Apple's Redesigned Mac Pro is Coming in 2019 (theverge.com)

Apple's long-awaited update to the 2013 Mac Pro won't be released until sometime next year, the company told TechCrunch. From a report: We've known since a press roundtable in April 2017 that Apple was "completely rethinking" the Mac Pro, in the words of marketing chief Phil Schiller. Now, we have confirmation that the product is arriving next year after some speculation that it could make an appearance this year at a fall hardware event typically reserved for MacBook announcements.

"We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It's not something for this year," Tom Boger, Apple's senior director of Mac hardware product marketing, told TechCrunch. "In addition to transparency for pro customers on an individual basis, there's also a larger fiscal reasoning behind it."

Comments

Well it's clearly not x86

[CajunArson]

Given this never-before-seen inside video of Apple's board meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

We clearly know that the 2019 Mac is faster because it's RISC, it will be faster with all existing software, and it will be cheaper!

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Dutchmaan]

Now might actually be a better time for marketing RISC processors.. since Ghz really isn't as much of a benchmark as it used to be.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[jaymemaurice]

Wait, but isn't that because more complex instruction sets...

I mean, it's in the name of the architecture dude...

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[CajunArson]

The funny part is that people who don't know the history of what RISC was actually about* making it possible to jack up the clockspeeds by having stupidly simple instruction sets that only did the bare minimum.

A highly clocked x86 is literally the opposite of what RISC designers actually thought was possible.

* Hint to all fanboys out there: Modern ARM cpus that are actually supposed to be "competitive" with x86 parts like Atoms instead of being used to run your toaster? Yeah, a real designer who actually worked on RISC back in the day would take about 3 seconds to figure out that they ain't really RISC either.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[LifesABeach]

cute fluff article, no bench marks. i know that will come in time. but if apple is curious, the 1 terabyte ram, 16+ petabytes for hard drive(s) would be useful for development work.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Junta]

First step, find a prominent RISC platform that doesn't just have RISC in the name for historical reasons. At this point, everything with any performance is CISC (whether by the inaccurate concept of count of available instructions, or in terms of how many instructions per memory cycle as was the original intent).

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[hawguy]

A highly clocked x86 is literally the opposite of what RISC designers actually thought was possible.

I thought CISC processors were essentially RISC processors, using microcode to execute the complex statement.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Joce640k]

Your RISC/CISC processor isn't really what people used to call "RISC".

(And neither are modern ARM processors, they've gone over to the dark side in order to compete with CISC on performance...)

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[sexconker]

Internally, sure. They still expose a complex ISA like AMD64 and ultimately implement it. But the black box you buy is CISC.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[e432776]

I recently read this article which gives an excellent historical perspective on ISAs, RISC, CISC, VLIW, etc. To me, it also shows why very long upgrade cycles (like 2013->2019 in this case) might make quite a bit of sense now a days. We may be heading to a period of expensive, long-lived machines. Interesting times.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Anonymous Coward]

See History of Computer Architecture and RISC (slides) by Dave Patterson.

Modern x86 chips are RISC processors, with an ugly compatibility layer on top which does have a cost. True, a number of processors that are ostensibly RISC (like ARM and PPC) do have many complex instructions and addressing modes, but the RISC ideal is alive and well with RISC-V. It is the best in class of conventional architecture, incorporating decades of wisdom. It offers a number of compelling advantages, and provides a solid and open foundation for future innovation.

There are a huge number of talks/slides available under workshop proceedings, for those with further interest.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[ArchieBunker]

Looks like the POWER8 is RISC based https://www.ibm.com/developerw...

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[BronsCon]

Modern x86 is nothing more than an x86 translation layer around a RISC chip, any way. We're already all using RISC processors, so there's not a whole lot to be gained by "switching" to them. Not in terms or performance and security, at least.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[angel'o'sphere]

Care to point some out?

Actually *all* modern architectures are RISC ... CISC no longer exists, except as "compatibly mode" for x86.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Anonymous Coward]

A microcoded monstrosity isn't necessary to compete with CISC. RISC-V is a genuine RISC design, with a simple compressed encoding that bests both ARM and x86 on 32 and 64 bit code density, while also enabling high performance implementations with macro-op fusion. The minimal design and lack of condition codes also make it more friendly for Out of Order, and enable exceedingly good performance, area and power efficiency. (Beyond even ARM; see numbers in slides.) The entire instruction set and common extensions fit on a single slide.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Anonymous Coward]

What is exposed to the application layer... massive opcode space, multiple modes, deep pipelining, reliance on both compiler and on-die logic...

this is not "RISC" in the original sense.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Junta]

The issue being that RISC was a technical feature that became a marketing bullet point. As the original bet of RISC architecture was lost (that complex hardware could not scale up, and that compiler optimization would close the gap of CISC), surviving high performance "RISC" families started embracing instruction set extensions to include multi-cycle instructions.

However, marketing material continued to beat the old dead horse of how RISC was better, despite their own designs seemingly saying otherwise.

RISC v. CISC deteriorated from a technical discussion to a sports team sort of affair. The reality is far more nuanced than that nowadays, and the strategic differnece was eroding a lot in the mid 90s and has gone away by now.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Junta]

Well, pretty much all modern SIMD instructions are not RISC.

For specifics, here's an ARM document about instructions in the pipeline and how many cycles the different instructions are:
http://infocenter.arm.com/help...

RISC was supposed to be that any given instruction was simplistic and would use no more than a single cycle, and that the processing units would be utterly generic. Now we have something of a hybrid of that philosophy and CISC philosophy, with people 'rooting' for the relatively meaningless 'CISC v RISC' designations as they would their favored sports team.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry, SIMD is obviously not RICS, and obviously a SIMD instruction needs more time than a single scalar instruction.
That has nothing to do with RISC versus CISC.
All modern microcomputer CPUs except Intel x86 are RISC CPUs, there is no single CISC left. And x86 is internal RISC, they translate the incoming CISC instructions into RISC instructions before executing.
Yes, 'one' idea behind RISC was that an instruction can be executed in one cycle, but obviously that never was true, you can not do a multiply or divide in one cycle ...
But you can have SIMD/vector pipelines that eat two or three operands per cycle and spit out one result (or two) per cycle: and that has nothing to do with CISCC versus RISC.
Read a book about it, that helps.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Tough Love]

Modern ARM cpus that are actually supposed to be "competitive" with x86 parts like Atoms

Modern ARM cpus overtook Atom some time ago and are closing in on Intel's Core architecture. These are highly superscalar, unlike Atom, which continues to disappoint. E.g. Cortex A75 can issue 8 micro-ops per cycle. These are now being evaluated realistically as server chips. Not quite there yet in per-core throughput but arguably ahead in core count. Only low end ARMs should be compared to Atom these days. Increasingly, Intel's performance edge will just be the FPU. In time that will go away too, just as it did with AMD.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Anonymous Coward]

Your RISC/CISC processor isn't really what people used to call "RISC".

(And neither are modern ARM processors, they've gone over to the dark side in order to compete with CISC on performance...)

Bah. In the old days one way to certainly tell that you had a CISC chip was if it had a fucking processor inside that ran microcode to implement the ISA it presented to the outside. Now asshats like you come riding in trying to pretend that the very thing that makes Intel's CPU a CISC machine "proves they are actually RISC". Fuck you.

Re:Well it's clearly not x86

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern x86 is nothing more than an x86 translation layer around a RISC chip, any way. We're already all using RISC processors, so there's not a whole lot to be gained by "switching" to them. Not in terms or performance and security, at least.

You just described the best way to identify an CISC CPU -it having micro-ops- as it being RISC. You are a true idiot.

