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A Flood of Fawning Reviews For Apple's Latest

Like many other review sites, it seems that MacWorld can hardly find enough good things to say about the new Mac Pro, even while conceding it's probably not right for many users. 9to5 Mac has assembled a lot of the early reviews, including The Verge's, which has one of the coolest shots of its nifty design, which stacks up well against the old Pro's nifty design. The reviews mostly boil down to this: If you're in a field where you already make use of a high-end Mac for tasks like video editing, the newest one lives up to its hype.

501 comments

  1. Will it blend? by dougisfunny · · Score: 4, Funny

    But the question we all want to know the answer to is: will it blend?

    --
    This is not the funny you're looking for.
    1. Re:Will it blend? by Virtucon · · Score: 1

      No but I'm sure I could use it to keep my sailboat anchored out in the bay.

      --
      Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    2. Re:Will it blend? by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes. Apple is working with the Blender team to optimize the popular free 3D design package for Mac Pro.

    3. Re:Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I see. So, not without heavy optimization.

    4. Re:Will it blend? by StrangeBrew · · Score: 1, Informative

      I used to want to know if it would blend, like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.

    5. Re:Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not quite the answer to what the parent was asking, but interesting none-the-less.

    6. Re:Will it blend? by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Looks more like a trashcan to me when you can't see the sockets

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    7. Re: Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Color me surprised, free software not optimized for multicore Mac workstations...

    8. Re: Will it blend? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

      Color me surprised

      Would you like RGB, CMYK, or Lab with that?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    9. Re:Will it blend? by Lumpy · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Which is taking a giant swipe at the "pro" packages out there that are slowly having their lunch eaten by Blender. Maya and the others are no longer the "standard" in hollywood and TV. I love that common people can buy a dirt cheap workstation like the MacPro and a dirt cheap $6000 camera+lenses and shoot/edit/produce a movie as good as hollywood could on a $5,000,000 budget.

      Indie TV shows like Mars One, Shows like Breaking Bad were done on a small budget, etc...

      This next year, short of good writing and good actors, a young adult can easily get enough gear and money together to make a movie that will rival even Michael Bay explosion fests.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    10. Re: Will it blend? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maya and Flame are not as well. So this gives Blender a HUGE advantage over those Multi thousand dollar packages.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    11. Re:Will it blend? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      You have been able to do that for years. The problem isn't the equipment. It's the skill set of the people involved.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    12. Re:Will it blend? by mjwalshe · · Score: 1

      You know that pro glass is 20-25 a pop yes a RED makes some things cheaper but you still need a pro crew to make a professional product

    13. Re:Will it blend? by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      12 Angry Men could probably have been shot on smartphones. :)

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    14. Re:Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks more like a trashcan

      So what else is new? It is a Crapple Macintrash.

    15. Re: Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you mean? Adobe RGB or sRGB?

    16. Re:Will it blend? by Dekker3D · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the link. I care not for Apple, but seeing that Cycles will get proper OpenCL support was almost enough to make me squee. Almost. Good to know, anyway :)

    17. Re: Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Base tube. It looks like a base tube. I'm sure the AV guys like it, not me however.

    18. Re:Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...wait this is the same Apple that EGREGIOUSLY OVERPRICES their shit notebooks? You know the $2k+ notebooks that don't even have a discrete GPU OR a way to at least upgrade the RAM/storage?! Or IF it does have a dGPU it's always a shitty mobile one, even on the imacs and then it's a pretty low end dGPU mobile. (750/755m tops). IOW if they priced their products reasonably they'd be worth a 3 or 4(w/dGPU) star rating.

      The only REAL machines that apple makes any longer are the Mac Pros, but those are just insane, starting off @ $3k, OTOH they have a half-assed excuse for those as they use Xeons and presumably come stock with ECC memory plus use the "pro" series GPUs(unfortunately all radeons).

      Hell for the "high" end, let me see 4800MQ, 780m(3GB), 16GB RAM, 1TB hdd, 1920x1080(15.6"), 802.11ac, DVD BD +/-RW, etc. with *GASP* RAM/CPU/batt/hdds ALL USER REPLACEABLE. The only "drawback" would be less than 7h of runtime, but hmmm... lessee IF I really need that runtime *gasp* I just swap batts which is a REALLY REALLY REALLY TRICKY operation(OTOH Google seems to think that uSDs are pretty tricky however they still make users deal with those nasty SIM cards...).

      And let's see for a high end air/low end pro(13") 4800MQ, 16GB DDR3, 1TB hdd, 765m(2GB), 1920x1080(13"), 802.11ac, (no optical drive), and *GASP* again all user replaceable components, including the CPU FFS! (GPU's a little tricky as the heatsink/fan mounts are NOT standardized in any way shape or form, plus there may be some BIOS trickiness(whitelisting)).

      I REALLY think that Apple REALLY does NOT want to make notebooks or desktops any longer given how crap their offerings are, esp for their pricepoints. OSX has always been marginalized(and really isn't worth the price of admission), and they're busily making it worse with each passing "upgrade".

      I kinda gave up on macs when then reduced the options to strip a powermac down to the basics, you know get it to a somehwat reasonable ~$1k barebones, then spending a couple hundred to get what apple charged another $1k or so for, for the same damned OTS parts. The I got even more meh when started sealing the notebooks, i.e. batteries initially, and then totally lost it when they went complete douchebags.

      I wonder how long Apple will survive once the successfully kill off their PC business? My guess is that they will slowly dwindle away.

    19. Re: Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I for one am REALLY shocked that someone who REALLY would never use Apple kit in the first place is predicting their demise. SHOCKED! Now you've only gotta convince the people who actually do by Apple products that you're right. Good luck with that...

    20. Re:Will it blend? by doccus · · Score: 1

      This next year, short of good writing and good actors, a young adult can easily get enough gear and money together to make a movie that will rival even Michael Bay explosion fests.

      Er.. "short of good writing and good actors"..that sounds suspiciously like 90% of network programming out there ATM..

    21. Re:Will it blend? by mad_minstrel · · Score: 1

      That's a rather inaccurate statement. Apple has declared they'd work with the Blender devs to get the Cycles OpenCL render backend to compile at all on AMD's dodgy OpenCL compiler implementation. The Cycles OpenCL backend has been working fine with both Nvidia and Intel OpenCL compilers for over two years now, but it has never worked on AMD. AMD has been in contact with Blender devs for a long time, but so far they haven't managed to improve the compiler situation at all. No extraordinary effort is going on to optimize Blender in general that would not benefit Blender users on all platforms.

      --
      May the source be with you.
    22. Re:Will it blend? by bjohnson · · Score: 1

      oooohhh an insult from the 90's...how clever!

    23. Re: Will it blend? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TLDR;

      Sent from my iPhone

    24. Re:Will it blend? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Shut up, you ponce.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. It's pretty neat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I read the review on the Mac CAD site a few days ago. They go into the GPU performance, and it looks like if you need the GPU offerings they are bundling, it's not a horrible deal. One supposes if you're into something specific like Mac CAD, then your CAD software will be updated to take advantage of that specific hardware, because it's a closed ecosystem. If you're an architect invested in a Mac workflow, then dropping $2-3K per year on your main desktop doesn't sound horrible.

    As a no-longer-an-Apple-guy, I might be interested in seeing a standards develop for commodity parts that used the tower cooling design. My big old LianLi Al case certainly takes up too much desk space. Then again, I should stick it in a closet and use a KVM extender, shouldn't I?

    1. Re: It's pretty neat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why on earth would you do that? Unless you have some sort of ac vent that leads into your closet, that system is going to overheat in there.

    2. Re:It's pretty neat by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      I like LianLi cases, been using mine for at least 10 years

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    3. Re:It's pretty neat by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      I like my Coolermaster HAF X.

      Since it's the biggest thing in the room, at Christmas, I just hang lights and ornaments on it. Last year, when I came downstairs on Christmas morning, Santa Claus was sitting there, playing Far Cry 3, drunk as a skunk. He wanted me to drive him downtown to cop some coke, but no way am I going to that neighborhood with a fat SOB in a red suit and a big sack of presents.

      I made him some coffee and eggs and put him in a cab. I never knew if he got home OK because there's no cell phone reception at the North Pole. I'll find out tomorrow morning, I guess. If I find him drunk again, I'm gonna send him straight to rehab, because I heard he's getting abusive to the elves again.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:It's pretty neat by wavedeform · · Score: 1

      Yes, but having "your CAD software [..] be updated to take advantage of that specific hardware" mostly means writing things to use parallel cores, and to leverage the graphics processors through OpenCL (and OpenGL, for the graphics-specific stuff.) This is stuff that a software author would want to do to help future-proof their code, in general, I think.

  3. Advancing in what direction? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hey guys, have you ever wanted to buy a workstation with half as many sockets and half as many DIMM slots as the prior generation? What if I remove all the capacity for internal expansion cards so that you can enjoy buying external cardcages? Still not sold? I've come up with the least rackable shape in the history of computing, you'll love it!

    1. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I do video editing and while I don't current need a new workstation, I see no problem with it. Neither me, nor my colleagues keep anything internal. All work goes on external or networked drives.

    2. Re:Advancing in what direction? by mlts · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think you hit the nail on the head. It would be nice to have had the canister Mac Pro be sold as a workstation, and the old tower with the ability to use expansion cards be made into a case that could function as a tower, or rack ears attached and put in that way.

      Heck, Compaq was able to do this with some of their Deskpros in the mid-1990s (IIRC), and Sun had kits for this for various Ultra models... I don't see why Apple couldn't offer this, so they have at least some presence in a server room without a major hassle.

      This cylinder looks cool, but for someone with FPGA boards [1], being limited to the relatively few PCIe lanes that Thunderbolt exposes to the breakout box will be a hurdle compared to just sticking the card into the case and going from there.

      [1]: Not for BitCoin mining, although when not in use, that has come to mind.

    3. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      with half as many sockets and half as many DIMM slots as the prior generation

      External expansion and higher density RAM solved that problem. Also, why would you want to put a piece of art in a rack?

    4. Re:Advancing in what direction? by BasilBrush · · Score: 1, Informative

      Rackable? It's a workstation not a server.

      Internal expansion is the dirty past. Let it go. It's about as relevant electric drill attachments for sawing and sanding.

      Total memory is the significant metric, not the number of slots it fits into. And that's 12/16 GB vs 6/12GB for the older versions.

      Sockets? The old Mac Pro didn't have any ThunderBolt sockets. This one has 6 ThunderBolt 2 sockets (supporting up to 36 devices).

      It also has 4 USB 3 sockets (vs 5 USB 2 sockets on the old model.) Which presumably is the straw you're clutching.

      Your complaints are without merit.

    5. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jbolden · · Score: 1

      People aren't buying the old one. Apple's customers don't want the size.

    6. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2

      6 ThunderBolt 2 sockets

      that are working off of up to 3 over all TB channels each one with it's own UP TO pci-e 2.0 X4 link.

      so you thing that repleting a lot of slots with a system that maxes out about 12 pci-e 2.0 lanes is good? But at the max one device can only use X4 pci-e max and at the same time tie up the full channel that it is on.

    7. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Kenja · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Advancing backwards. The new "Mac Pro" is just a "Mac Cube" version 2. I for one will not be buying one, which means my current Mac Pro is the last Macintosh I'll be getting. No internal drive bays, no expansion slots, not a professional computer. I would have to cover my desk with external devices to match what's in my current tower configuration.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    8. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      I'm sure that your beloved floppy drives and serial port cards are available from someone as USB 3.0 connections.

    9. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey guys, have you ever wanted to buy a workstation with half as many sockets and half as many DIMM slots as the prior generation? What if I remove all the capacity for internal expansion cards so that you can enjoy buying external cardcages? Still not sold? I've come up with the least rackable shape in the history of computing, you'll love it!

      With upwards of 32GB sitting on one DIMM these days, ever think there might not be a need for 16 fucking DIMM slots anymore? Just a thought.

      All those times you diligently performed system updates on your Macs over the years, never questioning if they ever queried your hardware profile and deduced that 95% of Mac Pro users ran with mostly empty systems, including the second processor slot.

      Like most marketing decisions, they are more driven by statistics than art. Users spoke towards this design more than you think.

    10. Re:Advancing in what direction? by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Interesting

      People aren't buying the old one. Apple's customers don't want the size.

      So, Apple's typical customer cares more about aesthetic than usefulness?

      10 years ago that would have been a solid burn (because it wasn't really true); today, when I take into consideration the people I know who tend to buy Apple products*, I'd say it's a far more true statement than ever before.

      * Other than the handful of graphic designers and musicians, myself included.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    11. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Chas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because it's not a piece of art. It's a tool.

      If you read the Verge article it talks about Apple having talked with people and horror stories of people sawing the handles off their old Mac Pros so they could fit into a rackmount.

      This is kind of important for crews with large amounts of equipment, as hand-carrying every...individual...component...is about the stupidest possible way to do it. Being able to rack a complete solution just makes more sense. You drop the case where it needs to go, plug it into power and a monitor and go.

      With the new version, you pull out your "case O' stuff", unpack the Mac. Unpack the first peripheral, unpack the second peripheral, unpack the third peripheral...and so on. Y'know, DUMB.

      Apple may have listened. But they apparently didn't hear a damn thing.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    12. Re:Advancing in what direction? by lennier1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Rackable? It's a workstation not a server.

      There's actually a third-party rack in the works for these. Think of something like a wine rack, but designed to hold these instead.

    13. Re:Advancing in what direction? by ttucker · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Macintosh people don't like relevant specifications, only marketing hype.

    14. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Kenja · · Score: 4, Interesting

      More stuff goes into racks then just servers. Go into any audio studio, the Mac Pro will be in a rack. Same with video editing bays. But I guess Apple isn't interested in those markets anymore. Shame really...

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    15. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      > People aren't buying the old one. Apple's customers don't want the size.

      If people aren't buying the old one, it probably has nothing to do with it's size. It probably has to do with the fact that it is OLD. Being OLD, it's probably it is out of date and is about to be superceded with something new.

      Being OLD it probably also has poor price performance relative to other PC workstations.

      Short of being designed as an insult to the IT guys that have to maintain this stuff, it's also a much needed hardware update with stuff like a current CPU.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    16. Re:Advancing in what direction? by ttucker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      With upwards of 32GB sitting on one DIMM these days, ever think there might not be a need for 16 fucking DIMM slots anymore? Just a thought.

      This makes the dangerous assumption that the memory needs of applications will remain the same going into the future. In three or four years when applications make use of more memory, you will be buying a new Macintosh. Oh, I see how that works.

    17. Re:Advancing in what direction? by ttucker · · Score: 1

      Someone will be standing by with insanely overpriced Thunderbolt based devices for you to buy.

    18. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jbolden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      -- So, Apple's typical customer cares more about aesthetic than usefulness?

      I'd say yes and I'm an Apple customer. The iPhone makes huge sacrifices for weight and thin. The rMBP makes huge sacrifices for weight and thin. the iMac. Yes, absolutely. aesthetics are a big part of what Apple sells.

    19. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Grow up. I know many folks with Mac Pros. They have never popped anything into the chassis. In the 1990's, it might have been something to be desired, but that was over 10 years ago. All their stuff is external. So it's a non-issue with the new Mac Pros.

      Stop trying to make it sound like it's a problem to make yourself fell better.

    20. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Customers telling Apple what they want is not Apple's business model.

    21. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jbolden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The used MacPros were an insanely good deal relative to comparable PC workstations or current iMacs. And frankly not a bad deal relative to PCs. So no, that's not true. They didn't run the latest OSX, but they would run Windows or Linux just fine if you didn't want to be stuck.

    22. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

      Too bad ... the fact that lots of media people use Apple gear is what got them the billions of dollars of free marketing for the iToys. There's more than a few of them fed up, it seems, and the fawning over Apple seems to have stopped. Many seem quite fed up with the change in direction.

    23. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Chas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Rackable? It's a workstation not a server.

      Internal expansion is the dirty past. Let it go. It's about as relevant electric drill attachments for sawing and sanding.

      Yeah. Rackable. A lot of these types of machines are used by mobile production crews. With the 2010 MacPro you had to saw the handles off the case to get it to fit some sort of portable form factor (mobile racks). With this one, it's a step in the wrong direction. Sure, the BASE UNIT is quite hand-portable. But you then have to deal with all the peripheral devices that used to be able to mount inside a normal case.

      Previously, you could simply drop your portable rack, pop the ends off, plug in power, a monitor and maybe network and go.
      Now, you have to either hand-carry or unpack multiple devices just to get the same functionality.

      Total memory is the significant metric, not the number of slots it fits into. And that's 12/16 GB vs 6/12GB for the older versions.

      Sockets? The old Mac Pro didn't have any ThunderBolt sockets. This one has 6 ThunderBolt 2 sockets (supporting up to 36 devices).

      It also has 4 USB 3 sockets (vs 5 USB 2 sockets on the old model.) Which presumably is the straw you're clutching.

      Your complaints are without merit.

      I think the term you're looking at is "desktop clutter". Being able to hook up umpty-jillion EXTERNAL devices is not a decent tradeoff for someone trying to get a nice, single-case solution.
      I simply don't understand why Apple has such a hard on for their systems looking like an octopus.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    24. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Chas · · Score: 1

      Touché

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    25. Re:Advancing in what direction? by rvw · · Score: 1

      Hey guys, have you ever wanted to buy a workstation with half as many sockets and half as many DIMM slots as the prior generation? What if I remove all the capacity for internal expansion cards so that you can enjoy buying external cardcages? Still not sold? I've come up with the least rackable shape in the history of computing, you'll love it!

      Maybe this is an opportunity for mac shops to refurbish those old pro's, and put the new hardware in there?

    26. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Wovel · · Score: 2

      Well most of the people using the Old Mac Pro were using external storage anyway...

    27. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Wovel · · Score: 3, Informative

      We can assume you don't do any pro video work (In the field or in the studio). In the new one you pull out your case, plug the single thunderbolt cable into the back and call it a day.. Several companies already make portable racks preconfigured with the thunderbolt cable and everything.

    28. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Wovel · · Score: 1

      Except all of the peripherals are already rack mounted, that was the point...

    29. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Every Mac Pro except the 2006 model will run the latest Mac OS.

    30. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      It reminds me of the old days before DIMMs when DRAM chips were soldered right onto the motherboard.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    31. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Waccoon · · Score: 2

      One thing that isn't brought up enough when discussing external expansion is external power supplies. So much for compact size.

    32. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right. And Apple has ceased to deliver what professionals need as soon as it got over confident with its iPhone success. The new Mac Pro may be perfect for video professionals, but it still is not for most of us other designers (those like me who hate glossy displays and therefore can not use an iMac). I have gone over to build Hackintoshes. Its way cheaper. Has more power than any former Mac Pro. And often looks even better.

    33. Re:Advancing in what direction? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      Depends.

      If most of your customers are not going to add any PCIe cards into the machine, then it does make sense.

      http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2836?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

      According to this, the previous mac pro idled at 167W.

      This mac pro idles at only 44W. Not only that but it has a lower temperature when the CPUs and GPUs peg. This all being said, I'm not shocked that Apple went this way.

      Same goes for the loss of ExpressCard slots on the MacBook Pro line. I spent the better part of three years on my current machine trying to find something to put in there(I settled this year on a super cheap memory card reader).

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    34. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In three or four years when applications make use of more memory, you will be buying a new Macintosh. Oh, I see how that works.

      And in 3 or 4 years, when cheaper & higher density RAM is available, you'll simply buy bigger chips and slot them in as replacements to your 32GB DIMMs.

      Just like you ALWAYS have been able to do. Jesus fuck, "whatever will I do without 16 DIMM slots"? USE HIGHER DENSITY RAM IN FEWER SLOTS.

      Are you really this stupid?

    35. Re:Advancing in what direction? by failedlogic · · Score: 1

      On the one hand, I agree. Not having internal expansion is a real killer on a desktop especially at that price point. OTOH, it used to be that on desktops/workstations you "needed" an add-on card to add sound, video and ethernet. Many on-board chips are good enough now that you don't need an add-in.

      The only people needing internal expansion on this system will likely be for discrete cards for additional processing.

      Apple opened a new production facility - in the USA - just to make a Mac Pro. It leads me to believe there might be a lower end model coming so production will be at full capacity.

    36. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 1

      You can always get a thunderbolt expansion chassis like Sonnet Echo Express III.

      I process a lot of data and this doesn't impact me since the JBOD box is external anyway. If I did upgrade to the new Mac Pro, I may be able to use something similar to Promise announced 20 Gbps thunderbolt 2 RAID enclosure

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    37. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 1

      The Echo Express III was used as an example. I haven't used that product.

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    38. Re:Advancing in what direction? by ahabswhale · · Score: 2

      It has nothing to do with the iPhone. It has to do with the fact that it's a limited market so it's really not worth their time to make it a priority project.

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    39. Re:Advancing in what direction? by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      32GB DIMMs are insanely expensive compared to 16GB DIMMS (which are pretty expensive, too).

    40. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AJH16 · · Score: 2, Funny

      But... but... if I needed it, my Mac daddy would tell me and market it to me cause they totally want me to have the best experience ever.

      --
      AJ Henderson
    41. Re:Advancing in what direction? by mlts · · Score: 1

      It will need some good, directional ventilation. The vertical cooling of the new canisters is not exactly friendly to the in from the front, out from the back of rack mounted machines.

      This is a shame that Apple doesn't have anything but the Mac Mini that can easily be racked [1]. I understand not bringing back the 1U XServe [2], but it would be nice to have a relatively powerful machine that can be used where density is important.

      [1]: Yes, one could buy a 1U rack drawer, Dremel holes for the MagSafe cable, ventilation tunnel and other items, then toss a MacBook Pro in it, but it would be nice to have an elegant solution for the musician/studio/video producer racks.

      [2]: The XServes were well built machines. Beats the usual 1U x86 stuff chattering away in the racks any day.

    42. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know these few people who never did thing so obviously nobody else ever did thing either, and now I'm going to tell you to grow up because it's relevant somehow.

    43. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AJH16 · · Score: 1

      Apple is making their classic mistake again, but this time they are probably going to overstep too far to be saved. For a time they've captured the "hip" pop-culture market which is great for their bottom line since they can control everything that a large number of people do on their devices and thus make huge profits, but they are courting that market instead of the A/V and Graphic Design markets that kept them alive for pretty much the entire rest of their existence. They already gave up the education market when Microsoft started really going after it years ago.

      Thing is, people are starting to realize how much of a corner Apple backs them in to and are starting to favor more open options (ie, anything else) so we're seeing Android growing in the market. Eventually, Apple's bubble will burst and they aren't going to have any die-hard markets to fall on, just like any other sell out. I've never been a fan of Apple, but it's almost comical to watch as they predictably run the same path over and over. Just before they had Jobs to distort reality and make people buy what he wanted to sell.

      The post Jobs Apple doesn't seem to understand they have to actually meet consumer desires instead of trying to control and monetize the entire experience.

      --
      AJ Henderson
    44. Re: Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Crusty Solaris admin here, I'd like to correct you. Intel architecture people generally don't care about relevant specifications, for desktops, workstations, or servers.

      "Intel is cheaper" is all I ever hear when tasked with comparing Intel to not-Intel. Intel keeps slowly adding SPARC-level RAS features, but their customers wouldn't even know it. These are the same people who buy Cisco fibre channel gear with 8-1 oversubscription... without knowing what they are getting.

      So, it's unfair to single out Macs as if the people running other Intel workstations or servers think twice about shoving a four port fibre channel adapter just wherever it fits or piping their backup and primary storage IO over the same lanes.

    45. Re:Advancing in what direction? by null+etc. · · Score: 1

      Oh, thank you. As a Macintosh people, I now understand myself much better. Thank you for your pithy post.

    46. Re:Advancing in what direction? by null+etc. · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh shoot. I'll definitely not be getting the new Mac Pro then. I was hoping my next computer would justify putting a rack in my living room, right next to the Cray I bought on ebay.

    47. Re:Advancing in what direction? by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Why would you get one of those instead of a Blade server?

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    48. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep, billions of dollars in the bank. More assets than most countries. No red ink.

      They're gonna die! OMG!

    49. Re: Advancing in what direction? by ttucker · · Score: 1

      In ECE we learned that the only relevant benchmark is time elapsed to complete an actual task.

      SPARC was a great chip, particularly considering the other options available when it was made. Intel has learned a lot of lessons since then.

      Cisco is another one of those marketing hype over specifications sort of places. How else would they charge an enormous up front cost for modest hardware, only to require lavish recurring costs as well?

    50. Re:Advancing in what direction? by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      Im sure there are a lot of things to love about OSX / Macs... the shape seems impractical, but Im rather impressed with what they did with it.

      The issue, as always, any time I think "gee, maybe I should get one" is that they are absurdly overpriced. Pretty hard to justify burning $4000 for hardware you could probably throw together for $2000 or less and have a lot more options; Its also really hard to swallow the idea that the form-factor or the OS somehow are worth that extra $2000 on a work machine.

      Same goes anytime I look at their laptops. Yea, the aluminum body is slick, and there are some cool things about OSX, but you know what? Asus and Samsung also make some really slick aluminum laptops, and they dont cost $2000.

      Im sure there will be people out there who can afford this, and will love it, and thats great, but I dont think anyone's ever gonna convince me that Macs are a good value proposition, or that I should be recommending them to friends / family.

    51. Re:Advancing in what direction? by SuperKendall · · Score: 0

      Thing is, people are starting to realize how much of a corner Apple backs them in to and are starting to favor more open options (ie, anything else) so we're seeing Android growing in the market.

      That's exactly why Linux finally won the desktop wars.

      Oh wait.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    52. Re:Advancing in what direction? by ttucker · · Score: 1

      Oh, thank you. As a Macintosh people, I now understand myself much better. Thank you for your pithy post.

      Actually, I was warning the original poster not to attempt factual discussion with your kind. In reality, you will need much more extensive introspection to discover how blindly you place faith in advertisements.

    53. Re:Advancing in what direction? by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      To be fair, most people care quite a bit about aesthetics; look at any geek who's drooled over some sick case mod like this one.

      On the other hand we usually dont drop an extra grand on just looks, and then try to justify it by virtue of the OS it comes with (or by how restrictive its EULA is).

    54. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's a tip: the future is not going to be uber-geeks controlling rack mounted servers in some ice cold clean room. Your career path is fucked because Apple likes to upset the cart. It's why you are nervous.

      Eat that shit and smile while you're holding a Why Lie I Need a Beer sign on the freeway. Or learn something new. It's really up to you.

    55. Re:Advancing in what direction? by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

      My 2006 core2 duo idled at 160W. Im not sure that its terribly impressive that theyre doing 167 in 2012, or that 44W is that impressive given the power features of most new video cards and Intel CPUs. Basically nothing in a modern SSD-based tower uses any significant electricity when idling.

    56. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you have locked yourself into running Final Cut Pro which only runs on OS X, and OS X doesn't run on blade servers.

    57. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just a sign of the times
      Going forward in reverse
      Still he who laughs the last
      Is just a hand in the bush

    58. Re: Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And Sun/Oracle SPARC only recently got out-of-order execution, which Intel had since 1995.

    59. Re:Advancing in what direction? by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      It's like a really cool looking Mini on steroids. I want one badly as I'm currently using a Mac Mini Server with quad i7 for video editing. I can see where it could vastly improve my editing speed. Having said that, I can see a lot of shortcomings for a professional environment, especially in audio studios where I've seen a lot of Mac Pros.

    60. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And Lehman Bros was over 150 years old and worth over $600B near the time of their demise. They went down fast.

      Just because a company is big, doesn't mean they'll last forever.

    61. Re:Advancing in what direction? by amiga3D · · Score: 2

      For everyone except the professionals there really is no need for a tower anymore. I see more and more people using laptops instead of desktop peecee's. It's a niche market nowadays.

    62. Re:Advancing in what direction? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      What about thermal? and about smaller size?

      I'm just not convinced a monolithic box full of cards is the way of the future.

      I think Steve might have been right in the 80's when he demanded that the original Mac ship with no ports.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    63. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Being able to hook up umpty-jillion EXTERNAL devices is not a decent tradeoff for someone trying to get a nice, single-case solution."

      I'm pretty sure the target user for this device had no hope of a single-case solution before or after the New Mac Pro was released.

    64. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Chas · · Score: 1

      We can assume you don't do any pro video work (In the field or in the studio). In the new one you pull out your case, plug the single thunderbolt cable into the back and call it a day.. Several companies already make portable racks preconfigured with the thunderbolt cable and everything.

      Sure. Maybe for a real basic setup. Sure.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    65. Re:Advancing in what direction? by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For everyone except the professionals there really is no need for a tower anymore. I see more and more people using laptops instead of desktop peecee's. It's a niche market nowadays.

      Well sure, but in my experience most of the people who want the tower want it for the expandability factor.

      Otherwise, why bother paying a premium for what is essentially a laptop, except you can't take it anywhere?

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    66. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Chas · · Score: 1

      So, instead of having one box, with a keyboard, mouse, tablet, power and monitor, you have one case with all your peripherals and a bunch of extra cords running out, plus keyboard, mous, tablet, power, and monitor...

      Again. No.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    67. Re: Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or, you know, they could lay them on their sideâ¦like you do with a wine rack.

    68. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      Why are you trying to rackmount them? What person tries to use graphics workstations as servers?

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    69. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Show me a blade server with SLI video card capabilities.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    70. Re:Advancing in what direction? by mjwalshe · · Score: 1

      the new mac pro and their peripherals is not going to fit very well into a flight case is it - which is what crews on location will be using. Oops the Grip just knocked over the table with the macs and all the peripherals.

    71. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Absolutely correct. My laptop is faster than most people's gaming PC. Quad Core i7 at 3.6ghz and dual video cards (ATI+Intel) with dual hard drives (one is a 512 SSD) and 16 gig of ram. So unless you are doing something that needs more horsepower than that no need for a desktop.

      I recently did build a desktop for one reason, a 6 camera live video switcher as I needed 3, 2 channel HDMI capture cards and the bandwidth needed to capture 1080p from all 6 at once and then render a video stream + GUI . basically built a poor mans tricaster. Sadly you can not do this on a laptop as I would have rather had the portability.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    72. Re:Advancing in what direction? by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

      No, you have one cable running from the Mac Pro to your rack with storage and monitor (thunderbolt)... the mouse and keyboard are of course wireless.

      The Mac Pro means fewer, or at worst the same number of cables as you had before (because anyone serious was using external storage anyway). Only with a lot less weight and bulk to cart around.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    73. Re:Advancing in what direction? by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      Hard to find a laptop with that kind of punch. I was puzzled as well when I saw the new model though. That didn't look to me like something for the professional market. If you don't need a lot of expandability though it seems like it'd be hell on wheels.

    74. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      show me a video package that can take advantage of SLI

    75. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Informative

      That is talking about the OLD times when you could not get a laptop that could do field editing. Today you would be a fool to try and carry that with you for a field shot that needed editing, every crew I see uses laptops. I have not seen what the Verge article talks about in over 5 years now. You can carry your entire editing suite + storage + backup drives all in a backpack.

      This is 2013 absolutely nobody drags a huge rack of gear on location anymore for field editing.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    76. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Sadly racks never have a horizontal flat surface that these could sit on. Oh wait.....

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    77. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      so you have a heater that provides half the power of a desktop, a worthless intel card, a crappy mobile 3d card and a power brick the size of a shoebox for something that really cant be moved off your desk cause it gets a whole hour of battery life

      wow, all that and a 17 inch screen for only 2x the cost of a desktop, you must be proud
      (yes I know what chunk of shit dell your talking about, if you are lucky you did not get last years model which goes down on a bluescreen faster than a drunken whore)

    78. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I have gone over to build Hackintoshes. Its way cheaper."

      This is a big fat Lie, I tried several times to build a hackintosh and ended up spending close to Apple Prices to build something that was a pain in the ass to maintain.

      In fact you look at ALL the hackintosh forums and the #1 thing you are told is, "stop if you are trying to build a cheap mac, you will not do it." Hackintosh is for building something you can not get from apple or to have control over the hardware choices.

    79. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your withering contempt has convinced me to abandon the reliability and ease of use I get from the Mac, and switch to a vocation of continuous maintenance like the Windows and Linux crowds enjoy.

      Thank you, for your magnificent superiority. Truly, you have enlightened us all.

    80. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jcr · · Score: 2

      I miss the Xserves too, but Apple just wasn't selling enough of them to justify the engineering time required to stay in that line of business.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    81. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Holi · · Score: 2

      Show me a Mac that supports Crossfire or SLI.
      2 Video cards does not mean SLI, especially on Macs.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    82. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jcr · · Score: 0

      You can bet that Apple knows just how many people ever used the PCIe slots in the previous Mac Pros, and that the new design takes that information into consideration.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    83. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 1

      Because it's not a piece of art. It's a tool.

      If you read the Verge article it talks about Apple having talked with people and horror stories of people sawing the handles off their old Mac Pros so they could fit into a rackmount.

      This is kind of important for crews with large amounts of equipment, as hand-carrying every...individual...component...is about the stupidest possible way to do it. Being able to rack a complete solution just makes more sense. You drop the case where it needs to go, plug it into power and a monitor and go.

      With the new version, you pull out your "case O' stuff", unpack the Mac. Unpack the first peripheral, unpack the second peripheral, unpack the third peripheral...and so on. Y'know, DUMB.

      Apple may have listened. But they apparently didn't hear a damn thing.

      Complaining that Mac Pros aren't rack friendly is like me complaining that my Lenovo ThinkCentre (Linux) Desktop PC is a bad design because I'd have to drill holes in the casing to be able to attach it to a rack mount slider. ThinkCentre PC's are designed to sit on a desktop, they are not designed to fit seamlessly into a rack mount and neither were the old Mac Pros and sitting on top of or underneath a desk is how most users use these machines. One can make the case that square pegs are crappy pegs for all sorts of reasons but not because they don't fit into round holes. Apple used to have the server line for people with rack mount needs and I'm not sure I want to take the piss out of them for not catering to the small number of people who need the Mac Pro package in rack mount format. That being said I do agree with you in that sometimes Apple just forgets to shut up and listen to the customer. Apple is good at design but sometimes they do have the tendency to put form over function, just like Dell (just as an example of the other extreme) sometimes focuses so much on practicality/austerity/affordability that they completely forget that a little design can go a long way toward making their products more usable.

      --
      Only to idiots, are orders laws.
      -- Henning von Tresckow
    84. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, Apple's typical customer cares more about aesthetic than usefulness?

      Had it occurred to you that being small and quiet are part of the use case?

    85. Re:Advancing in what direction? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Me.

      External 4xSATA drive enclosure, with an eSATA connection. Mac pros have no eSATA port. So I used a PCI-e eSATA adaptor.

      The solution on the new macs would be to use a thunderbolt enclosure. Which works, but is also hugely more expensive. By an order of magnitude.

    86. Re:Advancing in what direction? by noh8rz10 · · Score: 0

      Because it's not a piece of art. It's a tool.

      you're a tool!

    87. Re:Advancing in what direction? by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      I miss the Xserves too, but Apple just wasn't selling enough of them to justify the engineering time required to stay in that line of business.

      -jcr

      how do you know that? I don't think you do.

    88. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet everything they make seems to sell out. Seems like Apple's business model is just fine.

    89. Re:Advancing in what direction? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      the new mac pro and their peripherals is not going to fit very well into a flight case is it - which is what crews on location will be using. Oops the Grip just knocked over the table with the macs and all the peripherals.

      Given that most onsite shots are done with laptops and even iPads, that's no longer a very likely scenario.

      I mean, taking a look at how a director is shooting, he's sitting at a table of laptops. Hell, the director probably is holding an iPad in his hand directing the shot - the iPad loaded with the script, the animatic (or storyboards, but those are fading out in favor of animatics) and the dailies.

      The whole pile of equipment? That's back at the VFX shop where they have racks of servers - probably connected to desktops via stuff like GigE or Thunderbolt.

      Laptops are now what people are using for shoots - no one lugs desktops around. OTOH, the new Mac Pro DOES fit nicely into a carry on flight case.

    90. Re:Advancing in what direction? by phayes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Apple is making their classic mistake again, but this time they are probably going to overstep too far to be saved.

      You keep on telling yourself that. The general PC market has been shrinking year over year recently, precisely two manufacturers have been resisting the trend: Lenovo & Apple, but your basement analysis will turn that around and bring back the glory days of the beige boxes. Much as with the MBA, Apple is just ahead of the curve and the people too set in their ways to see it are criticizing what they do not understand.

      --
      Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    91. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No internal drive bays, no expansion slots, not a professional computer

      Professional computers don't need drive bays because all your data is going on the network storage so it can be backed up properly.

    92. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As you wish

      Whether or not OSX supports SLI is irrelevant as the hardware supports SLI and it runs under Windows.

    93. Re:Advancing in what direction? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I think the term you're looking at is "desktop clutter". Being able to hook up umpty-jillion EXTERNAL devices is not a decent tradeoff for someone trying to get a nice, single-case solution.

      I find this especially strange given Apple's primary designs have always appeared to be as much of an all-in-one design as possible. Sure the older PowerMac bucked the trend, but I always figured this was due to the amount of hardware not simply fitting into the back of the monitor.

    94. Re:Advancing in what direction? by the_B0fh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why are you shooting holes in his imaginary use cases? Don't you know Apple has to sell a computer for every category out there?! If not, Apple is doomed! DOOMED I TELL YOU!!!!

    95. Re:Advancing in what direction? by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Because of numbers? It's the same reason why Apple tossed the 17" laptops. Very very few people bought them.

    96. Re:Advancing in what direction? by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      In 2000, they were having a good year if they sold 400k computers in a quarter. In 2013, same quarter, they sold 4mil - 5mil computers a quarter.

      How are they not understanding or meeting consumer desires, especially since global overall PC market is dropping by 10% - 20% a year?

    97. Re:Advancing in what direction? by the_B0fh · · Score: 2

      I don't get it. The only thing this thing is missing, compared to the old Mac Pro, is expandable internal storage. *ONE* extra thunderbolt wire is going to add that much to the clutter?

      You still needed power, monitor and USB cables with the old Mac Pros, so it's not like those cables weren't used.

      One more extra external drive cable, if you don't use NAS/SAN is going to clutter up your desktop that much?

      Seriously?

    98. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Dahamma · · Score: 1

      Who cares if it's not rackable?? That's not what it was designed for; you might as well complain that a laptop is not rackable. In fact, it's not remotely targeted towards cost-conscious DIY builders or home users at all, so most of your "expansion" points are irrelevant. 4 DIMM slots are plenty (supports 64GB) if you are willing to replace RAM instead of adding (ie. pay more). And for serious video editing, etc, most of their customers are using external storage arrays anyway, so Apple just decided why bother to put it in the computer case and then have to deal with all of the power and heat issues, etc.

      Personally I'd never buy one since I have no use for an overpriced (but very functional) "stylish" workstation. But there are plenty of companies with too much money that will...

    99. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Most people put their computers under their desks or tricked away where they can't be seen. As far as I can tell the only purpose of this form factor is to look trendy as a desktop ornament. That's fine, it's just that Apple computers tend to look dated fast because everyone clones them and because fashion changes so fast. At least the new laptops look fairly generic but sleek now.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    100. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But "weight and thin" on a phone or laptop are not aesthetics, they are FEATURES. Good features that most people want.

      Weight and thin, on the other hand, are not particularly useful features on a workstation. There, on the other hand, they are mostly aesthetics...

    101. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I was really hoping USB 3.0 would provide enough power to run things like 3.5" hard drives and disc burners from a single port, but it seems they overlooked that need.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    102. Re:Advancing in what direction? by the_B0fh · · Score: 2
    103. Re:Advancing in what direction? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Apple used to have the server line for people with rack mount needs

      And when they discontinued it they suggested that people put mac pros on shelves in racks as an alternative, dunno if anyone actually did or not (the density was horriblly low but if you are dependent on mac os X servers and mac minis are insufficient. what else do you do?)

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    104. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AJH16 · · Score: 1

      I don't mean open source open, I mean MS open. Open to use software your way. The PC beat the Mac historically because it was a) cheaper and b) easier to use the way someone wanted to use it / more forgiving. It was even enough to get past the stability issues with crashes since old software simply worked and you could throw it at just about any hardware.

      Apple's mantra is to make one really easy way to do things they think people want to do and at first, that does draw people in, but as they start to get comfortable and try to push the boundaries, they realize they can't. Android and Windows on the other hand allow far more boundary pushing and the #1 reason that average users that switch to Android consciously tell me is because of that flexibility.

      --
      AJ Henderson
    105. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jbolden · · Score: 1

      I think Apple considers it to be feature on desktops as well. Again iMac and now the MacPro. I'd agree with you that who cares much about aesthetics in a desktop. But I see a ton of iMac.

    106. Re:Advancing in what direction? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Total memory is the significant metric, not the number of slots it fits into. And that's 12/16 GB vs 6/12GB for the older versions.

      According to wikipedia at least the old model supported 64GB (8x4GB) officially and 128GB (8x8GB) unofficially while the new model only supports 64GB (4x8GB).

      So it's no improvement if you look at the ofifical apple numbers and a downgrade if you look at what the aftermarket vendors found was actually possible.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    107. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AJH16 · · Score: 1

      No, I'm not saying that at all. Actually, I expect that PC sales will continue to decline a bit more until they stabilize. This isn't because of the death of the PC, it's because of the death of the useful advance of PC hardware. Mainline hardware (CPU and to an extent memory) are at a fairly hard limit that we can't rapidly advance. A 6 year old computer is now far more capable comparatively than a 12 year old computer was 6 years ago. The components that still advance are peripherals such as graphics cards, storage drives and to an extent, ports.

