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The Future of Apple's Pro Desktop Line
SB_SamuraiSam writes "WWDC is drawing nearer and ArsTechnica has a thorough look at what they think Apple's plans are for their future Pro desktop line. It's a decent read. As always Ars has a competent pulse on Apple and is more reasonable than purely speculative. From the article:
I think Apple's CPU choice is clear cut. Strange as it sounds, the Xeon 5100 series is the best fit for the Mac. If Apple wants to keep the Quad name alive, it's the only option. Dual CPU configurations are not possible with anything else in Intel land, so if Apple wants to offer two CPUs and four cores, Xeon is the only game in town. With the benchmarks we have seen, the Core 2 Duo is a clear winner for Intel, outperforming anything AMD has to offer. The Xeon? With its faster FSB and different memory, it's even faster than the Core 2 Duo."
It's pretty interesting how things have developed for Apple... It looks like Windows will be faster on an Apple machine than on any other factory-built desktops.
Some of my colleagues recommended that I write a letter about how Newt Gingrich's favorite activities include cheating, lying, and tricking people into believing that bad things "just happen" (i.e., they're not caused by Gingrich himself). This is that letter. Before I get moving here, let me point out that it's astounding that Gingrich has somehow found a way to work the words "histomorphologically" and "heterochromatization" into his agendas. However, you may find it even more astounding that I, speaking as someone who is not an obscene stirrer, am convinced that there will be a strong effort on his part to make me the target of a constant, consistent, systematic, sustained campaign of attacks eventually. This effort will be disguised, of course. It will be cloaked in deceit, as such efforts always are. That's why I'm informing you that in public, Gingrich vehemently inveighs against corruption and sin. But when nobody's looking, Gingrich never fails to sidetrack us, so we can't reinforce what is best in people. So don't tell me that according to the dictionary, "Gingrich-ism" is "any of a set of perorations that force onto us the degradation and ignominy that Gingrich is known to revel in" just because his analects will cause more harm than good. No matter what he thinks, we must speak neither of the past nor of the far future but rather focus on the here and now, specifically on the daunting matter of his bookish witticisms. The mere mention of that fact guarantees that this letter will never get published in any mass-circulation periodical that Gingrich has any control over. But that's inconsequential, because when I say that Gingrich's smear tactics are uncompanionable, I mean it. I don't mean that they remind me of something uncompanionable or that they have one or two uncompanionable characteristics. I mean that they are uncompanionable. In fact, the most uncompanionable thing about them is the way that they prevent people from seeing that I've known some sad sacks who were impressively frowzy. However, Gingrich is militant, and that trumps frowzy every time.
Gingrich insists that children should belong to the state. This fraud, this lie, is just one among the thousands he perpetrates. When I say that he should stop playing verbal games and tell us what he really means, I don't just mean that he wants to blend together commercialism and exclusionism in a train wreck of monumental proportions, that he wants to make us dependent on the worst kinds of execrable doofuses there are for political representation, economic support, social position, and psychological approval, or that he wants to justify, palliate, or excuse the evils of his heart. Sure, Gingrich indubitably wants all that, but he also wants much more. He wants to work hand-in-glove with the worst classes of mudslinging rabble-rousers I've ever seen. It's really not bloody-mindedness that compels me to combat the censorious ideology of Comstockism that has infected the minds of so many hate-filled schemers. It's my sense of responsibility to you, the reader.
If I had to choose between chopping onions and helping Gingrich require religious services around the world to begin with "Gingrich is great; Gingrich is good; we thank Gingrich for our daily food", I'd be in the kitchen in an instant. Although both alternatives make me cry, the deciding factor for me is that vigilantism doesn't work. So why does Gingrich cling to it? Whatever the answer, Gingrich can't attack my ideas, so he attacks me. It could be worse, I suppose. He could operate in the gray area between legitimate activity and lethargic, disgusting parasitism. Although the historical battle between good and evil is exemplified in the philosophical division between Platonic order and Aristotelian chaos, Gingrich thinks we want him to attack my character. Excuse me, but maybe he spews words like "pseudointernationalistic", "chromatographic", and "hydrometallurgically" and insidiously twists them into catch phrases designed to make interventionism socially acceptable. I'll stand by tha
Yeah!
It seems to me that Apple might as well hold off on releasing the Pro line until CS3... I've talked to a few designers, and they are all holding out for CS3 to make the upgrade, since they work so frequently in these applications, and they take a big performance hit on the new hardware.