My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[jsepeta]

My 2009 2x 6 core Xeon 3.4ghz system is faster than Apple's 2013 tubular 6 core Mac Pro that sells for $3000. Apple won't repair my Mac Pro's heat sensors but I'll be damned if I'll buy a new computer that costs a ton of money and runs slower. So I'm stuck with loud fans for the time being. It's frustrating as hell.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[greenwow]

There's an easy solution for the fans. Connect the 12V fans to 5V.

I've been using that trick for years since we have a bunch of Dell servers that after a BIOS update broke the software that based the fan speed on a reading from a temperature sensor. Also, I unplugged half of the fans since they run cool enough without them.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[omnichad]

There are great apps for fan control on the Mac that bypass the normal sensor info. I would be a lot more helpful if I could remember any of them. It might be Fan Control, but I'm not sure: https://www.lifewire.com/macs-...

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[jaymemaurice]

I too am running an equivalent era factory water-cooled HP z800 with 2x X5687 quad 3.6ghz.
I have a stack of dead power supplies I will eventually repair myself... the gods of planned obsolescence will have to wait.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[OrangeTide]

I'm still using my 2008 Mac Pro as my main game system (dual boot Windows 7), with a 1070 Ti it still runs the games I play pretty nicely (MMOs mainly) and doesn't have nearly as much fan noise of my wife's Dell.

I think the era where your computer was obsolete every 2 years is over.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[thegarbz]

There's an easy solution for the fans. Connect the 12V fans to 5V.

There's an even easier solution. Buy a quality product from a company who's motto is "It just works". Shame that no longer exists.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[thegarbz]

There are great apps for fan control on the Mac that bypass the normal sensor info.

So buy a premium quality fancy machine just so you have to bypass and screw around with something that shouldn't be broken in the first place?

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[omnichad]

Considering they're just dealing with loud fans, it's a better situation already. The fact is, you can buy heat sensors on eBay for under $5 if it's really worth it to you.

you have to bypass and screw around with something that shouldn't be broken in the first place?

Because other brands of computer never have failing components out of warranty? Because this computer has heat sensors beyond what typical PCs have, so there's more to fail? I'm not a huge Mac fan, but that's a bit of a stretch of an argument.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[evil_aaronm]

This is your second post along these lines, and it's just as silly. It's a nine year old machine. How long do you expect a mechanical device to last without *any* sort of failure? Heck, even the cochlear implant literally - yes, "literally" - installed in my head had a ten year warranty. Stuff breaks and it doesn't matter who manufactures it.

Re: My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[cyber-vandal]

I've just started up my 1986 ZX Spectrum after 20 years and loaded a couple of games. It's still working fine as far as I can tell and it's had a hard life in the past.

Re: My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[evil_aaronm]

That's pretty good. My 1985 TRS-80 Model 100 is still going strong, too, though I don't use it nearly as much as I used to. However, if either of our machines failed in some respect, no one would be terribly surprised. They certainly wouldn't say, "Go get yourself a better machine."

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is motto?

Re: My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

I think my 1984 C64 probably also works, but I no longer have a TV with an RF connector so now I will never know for sure.

Re: My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[cyber-vandal]

No but then my Spectrum was relatively cheap and from a company notorious for poor build quality and yet it still works fine. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a very expensive computer from a supposed high-quality manufacturer to still be working perfectly after a mere 9 years.

Re: My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but they seem like a real asshole.

Re: My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean you could be killed without any forensic evidence being left behind if one were to point a microwave gun at your ear?

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a huge Mac fan

Of course not. If you were you'd be quiet.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

smcFanControl

thank you

Re: My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised the keyboard membrane hadn't embrittled, let alone trying to get the modulated RF to display without interference from DTV on the same frequency.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like that need to upgrade has been dead for a while now, but for some reason, people just can't let old habits die. I've got a bunch of older systems at this point. My main PC (also with a 1070 in it) is the old FX8350 platform, I have some Macs from 2013 and 2011. It really depends on what you need.

If you're a writer, for example, George R.R. Martin has proven that all you need is DOS. Many geeky writers even stay in the terminal all the time on Linux. I do photo edits on older gear, though the monitor is important, so I calibrate it. I can even edit video on my Macbook Pro in 4K, though rendering will take time. (I have 18 computers, so if I can't use it for a while, I don't even care.)

Used hardware is also dirt cheap. For $100 you can get a lot these days.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[Gr8Apes]

Considering I'm running:

• 3: a 2006 laptop
• 5: a set of systems built in 2007
• 4: a 2009 mini
• 1: a hackintosh built from 2010 parts
• 4: a 2013 mini
• 2: a 2014 laptop

Among my older systems, I'd have to say that yeah, the 2 year cycle is over.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[thegarbz]

Because other brands of computer never have failing components out of warranty?

If I buy a Ford POS I expect the steeringwheel to fall off. If I buy a 7 series BMW I sure as hell expect reliability out of it. Apple *used* to be like this. I expect shit from Dell to break. I also expect to pay half the price for the machine.

Re:My Mac Pro is faster than Apple's Mac Pro

[thegarbz]

This is your second post along these lines

Yes welcome to the world of threadded conversations. When two people come up with the same arguement in different places you should expect the counter arguement to appear in two places as well, but thanks for admiring my consistency.

It's a nine year old machine.

And? I've got 9 year old machines in my house which still run as good as the day we got them, and several weren't from a permium manufacutrer.

How long do you expect a mechanical device to last without *any* sort of failure?

Depends on what I pay for them and what they are marketed as.

Heck, even the cochlear implant literally - yes, "literally" - installed in my head had a ten year warranty

So your point about computer parts having a short warranty with little manufacturer support and leaving a 9 year old machine without support is to point out that you have electronics that come with a 10 year manfuturer warranty .... I ... I don't ... I don't think you understand how this debating your point thing works.

My prediction:

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be like they epoxied two mac-minis together.

Re:My prediction:

[ColdWetDog]

It will be like they epoxied two mac-minis together.

No, they said modular. They'll use Velcro.

Re:My prediction:

[MightyYar]

Velcro is not exotic or proprietary enough. They will use a patented, 3D printed, titanium, sintered, anodized clip with a custom bluetooth chip.

Re:My prediction:

[omnichad]

They're going for dual A10X - two iPads glued back to back. Maybe they'll curve the screens into a complete 360.

Re:My prediction:

[drinkypoo]

They had a machine that shape already and it didn't turn out that well for them.

Let's see, they've done translucent plastic box, transparent over metal plastic box, cheese grater, and trash can. If they really are going modular then I propose the next look is stack of film cans.

Re:My prediction:

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

It will be like they epoxied two mac-minis together. Nope. My prediction is it'll be pyramid shaped. They've done a cube. They've done a tube. This one will be a pyramid. Got to be! Nothing says innovation like a pyramid.

Pyramid
Pyramid
Pyramid

iPyramid

iPyramid Pro

Re:My prediction:

[Anonymous Coward]

liquidmetal because fancy cool metal reasons.

Re:My prediction:

[DrXym]

I'm sure they haven't done a computer in the shape of a klein bottle yet.

Re:My prediction:

[MightyYar]

If you could watch the cooling liquid percolate through the little impossible do-dad, that would sell it for me.

By the way, if you haven't seen Cliff Stoll get excited about Klein bottles, this is your chance.

Re:My prediction:

[jwhyche]

Nope, going to be fireplug. Its the only logical shape for the next mac pro.

Re:My prediction:

[AHuxley]

Go full Maingear Prysma https://www.pcmag.com/article2...

Re:My prediction:

[Darinbob]

Keep it away from your dog then.

Re:My prediction:

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

+1 I liked that!

Of-course, *now* I have to look for a video that actually tells me what a Klein bottle actually is! ;-)

Re:My prediction:

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Not space-grayey enough!

