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New Mac Pro Tech Specs

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Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#391

Post by lostgame »

wayneftw wrote: post #366
swebs wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find me a comparable computer that: - Ships with anything other than Windows (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc) - Has a corporate warranty You'll quickly find that Apple has this market cornered. To many people, you're not paying the extra money for the goodness of Apple. You're paying to avoid the badness of Windows. There's also some software that works on Macs, but not Linux machines that may be necessary for the job.

Hmm, well I'd honestly do just about anything I could to avoid macOS. If only I could compile iOS apps without it, I wouldn't have to deal with their backwards and incapable UI. Hopefully soon I'll be able to use VSCode to remotely work on my Mac though! - https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/24 > You'll quickly find that Apple has this market cornered. No they don't. Not the market for people wh…

>> I wouldn't have to deal with their backwards and incapable UI.

Well, that’s, like, your opinion, man...

No, seriously, I feel the same way about Windows’ UI. I mean, did you ever use Windows 8? And Windows 10 has built-in ads by default in the UI/UX?

Windows XP SP3 was peak Windows, IMHO - the awful part about them making an abortive mess bastard child of the UI/UX in 8 was that there are millions of non-techie people who literally know how to follow one sequence of events on their computer, and that usually starts with ‘press start’.

Windows 8’s awfulness is probably what drove a lot of those people to iPads. If you’re learning a new user interface idiom anyways, and even Microsoft Office is on the iPad; why stick with Windows?

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#392

Post by whywhywhywhy »

throw0101a wrote: post #363
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #336

Still don't understand the justification for this machine, I waited years for a MacPro but when it became clear that Apple actually considered it a dead product and behind the scenes were building the iMac Pro to fill the niche I switched to windows and now run a dual 1080Ti workstation (Uses CUDA for 3D rendering path-tracing) for around half the price of a iMac Pro. Apple bloggers said time and time again the reaso…

> ... I switched to windows ... Some people do not want to do that.

I didn't do it lightly, I haven't owned Windows machine in 17 years.

But as I said dual GPU machine for half the price of an iMac Pro that can run Octane Render[0] which requires Nvidia cards with CUDA left me asking why I didn't do this years ago after using that for 15 minutes I couldn't go back to how I did my work on my old Mac.

If Apple wanted my business I would have given it to them but they were pretty insistent that they had no interest in my money.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE83n0qhe48

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#393

Post by lostgame »

inlined wrote: post #388
jcadam wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I remember when PowerMacs could be had at a wide variety of price points. That was nice. If Apple doesn't want to serve the "I need a decently powerful machine but don't want to waste money on what is basically a status symbol" market, maybe they should license MacOS to someone who does. Something like that might actually bring me back to the platform. As it is, I stick to PCs running Linux.

They used to do this and it almost led to the death of the company. I’m sure they’re quite hesitant to try again. Instead, you can look into the hackintosh project

They’re making money, now - they have no reason to license MacOS, and all the more reason not to.

Apple’s hardware/software combination is the reason a lot of us have stuck with them for so long. It’s quality control. No drivers to fuss with; just plug in and go.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#394

Post by whywhywhywhy »

wffurr wrote: post #389
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #336

Still don't understand the justification for this machine, I waited years for a MacPro but when it became clear that Apple actually considered it a dead product and behind the scenes were building the iMac Pro to fill the niche I switched to windows and now run a dual 1080Ti workstation (Uses CUDA for 3D rendering path-tracing) for around half the price of a iMac Pro. Apple bloggers said time and time again the reaso…

Doesn't the new top tier Mac Mini fill a lot of the role the trash can Mac Pro did? You can hook up GPUs to it with the thunderbolt ports. I think the top model is faster than the trash can Mac Pro.

> You can hook up GPUs to it with the thunderbolt ports

Thunderbolt GPU cases are hundreds of dollars.

For a dual GPU Mac Mini setup (which would be a mass of cables and require 3 outlet plugs) you could afford a 3 GPU Windows tower.

As someone who used to be a pretty extreme Mac evangelist I really did look into all this before I made the switch to a Windows machine.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#395

Post by xnyan »

swebs wrote: post #344
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #336

Still don't understand the justification for this machine, I waited years for a MacPro but when it became clear that Apple actually considered it a dead product and behind the scenes were building the iMac Pro to fill the niche I switched to windows and now run a dual 1080Ti workstation (Uses CUDA for 3D rendering path-tracing) for around half the price of a iMac Pro. Apple bloggers said time and time again the reaso…

Find me a comparable computer that: - Ships with anything other than Windows (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc) - Has a corporate warranty You'll quickly find that Apple has this market cornered. To many people, you're not paying the extra money for the goodness of Apple. You're paying to avoid the badness of Windows. There's also some software that works on Macs, but not Linux machines that may be necessary for the job.

Apple’s warranty service is terrible compared to the alternatives like Dell. A couple years ago I had a failed key on a laptop with a service warranty. Dell had a tech in my living room with the repair parts in less than 24 hours.