      Having expansion slots allows a computer to live on much longer because it can be easily upgraded since the core components don't need to be replaced nearly as often. This means expansion slots are more important than ever before. It used to be that you would replace the entire computer every 3 to 4 years because CPUs and bus speeds were being so rapidly outpaced, so expansion wasn't important.

      Similarly, people hold on to their desktops longer, so no kidding, sales are dropping off because people aren't re-entering the market. If we suddenly made cars that lasted 30 years we would see far fewer car sales within 6 or 7 years. It wouldn't mean that cars aren't desired any more, just that new ones aren't needed as often.

      That slack has been taken up by the rapidly growing portable device market, but Apple and many industry analysts are foolishly thinking this means the death of the PC and that all computing will become mobile devices. It is true that it is disruptive technology and that it results in a spending shift, but they are distinct products with distinct characteristics and it's a new market so it has high growth as the lack of advance in the PC sector has allowed for available funds to buy in to the new sector.

      And if you doubt my credibility, keep in mind, I saw both the e-book boom and the way that the previous console generation would play out when everyone else was predicting incorrectly. I have a far better than average track record for judging tech trends because I understand not only the technology but what both consumers, technophiles and business are looking for in technology.

      --
      AJ Henderson
    108. Re:Advancing in what direction? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Maybe this is an opportunity for mac shops to refurbish those old pro's, and put the new hardware in there?

      This brings an interesting question of "what part is legally the computer"

      That is if you replace the motherboard in a mac pro with a non-apple one is it still legally a mac and can you still legally sell it with mac os X installed? Would you want to spend a heck of a lot of money designing a motherboard that would fit easilly in a mac pro case only to have a court rule that your motherboard replacement made the computer no longer legally a mac?

      If you can't replace the motherboard then you are stuck putting in better components from the same era. That might extend the machines life a little bit but it's not a long term soloution.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    109. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AJH16 · · Score: 1

      For PC sales, they are simply one of the last quality builders standing. It will be interesting to see what privatized Dell is capable of depending on what direction Michael Dell takes it. Short of building your own, Lenovo and Apple are pretty much the only remotely quality hardware out there right now because PC manufacturers raced each other to the bottom of quality and consumers finally wised up to it.

      If you look on the handset/mobile device side. Android is very rapidly eating away Apple's market share and has already taken significant majority lead in the smartphone market. Even Windows 8 is starting to make some headway in the tablet field, though it is still too early to tell where that will go, particularly with MS itself in flux at the moment.

      --
      AJ Henderson
    110. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Dahamma · · Score: 1

      Well, in the sense that they consider aesthetics a feature, yeah, I totally agree. Their customers buy for style as much as substance, no question, but that's not all that unusual in the high-end consumer market... I should have stuck with aesthetic vs. utility, which is what I think the GP post meant...

    111. Re:Advancing in what direction? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      According to apple max memory is 64GB (4x16GB), has anyone tried larger configurations yet? (AIUI apple often understates max memory)

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    112. Re:Advancing in what direction? by phayes · · Score: 2

      Expansion slots are more necessary now than 6 years ago? Lol, you're deluded. What exactly (besides storage) did you need a slot for 6 years ago that is not present in the Mac Pro? The only thing I am aware of is video input & that has been announced as an external thunderbolt/usb3 connected box.

      There is no longer the need to have a vacuum cleaner sized device (with the equivalent noise level) for slots that are no longer needed nor wanted.

      Remember this moment. In 6 years look at your computer. It will certainly more closely resemble a Mac Pro with the essential bits (multi core CPU, ram, fast system flash disk, gpu) in the main unit & the rest like storage in other boxes, like NAS/DAS etc. Extension slots are much less necessary today & with thunderbolt & usb3 & successor techs will become even less necessary in the future. Your purported record on ebooks impresses me no more than how many times you may have flipped a coin heads in a row & is no more relevant, above all when I see to making the bad call on how much extension slots are needed.

      --
      Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    113. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jcr · · Score: 1

      how do you know that?

      How do you not know that?

      Apple sold thousands of Xserves. They sell millions of iMacs, and tens of millions of phones and iPads. They have a limited number of hardware engineers; where would you spend their time?

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    114. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      Hell, show me a blade server with the non-video capabilities that cost less than 2x the MSRP of the new Mac Pro...

      (...and Heaven help your bank account if that blade fits into a Cisco UCS chassis...)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    115. Re:Advancing in what direction? by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      How do you know how much units were sold, when most peeps at apple don't know that???? Methinks you have a big butt and you are speaking with it

    116. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AJH16 · · Score: 1

      The GPU isn't replaceable in the new Mac Pro. It's a custom board. Other expansions currently sitting in my tower are USB 3 (which wasn't out when I built it), eSATA, a Raid controller, a professional sound card, a consumer sound card, a real time video encoder and an upgraded GPU. Now, some of those could be done as external devices, but do I really want to have to cart around 6 different external devices every time I move my desktop? Not particularly. And what if a component dies? It's easy to replace with off the shelf components because it is standardized. Standardized parts exist for a reason and migrating away from standardized parts internal assembly isn't smart, it's backwards.

      They are tieing multiple expensive bits together with no way to modularly replace it and while that's great if you always want to buy entirely new hardware that looks "sexy", it's horrible if you want to actually be able to maintain a system.

      --
      AJ Henderson
    117. Re:Advancing in what direction? by AJH16 · · Score: 1

      Also, if you don't believe me, simply look at the average replacement time on tablets vs laptops vs classical desktops. The more you can swap out parts, the longer the systems last. People replace their tablet (no changeable parts) every year or two, their laptop every 3 years or so and their desktop every 6 years or so. Why does Apple want a desktop with fewer replaceable parts? Because they want you buying a new desktop every 2 or 3 years.

      --
      AJ Henderson
    118. Re:Advancing in what direction? by JLennox · · Score: 1

      I believe this is now the only Apple product to not solder RAM directly to the board.

    119. Re:Advancing in what direction? by MikeMo · · Score: 2

      This guy tried to make one DIY, and failed miserably.

    120. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      one thunderbolt does not have the bandwidth or the number of devices.

    121. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10 years ago that would have been a solid burn (because it wasn't really true); today, when I take into consideration the people I know who tend to buy Apple products*, I'd say it's a far more true statement than ever before.

      Snobs have been drinking the Hatorade for a lot longer than 10 years.

    122. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This makes the dangerous assumption that the memory needs of applications will remain the same going into the future. In three or four years when applications make use of more memory, you will be buying a new Macintosh. Oh, I see how that works.

      So how many 300 mhz Xeon machines do you have running with 32 gigs of ram in them? By the time the Pro's memory capacity is obsolete, so will be it's processor speed. You see how that works? Oh?

    123. Re:Advancing in what direction? by the_B0fh · · Score: 2

      There are a few things to consider.

      Every year, Apple sells more and more iPhones.
      Everyone else is counting Android activation, which includes those TV sticks, tablets that don't do anything, and so on.
      Smartphones include high end smartphones, mid end smart phones, and low ends, which are just used as feature phones.

      Feature phones are not worth crap to the user (in terms of smartphone features - obviously they function OK as a *CELL PHONE*), or the manufacturer. Only cell phone companies like them.

      You could make a case for the mid tier cell phones as part of the smartphone market.

      So, until you break it down that way, lumping everything together presents a distorted picture.

    124. Re:Advancing in what direction? by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      Are you sure? Thunderbolt 2 does not increase bandwidth over Thunderbolt, but it does make bandwidth use more flexible - it seems like there would be plenty there to drive a 1080p display plus most external storage solutions.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    125. Re: Advancing in what direction? by Dzimas · · Score: 1

      In the year leading up to the termination of the Xserve line, Apple sold 42,414 units. They were a money-losing niche product.

    126. Re:Advancing in what direction? by ducomputergeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Couple things to note. What are you comparing this to? An average Dell/HP PC or a proper "workstation" from these companies like the HP Z820? Because if you are comparing a regular desktop, you're not comparing Apples to Apples here (pardon the pun). Chances are if you aren't looking at the Z820

      In the industries these machines are used in and targeted towards have moved to external storage arrays/SANS/NAS. What the internal hard drive(s) have doesn't matter so long as it's enough to install their main programs on. Even the smaller shops I know doing video production have at least a 20TB array, most are around 50TB these days.

      When you start comparing the MacPro's against machines like the Z820 the MacPro's pricing is competitive. I believe the Z820 with a single 3GB Nvidia Quadro card is around $4k.

      --
      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
    127. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now that you've been shown to have no idea what you're talking about, presumably you'll post the retraction of your knee-jerk "absurdly overpriced" statement. Yes? No? Crickets...?

    128. Re: Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but FCP X does not support projects or events on network drives.
      So I would have to add a Thunderbolt external RAID or a thunderbolt to fibre channel adapter?

    129. Re:Advancing in what direction? by phayes · · Score: 1

      To replace the gpus in a Mac Pro, buy a new one with the requisite gpus & sell the old one. Macs have resale value PC owners don't even dream of & time machine + external storage makes moving data trivial.

      Almost every single card of yours is either unnecessary in a Mac Pro or is better in an external box but you're too set in "I used to have to do things by installing cards" to see that it isn't necessary or even optimal to do so any more. I'm sure you're comfortable wearing those diapers and afraid of changing but you really should move on...

      --
      Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    130. Re:Advancing in what direction? by phayes · · Score: 1

      Lol, slow replacement cycles are a sign of impending death, not hope. People aren't replacing their desktops, they are leaving them as is until they die & then replacing them with something else: laptops, tablets, nas, etc depending on their needs. That puddle you live in is drying fast. Will you wait until only mud is left?

      --
      Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    131. Re: Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The gpus aren't on a pci card so you can only buy ones made for the specific Mac design. Also, as previously mentioned, having to carry around multiple external boxes that use a slower connection is not an upgrade to direct bus connectivity in a self contained package that can be easily serviced.

      As for those diapers you mentioned. I'm an early adopter who had the first ebook, was on Facebook when it was only at 6 schools, was on Juno in the first 10000 users, had digital cameras, pdas, and digital music players before anyone knew what they were, etc, etc. Whenever you feel like waking up to the reality of what makes hardware capable and putting on your big boy pants, I'll be waiting.

    132. Re: Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How many people do you know that no longer own a desktop or a laptop? I don't know a single one. The only people that use tablets exclusively are people that are trying to make a point. I will however grant that I do expect laptops to take a bigger portion of the pc market relative to desktops.

    133. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jbolden · · Score: 2

      Well then:

      We know people didn't want the old one. The old one had lots of utility but:
      a) The price was high
      b) The case was ugly

      OTOH in the used market you could get some fantastic deals. Which indicates that either:
      i) The case was ugly was the big problem
      ii) They just didn't need the power at all. There simply is no high end workstation market anymore. A good quality desktop is good enough for almost everyone.

      I don't see any other alternative. What Apple is offering is a unit with terrific aesthetics and high utility relative to apple desktop at about $1000 more. So it offers people a clean choice do they want more utility or not without encumbering them with making an aesthetic sacrifice. If they don't buy the MacPro then we know that ultimately there just isn't a meaningfully sized workstation market and these things need to be made by small OEMs catering to niches. If it does sell then yes aesthetics were the problem.

      The original poster was upset about losing some utility for aesthetics where he is defining utility in terms of expansion slots. Given things like thunderbolt chaining I have a hard time seeing why they matter much. And if they did matter then why can I still get such a great deal on a MacPro on eBay?

    134. Re: Advancing in what direction? by jcr · · Score: 1

      Not actually losing money, but not making enough to justify the engineering time.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    135. Re: Advancing in what direction? by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      Do you work at apple???? Do you have a crystal ball???? For all you know it was the most successful product ever but SJ discontinued it to focus on consumer.

    136. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Chemisor · · Score: 1

      Gee, I wonder why. He bought a $2700 CPU and two $3400 graphics cards. Was that really necessary? Why not try to benchmark what you do on a cheaper combination first? You just might find that a $300 CPU and a $500 GPU would be adequate.

    137. Re:Advancing in what direction? by MikeMo · · Score: 1

      I don't think he was trying to make an "adequate" machine. One could argue that almost any computer is "adequate", depending on your goals. He was trying to make a comparably-specced machine using off the shelf components and really couldn't do it, and the closest he could come cost a LOT more than that Mac Pro.

      For folks whose profession is the processing of high-end video and photos, time is of the essence, and there really is no such thing as "adequate". The faster the better, period.

    138. Re: Advancing in what direction? by schlachter · · Score: 1

      What's wrong with a 3-4 year upgrade cycle?
      If you're using the Mac Pro for serious work, 3-4 years is a bit long.
      I've been upgrading every two yrs.

      --
      My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
    139. Re:Advancing in what direction? by solidraven · · Score: 1

      Blade servers start at about 3000 USD for the enclosure, and 1500 USD per server board. Performance is unmatched though, and if you buy several servers at once you can usually negotiate the price down quite a lot if you're willing to listen to the sales speech first.

      And anyway, all resource intensive applications we use run on servers. At our office everybody has a cheap, small, energy efficient Dell mini desktop. if you flip the case on it's side it's the perfect height to park a monitor on so it comes on eye level. Plus very handy to attach post-its to! The servers which have a large, efficient cooling plant and the necessary hardware to run all of the stuff are neatly hidden away. So is there any real use left for a macpro like this? Not really no, since it's useless for putting in a data centre and you can't effectively hook it up to a cooling system either.

    140. Re:Advancing in what direction? by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      One thing that isn't brought up enough when discussing external expansion is external power supplies. So much for compact size.

      The power supply is built into the Mac Pro. See the photos of the ports.

    141. Re:Advancing in what direction? by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      To replace the gpus in a Mac Pro, buy a new one with the requisite gpus & sell the old one. Macs have resale value PC owners don't even dream of & time machine + external storage makes moving data trivial.

      It's not only the MacPro. Most Macs, as well as other Apple products, are absolutely easy and efficient to upgrade even for the most technically challenged person by making eBay part of the upgrade operation.

    142. Re: Advancing in what direction? by jcr · · Score: 1

      Do you work at apple?

      Not lately, why?

      For all you know it was the most successful product ever.

      I wish it were more successful, I'd still love to buy them, but wishing doesn't make it so. And as it happens, I do know. I was working in a department that was probably Apple's biggest internal customer for Xserve when they stopped production.

      SJ discontinued it to focus on consumer.

      Ok, sparky, here's what you don't understand about Apple leaving particular markets: there are many things they've done over the years which were profitable, but not nearly profitable enough for Apple. When they pulled the plug on Xserve and Xserve RAID, they were already the #3 storage vendor, and on track to be #1 in another year or so, but if you go and look up the value of EMC, you'll find that their market cap is about 1/10 of Apple's valuation.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    143. Re:Advancing in what direction? by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      Its worth keeping in mind you cant actually GET a Mac Pro now, since they dont ship till February, so at this point its a TAD premature to say that you cant match it with DIY. Itd be more accurate to say that Macs cant match DIY, at least until February.

    144. Re:Advancing in what direction? by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      And he failed, because he chose the wrong equipment. According to this (and everythign I could find on AMD website)
      http://www.overclock.net/t/1436253/mac-pro-dual-amd-firepro-d300-dual-amd-firepro-d500-dual-amd-firepro-d700-options
      the D500 is basically this
      http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195117
      which costs $1400.

      So yea, if the guy is spending $3400 trying to match a $1400 card, he will fail to beat Apple's pricing, and should probably apply for a position with them.

    145. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Optali · · Score: 1

      Neat. So it boils down to that: A full blown computer designed to run one single application. Neat.
      But, I'm looking forward to get my VGA cable and be able to run a decent PC again after all these years.

      --
      -- 29A the number of the Beast
    146. Re:Advancing in what direction? by MikeMo · · Score: 1

      I'm a little confused by your post and what you're trying to say. Are you saying the W8000 is equivalent to the D700? The top-end Mac Pro uses the Firepro D700, which is, indeed, $3,400 at retail, not the D500, so the gent bought a D700.

      Interestingly, Apple is only charging $1,000 to upgrade from two $1,400 D500's you reference above to TWO D700's.

    147. Re:Advancing in what direction? by CanHasDIY · · Score: 2

      Hard to find a laptop with that kind of punch.

      The base model, quad-core Mac Pro starts at $3,000.

      If you can't "find a laptop with that kind of punch" for 3 grand or less, you're not looking very hard.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    148. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Dahamma · · Score: 2

      Yeah, and don't discount the fact that many who use high end workstations are designers, video editors, and/or just basic web developers (with no real need for them anyway!) working at companies with just plain too much money to spend. And as far as aesthetics - go into a well-funded startup office these days, and it's absurd where that VC money is really going...

      I have a maxed out nearly new Macbook Pro for work that I use for development (has Win7, Win8 and Fedora 18 on it, etc). When the company decided all email and corp network services had to be accessed from a locked-down managed machine, they wanted to reinstall and remove admin rights for it. But since they couldn't support Parallels, etc (or a lot of other tools developers were using) they just gave everyone a shiny new maxed out Macbook Pro JUST FOR EMAIL. So I now have a $3000 email terminal.

    149. Re:Advancing in what direction? by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Wow so you have a corporate image for the standard machine on a Macbook Pro. That's pretty funny. I'm sort of surprised you have Macs and have a lock-down managed system. Usually when the company goes BYOD / Mac the lockdown crowd is losing power inside of IT infrastructure.

    150. Re:Advancing in what direction? by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      Let's see, we have a mac pro for 3 grand with Intel Xeon E5 with 10MB L3 cache and Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz. It also has 12GB (three 4GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory and has capability of up to 64GB. In addition there are Dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics processors with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM each. You can connect up to 3 4K displays or 6 thunderbolt displays. Find me a laptop that is the equal of that for 3 thousand dollars.

    151. Re:Advancing in what direction? by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      Yea I did some research and see where youre coming from, and that I was mistaken. It seems like this new gen of Macs may be a pretty good deal-- but only because of the graphics cards, and because they constitute the biggest share of the cost.

      If I had to guess, theyre getting special pricing on those parts (which, as I understand it, are glorified and slightly tweaked 7970s) which helps Apple (because they get this exclusive pricing on parts that are guaranteed supported by AutoCAD etc), and helps AMD (because theyre selling what are basically 7970s for close to their FirePro markup),

      The one thing I wonder is whether the pricing on all of these parts will change in the next 2 months-- the first Mac Pros apparently dont ship till february, and Ive seen no indication that you can buy actual D500 / D700s yet. But nevertheless Im a bit impressed / intrigued by this.

    152. Re: Advancing in what direction? by phayes · · Score: 1

      What? You weren't there with Grace Hopper teaching her Cobol too? Not whispering in Woz's ear when he was designing the first Apples? Anonymous Cowards have sub zero credibility, coward.

      Upgrading the GPUs in a Mac pro is done by buying a Pro with the requisite GPU & selling the old one & nobody cares what you claim to have read in the ebook tea leaves. In 6 years you will still be wearing those PCI diapers & whining about how constricting they are when everyone else will be using faster more modular hardware.

      --
      Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    153. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I simply don't understand why Apple has such a hard on for their systems looking like an octopus.

      So you don't think it's a good idea to stencil a cartoon schoolgirl on the case then?

    154. Re: Advancing in what direction? by phayes · · Score: 1

      How surprising, an ignorant Anonymous Coward. I know dozens of people that own only a tablet. They are just the thing to offer an older relative so that they can perform the limited Internet access (web/music/video/ebooks/skype/facetime) they want reliably and more importantly easy to use. Tell us, Coward, was it the falling sales of desktops over the last decade that gave you you particular insight or did you come up with it on your own?

      --
      Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    155. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      he first Mac Pros apparently dont ship till february

      They are shipping now.

    156. Re:Advancing in what direction? by fastasleep · · Score: 1

      Or just get a Thunderbolt eSATA interface, I got one for $129 I think?

    157. Re:Advancing in what direction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Work full time as a Digitech onsite with ex. monitor and 27 inch iMac loaded into Pelican case. We are upgrading all our systems to the new MPro. The gain in processing outputs for offsite creation of magazine inlays is going to save the cost of the machine in 11 jobs, which will take roughly two months.

      This is 2013 and many people still drag all sorts of hardware offsite. Mine goes to California, Baja, Hawaii, and sometimes SE Asia each year. This is EXACTLY the reason I want to carry a MP around. The new size.

  4. Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The whole superiority of Apple might have been true many years ago, but now it's just nonsense. You can get a Windows machine with the same hardware specs for half the price with the same software (unless you insist on using Final Cut).

    Video editing in particular is a poor example, as it doesn't have critical latency requirements - and pretty much all recent benchmarks show that Windows does a little better across the board.

    Audio is a better example, because on an unmodified Windows install, live audio WILL have worse latency and WILL have a very high chance of dropouts when compared to Apple. A tweaked Windows install will be on par.

