New Mac Pro Tech Specs

https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/

by arunmib • 7 years ago

246 479 7 years ago

kristianp2• 7 years ago

Still no Nvidia cards?

olliej• 7 years ago

It’s seems like they went all in on AMD a few years ago, so I assume they have a bunch of long term agreements that lower the price?

It’s more irksome to me that they don’t have a high spec non-pro desktop.

Eg I want high end consumer desktop GPUs, not high end mobile GPUs (afaict that’s essentially what iMacs use). But my alternative appears to be “pro” GPUs with their absurd - for a consumer at least - markups and Xeons, which no one really wants ;)

gotoeleven• 7 years ago

Mac Mini with an eGPU might be a decent option.

lostgame6• 7 years ago

eGPUs have been supported for a couple years now. Grab a Mac Mini, an eGPU, max out the RAM, add an external hard drive or two, boom, your ‘pro consumer’ Mac for about $2k.

ScottFree• 7 years ago

Still no Nvidia drivers.

mises• 7 years ago

Doubly sad for those for us who like hackintosh.

whywhywhywhy5• 7 years ago

Anyone who wanted Nvidia already left Apple's ecosystem in the Mac Pro trashcan era, and honestly wont want to look back.

If your workflow and machine are built around CUDA thinking back to before you had that setup you wonder how you ever got anything done.

als0• 7 years ago

There are lots of stories about Apple’s difficult relationship with NVIDIA, e.g: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/18/apples-management...

cwyers• 7 years ago

Honestly I feel like reading that just leaves me confused. There have been some rough spots, but it seems like it's much less contentious than the relationship between Apple and Samsung, and Samsung still makes iPhone displays.

Shivetya• 7 years ago

hell they dropped Nvidia support awhile ago and Nvidia stopped making drivers earlier this year that could be used. I had a 2013 model with the Nvidia 780m chip that I was holding onto since I bought it in hopes of a new Nvidia based system but alas that did not come. Then suddenly early this year my github script reported no compatible drivers after an OS update and by June it was quite evident we were not going to get them,

so but a refurb BTO to replace the 2013 model, stuck with ATI but at least the screen appearance is a big jump for me, my model was the last on the non retina models

29_295• 7 years ago

exactly how I felt. My last mac pro was useless to me without CUDA.

baroffoos6• 7 years ago

There is open CL now which blender and other programs have started using. Hopefully the lack of nvidia cards in these mac pros means proprietary tech like cuda gets left behind.

proee• 7 years ago

This page would look better if they used high-quality 3d animated renders instead of the simplified 2D-graphics. Someone on the design team thought this was a great idea? It looks unpolished and out of place (in comparison to other well-done Apple product pages).

1123581321• 7 years ago

There are already two other pages about the Mac Pro (linked at the bottom) with the more luxurious consumer feel to them. I think the functional look of the flat art is totally appropriate for such a text-heavy page—and the illustrations still animate seamlessly as the user scrolls.

saagarjha• 7 years ago

and the illustrations still animate seamlessly as the user scrolls

Not on my computer if you scroll too fast :/

reificator• 7 years ago

Honestly if they're chained to this godawful scroll-based animation garbage they keep pumping out, I'd much rather the understated 2D graphics they're using here. The 3D looks incredibly amateurish to me.

alaskamiller• 7 years ago

I used to make these spec pages.

The purpose of these pages is to representative and informative than for selling or marketing.

This is an absolutely great style update.

crazygringo2• 7 years ago

Because it's not a product page, it's a spec sheet.

I personally think the understated 2D graphics are a cool touch. It's actually quite polished in its simplicity.

baroffoos6• 7 years ago

The only shocking things here are the lack of ports. Only 2 usb A and 2 usb c ports. Its basically required to use a usb hub on this device since once you plug in a proper mouse and keyboard you only have the usb c ports left

mcbutterbunz• 7 years ago

There are an additional 2 USB-C ports on top, if I'm reading it correctly. However, I agree, only 2 USB-A ports feels too few.

jsgo• 7 years ago

Looks like the aim is that you’d use Bluetooth for those. I know that isn’t what everyone wants and there is that option for corded, but the mindset seems to be for wireless.

I’m not sure how many ports are needed, though I’m sure more couldn’t hurt. This seems less about expansion externally than doing so internally. My MBP with 4 USB-C ports has one that is power + hub (HengeDock Stone) with one of the USB-A ports on it chaining to a USB-A (powered) hub. One other port is used for eGPU and the other two are untouched. Works for me, but I can completely see where this Mac Pro could end up needing a hub attachment for a lot of people.

thrower1233• 7 years ago

That would be fine if Bluetooth worked...

I swear, the old IR wireless keyboards and mice were more reliable.

joshgachnang2• 7 years ago

I don't think they're expecting you to plug in a "proper" keyboard and mouse since it comes with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Plus it appears you get another 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports on the front as well.

benburleson3• 7 years ago

Which is insane.. do people really use the wireless capability of their keyboard or mouse? Especially when you can't use your freaking mouse when it's charging? Serious insanity.

Edit to add: of course I know people use those keyboards... I meant are people actually moving with them in ways that makes the wireless capability useful? Do most users not stay in a pretty close proximity the whole time?

baroffoos6• 7 years ago

When price and space are not an issue with this device you would think they would just throw every thing on it so it suits everyone since there is no need to compromise here.

josho• 7 years ago

The monitor that you’ll use with this machine is likely to have a built in USB hub (see Apple’s new display or the LG display they were previously selling).

blattimwind• 7 years ago

Still it seems like quite little. Motherboards used to have 8 to 10 backside USB ports, most now only come with 6 (usually 4x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0), which at least for me means I have to use an external hub already.

tonyedgecombe• 7 years ago

They still sell the LG display, in fact a new version was released about a month ago.

fzzzy• 7 years ago

I thought that was really odd, but it appears to have two usb c (Thunderbolt 3) on top under "Additional connections", and the graphics cards each seem to have 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports on them. So 8 USB C unless I misunderstand.

bitwize2• 7 years ago

Or plug the mouse into the USB hub on the keyboard. (You did say "proper keyboard" by which, for a Mac, I assume you meant "Matias Tactile Pro")

drivingmenuts• 7 years ago

I thought OP meant a das Keyboard.

windexh8er• 7 years ago

Think about this. This is a "Pro" level machine and Apples like "Because aesthetics...". Think about video workflow using external drive arrays. Many who are working with these sort of peripherals will want them plugged in all the time. So you need a docking station for your Pro level non-laptop workstation. Apple has gone way beyond thinking about their end user experience and send to only care about non-functional looks.

pkamb• 7 years ago

It has a USB-A port inside the computer for plugging in a software protection dongle for Pro-level audio/video applications.

rosege2• 7 years ago

I wonder what a maxed out one will cost

bobwaycott• 7 years ago

I’d guess around the price of a small sedan.

justinator• 7 years ago

or a mid-range road bike.

NeedMoreTea• 7 years ago

The Rolls Royce model of pricing: "If you have to ask, you can't afford it".

rosege2• 7 years ago

ha yep I definitely can't afford it!

octomiao• 7 years ago

This is how I feel when boston dynamics released spotty.

jasoneckert2• 7 years ago

At the base configuration (single 8-core Xeon W) with 256GB SSD and 32GB RAM for $6000, it's about twice what it should be. I could build a faster dual Xeon Silver series with more cores, Nvidia graphics, much larger SSD and 32GB RAM in a nicer case for around $3000. So, that Apple logo and macOS are the other $3000.

jasoneckert2• 7 years ago

I love how any post I make that is critical of something Apple always gets me some negative points here on Hacker News - I actually made a point of showing my tech class this social phenomenon a few weeks back and we had a good discussion that explored possible reasons why it happens.

skellera• 7 years ago

No one is going to disagree that you could build the same thing for cheaper and the point has been made over and over again.

Apple isn’t selling for your use case.

pram2• 7 years ago

Perhaps people would like to discuss the product, and not how everyone can cobble together a 5x more Powerful Rig from random Newegg parts?

kirstenbirgit3• 7 years ago

A similar rig from HP or Lenovo is going to cost you more.

acdha5• 7 years ago

You're getting downvoted for being incorrect and doing so in a way which has long been cliched. If you actually did your homework and made a spec sheet for an truly equivalent build you'd learn why some many people are tired of hearing lazy attacks repeated again and again.

jaequery4• 7 years ago

The biggest new feature im looking for is the removal of the touchbar.

Until then, I’m going to just buy upgraded but used 2012-2013 macbook pros.

It’s one of those sounds good on paper but useless in real life. Not only that, it’s a hindrance for coders like me who need to be able to hit the escape button and other top buttons quickly with force feedback.

bradly• 7 years ago

There is no touchbar included with new Mac Pro.

jonplackett• 7 years ago

but there's never a bad moment to complain about the touch bar.

jaequery4• 7 years ago

my bad, I read the title as a new MacBook Pro. Carry on.

burnte2• 7 years ago

This is about the desktop. not mobile machines. The predecessor to this was the trashcan, which had no touchbar.

29_295• 7 years ago

I'm not sure why people are downvoting you. I hate this feature on HN. I cant even read what you said.

jaequery4• 7 years ago

It looks like any slight mention of negativity towards Apple are being downvoted.

