that long for people who aren't building a whole OS.

I wouldn't try contributing if I were aware of it too lol. Imagine that I did it for Chromium. I was told that it takes about 20GB to build Chromium.

It's usually more, actually. We have seen 100+ GB build directories when building the "all" target and a non-GOMA build easily takes multiple hours on a desktop i7

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#187

Post by AmericanChopper »

xupybd wrote: post #177
slig wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the parent meant that Apple charges enough (in the US), so it should have the extended guarantee included there. In NZ, things cost extra due to that law, correct? The difference: is everybody is paying for that extra protection, there's no choice.

We do have very high retail mark ups. Perhaps this is due to that law. But it is very nice protection to live under.

Aside from the additional taxation and regulations in NZ, it does have some pretty unavoidable issues which drive up the prices of consumer goods. It’s a very small market, and very far away. Getting things there is just going to cost more anyway, and the market isn’t big enough to invite significant competition, so there’s usually a large (or at least larger than a lot of other places) markup on imported goods.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#188

Post by Marsymars »

zamadatix wrote: post #158
Marsymars wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you live anywhere near a data center it should be under 50ms delay. Hm, I guess I don't live anywhere near a data center. 1M+ North American city, but lowest ping to any AWS/GCE region is ~130ms.

My RTT from the midwestern US to AWS/Azure/GCP in Germany is less than that. I think your ISP has more blame than your distance to the nearest zone in NA.

Yes, you guys are entirely correct, something looks fishy with my ISP. I'll give them a call them tomorrow morning if it still looks like this.

Edit: Now resolved, pings (barely) over 50ms.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#189

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #149
Pmop wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackintosh allows you to have OS X on better hardware but these days it's really unsafe, due to the possibility of Apple going full ARM in the near future, dropping all the support for x86.

Not a chance, the Mac Pro isn't even out yet and it's Xeon, so x86 support will be in Mac OS for at least the next 10 years. There's just nothing from ARM that can compete with Xeon at any price. I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the low-end laptops within 5 years, but x86 is still safe as houses.

I'd argue that the software people run on a Mac Pro is a strict superset of the software people run on a MacBook. Combine that with Apple's philosophy of hiding technical details from users (e.g. with fat-binaries in Darwin), so if Apple _does_ switch to ARM for the MacBooks that's not a problem: Microsoft Office for Mac, Chrome for Mac, and the rest (if they aren't just Electron apps like everything is thesedays) will have to be an x64/ARM fat-binary for the Apple App Store - and no-one will complain about specialty pro-only software distributed outside of the store only being available as x64.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#190

Post by bilbo0s »

bfrog wrote: post #150

Doesn't a single thread ripper basically slay this thing?

You'd be surprised how married effects houses can be to their chip architectures. Attempts to switch can sink you when you realize that some technical artist wrote some extremely critical plugin or extension that's super fast only because it uses Intel only or AMD only instructions.

My own theory, Apple has probably already spoken with clients like effects houses long ago. Since these are the clients that will generate most of the revenue with this product, I'd wager they've put it together almost especially for them. If anyone else wants to buy one, gravy, but I'd bet Apple's money comes mainly from clients in those very specialized segments.

My guess is, they won't be doing anything those clients don't want them doing with that platform. Apple made that mistake once already, and it sounds like they are done chasing the larger market with their pro platform. Basically, They're going the HP workstation route and just becoming an Intel distributor. Only they're trying to distribute components in a bit more aesthetically pleasing package.

Post reply on HN