    I am no MS shill - I just believe in using the right tool for the job, and fanboys by definition don't believe in facts.

    1. Re:Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sometimes you just want something cool and fun, and you buy a Rolex instead of a Casio, or a Ferrari instead of a Volvo.

    2. Re:Video editing... by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are confusing tools for professionals with overpriced doo-dads intended to fool other people into believing that you are wealthy.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re: Video editing... by tysonedwards · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've just specced out a Dell, and the Dell is $1016 more expensive. Add to that, the Mac Pro only consumes 450w versus the Dell's 1500w, which in turn will save $1040/year in power. While the others will probably come down in price in a few weeks to months, at this moment Apple does have the edge on price. Now, when you compare to build-it-yourself, you are absolutely correct that Apple is more expensive, but so is everyone else too.

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    4. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Equivalent video cards alone cost $1400 or so, so you most definitely cannot build an equivalent pc or half the price. Perhaps you could wind up cheaper, but not nearly by as much as you suggest.

    5. Re: Video editing... by hawguy · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've just specced out a Dell, and the Dell is $1016 more expensive. Add to that, the Mac Pro only consumes 450w versus the Dell's 1500w, which in turn will save $1040/year in power.

      While the others will probably come down in price in a few weeks to months, at this moment Apple does have the edge on price.

      Now, when you compare to build-it-yourself, you are absolutely correct that Apple is more expensive, but so is everyone else too.

      I can believe the pricing (though I had a hard time finding a Dell with equivalent specs - can you post the configuration here?), but I'm having a hard time believing that a Dell with equivalent hardware specs to the Mac Pro uses 3 times more power, since the underlying hardware is, well, equivalent.

    6. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "You can get a Windows machine with the same hardware specs for half the price"

      No you can't. Nonsense. Bullshit.
      This is not some consumer kit. Roughly comparable Workstations from Dell and HP cost at least as much as the MacPro if not more.

    7. Re:Video editing... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      I don't see it. Just to test I configured a dell workstation and I'm within about 12% with a few things still worse.

    8. Re:Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Right you are, jedidiah.

      I need tools that work so I can do my job, that don't creatively reinterpret the "Universal" in "Universal Serial Bus", that don't break compatibility with mission-critical Firewire devices that were released within a reasonably recent timeframe, on which I can upgrade the graphics accelerator to keep improving productivity as time goes on. We don't just buy a new computer every year at work. We're lucky enough to get an upgrade every two or three years. And other companies aren't so lucky.

      It's past time to bite the bullet and switch to a platform that DOESN'T hang me out to dry... now if only it wasn't so expensive to switch... hard to convince the powers-that-be to relicense everything and buy new computers for a whole organization though... Apple did what they did, knowing it would lock us in.

    9. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everyone has their own preference, even professionals. Surprising right?

    10. Re: Video editing... by djdanlib · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you want to talk about power supplies... You are confusing the maximum available spec with the normal power draw of the system. I have an 800W power supply in my reasonably overpowered Wintel gaming box. It draws ~160W during normal use, up to 300W while gaming. Most people will be fine with a 450W power supply unless they add a whole bunch of extra hardware, especially hard drives. The other benefit you usually see with a higher-wattage power supply is that it's typically built with better power filtering and more efficient components, so you would save money with a more efficient power supply even though it is rated for higher maximum available power. It's not totally intuitive. The more you know!

    11. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The Dell consumes 1500W, or it has a 1500W power supply? Those are not the same thing.

    12. Re:Video editing... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 2

      Audio is a better example, because on an unmodified Windows install, live audio WILL have worse latency and WILL have a very high chance of dropouts when compared to Apple. A tweaked Windows install will be on par.

      My experience tells me otherwise: Regardless of how much I tinkered with it, Neither XP or 7 could deliver acceptable latency with either the Rocksmith 1/4" TS cable, nor my Korg K49.

      the 2008 model Macbook I was given, however, syncs both up perfectly; albeit not at the same time, but I'm pretty convinced that's either a software issue (Garageband seems to play better with multiple USB input devices than Logic), or just good ol' fashioned user incompetence.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    13. Re:Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The whole superiority of Apple might have been true many years ago, but now it's just nonsense. You can get a Windows machine with the same hardware specs for half the price with the same software (unless you insist on using Final Cut).

      Video editing in particular is a poor example, as it doesn't have critical latency requirements - and pretty much all recent benchmarks show that Windows does a little better across the board.

      Audio is a better example, because on an unmodified Windows install, live audio WILL have worse latency and WILL have a very high chance of dropouts when compared to Apple. A tweaked Windows install will be on par.

      I am no MS shill - I just believe in using the right tool for the job, and fanboys by definition don't believe in facts.

      You're missing 2 things:
      1) Someone in graphic design and certain other professions are almost expected to have Apple devices. It doesn't matter whether they're actually better or not, only that clients expect it. Since many of these guys rely on piece work for their income, appearances matter a lot.

      2) Apple tends to be a little forward thinking (lately) in display technology. The new Macbook Pro literally blows cheaper options out of the water on screen quality and resolution. Anything comparable costs almost as much or as much, so really, if you buy Apple you're paying for a screen. The iPhone kind of sucks now compared to other options, but iPad still boasts one of the best screens in the industry (again, comparable Android tablets cost just as much) and the Macbook Pro's screen is amazing, 2560x1600 (around 15 inches, probably over, diagonal iirc), additionally it's a high end LED (not sure if these still use IPS technology but they look just as good) and they offer matte again (finally).

      There are some asinine things about this laptop, Thunderbolt is certainly one of them, but all in all you can't find a comparable one for any cheaper, really. If you need that kind of oomph, yeah, get one.

    14. Re: Video editing... by jedidiah · · Score: 0

      > Everyone has their own preference, even professionals. Surprising right?

      Keep on feeding those excuses to yourself.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    15. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tyson, what Dell you "specced out" that had similar specs with the Mac and cost THAT much more? Could you provide the link? Because I have a hard time finding such a Dell machine, considering I could not find any ATI cards and the Nvidia ones they have for dual card setups are much more powerful to start with.

    16. Re: Video editing... by ttucker · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Price out buying a computer from dell, and then adding a commodity video card (remember only Apple stops you from doing this).

      Add to that, the Mac Pro only consumes 450w versus the Dell's 1500w,

      Neither computer even draws anywhere close to 450w in normal operation, probably closer to 150w at idle, and maybe a little higher when working. You have amusingly confused a lower quality PSU to a much higher quality one, and in true Apple fashion picked which ever one goes in the Macintosh as better. The Apple has lower peak power needs because it has no internal expansion space, so instead you will be bleeding power from the various wall warts and power dongles that come with external accessories.

    17. Re: Video editing... by HerculesMO · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Having a 450w PSU vs 1500w PSU doesn't mean that your computer will actually consume that much electricity.

      That said if you're insistent on buying the Apple is rather proves the point that intelligence is really not a required attribute of the buyers of that system.

      --
      The price is always right if someone else is paying.
    18. Re:Video editing... by guruevi · · Score: 1

      If you really care about video and audio latencies (live productions) you are not going to go DirectX. You'll need a decent FireWire stack to begin with which can't be found on Windows. Yes Mac for pre-packaged software, but more and more Linux as well especially on the rendering backend.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    19. Re: Video editing... by HerculesMO · · Score: 1

      Same here... I'm rather convinced he made the Dell more expensive in his head to justify his Apple purchase. You don't buy a PC for more than a Mac with similar hardware specs, unless it's an Alienware or something.

      --
      The price is always right if someone else is paying.
    20. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's the problem with iHating lapdogs. They think they know better.

      Apple's price-point is on-par, and in many instances far cheaper than what one can attain with a custom-build PC. Just sheer stupidity on their part. It makes me wonder if these cheaptards are really that delusional to think they can part one together EXACTLY spec-to-spec at 1/2 or 1/4 the cost.

      Morons.

    21. Re:Video editing... by Wovel · · Score: 1

      Link one then. Seriously. You can't do it. You can't even come close.

    22. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Coming from a known Linux fanboi? Nothing you say can sway me. Why not tell us again why GIMP is just as good as Photoshop too...

    23. Re: Video editing... by LDAPMAN · · Score: 1

      I'll bet your missing something in your comparative specs. Are you using a PCI connected SSD that can do >1GB/sec?

    24. Re: Video editing... by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      > Coming from a known Linux fanboi? Nothing you say can sway me. Why not tell us again why GIMP is just as good as Photoshop too...

      The main problem with Photoshop is that a poser like you doesn't have the money to spend on it.

      Like I said. Keep on repeating the excuses you need to tell yourself. Never lose faith with your chosen brand. Never question it.

      That's the best way to ensure it will always serve you well.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    25. Re: Video editing... by thestuckmud · · Score: 2

      FWIW, the Mac Pro (base model) is said to consume 40W at idle. It is also very quiet.

    26. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right. My Hackintosh has a 600W power supply. But when I check the actual consumption, its 65W during low level work, 160W under real heavy load.

    27. Re:Video editing... by akinliat · · Score: 1

      Or you could even spend an extra $40 on your "Windows" box and buy a copy of MacOS. Then you could run wahtever Mac software you wanted and still pay half the price for the hardware.

      It astonishes me that anyone actually believes that Mac hardware is somehow superior -- they're Foxconn boards fer Chrissake.

    28. Re:Video editing... by StripedCow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      [quote]
      You are confusing tools for professionals with overpriced doo-dads intended to fool other people into believing that you are wealthy.
      [/quote]

      Annual cost of a dog: $695 (http://xkcd.com/980/)
      Cost of an iPhone: $699

      A daily pack of cigarettes per year: $3,050
      Cost of a Mac Pro: $2,999

      Ergo, Apple products do not make you look wealthy.

      --
      If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
    29. Re: Video editing... by ttucker · · Score: 1

      That is a pretty impressive idle load. Any fair comparison would still include whatever external devices are needed to compliment the computer though.

    30. Re:Video editing... by NIK282000 · · Score: 1

      You are confusing tools for professionals with overpriced doo-dads intended to fool other people into believing that you are wealthy.

      Wait, now I'm confused, are you talking about the ferrari or the mac?

      --
      Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
    31. Re:Video editing... by riskkeyesq · · Score: 2

      Your post indicates that you are not a video professional, so you can run along, this product is not designed for you. The right tools for many video production houses are FCP and this product. And please, shill, do post your "recent benchmarks" that show "Windows does a little better".

    32. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When you call ECC RAM and the RAS features of Xeon "overpriced doodads" you should surrender your geek card.

      This thing is what it is, a high end Intel workstation. Don't blindly attack it because of the brand, Dell will probably make a copycat in a year for you to jerk off to, with the same features and we can throw the same attacks at it because it will always be "the same but cheaper" if we call things like ECC just a doodad.

    33. Re:Video editing... by Swampash · · Score: 1

      If you worry about how much it costs, you are not Apple's target market.

    34. Re: Video editing... by dk20 · · Score: 1

      Who said anything about being fair?

      This is about comparing a mac with an SSD and everything else external vs any other computer which has the devices internal.
      I personally think this is a throwback to the old mac days when they had nice looking computers but UGLY devices all daisy-chained together to get it functional.

    35. Re:Video editing... by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 1

      I've been regularly accused of being a MS Shill, and it's unfortunate because it discredits this very argument when I present it. Outside of a personal preference with your OS Workflow for creatives, I have not supported an enterprise environment (or small business, for that matter) that had a justifiable need for Apple workstations in the last 5 years. If you want to use this overpriced designer hardware, be my guest and BYOD. I'll even give you DMZ Internet access. But if you expect the office to pay for your computer, it's going to have a PC logo on the front, Active Directory in the back, and a fully licensed copy of the industry standard application for your job. It's nauseating how many creatives act like I've dropped a dead fish on their desk when they see a Windows box - the only good news is decent creative is a supply-saturated market now, and most companies just won't put up with that crap.

      --
      Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
    36. Re:Video editing... by dk20 · · Score: 1

      Doesnt apple's "record profits and industry's best profit margins" prove they are better then what foxconn puts in other systems?

    37. Re:Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Video editing in particular is a poor example, as it doesn't have critical latency requirements - and pretty much all recent benchmarks show that Windows does a little better across the board.

      What benchmarks? No sane OS is a bottleneck for video editing. Pretty sure I could set a SAN as a framestore and edit 4k dpx using shell scripts if I so chose.

      Audio is a better example, because on an unmodified Windows install, live audio WILL have worse latency and WILL have a very high chance of dropouts when compared to Apple. A tweaked Windows install will be on par.

      On par with what? Apple machines (aside from a hiccup with the G3) have proper shielding on the switched mode supply to minimise RF. This was always a crap shoot with PC's -- even ones sold as "multimedia workstations".

      I am no MS shill - I just believe in using the right tool for the job, and fanboys by definition don't believe in facts.

      You don't even appear to know what the facts are. I'd agree that Apple do not currently offer a serious, workstation class machine for high-end professional use. How Microsoft Windows could possibly factor into that discussion I have no idea.

    38. Re: Video editing... by LordLimecat · · Score: 0

      THeres also an efficiency curve; powersupplies tend to be the most efficient somewhere around 1/2 of their rated power. Drop too low (using 50W on a 1000W PSU) and the efficiency plummets. Go too close to the limit and it can also drop. See here for an example:
      http://www.anandtech.com/show/2624/3
      On that 900W PSU, peak efficiency was hit with consumption between 450 and 750W, with a modest drop around 800W and a nosedive below 200W.

    39. Re: Video editing... by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      FWIW anything using a recent Intel CPU, low-power dimms, and an SSD is going to run very quite and use very little power. Stop giving Apple credit for the CPU and SSD.

    40. Re: Video editing... by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

      THe claims about Mac's supposedly superior power consumption are hillarious. Ive seen like 3 or 4 people post here about how awesome the new Mac Pro's 44W power usage metric are.

      NEWS FLASH: All Haswell-based platforms are going to have incredible power consumption:
      http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel-core-i74770k-i54560k-tested/2

    41. Re: Video editing... by Cwix · · Score: 1

      My Alienware has better specs then the new MBP. On top of that I bought it a year ago, and it cost less.

      --
      You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
    42. Re:Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "You can get a Windows machine with the same hardware specs for half the price with the same software (unless you insist on using Final Cut)." First of all, this isn't true on hardware - and it certainly wasn't true last summer before the lastest round of try-to-copy-apple. I recently broke down and bought a Mac Air to replace my old Windows XP netbook. The Air is awesome. Before getting it I looked a LONG time at Windows machines which could match it on simply a hardware base. I couldn't find one, based mainly on reviews, which was clearly even as good -- especially taking into account reliability of all the subsystem hardware (e.g., Haswell Windows 8 boxes with poor touchpads or other defects are common; and then there was the unsurpassed battery life, etc. and general convenience of having a vendor who has open stores where I can go in for help as opposed to a web only presence where nobody answers and few answers can actually be found).

      And then we get into software issues. I had never had an OSX machine before, although I had experience with Unix a few decades back. The software performance and overall smoothness of function of OSX is vastly, vastly better than Windows 8.

      And then there is the layers upon layers of bloatware and Microsoft-wanna-be-Google "features" which aren't features at all in my book, but just another hook.

      Am I totally delighted with my Mac Air? No, I can imagine some improvements and don't like things such as Apple wanting to run everyone through their iTunes and AppStore (e.g., iPhoto downloads photos from my iPhone but won't allow me to upload them? How transparently control-freak obnoxious is that?)

      But on the whole? Compared to alternatives even now and, especially, at the time? Apple dramatically raised the bar with Mac Air. Again. And the competition -- especially weighted down by Windows 8 - really isn't competition. At least not yet.

    43. Re:Video editing... by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      " You can get a Windows machine with the same hardware specs for half the price "

      no you cant. Show me a build of the mac pro with Two of the equivalent video cards for HALF PRICE. Because if you do you will make a lot of people really happy.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    44. Re: Video editing... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Like all those idiot auto mechanics that buy Snap On tools instead of the exact same tool from harbor freight at 1/20th the price?

      Those china made $0.50US screwdrivers are just as good as the $5.95 Snap on screwdrivers.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    45. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a complete LIE. The videocard in the MBP has more power than your crap alienware.

    46. Re:Video editing... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Want to see worse? Install Ubuntu Linux and enjoy the horrid audio delays. you have to rip out all the audio subsystems to get the latency down. Pulseaudio is utter garbage for anything other than playing email notifications.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    47. Re: Video editing... by jcr · · Score: 0

      All Haswell-based platforms are going to have incredible power consumption

      Not quite. The Haswell processors make it possible to save a lot of power if the OS is smart about it, but you don't get it just by choosing the CPU. Watch the "Energy Best Practices" session from the last WWDC for the details.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    48. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, man, you look like a good fellow, I have these cables lying around, can sell you a few for cheap. They sound better, but it's not totally intuitive

    49. Re: Video editing... by thestuckmud · · Score: 1

      I'm just going by reviews that use superlatives like "insanely quiet". Apple claims an impressive 12bDA at idle, which is going to be hard to hear even with the unit on top of a desk, but it is easy to turn the fans off at idle. I am assuming that the unique thermal design is really being exploited to minimize fan noise.

      I disagree that about the competition being "very quiet". Quiet in a relative way, sure, but not as quiet as I would like. For reference, consider the recent Xeon powered HP workstation (non-liquid-cooled) under my desk for reference. It is actually quite nice compared to the screaming hair dryer fans of old, but, under load, the whooshing of air through it is plainly audible even with a gas fireplace fan blasting away 2m from my ears. Turning off the HP under these circumstances gives me a sense of relief from its noise. Compare that with this description: "during an Apple demo, a high-end Mac Pro, complete with upgraded processor and graphics cards, was live-rendering multiple 4K videos, and we couldn’t hear the fan over the normal room noises."

    50. Re: Video editing... by djdanlib · · Score: 1

      Hey, man, you look like a good fellow, I have these cables lying around, can sell you a few for cheap. They sound better, but it's not totally intuitive

      Oh please, my AudioQuest cables heard that joke coming, with supremely high clarity, before you told it.

    51. Re:Video editing... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

      Been there, done that, took it out back and put 'er down for the good of the pack.

      I did manage to find a version of PuppyStudio with the RT kernel that actually works (as opposed to the 100 or so PuppyStudio ISO files that are, in fact, completely unusable shit); looks promising, but to be honest haven't really had much chance to mess with it.

      The Macbook I have just does audio production so damn good right out of the box (and it's only on Leopard!), I'm hard pressed to go back to my old method - spending so much time configuring Windows and Linux boxes I never get the chance to actually record anything.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    52. Re: Video editing... by amanaplanacanalpanam · · Score: 1

      You have amusingly confused a lower quality PSU to a much higher quality one

      I agree with your post in essence, but take exception to your word choice here; PSU power rating does not determine quality. As it's generally accepted that PSU's are most efficient when under moderately heavy load relative to its rated maximum (the sweet spot of course varies) high quality PSU's exist in a range of power ratings to accommodate a range of load needs. It makes little sense to throw a 1500W-capable PSU at a system that will never peak over 450W.

    53. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you unironically explaining your own rationalization philosophy to us?

    54. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WTF are you talking about? There are no Foxconn boards. Every logic board, every gfx card in iMacs, MacBooks and now macpros is custom made by Apple. This is not hardware you could buy on newegg or anywhere else

    55. Re: Video editing... by the_B0fh · · Score: 4, Funny

      I just submitted a link earlier today - the Appleinsider guys spec'ed out a build it yourself computer with the same specs as the high end $10k Mac Pro and it ended up costing them $14,300. That, and your $1k/year in power savings, is quite a bit of TCO savings, for someone who can use that kind of a system.

      http://slashdot.org/submission/3217733/high-end-mac-pro-is-40-cheaper-than-what-you-can-build-it-for

    56. Re: Video editing... by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Come on, don't you know, Apple doesn't innovate, and if Apple ever makes a claim, it's just because it's standard industry stuff they use, and everyone else's stuff is just as good.

      Go on, just get your generic white box, it'll be just as good as a Mac Pro, he promised it!

    57. Re: Video editing... by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      How heavy is your Alienware again? Or is extra weight not a spec?

    58. Re: Video editing... by sciencewhiz · · Score: 1

      Price out buying a computer from dell, and then adding a commodity video card (remember only Apple stops you from doing this).

      Have you priced out an equivalent commodity video card? It isn't the $200 video card from Best Buy.

    59. Re: Video editing... by ApplePy · · Score: 2

      No.

      Sorry, but no. Harbor Freight shit is nowhere near SnapOn.

      You obviously do not use tools to make your living, or you wouldn't utter such nonsense.

      Unless you're being facetious... maybe? :)

      --
      That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
    60. Re:Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Annual cost of a dog: $695 (http://xkcd.com/980/)
      Cost of an iPhone: $699

      You have seriously undervalued the wealth of a friend ready to greet you with a happy tail wag at the end of a shitty day.

