Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

http://www.marco.org/2012/06/11/half-assed-mac-pro

by iand • 14 years ago

273 308 14 years ago

marco.org

robert_nsu• 14 years ago

I don't get it. Why don't they just discontinue the Mac Pro?

prophetjohn• 14 years ago

Because there's still a handful of people willing to pay $5000 for an above average desktop computer.

hristov• 14 years ago

Probably because they want to clear out some parts, or finish up supply agreements as Marco suggested.

planetguy2• 14 years ago

I really doubt it. As long as there's a few customers willing to buy it, and as long as they can make what must be a ridiculously large profit margin on them, they're gonna continue to make 'em.

ary2• 14 years ago

Because there are audio/video professionals who want a Mac that has hardware expandability similar to a PC. The market becomes more niche by the day, but it's there.

zobzu• 14 years ago

That being said the vast majority just have a laptop Its fast enough and support high rez external monitors.

That's probably the reason. When the niche for desktops is too small, it will eventually die. Because Apple only produce stuff that makes a pretty good amount of money. If it doesn't, it's removed.

It make sense, even if it's annoying.

marquis2• 14 years ago

Mac OSX is still solidly used in many industries, such as media and publishing. Recording studios need the Pro to install expansion cards, video production houses the same. I've seen close to riots because a production house wanted to move all their staff to Windows, and as much as you think it might save costs, you don't have to worry about Anti-Virus and Firewall software management, admin permissions etc on top of all that, Windows Pro licenses etc. Integration with iPad and iPhone is also important given that a lot of media development for these goes on in this studios.

seanica• 14 years ago

"you don't have to worry about Anti-Virus and Firewall software management, admin permissions"

Are you sure about that? "Flashback" is just one example. Apple has also approached an av vendor to help harden OSX.

verisimilidude• 14 years ago

I (still) work in old-world publishing. Honestly, Mac Pros are losing their edge in this industry. My machine was recently upgraded from an old Mac Pro to a new Mac Mini. Even when I spam my machine with a half-dozen Adobe apps at once, I don't really hurt for performance.

Granted, some still need a Mac Pro to drive multiple huge monitors, cut video, add weird device interfaces, etc. Some will demand super expensive hardware for reasons more political than practical. All that said, overall, the publishing industry seems to be hitting a performance-plateau where the old Pro is no longer necessary among many practitioners.

twog2• 14 years ago

Because its easier to sell your stockpiles of CPU's/other left over assets this way.

lwat• 14 years ago

If a product is still profitable, why discontinue it?

ams61103• 14 years ago

Perhaps they would save more by discontinuing the line than they make in profits on it.

jsz02• 14 years ago

A 12-core Mac Pro still offers significantly more processing power than a quad-core Ivy Bridge i7. So the Mac Pro still serves its purpose.

tar• 14 years ago

I do not understand. What is the appropriate use case for a Mac Pro where something equivalent and much cheaper cannot be used?

wmf6• 14 years ago

PCIe cards. Multiple matte 30" monitors. Anything really CPU intensive.

joshAg• 14 years ago

I think he meant, why wouldn't a windows/unix/linux machine with similar hardware work just as well?

dasil0033• 14 years ago

Final Cut Pro?

sphilipakis• 14 years ago

IOS + OSX developers (edited out my not really interesting comment about XCode)

petercooper5• 14 years ago

Logic Pro with high numbers of tracks and effects/filters.

Anything that needs workstation-level graphics like the NVIDIA Quadro (for doing stereoscopic graphics, multi device synchronization, broadcast pipelines, and more).

AndrewNCarr• 14 years ago

I wonder if this is a tacit acceptance of the DIY hackintosh. Has anyone seen hacintoshes used by audio/video pros for production work?

Everything I've read over the last year seems to imply that Apple is losing interest in the pro A/V market in favor of the profitable portable market, instead of keeping both going.

grecy• 14 years ago

I agree this is a lame "update"

But I don't think that means it's dead for certain. Maybe they are having a hard time figuring out if Thunderbolt will go on the gfx card or the motherboard...maybe they are still waiting for a usb 3.0/thunderbolt/ivy bridge chipset from inel?

In fact, I think a "lame" update is a good sign that Apple wants to keep it around, and for whatever reason doesn't have the tech yet to make it much better.

wmf6• 14 years ago

They've had years to figure out the Thunderbolt thing. Xeon E5 was delayed 9 months, so the new Mac Pro actually should have been ready in September.

millzlane3• 14 years ago

This isn't surprising. Look at the product wikis and see the comparison of all the hardware. From the mac pro all the way down to the phone. They have been selling overpriced hardware for a very long time.

To be fair.. before the intel switch the hardware was theirs. Now, after the intel switch they're still selling over priced hardware except now it's cheaper for them because they're not using powerpc's anymore, and are now able to reap the benefits of using PC hardware.

Bud3• 14 years ago

Uh, except they aren't overpriced, as evidenced by the fact that nobody can undercut the Air or the iPhone or the iPad on price yet.

And they aren't reaping the benefits of using PC hardware, either; other than Intel CPUs, Apple is custom-building all its motherboards and parts.

So basically, you have no valid points at all and are just posting an anti-Apple rant.

millzlane3• 14 years ago

You only named 3 devices. All of which have only been on the market less than 5 years. It won't take the industry long to surpass those. Intel chips are the brain of the computer. Therefore the rest of the device benefits from it. And you can't argue that Apple didn't benefit greatly from the switch. Or else they wouldn't have rewritten their entire OS for them.

So maybe 1/3 of my points are invalid.and I'm not anti apple I happen to own the latest macbook. And used to work there.

2muchcoffeeman• 14 years ago

I haven't checked since this mornings refresh, but at least here in AU, there are some arguably cheaper options to the Air. Where the Air excels is giving you a nice machine that is also really well made + all the little niceties of Mac hardware like Magsafe, backlit keyboard, ambient light sensors.

Also Apple is actually making a nice profit on their machines.

Terretta2• 14 years ago

Not overpriced. Nobody could come close to the price of the Macbook Air with fully equivalent hardware, for example, and today's MBP release is the same. When competitors try to meet the specs across the board, without any major compromises, they cost 20% more.

The overpriced thing is a decade old, and used to be justified as a brand positioning (pay more for quality build).

Now, Apple's supply chain lets them offer even higher build quality but at a discount to inferior products.