Re:My prediction:

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

There's part of me that really hopes that somehow, someone in Apple just thinks, screw the thin-sleek look. Let's go for something *completely* different. Let's go full fire-hydrant. Don't that'll happen though.

I'm Sold

[Anonymous Coward]

Take my money please. I can't wait to experience this new Mac.

Translation

[sjbe]

We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It's not something for this year,

Translation: We couldn't be bothered to get off our ass and work on this before now because we make all our money from iPhones these days.

In addition to transparency for pro customers on an individual basis, there's also a larger fiscal reasoning behind it.

If Apple wants to be transparent it might help if they didn't say things that only have meaning if you work at Apple. "Larger fiscal reasoning" could mean almost anything.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple wants to be transparent it might help if they didn't say things that only have meaning if you work at Apple. "Larger fiscal reasoning" could mean almost anything

It means "We couldn't be bothered to get off our ass and work on this before now because we make all our money from iPhones these days"

Re:Translation

[sl3xd]

It means "We couldn't be bothered to get off our ass and work on this before now because we make all our money from iPhones these days"

That doesn't make any sense. Apple has one of the (or is it "the") biggest cash reserves of any public company in history. They can buy Dell with pocket change.

If they gave the money to the Federal Reserve and had them print up special $0.99 bills, they could power San Francisco for a year by burning them.

To me, the only thing that makes any sense is that it has something to do with taxes and a 2019 deadline of some sort. (That or they want to build a factory in a tax-favored location, and it won't be complete until 2019).

Re:Translation

[Roger W Moore]

Translation: We couldn't be bothered to get off our ass and work on this before now because we make all our money from iPhones these days.

Not only that but they are still selling the 2013 model at full price despite the fact that it is 5 years old. Jobs' reality distortion field still seems to live on even though Jobs himself is no longer with us.

Re: Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but I consider all Apple devices and their prices as an idiot tax.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

They can buy Dell with pocket change.

No they can't, Dell would need to be publicly traded for that. I'm pretty sure Michael Dell would ask a lot more than pocket change to sell off his namesake again...

Re:Translation

[exomondo]

Translation: We couldn't be bothered to get off our ass and work on this before now because we make all our money from iPhones these days.

The Mac Pro is just a computer to build iPhone apps with.

Re: Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Republican. He can be easily bought.

Re:Translation

[Jason1729]

Every other computer vendor in the world brings out multiple refreshes per year as new CPUs or GPUs become available. But the trillion dollar company can't update a desktop computer in less than 6-8 years.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

That's really the only reason to buy one. Everyone else has been jumping ship.

My pre-review

[Anonymous Coward]

"Half as good, twice the price."

Please share your comments.

Re:My pre-review

[omnichad]

That was their new feature last time. They need to innovate if they want to stay ahead.

Whoop-tee-do!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well cut off my legs and call me shorty!

What will the boys in Cupertino think of next!

Another dead end MacPro

[Anonymous Coward]

And since it appears that Apple is moving off Intel toward its A-series chips, then this machine will be another dead-end MacPro.

Re:Another dead end MacPro

[omnichad]

More likely the dead end has already happened. Just look at the specs of the current model. Next one is probably the first of its kind with A-series. One brand new high-end A-series core paired with a lower power core to switch to when idle.

mod do38

[Anonymous Coward]

much as Windows Obvious that there Satan's Dick And having lost 93% [nmero-online.org]. Some of you have

Overpriced crap

[sproketboy]

ntr

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Fiscal Reasoning?

[sl3xd]

Seriously... "Fiscal Reasoning?!?" That's like saying Bill Gates needs to save for a few days to buy himself a Big Mac.

How hard can it be?

[xack]

Just take a brushed metal ATX tower and a standard motherboard and call it a Mac Pro. The lie that MacOS needs “special” hardware is making it lose it’s credibility among real professionals who also need more than 16GB of RAM in a laptop.

. . . and using 2018 tech

[Anonymous Coward]

soldered down, too.

Innovation

[fyngyrz]

1/4 as good, 4x the price.

Re:Innovation

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

1/4 as good, 4x the price.

Just like kosher food!

Re:Innovation

[sexconker]

Nathan's hotdogs are tasteless trash!

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the hardware is at least 2 generations old and it cost more that a top of the line workstation i am so fucking in.
Just kidding i was sold from the word Apple.

External GPU Reduces the need

[Anonymous Coward]

With the external GPU, the use cases for a MacPro really goes away. If you need more raw non-GPU horsepower run on a server and work on a laptop.

Re:External GPU Reduces the need

[tniermann]

I guess the only point could be it is that it is one integrated box. Personally I would take the portability of a laptop with the rendering capability of an external GPU.

Re:External GPU Reduces the need

[Junta]

External GPU has 40 Gbit/s, versus that same GPU getting 128 gbit/s of throughput internally. In the 2019 timeframe, that PCIe number will jump to 256 gbit/s with PCIe gen 4. There has been very little information on Thunderbolt 4, but even the most optimistic speculation has it at 80 gpbs and after pcie gen 4.

One can argue that a fair number of applications settle for x8 PCIe (64 gbit/s) to get to SLI, but even then you are ahead of thunderbolt 3 and you also have a second GPU.

Additionally, serdes and encapsulation mean that latency is significantly impacted.

This may not matter for a great chunk of the market, but it still has an impact for some.

Re:External GPU Reduces the need

[Anonymous Coward]

I always love how the Mac fanboy solution to Apple's form-over-function hardware is an endless series of external boxes, dongles, and a snake's nest of cables. Which means that even if you bought the thing for the minimalist design, you don't even get to enjoy that.

No thanks. I'll just buy the computer that does what I want out of the box. And save a bunch of money in the process too.

Pretty much this.

[aussersterne]

I own two Macbook Pros for mobile work, but for desktop work I rely on a self-built that runs MacOS and actually has the hardware that I need in it. Too bad Apple won't sell me one, I'd buy it instead and not have to worry about dealing with the vagaries and annoyances of maintaining my own white box hardware.

Re:Pretty much this.

[Anonymous Coward]

What hardware do you need? I'm actually just curious about your build.

Re:Pretty much this.

[evil_aaronm]

Echoing the AC that replied earlier. Can you provide the specs for the machine you have? I'm happy with my MBP, but if yours is faster, it wouldn't hurt to spec one out.

Re:Pretty much this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Echoing the AC that replied earlier. Can you provide the specs for the machine you have? I'm happy with my MBP, but if yours is faster, it wouldn't hurt to spec one out.

I am not sure what the parent is using, but I'm using a Dell XPS 15 9550 running High Sierra (Guide)

Geekbench scores put it at roughly 4200 for Single-Core, and 13800 for Multi-Core, which are competitive with recent Macbook Pros. I use it mostly for programming and development (including iOS/Android), and it's been absolutely perfect for that. The extra ports are especially nice for attaching/charging devices.

Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[fyngyrz]

I doubt they could do much better than simply going back to the 2012 cheesegrater hardware, with a new motherboard that offers the same expansion capabilities but newer, faster/more CPU and RAM and so forth. Pluggable gfx cards, hard drives, absolutely no non-replaceable flash storage, optical drives, lots of standard USB I/O, ethernet, optical and analog audio, etc.

I also highly doubt they'll do it. They'll almost certainly just screw up again. Look at the mini and so on; just one more screwup after another last few iterations. There's no sign of sanity over there at all. And the iMac "Pro" is outright ridiculous.

That's okay, though. The cheesegraters will probably last for many years yet. I feel no burning need to give them money for yet another design fail.

OTOH, I'd be happy to give them money if they actually improved the mac pro beyond the cheesegrater. Or went back to the cheesegrater. Or actually improved the mini beyond its peak (which is not the current mini.) Or put out a decent mid-tower.

But again... breath-holding is not called for here. The evidence shows they're thoroughly lost in stupidland.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[ckaminski]

Fuck, they could just OEM the whole thing to Asus and rebrand it and still come away with a fuckton of profit.

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99PROUSB_31/
Older Model, probably $300 new when it came out...

Or this http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EP2C602

$350 from Newegg. Convert one of the PCI x16 slots into a Thunderbolt port... Update to DDR4, maybe.

XEONs pack a hell of a wallop in cores.

Do that, at half the price you're charging for the Current ash-can.

And give me an upgraded home Mac MIni. Something halfway between what we got now and a Future 36 core (2 cpu) Mac Pro.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[sl3xd]

You realzie OEM’ing to Asus is the root cause of the whole “AMD Secure Processor” bug from a couple weeks back, right? (AMD OEM’d that “non-critical” part of the design to an Asus Subsidiary)

I’d think twice about partnering with Asus.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[UnknownSoldier]

I agree 100% that Apple has completely lost their way W.R.T. computer hardware.

When they:

* put out a new computer that is slower the previous model (the Mac Mini fiasco)
* make it impossible to upgrade RAM and SSD because they are soldered in (WTF!?), etc.

you quickly realize Apple is all about streamlining their products at the expense of versatility.

Seriously, who the fuck would buy an Mac Pro -- when the hardware is so over-priced and out-dated it isn't even funny -- so why even continue selling it?

They are out of touch with what geeks want.

* Make gamepad support a 1st class citizen on the iPad / iPhone because some touch SUCKs for certain games
* Allow me to hook up a wired (*gasp*!) keyboard and monitor to the iPad
* Allow me to listen AND charge my phone at the SAME time -- like they fucking used to.
* Provide a fucking MicroSD ram slot
* Allow me to use my iPhone / iPad as a generic storage device

Instead we get "consume only" devices with a hard-one for everything wireless. Wireless is great -- but give me the OPTION of wired.

Apple only needs to do one thing to regain their focus:

How about making it _easy_ to _create_ content -- you know, like what the Mac became originally famous for.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[ckaminski]

If they made a decent machine, and charged a premium say 10% of what I could get for a hard-core ASRock or ASUS and let me put in CPU and memory upgrades and gave me ports like NVDIMM and lots of PCI x16 slots (for workstation), and something straightforward on the desktop, like just replacable CPU and memory for the Mini, then they'd have a Windows killer everywhere.

Not twice the price, 3 times the price, but 10-20% premium.

I'd replace almost all my Linux boxes in a heartbeat. Bring back the MBP 17, or at least give me 32G of RAM at an under $2500 price point... ugh.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[ckaminski]

No.

But contract with someone with volume - get them to make you a mostly identical version of a wide-production motherboard that apple can put their special license ROMs on (or a special TPM the add in a seperate step).

Pick any manufcaturer who has decent volume - Supermicro would probably be a good choice for the Mac Pro. ASrock, ASUS, both make great home user motherboards.

Walk back away from the 2 year upgrade cycle - give people something they can get 10 years out of, because at this point YOU CAN. It's not like we're making the dramatic leaps of 1990-2010 here anymore. Most of the advances are in GPUs at this point

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[Wrath0fb0b]

They are out of touch with what geeks want.

Probably due to lack of desire/effort. A business can get by just fine without targeting a specific audience in order to have strategic focus on their core customers.

This is like saying that Budweiser is out of touch with craft beer consumers, even though microbrew is clearly better than mass produced.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only one of your wants that may be a bit mainstream is the ability to charge and listen at the same time. Wired headphones are still a common want.

The rest is pretty niche. You're just not in Apple's target market.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they made a decent machine, and charged a premium say 10% of what I could get for a hard-core ASRock or ASUS and let me put in CPU and memory upgrades and gave me ports like NVDIMM and lots of PCI x16 slots (for workstation), and something straightforward on the desktop, like just replacable CPU and memory for the Mini, then they'd have a Windows killer everywhere.

Not twice the price, 3 times the price, but 10-20% premium.

I'd replace almost all my Linux boxes in a heartbeat. Bring back the MBP 17, or at least give me 32G of RAM at an under $2500 price point... ugh.

Why would they bother when their market still buy whatever they produce and vehemently defends them? Apple hasn't done anything really innovative since the original iPhone and even then you could make a case they just combined tech from other companies with some slick marketing. My favorite is the Retina display, which is just marketing where they pretend to have something special that everyone else already had. Personally, I don't think Apple has been particularly innovative since the iPod. Nothing necessarily wrong with that but it really defines their base which value style and simplicity (really just an absence of change) over all else.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[H3lldr0p]

The difference is that Budweiser knows they're being outmoded which is how and why they're part of the single largest brewer in the world. Craft beer has eaten so much of their market, the most regulators didn't blink at the purchase since they've been losing market share for years. Budweiser reacted to the changes in their market in order to stay in business.

Apple actively tries to keep the market from changing instead of adapting. The MacPro is evidence of that. Once the darling of the graphics and music producers it's been left behind as Apple continues to ignore that segment.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[LWATCDR]

Pretty much. High-end systems like the Pro should be thought of as tools and not fashion.
A nice sized case with slots, sata, m2 and space for lots of drives.
They could do a reference design and add an advanced heatsink and fans to keep the noise down.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no proof of anything in the CTS report, and even their claims of Asmedia are sophistry. It's also unlikely that other chipsets aren't subject to the same kind of insecurity when local admin and local access are available; some would wonder if preventing bios level write access against an "owner-user" is even ethical.

Even if the worst possible claims brought by CTS was true and they were somehow unique, apple outsourcing their "workstation" market would still provide exclusively more use cases than their current market which is none.

Re:Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise.

[cthulhu11]

I'm using a 2009 Mac Pro at home in part because of having effectively 6 drive bays. OS support stopped a while back, so far for my limited purposes that hasn't been a problem. Yet.

A new-gen grater would skip the optical drives and use LFF or M.2, so it'd be a lot smaller.

comes with giant sharing buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

for facebook, twitter and the rest. special for all the 'pro' bloggers out there.

(has no expandale graphics though...)

Necessary to integrate product lines

[fermion]

The shift away from Intel is to be expected. The shift to G4 groundbreaking. This is just necessary. Apple does not do diverse products well, and this is why we have the reliability issue. MS does diverse products well, and part of that success is a lowered expectation on how easily it will be to get an OS on hardware, but the expectation is that it will eventually run on even a PC put together with parts that fell out of a garbage truck.

For Apple to regain it's reliability, everything is going to have run on the same base, which means that Macs are going to have to derive from the same hardware as iPhone. Hopefully we won't take a step back in software features or lose more products, as we did with Aperture.

Apple transition about every 10 years, when the chipset can no longer be innovated to meet the needs of the end user. Apple can radically change the machine because they don't support infinite backwards capability, It is one of the advantages of using their products.

As far as fiscal needs, I hope they mean sales and they are not going to design a machine that sells only tens of thousands of units. They have cash so they can create a machine that will ultimately break even, but I think they are looking at a wider audience. The iMac Pro actually would be a good machine, if it had a touch screen. For the pro user I don't think the all in one is appropriate.,

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[jeremyp]

Yeah, that's bollocks,

The alleged "we will use our own chips" thing is slated for 2020. They just said the Mac Pro is a 2019 product.

Furthermore, if there is one Mac that really needs to stay on x86_64 architecture, it is the Mac Pro where power consumption is not an issue but absolute performance is.

Also, I find it quite amusing that people are assuming that the new Apple chip for PCs will use the ARM architecture. Is there any reason why Apple couldn't do their own x8664 compatible?

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[ckaminski]

Oh god no. A switch away from Intel would be the nail in their coffin.