    61. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe the poster's assumption of 150w idling is a very old figure. That was standard a long time ago but even my aging dualcore doesn't go over 40w. Low enough that I installed a controller on the front so I can drop all power to the fans since passive cooling is enough.

    62. Re:Video editing... by sydneyfong · · Score: 1

      Annual cost of a [human] friend: $0 (well, real friends anyway)

      --
      Don't quote me on this.
    63. Re:Video editing... by akinliat · · Score: 1

      Well, no, it doesn't. In fact it proves nothing of any sort when it comes to the quality of the hardware, though it may suggest that they are using cheap hardware, and thus reaping massive profits from their huge markup.

      Apple's success is in marketing, and they deilberately market their products to the most vulnerable, least technically-informed demographic so that they can use Foxconn boards and other low-end hardware without their customers realizing the extent of the ripoff.

    64. Re:Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Real pros use Avid, not Final Cut.

    65. Re:Video editing... by dk20 · · Score: 1

      Evidently you missed the fact i was being sarcastic ;)

    66. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the only difference tween a pro card and a gamer card is its firmware and resource allocation, buy a 300$ card, flash it and boom 1400$ card

    67. Re:Video editing... by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      Apple's success is in marketing, and they deilberately market their products to the most vulnerable, least technically-informed demographic so that they can use Foxconn boards and other low-end hardware without their customers realizing the extent of the ripoff.

      Now compare to Samsung, which spends three times as much on marketing, and just recently has been found cheating on benchmarks, banned frrom some benchmark publications, and fined for paying people to write fake bad reviews of competitor products.

    68. Re: Video editing... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      "You obviously do not use tools to make your living, or you wouldn't utter such nonsense."

      Just like any of the complete idiots that claim a cheap Dell is the same as a Mac Pro.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    69. Re:Video editing... by akinliat · · Score: 1

      Dang it, that's what tags are for!

      More seriously, and in my defense, it's exactly the sort of comment I've come to expect from Apple fanboys. My apologies for having confused you with one.

    70. Re:Video editing... by akinliat · · Score: 1

      I wasn't suggesting that Apple is the only company that is a front for a marketing agency, though they are among the most egregious. Microsoft, for instance, owes its success almost entirely to marketing, as its flagship product has always been mediocre at best. It's become the norm in the modern marketplace to substitute marketing for product quality as a way to gain market share.

      What Apple does, though, as I mentioned above, is deliberately target those who are technically illiterate. By marketing themselves as stylish and easy-to-use, they've focused on the artsy-hipsters-and-grandparents demographic. You would never catch Apple cheating on a benchmark, because their target market wouldn't know a benchmark if it slapped them in the face. Apple's approach has always been to limit choices as much as possible ('just give them one button") so that any moron can use it. Seems like it works.

    71. Re: Video editing... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Watts = volts * amps.

      The voltage will be constant (depending on what country you're in) - either 115V or 230V. Well, we'll hope it's constant, or you're replacing that power supply.

      The power supply draws the current (amps) needed at that particular moment. It is not constant. An idling computer will draw FAR less amperage than one that is busing working on something. The Dell may be rated at 1500W, but will be pulling much less than that on average.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    72. Re: Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it doesn't.

      Hint: Xeon != Core i7.

    73. Re:Video editing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, because running a business on software where you aren't complying with the licensing agreement is a great strategy.

      We're talking about a PROFESSIONAL machine here.

  5. Not a great value, in my opinion by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 4, Informative

    - Only a single CPU, despite using the more expensive line of dual-CPU capable Xeon E5 processors (so you are paying for the added circuitry to handle dual procs without the corresponding benefit).

    - Dual video cards, despite this not being a gaming system. Granted, some media editing applications can utilize multiple GPUs for computing - like Adobe Premiere Pro CC - but many cannot, and even ones that can don't necessarily get a doubling of performance from the second card.

    - Only room inside for a single drive, so any serious storage has to be external (adding wires and cluttering up things, rather than saving space like this small form factor seems to be designed for).

    - 64GB of RAM maximum, despite the CPU's ability to handle more.

    - Upgrades overpriced... and this is coming from someone who works at a custom system builder, and we sometimes get dinged by folks for charging more than Newegg. Obviously things like labor, support, warranty, etc have to be factored into the parts costs, but Apple charges more than any other company I've seen for that 'value add' (this is not new news, though - just a continuation of what they have always done).

    I've already had customers of mine asking for price and performance comparisons, and the good news? We always come out on top! I love PCs :)

    --
    William George
    1. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Informative

      Only a single CPU, despite using the more expensive line of dual-CPU capable Xeon E5 processors (so you are paying for the added circuitry to handle dual procs without the corresponding benefit).

      This is a bit of a bummer, but I think they nonetheless went with the Xeons over the desktop-class Intel processors because of the support for ECC RAM.

    2. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by geekoid · · Score: 1

      price performance to do what?
      Blade servers would be far better than PCs.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    3. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      They could have gone with the cheaper Xeons. Not all the Xeons are dual-socket.

    4. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by phayes · · Score: 1

      He gets to crow "My PC is more powerful than a Mac Pro". Wow, how impressive...

      On a side note: Way to go Timothy, flamebait in the header, of course nobody expects anything better from you given your track record.

      --
      Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    5. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Despite my lack of interest in Apple products and video editing, I actually did read the fucking article.

      Adobe Premier doesn't use the second video card. It barely uses the first one. It pegs the CPU.

      Apparently Final Cut X (whatever that is) is the only video editing software that features optimizations that make use of all this hardware. It's apparently wicked fast, but people hate Final Cut X. Apparently, Final Cut 7 was great, but X blows, despite running like a champ on this system.

      My head did almost asplode when I saw the price tag, though. I guess the barebones model isn't that overpriced at $3k, but the configurations they mention weighing in around $10k sound like hilariously bad deals.

      --
      Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
    6. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Wovel · · Score: 1

      I am going out on a limb and saying you did not read even one of the reviews. Stay safe in your bubble of ignorance.

    7. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Holi · · Score: 1

      And no Crossfire support.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    8. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Wovel · · Score: 1

      The GPU difference with Premiere stems from Adobe's mistaken focus on CUDA over OpenCL. They have since stated they working to remedy the problem.

    9. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 1

      Or Apple's mistaken focus on OpenCL over CUDA. Unfortunately, Apple have not indicated that they will remedy the problem.

      Your logic cuts both ways. Don't hate, though, as I have no horse in the game. I don't do computing-on-a-video-card, nor do I love/hate Adobe or Apple. Actually, scratch that; now that I think of it, I really do hate Adobe.

      --
      Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
    10. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by LDAPMAN · · Score: 1

      And for the fact that the Xeons can keep cranking under load long after an i7 would have to throttle down to keep from overheating.

    11. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      - This machine is focused mostly towards video use. Much of the software lately supports, or is gaining support for OpenCL in which case using the GPU's provides way better performance then the CPU.

      - Applications that support OpenCL (should) take advantage of all GPU's available in the system that support it. While there are currently some exceptions (ie, Premiere will only use a single GPU when previewing video, though it will use all of them when rendering), having the two gpus is a really good thing. This machine is not designed for gaming, so anyone that even thinks of that first, has no idea what this machine is intended for. Can't wait to check out Resolve on this thing.

      - Looking at my system most of my storage is already external. All I need internally is a boot drive, a small place to put my home directory and some really fast storage for multi cam work. This new machine has all of that. Fast external storage (via the TB ports) is where its at. Most pro houses will use external storage anyway (external raids and/or SANs). It makes it easier to move projects between machines/departments and even take with you on the road to a clients. I'm happy that I'll finally have a good way of sharing fast storage between my desktop and laptop (Pegasus2 via TB). Good bye flakey eSata/USB3 cards.

      - The machine will support whatever amount of RAM the CPU supports. Right now I believe the maximum chip size for Registered ECC memory is 16gb, thus the 64gb current limit. Sure they could have added more then 4 slots, but considering the 12gb of total VRAM for video applications, 64gb should be enough to hold just about anyone over for a while.

    12. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Overzeetop · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know, if you don't put your computer in a miniature trashcan, you can install a more efficient cooling system.

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    13. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by LDAPMAN · · Score: 1

      Whatever cooling system you use, the Xeons will keep cranking longer than the i7. It's one of the key things thats different about the chips.

    14. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Apple switches between nvidia and ati every generation of notebooks. The frequency of switching video card makes it possible for Apple to remain agile and gives Apple some leverage against the manufacturers.

      Since a good/consistent implementation of OpenGL is extremely important for Apple because its whole GUI uses it to its 3D acceleration to its fullest, Apple also had to create its own OpenGL drivers (probably with help from nvidia, ati and intel).

      When Apple saw GPU as a good way to increase the performance of their own software/platform they wanted an API that was like OpenGL, not depended on a API that is designed for a single manufacturer (CUDA is for nvidia only). So they decided to create their own open specification, OpenCL.

      Many of their high performance libraries and their applications now use OpenCL, so many Apple software actually will use those graphics cards to their fullest.

    15. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 1

      While that seems like a savvy business decision, it seems like this article is suggesting that it's a decision that has had a negative impact on customer experiences. Apparently, among third-party developers, CUDA is more widely supported than OpenCL.

      My post, however, was meant as a cheap shot at Wovel, as his biased claim blames Adobe for this situation when it would be just as valid to blame Apple.

      --
      Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
    16. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by bussdriver · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Final Cut Pro X changed the game significantly which upset all the entrenched pros. The changes take relearning and people do not like that unless they were really upset with their previous workflow (like everybody was before FCP, even Avid which was great but it cost way too much!) People liked their FCP 7 workflow.

      The main reason pros were upset with Final Cut Pro is they removed all the hardware and high end features from the software. Your expensive camera gear was rendered useless because FCPX was file based and didn't care about film or magnetic tapes which all the pros had much more money invested in. The Mac and FCP is cheap compared to all the other gear.

      Pros who make $$ think little of blowing $10k on a new workstation. Apple ALWAYS has high end configurations for people who just want the maxed out system and money is not an issue...

      As for the base models, Apple has always had static pricing and rarely lowers price points during the life of the model. When they introduce something it usually has a fair market price with the PC world, on rare occasions it is better. I've spec'd out PCs with the same stuff and they can come out to be more-- usually because Apple has some unusual option that costs a bundle to replicate. I can't buy workstation cards like those for the prices apple is getting them at. I have a workstation card NOW and even though it is 6 years old it beats the stock GPUs that come with many new consumer machines.

      When I was in the tv industry, we would retask or just resell the mac -- macs have crazy resale value! You don't need to upgrade anything, just buy new and ebay the old model-- it'll cost you less, if you value your time-- I've had times where it only cost $250 to upgrade to the newer mac. Also, the benefits of going from a $1500 GPU to the next $1500 every year are not usually worth it... (but selling the old card it likely going to cost you as much as if you just did the whole mac at the same time.)

    17. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Apple likes to throw in the odd unusual server class part to make comparisons harder. If you look at the benchmarks in typical workstation applications it makes no sense, but now it's much harder to compare to other manufacturer's hardware and difficult to cost match since most people selling Xeon based systems are making servers.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      I call bullshit. You find me a FirePro W9000 for less than $3k each.

    19. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Why? I had submitted this earlier, but basically, the high end video cards are equivalent to the AMD FirePro 9000s, which has a street price of $3,400 each. They tried to do a build-your-own and see how much it would cost. If you are in the market for a 12 core Xeon with 2 AMD FirePro 9000s, and 64GB ECC Ram, and 1TB of PCIe Flash, it will cost you $14k and change.

      http://slashdot.org/submission/3217733/high-end-mac-pro-is-40-cheaper-than-what-you-can-build-it-for

    20. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by wavedeform · · Score: 1

      Or Apple's mistaken focus on OpenCL over CUDA. Unfortunately, Apple have not indicated that they will remedy the problem.

      Well, Apple is pushing an open API that will run on lots of hardware, while nvidia is pushing an API tied to their hardware. I think everyone would benefit with a widely supported open API.

    21. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Overzeetop · · Score: 1

      But not for thermal reasons, I presume, as you implied. If I keep the chip at a constant 35C, I presume it will last just as long.

      I understand that the xeons have larger caches and are enabled for multi-processor systems (which is a logical and/or licensing limitation of the i7s, not a physical one). As a result they do better on certain operations. You can also get them with more cores than an i7. The performance increase is not justified by the price UNLESS you have to have a base level of performance which exceeds that of a single, top of the line i7 with cooling. I deal with CAD workstations and we struggle with this artificial price cliff every upgrade: will we realize an actual increase in productivity which justifies a $4000 workstation compared to an $1200 desktop with the components which matter for our work. In rare cases, the workstation wins out - leaving a technician picking his nose for 20 extra minutes during a render can add up to be worth while. As server versions of software rendering are coming online (everything old is new again!) we're pushing intensive processes on to remote machines to allow manpower to work on other projects during that render.

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    22. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In fact the base 4- and 6-core CPU's Apple is using the new Mac Pros are NOT dual-socket capable! It's only the 8- and 12-core upgrades that are dual socket capable. And how many 8+ core Xeons are in Intel's current lineup that are only single socket capable? Oh, NONE.

    23. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it is true that if they wanted a single socket solution with >6 cores Intel doesn't have a product specifically for that. I just don't understand why they didn't stick with the dual socket setup that past Mac Pros have used, and most other high-end pro-grade workstations also offer. Or maybe offer both, with the dual CPUs in a larger version of the round chassis? Anyway, just another example of the limited selection and choices you get with Apple products.

      --
      William George
    24. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      This is not true - the Xeons and Core series chips that are built on the same tech generations perform almost identically in terms of heat and processing power. The Xeons can use ECC memory, which most of the Core series cannot, but there is no difference in heat generation or whatnot. A properly built Core i7 workstation can keep going - even with TurboBoost'd speeds - indefinitely, you just need to right sort of cooling in place (which is also true of the Xeons).

      --
      William George
    25. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      I didn't read that part of the article, but if the Mac version of Premiere Pro doesn't use dual GPUs then that is unfortunate. The PC version definitely can, though you only notice the difference when working with resolutions above 1080P:

      http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-Professional-GPU-Acceleration-502/#4k(Custom)Results

      --
      William George
    26. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      Hmm, are they really that powerful? It seems odd that Apple would overcharge for the RAM, the CPU options, the SSD... but then drastically under-price the video cards. Something else is going on there, methinks.

      --
      William George
    27. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      Not in full, no - I mostly look at the specs and prices (the price increase to upgrade from one part to another, specifically). The story is all there, in terms of value.

      --
      William George
    28. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      You are not understanding what is written. I was showing one component cost on the market. All the components together costs $14,300.

      Apple does not break out the costs of individual components. So there is no overcharging or undercharging the way you are stating it. If anything, Apple is undercharging for the most part.

    29. Re:Not a great value, in my opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dual video cards, despite this not being a gaming system. Granted, some media editing applications can utilize multiple GPUs for computing - like Adobe Premiere Pro CC - but many cannot, and even ones that can don't necessarily get a doubling of performance from the second card.

      OpenCL (the general purpose compute language that Apple has supported for 4 years now) uses any OpenCL-capable GPU you have in the system automatically. If a piece of software uses OpenCL (and many in non-linear video edit do) automatically get a HUGE gain from having multi-GPU. Adobe will have to do a small patch for Premiere and they're off to the races, as they use a whitelist scheme for what GPUs they offload to. Final Cut is already there, as it's published by the same company that makes this pro workstation.

      Just because you know how to screw a motherboard into a case doesn't mean you understand pro graphics, pro audio, or pro video. It's a completely different world than the slap-and-tickle gamer PCs.

  6. Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by Assmasher · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...coming from someone with a 2012 Mac Pro dual hex core.

    I know it's been said before, but for God's sake people - paying Apple's RIDICULOUS prices for SSD, RAM, processors, is just insane.

    I like OSX, and Apple's laptops are sometimes the best choice, but as a desktop or dev box? Last choice by a wide margin. I only had to buy one for very specific (unhappy about it) reason and hopefully will never need to buy one again.

    Just an example of the obscene pricing from Apple, 24GB of RAM from Apple was going to cost me almost $2000 at the time. TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS. I bought better RAM, ending up with 26GB, with better performance and all the same trimmings (ECC et cetera), and it cost me $400.

    I wonder if their SSDs are made out of solid gold as well... Oh, and good luck with upgrading your graphics card in a year.

    --
    Loading...
    1. Re:Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by oodaloop · · Score: 1

      I sometimes joke with my Apple fanboi friends that they're paying four times as much for something twice as good. But it's worse than that, isn't it?

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    2. Re: Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by tysonedwards · · Score: 1, Informative

      You are incorrect.
      32GB is $400.
      64GB is $1200.

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    3. Re: Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by Assmasher · · Score: 1

      No I'm not.

      I'm clearly talking about when I bought the one sitting in my office.

      --
      Loading...
    4. Re:Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Yes. Paying $200 to upgrade my iPhone from 16g to 64g which probably ran Apple about $30... Apple is usually overall high but reasonable but on some things total robbery.

    5. Re: Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 1

      Buy 3, get -1 free?

      --
      Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
    6. Re:Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by OzPeter · · Score: 1

      paying Apple's RIDICULOUS prices for SSD, RAM, processors, is just insane.

      Which is why my next Apple desktop will most likely be a mac mini and not an iMac, and I doubt I will get another MacBook Pro (even a refurbed one)

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    7. Re:Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by LDAPMAN · · Score: 4, Informative

      Try again... Go price a PCI connected SSD that can do 1200MB/sec. There are several available from Intel, FusionIO, and others. You will find that they are more expensive than what apple is offering. A 1TB Intel is around $3500

    8. Re:Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by LDAPMAN · · Score: 2

      Actually, it's worse than I thought. An 800GB intel is $4575.
        http://www.serversdirect.com/components/drives?PageSize=10&CurrentPage=1&f=d009c317-95b0-4676-9937-fbe4692b623f+bde97a67-549f-4493-aa82-c2512f98619c|6e112ca4-0f29-4068-82df-54be3f465864+6cf1a74d-d93b-4765-b5cb-9e4e2c2c8cf6|9b473e27-c1d5-42f3-b1ea-553fd08ee8e5+559396bd-4999-4f6f-8f25-c1bc348fd49f|060c2fbe-a817-491e-a78f-e50acef28521+8451ff7a-4982-445a-8ad7-ad4f609de97b|

    9. Re:Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Stupidity is bringing up the same tired "Mac Pro is overpriced" while not providing one provable real-world system that can be made cheaper to the 1/2 - 1/4 price discount. Everyone parting one together ALWAYS has compromises.

      You guys talk a lot, but say little.

    10. Re: Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by Wovel · · Score: 0

      Congratulations!

    11. Re: Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      please read more carefully before discrediting someone:

      They wrote: "from Apple was going to cost me almost $2000 at the time"

    12. Re: Sheer ridiculous stupidity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Congratulations!

      Wow, great response asshole!

  7. Except by geekoid · · Score: 1

    their are better (i.e. more powerful) systems for the same or less money for video and animation rendering. I don't really know who this is for. It cost the same or more then professional high grade systems and is less powerful. It it's performance is more then would ever be used by high end games.

    No, I'm not a hater I just see any good business case for having one.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    1. Re: Except by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong.

  8. I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by maroberts · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...and produce a new 17"+ MacBook Pro with Retina display quality

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
    Karma: Chameleon

    1. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      They aren't going to. 17" macbook didn't sell well. There isn't the demand.

    2. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by koan · · Score: 1

      I have one, 2009 Macbook pro, bought it when I worked at Apple so I got it at ~$1000 (fully stocked too).
      Would I pay list price? Fuck no.

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    3. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 2

      Quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Do 17" laptops still exist?

      Yup, my wife has a 17" Dell from maybe 2-3 years ago.

      I find the full keyboard w/ 10-key awful damn handy.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    4. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they don't, I'm not quite sure what I'm typing on right now. It claims to be a Dell Latitude something or other. I also have a personal "laptop" with a 17" screen, that's an Asus M70m or such, but is a few years old by this point.

    5. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by maroberts · · Score: 1

      Yup, I'm typing on a laptop PC. If you're being picky I think its 16.5". Anyway what is the point of putting 3000+ pixels across a 13" display. Across a 17" plus display and its a mobile programmers workhorse.

      --

      Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
      Karma: Chameleon

    6. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by TubeSteak · · Score: 1

      I find the full keyboard w/ 10-key awful damn handy.

      I'm heartily annoyed that I can't find a decent 15" laptop without the 10-key number pad.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    7. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is your wife fat?

    8. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "from maybe 2-3 years ago"...so the conclusion one must draw from that anecdote is that you haven't seen a 17" model newer than that to answer the question.

      17" laptops are a dying breed. What few new models are left are generally warmed-over afterthoughts.

    9. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      They aren't going to. 17" macbook didn't sell well. There isn't the demand.

      17" MacBook was a product that everybody wanted, but nobody actually bought. When it was cancelled, it took Apple in the UK almost a year to sell the remaining units as "refurbished" at a hugely reduced price.

    10. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      I get that. When they first came out I went with the 12" which was fantastic. I knew some people who liked the 17" but it died soon. 17" is hard to carry.

    11. Re:I wish Apple would stop wasting time... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

      Really? I've had the opposite problem.

      FWIW, I've got a Dell 1545 that lacks the 10-key, you may want to look into their product line.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  9. $3k by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    $3k for a quad core, 3.7GHz processor, 12G of RAM, a decent SSD and other gubbins.

    I know that raw specs aren't everything (noise, is important), but hells bells that is not a lot of bang for the buck. Amazon says an i7 3.2GHz 16GB mac mini costs $1200. So, the Pro has substantially better graphics. But even so. This seems to be aimed at the niche of people who need a portable desktop. Which makes sense since Apple don't make a luggable, but it looks like they're still missing a workstation.

    From other vendors, can get a dual socket Opteron workstation. Sure not as fast per core as a xeon, but 32 AMD 3.2 cores *totally* whump 4 3.7GHz opteron cores. Also, the AMD processors come with quad rather than triple channel memory. Being Opteron, it's also upgradable to 0.5TB of RAM.

    IOW, this seems like a seriously weedy workstation.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
    1. Re: $3k by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a Xeon E5 Workstation CPU, not some consumer shit. Don't compare them. Quadcore != quadcore.
      Same applies to the graphic cards.

    2. Re: $3k by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 1

      Quadcore != quadcore

      wat

      --
      Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
    3. Re:$3k by Wovel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You need to look a lot closer at the specs...

    4. Re: $3k by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's saying not all quadcore processors are equivalent, that's "wat." That was really obvious given the context of his four-sentence post so you might want to work on your reading comprehension.

    5. Re: $3k by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 1

      But... what does that have to do with the number of cores?

      I understand that there are significant variations between CPU architectures. For example, the Xeon supports ECC memory, whereas the i7 does not. That's a notable difference between these two processors, and relevant to this thread.

      On the other hand, a quad core is a quad core. If the Xeon and the i7 both have four compute cores, then indeed, the core count is not a notable difference between these two processors. In fact, quadcore==quadcore.

      Computer != computer would've been just as insightful. That is, not at all.

      --
      Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
    6. Re:$3k by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      I looked at the link. Seemed to be a single socket, quad core triple channel Xeon.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    7. Re: $3k by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      I understand that there are significant variations between CPU architectures. For example, the Xeon supports ECC memory, whereas the i7 does not. That's a notable difference between these two processors, and relevant to this thread.

      AIUI High end desktop and 1-4 socket workstation/server are basically the same designs but with the crippling set differently* The 1-4 socket server parts have overclocking locked out, the desktop parts have dual socket support and ECC memory support locked out. The ammount of enabled cache also varies a little. But fundamentally it's the same core and bus design and in most applications one would expect similar performance.

      * Afaict you can't by a version with everything enabled at any price.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    8. Re:$3k by Hamsterdan · · Score: 1

      Consumer vs. Workstation class CPU (ie: Xeon)

      --
      I've got better things to do tonight than die.
  10. CPU upgrade priceing a big ripoff by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    talking about $800+ over the cost of buying the chip on it's own and that is not counting the cost of the build in base cpu.

    Memory seem to be not that bad but the base is only 3 of 4 channels.

  11. at that price why no mouse / keyboard? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Come on apple do you really to save the $50 (high end estimate) on an 3K+ system?

    1. Re:at that price why no mouse / keyboard? by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      Because there's a variety of mice, trackpads and keyboards to chose from. So they are a configuration option, rather than bundling a fixed choice in the box.

    2. Re:at that price why no mouse / keyboard? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      no I was saying apple should give them out for FREE with an 3K system.

    3. Re:at that price why no mouse / keyboard? by SuperKendall · · Score: 0

      no I was saying apple should give them out for FREE with an 3K system.

      Why, so I can add them to the box of extra mice and keyboards?

      Far better to let people use the solutions they already have and like than ship with some default that is just there to meet a checkbox list.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    4. Re:at that price why no mouse / keyboard? by ahabswhale · · Score: 1

      Because the people who buy these things won't be using Apple mice and keyboards anyway.

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    5. Re:at that price why no mouse / keyboard? by jo_ham · · Score: 1

      Come on apple do you really to save the $50 (high end estimate) on an 3K+ system?

      The real reason is probably because they won't fit in the box, and that most people who buy these machines will already have their own preferences (like custom FCP keyboard, for example), so the keyboard that comes with it will probably never be unwrapped.

      The box is really small.

    6. Re:at that price why no mouse / keyboard? by dk20 · · Score: 1

      And give up the margin from selling their "made in china" mouse for $69, and keyboard for another $69?

  12. Expensive Garbage Can ? by SpaceManFlip · · Score: 1
    Everybody has made fun of the garbage-can-like appearance. It does look pretty silly, but the design is innovative when you look at the innards. I guess if you want a really small desktop and you don't know about hard drive failure rates, then it could be an attractive choice.

    Personally I don't like anything about it except for the dual-gpu support. I love the old Mac Pro / PowerMac G5 chassis series. Because I'm always like "fuck it, I've got room" when it comes to desktops and their largitude. I have a sweet hackintosh in a PowerMac G5 chassis that I custom-built and it's not as pretty inside but it can trounce several Mac Pro models in benchmarks while I paid less than half the price for it. And BTW when I say custom, I mean that Dremels and JB-weld were involved. It's fully ATX-motherboard-compliant now. I have room for 4 video cards and about 8 hard drives. I have 16GB quad-channel DDR3. It is a great case design for airflow and therefore overclockers.
    Apple dropped the ball, when it comes to expandability, and that's what I liked about the Mac Pro design. Sad face.

    1. Re:Expensive Garbage Can ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The saying from Tommy Boy goes "You can get a good look at a T-Bone by sticking your head up a bull's ass, but wouldn't you rather take the butcher's word for it?"

      Dremels and JB weld? This is apple we're talking about here, dude. The butcher wants to feed you while you're wearing a blindfold.

    2. Re:Expensive Garbage Can ? by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

      If you know about hard drive failure rates, the new design is an even better idea - putting large hard drives in external cases where it's easier to swap them out.

      The internal storage is all very fast SSD, and doesn't really have the same level of failure rate as a spinning disk.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    3. Re:Expensive Garbage Can ? by thestuckmud · · Score: 1

      I guess if ... you don't know about hard drive failure rates, then it could be an attractive choice.

      What hard drive? These come with SSDs.

      Personally I don't like anything about it except for the dual-gpu support.

      By all means choose a computer with the features you want. For my part, I think I've finally found a serious computer without distracting fan noise.

    4. Re:Expensive Garbage Can ? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Wow. nice attempt to justify non-user-serviceable products there. Most computers and laptops make swapping the HDD very easy. A few screws, that's it. Even ultra think laptops often use mini PCIe SSDs which can be changed.

      The last thing I want is another two boxes and two cables on my desk. Yeah, two because you need the HDD and its power supply.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Expensive Garbage Can ? by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      Most computers and laptops make swapping the HDD very easy. A few screws, that's it.

      Which still sucks. That's why for a while now I greatly prefer using a dual SATA dock with bare drives.

      You also have to open the case, yet more latches or screws, sometimes having to unplug things as well. And generally you have to shut down the system.

      Just easier to get an external storage box like a Drobo or some kind of multi-disk case and pull things in and out. I was doing that even back when I had a Powermac because it was simpler and easier.

      The last thing I want is another two boxes and two cables on my desk.

      Why? They don't have to be on the desk you know, in fact they can just be elsewhere on the network..

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    6. Re:Expensive Garbage Can ? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Changing the game a bit there, buy basically what you are saying is that you are happy to pay more and have cable clutter rather than undoing a few thumbscrews. Moist quality cases have quick release hard drive cages and SATA is fully hot swappable.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  13. Apple's NeXT Mac Pro.... by tekrat · · Score: 1

    ....Will look like a certain well-known Black Cube, and come with a Magneto-Optical drive.

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
  14. You will like it! We're Apple! by Geste · · Score: 1

    I mean, we're Apple!

  15. You PC fanbois don't get it by Trashcan+Romeo · · Score: 1, Troll

    So what if they have a better price/performance ratio? The Mac Pro is *round*. Round! You could lay it on it side, push it with your foot, and it wouldn't stop until it hit the far wall. How fucking cool is that? Let's see any of you fanbois try that with a PC. Heh... good luck.

    1. Re:You PC fanbois don't get it by koan · · Score: 1

      Or you could buy a olive bucket shove a motherboard in it and call happy crappy.

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    2. Re:You PC fanbois don't get it by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      it wont roll very far with all that ratsnest of wires hanging out of it

  16. also only 1 build in storage port that maxs at 1TB by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Build in storage is weak only 1 port 256GB base and the said thing is it's looks like there was a plan for 2 storage ports? that hit some kind of IO / pci-e lane limit? Can't do raid over the pci-e flash?

  17. MacWorld weren't that positive by fatphil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He was quite explicit - if he had the money, he'd rather spend it on something else.

    Looks gimmicky, seems massively over-priced. I'm sure there's a market for it...

    --
    Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    1. Re:MacWorld weren't that positive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seems like the latest incarnation of the Cube. Actually, Apple's laptops seem to be going that way as well -- fewer features and capabilities, same or higher prices, because they think non-functional changes in form factor are worth the premium. Ives has a chance of severely hurting Apple's future unless someone steps up to reign him in.

    2. Re:MacWorld weren't that positive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True, but he also got buff-fucked in the comments for not understanding the advantages of Thunderbolt.

    3. Re:MacWorld weren't that positive by ahabswhale · · Score: 1

      Price out all of the parts and then come back and tell me how overpriced it is. I have yet to see anyone do it.

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    4. Re:MacWorld weren't that positive by fatphil · · Score: 1

      A valid question. A lot of the cost will be the in the industrial design which is almost impossible to put a value on, and the all-US manufacturing.

      Then you have you ask yourself if you would chose absolutely identical components were you to try and create one from components? Would you Xeon E5 rather than Core-i7 if 64GB wasn't something you'd want to expand too?

      I guess the best place to start the comparison is probably a Battlebox, and see if an extra $1000 will pimp it to Mac-Pro spec.

      Typing this on what was once the top-of-the-range Dual G5 powermac. Do not mistake my cynicism for not liking some of Apple's hardware choices. (Note, however, that I did *not* pay for this.)

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    5. Re:MacWorld weren't that positive by fatphil · · Score: 1

      Or start here, and have $1400 to play with:
      http://www.tomshardware.com/system-configuration-recommendation-58.html

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    6. Re:MacWorld weren't that positive by ahabswhale · · Score: 1

      So you're just calling it "massively overpriced" without anything to support it? It's just something you pulled out of your ass?

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    7. Re:MacWorld weren't that positive by fatphil · · Score: 1

      MacWorld effectively called it that. As you can see from the top-end gaming machines with only-slightly-inferior specs at down to half the price of the *entry-level* Mac that I already pointed you towards, yes, there is concrete evidence that the price is way more than just the components.

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
  18. Tailored for thick wallets, thick heads by Reliable+Windmill · · Score: 0

    They've made sure it's even more expensive to upgrade the new Mac Pro than the last one. If you have more money than sense, then this is the computer for you.

    --
    Signature intentionally left blank.
    1. Re:Tailored for thick wallets, thick heads by koan · · Score: 1

      ^...

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    2. Re:Tailored for thick wallets, thick heads by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      The people that buy it will be people who do jobs that need this sort of power, and which pays enough for this to be a good option. These are creative professionals, and so are certainly not lacking in sense. Though they won't be lacking in money either.

  19. and the non pro video cards are just about the sam by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    and the non pro video cards are just about the same.

    Now what does the mac pro booted to windows show them as?

  20. Wow! That's hard to believe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I can't believe magazine Mac World would give a positive review to a Mac.

    I'd expect them to be promoting a similarly specced Ubuntu based machine.

  21. If you're a pro by koan · · Score: 0

    Why buy Apple?
    Over priced, limited upgrade options, and Adobe Première trumps Final cut, Apples music software is crap.

    Why buy Apple?

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:If you're a pro by BasilBrush · · Score: 1

      As regards professional music, it's Pro Tools all the way. Which is both Mac and PC.
      And Adobe Premiere is both Mac or PC.

      So your software arguments do nothing to eliminate the Mac Pro.

      Advantages of the Mac Pro, which you cannot get on PC, is the possibility to use Final Cut and Motion, and the ability to use legal and non-hacked OSX.

  22. and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0?

    1. Re:and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0? by Wovel · · Score: 1

      Whats wrong with Firewire? It was a lot better than USB and widely supported. In fact, in many areas it had much better support than USB2. (Was always better supported than USB1).

    2. Re:and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      The same thing that happened when Firewire became SCSI 2.0.

      You plug it into compatible devices and work as well as you can.

      The whole argument of TB vs USB3 ignores that each socket has it's own use case. It's not like i'm going to buy a Thunderbolt mouse or a USB3 RAID SAS enclosure. But if I want to expand and put in a bunch of extra USB sockets, I can expand using Thunderbolt.

      FWIW, Firewire lasted about 12 or 13 years whereas SCSI only made it 9.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    3. Re:and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      when if flops like fire wire did.

      Yes firewire is faster then usb but in the mass market firewire got killed.

    4. Re:and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes firewire is faster then usb but in the mass market firewire got killed.

      Most users have no need for firewire... or a desktop computer (as tablet sales show).

      For those of us working with multichannel audio and video, firewire was king. USB3.0 is probably fast enough for multichannel audio, although high end users don't want the associated processing overhead -- much better used for DSP. For the video guys, thunderbolt isn't fast enough for what they want to do with it.

    5. Re:and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0? by bussdriver · · Score: 1

      Firewire was not perfect; however, there were 3 reasons it didn't get bigger:

      1) Intel was against it.

      2) USB 1 was cheap and totally not designed to fill the gap Firewire was designed to fill. Firewire support costs extra $ and you still needed USB... complex controllers and buffering wasn't in USB 1; then USB 2 (a hack) took away the price advantage by adding complexity (by then the cost difference was gone... the difference was never great to begin with.)

      3) consumers are the mass market. they are happy with "good enough" which is a really really low bar. Many didn't seem to know the difference between USB 1 and Firewire; plus they didn't care much. Most "experienced" users couldn't notice the speed gap between USB 2 and Firewire but it was significant in the real world. Some USB 2 devices sucked... and people didn't notice it was running near USB 1 speeds.

      The reality is that the changes firewire made were adopted by all the other upgraded standards. What is sad is the project sat at Apple for years when it could have come out much earlier and trounced SCSI... which is what it initially was aiming at.

    6. Re:and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      USB was 'good enough' for all but the most demanding applications, and a lot cheaper.

    7. Re:and what happens when TB becomes firewire 2.0? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      What mass market devices are that that need or are likely to need in the forseeable future more than USB3 (which the new mac pro also offers) can deliver.

      I would expect thunderbolt to remain a niche product much like firewire did but also like firewire I would not expect it to go away any time soon.

      One nice thing about thunderbolt is it's PCIe derived. So it is relatively easy to design and make high performance adaptors from thunderbolt to virtually anything. There are already thunderbolt to fiber channel, thunderbolt to firewire, thunderbolt to SAS, thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet and thunderbolt to PCIe slot adaptors out there.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  23. $1040/year in power? by iceperson · · Score: 4, Funny

    Are you generating power by throwing money into a furnace to fuel a steam engine?

    1. Re:$1040/year in power? by Jarkov · · Score: 1

      Apple Steampunk?

  24. 3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Animats · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I was given $3000 to spend on a desktop Mac, I'd be hard-pressed to pick the entry-level Mac Pro instead of a 27-inch iMac with 3.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM, a 3TB Fusion Drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M GPU.

    Unimpressive specs for the price. I'm writing this on a 3.2GHz 4-core Intel i5-4570 CPU, with an Nvidia GeForce GT 640. Running Linux. Cost under $1000. I could have ordered a machine with the components Apple is installing for a few hundred more. The CPU upgrade would cost $116 and the GPU upgrade about $225. The GTX 780M isn't even NVidia's top-of-the-line GPU; that's a mobile (for laptops) part, three or four steps down from the top of the line.

    1. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Nerdfest · · Score: 1

      Don't poke the fanbois.

    2. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Wovel · · Score: 2

      No you couldn't have. Why did you feel the need to lie on /. What a reason to throw away your personal integrity. Go ahead and link your parts list. Make sure to only use new parts and not used CPUs and RAM like so many like to link.

    3. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Holi · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can get two D700's for $225? Please tell me where. the closest card I can find to that is a W9000 and the best price for 1 I have seen is $1300.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    4. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 2

      I'm writing this on a 3.2GHz 4-core Intel i5-4570 CPU, with an Nvidia GeForce GT 640. Running Linux.

      Phew. For a second there I thought you were gonna talk about how long it's taking you to copy that 17-MB file.

    5. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Assuming your comparing to the iMac, how about the 27" IPS display thats included in the price?

    6. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by jo_ham · · Score: 0

      The 780M is actually an under clocked desktop part. It's classified as a mobile chip because it pulls about 120-130 W under load, making it one of the best GPUs for performance per watt you can buy.

      Crucially it gives you almost all of the performance of a "top spec" desktop GPU (but obviously not all), but the machine it sits in is virtually silent under full load.

      I have the 680MX in the previous generation iMac (late 2012) and it has been fantastic. Running in bootcamp I'm getting brilliant gaming experiences without the computer making a sound, and also being 'just the screen'.

      It's not for everyone of course, but those high level mobile GPUs do have a niche and they have a lot more grunt that people give them credit for - mine can drive a 1440p display at native resolution in Bioshock Infinite at 55 fps with everything set to ultra, for example. To get it over 60 I can just drop one or two settings off ultra onto high, or I can drop it down to 1080p resolution. In other words, the compromises I have made in choosing a (near) silent computer are not that bad at all.

    7. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hooray for your usual Apple bashing comment Animats. Don't you ever get over your nerdrage? Go back to making some more 80s-era 3D modeling software.

    8. Re: 3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by schlachter · · Score: 1

      Wtf, you built a machine that's not even remotely in the same class in hardware specs, and has none of the design features of the Mac Pro and claim you could have built something similar for another $500? I think each of the graphics cards in the Mac Pro alone are more than your entire system.

      --
      My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
    9. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Unimpressive specs for the price. I'm writing this on a 3.2GHz 4-core Intel i5-4570 CPU, with an Nvidia GeForce GT 640. Running Linux. Cost under $1000. I could have ordered a machine with the components Apple is installing for a few hundred more. The CPU upgrade would cost $116 and the GPU upgrade about $225. The GTX 780M isn't even NVidia's top-of-the-line GPU; that's a mobile (for laptops) part, three or four steps down from the top of the line.

      As a Linux fan, dare I say so friggin' what? The Absolute cheapest is always the best!" crowd is a throwback to the days when people would fight over pennies in price.

      Because what law is there thats says cheapest is best? I like my apple Computers, loved my Mac Pro's. Love my Linux machines, even if they take more maintenance. Do not like my Windows machines, becuase they take too much maintenance. Just got many back on line after the latest forced updtate removed all the sound drivers from several. Just recovered them from an ads by better surf malware attack The Mac and Linux machines didn't have any downtime at all.

      Cost? That's way down the list. My most important criteria is uptime, followed by the software quality. I've spent way more in labor than any cost savings on the devices.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    10. Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. by Hamsterdan · · Score: 1

      Try the same now, but using workstation parts. Xeon, Quadro and ECC RAM.

      --
      I've got better things to do tonight than die.
  25. Re: apple was/is for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... and for those who just want to concentrate on their work (usually stuff not related to building and setting up computers) and not worrying about troubleshooting issues themselves, should they arise.

  26. Mac Pro icon for OS X by recoiledsnake · · Score: 3, Informative

    How can I replace my OS X trashcan icon with a small Mac Pro?

      http://jonathanhirz.com/macprotrash-icon/

    --
    This space for rent.
  27. GPU cards for OpenCL by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dual video cards, despite this not being a gaming system. Granted, some media editing applications can utilize multiple GPUs for computing - like Adobe Premiere Pro CC - but many cannot

    On the other hand if there are a lot of professional systems that have a ton of power available to those that program in OpenCL, might not we see a new class of accelerated applications?

    If nothing else it will probably get Blender to support OpenCL.

    Apple has historically tried to promote a more advanced standard to make possible applications that are not written yet, but can be with new technologies.

    And while currently not everything uses OpenCL, now there is powerful motivation to do so. But Photoshop, Aperture and Final Cut all make use of this hardware so there's lots of people that will benefit.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:GPU cards for OpenCL by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Dual gpu configurations have been around for over a decade. Apps have been supporting dual GPU configurations for computing/encoding for years. This changes nothing.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:GPU cards for OpenCL by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      It's not the aspect of there being dual GPU's per se. Just the fact that Apple has a framework (OpenCL) and hardware with massive computation power on tap if you make use of it.

      CUDA is actually a big success story there; Apple just wants to bring that same success to an open standard that is not tied to one hardware maker.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  28. legs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't understand why burnt leg syndrome isn't listed as a cool feature? Why isn't table discoloration from heat discussed? "Oh it's OK!" is what I hear from apple users almost as if it's one of the best features available once you buy the shitty thing.

    I'm going to be blunt with all of you, the reason they overheat is because they weren't designed well. That's right they are shiny but on the inside it's a cobbled mess of shit. It's almost as if they tried to fuck it up on purpose. Aside from hiring competent people they could have at least put a decent fucking fan in there but no...that might make noise or some other bullshit reason they came up with. GFY apple and your shitty ***** factories. A bunch of communist sellouts.

    1. Re:legs by Wovel · · Score: 1

      WTF are you talking about. The new Mac Pro has no cooling problems. You seem to live in some alternate reality. They were talking about a Linai case overheating.

    2. Re:legs by jedidiah · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      I certainly won't take YOUR word for that.

      I've personally seen what the Apple approach to design leads to. Proper operating temperatures seem to be a distant afterthought. Effective cooling is heresy.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re:legs by ahabswhale · · Score: 1

      If you'd bothered to do some research, you would know the new Mac Pro vents heat out of the top. So unless you plan on laying your legs over the top of it, you should be fine.

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    4. Re:legs by SpzToid · · Score: 0

      And when you use a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones while you concentrate on your work, so you don't hear all the noise, you'll be fine.

      --
      You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
    5. Re:legs by Golden_Rider · · Score: 1

      And when you use a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones while you concentrate on your work, so you don't hear all the noise, you'll be fine.

      All the reviews so far mention that the new Mac Pro is about as loud as a Mac Mini, i.e. unless you are in a completely silent room, you will not hear it.

    6. Re:legs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the Mac Plus era, you could spend $1000 on a third party muffin fan in a shroud that would push down into the handhold to give your Mac proper cooling.

      Because back then the dogma was 'one mouse button, no fan.' Also, 'sealed box that only can be opened with specialized tools'. The mac was by design 'hacker proof' and they had that listed as a bullet point feature.

    7. Re:legs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love zero brain morons like you. Some day you will actually understand "puters".

    8. Re:legs by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      Are you really that uninformed about it? The thing is silent compared to anything else out there with even 1/2 it's processing and video power.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    9. Re: legs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. But what if I do plan on puting my legs over the top of it. What then?

    10. Re:legs by Penguinisto · · Score: 3

      It's obvious that you are grossly ignorant about Macs.

      If the reviews are fully accurate (no reason to believe otherwise), the only thing quieter than the new Mac Pro would be the original Mac Cube (which had no cooling fans at all, so you only heard something if you held your ear reaally close to it...)

      Hell, even my old dual 2004-era G5 PowerMac (with, no shit, NINE Fans!) was quieter than most PC-style desktops. You only heard it if you really shoved the CPU cycles (e.g. rendering a highly complex 1080p-sized Bryce scene in a very hot room at full-rez w/ all options cranked to '11' would do it), or if you opened both outer and inner cases while it was running.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    11. Re:legs by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      I certainly won't take YOUR word for that.

      So your alternative is to make up your own reality.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    12. Re:legs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah. you missed the Quicksilver G4.

    13. Re:legs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your experiences with Mac Pro's are different to mine.

      About 2 to 3 years ago, one of my co-workers bought himself a shinny new Macbook Pro, when he first got it he was thrilled to tell us all (the rest of us had Dell laptops) how great his machine was...

      Well, after a few weeks/months the fans in his laptop started kicking in more often and when they did ... it sounded like a small plane preparing for take off ... if we mentioned anything to him about it, he got very "snappy" - typical Mac user???

    14. Re:legs by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      MacBook Pro != Mac Pro (or PowerMac for that matter).

      Incidentally, my own MacBook Pro (July 2013) is extremely quiet, unless I kick LuxRender on (which will stress any damned laptop in existence.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  29. Re:apple was/is for by timmyf2371 · · Score: 1

    Personally, I don't like OS X but if you want a fully functioning workstation which runs Apple's OS and you don't want to deal with the hassle of building an unsupported Hackintosh setup, then maybe an Apple computer is the most appropriate solution.

    Besides, from what I've read from other posters and sources, it sounds like you can't actually build a superior machine (or even one with the same specs) unless you spend more money than the Apple model.

    Certainly, looking at some their other products, there is no evidence to support your theory that it's a tax on the ignorant considering my Sony Z1 cost more than my iPhone 5 did.

    --

    Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
  30. Poor Apple Haters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I wonder how you will all deal with the cognitive dissonance when this too, is a hit in sales?

    You keep claiming Apple gear is "expensive". That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

    1. Re:Poor Apple Haters by scott9693 · · Score: 1

      expensive
      adjective
      1. costing a lot of money.
      For a workstation, yes it's pretty expensive. Why what did you think it meant?
      Regardless if it returns the best ROI, it is still expensive.

  31. Re:apple was/is for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You probably waste more time than these people do money. The funny thing is that they're getting on with their lives and you're still trying to feel like you're somehow better than them. Personally, the more successful people I know pay a bit more but don't get caught up in endlessly trying to defend their positions. Take it for what it's worth.

  32. The video cards are really dumb by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Since they aren't upgradable. The thing is video cards get obsolete quicker than the rest of a system. This looks like it may be starting to change, but so far, they are the component that benefits from the most frequent updates. You want to buy less video card more often for optimal performance. This is true for gaming, 3D visualization, CUDA, whatever.

    Well here you've two high end cards, which would imply high end tasks... and no way to replace them when the time comes. That is not a good situation. I mean I suppose you can replace the whole system, but that is rather wasteful. It is also predicated on a new replacement being available and Apple has shown a lack of interest in keeping the Mac Pro line up to date.

    To me, this looks more like a shiny toy that people want to show off. "Oh look, I have the most powerful system EVAR! It is amazing!" rather than any consideration of usefulness for a workset, which is what a workstation should be.

    Also what the people who are playing the price comparison minuta game miss is that yes, it isn't a bad price provided you need precisely what it is providing, but as the parent pointed out that is rare. The idea with an expensive workstation should be you get the components you need, not the ones you don't. Two GPUs might be great for videogames, they are useless for 3D EM simulation. Conversely 64GB is more than you can use for any game, but is entry level for 3D EM work, you could use 256GB or more for many simulations.

    When you are spending multi-thousands on a workstation, it really should be custom to order. The money should go where it is useful to your application set. Trying to have an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach and then saying everyone should meet that is silly.

    1. Re:The video cards are really dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They will be upgradable if a third party company makes a form factor that fits. The cards are removeable.

    2. Re:The video cards are really dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's my only issue with it. I need the power for compiling code, creating images with photoshop, sounds with logic and heavy virtualization. I don't really need the video. I'd rather spend the extra $$ on more cores than dual video cards I won't use.

      Having said that, the form factor is fucking mind blowing. If you can't appreciate what they've done with the form factor, you aren't a real nerd.

    3. Re:The video cards are really dumb by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      Just because a form factor looks good doesn't mean it is practical. Does the new Mac Pro look nice from the outside? Yeah, I suppose. Does the form factor lend itself well toward a performance computing solution? With the *exact*, *limited* specs they offer - well enough... but with a lot of caveats in terms of what you can do with it. And I bet it wouldn't look as nice once you have multiple external drives stacked around it, with tons of cables everywhere, because they won't let you put more than a single SSD inside the thing.

      --
      William George
  33. What pathetic god-awful "bang" for BIG BUCKS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Itâ(TM)s priced that way, as well, starting at $2999, with the price quickly racing past $5000 as you upgrade components. The model I tested for our review has a configure-to-order price of $6799, and you can build a 2013 Mac Proâ"just the computer, without any external peripherals or displaysâ"that costs nearly $10k.

    When I see a $3000 pricetag on a single computer, my main question is: Is this an overpriced dual-Xeon, or is this a well-priced quad CPU (either Xeons or more likely, Opterons) machine that maybe aren't running the quite highest clock rate? And when I see $6799 I know it's going to have at least 4 CPUs, and possibly as many as eight. And if it's only four CPUs, then they're going to be four pretty high end ones.

    To think that this is a single wimpy core i7 is so sad. I'm not saying a machine can't be worth $10k but this machine sure isn't. If you are really stuck in Mac OS X then at least build a hackintosh so that you can have some reasonably modern hardware and get your jobs done sooner. Nobody who spends $10k should be waiting on a poor lone i7 all the time like this. Spinny wheel, spinny wheel. You know your competitors sure as hell aren't putting up with performance from that many years in the past. Talk about a GWB administration-era computer!

    At least the i7 should be pretty good for playing Dwarf Fortress. Now I know what the Mac Pro buyers are actually doing at their "jobs."

    1. Re:What pathetic god-awful "bang" for BIG BUCKS by LDAPMAN · · Score: 1

      What...? This machine uses the latest Xeons. The most expensive version is using a 12 core chip. There are no i7s involved.

    2. Re:What pathetic god-awful "bang" for BIG BUCKS by jo_ham · · Score: 0

      You need to read that again. It's not a "wimpy i7", it's a Xeon. Only one of them (in quad, hex, octo or duodenal? [what's 12?] core config), but a Xeon nonetheless.

      Oh sorry, I let facts get in the way of an Apple bash. So sorry. I'll try to avoid that in the future.

  34. Not Pro by Latinhypercube · · Score: 1

    A single cpu makes this consumer NOT PRO !!!!!

    1. Re:Not Pro by LDAPMAN · · Score: 1

      How is 12 core's not PRO? A two socket option would be nice but 12 cores is enough for anything that doesn't require a render farm.

    2. Re:Not Pro by dk20 · · Score: 1

      That is what the price tag is for ;)

  35. Re: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well first off its not meant to be racked so your argument there is moot. As for internal expansion? Big deal. A lot users these days would prefer to go to their local BestBuy, buy a USB/Firewire/Thunderbolt external drive take it home plug it in and have immediate access. Not every user is comfortable opening up their computer to add disks, so they wind up taking it to someone that can do it for them and paying to have it done.

    If you don't like the lack of internal expansion capability, then this computer is not for you. But from the initial reviews, for the people it is targeted at it smokes everything else out there.

  36. What's wrong with firewire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whats wrong with Firewire?

    Lots of things, apparently, because Apple no longer offers FireWire support on nearly all of their computers. Sucks for anybody that invested in FireWire-connected peripherals...

    1. Re:What's wrong with firewire by LDAPMAN · · Score: 1

      How does it suck when the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter works perfectly.

    2. Re:What's wrong with firewire by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      You mean like how it must've sucked for anyone in 1999 when Apple dropped the SCSI port from the Power Mac G3 Blue and White?

      They DO ship a Thunderbolt to Firewire dongle if you need firewire(Which chains very nicely together, btw; much nicer than SCSI ever did).

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  37. How is an oven "more efficient" at cooling? by SuperKendall · · Score: 1, Funny

    You know, if you don't put your computer in a miniature trashcan, you can install a more efficient cooling system.

    Kind go amusing that you don't understand the most impressive aspect of the Mac Pro redesign, with a common thermal core that is in fact more efficient at bleeding heat than stuffing all of your parts in a box shaped like an oven and with nearly the same ventilation possibilities...

    You know what else is round? A Jet Engine. They seem to manage heat OK.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:How is an oven "more efficient" at cooling? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know what else is round? A Jet Engine. They seem to manage heat OK.

      You're not really that dim, are you? Otherwise I might offer the following idea for your mental acrobatics:

      You know what else is round? a furnace. They also seem to manage heat OK, for the purpose. Oh, the magic of roundness, solving thermodynamics problems all by itself.

    2. Re:How is an oven "more efficient" at cooling? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      Why round?

      The goddamn top is an exhaust fan.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  38. Because tying to a proprietary standard is better? by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Or Apple's mistaken focus on OpenCL over CUDA.

    So I'm curious why you think Apple tying themselves to a single video card maker (nVidia owns CUDA) vs. a standard (OpenCL) that works with any video card from any maker (including nVdia, and also Intel integrated graphics) is better?

    I mean, this is Slashdot so I thought we were for standards. But I guess you prefer to tie yourself to a single hardware vendor. Good luck with that.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  39. Everything Old Is New Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The picture of the MacPro reminded me of the Cray-1 Computer, except that you could sit beside the Cray-1, while sitting on the MacPro seems like it would rather uncomfortable.

  40. Just buy the 15", same res by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    I would personally have liked to see a 17" update.

    But I finally gave in and bought the most recent 15" retina. It's fine, if you enable scaling mode to use all of the pixels on the screen directly it has the same resolution as the 17" did. You just increase font sizes a little bit.

    It's also quite a bit lighter and has better battery life.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  41. Smaller is more useful by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    So, Apple's typical customer cares more about aesthetic than usefulness?

    Smaller in just about any area of computing, IS more useful.

    I had a Mac Pro at one point, and the only thing I ever really put into the case was more hard drives. But external cases are really better for that anyway because they are easier to get to, as long as you don't lose any speed accessing external storage - which you do not with thunderbolt (or heck even with USB 3.0 if you are talking spinning media).

    The new Mac Pro is more useful to the people that still need workstations and cannot be served by consumer PC's.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Smaller is more useful by CanHasDIY · · Score: 0

      So, Apple's typical customer cares more about aesthetic than usefulness?

      Smaller in just about any area of computing, IS more useful.

      I can only guess you're saying this because, as one of the venerated resident Apple fanboys, you feel compelled to 'represent.'

      C'mon, dude. Really.

      Nothing you've said in the rest of your post really relates to your claim that "smaller is more useful."

      So, you really think a netbook is inherently more useful than, say, a 16" Alienware powerhouse? After all, smaller is more useful, right?

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  42. Yay haters fucked again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ah, the Apple haters. As dependable and predictable as fags dying of AIDS.

  43. You really can't understand the desire for small? by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    So, you really think a netbook is inherently more useful than, say, a 16" Alienware powerhouse?

    That is a bad comparison because it misses the point of WHEN smaller is better. Smaller is better if you have enough (or more) compute power in the smaller item to do the same job as the larger one.

    I had a Mac Pro myself; it was a beast. It was hard to move around if I needed to, and harder to get to hard drives to add or replace. For what most people do with workstations these days, smaller is more useful - because we are often re-configuring (or moving) workspaces, we are working in smaller areas. Or we are working at home (as people do these days much more often) and may need to change areas we work in.

    I also just recently went from a 17" laptop to a 15" laptop. The larger screen was nice but the new one has the same resolution, and is more powerful and also has improved battery life and much, much faster internal storage and external ports. So that is in fact far better. Smaller means it's easier to carry in more bags and also lighter.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  44. Usual fanboi behavior by Animats · · Score: 1

    The comment was modded up, and then, after about two hours, modded down. This happens so consistently with criticism of Apple products that it's probably orchestrated. Is there a crawler somewhere looking for criticism of Apple?

    1. Re:Usual fanboi behavior by Nerdfest · · Score: 1

      No, an army of fans, many surprising old, that don't seem to mind the future we're headed for where every computing platform is tightly controlled and effectively only 'rented'. One where you need to pay extra to be able to develop software, and where you're beholden to a single company to release your software for 'approval'. I figure at least the older ones should know better after the days of IBM. Unfortunately, many people don't like having their purchasing decisions made fun of on any grounds, even logical ones, and take it as a personal insult.

    2. Re:Usual fanboi behavior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been reading this drivel here for three years and it's no closer to true now than it has ever been. Do you get tired of being wrong? Or do you have boundless energy for repeating yourself in the hopes that your bullshit will magically become true?

    3. Re:Usual fanboi behavior by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      No, an army of fans, many surprising old, that don't seem to mind the future we're headed for where every computing platform is tightly controlled and effectively only 'rented'. One where you need to pay extra to be able to develop software, and where you're beholden to a single company to release your software for 'approval'.

      Umm, yeah, that must be it. Or maybe just the fact that we don't have to work wiht Windows 8.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  45. Re:Advancing in what direction? (piped cooling) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "least rackable shape" - Sounds to me like saying an automobile is the "least horse-pullable" design. Have you considered that people may stack them in cooling pipes and and make super efficient server rooms? What makes more sense to you - cooling an entire room full of tiny hotspots inside cabinets or drawing air through a big tube? Which one sounds more efficient?

    I bet we get an announcement about some university building a cluster of them within a month.

  46. size matters by itchybrain · · Score: 1

    I noticed that all the top posts highlight the issue of price versus performance.

    Wouldn't a fairer comparison include the form factor of the computer as well? It is arguably possible to build a better computer than the next person, with extra ports, compute power, etc. when size is no limitation.

  47. Re:You really can't understand the desire for smal by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

    So, you really think a netbook is inherently more useful than, say, a 16" Alienware powerhouse?

    That is a bad comparison because it misses the point of WHEN smaller is better

    Well, I blame you for not being more specific when you said "... in just about any area of computing, IS more useful."

    I think mine is a good comparison, since, "in just about any area of computing," the Alienware beats the pants off a netbook.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  48. Should have called it Mac Video instead of Pro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mac Pro implies that it's for all professionals. As a professional software engineer, I couldn't think of a worse computer for the job, save tablets and chromebooks.
    This is a single-purpose computer that should boot straight into Final Cut instead of wasting time and memory with a full OS.

  49. Re:apple was/is for by danbob999 · · Score: 1

    Besides, from what I've read from other posters and sources, it sounds like you can't actually build a superior machine (or even one with the same specs) unless you spend more money than the Apple model.

    You are doing it the wrong way.
    Try building an Apple desktop computer with the same specs as a high end ($1500) custom PC.

    You can choose between a Mac mini with a 2.6 GHz CPU, intel graphics, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD and 1TB external hard drive (because there is not enough room inside the box) for $1600

    or

    Get about the fastest core i7 PC with 32GB RAM, a high end video card, 512GB SSD and two 3TB hard drives in RAID and save money.

  50. My favorite source of humor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I may never stop laughing at the apoplectic nerds who predict the demise of Apple and expend great energy screaming at each other about how no one with any sense would ever buy from them. It must be amazingly grating to see them be so massively successful.

    At least you get to build a false sense of superiority by explaining to each other how your opinions are objectively correct. That probably makes dealing with the cognitive dissonance worthwhile.

  51. Totally False by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    Apple's mantra is to make one really easy way to do things they think people want to do and at first, that does draw people in, but as they start to get comfortable and try to push the boundaries, they realize they can't.

    That is 100% wrong, and a complete misunderstanding of what Apple does - even in fact why Apple products are popular.

    Apple optimizes for the easy case, yes. But to make something REALLY easy requires a ton of complexity underneath, which they expose to those interested or technically inclined.

    Even iOS, the supposedly closed system, Apple does nothing to stop jailbreaking - they even hire jailbreakers. They now that having a contingent of highly technical users that want to work without boundaries is a good thing, so Apple does nothing to stop them - and unlike many other companies Apple stuff is written in such a way that it's easy for technical people to make great use of it once you are "inside the system" as it were.

    Who got tens of millions of advanced UNIX systems in people's homes? It wasn't Linux. It was Apple.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  52. What to call it? by iblink · · Score: 1

    We are all used to referring to Mac Pros as towers. I have heard people refer to the newest creation as a tube, but this sounds rather grim. Suggestions? How about Ziti? Rigatoni?

  53. I think the Mid-2012" Mac Pro by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    can take the same cpu's that new 2013 one has

  54. And they might lose those by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    You don't need a Mac for AV work. Most stuff is cross platform, particularly the heavy hitting stuff. All the Avid stuff (Media Composer/Pro Tools) is either, Cubase is either, Studio One is either, Digital Performer is either, all the Adobe software is either, etc, etc. It is pretty much just the Apple products that are Mac only I the pro A/V arena.

    I personally Use Cakewalk Sonar, which is PC only, and there have been a steady trickle of Mac people on the forums that are either wavering, or going PC for pro audio. Some are doing bootcamp and running Sonar, some are buying PCs because they find the cost to just be too much on an advantage.

    They days of media being an "Apple thing" are long past. There's a lot of inertia in that area, after all if you've a setup and it works why change, but there isn't a technical hurdle. Unless you use FCP or Logic, you can most likely keep your exact same workflow, programs, plugins and all, and switch to Windows.

    Also you are straight fucked if you have dedicated hardware that isn't USB/FW/thunderbolt. Have a Nitris DX? So sorry, nowhere to hook that up in the new Mac. Also no thunderbolt option (PCIe only for now) so you can't even rebuy it if you wanted to drop another $5000.

    If all Apple keeps targeting are the people who want aesthetics, that may happen. After all, if you are doing music and a $1500 PC would meet your needs as well as a $3000 Mac, despite being less powerful, then maybe you decide that extra money would better go to some nice samples or the like.