RegEx• 14 years ago

I'm confused: what hardware specifications are you referring to? A simple NewEgg browse disproves this comment unless I'm misunderstanding you.

vacri4• 14 years ago

Nonsense. Comparing a Lenovo X220 with equivalent specs, it comes out slightly cheaper on the Lenovo side. There are minor differences on both sides (eg thunderbolt versus replaceable battery) but going for SSD, same RAM, same CPU, similar screen size, the Lenovo comes out at $1216 and the Mac Air at $1349 (in Australia).

eswangren• 14 years ago

You're right in terms of the Air; it's a great deal for how well it's built. Almost every single other computer they offer is demonstrably overpriced based on specs.

mistercow• 14 years ago

The trick to your claim is "fully equivalent hardware". I just bought a System76 laptop after a lifetime of using macs exclusively, and there was just no contest on price. To get a roughly equivalent machine from Apple would have cost nearly twice as much. Yes, that would have included a few nifty little things here and there that simply weren't available for the machine I got, just as my machine has some things I couldn't have gotten on a mac.

But to claim that Apple is competitive on price is just absurd. They're very competitive on hardware/software integration, on usability, an aesthetics, on stability. But not on price.

planetguy2• 14 years ago

"No Xeon E5 CPUs"

I must admit I've lost track of what the latest and greatest CPU is at any given time, so I googled for "Xeon E5" and found this article:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/11/apple_quietly_...

So what is it? Have they stuck in an Intel Xeon E5 or not?

wmf6• 14 years ago

AppleInsider is confused. Xeon E5645 is two years old. Xeon E5-26xx is the new hotness.

blueprint2• 14 years ago

That's quite a mistake to make!

adventureful• 14 years ago

Consumer wise it's the i7-3930k and 3960x. For the XEONs as the other person noted, it's the E5-26xx and the E5-1650 is pretty badass.

You can still go higher than these, but the prices skyrocket on the E7 line, eg the E7-8870, and the core to core value isn't higher:

http://ark.intel.com/products/53580/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-...

mattgreenrocks2• 14 years ago

The Mac Pro clearly isn't on their radar.

That said, a Hackintosh can save you a lot of money if you're looking at the Mac Pro line. It's a crappy solution, for sure. Apple would never bless such a thing, but they don't seem to try and stop it.

AndrewNoNumbers2• 14 years ago

Ditto to Hackintosh. The Mac Pro never was a good buy.

Half the reason one buys an Apple product is because of the terrific build quality and design. That's extremely important in a notebook computer, something you'll carry around day in day out and have to depend on to not fail when you're in the field.

There's far less incentive in buying a terrifically sturdy and pretty machine that will sit under your desk and not be moved for years on end.

bengl3rt2• 14 years ago

I dunno about you guys, but as a college student that frequently takes internships, I move every 4-6 months.

Having a really powerful desktop that can be thrown back into its (incredibly well designed) original box and shipped here, there, and everywhere while continuing to work perfectly and housing all my disks has been awesome.

abruzzi• 14 years ago

I think there are two possible explanations:

1. Marco's pessimistic take that they are clearing through existing inventory in slightly reconfigured and cheaper machines.

2. grecy's comment here that they needed to keep people hooked while they get the real bump out the door.

If the answer is 2, then they really can't wait too long. A few people will be satisfied that they can get 12 cores for $3800, but it's only a stop gap.

My pessimistic gut says Marco is right (see FCPx/exFCP fiasco), but I keep hoping he's wrong. Right now I have too much invested in PCIe in my studio (audio hardware) and might get one of these new 12 core boxes and nurse it along for as long as I can.

Geof

nym• 14 years ago

If #2 is correct, wouldn't they tease a new release instead of introducing a new model? No sense making customers buy something only to release a new model out of schedule.

cbsmith4• 14 years ago

You don't want to Osborne your existing line.

sitkack• 14 years ago

U should build a hackintosh using E5 Xeons

    http://vr-zone.com/articles/ultimate-8-core-matx-powerhouse-xeon-e5-2690-r4g-7970dcii-and-more-/15123.html
    http://www.macbreaker.com/2012/04/ultimate-xeon-hackintosh-server.html

speleding• 14 years ago

Mountain Lion won't even be available for older MacPros, that speaks to answer 1

(my 2007 MacPro is still humming along nicely, I really can't see why Apple won't allow me to install their new OS on it, other than that they just want the whole line to disappear)

chrissnell3• 14 years ago

The Mac Pro isn't just for those in the A/V industry. It's for anyone who wants a Mac with more than four cores. No other Mac can do 6+ cores.

The Mac Pro hasn't seen a case update in at least six years. What other Apple product has been neglected like this?

ary2• 14 years ago

Neglect on the internals side is objectionable, but what of the the case? It's still just as (subjectively) beautiful today as it was six years ago. Does a product really need to radically look different just to be "new?"

chrissnell3• 14 years ago

Well, for one, it's huge. I'd love to see a smaller package that could still hold as many internal drives and PCIe cards. Something that could sit comfortably on top of a desk or be easily rack-mounted would be nice.

AndrewNoNumbers2• 14 years ago

I'd politely like to ask..

What, besides A/V work, is a 6+ core OS X machine necessary for?

aphyr2• 14 years ago

Scientific computing, system modeling, numerics, CAD/CAM, visualization, developing highly concurrent software, event processors, rendering, machine learning (esp vision/video/spatial stuff), genetic algorithms, databases, GIS, crypto, traffic processing, theorem proving, compiling stuff, exploratory data mining. Gaming, maybe. I routinely saturate my MBP's 4 HT cores. It's also nice to develop on the same architecture you'll deploy to; helps with concurrency tuning.

Not that you can't run these on smaller devices; these are just easy ways to use up a lot of CPU.

jes5199• 14 years ago

some of the iOS developers at my work use them just so they can compile faster.

mortenjorck• 14 years ago

Let's say I'm running a post shop and I want to render from After Effects as fast as possible. In normal use, just how much faster will one of these dated Xeons render my comps than the quad-core i7 in a top-of-the-line iMac?

chrissnell3• 14 years ago

Depends on how heavily After Effects leverages threads. With up to twelve cores on a Mac Pro, it could potentially be much faster.

protomyth• 14 years ago

After Effects has NVidia acceleration (CUDA), so a Mac Pro with multiple NVidia cards might be a better choice.

This is an "upgrade" in the sense that the processors they were using became too expensive and they used the currently sold ones.

reitzensteinm4• 14 years ago

Here is a relevent benchmark. The top of the line iMac has a Sandy Bridge 2600, and the 980X is the desktop version of the equivilant server part.

980X vs 2600 video transcoding: 24s vs 29.1s (lower is better)

But there are still 2 CPUs in the Mac Pro, so you can double performance; it should be 2.5x faster still.

Ivy Bridge, which features in the new MacBook Pros, and likely iMacs soon, nets another 10% or so for the same clock speed over Sandy Bridge.

Haswell will likely be the point at which a quad core Haswell chip roughly equals a 6 core Westmere chip (not bad for a 3 generation gap).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-i...

Edit: Another commenter pointed out that AE has CUDA acceleration. In that case, even a mid range graphics card would be faster than two high end CPUs.

cheatercheater9• 14 years ago

Why can't you offload to render nodes?

forrestthewoods2• 14 years ago

Our sound guy is PISSED at the lack of update. Seriously, incredibly pissed. I've honestly never seen him this angry before. He'd been counting down the days till WWDC and a long overdue update. There are three major pieces of software he uses on his Mac that he swears by. It sounds like they have all just released or are about to release Windows versions.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is a trend? Apple is clearly focused on iOS and consumer/prosumer and not professional. I certainly don't blame them. Is the future of professionals going to be Windows? Even for lifelong Mac die hards? It seems plausible imo.

blueprint2• 14 years ago

To confirm, what kind of professionals are you talking about for whom a new Macbook Pro isn't going to be fast enough?

veemjeem3• 14 years ago

Probably the ones who have 32gb of memory for their photoshop scratch buffer. There's still quite a few of these types of professionals. You just can't put that much memory in the Macbook Pro. Processor speed is probably less of an issue compared with memory capacity.

luser001• 14 years ago

You can never have enough processing power when you're editing and re-rendering videos.

Hell, I find lightroom able to use all the CPU I can throw at it when I muck around with ~400 photos that I shoot in a day.

I have no doubt that video work can easily use all the CPU/memory you throw at it: imagine rendering a finished video in five different formats and resolutions in the background, while you're editing/tweaking your next project in the background.

Remember these are professionals.

rpedroso• 14 years ago

People in the business of video editing are one example. They need/use more RAM and processing power than you can get on any new model of Macbook Pro.

twog2• 14 years ago

I imagine he is talking about sound engineers. Also, he is talking about the Mac Pro (the desktop) not the Macbook Pro, the laptop.

dasil0033• 14 years ago

What everyone else said, plus the fans. Man, there are times I actually think about a Mac Pro as a humble Rails developer. If I fully parellelized my test suites it might even be worth the money.

forrestthewoods2• 14 years ago

Video game audio. He does all of our audio work. Sound effects, voice over, music composition, etc. I asked him what audio he used and his answer was Pro Tools, Digital Performer, and Peak. He's got a super top of the line Mac Pro that's only 2 years old and he's been salivating at the prospect of an upgrade for a long time.

He was extra pissed that the new machines don't even have Thunderbolt. He has many hundreds of gigabytes of audio libraries on a variety of external storage devices and just having Thunderbolt would be a pretty decent productivity improvement.

burrokeet3• 14 years ago

Audio professionals editing large surround sessions with lots of plugins and lots of tracks for one (plus you need 3-4 or more PCIe slots to stick Pro Tools or similar DSP cards in). These need as much horsepower as you can throw at them.

Video professionals doing rendering or compositing, ditto.

Not to mention the video cards available, plus being able to throw four full size drives directly on the SATA bus.

ktizo7• 14 years ago

FX artists for digital cinema. 4K takes nearly half a gig a second uncompressed.

gallerytungsten2• 14 years ago

All of the above. Audio, video, 3D. Any pro level design. Even print design.

Having a Mac Pro with lots of storage and big monitors when you're working on a 300 page book with 300GB of photos is much less annoying than poking along with a laptop.

It's not just the speed, it's also the usability. Eg, a comfortable trackball and a nicer keyboard. Sure, you can add those to a laptop, but then you have a kludge.

Bud3• 14 years ago

Except there's not really a premium Windows platform to compete with the overall integration that a high-end Mac and Mac OS X offers.

If you can get the same performance out of, say, the new MacBook Pro plus a couple Thunderbolt displays and a Thunderbolt RAID, the pros can just move in that direction.

Notice that there was no iMac update at all today; Apple might be planning to release a new high-end iMac to better serve the old Mac Pro crowd.

icegreentea• 14 years ago

I really doubt you can get the same performance out of a MacBook Pro. Professional media software (audio or video) takes a -lot- of power. Trying to run through a big multi-track synth setup would probably bring a MBP to it's knees.

I mean for one thing, despite all the awesomeness that is Ivy-Bridge, I still do not think that Intel can cram in the same level of performance into a 35W chip that use to go into a 90W platform just 2-3 years ago.

super_mario• 14 years ago

I have 2008, 8 times 2.8 GHz core, 32 GB of RAM Mac Pro with SSD for boot drive. That thing is still faster than latest and greatest 17'' Macbook Pro when it comes to doing actual work, like compiling, transcoding video etc (rather than running benchmarks, where newer CPU in the laptop gets about 15% higher score). And the Mac Pro does all this without breaking a sweat. The cooling solution in the large case with huge slow rotating fans means Mac Pro stays quiet and cool under serious multi-hour load.

17'' Macbook Pro gets all huffy and puffy after just a minute of actual work and stays pretty loud and too hot to hold on lap during entire compiling/transcoding session.

So, no currently, you can't replace Mac Pro with a laptop, nor with iMac (I have a couple of latest 27'' iMacs as well, and it's pretty much the same story).

I don't think this will change any time soon. The box size of Mac Pro will always be able to contain more cool, quiet computing power than any laptop.

True, not everyone needs this kind of computing power. It seems Apple's target audience most certainly does not. Majority of them need an appliance running on a phone/tablet it seems.

nirvana• 14 years ago

I read recently that the Mac Pro accounts for less than %2 of Apple's Mac sales.

Since thunderbolt basically is a PCI express cable, there's nothing to stop people from building external cases that can hold PCI express cards, like the Mac Pro can. Since thunderbolt is becoming prevalent across the line, I can't really see a need for the Mac Pro so much anymore.

True it is nice in some situations to put all your hard drives and all your PCI cards in one box, but at %2 of the total sales (by units) the big old tower is less relevant these days.

The other thing the Mac Pro had was the highest end of Intels CPUs. If the sales aren't making the engineering effort worth it, then the answer Apple's intending people to take may be a high end iMac.

I edit a lot of HD in Final Cut X on my 2 year old Macbook Pro, and background rendering seems to have no trouble keeping up. I've not really felt CPU constrained in awhile with HD.

petercooper5• 14 years ago

there's nothing to stop people from building external cases that can hold PCI express cards, like the Mac Pro can.

Such a thing has been announced: http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt.asp

then the answer Apple's intending people to take may be a high end iMac.

Maybe, but the 3.4GHz i7 - currently the highest CPU in the iMac range - still comes in at 2-3x slower than the highest end current Mac Pro CPU.. and there are E5 Xeons out there already faster than those.

vacri4• 14 years ago

I think it's funny that Apple markets itself as simplifying and reducing wires and reducing clutter... but boy, they like adaptors!

gaius• 14 years ago

I read recently that the Mac Pro accounts for less than %2 of Apple's Mac sales

What % of media and apps consumed on other Apple kit is created on Mac Pros? Are all the devs and videographers etc using laptops now?

FWIW my dev setup is a MacBook Pro connected to a Cinema Display.

millzlane3• 14 years ago

Definitely a trend. I wonder if the iPhone will see a micro SD card reader? I don't think so. It would render their good, better, best model useless.

petercooper5• 14 years ago

Is the future of professionals going to be Windows?

Which itself is going super-consumery with Windows 8..

zokier2• 14 years ago

I believe that professionals are now excepted to skip every other version. Windows 7 is the new XP. I bet we will be seeing it for a long time.

beedogs2• 14 years ago

I say the future of desktop software is going to involve Linux, finally.

Both Windows and OS X are becoming walled-garden tablet-centric shitfests.

dockd• 14 years ago

That begs the question, what is the future of the desktop?

It's not a knock on Linux, but if the mass market moves to tablets and smartphones (not sure if you count laptops as desktops), owning the desktop is going to be like owning the mainframe market. It doesn't disappear but it's not what it once was either.

chao-• 14 years ago

As a Linux desktop user, I want to agree with you.

As a Linux desktop user, I'm not sure that I can.

AncientPC3• 14 years ago

No. There are monetary and performance gains for using Linux on servers and embedded products. As a result, OEMs have a financial incentive for making sure those products run Linux well. No such incentive exists for desktops.

Apple incorporates the cost of OS X into selling hardware. Windows' licenses are effectively free for OEM manufacturers.

Dell is the only major OEM I know of that offers a Linux laptop and I'd guess that division is in the red. The original Asus EEE PC was Linux only and spawned the netbook revolution, but Linux only did not last very long once the market took off and Microsoft intervened.

mitchty3• 14 years ago

I've heard variations of this since 1999 or so on slashdot. I'm somewhat reserved on Linux becoming a desktop platform.

astrodust7• 14 years ago

What the hell does your sound guy want, exactly? A 64-core system that uses 6000W of power simply to boot?

cheatercheater9• 14 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880

> Is the future of professionals going to be Windows?

No.

mathnode• 14 years ago

Why is he pissed? I assume he has custom sound hardware anyway, what can't he do with the last gen Xeon he can with the latest gen Xeon? It's Xeons...in a box. Most editors (video/sound) would be provided with fibre storage links from an all-in-one vendor, whilst it might be nice to see thunderbolt on a mac pro, you can't put infiniband on an imac...

seclorum• 14 years ago

Audio folks like to have as much power as possible - it allows them to pile on plugin after plugin without much fuss.

Every bit of CPU power gained from an upgrade is promptly put to use in doing audio processing .. and I would imagine that this Audio guy is probably using Pro Tools or Logic, and has reached the ceiling for what he can do without upgrading to a faster CPU.

Fact is, Mac Pro's are no longer the really best solution for a high-end audio/studio situation - sure, they look good as furniture, but for the same price you can get 2x the number of plugins running on self-built hardware. This matters in the audio business.

(Disclaimer: My DAW is a Linux machine. It rocks. I also have a portable DAW: Macbook Pro. It also rocks.)

jcromartie3• 14 years ago

What does your sound guy need that a top-end MBP with Thunderbolt storage wouldn't handle?

pippy• 14 years ago

The fact is Mac Pro's aren't as profitable as iPads or iPhones. If you were CEO you'd de-prioritise the line as well.

They're not killing off the line altogether probably because it's a less risky market. iPads and iPhones are new, and tomorrow a new phone could kill off iPhone sales over night.

It is pretty shitty to see Apple do this however. I'd love for them to put in the bleeding edge hardware on the line.

Osiris3• 14 years ago

My problem with that line of reasoning is that the company has (had) over $100 billion in the bank. They have no reason to de-prioritize any area of the business that's making a profit. They have enough resources to pump into all their profitable lines of business and more.

Is the potential of pissing off dedicated customers worth the money they'll save? What will they do with the money they save? Add it to their unimaginably large mountain of cash?

ams61103• 14 years ago

Who says the Mac Pro line is profitable?

mturmon• 14 years ago

It's not about profit, it's about executive focus. That's the limiting factor. Mobile is changing so fast, and they don't want to take their eye off that ball.

eddieroger• 14 years ago

I was bummed, too, but I can also see why Apple doesn't put as much effort in to the Pros anymore. First off, those machines are meant to have longer lifecycles given their bumped hardware. So when you take that in to account, the biggest piece of tech I can see missing is Thunderbolt, but the Pros are meant to be hooked to bigger things with fibre cards and other Ethernet connected SANs. As for video, being the expandable machine means it will probably have extra GPUs with their own, non-Thunderbolt video cards in, so it's completely erroneous. As for the software updates, Mountain Lion will run just fine, as will the updated versions of the pro apps.

I'd love an update as much as the next guy, but I take solace in the fact that my machine is a little less outdated than it can be, and understand that Apple is smart enough to know where their bread is buttered these days, even if it sucks.

Osiris3• 14 years ago

I'm curious, why is it not possible to buy pre-configured, off-the-shelf dual or quad CPU PC systems?

I know that you can get dual CPU server motherboards and build your own system, but as far as I know no one sells a pre-built desktop system that looks anything like the Mac Pro (spec-wise).

EDIT: Looks like I was mistaken. You can get high-end PC workstations.

wmf6• 14 years ago

It's possible; they're called workstations.

ktizo7• 14 years ago

It is perfectly possible. You buy them from companies that supply the professional CAD market and it is relatively easy to find 32 core, dual processor, twin graphics card systems for less than $5000.

tedunangst4• 14 years ago

I think you mean 12-core. Who's selling 16-core CPUs? Also worth pointing out that the Mac Pro is one such system as you just described.

petercooper5• 14 years ago

Take the Dell Precision T5500. Google it (to get the crazy long Dell configuration page URL) and you can configure it with dual six-core Xeons, for example.

Osiris3• 14 years ago

Thanks, I learned something today. Oh, and the Dell is less than half the price of the Mac Pro.

lbotos• 14 years ago

I don't think any "major" brands do but you can find similar stuff in the "gamer" market.

http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Gamer_Paladin_F950

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

Another good option for that:

http://www.gamepc.com/

zokier2• 14 years ago

HP has the Z-series of workstations. Z600 and Z800 are rather nifty (and pricy too).

gdubs3• 14 years ago

A souped-up iMac and some sort of thunderbolt 'bay' for expansion cards would serve the pro market, one would think. A large-scale touch display would be on the wish-list as well. That's my complete guess as to where they might be headed. I can't really imagine that Apple is unaware of how important the pro market is to their image, if not the bottom line. Consider the strong ties with Pixar – they must get constant feedback into what a pro setup needs. I'm betting on a big iMac/Pro update in the fall.

MBlume2• 14 years ago

Perhaps you should actually bet with OP then!

gdubs3• 14 years ago

Haha. We need a Hacker News version of intrade: prediction markets for the speculative hacker.

astrodust7• 14 years ago

A touch screen display? Are you proposing everyone get gorilla arm (http://catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html)?

There's nothing wrong with the Mac Pro but the whiny ones who can't afford it or prefer to scoff at the price rather than recognize the value. Yes, we all want a smaller "Pro" system you can upgrade, but there's no market for it.

The sad truth is Apple sells only "thousands" of Mac Pro systems compared to "millions" of their more mainstream products. That they make them at all is interesting considering the expense that must go into designing them.

It's possible as Apple makes an increasing proportion of their revenue from iOS and are less threatened by the possibility of losing control of a portion of their OS X market that they might allow a few select manufacturers to produce and support a true workstation-class system. For Apple it'd be checks in the mail for licensing fees and an almost imperceptible loss of market share.

gdubs3• 14 years ago

I'm aware of gorilla arm, and sure, that's an issue with an upright display... but I see no reason why you couldn't have the display on a swivel – like a drafting table. Swivel down, and the display becomes a table-top. Swivel up for traditional computer interaction.

As far as Apple licensing OS X, that seems highly unlikely given how things went during the 1990s with Apple clones.

brunorsini5• 14 years ago

If you're into home recording (who isn't, these days?), this is a huge blow. When your Pro Tools/Cubase/Logic project has 40+ tracks of high resolution audio files and several high quality real-time plugins processing each one of them you really need a lot of CPU power.

I purchased a Thunderbolt display just a couple of months ago. I wanted to use it with my Macbook Air while waiting for the Mac Pro to be updated, feeling that not even Apple could get away with a $1000 display that was not supported by its super expensive high end computer.

I was wrong, apparently. Now I know what it must have felt like to have bought NeXT computers or Betamax VCRs.

petercooper5• 14 years ago

I might be wrong, but you can still use the display with a current Mac Pro using DisplayPort, right? (You just won't get to use the other connectors.)

I have a 2008 Mac Pro and was looking into doing this, but I'd need to buy a graphics card with DP first.

UPDATE: Thanks! Yes, I was wrong ;-) Another source: http://store.apple.com/us/question/answers/product/MC007LL/A...

brunorsini5• 14 years ago

I wouldn't count on that, because I actually had to update my macbook air just to get the Almighty Thunderbolt Display to work. In fact, my previous MBA (2010 generation, display port)didn't even power the thing up (it's powered exclusively over thunderbolt).

wmf6• 14 years ago

No, the Thunderbolt Display definitely requires Thunderbolt.

huggyface• 14 years ago

Cubase VST was doing 32 track audio flawlessly on Windows back in the late 90s on an original Pentium. Seriously weird seeing people demanding more power for audio work.

brunorsini5• 14 years ago

That's like saying people were multitasking just fine on Windows 3.11, so why would anyone want a modern OS? If you want to work at a professional level and produce music that actually sounds good you need to work with high resolution audio files and complex, CPU-intensive plugins.

Unless, of course, you own extremely expensive hardware or happen to be a lo-fi genius like Bob Pollard or Calvin Johnson :)

leeskye• 14 years ago

Am I the only one who is stoked it comes with a third USB, standard SSD, and HDMI port?

mark_l_watson• 14 years ago

My Dad, who is really into video editing and 3D animation, swears by the Mac Pro line. I have been suggesting that he get a fast MacBook Pro, use Thunderbolt with the nice raid box Apple sells, and move on. After the new MacBook Pro hotness and the minor Mac Pro update, I bet he will make the switch.

My world is Linux servers and a MacBook Air (and a good SSH shell on my iPad if I am travelling light) work fine; some local develop using IntelliJ/RubyMine, etc., and good access to servers == happiness. I could personally care less if Apple wants to concentrate on what makes them money.

For people who do professional video, sound, etc., maybe the Windows world is looking better, especially with Adobe's neat Creative Cloud stuff. I am a rank amateur when it comes to video and digital photo post production, and even I am thinking of dropping Final Cut Pro 7 and paying Adobe $50/month for Creative Cloud. I think that Apple has made their intentions clear.

mahyarm2• 14 years ago

I guess it's going to a thin client approach. iMac workstations with thunderbolt expansion and processing farms for rendering or what have you. I bet someone would make a killing with the pro market if they sold an easy to integrate and expandable render farm, or something that uses amazon services.

burrokeet3• 14 years ago

Except that you would have to pipe giga/terabytes of data to/from the cloud - that is why lots of in house rendering and catalogue systems use Fibre Channel and similar technologies - one of the bottlenecks is I/O from the workstation

mahyarm2• 14 years ago

It wouldn't be the cloud, it would be local gigabit ethernet and thunderbolt interconnects.

T_S_• 14 years ago

Did my 17" MBP just become a collectors item?

MetaCosm2• 14 years ago

Has it come to the point that the only way to build a serious Mac rig is a high end hackintosh? I had high hopes as I need a very serious rig for work related stuff, I put off doing soe RMA and other nonsense waiting for this thing... and ... this is it?

Speaking of which, has anyone built a monster hackintosh?

sneak2• 14 years ago

I was thinking about it, but then I just bit the bullet and got the top iMac, ordered 4GB with it, then ripped out the 2x2GB from Apple and put in 4x8GB. It's acceptable, though sometimes when I am churning data I wish I had more than 8 threads.