The force is strong with this one.

PhantomGremlin• 7 years ago

If you're logged in, all you need to do is click on the "9 hours ago" field of the comment. That takes you to the individual comment, fully visible. So it's only one extra click to read.

This unfortunately doesn't work if you're not logged in.

htfu2• 7 years ago

Surely if esc is important to you you shouldn't be using the esc button as esc in the first place? Caps is both my esc and my ctrl and I wouldn't have it any other way. If f buttons are important just configure your fn-as-hyper+1 so do f1, etc.

Checkout karabiner and hammerspoon.

siquick• 7 years ago

What are people doing that require such high-powered desktops?

empath75• 7 years ago

Professional film editing.

BlueToth• 7 years ago

8K movie editing

burnte2• 7 years ago

Advanced video, 3d rendering, etc.

readbeard2• 7 years ago

I am working on a project right now where I am rendering atmospheric effects (lots of clouds). Even on a 12-core workstation, it takes a very long time to render a single frame to even be able to get a good idea as to what things will look like, so I'm doing a lot of changing something, waiting… changing something, waiting.

Most of the final rendering can be offloaded to a farm, but being able to quickly and interactively get a good idea of what something will look like is extremely helpful and time-saving. Right now, I'm doing some of the work on an EC2 instance with 48 cores (96 vCPU) to help with this—cost-effective for occasional use, but I can certainly see the appeal of a machine like this. And for task like compositing where you need access to a bunch of huge source files, or where maybe you have a specialized video I/O device you need to use, running in the cloud might not be practical at all.

kristianp2• 7 years ago

I'm curious, is gpu-based rendering not an option for you?

belltaco• 7 years ago

Chrome.

thomasjudge• 7 years ago

Made me laugh out loud

initself• 7 years ago

Looks like a company finally listened.

29_295• 7 years ago

no NVIDIA cards its useless to me

_ph_7• 7 years ago

Very little. Yes, they finally made a Mac Pro that is extensible and up to date. Basically everything the 2008 Mac Pro already was. On the downside, they doubled its price so for the non-Hollywood customer, there still isn't a desktop machine. Even 3k is much for a deskop machine, but I had set some money aside to get a Mac Pro, if it had started around its predecessor price. There was even a time in the past, when a Mac Pro would start below 2k and consequently was very popular.

rangibaby• 7 years ago

on the downside, they doubled its price so for the non-Hollywood customer, there still isn't a desktop machine. Even 3k is much for a deskop machine

I think there were more benefits to an ordinary user to getting a tower in the past then there are now.

In the past even a hobby or prosumer photographer would see a big benefit from getting a Mac Pro. Nowadays an iMac or Macbook Pro with very normal specs can edit large RAW files without breaking a sweat.

The extra HDD bays on a Mac Pro were great because you didn't have to mess around with USB2 (cheap but slow) or FW (fast but expensive). Now you have USB3 (cheap and fast) or TB (very fast but expensive).

I guess that leaves upgradeable graphics cards, at this point it is easier to just get a PC or try a hackintosh build if you want a beast GPU for the latest games.

There was even a time in the past, when a Mac Pro would start below 2k and consequently was very popular.

2006:

Mac Pro base model: $2,199 ($2,800 in 2019 dollars)

30" Cinema Display: $3,299 ($4,198)

Soundsticks (Of course!) $169.99

2019:

iMac 27" 5K base model: $1,799

iMac Pro base model: $4,999

lliamander8• 7 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but who here uses a HEDT (high-end desktop) or workstation computer for software development? Does it make a significant difference in comparison with a standard business laptop?

Skunkleton• 7 years ago

I use a desktop, not sure I would call it high end (32 GiB, 6 cores, nvme). I do lots of large builds of things like linux kernels. I doubt any laptop would be able to keep up simply due to thermals.

lliamander8• 7 years ago

Yeah, what's considered high-end does shift, although that still sounds higher end than most laptops. I think a typical "high-end" desktop is one that has more cores, memory channels, and PCIe lanes than a typical "mainstream" desktop (whatever that happens to be at the time). Support for ECC memory is also sometimes a requirement.

I use a 3 year-old laptop with 32GB of RAM, an SSD, and a dual-core i7 (U-series) processor. It's reasonably efficient. I think the amount of RAM and the IO speed of my SSD remove most of the hardware bottlenecks I face.

However, I would like compile times to be faster, I do sometimes notice applications hanging, and IntelliJ (we use Java at work) seems limited on how many projects I can run efficiently in a single workspace. I'm just wondering whether a workstation-grade laptop (Dell Precision or Thinkpad P-series) would be a sufficient upgrade, or investing in a desktop would be worthwhile at some point.

deminature• 7 years ago

On extremely large projects (15-20 minutes to compile from scratch or longer), the more compute power available, the more productive you can be.

Cumulative wasted minutes from compilation over the course of a year can add up to a lot.

dsalso• 7 years ago

6 core Xeon, 64GB RAM, some builds take 4hrs....

lliamander8• 7 years ago

Holy moly. What language, and roughly how many lines of code?

simcop2387• 7 years ago

I do, but mostly because there's a few projects where running multiple virtual machines with multiple cores and lots of ram is useful for them. Also because I run a VM for cad work for my 3d printer, on the same machine.

lliamander8• 7 years ago

Yeah, I sometimes will be running a dozen or so docker containers, although the CPU utilization on those tends not to be very high - RAM is the main bottleneck for me. However, I also don't typically leave those running. I just spin them up when I need to for testing. I'm not sure how fast my other applications would run if I left those up.

valbaca• 7 years ago

My company provides a pretty standard laptop, but they rarely have more than 2 cores.

In native app development, Android Studio and Xcode are severely bottlenecked by 2 cores. The difference between my laptop and my Mac Mini (6 cores) is astounding.

The difference between a build taking 6x minutes and 1x minutes is more than just 1/6 because it goes from "Well, guess I'll check email/messenger/HN real quick." to taking a sip of coffee.

It also gets real bad when your IDE is forced to fight with your browser, email client, etc. Then you're forced to do nothing, lest your casual actions further slow down your local build.

Usually the "breaking point" is when builds take more than 5 minutes, but especially when they take more 30+ mins.

lliamander8• 7 years ago

Slow builds can definitely break concentration. I'm on a dual core as well, although most new business laptops come with 4 cores.

My build times aren't as long, because I'm working with Java-based microservices, so each service takes a minute or so to build (with tests) but even that delay can break concentration. Turning off tests helps, but then you don't always have the immediate feedback of the test results (and don't worry, I always run the tests before committing).

wyclif• 7 years ago

The 2018, 6 core Mac Mini is underrated for use as a HEDT in my opinion. It's surprisingly powerful and silent. I really have to thrash something to even get the fans to spin up.

LeonM• 7 years ago

Your employer supplied you with the wrong tools for the job. Explain why you would need a more powerful computer and you'll probably get it.

arvinsim9• 7 years ago

When I started working in my current company, the dual core, 16GB MBP that was given to me was enough since I was working on a single project.

But now that I am working across projects that run 2-3 repositories at a time with Jetbrains IDE, the computer almost barely keep up. I get times where typing will actually lag.

I am contemplating asking them for a Mac Mini instead since I rarely ever venture out from my desk.

edude03• 7 years ago

I do, and it makes a significant difference in most of my workloads. A lot of my work requires testing bleeding edge software, for example, applying a small patch to the latest version of kubernetes then running a small virtualized cluster locally to make sure it works.

Even if not for that, I tend to cross compile a lot of software since all the engineers at my company use macs for software development but we deploy to linux servers, so often I end up building rust binaries for linux and it's fairly computationally intense.

For an anecdote, on my work laptop (i9/32Gb/512SSD 2018 15" MBP) I can compile the dev environment from scratch in 40 minutes whereas it takes 4 hours on the company standard dual core/8gb/256gb 2015 13" macbook

MuffinFlavored• 7 years ago

Reading the replies to this make me very grateful that I just run a couple of Docker containers for local Postgres/Redis along with some non-compiled node.js

alfalfasprout• 7 years ago

Yeah, work on some pretty big codebases with an IDE. CLion, IntelliJ, and PyCharm are pretty resource intensive for instance.

SkyPuncher• 7 years ago

Not a great example.

Web Dev. Going from a 2015 MBP to the new touchbar model, my cold build times were cut in half. Other than, saving 15 seconds once per day, I noticed nothing.

imeron• 7 years ago

Try going backwards. It’s easier to notice the speed difference the other way around :)

jchw3• 7 years ago

I just upgraded from a 2700X to a 3900X. Maybe it’s not quite HEDT but its closer, and my god, it’s literally mind blowing. I measured a 47% wall clock improvement on a test compilation. If you compile lots of C++ you are in for some serious surprises. Especially so if you are doing things that cross-cut hundreds of C++ packages at once, it basically enables things that aren’t possible on, say, a mid range laptop.

That said, if you are just running simple Go or Rust compilations, or small single-package C++ compilations, caching and a decent processor should be good enough, and you probably won’t benefit much from a lot of threads. (You may want it for your Webpack builds still ;)

One tip: scale up your RAM, pay attention to clocks and latency relative to your processor (especially with AMD where it really matters.) 16 GB is easy to kill when you are running 24 instances of GCC and a VM or two.