Slashdot has spawned an evil looking box marked "show control" that when clicked brings up a bizarre panel of obscure options like "Relatives of focal comments replies -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 N".
The evil looking box chases the window contents as I scroll down, which is distracting, instead of staying fixed to the page like a well behaved widget.
Does anyone know:
1. WTF?
2. How do I get rid of the evil looking box?
Thanks
Having owned Macs going all the way back to the beginning this is the first time I have ever been faced with Apple coming out with weaker machines than they already are shipping. This whole Intel mess with Apple is enough to make me sick enough to my stomach that I am faced with the first in my life feeling of moving beyond Apple.
Apple this mess didn't need to happen! Your bungling of the IBM relationship was your own fault!
After the years of work with OS X preparing for the use of Cell type CPUs to have lost all of that for the games you played with IBM over order sizes for new chips and all the other games you tried to play have now come back to bite you in the ass.
Apple pro users could be looking at dual and quad Cell based workstations right now - or dual and quad 970 systems with multi-Cell daughter cards, instead we are looking at these joke Intel systems.
At least current quad-970 owners don't have to worry about that usual feeling of obsolescence when new hardware comes out from Apple...
I think Ars made wonderful points and a well informed prediction. However, though this article is a few months old, I think that the principles behind it will still be in effect for Intel's upcoming lines, namely that a motherboard setup with a multi-core chip is in general cheaper than a roughly equivalently configured multi-chip one, and still for most applications the multi-core configuration will result in greater performance.
Falun Dafa is good!
Pure speculation here, but what's preventing Apple from using an Opteron in their Pro lines? Last I heard, AMD had the competitive edge in the high-end/server market...
Personally, I'm waiting on an Intel XServe.....
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I'm guessing that apple will make their new lineup similar to their current one. A single dual-core for the low end(conroe), a faster single dual core for the midrange (conroe) and dual dual-core or the high end (woodcrest).
Apple desperately needs to update their powermac line; its embarassing when compared to any current PCs.
Apple:
Dual-core 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 processor
512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
250GB Serial ATA hard drive
16x SuperDrive (double-layer)
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 with 256MB GDDR SDRAM
$2,499.00
Dell XPS 700:
Dual-core 3.0ghz Pentium D
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs
320GB Serial ATA Harddrive
16x DVD-ROM
16x Dual-Layer DVD+/-R/RW Dvd burner
Dual 256MB nVidia GeForce 7900 GS in SLI
20 inch UltraSharp(TM) 2007FPW Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
$2503
For $4 more, you get a faster processor, 4 times the memory, more harddrive space, dual optical drives, SLI, and a 20" LCD. Apple has done a good job of making sure that they add a lot of mac only accessories (or gimmicks depending on your point of view) that make direct comparisons to a PC harder. Stuff like backlit keyboards with light sensors, integrated webcam, frontrow, firewire, small formfactor, etc.
On a tower, things like expandibility, quiet operation, and size are pretty important and apples last workstation was fairly poor by that standard. The powermac looks nice, but 2 harddrive bays and 1 optical bay aren't going to cut it in such a large case.
Apple's brand is strong enough to command some premium, but they certainly are immune to market pressure and may need to realign their pricepoints. Mac minis need to start at $500, imacs at $1000, and Mac pros at $1500. Notebooks should start at $800 and $1500 respectively.
IMHO, the author is wrong about Xeon going into Pro Macs... Core 2 Duos for the Low/Mid Range Pro Macs with Core 2 Extremes for the High-End Pro mac is much more likely... My 2 Cents
was kinda screwed up :) i mean it looked like 7 different editors had gone through it and tried to put in their own views of what the new mac pro should be. and wound up stuck in an infinite loop of just rehashing the same issues.
there are better articles out there on the new mac pro. i just haven't had a chance to read them yet.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Here's a heaping pile of salt for you:
Your suspicion is based on the erroneous assumption that all "creative pros" are people who work in graphic design, publishing, web design, etc.
Let's not forget that filmmakers are "creative pros" and a lot of them are using Final Cut Pro Studio and Shake. Musicians are "creative pros" and a lot of them are aready using UB versions of Garageband or Logic. Ableton Live is also already Universal Binary, and very widely used by laptop musicians and DJs.
In fact, a lot of musicians are even using Final Cut Pro Studio, because they loved Soundtrack Pro and their only option to upgrade was an attractively priced crossgrade offer to FCP Studio.
There are many professional creatives already working on Intel Macs to earn their daily bread.