No more VMware fusion or Bootcamp. No more performance. All new drivers for everything.

I guarantee it. Switching to ARM will be the end of Mac OS. You will lose the developers. Though Ballmer was a fucking monkey, he was right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[Anonymous Coward]

> derive from the same hardware as iPhone

ARM will work just fine for the FaceBook crowd, but these are Mac Pros we're talking about. I'd be concerned about the performance of a first generation workstation ARM CPU. It's something that fairly untested (yes, there is some server ARM, but I don't know if those have ever been used for CAD or whatnot).

Someone in a previous article was talking about LLVM for code that works both on ARM and x86. The Pro line might remain x86 while everything else goes ARM.

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[Merk42]

What are you using VMware fusion or Bootcamp for that there aren't native macOS...or iOS versions of?

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[angel'o'sphere]

Most developers who run VMs on Macs run linux in the VM.
On the other hand, both Windows and Linux run on ARMs.
I would assume if Apple switches to ARM we soon see virtual machine vendors supporting ARM hosts.
I don't think there will be a big change if Apple changes the architecture.

I for my part only care for Java anyway ... I don't develop natively for Macs.

Re: Necessary to integrate product lines

[Anonymous Coward]

People apparently only use macs even mac pros for Facebook... sp performance is not a concern.

What matters is that it will be expensive and it will have a shiny Apple logo.
Look.. Shiny.

Nothing more is needed.

The beauty of simplicity.

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[angel'o'sphere]

To host an other OS, obviously.
You are not a pro?

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[Junta]

They'd need intel and AMD's blessing and to pay them royalties to do AMD64.

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[Merk42]

To host an other OS, obviously. You are not a pro?

Cool, condescending comment, bro.
I know what VMware fusion and Bootcamp do, but I'm asking for the specific use case of why the person would need to "host an other OS". I'm guessing the possibly loss of sales from being unable to do so might not outweigh the savings in paying Intel for chips.

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[angel'o'sphere]

If you develop software in a Mac or a windows PC that is intended to run under linux, you most likely want a VM running linux to test it.
On the other hand much of testing in our days is automated having one or several VMs dedicated to building and testing software is often very useful.
Being able to have a VM running Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 might be interesting for old games,
Or if you one of the guys who has some custom made office software, where the vendor went out of business 1992, but you still manage your customers with (I know a guy who has a construction office, and only gets like 2 or 3 new customers per year, running his office on 25 year old windows software)

Re:Necessary to integrate product lines

[Merk42]

Thank you and they do seem like edge cases, by that I don't mean they are pointless, but that they account for the minority of Mac users.

Some of those, one could even do with a VM that would work on a different architecture. There might be a performance hit, but for something built for "Windows 3.11 or Windows 95", I doubt it'd make a difference.

YAY! Finnaly hotswap LFF and SFF SAS drives!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna love keeping my DB in the machine again!

Evolution prediction of mac hardware by use case

[jaymemaurice]

If the remaining good older/affordable apple hardware dies, this is my prediction

"Server"
xserve -> mac pro -> mac mini -> linux pc

Photo/Video content creators
mac pro -> mac pro -> imac/pc

"home users"
imac -> imac -> mac book air -> ipad

students
macbook air -> ipad/chrome book

programmers/mobile content creators
mackbook pro -> macbook pro -> macbook air like macbook

Iphone users
iphone -> iphone -> iphone

iPod touch users
ipod -> iphone

Apple used to have software manufacturers pushing/backing their platform. When it comes to general purpose computing, who's still doing that? Adobe? nah.. Microsoft? please... Avid? you're better off on HP. Autodesk? no. What do mac users do now that needs compute power? Dual boot windows and write on Slashdot blogs...

IMHO Apple needs to step up their game in the PC market, become cost competitive to bring up their user base, or abandon it.

Based on the A12

[nbritton]

I predict a 12-core A12 based Mac Pro. Why else would it take so long to release?

Apple still has pro users?

[Stormwatch]

The way they've been neglecting the Mac for years, you'd expect all their pro users to have jumped ship. But then again, the alternatives are all flawed.

Re:Apple still has pro users?

[UnknowingFool]

Many may have begrudgingly gotten the iMac 5K as it comes with a 5K display and updated hardware.

Re:Apple still has pro users?

[JackAxe]

I jumped ship a couple of years ago, because the alternatives had all surpassed Apple's offerings for a price that I couldn't argue. To say the alternatives are all flawed comes off as very dishonest. I can argues Apple's offerings are flawed, which is why after decades of using Macs I had to go elsewhere.

Re:Apple still has pro users?

[painandgreed]

The way they've been neglecting the Mac for years, you'd expect all their pro users to have jumped ship. But then again, the alternatives are all flawed.

I suspect they have plenty of pro users. Just understand that by "Pro" these days, they mean people catching planes to give some Powerpoint show in a nice suit. That's why we still get laptops while desktops flounder.

Re:Apple still has pro users?

[AHuxley]

The way color is supported by the OS and over apps.

Re:Apple still has pro users?

[Stormwatch]

Yes, I know Colorsync was a big deal back then, but Windows includes an equivalent solution now, right?

Re:Apple still has pro users?

[AHuxley]

MS supports an app using color in a good way.
Apple has the OS and other apps able to all use the same color details in much better way.

Next article please

[AlanObject]

Next Article: Tech people get enraged over the pettiest things.

Pro Tip: If you don't like the Mac Pro don't buy the Mac Pro. Don't whine about every little design decision they made because it didn't cater to your specific fetish. Nobody cares.

Re:Next article please

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro Tip: If you don't like the Mac Pro don't buy the Mac Pro. Don't whine about every little design decision they made because it didn't cater to your specific fetish. Nobody cares.

Yet here you are whining about comments, do as you say and move on to the next article.

With new innovations like...

[Zorro]

They will Solder the Mouse and Keyboard in directly.

Too prevent counterfeit Mice and Keyboards, or something.

This will be called 'Courage".

Re:With new innovations like...

[hipp5]

Funny enough, my coworker just got the iMac as her work computer. The most recent version of the mouse that comes with it has a rechargeable battery instead of using AAs. Okay cool... except Apple didn't want to blemish the sleek design of the mouse, so the charge port is ON THE BOTTOM. I.e. if your mouse battery dies, you can't use it at the same time you're charging it up.

Re:With new innovations like...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hilarious that a company widely credited for "inventing" a keyboard-and-mouse interface is so terrible at designing a passable keyboard and mouse.

Re:With new innovations like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution: buy a 2nd mouse! Thanks Apple, for always being there to innovate problems

Re:With new innovations like...

[djbckr]

This isn't a big deal. I have this mouse for my work computer. It lasts for months without a charge, and every so often I remember it will need charged in a month and I plug it in when I leave work. Really, it's not an issue.

Re:With new innovations like...

[painandgreed]

Funny enough, my coworker just got the iMac as her work computer. The most recent version of the mouse that comes with it has a rechargeable battery instead of using AAs. Okay cool... except Apple didn't want to blemish the sleek design of the mouse, so the charge port is ON THE BOTTOM. I.e. if your mouse battery dies, you can't use it at the same time you're charging it up.

Well,let's be serious. I'm much more of a Mac addict than most of you lot, and one of the first things I'll admit is that Apple hasn't had a usable mouse since before the puck style appeared in '98.

Re:With new innovations like...

[Dixie_Flatline]

I don't think it was a matter of blemish, it was a matter of making sure the battery life isn't unnecessarily shortened by keeping the mouse plugged in all the time.

THAT SAID

I'm not a big fan of wireless keyboards and mice in general except in specific circumstances. The keyboard that's at my desk day in and day out doesn't need to be wireless. I'm not lounging on the couch with it. Same with my trackball. Apple doesn't want you to use the mouse like a wired mouse, so they came up with a weirdo design to ensure that you don't, but it ends up being far more ridiculous than just shipping a wired mouse or accepting that people will leave the mouse plugged in and the battery will die prematurely. There's a dozen ways out of this conundrum, and I honestly think Apple picked the worst one. I THINK I know what they were going for, but I don't know that it was a problem worth solving at all.

Re:With new innovations like...

[thogard]

Wireless keyboards are major issue if you work in an industry where security compliance is a requirement. Wireless keyboards are a security fail for PCI-DSS and HIPAA.

Re:With new innovations like...

[CanadianMacFan]

I hate two things about the new version of the mouse. It wouldn't be so bad to have the port on the bottom except that you don't get the warning to charge the mouse until it's almost dead (as in it doesn't make it through the rest of the day for me). If the warning came with 25% charge left or something higher than what it currently does then I'd have more time to charge it. I'm terrible at checking how much charge is remaining. The older version with two AA batteries wasn't that bad because I used rechargeable batteries and I always had some ready.

The other thing I hate about the new mouse is there isn't an easy way to clean out any hairs that get in near the sensor. The previous version had the door to change the batteries which gave access to clean the area where the LED and sensor are. I find that cat hair gets trapped in that area quite easily and if it gets into the right place the mouse will stop responding. Without the door it's more of a hassle to clean that area out. Tweezers help but whoever designed the new version never had to worry about cleaning the sensor out.

Funding isn't the issue

[sjbe]

That doesn't make any sense. Apple has one of the (or is it "the") biggest cash reserves of any public company in history. They can buy Dell with pocket change.

Exactly my point. The only reason to not update the Mac Pro is because either (A) it isn't profitable or (B) your attention is elsewhere or (C) gross incompetence. Funding the project is obviously not a problem for Apple so it's something of a mystery why they only can be bothered to update the Mac desktop lines once per presidential term. My guess is that management attention is largely on the iPhone and iOS and the Mac gets the sloppy seconds.

To me, the only thing that makes any sense is that it has something to do with taxes and a 2019 deadline of some sort. (That or they want to build a factory in a tax-favored location, and it won't be complete until 2019).

Might be a factor but taxes really aren't as big a consideration as most people think for these sorts of capital projects. Taxes can impact profitability but the project still has to be profitable for the taxes to play any role at all. So even at Apple's ~25% net profit margins taxes would at worst lower their net profit margin to 20%. A problem but nothing that should keep them from making the investment.

Re:Funding isn't the issue

[UnknowingFool]

My guess is that management attention is largely on the iPhone and iOS and the Mac gets the sloppy seconds.

That and the new HQ. Apple's chief designer Johnathan Ive has been working on designing the new HQ for the last several years which has taken his primary attention. He handed off his managerial duties to two deputies in the interim and only recently returned to the role. While Ive's work is on overall design and not necessarily the technical details, his design choices have influenced Apple's look and engineering. My guess is that his lieutenants did not have his managerial skills to take over adequately as they are no longer listed with the company.

Re: Funding isn't the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed one. C) Dickishness

Re: Funding isn't the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Ack. D). Never post after the 3rd martini.

Why!?

[0101000001001010]

Apple, come on! Just give us a tower with good cooling and standard expansion slots. That's what the pros want. This shouldn't take long to design, even if you want to make it all shiny.

If you can't handle designing a tower anymore, just give us a "blessed" motherboard that we can assemble our own computer out of. No support, etc. For pros only.

Re: Why!?

[Anonymous Coward]

That will never happen. Their focus is on iphone and ipad and the users that can live with that.

This might very well be the last mac pro

The iphone will probably get a laptop dock at one point... after that point the mac books will vanish too

Leaving only iPhone and iPad. .. also consumers are "confused" by the "many choices" that Apple provides.. so they will cut back to offering just one iPhone and just one ipad. ... these will then only be updated very little every 8 years

In the meantime.... the old models will sell at full price

Re:Why!?

[Joe_Dragon]

TB with it's need to route video over it is why the mac pro has been MIA and that 2013 has shit.

Apple Dell / HP and others looked at the past and PUT IN A LOOP BACK CABLE like the old voodoo cards.

Re:Why!?

[jwhyche]

I predict it will be shaped like a fireplug.

ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a computer?

Re:ummm

[oldmac31310]

Eat yourself fitter!

AMD EPYC gen 2 system?

[Joe_Dragon]

AMD EPYC gen 2 system?

Go back to the CheeseGrater, but with ARM

[williamyf]

But smaller, with datacenter specs, so lots of 2.5" SAS drives, no optical, lots of GFX cards, with datacenter sizes (half height, half length, 2 slots).

Put a couple Cavium (Marvell) ThunderX2 chips inside (instead of intel) so that you start the transition to ARM in earnest, and with a Bang.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If is Good enough for a FUCKING CRAY XC50 SUPERCOMPUTES, shall be good enough for Mac "Pro" users.

For the tiem being, leave the Apple designed ARM stuff for low end laptops.

More Apple screw-ups.

[tonywong]

Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac hardware product marketing, told TechCrunch. “In addition to transparency for pro customers on an individual basis, there’s also a larger fiscal reasoning behind it...We know that there’s a lot of customers today that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro..."

Sounds to me like they want to force people waiting on the sidelines to consider the shitty iMac Pro or the even shittier 2013 Trashcan.

Mac Pro 2019. Now with more and heavier welds

[smooth wombat]

there's also a larger fiscal reasoning behind it.

It will be an additional $500 more expensive and the case will be sealed shut to absolutely prevent anyone from even attempting to see if any part can be pried off the motherboard to be replaced.

If something goes bad, oh well. You'll have to buy another one. That's the fiscal reasoning behind the delay.

Re:Mac Pro 2019. Now with more and heavier welds

[blind biker]

there's also a larger fiscal reasoning behind it.

It will be an additional $500 more expensive and the case will be sealed shut to absolutely prevent anyone from even attempting to see if any part can be pried off the motherboard to be replaced.

If something goes bad, oh well. You'll have to buy another one. That's the fiscal reasoning behind the delay.

Joking aside, this is exactly what Apple will do.

Re:Mac Pro 2019. Now with more and heavier welds

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it now, an epoxy pyramidal block of components. A marketing designers dream of neon radiating outward in all directions. And 100% unfucking upgradeable. Win/win for Apple.

What I want

[Anonymous Coward]

Updated 2006 mac pro
New mobo ( single or dual cpu )
Lot of ram banks
modular psu so that one can feed the gpu directly ( and not through the mobo )

6 years...

[BronsCon]

So the Mac Pro is going to go 6 years without a refresh?

Yes, Apple very clearly cares about professional users.

Re:6 years...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be worse. They could downgrade it like they did to the mac Mini. Neither pros nor casuals are safe from the pathetic mac division of apple.

Re:6 years...

[BronsCon]

It really is sad. I mean the common argument for the de-portification of the MacBook Pro is that not everyone needs the ports. Know what? That's who the MacBook and MacBook Air are for. The MacBook Pro is for the Pro user to be able to pick up (with nothing else*) and go and know they can plug in to the projector for their presentation, or connect to the secure no-wi-fi network, or hook in to the audio system, or whatever they need to do.

* With nothing else: The MacBook Pro was touted as the ideal laptop for the professional in part due to its battery life, which meant you could leave your charger at your desk. That "benefit" means a lot less if you have to bring an ethernet adapter, an HDMI adapter, a DAC, and a memory card reader with you to do all the things your old laptop could do that you, as a professional, may need to do in whatever line of work you happen to be in. At that point, you're better off with a laptop with a shorter battery life and all the ports you need built in, because then you only need to carry your charger; you know you've got everything else you need, because it's built in.

