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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.
If you spend all your time working in a few select apps, it clearly makes more sense to wait until those apps work well on the hardware. Doing otherwise is just foolishness. OTOH, Adobe won't get their shit together until there are machines out there for the CS apps to run on, so telling Apple to hold off releasing the pro machines until Adobe is ready doesn't make sense. Chicken-egg thing...
This guy's the limit!
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!
I think the video and coding communities might have a bit to say about that. Not all Apple Pros depend of Photoshop, you know?
I don't have any numbers of any kind to back this up, so take this with several large dollops of salt, but: I suspect that the number of creative pros who rely on Adobe tools is much, much higher than the number of those who rely on the Apple in-house tools.
And don't underestimate the capacity of design pros to drag their feet. For years, I knew graphic artists who refused to upgrade to OS X because Quark wouldn't run natively in it. Of course, when the new version of Quark finally was release, Adobe's answer was arguably much better.
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.
I'd have to guess being uniform. It's pretty obvious that they're going with the Intel route for everything else as the Core Duo is a decent chip (and the Core 2 chips are supposedly quite nice). Having their pro line be the black sheep might cause more headaches than they'd want: different motherboard, different chipset, different CPU, different drivers, etc. Might as well "go with what's working" for them.
That being said, considering their already buying bulk from Intel, adding another line of chips to their order is probably fairly cost efficient. So now instead of buying x chips from Intel at a bulk-order discount of y, they'd be buying 1.2x for perhaps an even larger discount-per-chip (0.98y). After all, you can get lower than a standard OEM price if you buy large-enough bulks.
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.
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.
People like you - the PowerPC devotee - make me embarrassed to be a 20+year Mac user.
Wasn't your Quad worth the money you paid for it when you bought it? You do realize Apple has to keep revving it's product line, don't you?
Face it - Intel's latest offerings are a better than the 970FX, which is a several-year-old design. The Core 2 has longer legs than the G5 in any form.
Apple's done it's users a favor by moving to a faster, less expensive, more readily available microprocessor part. They've also done users a favor by producing an easily-portable OS and gracious backwards compatibility.
You may pine for the days when you could argue the vagaries of microarchitectures you don't understand on Slashdot, but some of us actually have work to do and look forward to faster, more productive machines - and don't mind paying a few extra dollars for Apple design and the Mac OS. We like the relative simplicity Apple has brought to the x86 platform and we'll enjoy using our faster machines while you moan about your "Four by four monster style" PowerPC.
Go complain up a rope.
You severely underestimate the stubbornness of artist types... : p
This guy's the limit!
.. except that Cell is completely unsuitable for use as a desktop CPU.
For games consoles with dedicated software? Perhaps.
For scientific computing and HPC? Sure.
As an off-board number cruncher and accelerator chip? Yup.
As a desktop? Heck no, a multi-core x86 or indeed PPC knocks it in to a cocked hat.
BTW, I own both a dual 2GHz G5 and a dual-1.8 iMacIntel. The intel box smokes the G5 by a long distance.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
On the other hand Quark lost market share by not moving to OS X in a timely manner. My wife's firm moved to InDesign when they upgraded to new OS X native machines back in the day. For every person who held out, another switched applications. Quark really dragged their feet on the conversion and I don't think Adobe will hold out as long on the move to UB, particularly if the hardware is selling well. People want the new hotness.
To stay on topic, I've always felt that Apple releases hardware and then developers create software to take full advantage of it. In short, hardware drives software development. It seems to differ slightly from the WinTel universe where hardware upgrades are often invoked by mew software. Admittedly, I have this perception because I always upgrade when new software runs dog slow on my PC. I don't seem to do that on my Mac as much, though the Intel move will probably hasten an upgrade from suddenly ancient G4.
An "Exclusive for X years" deal with Intel is the reason Apple can't use Opteron; the reason Apple won't use Opteron is because Intel provides the complete package of processor and chipsets, optimized for stability and performance. In order to use AMD processors, Apple would have to sign deals not just with AMD but also with ATI, or NVidia, or VIA, or another chipset maker.