Having to deal with opening up one's computer and also occasionally losing a half a day to tracking down proper kexts is not my idea of cost savings. (I'm not afraid of it, it just sucks and absorbs my only non-renewable resource.)

MetaCosm2• 14 years ago

My current rig is a last gen Mac Pro 12 core with 128GB of memory from OWC and 4x2TB in raid.

I was hoping to upgrade to a box that could support more memory (the 128GB is already over the official spec, but well tested) ... but just meh. I am disappointed.

But, it gets me off my butt to research how to build out a decent hackintosh.

justindocanto3• 14 years ago

If I used your logic last year when they did soft bumps to the MacBook Pro after not having a major upgrade since 2010, I would've been shitting my pants thinking they would be dropping the MacBook Pro and only going consumer... which, as we learned today, is not the case.

The Mac Pro is a necessary part of their line for professionals and aren't going anywhere. My guess is next upgrade will be a big overhaul. It will also probably come with Mac Mini upgrades & a complete thunderbolt display selection (which I am waiting for).

EDIT: the upgrade I'm referring to is April 2010 when the MacBook Pro's started using the Intel Core i5 and i7 processers, removed the express slot, etc. That's 2 years and 2 months between major updates AND you could say the 2009 was really the last time it was upgraded THIS much. So 3 years? and you're complaining about 2 which is not abnormal by any means.

MBlume2• 14 years ago

You and OP have made clear, concrete, differing predictions about the future, predictions which can be checked within the next 6-12 months. This is epistemically virtuous -- congratulations! If you want to be even more epistemically virtuous, you could arrange a bet. How much would you be willing to bet that there will be a new Mac Pro within the next year?

justindocanto3• 14 years ago

Like I said: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confi...

robomartin4• 14 years ago

This illustrates the issue I highlighted in another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097141

The fact that Apple keeps hardware and, increasingly, software, so tightly controlled leads to a situation like that of this "new" Mac Pro. If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways. Performance would go up and prices would come down.

There are lots of use cases where the user couldn't give a crap about a nice and polished enclosure. You are paying dearly for design you don't need. If you want to pay for design, fine, do so, but to a lot of us it means nothing.

Case in point: We have several workstations setup for Finite Element Analysis of heat and fluid flow. They are dual quad core i965 Extremes. They run overclocked at 4.0GHz with memory overclocked to 2.0GHz. They have 64GB of DDR3. All fluid cooled. Tons of storage as well. They also have dual NVidia graphics cards and sport three 24 inch 1920 x 1200 LCD monitors. Total cost, about $3,500. Including the three monitors and the OS hard drive.

These are monster machines in terms of performance and they still cost less than a Mac Pro. We have three Mac Pro's as well.

I would really like to see Apple open it up. A lot of interesting things could come of it.

Because their hardware is not subject to competitive forces, we will now be stuck with a less-than-desirable incremental update for probably three years, if not more.

sillysaurus• 14 years ago

Which monitors did you buy? How did you get them so cheaply?

donio• 14 years ago

I don't know what robomartin got but the Dell U2412M which is a decent 24" 1920x1200 IPS panel can be had for $300.

robomartin4• 14 years ago

NEC 24WMCX We bought a pile of them way back. Found a deal.

sciurus• 14 years ago

You can get the Dell U2412M for $300. Reviews seem good; e.g. http://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull...

asdfaoeu• 14 years ago

I can't see much benefit to Apple though they obviously already make heaps on markup of the current Mac Pro's. Selling OS X standalone I imagine would devalue the rest of OS X products.

alaskamiller2• 14 years ago

The irony of this post is so hilarious to me, this is Apple coming full circle from its clone wars days.

Man, those were some shitty experiences.

Apple is an hardware company. They make money off the nuts and bolts pieced together with premium markup, software is but icing on top. They practically give away the results of their development costs on OSX.

You're encountering the cognitive dissonance as experienced in the 90's. Why, oh, why is Apple not courting customers that don't care about shiny enclosures and slick packaging?

Because that's not the Apple way.

I'm just waiting for Mac Pros to go the way of Xserves (which the group was ran for years just to break-even for the sake of pretension)

wh-uws• 14 years ago

I agree with all you said except the software being the icing on the top part.

Apple knows its the end to end experience (software to hardware).

Apple is just fortunate to be in the very small category (if not the singular player) of companies that have great depth of talent in both the hardware and software realms.

This and the market they cater too (those with the money to spend) allow them to pick either pushing the hardware or the software forward and make a killing not having to move on the other end.

I say this as a person who hasn't bought an Apple product in 10 years in protest of some of their business practices:

- draconian App Store developer policies,

- 1984- esq lockdown on their platform and employees,

- the ridiculous markup on their devices, etc.

but who isn't dumb enough to not pay attention to them because they are some of the sharpest folks in the industry.

kbuck• 14 years ago

I disagree. Apple is both a hardware and software company, and I would argue that most of the decision to buy a Mac lies in software, not hardware. People don't say "I need this computer because it has an aluminum case"; they say "I need a Mac because it's easier to use."

Not charging for minor updates doesn't mean they're giving them away. It means they've already rolled the cost into the original sale price.

mcantelon• 14 years ago

>Man, those were some shitty experiences.

I did IT at the time for a Mac-friendly company and had no issues with the clones of the day.

robomartin4• 14 years ago

The problem with the early attempt Apple made at inviting the clone market is that they didn't give it time to evolve. The first wave or two of IBM clones were a mess. A disaster. Compatibility problems galore. People who buy crap don't continue to buy it and they sure as hell don't recommend it. The crap PC clones died a quick death.

It didn't take long for the market to evolve and "grow up". Companies like Compaq surfaced. Very soon you had a million hardware ideas iterating from every angle trying to do it better and for less.

Today you can buy a PC notebook for a fraction of the cost of a Mac notebook --maybe a third or less. And, frankly, quality is excellent. Today you can walk into a place like Walmart and quite-literally grab almost any notebook computer and walk out with a quality product.

That's what Apple missed out on. Everyone got spooked as they watched the evolution begin and they pulled the plug.

Also, evolutionary forces are interesting. They naturally select product that people want. Perhaps Apple was afraid that they'd loose a lot more than the hardware war if they let go of the hardware. I don't know.

Barring a few details, today a PC and Mac notebook are basically the same machine. Same processor, memory, graphics, etc. Yet Apple isn't iterating the hardware as quickly and efficiently as the PC market continues to.