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[account_deleted]

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Re: Apple has been lost for a while, hardware-wise

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen!
This is why I chose Android way back when and why I am sticking to some older Android phones... they got all this.. are plenty fast and have other great stuff like IR + stylus + removable batteries (2014 note 4), physical keyboard (2015 bb priv) etc

And of course the famous and much needed mini jack

Long time Mac user... goodbye Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a long time user of the Mac platform. I owned a few machines over the years and even ran a pro-Mac website for developers for many years. Sometime back, the App store was hacked and it was recommended people turn on 2-step authentication. So I followed the advice and turned it on. I was away from my machine some time and one day booted it up and saw I needed to upgrade some Apps and the OS. So I put in my Apple ID and Apple ID password, however, the password was wrong. With 2-step authentication, I am stuck in a catch-22. I have the device that the 2-step process has on file, but I l don't recall my password and 2-step keycode. I asked Apple Care if I could produce written documentation that showed I was the owner of the ID. I even had copies of past Apple store orders. But their machine-like support person stated, "Please make a new account as there is no way for me to allow you to gain access to the account." Sure, I don't mind making a new account but doing so would lose all the orders I placed. So, if I purchase new software, I am paying a full/new user price rather than upgrade price. I had a large investment in software. So the choice is.... (1) Never upgrade the machine (2) Get a new Apple ID and pay for all the software again. (3) Give up on the Mac and switch to a new platform. I'm kicking myself for having turned on 2-step. I heard they did away with that in the latest OS? I just don't understand why there isn't any resolution for a person in my situation. Surely there must be others? And so, I am leaning towards option 3 and playing with various Linux/BSD distros. If anyone has found a solution for this catch-22, please let me know. From time to time, I try to 'guess' at the password I used but after 3 tries, I am locked for a few days. Uhg.

Re:Long time Mac user... goodbye Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to use
and try remembering your password.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I Doubt It

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple likes to go on these idea-driven engineering exercises. The result is invariably stylish, interesting, and deeply flawed. But Apple has to justify the premium price and lack of choices somehow and this is part of that equation.

I predict that legions of Apple fans will suck in air and rationalize. "I want 64 GB RAM but Apple says I only need 32 GB, so 32 GB it is!"

Many other high end users have noticed the problem, decided they are not well-served by Apple at this time and have moved on. However many of those people have a sense of personal betrayal. "I was a Mac! Why have you left me for those iPhone hussies!? You bastard!!"

Re:Evolution prediction of mac hardware by use cas

[Anonymous Coward]

The current iMac Pro can be configured with 18 cores. The current Mac Pro maxes out at 8. This is the market segment of workstation towers which are supposed to be easy to upgrade/maintain and they haven't refreshed the product (ignoring the fact the trash can design is terrible for servicing).

Hasty Instruction Set Computing

[epine]

add segment_register:[disp + r32_A + r32_B*n], r32_C

That's no-one's idea of a classic RISC instruction.

And even though this gets decoded into micro-ops, the complex address generation is computed only once, and the memory order checks take advantage of this having been a single, fused instruction, so the semantic nuances are carried deep through the OOO pipeline.

There's so much crap on the Internet about RISC, it blows my mind.

50% of the RISC hype was about being able to compete against the legacy vendors with smaller, cheaper design teams.

You can call x86 RISC, but it never got cheaper to design. The cost of the design is almost a superset of its CISC and RISC elements (I'm pretty sure its hybrid nature creates headaches above and beyond the sum of its parts).

The RISC hype bubble had some validity for roughly a five-year period before Intel launched the Pentium Pro in 1995 (RISC hype persisted outside the clue nucleus for another five years after that for largely political reasons). The Pentium Pro is where the complexity of the CPU core and the complexity of the memory subsystem (and latency hiding) began to cross over. There is no possible way to design a processor with a deep, concurrent queue of in-flight cache and memory transactions (with SMP coherence), and extensive latency hiding in the execution engine using a small design team.

Wikipedia's article on the Pentium Pro makes it sounds like its performance sucked, but it held up amazingly well on mixed Windows NT server workloads compared to any RISC architecture at anywhere near the price (it's deep OOO latency-hiding was a huge boon to memory thrashing compared to in-order RISC with wider dispatch.)

Wide dispatch = straight line speed (American car).
OOO latency absorbers = cornering speed (German car).

Of course, most benchmarks are biased to the salt-flat quarter mile.

Another thing, the majority of CISC junk-in-the-trunk (e.g. 286 call gates) is subject to exponential shrinkage; barely a third decimal point by the time you reach a billion transistors.

On the matter of superscalar execution, this naturally prioritizes the quick and the fleeting (only these instructions could pair up in the P5). Superscalar under OOO is a different beast: now the killer dimension becomes instruction flight time. This for the macro-ops at the level of the retirement order buffer, the micro-ops at the level of the dispatch buffer, and the outstanding memory operations at the level of the memory order buffer.

Intel's x86 architecture is more HISC than RISC: Hasty Instruction Set Computing. The faster you retire the operations (at any level), the sooner you free up precious reservation buffers. (x86 never inched one step closer to a conventional load/store architecture, the cardinal 'R' in RISC; most especially, transient addresses off the stack frame do not retire to the register model in x86—what a waste of reservation stations—because they are never register-assigned in the first place.)

Micro-operation

Execution optimization has gone even further; processors not only translate many machine instructions into a series of uops, but also do the opposite when appropriate; they combine certain machine instruction sequences (such as a compare followed by a conditional jump) into a more complex uop. This is also known as macro-op fusion.

If some traditional RISC architecture adds macro-op fusion to its internal implementation, do I get to declare that "modern MIPS is nothing more than a MIPS translation layer around a CISC chip, anyway"?

Since the early 1990s, this debate has been my #1 personal case study in technological propaganda, herd following, and revisionist misinformation.

I originally got onto this file asking myself a hard question: just who is this messianic charlatan named Steve Jobs?

Re:Hasty Instruction Set Computing

[BronsCon]

add segment_register:[disp + r32_A + r32_B*n], r32_C

That's no-one's idea of a classic RISC instruction.

You're right. It's not. That, sir, is an x86 instruction, which the x86 translation layer takes as input and passes to a RISC core. Intel, at least, has been doing this since the Core series was released.

Your comment jumps the rails right there, with your first remark, and only gets farther and farther off course from there.

Re:Hasty Instruction Set Computing

[Junta]

Even if you strip off the microcode and the instruction decode (which is intrinsic to the platform an dI would argue you cannot strip away), you'd still be left with a behemoth that most would not call RISC, except for religious adherents to the hype of RISC as a way to claim victory.

Of course, everything has dramatically changed since the m68k CISC v. Berkeley RISC days, and this whole debate is silly. Just because something is CISC, it doesn't vindicate the m68k design that spawned the architectural exploration that would be called RISC..

Re:Hasty Instruction Set Computing

[Darinbob]

At the time of RISC, the instruction decoding and micro engine was often one of the largest and most complex parts of a computer. The design of so many computers and chips in those days was all about the instruction decoding and microengine, if they wanted to speed up their processing then they worked on faster clock speeds (work harder, not smarter). So the idea of RISC is to minimize those parts of the chip and replace them with components that can speed up the processing. Ie, more registers, concurrent ALUs, etc. Faster computer but with lesser or equal cost.

Of course what could have happened instead was just add the extra stuff to improve processing speed without reducing the complexity. That is, just add more stuff into the computer, making it more expensive. That's essentially the approach Intel is using now, a brute force architecture. They are borrowing ideas from RISC and using them in the back end but keeping a strict dogmatic backwards compatibility in the front end. And add caches everywhere. Today's modern PC processor is incredibly complicated and is certainly what no one would ever design if they had to do it from scratch without worrying about being compatible. No one has ever called the modern Pentium and higher designs "elegant".