Macha• 7 years ago

Rust actually benefits a lot from more threads once you have a couple of dependencies. A personal project using amethyst/nalgebra dropped its compile time for a fresh release build from 20 minutes to 2 when I upgraded from a i5-4670k to a r9 3900x.

tracker17• 7 years ago

Regarding webpack builds... absolutely NVME, when I went from SSD to NVME it's the Node/webpack build times that I really noticed the performance differences.

I would think the extra cpu would be more of an impact with Rust than even C++... I wouldn't know, running a 3600 as a place holder until the 3950X comes out. I couldn't handle the 4790K anymore, going from 32gb to 64gb and the couple extra cores made a huge difference for my docker/vm workflows. Can't wait for the 3950x. I'm sure the TR 3rd gen will be similarly impressive with the changes to IO.

newman8r• 7 years ago

I do, I really like it. Current uptime, ~90 days, got everything the way I like it with i3... I can have hundreds of tabs open in various browsers, I've got 9 workspaces with various projects and things in them and a 4k display.

Actually my main rig is the last mac pro, the 2013 one - I just don't use apple's OS. I really like the rig and I expect to use it until at least 2023 (10 years of use).

bgentry4• 7 years ago

I use an 8-core iMac Pro with 64GB RAM; it’s wonderful.

When I bought it I was doing some embedded device work involving a Windows VM, as well as heavy web dev on a frontend JS app and a backend app with tons of Chrome tabs open. All these things crave memory, and my 16GB MacBook Pro was swapping itself to death. This was pre-32GB MacBook Pros, so I bit the bullet and couldn’t be happier with the setup. It’s dead silent basically no matter what I do and doesn’t get thermally throttled during heavy workloads. Having the extra RAM also makes a huge difference.

Now that I’m doing more regular web dev on an Elixir & React app, I benefit from the 16x parallel compilation & test suite, as well as the ability to keep basically anything open without resource issues.

Kimitri• 7 years ago

I have a similarly specced iMac Pro and I use it for very similar tasks. Could not be happier with the machine. I think the RAM + the very speedy storage make this a great choice for the kind of dev work I do.

maaaats4• 7 years ago

I got a Lenovo laptop with roughly the same specs, though.

sdan2• 7 years ago

I do similar work (arguably a bit more intensive) on my 2016 MBP with the lowest specs possible (8gb ram, 2ghz cpu) and it's surprisingly silent most if not all the time.

I have around 5-6 windows with 10-15 tabs each within them as well some ssh tunnels and some other applications open (I do heavy front/backend with docker builds through ssh as well as ML work through ssh)

Not sure what's going on, but my lowest-end Mac is running everything I need like butter.

baroffoos6• 7 years ago

I could do with one since vscode + sql server in docker brings my new high end laptop to a halt every now and then until I restart them

kbumsik6• 7 years ago

I don't have an HEDT but an outdated Haswell i5 laptop (not an Ultra Low Voltage model at least, so it's quite fast). Last year I spotted a bug in Firefox and I though it was time to put a line in the contribution section in my resume.

The contribution experience was a nightmare because a full build of Firefox took 3 hrs and running the entire testing framework took 4 hrs, though it turned out that I needed to run only a part of the testing framework. Changing a single line and building it again still took more than 30 minutes.

That was the first moment that I wanted a HEDT in my life. It feels like devs who work with big C++ projects would want a bigger workstation because of the significant build time.

_bxg1• 7 years ago

Woof. I wasn't aware compilation times got that long for people who aren't building a whole OS.

xuki• 7 years ago

Maybe spin up an instance on GCE or EC2 and remote into it? If you live anywhere near a data center it should be under 50ms delay. Your time is certainly worth more than whatever the cost of the instance.

yitchelle2• 7 years ago

Are compile farm still relevant in these type of scenario these days?

stephenr3• 7 years ago

3 HOURS? Does that say more about your workstation or the project?

I've recently built php + most of the bundled extensions, in a VM (on a 2018 Mac mini) and it's only a couple of minutes at most to build.

skrying• 7 years ago

Recently picked up a 9900X and now my company's javascript app builds almost twice as fast ;)

GlenTheMachine• 7 years ago

I do, although not the kind of software development most people do.

I’m a robotics controls engineer. The code I write is pretty short compared to most of you, and it doesn’t take long to compile. But to test it I have to run very complicated dynamic simulations. These never run in realtime. It’s not uncommon for a thirty-second simulation to take five, ten, fifteen minutes to run; sometimes I have to run many iterations of the sam sim to collect valid statistics. So both CPU speed and number of cores translates directly to time spent waiting for the sim run to finish.

I have a 2013 trashcan Mac Pro with 12 cores. It’s still a good machine.

vmlinuz• 7 years ago

Not a desktop, but... My employer typically gives people a MacBook Pro, but when a colleague left a couple of months ago I snarfed his laptop - a ThinkPad with 24GB RAM and an i7. I put Slackware on it (for I am Old Skool) and it's really handling many many tabs, plus our many-docker local dev environment far better than everyone else's Mac.

Of course, it's far bigger and heavier than the Mac, but also of course (for I am Old Skool) I'm using it with a decent keyboard, a decent-sized monitor, a decent mouse, and a USB-C charger. It does mean I can't go to meetings, but that's ok with me...

loeg2• 7 years ago

I use a first-gen AMD Threadripper 1950x (16 cores x 2 HT, or 32 logical cores), if that counts as HEDT.

It's absolutely faster than any business laptop for doing builds of medium sized C and C++ projects.

(But I think a non-HEDT desktop would also outperform a typical laptop in this use case -- thermal throttling is a real problem for laptops.)

aseipp• 7 years ago

Yes. I work on a Linux distro, and the amount of time my 1st gen 32 core Threadripper has saved me is truly mind blowing. It made it possible to do changes I wouldn't have dreamed of.

As an example, I worked a bunch on our PostgreSQL infrastructure, but we support 5 years of versions. So you have to CI/integrate your changes and test them across all 5 versions, every time you test. My machine could do this on the order of 2-3 minutes -- recompiling everything from scratch every time, and running all integration tests on all versions. There's no CI system or cost-effective cloud hardware that would have given me turnaround like that. In the end I was doing hundreds of builds over the course of just a few days.

In contrast, at $WORK we have a C codebase that takes < 1 minute to compile on my 4 core work laptop. YMMV.

kbumsik6• 7 years ago

How's kernel support and VM support such as QEMU lately? I'm thinking to buy i7 for embedded OS dev but that sounds very tempting. I heard AMD CPUs had some breaking issues last year.

felipelemos• 7 years ago

Why not a dedicated CI server with all this power and a more modest and cheap workstation?

scarface74• 7 years ago

The standard business laptop msxes out with 16GB, which is good enough if you don’t run all the secondary stuff like databases locally. But 32GB would be great.

ericd2• 7 years ago

To add to the chorus, Threadripper has been incredible for deep learning related workloads, partly for the high core count for prepping batches, but also because it can support multiple GPUs and gobs of RAM. If you have a lot of big compile jobs, it shines there too.

fyfy18• 7 years ago

I bought a used Dell workstation with a 8c16t Xeon E5-2670 and 32GB ECC DDR3 RAM a few years ago. It's a bit outdated now, but it's still faster than the most laptops (for multi core workloads). At the time I had a MacBook Air, so this completely blew it out the water. I remember one time while trying to debug an issue I had 10 docker instances of our CI running (Rails + Cucumber + Firefox) and there was absolutely no performance impact to the desktop experience.

Last year I bought a T470s with 20GB DDR4 and an i7 (U series) as I was mostly working away from home. It's good enough for most of the work I do, but it can be a bit slow at times. The processor just isn't as fast and the integrated graphics struggle with a 4K desktop (I think that's mainly Linux/GNOME being unoptimised though). I haven't noticed it throttling, but my workload usually isn't that CPU intensive.

If you mainly work from home I'd definately suggest building a desktop machine for your needs.

bluedino• 7 years ago

You could get a T480 with the quad-core CPU, or a P5x with a 4, 6, or 8 core CPU (like the 15" MBP) and 64GB :)

jesalg• 7 years ago

Yes. I have a company issued 2018 MBP 2.6 GHz i7 & 16GB RAM but I prefer to do most of the dev work on my HEDT running Linux (Ubuntu 16.04), 4.0 GHz i7 & 32GB RAM.

It's way better at running Docker instances, a bunch of electron apps, and tons of Chrome tabs simultaneously without a hitch.

tlobes2• 7 years ago

My HEDT at home serves as my VR development machine and doubles as a gaming rig. I generally save basic research, design, and sandboxed coding for my MacBook Pro at a coffee shop.

If I had a similar performing laptop that could replace my desktop in terms of GPU performance and compatibility with the devices I use, my HEDT would start collecting dust.

timwaagh• 7 years ago

I did once. It was wonderful not having to take the thing home.

thrower1233• 7 years ago

I do all my work on desktop workstations; I have a little burner laptop I lug around to meetings, but all it really does is browsing and outlook.

