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The Mac Pro Is Getting a Major Do-Over (mashable.com)
Apple is moving away from the current, cylinder-shaped design used on its Mac Pro desktop, but that replacement will take until next year to hit shelves. From a report: "The Mac Pro, the current vintage that we introduced, we wanted to do something bold and different. In retrospect, it didn't well suit some of the people we wanted to reach," admitted Apple SVP Craig Federighi. "So many of our customers were moving to iMac that we saw a path to address to many, many more of those people," he added. "With the current generation Mac Pro, which some customers love, others may not, one of the things that's certainly clear and true about that is the team tried to do something different, something bold and we always want to encourage the Mac team that whatever products you make, that make customers happy, that we do bold work. Because the Mac's always been about that. It's been about not being conventional thinking, not me-too-stuff," said Phil Schiller. [...] While we'll have to wait until 2018 for the Mac Pro rebirth ("Want to do something great... that will take longer than this year to do," said Schiller), iMac fans can expect a significant update this year, including some new configurations designed specifically for Pro users who already fans of the all-in-one design. [...] Schiller was somewhat less emphatic when I asked if he was willing to make any "courageous" decisions about Mac Pro ports. I thought I saw a little discomfort flicker across Schiller's face as he reacted to that word and he told me that Apple wasn't making promises about ports on the Mac Pro. Port decisions, he said, are made at a product level. "Just because on one product we removed something, doesn't mean we're going to remove it elsewhere," he told me. More on this here.
The new one is a cylinder with rounded corners.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
For most users these days, even those using higher-end systems, the exact hardware doesn't matter. It'll be more than sufficient for most tasks, and in the rare cases when it isn't, such a user will likely need far, far more computing power than a single system can deliver (a workstation that's twice as capable won't help when you need a 4000-machine render farm).
What does matter is the software.
What direction is macOS going to take?
Will it ever get proper virtual desktop support, like X11 desktops have had going back decades? The current hackish approach to multiple desktops is shitty and awkward to use.
What's happening with Swift? Now that Chris Lattner has left Apple, does it have a real future?
What's the status of APFS for macOS, and when will it be considered production usable?
Those are the kinds of questions we want answers to!
So, Apple has gained their own definition of the work "courageous", a bit like the Alanis Morissette definition of ironic
So the trash-can Mac Pro is "vintage" now?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
...we wanted to do something bold
...that we do bold work.
So iPhones are all about courage, while Mac Pro is all about being Bold. I'm sensing a theme here. Perhaps their iMacs should have valor, iPad tenacity, and earpods should have balls.
Hooray! Maybe next year there will be a Mac that I can consider worth buying again! Also, they should be using the current most recent generation Intel chips by then. But nah, they'll probably just fucking solder everything down again. Because to the post-Jobs Apple, "Pro" apparently means a fancy-pants artist who wants curvy thin stuff with no seams that can impress people, not an engineer or architect, or even someone in the music or film production business, who wants to get shit done.
Meanwhile, I will stick to my accumulated pile of MacBook Pros and Mac Minis from the 2010-2012 era. And also the corresponding stack of Magsafe 1 chargers and Thunderbolt adapters. I even bought a USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter yesterday.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Apple ostensibly was trying to target the pro market, but was trying to spearhead it with aesthetics and novelty like you'd use to target the consumer market with.
Consumers didn't want a super expensive box. Pro users are like "THAT is definitely not going in the rack". So they missed out on both markets. I don't see how this took anyone by surprise.
Now I see they're going to push the iMac into the pro market. Clearly they're still trying to keep themselves on the desktop and out of the data center, but there's plenty of room to work with inside an iMac. Put a few hatches on the back. Give me lots of soldered ram WITH a slot or two to upgrade it. Give me access to BOTH M.2 SSD slots (or 3... or 4?) from the outside. Give me 4 (or 6) thunderbolt ports and a mix of USB.C and USB3. Now that's more like it.
The black dustbin was no more practical than the cube. This is where Apple needs to go if they want to be in this middleground between consumer and pro... call it "pro-desktop".
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Interesting. I've seen posts about emerging technologies labeled as spam on Slashdot, but not anything about upcoming Apple products. In fact, you've got two posts in a row on the FP of Slashdot about Apple products. Curious.
The next model will take their design in a new bold direction, and actually function as a trash can.
Of course it'll require proprietary trash liners and will require an adapter to deal with various forms of trash.
In the computer word a lot happens in a year. Are they seriously just starting now?
Greed is the root of all evil.
I never really knew that I wanted un-replaceable RAM and Harddrive/Flash until I went to upgrade my Macbook Pro.
Now I know that is these features that really make me happy, and screw that idea of me having a choice.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I'm still waiting for a worthy successor to my 2006 black MacBook (yes, I paid the extra $200 for black version). Still a conversation piece when I bring it into the Apple Store. Not many Apple Store employees have ever seen a legendary black MacBook.
Oops - time for one more Slashdot History talking about the amazing and brilliant bew Apple products. Who cares if it is the 4th or 5th history about Apple products in a row??
-><- no
... but how about starting with the adjectives "functional, useful, reasonable"?
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
As part of my day job we have to support a lot of Macs in server rooms and/or lab spaces. The current product lineup falls flat and makes us do a lot of stupid workarounds and hassle that we don't have to deal with with Linux/Windows/ESX/OpenStack, all of which run happily on standard rackmount hardware.
"Pro" options I'd like to see:
- IPMI/out of band management tools. No Apple proprietary crap. Give me an tool that plays nice with the rest of my machines that speak IPMI.
- Expansion bays for drives, easily accessible from the front.
- Support for modern nVidia GPUs / CUDA. OpenCL doesn't cut the mustard. I should be able to use GeForce, Quadro or Tesla GPUs. Support for two at a minimum, four would be better. Use standard power connections, too.
- Dual 10 GB drops, options for more.
- Dual power supplies, also hot swappable.
- Rack mountable form factor. Look at what Lenovo is doing with their P500/700/900 lines. Host will be happy as a desktop or in a rack. Sure, it's 4U but at least if you need to rack it, you can. I get that Macs in a server room is weird.
I became a Mac convert (from Windows XP) in the mid 2000s, especially since I use several Linux machines throughout the day also. I did a lot of video editing on my MacBook Pro but by 2013 it was a bit sluggish so I thought I would pay the large chunk of money and get a nice machine to edit video on. Lo and behold what did they have?...a stupid cylinder that I couldn't put my five hard drives of video files into.
Yes it looked cool and sleek, unless you actually wanted to use the thing. The last thing I wanted on my desk was a rat's nest of external enclosures for hard drives, cables, and power supplies. I had enough of that in dealing with my laptop setup. Bump a cable, oops, there goes the whole chain.
The most obnoxious part was people actually defending this "radical new design" and that people like me who didn't like it were "afraid of change". Or even, "Who needs so many hard drives, just use the cloud, that is the future!" (yeah, try and edit HD video files that are being served off the cloud, heh).
So for about $1500 I bought a PC with Windows 7 and haven't looked back. Bye bye Apple.
My personal view is (and has been for a few years now) that Apple needs to rejigger their entire lineup. I'm not saying that they need to make drastically different products, but their current marketing is out of whack, which is weird for Apple. My general suggestion would be to make three levels across most of their product line, and name them similarly.
For example, make 3 different phones:
Make 3 different Mac models:
Then 3 laptop models:
and 3 iPads:
and finally, if I had to figure out 3 iMac models to keep the trend (which I'm not sure makes sense):
And to be clear, it's not that I'm specifically fixated on particular features going into particular models, but I think apple would be smart to do something like this. Having a breakdown like this would provide more consistency among their product lines and a clearer differentiation between the tiers within each product line. I also think it would also fill in some of the gaps in their lineup, while still providing reasons to spring for the more expensive pro models.
> Not to detract from your excellent points, but the hardware does matter. The lack of ports, ludicrously low max memory
That's a good counterpoint. "Ludicrously low max memory" is of course a problem for some people. Once you've achieved the specs of "modern workstation", the details don't matter so much - 99% of the time, if 512GB is enough, 256GB is also enough. Maxing out at 64GB is too low, though, even with memory compression.
Apple is gonna dick people around with the Mac Pro just like they did with the Macbook Pro. They will take away ports and functionality and charge $4,000 dollars for it. I used to be an Apple fan but these last several years seems to show that Apple has given up on the desktop. I would rather they just sell licenses to OS X (or open source it)...their bread and butter are the iOS devices anyway.