So let's stop acting as if design pros are the only pros who are "creative". They didn't invent creativity, and judging by the current state of the majority of the web, they're not the final word in it either.
I use Quad G5 desktop.
The problem is Applications. I keep monitoring Applications CPU usage, I see many of them use single CPU, mencoder like open source stuff uses single CPU while iDVD happily uses all 4 CPUs (360% CPU usage)
Legendary mac shareware uses single CPU while saving TIFF files. To use all CPUs you need professional applications and they are expensive.
Photoshop CS, AVID comes to mind.
Games are just beginning to use SMP and can't expect 4 CPU.
There is advantage of Quad CPUs but don't expect too much.
Also as a person used Xeon systems, Xeon is not a top of the line game/ordinary application performer. It is optimised for corparate/server usage from the start.
Anyone not buying a Mac because it contains an Intel?
... again.
I'm curious because I have several friends that will not buy one now because it contains a Intel.
Some point out that the real reason Mac picked Intel over AMD was for the simple fact of marketing.
It was sighted that one of there reasons for picking Intel was the heating issue of the CPU. They thought Intel was better at controlling heating issues. What I hear on the news now and from one friend this has happened to is the new Macs are reporting over heating issues, even exploding and catching fire.
What I remember from talking to other friends and colleague is that it was Intel that had the notorious reputation for over heating issues and that AMD was better.
Some friends wish Mac would have offered choices instead.
The Intel fan could have a Mac with Intel or the AMD fan an AMD CPU inside the Mac.
One friend pointed out they thought this was just another blunder Mac is famous for making. They shot themselves in the foot
By not offering choices they have alienated a huge section of potential buyers.
???
It's too bad they aren't willing to look at the new AMD Opteron 4x4 and 8x8, mentioned recently. That would allow the system to keep the quad (and beyond) name and run cool and efficiently (compared to the Xeon).
The parent's post had nothing to do with single core chips. What he was getting at is that intel is likely to release a quad-core chip to fill the role that the dual Xeons have filled. Therefore, as far as the apple linup goes, dual 2-core processors will be a very short lived technology depending on how long they wait to release thier pro line.
I'm willing to hazard a guess on the nature of the redesigned enclosure.
Have you noticed how Apple likes a certain symmetry between applications (iTunes brushed aluminum, Safari brushed aluminum) and the Pro enclosure (G5 brushed aluminum)? Apple seems to be experimenting with a lighter, smooth metal theme as seen in the current Mail.app. I hereby conjecture that the new Pro Mac enclosure will likewise be a very light-colored, smooth metal with a similar look.
The Xeon 5100 series chips are Core 2 (Conroe) based. These chips are code named Woodcrest and started shipping in June. See the page 2 of the article. You must be thinking of the older Intel roadmap.
It looks like Windows will be faster on an Apple machine than on any other factory-built desktops.
There's no evidence for this. You can buy a Dell or HP that has the exact same components as a Mac Pro.
Iv always wanted to to ditch my PC for ever and go Mac. Now I can't, because a Mac is a PC. Oh why couldn't apple have kept the PPC! AMD and Linux for me now always. Apple went down the shitter.
Linux, because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
Gentoo PPC on the dual CPU powermacs is great. And it is getting better. I recently purchased a used Powermac G5- it's a fast machine. Compiled KDE-base and other KDE apps together in well under an hour. Wireless airport card works now with 2.6.17 kernel. I love it.
The only thing I disagree with is the death of the PowerPC remarks. I expect Apple to keep at least one G5 in its product line (e.g. the dual 2.3, perhaps a single CPU dual core 2.5) to support those needing fast PowerPC boxes until all key software, such as Adobe's product line, has migrated.
The whole point of Dev Kits is so software can be ready for hardware when it comes out.
Although, I sometimes get the feeling that Apple has intentionally withheld information about the Intel switch from it's development partners to give Apple's own products an edge as far as having universal binaries is concerned.
Mmmm.. Donuts
That wasn't his point. The whole conversation here is a discussion of the benifits / drawbacks of intel vs PPC platforms for Mac. We're talking about the hardware. He was pointing out how outdated and overpriced the current Mac PPC Desktops are now.
I forgot to mention... can we not mod the parent 'insightful'?
He just definitively informed us that real creative professionals are waiting for the intel powermac to use garageband, and that using Final Cut Pro is the norm with recording musicians.
Han shot first.
Although the reviews of Core2 seem pretty compelling so far remember that AMD isn't out of the game just yet.