  55. Also that pricing is misleading by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apple fans love to demand an "equal for equal" spec for comparisons, but that's silly. Party of the reason Macs often cost so much is you have to get a ton of shit you don't need. Ya, dual video cards cost a lot. Guess what? Next to nobody needs them. If you don't, they are wasted money. In a Dell, you just don't order one. With Apple? You get what you get and fuck you otherwise.

    So they often lose out on pricing bigtime when you compare actual task needs. Like let's say I need a system with a fast CPU and reasonable bit of RAM. I want to run some Cadence (ok you can't do that on a Mac, but whatever). A fast quad core and 32-64GB of RAM. The Mac Pro is good there. However video needs are minimal, integrated graphics is fine, as is a $50 GPU. Oh, well there I'm screwed. While the dual GPUs won't hurt, they won't buy me anything either. So I'm paying for them and can't make use of them.

    That is a problem, if money matters at least. You want to spend it on the useful things, and save it on the shit you don't need.

    1. Re:Also that pricing is misleading by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      If you need a Xeon based workstation I'm willing to bet most of your workflow could be sped up by having software that takes advance of open CL.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    2. Re:Also that pricing is misleading by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

      Well let's see, what do we use at work... Cadence. No. HFSS. No. Hyper-V. No. ADS. No.

      Hmmm... Maybe not so much. There's plenty of shit that doesn't use OpenCL, but where you want speed and big memory, but there's little to no GPU use.

      Also you find a lot of stuff that does GPU acceleration, wants CUDA. The research labs we have that do GPU based work are all NVidia all the time on account of CUDA.

    3. Re:Also that pricing is misleading by blindseer · · Score: 1

      Then don't buy one if you don't like it. It's really that simple.

      I did the math when looking for a laptop. The Apple had Thunderbolt that I didn't need, the other brand (I forget which) had eSATA that I didn't need. Both had video capabilities I didn't need. I had to pick one though, both were a compromise.

      That is a problem, if money matters at least. You want to spend it on the useful things, and save it on the shit you don't need.

      Money always matters. My brother wanted heated seats in the new car, his wife didn't want to pay for the GPS and stereo that came with it. She won, and now her butt gets cold. There were other car manufacturers, many that offered heated seats without having to buy GPS and a fancy stereo. They also didn't have other things they wanted like all wheel drive, or fuel economy.

      If you think that Dell has a better deal then go buy from them. Also, I'm pretty sure that a Mac Pro can run Cadence tools. Cadence software may not run on Apple's OS but if it runs on Dell hardware then I'd wager it would run on Apple hardware too.

      I remember running Cadence on HP-UX in college. That lab was switched to Windows NT the next year. The next year Windows was replaced by Linux because Windows caused the engineering college so many problems. I'll admit my dislike for Windows runs deep. I'll also admit that Apple products are not for everyone. Everything is a compromise. Everyone has their own priorities. Money matters, but it's only one factor of many. You buy the cheap shit if you like, I'll spend money on shit I don't need and get an Apple.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  56. When thunderbolt or other can be faster then pci-e by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    then slots will go away.

    Right now thunderbolt is at best pci-e X4 at least it has 3 buses so you can at least give stuff it's own bus.

  57. Particularlty for high end Dell gear by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    It may well be redundant. The servers we use a lot of in our datacenter have "1500 watts" of power supply, divided in to two 750 watt units. They could be upgraded to 1100 watt units, 2200 watts total, if we needed. However, if you do actual load testing on the system, you find peak draw with the configuration we have to be about 600 watts, well under the limit (remember 750 is output, not input, and there's some loss in conversion). So what's the deal?

    Reliability. The power is fully redundant. Even if heavily loaded, if one PSU fails the system will not need to throttle. It has WAY more PSU than it needs for that reason. That's also why the 1100s are available. We are running dual 8 core CPUs and 256GB of RAM. If we stepped up to something heavier hitting, 2 12s and 768GB for example, we'd have a peak load over what 1 PSU could handle and need to upgrade or lose full redundancy.

    However that doesn't mean it is power hungry if it doesn't need to be. It'll draw around 120ish watts at idle, mostly due to the RAID array since that is magnetic and doesn't get spun down.

    Of course I'd think most of this would be known to the kid of person who buys an enterprise workstation or server. That the Mac fans who like the pro don't tells me something.

  58. ...and if I have no need for that? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    This is the thing all Mac fans seem to miss: Apple often throws in expensive shit that people don't need, and would rather not pay for. You discover that with SSDs, they are pretty much all "fast enough" for most tasks, meaning they are not a significant bottleneck, if one at all. You can see this upgrading a SATA 2 SSD to SATA 3. You get twice the bandwidth, and benchmarks bear that out, but you notice no operational difference. It was already fast enough for what it is tasked with.

    Even high end stuff in nearly all cases. Like streaming audio samples. SSDs are the best shit EVAR as far as those of us that play with audio samplers (NI Kontakt and the like ) are concerned. What you find is that all limits go away with regards to the drive. Want to stream 2000 voices at once? No problem, even "slow" SSDs are fast enough for that no problems.

    So the "givashit" quotient on these hyper-fast SSDs is pretty low. If I was running a heavy hitting database maybe. Of course one wouldn't do that on a Mac Pro. For AV work? Nope, regular SSDs are fast enough and space is more of an issue than speed. You can do uncompressed 4:4:4 HD video on any SSD no problem. However you need 13GB/minute to hold it. So 1200MB/sec doesn't matter 225MB/sec is all you need and a SATA-2 SSD could do that. What you need is space for cheap. A comparatively slow 1TB SSD is more use than a lightning fast 250GB one.

  59. What if I want data integrity? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Say, RAID-6? That's what you do for drive failures. The problem with drive failure isn't replacing the drive, but the data and the downtime.

    With most workstations, this is easy, you can get a RAID controller, usually integrated on the board (Dell's PERC 710s are great) and you can knock in a bunch of drives and go. High performance, high resilience. No such luck on this new Pro.

    Another option would be a good external system. Maybe a heavy hitting iSCSI or FC array. That's where you go for really high end, lots of storage, reliability, etc. Ahh well you are kinda screwed there too. No cards to add FC to the pro, and OS-X has no iSCSI initiator, which is shocking for a modern OS, Windows got it in 2003 and Linux in 2005.

    Also you might want to look in to SSD failure rates. They aren't particularly high, but they aren't particularly low either. Oh, and they are workload dependent as well. I loves me some SSDs, but don't think they are rocks on which you can build your house.

    1. Re:What if I want data integrity? by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      With most workstations, this is easy, you can get a RAID controller

      Which you can do on the new MacPro also, generally by either attaching a case with RAID integrated or an external pcie case into which you can put a raid card.

      Ahh well you are kinda screwed there too. No cards to add FC to the pro.

      No cards, just Thunderbolt 2 where you can add a Thunderbolt 2 to 8G Fibre Channel bridge... You really need to look into what you can do with Thunderbolt 2.

      Also you might want to look in to SSD failure rates. They aren't particularly high, but they aren't particularly low either.

      They are better than for spinning media and its not like Apple is using discount components here.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    2. Re:What if I want data integrity? by bhiestand · · Score: 1

      Say, RAID-6? That's what you do for drive failures. The problem with drive failure isn't replacing the drive, but the data and the downtime.

      With most workstations, this is easy, you can get a RAID controller, usually integrated on the board (Dell's PERC 710s are great) and you can knock in a bunch of drives and go. High performance, high resilience. No such luck on this new Pro.

      Another option would be a good external system. Maybe a heavy hitting iSCSI or FC array. That's where you go for really high end, lots of storage, reliability, etc. Ahh well you are kinda screwed there too. No cards to add FC to the pro, and OS-X has no iSCSI initiator, which is shocking for a modern OS, Windows got it in 2003 and Linux in 2005.

      Also you might want to look in to SSD failure rates. They aren't particularly high, but they aren't particularly low either. Oh, and they are workload dependent as well. I loves me some SSDs, but don't think they are rocks on which you can build your house.

      Your analysis misses a few important implementation details.

      First, at least one company (ATTO) already makes thunderbolt adapters for 10GbE and FC. ATTO and SNS makes iSCSI initiators for OSX. I've used both. They work fine. But iSCSI on Mac rarely makes sense.

      Second, the typical usecase for these is for a video editor. Few use iSCSI, and the better funded ones will be connecting to a nice SAN or NAS over 10 GbE.

      Third, who cares? The SSD fails, you get it replaced. These are workstations, not servers, and any important data should be going to a more redundant system.

      --
      SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
  60. Worse? Like you "eating your words" troll?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4539709&cid=45664491

    APK

    P.S.=> Tell us: How does "eating your words" TASTE, troll (especially when they're flavored with YOUR FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat")?

    ... apk

    1. Re:Worse? Like you "eating your words" troll?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      APK

      P.S.=> I am sorry that I eat my own feces. Sadly I have mental problems and can not control myself. ... apk

  61. Then don't fucking buy it. by Uberbah · · Score: 1

    Here's the thing Hatebois seem to miss: zombie Steve is not holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy his products. I have no need for a truck with 18,000 lbs towing capacity - does that mean that F450's are overpriced crap and anyone who buys one is an effete snob chasing fashion?

    If you don't need a monotower with PCI flash storage, then.....buy whatever it is that does what you want at the price you are willing to pay. Shocking concept I know, but feel free to try it sometime.

  62. Re: also only 1 build in storage port that maxs at by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

    Six times Thunderbolt. You can buy a 32TB Thunderbolt RAID drive off the shelf; six of them are 192TB.

  63. Re:When thunderbolt or other can be faster then pc by phayes · · Score: 1

    For specialty needs involving an extremely tiny minority... What, pray tell us, other than gpus (already present in Mac pros) and storage (better served via thunderbolt enclosures) needs better then PCI x4 speeds that is needed by a significant population of potential Mac Pro buyers?

    --
    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
  64. Re:apple was/is for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And when Red's tech support asks what machine their hardware is plugged into - you'll get the response "that platform" aka - your POS hackintosh - isn't supported. Enjoy your Nintendo PCs tho. Fag.

  65. Peripherals vs. internals by the_other_chewey · · Score: 1

    This doesn't seem to have been linked already:

    Photo showing the 2012 Mac Pro vs. the 2013 Mac Pro - both with the same amount of additional hardware.

  66. Idiots like you that must "eat their words"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After you shot your big mouth off libeling me also http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4539709&cid=45664491

    "?"

    ("Gosh golly gee - wonder WHY it is you keep avoiding the question below, troll? Not!)

    APK

    P.S.=> Tell us: How does "eating your words" TASTE, troll (especially when they're flavored with YOUR FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat")?

    ... apk

  67. Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It doubles as a giant butt plug with an exhaust in the center for blowing hot air up your ass.

  68. Slashdot you are idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every time Apple releases a new product that isn't exactly like an older one Slashdot goes wild claiming they are done for. I remember when the ipad came out. The comments read just like these.

  69. Re:When thunderbolt or other can be faster then pc by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    storage (better served via thunderbolt???)) the old mac pro raid card was X4 and other raid card can be X8 or higher.

    video in / other pro cards RED ROCKET cards I think are pci-e X8 so one can max out the TB bus.

    fiber channel cards I think they are X4 - X8 so one can max out the TB bus.

  70. I'll show YOU "eating your words" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After you shot your big mouth off libeling me also http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4539709&cid=45664491

    "?"

    ("Gosh golly gee - wonder WHY it is you keep avoiding the question below, troll? Not!)

    APK

    P.S.=> Tell us: How does "eating your words" TASTE, troll (especially when they're flavored with YOUR FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" that you can't face up to, troll)?

    ... apk

  71. Re: but people hate Final Cut X by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apparently Final Cut X (whatever that is) is the only video editing software that features optimizations that make use of all this hardware. It's apparently wicked fast, but people hate Final Cut X. Apparently, Final Cut 7 was great, but X blows, despite running like a champ on this system.

    FCP X is a great program with a new way of looking at the editing process! If your in the business of editing like I am and open to new ideas it's a program that is looking forward not back. People who hate usually have spent the time to understand it.

  72. Why Isn't The Title of This Post? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    New Mac Pro Receives Rave Reviews

  73. Sadly, you had to "eat your words", troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After you shot your big mouth off libeling me also http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4539709&cid=45664491

    "?"

    ("Gosh golly gee - wonder WHY it is you keep avoiding the question below, troll? Not!)

    APK

    P.S.=> Tell us: How does "eating your words" TASTE, troll (especially when they're flavored with YOUR FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" that you can't face up to, troll)?

    ... apk

  74. Re:When thunderbolt or other can be faster then pc by phayes · · Score: 1

    Thunderbolt DAS units are used by anyone serious about storage.

    Red Rocket is planning on a TB box and externalized PCI boxes over Thunderbolt are already being used by many until they deliver it.

    Fiber Channel? Oh yeah, Everybody needs Fiberchannel... You're grasping at straws.

    --
    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
  75. Lumpy "impersonates" me AGAIN? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Keep showing us how you are, Lumpy: & keep "eating your words"...

    * :)

    You're also projecting your own "issues", yet again too - don't you EVER learn? Apparently not!

    (As far as "eating feces"? Sorry - wrong door: I don't DO that but you DO "eat your words", lol, & you KNOW it!)

    APK

    P.S.=> You're truly, a loser - even moreso than where I made you "eat your words" here -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4539709&cid=45664491 ... apk

  76. Re:Because tying to a proprietary standard is bett by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 1

    I was being facetious, if that wasn't obvious. I was merely pointing out that "blaming" Adobe for supporting CUDA is no less subjective than "blaming" Apple for supporting OpenCL.

    Also, it's worth pointing out that Apple didn't tie themselves to a standard so much as they created a new standard for everyone else to tie themselves to. It's not like OpenCL was an existing standard that Apple embraced.

    Obligatory.

    --
    Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
  77. Re:When thunderbolt or other can be faster then pc by AJH16 · · Score: 1

    They likely won't go away even then. We've been down this road before prior to the advent of internal expansion. Anyone else remember when computers were a small stand alone box and all the accessories were plugged in to it. Used to be your disk drive, your hard drive, pretty much everything was plugged in to it.

    We moved away from that because having components inside meant that you didn't have to carry a bunch of different expansion devices with you for you computer. The industry favored internal modules over external quite strongly. Now, yes, there were technical limitations that required moving stuff close to the bus and largely accessories have been lagging on making full use of the bus speeds available now, but the closer you can get to the CPU, the faster you can make stuff operate and that is going to always be the case. No external port will ever match the speed you can get internally simply because of the distance the signals have to travel and the limited number of lanes available in a decently sized cable with reasonable power consumption.

    Expansion slots may even become less common in a typical end user computer, but for a workstation, expandability and adaptability has ALWAYS been the name of the game and for expandability, internal, simple usage has always been favored over slower, modular, external options with a hard to service core.

    --
    AJ Henderson
  78. Re:Because tying to a proprietary standard is bett by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    I was being facetious, if that wasn't obvious.

    Thanks for the clarification.

    Also, it's worth pointing out that Apple didn't tie themselves to a standard so much as they created a new standard for everyone else to tie themselves to

    In what way is everyone else "tying" themselves with this standard? It works across hardware platforms, and is controlled by a standards body run by a number of companies (not just Apple).

    "tying" implies they are bound, but using the OpenCL standard means they are free to run on any GPU.

    It's true Apple created it but that's because nothing else like it really existed at the time (apart from CUDA of course).

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  79. Re:Because tying to a proprietary standard is bett by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 1
    Tying to, supporting, semantics.

    Instead of encouraging Nvidia to open up CUDA and other hardware vendors to support it, Apple opted to create a new standard, OpenCL. Of course, there's no technical reason [that I can see] why CUDA support couldn't be extended to non-Nvidia hardware, much like OpenCL support has been added to a variety of GPU hardware. That would've resulted in a world with one standard for GPGPU instead of the two we see today. Nvidia could've passed CUDA off to Khronos to alleviate any conflicts of interest. Also, I'd like to point out that OpenCL support was not always quite so universal, and targeting the OpenCL standard did not mean free choice of "any GPU".

    It's true Apple created it but that's because nothing else like it really existed at the time (apart from CUDA of course).

    That's my point. CUDA did exist. Apple could have used CUDA and worked to promote CUDA as the standard for all GPGPU. They didn't, for what I'm sure were perfectly valid reasons. But they could have, and that's why I'm saying it's not reasonable to blame Adobe over Apple.

    --
    Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
  80. Re:You really can't understand the desire for smal by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    So, you really think a netbook is inherently more useful than, say, a 16" Alienware powerhouse?

    That is a bad comparison because it misses the point of WHEN smaller is better

    Well, I blame you for not being more specific when you said "... in just about any area of computing, IS more useful."

    I think mine is a good comparison, since, "in just about any area of computing," the Alienware beats the pants off a netbook.

    More specific? Like "My Alienware would be so much better if it were an inch thicker"?

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  81. Re:You really can't understand the desire for smal by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

    Who rattled your kennel? I don't remember inviting you to the conversation.

    Anyway... if you don't know off the top of your head how one of those big Alienware powerhouse laptops is more useful than a tiny, underpowered netbook, you'd be better off comparing them on NewEgg than talking to me.

    'Cuz I'm probably just gonna make fun of you.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  82. Re:You're a fool, today, "eating your words" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK is a virus distributor that actualy can not write software. He is simply a script kiddie.

    what a loser APK is.

  83. This disproves your b.s. Lumpy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From REPUTABLE sources in the security community http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4539709&cid=45664491 & it's COMPLETELY easily verified by emailing the folks I noted @ malwarebytes (as well as other sources noted).

    * :)

    (Funny how "Lumpy" won't post using his REAL account here anymore too, eh? LOL, not...)

    ---

    Additionally CHUMPY, the day you can write up a ware that goes commercial from a certified Microsoft partner & it's ideas and code made it a FINALIST @ Microsoft Tech-Ed 2000-2002 in the HARDEST CATEGORY THERE (SQLServer Performance Improvement) as I did, is the day you can even BEGIN to talk out your ass like you do, troll...

    ---

    "Chumpy" also AVOIDS answering this SIMPLE QUESTION after that link above too (lol):

    Tell us - How does "eating your words" taste? Especially when flavored with your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH, & spiced with "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat"??

    (See "Chumpy" do his usual "Run, Forrest - RUN!!!" from that, with only non-sequitur illogical off-topic failing ad hominem attacks instead...)

    APK

    P.S.=> Lumpy as far your b.s.? What've YOU ever done in the way of programming?? ZERO is what... if not, prove otherwise (programs, not 'chump-level' website crap - that's for morons & dolts (e.g. Linus Torvalds doesn't "get into that" & guess why: Pretty much what I noted, since it's not REAL programming by a LONG shot)) - go for it, show us - prove me wrong (I know you can't)...

    ... apk

  84. Re:You really can't understand the desire for smal by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    Who rattled your kennel? I don't remember inviting you to the conversation.

    Aww poor baby. I didn't know I needed your approval to show just how THICK you are. Feel free to just assume that you are THICK whatever you say from now on. It's a given.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  85. Re:You really can't understand the desire for smal by CanHasDIY · · Score: 1

    Who rattled your kennel? I don't remember inviting you to the conversation.

    Aww poor baby. I didn't know I needed your approval to show just how THICK you are.

    Troll much?

    Because you suck at it, FYI.

    Feel free to just assume that you are THICK whatever you say from now on. It's a given.

    Ha! Man, do I love it when someone who can't even write a coherent sentence tries to insult my intellect; tragic irony really cracks me up.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  86. way over the top price wise by Douglas+Goodall · · Score: 1

    Given that Apple limits the duration of the Applecare support, I divide the price by the number of years it is supportable then ask myself if the machine is worth so much per month. My experience with my previous Mac Pro was a disappointment because a limitation on the boot ROM keeps me from being able to load a 64-bit kernel. My five thousand dollar Mac Pro is stuck back on Snow Leopard for the rest of it's life. I have a certain degree of remorse about this, which would be even more extreme if the price tag was over ten thousand dollars. I don't think I will be able to enjoy one of these, although my inner child yearns for one. I can't afford a Mercedes or a BMW either. My Mac Pro is the workstation of my dreams in a generic fashion though. 16GB of ram, 8-cores of 3.0GHz Xeon is still a kick ass development machine for GNU g++.

  87. -1 overrated for parent comment, really? by jo_ham · · Score: 1

    Seriously? -1 overrated on an unmoderated comment?

    Guys, the moderation system is not a tool to be used when you disagree with someone. We talked about this.

    What specifically about the parent comment is worthy of an overrated mod? Quotes and discussion please.

  88. Then go with Lenovo's Thinkpads(or Dell Precision) by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    Not only will you get something of comparable (if not better) quality, they're actually designed to be maintained. For the Thinkpads, you finally get to have IPS again after seeing it depart for about 6 years(last model being the 4:3 T60p). For Dell, you're likely to luck out on larger displays and swappable video cards. In both cases, the machines are designed with a higher degree of maintenance friendliness (favoring the Thinkpads though) and greater part availability.

    That, and you usually can make them run OS X if you really wanted to.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.