How many drive bays, how many ports, and how many card slots? I've owned every top end Mac Since the Macintosh II; this one I skipped.
I have a Mac Pro; it is my production machine and it's an early 2009 "Cheese Grater." It has 32GB of system RAM and, I am told can go higher (though Apple says it can only pack 32GB) and I have definitely upgraded the standard disk drive that it came with (I have all four trays full). I will probably get an SSD drive for its startup drive fairly soon.
But Apple has become an appliance-maker with a limited "shelf life." They make way more from their tablets and smartphones than they do with their computers and I believe that adding the word "pro" to their tablet is an indication of something. There are no user-serviceable parts inside their phones and tablets, even though iFixit regularly takes them apart. But they're pretty clear that you cannot upgrade the insides and all you can do (if they offer parts) is replace what is there.
This means that the lifecycle of the phone or tablet is one to two years, which is a real moneymaker for Apple. I kept my last Mac for ten years and plan to keep my current Mac Pro for ten, as well. As to the cost of their computers, I really don't care as long as I can expand it—their trashcan model is definitely not expandable and one cannot change out the graphics card, so I have not been tempted to look into purchasing it in the slightest.
As to ports, I have what I really need on my Cheese Grater, though it does not feature the faster Thunderbolt port that the newer Macs have. It does, however, have plenty of USB ports and it has an internal bus that I can swap out cards on. I can also change my GPU and I note that Apple tends to have a love-hate relationship with GPU makers, generally switching companies every one to two years. This means that if you purchase a computer with a built-in GPU, Apple will change their software and their OS to not be optimized for it in a couple of years. Want to use your computer as a main production machine with the latest software? Sorry, your investment is now obsolete.
Apple will be transitioning you to a tablet soon. They do not care about computers any more. Their hardware will be designed to be replaced in one to two years.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
I had an original Mac Pro that I got for a song so it became my primary machine. Over the years I added a big screen, drives, GPUs, memory, etc. It was not until 2014 that I considered an "upgraded" because I needed to move to 64bit in order to keep running Xcode. That left me with the decision of buying the top of the line iMac, or a Mac Pro. I went the later because I could keep my monitor, which I love. The price difference if you ignored the monitor was a couple of hundred bucks, so why not?
But quite frankly, the machine sucks. Oh, it's fast, and small, and very very quiet. And it looks good. But really, those are it's only good points. And there are lots of bad points...
1) You get two GPUs, one for rendering and one for calculations. However, I never (?) do GPU-hosted calculations, so that GPU is idle. I am certainly not alone in needing a single GPU. I would be happy if the second GPU could be used for rendering in a CrossFire-like way, but no one is bothering with that. So I have an expensive GPU doing nothing. Worse, it can't be used as a backup, as I understand it, so if the display GPU fails, my machine is dead.
2) There is a single "drive slot". It is non-standard (although such a standard did not really exist at the time). It also sprouts from one of the two GPUs, which is ridiculous. So Apple has to make two different GPU cards, one with and one without the SSD slot.
3) You may say it needs only one drive slot because you'll use external drives... right? Well here's the problem with that: most external drives are so much slower than the internal SSD that the machine is fully booted before the external is up and running (its FAST). Since you'll probably put your user account on that drive... odd things happen. Like your account is read-only. Or you get a sort of guest-like account. The only solution is to reboot.
4) It has FOUR USB ports. That isn't enough for anyone. Ever. All of them are on the back. So every time you want to plug in a USB key, you have to spin the machine. I gave up and left it back-to-front, so everyone gets to see my cable spaghetti.
5) It has SIX Thunderbolt. I have exactly one TB device, the screen.
6) All the ports are at the top of the machine, so the cables hang down and bend at the strain relief. If anything heavy ever falls on the cables, they're going to break. This is just bad design.
The good news is we can fix it all, easily:
1) put in at least two M2/U2 ports, preferably four. I shouldn't HAVE to use an external drive, and I shouldn't have to throw away the drive it came with if I want a larger option.
2) alternately, add a bay for a single (or two) conventional SATA laptop drives. You can get 1.5TBs for reasonable prices. It would make the case *slightly* larger, but who cares?
3) 10 USB-C, two of them on the front.
4) either move the ports down, or angle them downward to release the strain on the cables.
5) allow the system to run with a single GPU. And allow us to swap them! There's a number of small-form-factor GPU slots out there, and surely one of the companies you deal will with make one that can be mounted to the cooling block somehow.
Its shocking its taken this long.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dear Apple,
Here are some tips for making your next MacBook Pro more successful:
1.) Stop fucking taking away necessary ports. If your laptop doesn't have at east 2 USB ports (preferably 2 side by side), that shit can fuck off.
2.) Stop replacing the necessary ports with proprietary ports. We don't need 2+ Thunderbolt ports. they can fuck right off too.
3.) Why the fuck can't you stick with industry standard goddamn parts for SSD's?
If you could do these three things I would have purchased another macbook pro when my last laptop died. But no, you had to make that piece of shit...
My Mac Pro is turning into the Ship of Theseus. I've changed so many parts on the darn thing waiting and waiting for Apple to upgrade the workstations.
I think it's great that Apple tried something but people who need Mac Pros need to change parts to upgrade video cards, PCI cards and storage volumes. This is the whole point of a Mac Pro. The Trash Can mac was really a super Mac Mini. Changing parts is a factor and fact of life for a pro machine. There were too many custom parts in the Mac Pro 6 for it to be useful for the pro market.
A second phenomenon was Apple's simplifying its parts bin for its product line. The laptops, iMac and Mac Mini all shared a common parts bin. This mean trading off performance for battery life was built into the engineering. A Mac Pro desktop unit should be able to use all of the AC it can suck out of the wall and let the fans and SIZE OF THE CASE handle the thermals.
Now, if they're backing off, and giving us the Data Truck this market wants, good. However, I don't want to hear more about pipelines. I want product.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
what about a server again or at least OSX server VM rights on any base hardware?
Pro users would be happy with a voodoo like loopback cable for DP data that other pro workstations with TB have. Also nice to have video out that is just video and not video that uses the same bus as TB data.
Back in 1989, Acer introduced a powerful 386 computer, and offered it as a (huge, yes) desktop/tower combo. Both placements were supported. And how did they say they supported your favorite placement? Becuase the square Acer logo in the big bulky box could be rotated 90 degrees. Yay for user-configurability! *That* is what Apple needs.
amd Naples based?? 128 pci-e lanes can give them a 1 or 2 cpu system with 2 video cards, 4 pci-e X4 storage cards + 10 TB 3 buses + 2 X16 slots and dual 10-gig-e.
It took them four years to discover they screwed the pooch? Really? How much of their pro market share did they lose before they realized they stepped in dog crap with the 2013 model? I know I've left Apple behind.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The day the Mac Pro was announced haters all over the internet were complaining that the thermals were too tight and that it would be too hard to upgrade the components and that Apple being Apple would never offer an upgrade for the video card or processor. They were proven right on all counts. Hopefully Apple listens to the users this time and puts out something that can live comfortably under the desk and has headroom to grow. Also, using commodity parts so people can do their own upgrades since Apple is so bad at upgrading their own machines.
I read the internet for the articles.
New cpu's are coming out later this year.
say DEC 2017 show it off / limited volume.
Apple has become the computer version of anorexic.
I have fixed many Magsafe problems. It is mostly the lousy CABLE they use which can't handle normal long term use... it's like they designed it to not last over 5 years which was a long time for a computer over a decade ago. The adapters before that time often were weak as well but we didn't heavily use a macbook from 2000 to 2010.
The magsafe connector itself has some minor issues with age but I still feel it is worth it and not that difficult to clean.
I think they went with a softer weaker plastic to keep the connector from bumping out with a twist of the cable. Which might be more annoying... the least they could do is make it removable from the power brick so it can be replaced.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
also they where pci-e lane caped.
No way to have 2 full video cards + 3 TB 3 bus + 1 storage card.
They tried to get 2 storage cards but ran out of pci-e lanes for them.
I'm not paying $3500 for $1500 worth of PC.
BlueTooth for mouse and keyboard.
