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 to look around a regular "PC customization" website e.g. [1]. Apart from Razer and maybe Alienware nobody has even tried to really innovate the workstation landscape. I remember when I was building one of my first desktops with my dad - 20 years ago.
A final thought: Apple has a million flaws (mostly software and systems, grr), but they didn't get where they are for being stupid or for not understanding the market, so at least give them some fucking credit.
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, power management and cable routing, volume management etc. More RAM? chuck it in. More CPU, chuck another CPU in.
Apple aren't offering ANY of that.
To be honest, neither Alienware or Razer are even workstation class machines either.
People have a low expectation of the term "workstation" these days.
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.
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.
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.
We do use fibre, but only in production deployments.
The secondary issue is "open holes". People like plugging stuff into their workstations. We can fix that with desk cages as well. There is a hole big enough to get your finger at the power button.
I didn't downvote you, but I don't think your criticism is well founded. For example, on the existing Mac Pro, adding a hard drive not require any cables at all. Neither does adding RAM. So it's not the case that "Apple aren't offering any of that."
I also don't see how the machine you linked to supports "chuck another CPU in". It looks like it limits you to two, which is the same as the Mac Pro.
I'm talking about the "new Mac Pro". The existing one a better piece of kit if you ask me.
You can change the CPUs officially with the HP. I doubt Apple will offer that option.
My current "workstation" is configured with 2x 4 core Xeons, 32Gb of RAM, 2x Samsung 840's, a 5 drive SAS array, a 32Gb PCIe RAMdisk and 2 Quadro cards. That won't fit in the new Mac Pro...
nah, dyson fans have used similar bases for years.
I kid, I kid.
Honestly though I do not care for an integrated "pro" machine. This is form over function. Fail a component and its off to the shop. Combined with, if I want to upgrade them I need to replace the unit.
If they are going to integrate everything then they need to drop the price. Integration implies lower costs as having all the support needed to drive user added cards and internal drives can be done away with.
Plus its not like I want to have an octopus of cables on my desk and moving storage to all external does that.
Benefits, perhaps driving the thunderbolt prices down and having new and interesting devices to connect to the system.
In the end integration means commodity, just expensive. Can't wait to see what they want for it, I figure on three thousand minimum, which would be a third too much for something so inflexible. Apple, meet Dyson
Exactly why I'm not taking it seriously. What does form do for a power desktop? Nothing. I put my desktop under my desk. I can't see it. I have to stoop to reach the power button.
I'm not going to say there's absolutely no use for form in any desktop, but IMO it's practically the number one least important feature of a power desktop/workhorse.
To me this looks like an example of Apple's craftsmanship in depth where quality and elegance can be seen at multiple levels, from the case to the internal hardware to the OS and its APIs.
Certainly one can find flaws, but compared to a typical Windows machine Apple has more craftsmanship (in my opinion). Windows exhibits more of the "just get it done" utilitarian idea.
A craftsperson can make the most beautiful, elegantly designed thing that is a joy to look at, use, and serves as a conversation piece... and still fail to meet the brief.
If someone needs a high stool for a high workbench, giving them an Aeron task chair is, while beautiful and well-made, missing the brief.
Don't get me wrong - I like everything about the Mac Pro but you pay for your thrills. I can't afford to lay out that kind of scratch unnecessarily. Apple has done a nice job with the design, no doubt. Meanwhile, I have a high end Windows PC for much less money. The speed thrills me, so I don't need a Mac to get a thrill.
The new design might bring some improvement on cooling a lot of powerful hardware stashed inside a small space while keeping the noise level to a minimum.
Dyson? You're so far off ... it's clearly Darth Vader.
I can't believe no one has recognized the classic Lucas handiwork. The helmet descending on the tangled mass of circuits. The signature triangular mouth piece is so clearly evident in the heat exchanger. I can just hear it cooling ...
Amazing retro-future design cues aside, it might be user-serviceable for all components - will wait for the teardown. It's gorgeous enough to be on the desktop and may be quieter because of the chimney. And it's finally a really powerful Mac.
If you need something more powerful than this, it seems maybe a server is more appropriate.