Having a real keyboard, mouse, and four 27" monitors is something I will never leave behind at this point. All that screen real estate to spread out over helps enormously. I can have a browser with our application pulled up, Visual Studio, another browser with doc, Webstorm with the front-end code, SSMS connected to the database, an email client, Notepad++ with logfiles, all the different chat clients I have to use, and more if I really need to, all on screen and available at the same time. I don't have to alt-tab around, I just look and it's there.

stephenr3• 7 years ago

It probably depends what sort of software.

I migrated from a MBP to a 2018 Mac mini with 64GB, and the ability to run say 10 VMs at once, without having to limit them to half a GB RAM each is amazing.

I'm not in the market when this thing (Mac Pro) is actually released but in a year or to, I may well be migrating to the latest of the Pro line - I don't care about GPU (much - it just needs to drive some displays) but I do care about CPU speed + core count, Memory and fast storage.

nottorp• 7 years ago

Not everyone does web development and can work with just an editor on their dev machine...

Cthulhu_• 7 years ago

Does wanting to count? I don't have a need right now, but some years ago I was doing iOS development; compile times started to get to a point where a more powerful system would've come in handy.

Mind you, my workflow could probably do with adjusting as well, I tended to work like I do with webapps and just continually rebuild/restart and review my changes on the device itself (or an emulator).

Part of me also wishes we had a big setup with multiple docker images running in parallel but ATM we have the luxury of working on 'just' a website (react, some lambdas, back-end are all third party services, we connect to a staging environment during development) so it's not too bad.

But I'd still like a permanent machine, there's something about (and this is me idealizing) having a fixed workspace you don't have to pack up every day. I mean sure disconnecting a laptop and yeeting it into a backpack isn't that much effort but it's the little things.

rehemiau• 7 years ago

Not a HEDT here, just a regular desktop, but it is significantly more responsive than a business laptop. Also much cheaper than a laptop comparable in performance. Plus it's upgradeable so more future-proof.

I still have an old laptop that I use to ssh into my workstation occasionally.

NCG_Mike• 7 years ago

HP Z800 with 96GB of RAM, 2TB of RAID 0 rust and a 1TB SSD. C++ dev using Fedora 29.

nvarsj2• 7 years ago

Oh yes, it makes a _huge_ difference. Most modern laptops use constrained, low power CPUs and GPUs. They are dog slow. Even my 5 year old desktop is substantially faster (like, builds take half the time kind of difference) compared to my <1 year old max spec'd thinkpad.

Possibly the only laptops that could compare to desktops are gaming laptops, and I know developers who buy things like the Razer gaming laptop to try and get desktop-like performance.

8draco83• 7 years ago

For me the problem with gaming laptops for work is their GPUs. I honestly don't need anything beyond build in Intel GPUs but I would love to have powerful CPU + a lot of RAM. Highend GPUs are driving prices of laptops very high so essentially I'm paying a lot for hardware that I would never use. That's why I prefer desktops, there is no problem with having Threadripper and 128GB of RAM in case with some basic $30 used GPU.

ChrisRR• 7 years ago

Depends what you're doing. I'm a low-level developer, my build times are less than a minute, so cashing out on a huge beefy PC would barely make a difference to my workflow.

emidln• 7 years ago

I use a dual 10C Xeon (40 threads) with 128gb of RAM as my work desktop. I do builds development for C++, Java, SystemVerilog, and Python codebases. Jetbrains IDE products like IntelliJ, PyCharm, and CLion can use extra cores and ram for indexing our large codebases. The high core count is also useful when compiling C++ from scratch (common for me because I'm often doing weird things that defeat the bazel caches) and running large test suites or medium simulations.

The latest MacBook pros (8 core, 16 threads, 32gb ram, 2tb flash disk) are finally fast enough with enough ram to both run CLion with clangd indexing and do C++ compilation/testing. Full builds are still not advisable (not that a full build is particularly useful since our prod is only Linux and we have CI/desktops to avoid cross-compilation).

phillco• 7 years ago

And next to each component, "Market Price"

chx3• 7 years ago

It is still not shipping so there's not really a reason not to use a Threadripper for lower price AND higher performance. Or even Epyc chips. We know the Titan Ridge Thunderbolt controllers work on AMD motherboards. Alpine Ridge had firmware problems but Titan Ridge is fine.

bitL• 7 years ago

You can likely Hackintosh it with a 64 core Threadripper, WRX80 8-channel board, 4TB ECC LRDIMM and run circles around Mac Pro for half the price. Ryzen seems to work quite well with the latest macOS.

AceJohnny2• 7 years ago

Apple & Intel are deeply entwined, both at a technical and a contractual level. There's a reason Apple has never made an AMD computer.

chx3• 7 years ago

Well, AMD had nothing to offer really especially in the low power space where Apple mostly is but Sharkstooth and Rome so throughly trounces Intel high end it's not even funny. (Yes, Sharkstooth is not yet out but already the Ryzen 3000 chips make a joke out of the lower end of Intel Xeons and leaking benchmarks paint an interesting picture of the upcoming Threadripper 3000s.)

nwrk• 7 years ago

Same. No Ryzen :(

TazeTSchnitzel2• 7 years ago

Motherboard design takes time — and Apple would also need AMD firmware and software support. If Apple want to go AMD it would be next year's model at the very earliest.

chx3• 7 years ago

Eh, no. Google has been testing Rome for a long time before official announcement, this Mac Pro could easily have been the launch customer for Threadripper 3000.

Corrado2• 7 years ago

I think they should include Apple Care for their professional equipment. This won't put any any more money in Apple's pocket but I could see it being another differentiator and a good bit of PR, especially to all of those price arguments. Plus, it's only $300 and I'm sure Apple could suffer that "loss" on a $6,000 - $30,000 purchase.

pier252• 7 years ago

I've always argued that for the prices that Apple charges Apple Care should be included in all its products.

The first Apple computers I bought lasted for years and I never thought Apple Care was necessary, but since the fiasco with the 2011 MBP and the butterfly keyboards I'm not buying another of its products without Apple Care. Yes, Apple ended up doing the right thing in both cases but it took years after the problems started and a couple of class action lawsuits.

Marsymars4• 7 years ago

I don't think Apple should necessarily include coverage for user-caused damage as standard, but having only a single-year warranty on manufacturer defects is kinda shameful for a premium product. I expect premium products across most product categories to carry a three or five year warranty as standard.

A single-year warranty is in general an indicator that a) the manufacturer doesn't have faith in reliability past the first year and b) the manufacturer is begrudgingly just meeting the minimum standard for warranties in most jurisdictions. Even if neither of these are the case, the optics aren't good.

lostlogin• 7 years ago

It presumably is in some areas. In New Zealand we have The Consumer Guarantees Act. Things are expected to have a reasonable life span. What this means is not specified but is generally accepted to be relative to the price paid (eg if it’s expensive, it should last). It’s a fantastic piece of legislation. I’ve had a 2.5 year old iPhone covered for example.

skofgar• 7 years ago

In Europe a lot of products have to include 2 years warranty by default, which makes Apple Care a lot less attractive. You're basically paying the same price for just one more year instead of two.

tomcam• 7 years ago

I'm wary about AppleCare BECAUSE of the MBP keyboard incident. They refused to replace mine or my wife's. I have purchased well into the 6 figures of Apple devices over the decades.

p.s. Switched to Windows when I bought my laptop for that reason.

yitchelle2• 7 years ago

Apple care should not cover things that are flaws in the design caused by Apple.

These type of design flaws should be fixed up as part of their normal warranty process.

fido• 7 years ago

I hear you. My current strategy, unfortunately, is to buy a new MBP, sell it at exactly 23 months so that I can advertise "over 1 year left of Apple Care".

thelittleone3• 7 years ago

I live in Indonesia where there is no Apple store and where time for repair of an issue such as keyboard replacement is six weeks.

This wasn’t an issue years ago because reliability wasn’t an issue. My ~2005 30” Apple Cinema Display is going strong connected to my 2010 Apple mini. My 2017 MBP however has been the most unreliable hardware I’ve ever had (my first computer was a 286). 6 weeks for repairing a pro device with a hefty premium price.

LoSboccacc• 7 years ago

assicuration is often a form of self selction bias. people conscious about damaging their property are those that are more likely to take care of it. apple care for everyone can dramatically shift its profitability.

lonelappde2• 7 years ago

Why would they price it so low, and not at 10%?

alpaca128• 7 years ago

But then they would have to either extend that to all Macbook Pros, iPad Pros and iPhone 11 Pros for consistency, or admit that these devices only got the "Pro" slapped to the name for marketing.

iagooar• 7 years ago

It goes both ways. If you can afford to spend this (crazy) amount of money, you can pay for Apple Care as well.

nickjj2• 7 years ago

I think they should include Apple Care for their professional equipment. This won't put any any more money in Apple's pocket but I could see it being another differentiator and a good bit of PR, especially to all of those price arguments.

Do Apple hardware failures happen often?

In ~20 years of assembling PCs with consumer grade parts I've only had 2 legit non-keyboard/mouse hardware failures (3 if you count lightning destroying a power supply before I knew about surge protectors). For context, I've had 0 hardware failures in the last 10 years. I keep my computers on 24/7 too.

delgaudm• 7 years ago

Sure, they fail plenty, and Apple "extends the repair period" on products fairly often. Macworld has a pretty good roundup for recent ones: https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac/macbook-problems-reca...