It'll be interesting to read what will be written in business books about this in twenty years.

bane4• 14 years ago

Funny, I remember the Mac clones being quite nice machines.

ktizo7• 14 years ago

They practically give away the results of their development costs on OSX.

Most of the development was already done for them in the development of Open-BSD.

madrona• 14 years ago

Shitty experiences? Apple made some really, really awful computers during the clone era.

akeefer• 14 years ago

Apple is what it is because they tightly control the end-to-end user experience, from the hardware to the software. You can't maintain that and open up the hardware ecosystem; it's an either/or choice. So far, their choice has worked out really, really well for them, so why should they mess with that?

I'm sure you're aware of Apple's fairly disastrous entry into the world of Mac clones back in the day. What you're arguing now is essentially the same theory back then: clones would benefit them by increasing the marketshare for their OS. Instead, clones just cannibalized Apple's own sales and diluted their brand with a bunch of crappy knock-offs. I'm not sure why anyone would expect it to play out differently now.

Sure, it might be in your interest as a consumer to have choice in hardware, but I don't see how it's in Apple's interest to do so. They seem to be doing pretty well precisely because of the choices they've made to lock things down, not in spite of them.

achompas2• 14 years ago

What you're arguing now is essentially the same theory back then: clones would benefit them by increasing the marketshare for their OS.

That's not what OP is saying:

If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways. Performance would go up and prices would come down.

This isn't "moar market share," it's "the end user would benefit greatly if Apple hardware opened up."

Today is much different than the Mac clone era for two reasons:

(1) Apple clearly has no intention of offering a high-end desktop solution. Instead of losing those users to high-end Windows or Linux machines, they could keep them in the ecosystem by licensing OS X for use in boutique-style desktops.

(2) Apple holds much more power now. In the 1990s they licensed Mac OS from a point of weakness; today they could license to high-end, boutique manufacturers who meet their design standards.

Is this the right way forward? Maybe, maybe not. But OP's suggestion does not necessarily lead to the Mac clone days of the 90s.

cageface4• 14 years ago

The crowning irony is that it looks like the digital creative set is going to be pushed into the arms of Microsoft, for so long the subject of their scorn. If you want a fast digital workstation now Windows is your only reasonable option.

astrodust7• 14 years ago

Discounting home-made computers, which the big names are not interested in competing with, where you can you source a workstation that's more powerful than the 12-core Mac Pro?

The Dell T7600 with 2x2.2GHz 6-core Xeon chips and only 8GB of memory and a 500GB drive comes out at $4,300. The Mac Pro with 2x2.4GHz 6-core, 12GB and a 1TB drive is only $3,800.

Unless I'm missing something, the Mac Pro is still a better deal, even for Windows.

bronxbomber92• 14 years ago

If you want non-Apple hardware, go buy it. There's nothing stopping you (or anyone else) from doing so. I think Apple fills an obviously valuable niche (several niches, really) and I don't see any incentive for them to open up like you suggest. A lot of us do like to pay for design, reliability, and the end-to-end experience, and I'm glad there is a company like Apple to provide for customers like myself.

bane4• 14 years ago

"If you want non-Apple hardware, go buy it. There's nothing stopping you (or anyone else) from doing so. "

Unless I want to use non-Apple hardware with Apple software.

damoncali• 14 years ago

Why would apple want to let some else use their software to undercut them on hardware? It makes no sense. Apple's margins a huge for a reason.

therandomguy• 14 years ago

You are forgetting the primary question here: What is in it for Apple to cater to users who couldn't give a crap about a nice and polished enclosure? They are happy to play in the premium segment.

jarek• 14 years ago

They don't play in the premium segment for high-end desktops anymore. That's their right but it does bum out users who would like a high-end OS X desktop.

T-Winsnes• 14 years ago

Even though I agree with your sentiment, you're comparing a desktop/server with a laptop. One is built to be portable, and will have big tradeoffs because of this.

flyinRyan3• 14 years ago

> If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways.

And OSX would also be crashing all the time, getting a reputation for being unstable. This is exactly why they have such tightly controlled hardware configurations: so some cheap company with bad drivers can't make Grandmothers think Mac OSX crashes all the time.

It's not "free" throwing in support for any stupid (even conflicting!) configuration that people could come up with. You have to write your OS different and you're still not going to stop all the problems. Most of Windows old reputation for being horribly unstable came from a handful of drivers.

FireBeyond• 14 years ago

"Crashing all the time"? This isn't the days of 95, 98, and early XP...

Crashing and BSODs are a thing of the past now, unless you buy a non-name peripheral, or have faulty hardware (which will crash an Apple just as quickly).

mgkimsal• 14 years ago

At the moment, this feels very much like a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Well, sales are down" or "Sales are such a small percentage of revenue"... that they question keeping the product line around. Given that there haven't been any major updates, yes, sales are down.

I suspect if they hadn't put out a new model of the iPhone since the 3GS, sales of the iPhone would probably decline over the last 2-3 years.

geuis• 14 years ago

Gonna play devil's advocate for a moment. Disclaimer: I don't work for Apple. I love their products (4 iPhones, 1 iPad, more 3 laptops in the last year, 1 Hackintosh that was an old gaming tower I built 3 years ago and never used till I put OS X on it, which I purchased).

Apple's core revenue sources have changed significantly over the years. Used to be towers were a primary source of revenue. That's most likely no longer true, and hasn't been for a while.

Take into account how much money Apple has to spend on R&D internally for their products. That's not only hardware, its also software support. One thing I've learned in the Hackintosh community is that while there's a lot of hardware that works really well, its a subset of all the hardware out there (chips, mobos, graphics cards, etc). You have to pay special attention to your hardware or getting OS X running is a huge pain in the ass, if impossible. It costs a lot of money to have good programmers to support hardware.

I have to choose to believe that the people at Apple know what they're doing for the benefit of their company. If the internal folks responsible for weighing the scales have found that the amount of revenue earned for cost of development and all for Mac Pros is too narrow, or even negative, then its entirely responsible for them to be phasing out the availability of this product line.

Yeah, lots of people want Mac Pro towers. That includes me. I'd still love to switch out my Hackintosh for a Mac Pro if just for the freedom to freely do software updates without worry. I develop about 50/50 between it and my laptop.

But for Apple, who have proven over and over again that they know where their markets are going, they may be finding little to no value in continuing the Mac Pro line.

