The new Mac Pro – ooooooooh!

grum – Member
Why do you open every single Apple thread on here just to be a hater? It’s a bit sad really.

They don’t even look vaguely similar anyway.

It’s the functionality, besides that’s a Samsung skin, the current android default has a flatter look that apples new design looks closer to.
Just slightly ironic coming from a copy so fond of petty litigation over minor feature similarities 🙂

Video editing and 3D graphics I’d imagine.

I guess – and I suppose applications that need specific screens rather than an all-in-one solution.

I wasn’t sold… until I spotted Darth Vader’s mouthpiece mid way through the demonstration, just before the computer became a three-sided tie-fighter.

From then on, it was epic.

i’ve got a new i7 iMac which is more than enough, but… I WANT ONE.

Surely they can’t have completely exhausted all of the big cat names?

Ocelot.

OS XI “Grumpy Cat”?

Do like those Mac Tubes – the hovering ping-pong ball idea is great!

Damn, just bought two super pimped mac pros, should of waited.

Damn, just bought two super pimped mac pros, should of waited.

Given that the outgoing mac pro is about three years and as many generations old, yes…

Get one with a spell/grammar checker next time.

rewski – Member
Damn, just bought two super pimped mac pros, should of waited.

Take them back.

That looks cool. I have a use for the extracted heat…

That’s just caused more fuss in the studio than a delivery of skinny decaff, fair trade lattes’s!
I NEED ONE!

Quote of the week! 😆

That’s the thing though that’s lots of people new to Apple don’t understand, the guys who work as creative professionals don’t really care what the new iOS is like, or if the 27″ iMac has an incredible screen built into it as well as being a powerful consumer desktop computer. For these guys it’s all about truck loads of power on a stable OS, something which was always Apple’s forte but they rather let wane somewhat the last few years letting the old Mac Pro soldier on and on as they did.

Lots of people thought Apple had just become a lifestyle company and weren’t bothered about their traditional core customers any more. Given that the new Mac Pro seems to be exceeding everyone’s expectations somewhat, I’d say they’ve dealt with the doubters rather nicely!

Some tasty looking stuff there. I know the Control Centre is not exactly ground-breaking, but it’s been an omission from iOS for too long. Love them or hate them, those Cupertino lot do know how to promote their stuff.

mboy – Member
Lots of people thought Apple had just become a lifestyle company and weren’t bothered about their traditional core customers any more. Given that the new Mac Pro seems to be exceeding everyone’s expectations somewhat, I’d say they’ve dealt with the doubters rather nicely!

Well, no not really. I’d say they’ve stuck to their current form over function drive. For example:

-No internal PCI-e expansion… okay so I’ll need an external fibrechan card then?!

-Fewer RAM slots than the outgoing model

-Presumably no RAID protection on the boot SSD

The one thing I’ve heard which pros have been asking for is proper mutliscreen support (finally!!)

Wonder how much it will cost….

I’m a fully paid up mac fan boy but i’m struggling to get excited over this, reminds me of a liquorice allsort. I’ll stick to my iMac for the time being.

Well, no not really. I’d say they’ve stuck to their current form over function drive. For example:

-No internal PCI-e expansion… okay so I’ll need an external fibrechan card then?!

Yes – but does your fibre have a greater throughput than 40GBit? If not, then what’s the problem?

-Fewer RAM slots than the outgoing model

Not really an issue given the size of RAM modules these days

-Presumably no RAID protection on the boot SSD

Guess not, but presumably TimeMachine can give you something to rebuild to quickly. Is RAID even needed with SSDs? No moving parts to break, and much faster.

The one thing I’ve heard which pros have been asking for is proper mutliscreen support

Does it have that? I though it just had the single hdmi output.

no raid

Space for 2 PCIe SSDs inside it. Bandwidth-tastic.

Is RAID even needed with SSDs? No moving parts to break, and much faster

Been looking at some imaging kit that’d need striped SSDs to keep up…

Assume the Thunderbolt2 ports can be used for video out? claims to be able to handle 3 4K monitors, but the pic I’ve seen has just the one HDMI port.