These were one's that specifically came to mind for me:

2019: Battery Recall: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-macbook-pro-recall/

2018: Macbook Air Logic Board issue: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/apple-macbook-air-power-i...

2018: Battery Recall: https://qz.com/1258843/macbook-pro-battery-recall-apple-ends...

2017: Screen staining: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/17/apple-extends-free-stai...

2018 SSD Issue: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/09/apple-macbook-pro-ssd-s...

2017: Battery recall https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-recall

2016: "Flexgate" _ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/flexgate-macbook-pro-display...

2013 - 15 Retina Screen Issues: https://www.cultofmac.com/514741/apple-extends-free-repair-p...

2010: White Macbooks Yellowing - "https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unibody-white-macbook-t...

2009: White MacBooks crack: https://appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/08/apple_addressing_...

tracker17• 7 years ago

Funny, in about the same period ~27 years or so, I've seen enough PSU failures alone, that I always use a UPS. I've seen ram that failed a couple times, quite a few motherboards die in the early 00's. A MB that was DOA and a video card that died after a year. Oh, and a first gen Intel SSD that suddenly thought it was an 8mb drive.

I still prefer to DIY for value... my 4790k build lasted 5 years, just put together a new one, placeholder cpu waiting for 3950X. Will probably, again, last 5 years or so.

joncrane• 7 years ago

Why do the different processor quantities have different base frequencies (higher for lower CPU count) but the same "Turbo Boost" frequency of 4.4 GHz?

If you ran Folding@Home on one of these, would you get sustained 4.4GHz clock speeds?

sedatk• 7 years ago

I guess Turbo Boost works only for short intervals, not continuously.

bgentry4• 7 years ago

Thermal limits. Lots of cores in a tiny space will generate lots of heat under a full workload. They can do full speed in short bursts (or when only one core is working hard) but can’t sustain full performance indefinitely without damaging themselves. The more cores in a small space, the lower the clock speed they can sustain for long periods of time.

jannes• 7 years ago

Intel's Turbo Boost specification only allows for a few seconds of boosting. Of course you can overclock (letting it run longer than stock settings) if you have better cooling or if you won the silicon lottery.

Furthermore, I think the advertised Turbo Boost 3.0 frequency is single-core only. It will not increase all core frequencies to that level unless there is sufficient thermal headroom.

https://segmentnext.com/2017/10/11/intel-removing-all-core-t...

hinkley• 7 years ago

This thing is pulling almost 12 amps by itself. Add a couple monitors and hopefully you have recent vintage wiring in your office...

na852• 7 years ago

That'll be a peak amperage; it won't draw 12 amps by itself.

Even if it did, most displays pull less than 1A, so theoretically you have room for 3 more displays on your standard 15A North American residential circuit. Any office should be on 20A circuits, anyways.

JohnJamesRambo• 7 years ago

That would work great if you had nothing else in your office...

A coffee pot pulls 5-8 amps. Laser printer 3-5 amps while printing. Stereo, lamps, etc., it all adds up pretty fast.

Marsymars4• 7 years ago

Presumably that's with the dual-GPU, 28-core processor model under full load (and the MPX module drawing its full 500W, among other peripherals). An office with this kind of workload is going to require robust wiring regardless of which particular workstations are installed.

m0zg6• 7 years ago

And robust air conditioning, too. Source: worked in an office full of dual-GPU deep learning workstations. We had to bring in those gigantic rental portable conditioners in the summer, and re-do pretty much all of the existing wiring in the office, because electricians who installed the first iteration could not conceive of having two dozen ~900W workstations cranking away 24x7x365 in a single open office plan.

reilly30003• 7 years ago

Many tiny houses only have 15-30 amp systems. Best not to vacuum while rendering!

dahauns4• 7 years ago

Dammit NA, would you hurry and finally upgrade to 230V already?

jagger27• 7 years ago

I'm bummed out that there's no sign of Navi cards as an option. The 5700 series seems right at home in this machine.

I'm still holding out for a Navi product from Apple. There's some mention of support in the Kexts but alas my 5700 XT does not work in Mojave or Catalina (Hackintosh).

frou_dh• 7 years ago

The 5700 series seems right at home in this machine.

Isn't the Navi architecture gaming-focused? Vega might still be superior for the "compute" workloads of pro apps.

Edit: Although I guess the base-spec comes with an ancient Polaris card, not Vega. Cheap bastards.

peignoir• 7 years ago

I wish I could afford these, but I’m really curious to test a hackintosh with threadreaper 3 following what they did on Linus tech tips with a virtualized PC and Mac running at the same time on the same monitor https://youtu.be/EozeSDeV3Vo

Pmop• 7 years ago

Hackintosh allows you to have OS X on better hardware but these days it's really unsafe, due to the possibility of Apple going full ARM in the near future, dropping all the support for x86.

cosmotic• 7 years ago

Considering they just spent possibly 6 years designing this crazy expensive x86 beast, I don't think support is going to drop that hard that fast to warrant avoiding x86.

dewey2• 7 years ago

but these days it's really unsafe

How is it different than buying a Mac now? It also won't upgrade itself to an ARM processor and they'd need to support existing macOS installations for a while anyway.

tiew9Vii• 7 years ago

That logic is a bit strange.

When / if Apple stop support for x86 any Apple computer purchased before they go ARM will essentially be end of life.

If you do not want to build a hackintosh because of ARM in the future you also do not want to buy a Apple x86 computer today.

Sophistifunk• 7 years ago

Not a chance, the Mac Pro isn't even out yet and it's Xeon, so x86 support will be in Mac OS for at least the next 10 years. There's just nothing from ARM that can compete with Xeon at any price. I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the low-end laptops within 5 years, but x86 is still safe as houses.

tlobes2• 7 years ago

Given that the latest Mac still uses an Intel CPU, I’d say the range is [5,7] years at minimum, based on Apple’s current vintage/obsolete policy, before x86 support is dropped from OSX.

hartator• 7 years ago

I like it. You pay the Apple tax for sure but the design makes sense and is nice. I wonder thought when they are gonna to announce the new MacBook 16”. It has been rumored a lot.

m0zg6• 7 years ago

And all of that will be pretty laughable compared to the stuff AMD is releasing later this year.

dragontamer• 7 years ago

The AMD Vega II appears to be a higher-end Radeon VII except with 32GB of HBM2 (instead of 16GB like the Radeon VII). So not really. AMD VegaII Duo (the dual-Vega II) is going to be far more powerful than anything AMD releases in the near future. 64GB of HBM2, 28+ TFlops single precision, etc. etc.

CPU-wise, probably. Xeon W 28-core is still quite good from Intel however, with AVX 512 support and such.

snvzz2• 7 years ago

I would think he's referring to Zen2-based Threadripper.

bfrog• 7 years ago

Doesn't a single thread ripper basically slay this thing?

crazydoggers• 7 years ago

Different market segment. The Mac Pro has 64 PCI lanes, and eight PCI slots, along with supporting 1.5TB memory. 3900x for example only has 24 pci lanes and 128GB memory support.

Edit: My bad... I misread thread ripper for Ryzen for some reason

CarVac• 7 years ago

The 3900X is not a threadripper.

ericd2• 7 years ago

The 2nd gen Threadripper has 64 PCI lanes, FWIW, haven't seen specs for 3rd gen yet.

mister_hn• 7 years ago

Yes, The Epyc 2 definitively destroys this one as appeared in multiple benchmarks.

trynumber9• 7 years ago

The Current 2990WX is typically slower. For example, rendering is a strong point of Zen: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13748/the-intel-xeon-w-3175x-... but here it is behind. The Mac Pro's Xeon W would be slower than that tested Xeon W in multithread but faster in lightly threaded workloads.

But AMD said new workstation chips are coming in November. This could be up to 64-core Threadripper chips with PCIe4 support. Though we have no idea on the clock rates so it is possible these Xeon W CPUs may still come out ahead in lightly threaded performance, especially with AVX-512.

bilbo0s• 7 years ago

You'd be surprised how married effects houses can be to their chip architectures. Attempts to switch can sink you when you realize that some technical artist wrote some extremely critical plugin or extension that's super fast only because it uses Intel only or AMD only instructions.

My own theory, Apple has probably already spoken with clients like effects houses long ago. Since these are the clients that will generate most of the revenue with this product, I'd wager they've put it together almost especially for them. If anyone else wants to buy one, gravy, but I'd bet Apple's money comes mainly from clients in those very specialized segments.

My guess is, they won't be doing anything those clients don't want them doing with that platform. Apple made that mistake once already, and it sounds like they are done chasing the larger market with their pro platform. Basically, They're going the HP workstation route and just becoming an Intel distributor. Only they're trying to distribute components in a bit more aesthetically pleasing package.

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

A great machine to be sure for high end content creation but Apple is not chasing the deep learning dev market because of the lack of CUDA. That market is better served by Linux boxes with appropriate GPUs for TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc. support.

reilly30003• 7 years ago

Bingo. Although it looks clear that there is a lot of movement towards broader support of AMD in DL via ROCm: https://rocm-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Deep_lea...

atemerev2• 7 years ago

A reference FFT implementation in CUDA: about 150 lines of code. A reference FFT implementation in ROCm: about 1200 lines of much uglier code using advanced C++ idioms.