Intel knows this. They have designed several chips to try to break out of this rut, using RISC design and abandoning compatibility with PCs, and they have flopped. Such as the i860 and i960. Even their first 64-bit cpu intended for the CPU market floundered because it didn't provide enough 32-bit compatibility.

There's a big market however for cheaper and less power hungry computer chips these days. Even stuff that runs off of a coin cell. The brute-force PC chip designs can't cut it so easily in this market. But ARM was popular there, because it was very much RISC like in most places (ok, the added on Thumb modes aren't, but the amount of chip space necessary for that is orders of magnitudes less than what's in your PC). Also older 8 and 16-bit architectures are working well in that space, as well as 32 and 64-bit RISC processors like PowerPC and MIPS. A lot of complexity is added not to speed things up but to enable reducing power usage and ability to turn off components that aren't in use.

Re:Hasty Instruction Set Computing

[Darinbob]

The base conditions of the argument has changed too. It used to be about what you could do with a fixed number of transistors or fixed cost. But as prices of everything went down, the rules changed. So Intel decided they could keep their PC market share by just shoving in more and more transistors. Make this chip do instruction decoding and translating, then pair with another compute engine chip with modern super-scalar designs, add in some chips for caches, and shove it all in a CPU bundle the size of a deck of cards. It's not RISC or CISC, though it certainly uses design concepts popularized by RISC, and ccompatible with CISC, and speedups from supercomputing concepts.

I think RISC and CISC dominate arguments today is because that's where undergraduate CS architecture classes usually end, more advanced concepts show up in graduate courses or on the job.

Re:Hasty Instruction Set Computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Always nice to see the RISC controversy again. I was an Amdahl architect way back and we couldn't understand the fuss. Anyway, as with a lot of fundamental ideas Turing got there first. I wrote about this at a conference about the ACE computer which was, in some sense, the first and ultimate RISC. It was published in a book. I have put a copy up at https://www.dropbox.com/s/d1uvh0gknyvorqm/ACE.doc?dl=0 if anyone is interested. Its got my name on it, definitely not anonymous nor cowardly.

New Mac? Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was "News For Nerds", not "Press releases for Pretentious Pricks".

It will still be overpriced an inflexible

[mfearby]

Whatever the revamped Mac Pro will be you can guarantee that it will still be massively overpriced (more so than Apple's usual pricing) and won't go anywhere near having the upgradeability that one would usually expect from a "pro" machine.

botanist vs engineer

[epine]

You're right. It's not. That, sir, is an x86 instruction, which the x86 translation layer takes as input and passes to a RISC core. Intel, at least, has been doing this since the Core series was released.

No, since the Pentium Pro in 1995, which already employed microcode translation; not with the Pentium IV, which was deliberately brain damaged to win the MHz war (I don't even know how to classify the trace cache, except ungodly hot); again with the Core Duo, after that (god bless Israel).

How Israel saved Intel

What you are calling a RISC core has more proprietary CISC-world abstraction violations than you could shake a stick at (these are primarily performance hacks, but nonetheless).

Explain to me why micro-op fission gets more air time in your lexicon than macro-op fusion? Because modern x86 processors use both tricks to obtain a working representation which minimizes in-flight resource consumption (which is similar to RISC, but is not directly motivated by either "simple" or "reduced"—hasty is a better proxy—and none of this is reflected in the instruction set, as is patently obvious). And even then, the micro-op fission remains semantically distinct from an actual RISC instruction stream deep into the pipeline in small yet critical details (internal modern x86 micro-ops are fuzzy creatures, but these implementation tricks aren't publicly documented).

There's actually a more basic level underneath RISC: readers and writers attached to separate busses. But this is so low level is tends to make your ISA non-portable to the next iteration, so no-one sane goes here (I'm looking at you, Itanium, even though after you started here, you went another 100 miles downstream).

write_assert rA to register_bus_1
read rB from register bus_1
read rC from register bus_1
write_deassert rA to register_bus_1

Register files tend to be multiple ported, so there would be other register busses available concurrently. That's all one clock cycle if your macro-op fusion puts Humpty back together again (and not analogous to any RISC instruction).

mov ebx, eax
mov ecx, eax

In a transport triggered architecture-like world, these two instructions could be fused into a single assertion of eax, and a simultaneous read by register file ebx and register file ecx off the same bus.

But you'd still call it a RISC core, wouldn't you, so long as the internal representation was granulated into some kind of small, vaguely uniform ops? (Macro or micro, who cares?)

Between 1985 and 1995, I must have read many dozen articles in computer magazines about how x86 CISC could never grow up to compete against the Big Boys (where RISC was the prototypical Big Boy). This was a potent brew of aesthetic disgust (with which I largely concurred), competitive ambition, and mentally defective bullshit—as history now records. In order to advance this kind of claim in a falsifiable way, RISC has to actually mean something.

Back when I wrote a fair amount of 486 code, I mainly worked in a RISC subset (most of which dated back to the 8086 or were simple extensions), heavily augmented with non-RISC ModR/M sib addressing modes. There was no OOO, so there was no need for an intermediate micro-op representation: the complex read/modify/write instruction were decomposed into RISC primitives (load,operation,store) by an execution-engine state machine (which I suppose you could call a micro-op sequencer on the understanding that the machine supported exactly one in-flight macro-op. A non-distinction without a difference?) Compared to 386, 486 felt a bit RISCy because many of your core operations had a single-cycle execution time (and you tended to ignore program fetch delays, because of the concurrent internal i-cache).

Once you get into OOO, you need track multiple i

Re:botanist vs engineer

[BronsCon]

I haven't worked close enough to the metal for any of it to really matter since I was 12. That might color my perspective and understanding a bit differently than yours. You, on the other hand, seem to have worked so close to the metal for so long that it has literally sucked you in. I do ask the questions you pose at the end of your post, but I ask them of a great many things other than the lowest-level architecture of a CPU I will never bare-metal program, so I'll keep my perspective just as you'll keep yours. I feel a little more sane that way.

Buy one today

[SuperKendall]

Apple, come on! Just give us a tower with good cooling and standard expansion slots

Congrats, you can by one today. It's called the iMac Pro. It has amazing cooling and really quiet fans.

For the nostalgic that still need "standard expansion slots", just get an external chassis for that connected via thunderbolt 3. You could wind up with way more slots than any PC if you so desired.

Re:Buy one today

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell us more about your universe where physics are apparently not a thing.

Apple gave the pros a great system LAST year

[SuperKendall]

The way they've been neglecting the Mac for years, you'd expect all their pro users to have jumped ship.

Not after the iMac Pro. That is a seriously good system and really takes the pressure off Apple to deliver a Mac Pro, which is why they are pushing back the schedule to make it better.

For you trash can owners, Amfeltec has an upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Amfeltec is now selling a internal SSD expander card so you can triple the number of M.2 SSD cards on the internal bus.

http://amfeltec.com/products/mac-pro-late-2013-carrier-board-for-m-2-pcie-ssd-modules/

This will tide you over until 2019 (if not later)

They lost the Pro in 2012

[trevrox]

Iâ(TM)ve been using my MacBook Pro since 2011 (17â version) and I still love it, love it so much my next machine may not be a MacBook Pro because they are just dinosaurs, the iPad Proâ(TM)s are better feature wise.. itâ(TM)s a real shame. If they brought out a version that allowed for external RAM and M.2 drive as well as Ethernet, USB and USB-C with a touch/tablet ability like the surefacebook then maybe Iâ(TM)d upgrade to another MacBook, for now I just hope my 2011 model (custom 16gb ram, 2 500GB ssd drives) survives long enough to see something worth upgrading to...