;)
Their K8L looks interesting, and that's quad-core. According to TheInquirer benchmarks are starting to trickle out, so there must be a few engineering samples floating around - I'm guessing that means production might happen sooner than you'd think.
Of course Apple might introduce a loss-leader high-end box as a stop-gap, in low volumes
You might look into adding Microsoft Small Business Server to your list of server options for "small-ish" companies. It includes a file, print, web and mail server (and optional SQL server)... plus you have flexibility in hardware choice.
From the consultants point of view it's not as good as Mac hardware because your clients have a lot more flexibility in finding another consultant if they don't like you. The advantage of Macs are that you've locked in the clients as there are many fewer Mac consultants that they can go to.
Downside to Windows SBS is that they licensing is per-user... but in 12 to 15 user range it's actually cheaper than the x-server license as you can be the CALs as needed. OS-X server forces you to buy a unlimited license.
If your clients are on Windows... the NTFS file security model and Outlook integration are pretty slick...and way better than SAMBA (what OS-X offers) and Sendmail.
The point was that the quad core is not that fast in real world performance, that not many apps at all play its strengths. Its a very valid point, because Apple people can say "look, 4 cpus! FAST!" while it gets its arse handed to it by a dell or what have you.
Some just dont have all the money in the world to play around with.
---
Trying to match the configs as best I could...
PowerMac G5
Dual 2.5ghz dual core Power PC
4 gb 533 mhz ECC memory
2 500 GB SATA HDD
1 Quadro FX 4500 video card
Dell 690 Workstation
Dual 2.66 GHZ Woodcrest Xeon 5150
4 gb 533 mhz ECC memory
2 500 GB SATA HDD
1 Quadro FX 4500 video card
Apple's price: $6924
Dell's price: $6887
Now Dell only offers Quadros and Fire GLs while Apple has a history of offering a consumer grade video card, so they may well offer an NVidia GeForce 7900 as the low end option. Buy your RAM from Crucial or Newegg, save a few hundred more. You can have a pretty badass Apple system for $5k'ish, which is what you'd expect to pay for a badass Apple system.
I have no doubt that Parallels could run Windows XP as fast or faster on a Quad 2.66 core Woodcrest machine as it does on my single core P4 3.2ghz machine.
Basically, I get all the fun of commandline BSD, all the polish of OS/X, and my old PC running in a window faster than it ever did... if I can afford the price, sign me up.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
You call names, i can, too. Failed abortion.
Because apples are so known for gaming, you asshat, right?
Take a look at the benchmarks of stuff workstations really do.
Have you seen how annihilated the k8 architecture was in stuff like compiling/photoshop/media encoding and even rendering (in 3dsmax as well as in cinemabench?). Thats the stuff people buy workstations for, and thats exactly where AMD is losing it.
Maybe YOU are the g4m3r here, because it seems you have no fucking clue about the whole situation.
IN fact, explaining to you just why the conroe|woodcrest design is superior, and why the architecture of the k8 is slowly becoming depricated (besides some miner tweekings the core is still the k7, designed 8 years ago) would be a futile exercise, like trying to teach a turd to dance.
Just get a clue.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I'm a little surprised that Conroe is still a single processor only option. I guess it makes sense though, there are a whole lot of dual CPU servers sold, so they'd like to keep those markets separated... still it seems wasteful to buy Xeons for a workstation.
While reading the Ars article, it sounded eerily like Apple needed the AMD 4x4 platform concept - which is basically releasing Athon64's that can do dual-cpu but without the "server" chip premium. How AMD plans to prevent dual CPU servers based on A64's is another matter...
Anyway, while I doubt that Apple would split their CPU supplier contracts at this time, there's not much downside to doing it. Heck, even Dell is about to do it. Why not keep pressure on Intel to compete for future business?
"iTunes is fucking garbage and as soon as I find another player that does all the things that it does that I actually use, I'm going to can it. I actually use it on Windows because I really love the interface."
:)
That's good stuff right there.
KeS
I do believe he was commenting on the fact that the Mac BOOK Pro was the fastest windows laptop for over a month, because the Mac BOOK Pro and Apple had access to the Core Duo chips months before all other vendors. you should read the thread a bit before you make such strong comments.
You are correct that the Xeon is available on PCs, however as noted further up the thread the Apple machine may be a little faster at the get go because it will be a clean install. No bloat will have been installed by the vendors etc.
As you can tell from my sig, I'm a Mac user, and will likely be one for a long time. I converted in College after I found myself trying to "fix" my windows machine all the time and never getting any work done.
BobMacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows