Apple Updates MacBooks and Mac Pro Desktop With Haswell, "Unified Thermal Core"

MojoKid writes with more detailed information on the new hardware Apple announced earlier today at WWDC "On the hardware side, Apple is updating its two MacBook Air devices; both the 11-inch and 13-inch versions will enjoy better battery life (up to 9 hours and 12 hours, respectively), thanks in no small part to having Intel's new Haswell processors inside. They'll also have 802.11ac WiFi on board. Both models have 1.3GHz Intel Core i5 or i7 (Haswell) processors, Intel HD Graphics 5000, 4GB of RAM, and has 128GB or 256GB of flash storage. Arguably the scene stealer on the desktop side of things is a completely redesigned Mac Pro. The 9.9-inch tall cylindrical computer boasts a new 'unified thermal core' which is designed to conduct heat away from the CPU and GPU while distributing it uniformly and using a single bottom-mounted intake fan. It rocks a 12-core Intel Xeon processor, dual AMD FirePro GPUs (standard), 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory (60GBps), and PCIe flash storage with up to 1.25GBps read speeds. The system promises 7 teraflops of graphics performance, supports 4k displays, and has a host of ports including four USB 3.0, two gigabit Ethernet ports, HDMI 1.4, six Thunderbolt 2 ports that offer super-fast (20Gbps) external connectivity."

Comments

Not Upgradeable?

[javakah]

With so much in such a small space/size and an unusual factor as well, I have a very bad feeling about your ability to upgrade practically any parts in this thing.

Re:Not Upgradeable?

[csumpi]

But why would you want to do that? Apparently it's perfect.

Re:Not Upgradeable?

[WCLPeter]

In all the years I've been building computers I can name only twice where I ever had the opportunity to upgrade; once with an old 466 when I went from a DX2-50 to a DX4-100; another time when I upgraded a K6-2 333 to a K6-2 500. Most of the time when it came time to "upgrade" there had been so many changes to the bus types, socket types, memory types, etc... it was just easier to start over from scratch than try to pick an upgrade from a narrow list of parts which often cost a fortune, while often only giving a moderate speed boost, because they were now considered "specialty" equipment for an obsolete architecture.

Granted, there are people who will insist that they've been able to upgrade their systems multiple times - but I'm not talking about those compulsive types who need the newest graphics card every other week. Most people I've talked to will buy a machine and keep it for 2-4 years before thinking its time buy a new one, by then everything has changed and the existing machine is mostly obsolete and so they have to start new.

Re:Not Upgradeable?

[gman003]

As a guy currently dragging his old Mac Pro into the modern computer era, let me say this: Apple would have found a way to make it incompatible anyways. There are so many just-slightly-nonstandard things they have, that any significant upgrade is made a hundred times more difficult.

First are the obvious ones. Nonstandard motherboard layout. The whole case layout in general, which requires a lot of stuff be removed just to access anything beyond the drives, video card and RAM. No legacy PCI ports.

Then come the subtle incompatibilities. Only certain video cards have OS X drivers, and only an elite, overpriced few have firmware that lets them work in the BIOS/EFI stage. I have to keep the original card around just in case I ever need it. Then the hard drive caddies only work with full 3.5" drives, or with 3.5" -> 2.5" adapters that perfectly mimic a 3.5" drive (I believe a Velociraptor IcePak will work; I use a cheaper plastic one since heat isn't an issue for SSDs). There's also a custom "mini-PCIe power" port, used to provide power to PCIe cards.

Then come the dangerous ones. Apple seems fond of using standard connectors in non-standard ways. For instance, the front USB panel? That's connected to the mainboard using a SATA connector. Just don't try to plug a hard drive into it. Same for the case fans - they're four-pin, but they don't use PWM for speed control (I believe they use analog voltage instead). Which also means that Windows (should you boot into it) does not get any control over the fan speeds, or even visibility.

Finally are the downright confusing ones. On mine, there are two unused SATA ports on the motherboard, hidden behind the front fans. They're labeled "ODD_SATA", hinting that they were planning to use SATA-based optical drives instead of IDE. I thought I could just use them for additional hard drives, but nope - they somehow only work in OS X. Don't ask me how, but they managed to make it happen. I've given up and just ordered a RAID card.