A lot of people will counter with the argument that since Apple has so many billions of dollars, its just a drop in the bucket for them to continue Mac Pros. That may be true, but Apple isn't a company like Microsoft. They don't tend to waste billions of dollars on products that go nowhere or have little chance of success. Its true that Apple has had failures (Ping anyone?), but they are very small in comparison to their successes.

Many people reading this may be too young to remember Apple from the late 80's and 90's. They were lost and wandering in the woods. They almost died a few times. I remember going with my mom to get our first Mac in the early 90's and having to pick between 3-4 different models of the same Performa series. They had multiple types of desktops available, including the Performa, Quadra, and others. Their product skews were all over the place.

It wasn't until Jobs came back and brought a laser focus to their product lines that they turned around. He spent the last decade imprinting that way of thought on the entire company. Its vital to their future success, and our enjoyment and the productivity that comes from their products, that it continues. I would like to hope that there is an endemic fear in the company of losing that focus and going back to the Apple of old.

So if Apple has found that the Mac Pro line is no longer worth it, its entirely reasonable that they begin phasing it out. I'm choosing to look forward and see what they're doing next, and how I can use what they're building to make cool, amazing new stuff. Not looking back and complaining that old things I thought were valuable are being taken away.

cheatercheater9• 14 years ago

> Gonna play devil's advocate for a moment

ITYM fan, because "devil's advocate" means arguing for the sake of something you dislike a lot, in order to bring better criticism.

You're playing bait and switch. Can it be you have learnt this from AAPL?

codex• 14 years ago

I suspect that Apple has delayed significant changes to the Mac Pro until desktop Retina displays are ready. Likely there was some snag, and the whole kit (including a Retina capable video subsystem) wasn't ready when originally planned. In that case, a small incremental update is the only option.

TheMagicHorsey• 14 years ago

Well, if you are banking on OS X as your platform for scientific computing, it seems you have chosen very poorly. I still don't understand why an organization would choose Mac Pros for workstations. That seems to me to be a class of machines where price/performance is very important, and Apple hasn't been very competitive in that area.

I think Apple has done a pretty good thing today. They've politely signaled to the market that they want you to f' off and buy someone else's product in this segment, because you aren't worth the effort anymore.

The money is in iOS and the laptops. And you don't need more than an iMac to develop for iOS or the laptops, so they just can't be bothered to make a workstation anymore. If you are pissed off about this you should investigate Linux or Windows.

cheez• 14 years ago

The only reason I use OSX is because it's on a Macbook. I would never use this OS anywhere else.

Please, someone give me a replacement for this damn hardware already.

scarmig• 14 years ago

Only tangentially related, but what's the consensus on which "ultrabooks" look best to compete with MBP/MBA? I was hoping that Apple would make my choice for me, but I'm underwhelmed.

I'm personally surprised that the Lenovo X1 Carbon hasn't gotten more notice: 14 inch screen, 1600x900, made of carbon fiber, beautiful body, less than 3 lbs, embedded 3G connectivity.

Question marks seem to be battery (I've heard numbers ranging from 3.5 hours to 10 hours) and price (I'd wager around $1200ish?).

Skepticism around the claims of improved sound.

The Samsung Series 9 (also 1600x900, but 13.3 inch screen) also looks solid. Any others out or on the horizon worth noting?

there• 14 years ago

The new ASUS Zenbook Prime (UX21A 11"/UX31A 13") models that were announced last month have similar specs to the new MBA (Ivy Bridge, up to 256Gb SSD, etc.) but are both available with 1920x1080 IPS screens. I had the original UX21 and sold it because the keyboard was not so great, but from the reviews of the new models, they have improved the keyboard and trackpad.

hybrid11• 14 years ago

What are you going to do with a Xeon processor, run a server on there?

tlb• 14 years ago

The upgrade path from a Mac Pro is to a MacBook Pro with external monitor, and external Thunderbolt disk array if you need it.

nvartolomei• 14 years ago

http://www.apple.com/macpro/index.html

kevinpacheco• 14 years ago

According to David Pogue, "Many Apple observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs are under way, probably for release in 2013."

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/an-explanation-of-...

fyolnish• 14 years ago

How is a 12 core 3.06ghz xeon not sufficient to develop Instapaper?

drawkbox• 14 years ago

It would be a huge mistake for Apple not to keep the Mac Pro and the core of content creators/developers happy. We want/need a big machine to run OSX and Windows via Parallels, we need 16-32MB+ RAM minimum, We need many cores and lots of memory to do that with minimal problems. We want to run OSX. Where else can you run OSX on powerful hardware that isn't a Mac Pro? Apple better keep this in focus and see it as an investment.

I love my Mac Pro. It is the best desktop I've ever had and what actually got me into Apple products. I can also develop all my Mac/iOS, Android and Windows apps on it, without it I'd need a windows machine again.

The Mac Pro is still key to getting Windows people to switch so they can run it in parallels.

daimyoyo• 14 years ago

It occurs to me that the single biggest complaint about the current update is the lack of processing power in the current MacPro. Why not rig together a box the size of an external drive that contains a dozen core Xeon processor and 64GB of DDR3 RAM? Then you could attatch it to whatever Mac product you were using via Thunderbolt and have all the horsepower you needed. Has any company done this?

brunorsini5• 14 years ago

There might be some hope, after all, at least according to David Pogue: "Many Apple observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs are under way, probably for release in 2013."

2013, really?

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/an-explanation-of-...

zachinglis• 14 years ago

Apple don't update their line, obviously dead. Hmm? Weird conclusion. Tim Cook has come out and said there'll be an update next year: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/11/david-pogue-new-imacs-an...

But the truth is, this is really self-entitled. There's huge iPhone updates on the go (iOS6 and hopefully iPhone 5 later this year), big MacBook Pro updates but that wasn't good enough. Nope, because they didn't cover Marco's chosen line of computers… they're playing a half-assed game.

Buying a computer is a 1:1 deal. You give money, they give computer (and support for a year.) That's it. That's the deal. There is no "we'll forever be in your debt" by Apple. Just because you want something, and you kick and stomp doesn't mean they should do it.

We also don't know why. There could have been a hardware issue holding them up, or a software. We've got no idea on this.

Apple are doing a pretty good job at the moment if you ask me.

dpres• 14 years ago

> I bet this is the last Mac Pro. If you wanted to kill a product line, an “update” like today’s would be a good way to clear out parts and keep selling to a few desperate buyers for a bit longer without any real investment.

Apple's products build off one another. Apple is not going to kill the Mac Pro line because the iPad and iPhone would suffer.

Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

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