Miracast for display. (WiFi Display)
WiFi only, no Ethernet
Storage is built-in and can be extended through the cloud. No USB-C for external harddrives.
A wind turbine for wireless power.
This new design is brave and courageous and innovative.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Is there any money to be made in selling operating systems?
How much would you pay for a macOS for PC license? $300/year? $500/year?
Most people seem to want to pay about $99-$199 for a lifetime access to an operating system, which is not terribly viable for Apple.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Be the best PC tower (people used to buy MacBook Pros to run windows because they were good laptops.)
Rack mountable (pro desks have rack mounts) + angle brackets so it could be screwed to the bottom of a normal desk.
Two standard 5.25" bays which could be rotated 90 (try using a DVD drive sideways, it's a pain)
Keep the wind tunnel of fans which keeps it more quiet than any PC tower.
Lose HD bays. Have MANY SSD slots instead.
HD: Use the two 5.25 bays if it matters to you... put some screw mounts in clever ways and you could cram 3-4 HDs in that same space.
Sell fancy front plates-- for USB, memory readers, etc. snap into that 5.25 bay. Figure out how to cram a few below a DVD drive face plate.
Removable back plate (motherboard upgrades? seems impossible... they want you to buy a new system and keep using the old one? why not discourage old macs by promoting hardware upgrades? that would be "brave" new thinking!)
The G4 tower case was one of the best; the flip out made it really nice to work with. They should combine the two.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I spec'd a Mac Pro the other day. There is an option for 12 cores, not the max-of-8 mentioned in the article.
And pricing for what you get has come way, way down. Max out everything and it's not $8000 any more, but rather much more affordable.
That's an excellent suggestion. Apple are masters of refining their product line-up to make it easier for people to make decisions (as opposed to people giving up because they have too many choices). But I think Apple have gone too far and there's now too few choices. Your suggestion makes perfect sense, and I hope Apple takes it on board.
What specifically do you need an OSX server for that you can't use BSD or Linux for? ...outside of say a build farm for OSX application development.
Some people just really like OS X. Plus, while you can do virtually everything on BSD or Linux, it does make certain thing stupid simple (like setting up VPN access) to do.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Some people just really like OS X. Plus, while you can do virtually everything on BSD or Linux, it does make certain thing stupid simple (like setting up VPN access) to do.
Yeah I get the argument for OSX in an end user scenario but what does it offer to the server market?
I have a high-end workstation sitting under my desk. Dual 14 Core Xeons with 128 GB RAM. Each. It is hard to build a Hackintosh on that monster as the OS does not support the X99 chipset, never mind 54 Virtual Cores. If Apple upgrades their hardware they will have to upgrade MacOS/X too, which might make it possible to run it on my little black monster. That makes me very happy.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Tim Cook sucks and he's killing the Mac. They should sell the Mac division to someone who actually gives a shit. Steve is spinning like an out of control top in his grave.
In a related story Apple wakes up and realizes it has now become Microsoft, and changes it's name to AppleSoft.
Murphy was an optimist
My Mac is a 2 x 2.93 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon system with 8 slots. The folks at Crucial told me that I can pack in more RAM than what Apple originally told my I could do and I may go to more density later. I find that the best way to extend the life of a computer is to max out the RAM.
But I think that Apple is not all that interested in computers any more. They're an appliance company.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
A commercial competitor to Windows Server? I would say OS X Server is a good replacement for Windows SBS for small businesses that either don't want to invest in the Microsoft setup or can't (and do not have an experienced Linux engineer on staff).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
No i mean specifically what is it that macOS offers to the server market that the incumbents (Linux and BSD) don't that you need?
You aren't looking at the same picture. OSX server isn't going to replace BSD, Linux, or Solaris. It is putting an easy to use interface on DHCP, DNS, a directory service (I think it is AD compatible, not just LDAP + Kerberos, but I have not tried that yet. Maybe I will just to see), control backups on the client systems (Time Machine), and a very easy to setup OpenVPN server. Places that would use it are going to use it in place of Windows servers, and probably are not going to consider other Unixes as options.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
No I'm trying to understand what it is that macOS offers that is unique that other servers don't offer that is so compelling that it would justify buying your hardware only from Apple. The lack of such a feature(s) is why the xserve was discontinued originally.