So yeah, don't think for a moment that the only thing standing between the new Mac Pro and any non-trivial upgrades is the form factor. The thing standing in the way is Apple.

Great fun

[michaelmalak]

Looks like it'll be great fun for pets and kids alike to roll around on the floor.

Re:What the hell?

[kelemvor4]

I wanted to like the new Mac Pro but it makes no sense to me.

Internal FLASH only - that's fine for a MacBook Air, but aren't the target users for this video editors? Limited RAM - only 4 ram slots. The old one had 8. Cylindrical - Great, now nothing fits next to it Exhaust from the top - Can't put anything on top and if you spill a drink on it, it goes straight into the machine.

What are the pluses to this design? Hopefully it runs quiet but beyond that???

This is the new Cube. I wonder if this will be the final Mac Pro - "Well, nobody bought it so it's obvious there's no market here..."

The pluses are in Apple's bottom line, as they always are. Also, if you put it on the floor and your home is burgalarized the culprit will probably assume it's a wastebin and skip it.

In an office, you might have a problem when the cleaning person tries to empty it. However, no worries since Apple products aren't often found in offices that can afford a cleaning person.

Re:and...

[fermion]

Actually the Pros were very upgradable, and much easier to do so than any PC. It was always pull a lever, or pull off the top. No screws, not hassle, and this was all the way back , in many cases, to Apple ][. I recall swapping my hard disk out of my Mac LC in about two minutes. Memory on my Mac G4 was about a minute. And worried about getting thing stolen from inside because it so easy? The pass through for the security cable also automatically locks the case.

Really with mac it was a design decision. Do you limit capability with internal, at the time, IDE ports or do you provide a high speed external port that is plug and play, before most things were plug and play. I have recounted many time how difficult it was to get a ZIP drive to work on a PC, but that such things were automatic on a Mac. Or that hard drives that were too big of slow on a PC were plug and play on a Mac.

In this case I assume that I would have networked storage through gigabyte Ethernet for archive.

Get over the upgrading

[gnu-sucks]

Folks,

I just read ten posts above about lack of upgradability.

Who cares!?

It's not a big deal. The days of upgrading your pc every few years are over. Two years after buying this machine, Apple will release a newer version. The newer version will be so much better (faster bus, etc), that the older one will be left in the dust and on ebay for $499.

Things have been headed this way for a long while now. Why upgrade when it's only a little more to get a new machine with the best and latest/greatest hardware inside? This argument didn't hold as much weight in the past when the computer ecosystem moved slower. These days though, we move faster.

I like upgrading because it's an interest of mine to spend/waste my time getting things as fast and cool as possible, but honestly, this is more for fun than anything. If my professional life depended on a few more GB/s, I would drop down the money and upgrade at every chance I have.

Max out the ram and other options when you buy it, and make the most of it until there's a new model.

Re:Not Haswell Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple shipping Intel CPUs in models/versions/speeds unavailable to other vendors is not unusual - there's been quite a few times when Intel has cut them a 6 month lead on the rest of the industry ( which kind of makes sense as Apple embeds VLSI engineers at Intel in these situations, and buys in unit quantities of a small number of speed bins that are net much larger single orders than any other single Intel customer) eg 3.2 GHZ Xeon availability, or ULV Macbook Air CPU - neither of which was an available part from Intel for 6-12 months after Apple was shipping them.

Re:No not really

[chris_martin]

I have a 10G Ethernet card on my iMac via an external Thunderbolt PCIe expansion chassis. So, OS X can use 10G.
I have a third party software iSCSI Initiator installed, so OS X can use iSCSI.
You fail to mention NFS, which OS X supports natively.

Aside from CPU upgradability, the 6 Thunderbolt ports means that this particular Mac Pro is the single most expandable Mac on the planet.
You can add a TON of PCIe expansion boxes to give you a ton of slots as needed, including additional graphics cards, RAID cards, etc.
Since everything is external, you also don't need to worry about upgrading the internal PS of the Pro or worry about cooling needs of the computer itself.
Yes, it'll mean that everything is external, but it also means that everything is "pay as you grow" and keeps the computer itself nice and small and hopefully less expensive (we shall see).

No, it's not for everyone, but it is an interesting design and it is expandable.