So no, it is not a replacement, again. Elegance matters.

Uehreka• 7 years ago

Nvidia really has the GPU market under their thumb. It would be one thing if their pitch was "We're not as good as AMD for games, but we've got CUDA for professionals and researchers!". At least that way there could be some sort of segmentation and I could tell people shopping for GPUs to "get the right one for what you want to do!"

But that's not the world we live in. Nvidia's pitch is "We make the only hardware that runs the framework used by almost all deep learning research and media creation software, and we're also the only folks operating at our level when it comes to high-end video game graphics, and if our high-end cards are too expensive for you, we have cheaper ones. And when our competitors start to think they can catch up, we'll drop RTX and Tensor Cores on their face."

AMD seems stuck on "We have great value middle-to-high-tier video game graphics cards" at best. I have no idea how they can get out from under that rock. They've been turning the CPU market upside down and smashing Intel's once proud "near monopoly" status. Nvidia seems like exactly the kind of prideful company that would be poised to fall, but I have no idea how AMD could make it happen.

mantoto• 7 years ago

Nvidia is still better for games then AMD. Haven't seen the GPU which beats them.

jay_kyburz• 7 years ago

Meh, just buy AMD because Nvidia sux. For gaming, the price to framerate comparison is so close anyhow.

arvinsim9• 7 years ago

The worst thing is that MacOS will not likely have Nvidia drivers anytime soon.

Lose-lose for customers.

tracker17• 7 years ago

I'd guess that within 2 years AMD will be competitive to Nvidia at the high end. Their strategy is a bit different, they're delivering good value at 2/3 the way up the performance graph... not as big a markup as a $1200 RTX 2080 Ti, but the RX 5700 XT is decent, especially for the price.

Most people aren't spending over $500 on a GPU, so they get the volume sales. The better aftermarket cards have been selling out pretty consistently. And the longer term strategies are similar to how they approached Ryzen. So, I'd think that Navi can definitely succeed in that light.

The real lock in for NVidia, is all the existing CUDA development. Intel and AMD will have a lot of work, One API may help there, so long as Intel and AMD can work together, without Intel's often and weird lock in attempts.

lliamander8• 7 years ago

This will probably only get more difficult as a bunch of AMD GPU engineers defected to Intel.

I'd still likely only go AMD GPUs in the near future, just because I don't have particularly demanding GPU requirements and they have better Linux drivers.

yalok• 7 years ago

Exactly, and to me it’s a deal breaker.

Anyone privy on what hold Apple back on supporting Nvidia? The only info I read was due to some earlier bad blood, but I wonder why hurt your users just because of some old scuffles...

samstave• 7 years ago

Lawyers.

They probably both each want too much money.

unicornfinder• 7 years ago

I've heard it's down to patent disputes. Wouldn't surprise me.

throaway1990• 7 years ago

I don't know about the compute capability of GPUs on this Mac Pro, but if one were to write CUDA like programs. HIP is basically the same API as CUDA.

For and Engineer or Computation Scientist, I think this is not a bad investment

But Yes existing CUDA libraries won't work.

danpalmer2• 7 years ago

With the new MPX module spec, Nvidia should be able to release cards for this.

dahauns4• 7 years ago

The hardware isn't the problem, it's the drivers.

overcast4• 7 years ago

I'm struggling to think what super high end content studio hasn't moved on by this point? All these tools are available on Windows, and no one still in business was waiting 12 years for a worthy upgrade.

thesquib• 7 years ago

What happens when Apple drops Intel and these become obsolete? I wonder if you can even boot Linux and use the internal storage...

_ph_7• 7 years ago

The Mac Pro obviously shows that Apple isn't planning to completely drop Intel (as in x86) anytime soon. At minimum, new OS releases are going to support x86 for the next 10 years.

lwansbrough• 7 years ago

Kind crazy you can’t configure this thing with an NVMe drive even if you’re ready to drop $30,000 on it.

pram2• 7 years ago

The storage is NVMe, though? All of Apple's recent SSD storage is.

nico_h• 7 years ago

Pretty sure the default storage is NVMe

Plus you can put some pci NVMe card the can support up to 4 NVMe slots

Hamuko• 7 years ago

The starting 256 GB SSD sticks out like a sore thumb on a machine as expensive as this. The barebones Mac Mini comes with 128 GB and 6-core Mini with 256 GB. And upgrading it is gonna cost an arm and a leg.

sudhirj2• 7 years ago

Depends entirely on workflow. A lot of shops will have all of their stuff on a 10G NAS share, so you’re actually forbidden from copying to and from your computer because it’s just stupid and sometimes slower to do so.

_ph_7• 7 years ago

Still, it isn't as if 1T of SSD is expensive. So if they set the entry price to 6k, 1T of SSD would be an appropriate minimum.

whywhywhywhy5• 7 years ago

"If you can afford the Mac Pro then you can afford the extra storage" as the Apple bloggers keep saying....

grecy2• 7 years ago

More like "If you can afford the Mac Pro, you probably already have many, many Terra bytes of storage arrays"

dev_dull• 7 years ago

802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networking

Surprised there's no 802.11ax/wifi 6. Why not use the same wifi chips as the iPhones?

mihaaly• 7 years ago

perhaps it is not that mobile

mseidl2• 7 years ago

Not with that attitude.

scep122• 7 years ago

It does have wheels, which is an upgrade on mobility from the previous generation.

acdha5• 7 years ago

Think about what you're asking: this thing uses a high-end server board with a bunch of exotic specs. Those things take time to design, validate, and test — don't forget that reliability under sustained load is a hard requirement in that market — so adding extra chips isn't done on a whim. Then you have to ask how many people are using this for something where the performance hit of using WiFi is acceptable — it has two 10Gb ethernet ports so you can get an idea for the kind of usage they're targeting.

jaynetics• 7 years ago

"Maximum altitude: tested up to 16,400 feet (5000 meters)"

Does anyone know how or where they do this testing? Seems quite bothersome to do.

borgel• 7 years ago

Might happen in a thermal/vac chamber. Seems easier than non artificial options!

nickserv• 7 years ago

Bolivia's capitalLa Paz is at more than 3500m, El Alto in the same metropolitan area is at more than 4000m.

Not saying this is where they were tested (I have no idea), just pointing out that these altitudes are not necessarily far from major metropolitan areas and international airports.

ghego1• 7 years ago

This made me wonder, why is max altitude a limit? Is it due to cooling (less air)? I'd be glad to know more if anyone has some insights

Shaddox• 7 years ago

I'm not a specialist, I just read up about it some time ago so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Basically there's two issues affecting electronic chipsets at high altitude : air density and cosmic rays.

The reduction of the air density can mess with the cooling system.

Cosmic rays contain radioactive particles which can cause soft failures to occur in solid state electronics.

EDIT : Found an interesting paper about it with more details : https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6046/529f05a65e182ac9323ef8...

dredmorbius3• 7 years ago

Low humidity -> static.

Lower air density -> less heat transfer, so components run hotter.

Air pressure may affect disk drives and other sealed / fluid-dynamic systems.

Capacitors and other electronics might possibly be affected.

Apparently displays and printers (liquid ink) are strongly affected.

Arcing increases with elevation.

https://highaltitudelife.com/electronics.htm

https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=24254

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

dredmorbius3• 7 years ago

Among other use-cases, high-elevation astronomical research can strain hardware.

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, has its Llano de Chajnantor observatory at 5,100m (16,700 ft), in the Atacama Desert. Low humidity is a major concern for electronics due to static buildup and discharges.

Not sure how much Apple kit they use.

cgb223• 7 years ago

Is this saying that I can have 1.5 TERABYTES of RAM?

That’s wild

What’s the professional use case for that?

QuinnyPig• 7 years ago

Slack.

kirstenbirgit3• 7 years ago

Well, barely.

Bantros• 7 years ago

Underrated comment

ksahin• 7 years ago

You made my day.

jansan• 7 years ago

Probably 8K video processing.

remus• 7 years ago

Running in-memory databases is a common use case for chewing through loads of RAM.

amai• 7 years ago

Excel on Big Data

imagetic• 7 years ago

For that price, it should come with Apple Care, Final Cut Pro X, and Logic Pro X included.

SCdF2• 7 years ago

So apart from the pleasure of being able to use MacOS, I presume it will be cheaper to just put these parts together myself, yes?

If the form factor is just a tower, well I can buy a tower myself. What is the advantage of paying for Apple a (presumed) bunch of money to build it for you?

If you don't want the hassle of building a PC (which is fair) there are an endless supply of places that will put PCs together for you, with (I'm presuming) a much smaller cut than Apple.

Synaesthesia• 7 years ago

Actually those server boards and CPU's from Intel are pretty darn expensive, as well as the fancy RAM etc. For it's specs, I think technically it is an OK price, but obviously for almost all other purposes you can custom build a PC for a fraction of the price yes, that's still really powerful. If you know how to hackintosh you can run Mac OS too.

But yeah it's to get Mac OS, that's how it's always worked, and the Apple workstations have always been at the high price segment, from the early G3, G4 days too.

SCdF2• 7 years ago

Where are you reading the price? I don't see any when I go to the linked page, I presumed the prices weren't released yet

htfu2• 7 years ago

The amount of time I’ve had to fiddle with my audio/video editing beast of a hackintosh tower is quite insane really.

Both necessary and well worth it, as Apple simply wasn’t selling anything appropriately powerful for like five years (also why x99 was so tricky until more recently - no equivalent hardware of theirs), but by any other calculation if you actually put the value of your own time anywhere close to any professional scale (or see it as a hobby) it will very likely end up costing way more to do yourself.

arvinsim9• 7 years ago

I could understand that you would want a proper Mac for work. But I think that time is well worth spending on a personal machine, especially when it is easier nowadays.

e12e• 7 years ago

Surprised no one(?) commented on the case yet - looks like they came to their senses and went back to the "old" case design.

I've been seriously considering a second-hand, early Mac pro - just for the case. Not sure if they fit regular/modern psus - but those cases were very nice.

Good riddance to the trash can design...

Now, if these wouldn't be priced like a car, and came with some proper AMD cpus ...

grenoire• 7 years ago

It's the good ol' cheese grater, the case design was known for a while.

chubot• 7 years ago

How many fans does this case have?

I thought the trash can was cool because the whole thing was one big fan. Never owned one though.

betimsl• 7 years ago

Imagine having to hibernate a 1.5TB RAM machine :D

masklinn• 7 years ago

FWIW by default desktops are configured to just sleep (hibernatemode=0 = suspend to ram).

Laptops default to persisting memory & sleeping (hibernatemode=3, a sleep which falls back to hibernation in case of complete power loss e.g. run out of battery). Both can be configured to regular hibernation (hibernatemode=25, persist memory then shut down).

DoctorPenguin2• 7 years ago

Please forgive my ignorance but the specs on this are just average in my opinion. Why would I choose this over a custom build pc with almost the same, if not better, components?

My experience with all apple products at work has been quite bad so I might be a little biased.

movedx4• 7 years ago

If you don't get why you'd want to buy this, then it's not aimed at you.

"Why would I pay AWS to host a Virtual Machine for me when I can get a physical host on Hetzner for the same price, if not less, that's 5x better?" -- the point has truly been missed.

Crinus3• 7 years ago

And what is the point then? I'm serious since i read this "if you do not understand why then it isn't for you" but without any explanations about what isn't understood.

ryanwaggoner• 7 years ago

I have zero interest in building my own PC, or dealing with fragmented and terrible support when issues crop up, or using anything other than macOS. And definitely not to save a few bucks. You clearly are different in your values and priorities. That’s what “if you don’t understand, you’re not the target market” means.

rubbingalcohol• 7 years ago

The parent didn't mention anything about saving money, or building a machine from parts. You can order a custom build from any number of OEMs and have a same-day on-site service warranty. The point about building a technically superior machine stands. I use Apple for their laptops because the OS is superior on a touch pad. But really all their desktop machines are joke hardware. The Mac Pro is just a bigger more expensive joke than the others.

Intel is old news on HEDT ever since Threadripper became a thing. The final nail in that coffin will be the November release of the third-gen Ryzen Threadripper making that 28 core Xeon obsolete. I'm curious if the new Mac Pro will even be available by then.

AMD builds admirable video cards, but the Radeon VII is inferior for professional work compared to Nvidia cards and CUDA.

MacOS is superior to Windows but inferior to Linux. A lot of people with HEDT builds are in Linux (myself included). I appreciate being able to do some of my favorite Unixy stuff in MacOS at a fraction of the speed, but for high end use it's still a joke.

acdha5• 7 years ago

Try to build a custom PC with equivalent specs, paying attention to the expansion options and I/O characteristics, and you'll end up with similar pricing. People who need professional workstations are in a different market than gamers or almost all software developers — the question is kind of like asking why anyone buys a semi-truck when your pickup can beat it off the light.

larrik2• 7 years ago

You'll never beat a custom built PC on price/performance.

hyperactive2• 7 years ago

Not impressive. New MacPro hosts only PCIe gen3 when all PC motherboards are on gen4 already. New MacPro is old and it did not come out yet.

movedx4• 7 years ago

It's not targeting you.

hyperactive2• 7 years ago

No it's not. I like MacOS and use their laptops, but Apple proprietary approach does not work for me when it comes to desktop. Their development lifecycle must be very long if they missed advancements in the CPU space. Ryzen to the masses.

tolien• 7 years ago

all PC motherboards

Gonna need a citation on the Xeon-W board with PCIe 4.0 support. Apple aren’t using Ryzen and definitely not Ryzen 3. If they were they’d be waiting for Threadripper - even current TR doesn’t support PCIe 4.

visionscaper• 7 years ago

Configure two MPX Modules with up to four GPUs

That's total, right? Not 4 GPUs per MPX module?

techstrategist• 7 years ago

What’s the best explanation as to why Apple is not supporting Nvidia GPUs?

sdan2• 7 years ago

Legal issues. Think they had some clash a while back.

whywhywhywhy5• 7 years ago

Still don't understand the justification for this machine, I waited years for a MacPro but when it became clear that Apple actually considered it a dead product and behind the scenes were building the iMac Pro to fill the niche I switched to windows and now run a dual 1080Ti workstation (Uses CUDA for 3D rendering path-tracing) for around half the price of a iMac Pro.

Apple bloggers said time and time again the reason they were not making a tower was that there isn't really a market for one anymore, yet when they finally made it they decided to build something that only really serves the highest of high end video editors.

Completely ignoring 3D, mid range video editors, developers who need high core counts + ECC, deep learning, etc.

Before they made it we kept being told "There isn't enough of you to justify them making it"

They finally make it and the narrative turns into "It's not for you it's for people who edit Marvel movies"

swebs2• 7 years ago

Find me a comparable computer that:

- Ships with anything other than Windows (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc)

- Has a corporate warranty

You'll quickly find that Apple has this market cornered. To many people, you're not paying the extra money for the goodness of Apple. You're paying to avoid the badness of Windows. There's also some software that works on Macs, but not Linux machines that may be necessary for the job.

curt152• 7 years ago

"Find me a comparable computer that:

- Ships with anything other than Windows (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc)

- Has a corporate warranty"

Support for mac-only software notwithstanding, Dell's workstations officially support RHEL, have Nvidia GPUs for CUDA workloads, and come with up to five years warranty with on-site service. You can probably find comparable HP Z-series workstations too.

jotm• 7 years ago

HP offers Linux on their Z workstations, which have been reliable workhorses for decades. I believe Dell does, too.

dahauns4• 7 years ago

-Has a corporate warranty

Has Apple finally started to offer one comparable to the Big Three? (SLAs, Onsite service with guaranteed reaction times and HW replacements and so on) Serious question - this was actually a big argument against Pro Apple workstations in the past.

-Ships with anything other than Windows

Well, you won't get macOS of course, but all big workstation manufacturers sell workstations with Linux preinstalled. It's really nothing unusual and hasn't been for quite some time.

_Wintermute• 7 years ago

Dell will ship you a dual socket workstation with either RedHat or Ubuntu, even better is you can get it with an Nvidia GPU.

wayneftw2• 7 years ago

Hmm, well I'd honestly do just about anything I could to avoid macOS. If only I could compile iOS apps without it, I wouldn't have to deal with their backwards and incapable UI.

Hopefully soon I'll be able to use VSCode to remotely work on my Mac though! - https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/24

You'll quickly find that Apple has this market cornered.

No they don't. Not the market for people who just need a corporate Unix box. At my consultancy we have a mix of machines with many people running a System 76 tower or laptop and you'll find plenty of folks here on HN who will name Dell, Lenovo or HP as their supplier.

Perhaps you're thinking of just the market for people who do the absolute highest end video work for the film industry? Other than that, I don't see it.

And Windows has been rock solid for a massive amount of users and developers of various types since Windows 2000.

ganonm• 7 years ago

Apple service is atrocious. Don't they make you book an appointment and turn up at their store just to get someone to look at it? I hear of people who spend more time taking their laptops to the local Apple store than most people with major illnesses spend going to the doctor...

I bought a Dell XPS13 laptop recently which unfortunately had a non functioning motherboard. I contacted Dell and a technician came to my house first thing the next day and replaced it, no questions asked. Totally hassle free. I'd take that any day over having to book an appointment to see a 'Genius'.

dekhn• 7 years ago

Dell does this.

xnyan• 7 years ago

Apple’s warranty service is terrible compared to the alternatives like Dell. A couple years ago I had a failed key on a laptop with a service warranty. Dell had a tech in my living room with the repair parts in less than 24 hours.