And you're wrong, AMD no longer has the high-end edge. They won't regain it until 2008 at the earliest.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
We already went through this just a few years ago with OS X. Apple would be STUPID to wait until CS3 comes out. Yes, designers squirmed for a year or two while they waited for all their apps to come out, but Apple managed to stay in business in the meantime, and by the time the apps came out, the OS was quite nice. Hell, the FINDER in OS X 10.0 sucked ass performance-wise; I can't imagine trying to run any real APPS with it. (I used 10.0 to play around with the UNIX side of OS X while I waited 9 months for 10.1 to appear. While 10.1 was out, all the apps were released, and then Apple came out with 10.2 and the whole package was finally very nice.)
Same thing this time: Apple will have new hardware out, and one day when the apps appear, users will be able to buy them and use them that day. Apple will continue to sell G5s, and designers will hoard them, just like they did with the last of the OS-9-booting MDD G4s. The switch to Intel is really no different. Doesn't matter if it's the OS or hardware changing, the effect on the applications is the same: the apps won't run in an ideal manner, so people will either wait to change, or get by with non-optimal systems, untill the apps match the system.
Besides, plenty of people buy nice Macs and don't use CS. Final Cut is already shipping for Intel and Apple's other pro apps will all be universal soon--maybe even coincident with the release of the hardware. I'd expect to see an announcement regarding that at the WWDC as well: "We at Apple have just finished our transition to Intel, and we've also transitioned all of our apps. Yay us!"
The biggest difference this time, actually, is with Adobe: since OS 9 came out, they purchased Macromedia, and Quark almost dead, so Adobe can drag their feet all they want for the Intel transition.* That's another big reason that Apple would be stupid to wait for Adobe to get a product out the door. (Besides, how would it look for Apple to be waiting on Adobe before releasing new hardware? Very weak, that's how.)
* Plus, the switch to Intel ain't exactly easy. Same situation at Microsoft.
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Umm... you apparently haven't been paying attention since 2005. Intel rearranged their ship dates months ago. Xeon 5100 series (aka Woodcrest, aka Core 2 Server) is already shipping and available.
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.
AMD advantage will come back with quad-core CPU as the Intel ones are the hack jobs of there first duel cores and with the Intel chip set NO SLI, NO Cross Fire apple will loss some of the high market on just that.
Amd Also has plans for Hyper Transport based cards and Co-processors that sound like the next thing to have in the high end market and people in it who are not into games may want to go for it.
I'd highly suggest returning the machine to Apple for repairs, there is clearly something wrong. Right this moment, I am encoding a 4 GB .MOV (MPEG-4 and AAC) to DVD Format with FFMpegX, have iTunes running on Shuffle playing my music, typing this from inside Camino, talking to friends on Adium and using X-Chat Aqua,Coreduotemp monitoring my CPU temp, and it is still running comfortably. Are you using the Core Solo or Duo? How much RAM is in it? I have the Core Duo Mini w/ 1 Gig of RAM. My Mom's 20" iMac Core Duo w/ 2 GB of RAM knocks the socks off of my old Powermac G4 1.4 GHz (upgraded with Mercury Extreme processor). Have you tried re-installing OS X? Trust me, it is not normal for your Mini to be acting like that. Yesterday, I had FFMpegX encoding another file and was using FrontRow to watch videos at the same time and it worked fine.
So your argument is that non-pro software is not optimized to use expensive pro-level hardware? How is that news or important?
If your needs justify the expense of a Quad-core computer, then your needs also justify the expense of the professional software needed to drive it properly. After all, "professional" means that you are making money doing that.
4.1 is the end of the line for Shake. The huge price drop to $499 reflects that. All support contracts are being bought out and not renewed. Large customers have a source-escrow option available.
u m=19, or http://www.outside-hollywood.com/2006/06/the-uncer tain-future-of-shake/, and so on.
They are rumored to be starting work on a new compositing app which may or may not be shake-like, but which will certainly take some time to develop. Some of the shake support people have been laid off, but AFAIK the developers are moving over to the new shake-replacement project.
See http://www.fxguide.com/article359.html (podcast with Dion Scoppettuolo of Apple), http://www.highend3d.com/boards/index.php?showfor