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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.
But the question we all want to know the answer to is: will it blend?
This is not the funny you're looking for.
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?
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!
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.
- 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
...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.
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...and produce a new 17"+ MacBook Pro with Retina display quality
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
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
Are you generating power by throwing money into a furnace to fuel a steam engine?
How can I replace my OS X trashcan icon with a small Mac Pro?
http://jonathanhirz.com/macprotrash-icon/
This space for rent.
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
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
You need to look a lot closer at the specs...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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?
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
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.