Apple could not possibly do that today. Maybe you don’t need it, but if you care about warranty service Apple is not the answer

alexis_fr• 7 years ago

You’re not paying the goodness of Apple You’re paying to avoid the badness of Windows

Are you telling me there is a market of an intermediate OS? Because I would be ready to pay about $250/year/user for a Linux that is as good as Mac, but with cheaper and more maintainable gear than the iMac. It’s almost as if Apple were trying to tell us there’s an intermediate market up for grabs, but they’re still to close to it for any incumbent to try their luck. Canonical was close to it, but stuck to the wrong business model and decided to switch to Unity in 2013 instead of stabilizing Ubuntu. Product roadmaps are hard. Jony Ive is available, just saying ;)

ryanlol2• 7 years ago

- Ships with anything other than Windows (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc)

It doesn't exactly sound like it would be any kind of a problem for you to install your own OS if you're willing to accept a manufacturer supplied BSD.

kensai• 7 years ago

I kind of feel that Apple needs its own pragmatic Satya Nadella to regain relevance in many niche applications. Sure, Apple is nowadays a consumer company mainly, but what is the problem having a competitive professional line as well?

helpPeople• 7 years ago

Profit? And that the audience is limited.

If I have a resource heavy problem, I can solve it for a fraction of the price outside the Apple Ecosystem.

Who buys these? When you look to the source you will understand.

doitLP• 7 years ago

Unfortunately they will probably point to the poor sales of this model as justification that this pro tower market really is dead. “Sorry guys, for some reason only Marvel editors bought these so were canning the line”

jcadam2• 7 years ago

Yea, I remember when PowerMacs could be had at a wide variety of price points. That was nice.

If Apple doesn't want to serve the "I need a decently powerful machine but don't want to waste money on what is basically a status symbol" market, maybe they should license MacOS to someone who does. Something like that might actually bring me back to the platform. As it is, I stick to PCs running Linux.

inlined• 7 years ago

They used to do this and it almost led to the death of the company. I’m sure they’re quite hesitant to try again. Instead, you can look into the hackintosh project

snapetom• 7 years ago

Yeah, I've waited years for this machine, was excited when it came out, and in an epiphany last night, will probably pass on it and opt for a beefed up Mac Book Pro instead. It will be cheaper and fill my needs.

I'm a programmer. If I want to prototype a multi-component stack, I've got a Raspberry Pi Cluster running K8 for that. If I want to play around with deep learning, I'll just spin up EC2 instances. Games? Let's be honest. That war was lost decades ago. I've got a good PC rig for that now. The days of a general machine to do everything are gone.

The only issue is the storage space, which I can get from a multi-bay drive enclosure.

throw0101a4• 7 years ago

... I switched to windows ...

Some people do not want to do that.

innocentoldguy2• 7 years ago

I agree! I find Windows quite cumbersome and unpleasant to use and would rather pay more for macOS; not because it is a status symbol, but because it is simply a better product for me.

whywhywhywhy5• 7 years ago

I didn't do it lightly, I haven't owned Windows machine in 17 years.

But as I said dual GPU machine for half the price of an iMac Pro that can run Octane Render[0] which requires Nvidia cards with CUDA left me asking why I didn't do this years ago after using that for 15 minutes I couldn't go back to how I did my work on my old Mac.

If Apple wanted my business I would have given it to them but they were pretty insistent that they had no interest in my money.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE83n0qhe48

overcast4• 7 years ago

Were people editing Marvel movies really waiting a decade for this though? Pretty confident they've moved on to PCs years ago. I struggle to find the target audience for this, now that they are alienating home users.

grecy2• 7 years ago

Were people editing Marvel movies really waiting a decade for this though?

Given the number of posts telling people in Hollywood not to restart their Trashcan mac Pros because of the Google Raven screw up, I would say that yes, in fact, plenty of people in Hollywood are using Mac Pros, and likely will buy this new one.

I struggle to find the target audience for this, now that they are alienating home users

This machine has NOTHING, and I mean nothing to do with home users.

Next you'll tell me that Tesla have alienated "normal" car buyers because they make a $100k P100D rocket ship. Tesla also make a $35k regular sedan. Apple also make much cheaper iMacs, and Mac Books and Mac Books Airs for home buyers.

I don't understand why people time and time again bash Apple for making something that isn't in any way designed for "home users", while they still make plenty of things that are.

wffurr2• 7 years ago

Doesn't the new top tier Mac Mini fill a lot of the role the trash can Mac Pro did? You can hook up GPUs to it with the thunderbolt ports. I think the top model is faster than the trash can Mac Pro.

whywhywhywhy5• 7 years ago

You can hook up GPUs to it with the thunderbolt ports

Thunderbolt GPU cases are hundreds of dollars.

For a dual GPU Mac Mini setup (which would be a mass of cables and require 3 outlet plugs) you could afford a 3 GPU Windows tower.

As someone who used to be a pretty extreme Mac evangelist I really did look into all this before I made the switch to a Windows machine.

dangus• 7 years ago

Apple didn’t say those things - like you said, bloggers, critics, people whose interest is in making you read about Apple and continue clicking on articles, they made up all these different reasons why Apple would or wouldn’t make a tower.

I don’t really think Apple cares about that drama. I think they know they have customers who will pay the premium. I think the machine is squarely aimed at businesses making the purchase, not consumers.

Is it really a problem that the Mac Pro is only for ultra high end users? Apple hasn’t made a mid-range consumer tower in over a decade now. If you walk into Best Buy how many towers you think they’re selling compared to laptops?

That’s the market Apple sells in, not the low-margin custom built PC parts market.

Apple doesn’t cover every use case of the personal computer. They are just one OEM. Unfortunately if you like macOS they are the only OEM.

As far as the mid-range video market that you talk about, what about the iMac Pro (has ECC memory) or a high spec iMac is insufficient for that task? Sure, it’s not as nice as your dual 1080Ti setup, but also, NVidia isn’t actually a viable option for Apple anymore thanks to their disastrous support for the platform in the past. If you made a Hackintosh system with NVidia you’d still be SOL. You aren’t getting CUDA on Mac no matter what hardware configuration Apple comes out with. Is Metal supposed to cover that use case and compete with CUDA?

headmelted• 7 years ago

I don't see the contradiction here honestly.

The only tangible market for a Mac Pro is professional Final Cut users in a professional setting, no?

If this is hogwash, tell me so, but it just seems that any other realistic scenario that requires this level of hardware (like research, rendering and AI) would be significantly cheaper and better supported outside of Apple's ecosystem.

Short of having a pretty device to sit in a studio, what other reason is there for this to exist? (And how much of that audience is more likely to just buy iMac Pros).

As regards development - Most development tasks won't significantly benefit from the performance offered here, and anyone who needs that performance is likely going to buy something significantly better value for money (as regards tech specs) than a Mac Pro.

I'm not aware of any significant tools for 3d modelling or video editing (besides FCP) that are OSX-exclusive, and that audience is surely better served by a much cheaper Windows/Linux machine.

ancientworldnow• 7 years ago

There aren't any serious edit houses that use FCP X outside of gimmick advertising deals like some late night shows. Everyone is using Avid or increasingly Premiere anyway.

In my experience, the past five years have seen a dramatic shift to windows in professional facilities (Oscar winning editors).

I do know one very high end editor who cuts on a Mac mini. The old school guys are used to proxy workflows and you don't need lots of power for that anyway.

droithomme• 7 years ago

I need a Mac where I can replace the harddrive when it fails after 18 months like Mac drives always do, and also I'd like a bay to put a decent optical drive and not the low quality Apple SuperDrive which they finally gave up on, and add a card so I can have more than 1 USB port which is ridiculous.

And it should cost around $500, not $12,000.

$500 with what I request is certainly available on the PC side of things and I have that and run Linux on it and have transitioned everything I can off Apple because they can't produce the desktop that I need. I've put Mac versions of my products on bug fix only status and when customers ask me when the new version comes out I tell them never and advise them to try Linux.

ksec2• 7 years ago

330 Comments, No one asked why was this submitted.

We have discussions on HN [1] when it was announced. The Tech Spec page has been there since day 1, I looked hard and dont see any significant changes, if any changes at all.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20087315

lm28469• 7 years ago

That was 3 months ago, no one asked because no one remember it was posted.

ksec2• 7 years ago

That was not the point though, Its release were widely known and this spec page isn't news. It is generally accepted on HN unless the last submission had little to no discussion, and there is nothing new related to the topic, we mark those as duplicate.

bitxbit• 7 years ago

Or they can just open up OS X to more hardwares.

scep122• 7 years ago

Handling the burden of hardware fragmentation will reduce their quality and velocity. It's not in their DNA and definitely not in their strategy to make this happen.

coldcode• 7 years ago

People here seem to think this is just a random set of components not as good as X+Y+Z. This machine was designed and specced based on talking with the people who will be buying them, not the general public. Complaining its not X+Y+Z is like saying IBM didn't design a mainframe for your needs. Not everything has to build for everyone.

jibanes• 7 years ago

reminds me of a sun ultra 45

larrik2• 7 years ago

So I can easily make a machine with more RAM than hard drive space...

esmi• 7 years ago

I was very skeptical of this machine and the whole Mac Pro as concept car idea [1] but the Afterburner Accelerator Card has me wondering if I was wrong. Especially if Apple finds a way to support more works flows and applications with it. That could be a real advantage moving forward and it’s not hard to understand how it could trickledown to other products.

[1] http://hypercritical.co/2013/03/08/the-case-for-a-true-mac-p...

hello_tyler• 7 years ago

I wish Apple would just sell me the damn OS and let me install it on whatever hardware I want.

EricE• 7 years ago

Still waiting for my xMac; the spiritual successor to the IIcx/IIci :(

New Mac Pro Tech Specs

Related Stories