I buy AppleCare and leave the screwdrivers to the Genius Bar. They have copies of them on all of the continents I travel between; I frequently do not.
Furthermore, who wants to be in the laptop repair business? I push bits. For a few hundred bucks they'll fix anything that breaks and I can stop being the Maytag Man and get on with life.
I take it you do not visit Poland or Trinidad and Tobago often. Fair enough, to each for their own needs! But keep in mind the grandparent is not necessarily a high-flying high-paid bit-pusher like you, so your dismissal is still a little self-centered.
(Should I mention that it took two standard-size Phillips heads to replace my screen, the kind of sizes frequently found in a basic swappable-head screwdriver?)
I agree. Apple has used the geometry of the device to assist more with cooling, and shares the heat sink among components, and uses one large slow fan. This kind of thing really pushes my buttons.
It's 10" high, which is unexpectedly compact. It seems like the designers have chosen a shape to maximize use of space. I'm sure it isn't the only way to go but it's a wonderful next step.
Again Apple has shown us what we want when we thought we just wanted "more".
But at what cost? Everyone likes to bash big box PCs but the fact is that every single component of one can be swapped out for another. Something tells me that won't be the case for the Mac Pro, and when all it's going to do is sit under my desk, I can afford to have it be a little less compact.
You're not the target audience. Notice the demo apps for the Mac Pro during the keynote: Final Cut Pro. The Mac Pro is not, and will not, be a developer's machine (though it could be).
There's the overall computing market, which overwhelmingly favors laptops. A subset of this market desires powerful desktop computers. An even smaller subset desires a self-serviceable desktop computer.
For everyone else, particularly people who who use these machines to make a living and are not overly technical (and have no real reason to be), a Mac Pro with a good support contract attached is far more valuable than one they can open and tinker with.
I think this particular point is overblown. Everywhere I look developers have overwhelmingly switched to MacBooks to little ill effect - machines that are far less expandable and less maintainable than these Mac Pros. It turns out that, if you use these machines to make money, it makes a lot more sense to let Apple take care of problems than to roll up your shirt.
Doubly so if you can't tell the front of a DIMM from the back.
Developers will continue buying MacBook Pros in droves. The Mac Pro is overwhelmingly a media machine.
The air being heated naturally flows upwards, so blowing downwards in such a design is a very bad idea. Ideally (and for it to be truly a relevant design), the whole thing is silent at the very least while idle, using very little if any fan and relying on convection to do most of the cooling.
So how many cubic feet per minute will convection cause in this case? 1? 10? Fans will move a hundred cfm or more without much noise.
Both of my recent hardware failures have been caused by dust accumulating in heatsinks, so having something which contributes to that is also a "very bad idea". Especially since the air passes through a relatively confined space which you can't regularly clear out.
What constitutes much noise is subjective, I suppose, but any fan moving hundreds of cfm will be very loud. A 140mm fan moving 20 to 30 cfm is still audible, if you're in a quiet room.
A common approach is to have an intake filter that catches dust. Another is to elevate the case a few inches above the ground.
I love making fun of it but of course I'm just hiding my admiration. At one point I owned an iMac G4 lamp-shade and it seems to hearken back to that design - especially the bottom vents. Ive and co clearly felt they had to come out with something as unique as that lamp-shade design (although it was discontinued, probably because it was really easy to snap in half) and new to inspire excitement about Apple again. It's really sleek, and not nearly as unwieldy as the lampshade iMac. Apple and Tesla routinely set new standards for industrial design. I predict they will sell like hotcakes, not just among professionals but for home users as well.
I think it looks gorgeous. I can't wait to see one in person. My only hesitation about the design is that cylinders don't snuggle well with other computing equipment.
Well snap. Sorry man. It was more of a function of not knowing versus trying to be rude. I actually went out of my way to shorten it to be (what I thought was) courteous, but you make a valid point and I can see how that is actually quite sketchy. I can see how that would be taboo.
"everyone" might be an exaggeration but the adoption curve for iPad is ramping up a lot faster than for the iPhone. Apple has sold over 100 million iPads so far.
This is going to be a $3000 workstation. Its processor will cost more than that "workstation" you linked to. They aren't even competing in the same space.