Apple could not possibly do that today. Maybe you don’t need it, but if you care about warranty service Apple is not the answer

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#396

Post by dangus »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #336

Still don't understand the justification for this machine, I waited years for a MacPro but when it became clear that Apple actually considered it a dead product and behind the scenes were building the iMac Pro to fill the niche I switched to windows and now run a dual 1080Ti workstation (Uses CUDA for 3D rendering path-tracing) for around half the price of a iMac Pro. Apple bloggers said time and time again the reaso…

Apple didn’t say those things - like you said, bloggers, critics, people whose interest is in making you read about Apple and continue clicking on articles, they made up all these different reasons why Apple would or wouldn’t make a tower.

I don’t really think Apple cares about that drama. I think they know they have customers who will pay the premium. I think the machine is squarely aimed at businesses making the purchase, not consumers.

Is it really a problem that the Mac Pro is only for ultra high end users? Apple hasn’t made a mid-range consumer tower in over a decade now. If you walk into Best Buy how many towers you think they’re selling compared to laptops?

That’s the market Apple sells in, not the low-margin custom built PC parts market.

Apple doesn’t cover every use case of the personal computer. They are just one OEM. Unfortunately if you like macOS they are the only OEM.

As far as the mid-range video market that you talk about, what about the iMac Pro (has ECC memory) or a high spec iMac is insufficient for that task? Sure, it’s not as nice as your dual 1080Ti setup, but also, NVidia isn’t actually a viable option for Apple anymore thanks to their disastrous support for the platform in the past. If you made a Hackintosh system with NVidia you’d still be SOL. You aren’t getting CUDA on Mac no matter what hardware configuration Apple comes out with. Is Metal supposed to cover that use case and compete with CUDA?

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#397

Post by ryanwaggoner »

DoctorPenguin wrote: post #282

Please forgive my ignorance but the specs on this are just average in my opinion. Why would I choose this over a custom build pc with almost the same, if not better, components? My experience with all apple products at work has been quite bad so I might be a little biased.

I have zero interest in building my own PC, or dealing with fragmented and terrible support when issues crop up, or using anything other than macOS. And definitely not to save a few bucks. You clearly are different in your values and priorities. That’s what “if you don’t understand, you’re not the target market” means.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#398

Post by Silhouette »

ganonm wrote: post #381
swebs wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find me a comparable computer that: - Ships with anything other than Windows (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc) - Has a corporate warranty You'll quickly find that Apple has this market cornered. To many people, you're not paying the extra money for the goodness of Apple. You're paying to avoid the badness of Windows. There's also some software that works on Macs, but not Linux machines that may be necessary for the job.

Apple service is atrocious. Don't they make you book an appointment and turn up at their store just to get someone to look at it? I hear of people who spend more time taking their laptops to the local Apple store than most people with major illnesses spend going to the doctor... I bought a Dell XPS13 laptop recently which unfortunately had a non functioning motherboard. I contacted Dell and a technician came to my ho…

To be fair, we experimented with a Dell XPS 13 laptop that had a succession of problems, and the service was the worst I have ever encountered in IT, taking several months of elapsed time before we finally got an on-site visit from someone who knew what they were doing (who then fixed the laptop in under an hour). That was what "next day" level support actually looked like in our case.

We were attracted to these as there was a Linux version that potentially offered a good alternative to Windows 10 for some of our people, but the experience was so bad that instead we immediately ruled Dell out as a supplier for any serious equipment for the foreseeable future.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#399

Post by virtualwhys »

lliamander wrote: post #67
Skunkleton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a desktop, not sure I would call it high end (32 GiB, 6 cores, nvme). I do lots of large builds of things like linux kernels. I doubt any laptop would be able to keep up simply due to thermals.

Yeah, what's considered high-end does shift, although that still sounds higher end than most laptops. I think a typical "high-end" desktop is one that has more cores, memory channels, and PCIe lanes than a typical "mainstream" desktop (whatever that happens to be at the time). Support for ECC memory is also sometimes a requirement. I use a 3 year-old laptop with 32GB of RAM, an SSD, and a dual-core i7 (U-series) proc…

> I'm just wondering whether a workstation-grade laptop (Dell Precision or Thinkpad P-series) would be a sufficient upgrade, or investing in a desktop would be worthwhile at some point.

Yes, either 17" machine offers an 8-core CPU and plenty of thermal capacity (i.e. larger chassis than their 15" equivalents), along with more than enough memory (128GB), and in Dell's case, a boatload of HD slots (4, run in whatever RAID config you want). These are desktop replacements, heavy (as in 6.5+ lbs), with 240W power bricks , so you'll probably want them to stay on the desk for most of the time.

I'm personally looking to replace my old Dell Precision with a 15" 5540, maxed out. For Scala work the extra cores help reduce build times, probably the same for Java.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#400

Post by sjagoe »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #385
ganonm wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple service is atrocious. Don't they make you book an appointment and turn up at their store just to get someone to look at it? I hear of people who spend more time taking their laptops to the local Apple store than most people with major illnesses spend going to the doctor... I bought a Dell XPS13 laptop recently which unfortunately had a non functioning motherboard. I contacted Dell and a technician came to my ho…

> Apple service is atrocious. Don't they make you book an appointment and turn up at their store just to get someone to look at it? I can't speak for anyone else, but the last time I had trouble with my MacBook (five years or more ago now, the touchpad had cracked, IIRC), I made an appointment in the morning to come in in the afternoon. Walked up, explained the problem, gave them the machine, and they called me back…

I've dealt with both Lenovo and Dell with on-site next day service. I thought it was a standard option across the industry for business PC warranty.
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