The new "paradigm" this is pushing is that you don't need PCIe cards or internal storage. We'll see about that.
This is not the first time they've decided there are elements that don't need to be part of the base machine. Each time there were outcries but they were proven right in the end. When's the last time you needed an optical drive for example? And did you see the mention under Thunderbolt 2 of "add a PCI expansion chassis" - that's their answer for those who really really need expansion.
I do in fact use an external unit, but only because the internal units on every Mac I have owned have failed due to Apple using very low quality, poorly designed Chinese sourced hardware components. This same low quality internal "SuperDrive" unit is in the add on Apple external optical disc.
The external third unit is pretty noisy, has a large wall wart, and takes up desk space which contributes two cables, power and USB, as well as taking up one of the small number of USB ports on the Mac. This is an exceptionally poor design compared to the experience of using a PC which reasonable comes with an optical drive, something that I use very frequently, as do most computer users.
Apparently Apple believes that Thunderbolt 2 changes that equation.
It looks to me like they've tried hard to make sure that the included GPUs are adequate for 90% of their users, at least for today. As for tomorrow their philosophy has always preferred replacing the machine rather than upgrading it piece by piece.
Yeah, that seems to be their solution. Actually, it seems like their solution is to pick a GPU that is adequate for 99% of their users at launch time. Which is not ideal, since everyone who buys a Mac Pro is going to be paying for super-premium graphics, even if they are buying the machine for the Xeons.
A major benefit of these systems is extensibility and repair options, which is why the layout isn't welded together with vendor lock-in proprietary components. Regardless... The ultimate in performance, price and flexibility is still to build it yourself.
Personally, I'd prefer to build a workstation with better specs for a third the price. I'm sure lots of people are terrified to open a computer, and will gladly pay premium prices for something that will look chic for the first nine months.
Let's talk about the real paradigm shift here: Black.
> Let's talk about the real paradigm shift here: Black.
The shape! I really wish they could have gone with a cube or a sphere...not a cylinder! But I understand why those options are not optimal thermally while the sphere is not optimal spatially.
> part from Razer and maybe Alienware nobody has even tried to really innovate the workstation landscape
By and large this holds true, however an increasing number of manufacturers are offering pre-built slim form factor PCs. They may not be radical re-designs of the sort Apple is trying to push, but they're certainly a departure from the norm [1].
Precisely. No one has taken the real human usability of the box design into question for far too long.
The cylinder doesn't inform a way of using it, it invites multiple. I picture myself using it "sideways," half turned for easy access/cable management.
Rack mounting will require innovation as well, but imagine how densely you could pack them and how dynamic you could make the cooling.
A single fan in a workstation machine. Unbelievable.
I have two large silent fans: one in the power supply and one over the cpu in my monolithic 2007 PC.
How about a load of mini-itx boards suspended in cooking fat?
I agree in that most workstation units have are visually lack lustre. I was asking someone the other day why they don't wrap X model of iPhone in alumunium or titananium, and he said that it costs too much. But surely they are so small that it wouldn't hurt to add some luxury materials - a can of pop comes with a free alu can.
The design actually reminds me perhaps of a precursor to the R1 astromech droids (on the inside.)
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.
It's not going to change anything. For awhile now, they've been constantly shrinking and slimming their Mac Mini and iMac line and until today it looked like that's what they were focusing on in terms of desktop. It's always been a choice of a compact fully-configured iMac or a bulky cheaper, configurable PC tower and the towers didn't go anywhere. Now they're taking away the configurable part of the Mac Pro, so there are even more people who'll move to PC towers from their outdated last-gen Mac Pro.
Honestly I saw the page after seeing the 'trash can' comments and expected to be unimpressed. But I actually quite like the concept, though maybe that's the nuclear engineer in me talking.
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 to look around a regular "PC customization" website e.g. [1]. Apart from Razer and maybe Alienware nobody has even tried to really innovate the workstation landscape. I remember when I was building one of my first desktops with my dad - 20 years ago.
A final thought: Apple has a million flaws (mostly software and systems, grr), but they didn't get where they are for being stupid or for not understanding the market, so at least give them some fucking credit.
[1] http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/view/Vortex-500-gaming-pc/