Assume the Thunderbolt2 ports can be used for video out? claims to be able to handle 3 4K monitors, but the pic I’ve seen has just the one HDMI port.

I’d asume so… Thunderbolt 1.0 does.

zokes – Member

Well, no not really. I’d say they’ve stuck to their current form over function drive. For example:

-No internal PCI-e expansion… okay so I’ll need an external fibrechan card then?!

Yes – but does your fibre have a greater throughput than 40GBit? If not, then what’s the problem?
The problem is needing to have yet another box on the desk, rather than in the PC. I don’t understand your comment on 40gbit? I think the cards we use are 10gbit.

-Fewer RAM slots than the outgoing model

Not really an issue given the size of RAM modules these days

But it limits future upgradability compared to the old one.

-Presumably no RAID protection on the boot SSD

Guess not, but presumably TimeMachine can give you something to rebuild to quickly. Is RAID even needed with SSDs? No moving parts to break, and much faster.

Yes, they die fairly often still. Time machine is good, but it means you have to stop the machine, new drive in, reboot, restore, as opposed to RAID where you can continue running, finish your render etc, even pop a drive in hotswap stylee if the hardware allows it.

Space for 2 PCIe SSDs inside it. Bandwidth-tastic.

I was talking about proper battery backed HW raid like Lenovo & HP workstations have.

Cleaning crew to my desk please. Sandwich has had a “Gentleman Crisis”.

I was talking about proper battery backed HW raid like Lenovo & HP workstations have.

I miss my old workstations (well more the HP one with the water cooling, the Lenovo was like a 747 making altitude at times (but never overheated)

but hell I’ll get over it order me 2 and 10 external drives to have all over the place with marker pen scrawls on them and lots more plugs to keep them all running (i’m guessing I’ll need special cables too) soon bang win 7 onto like stoner said and I’ll be off.

Is RAID even needed with SSDs? No moving parts to break, and much faster

Said no one who just lost all their data in a magic smoke release.

Get one with a spell/grammar checker next time.

dus it cum with won den? A useful tool four grafik deisngers init, will it fix color blindness two!

I like the hole in the top for you to keep your felt tips in!

a stable OS, something which was always Apple’s forte

So you never used MacOS System 7 then?

The problem is needing to have yet another box on the desk, rather than in the PC. I don’t understand your comment on 40gbit? I think the cards we use are 10gbit.

Well, if the new “existing” box is considerably smaller than a conventional workstation, then there’ll be more space. I’m inclined to agree to some extent, but they have always had a strong focus on form as well as function, and clearly saw the innovative cooling solution as a more important part of the design than conventional internal upgradability.

The 40gbit was about ThunderBolt2’s bandwidth – seems you could run four 10gbit cards in that case 😉

As someone who’s at the crossover of a high-end consumer or a low-end workstation, I can see something like this new MacPro being very attractive if the price is remotely reasonable. But at the same time, I can also see that for true high-end workstation users, the limits on upgradability might finally move all those users hanging onto their old MacPros into the Widows / Linux domain once and for all. That, would be pretty unfortunate for us moderate power users on the next rung or two below who don’t want iOS everything, but do like OSX and have come to expect top-end machines that will run it.

If the price is right on release day, a top-end MacMini might hit the classifieds that day…

Is RAID even needed with SSDs? No moving parts to break, and much faster

Makes a big difference moving from a single SSD to a pair on RAID0. I’d argue RAID1 makes a lot of sense with them as well.

SSD’s can fail too, just like mechanical drives.

SSD RAID-0 is blindingly fast, and there are many applications which require such extreme bandwidth (video editing, batch image processing on large files, databases)

I have a single SSD in my hackintosh which is plenty fast enough for my requirements…

zokes – Member

The 40gbit was about ThunderBolt2’s bandwidth – seems you could run four 10gbit cards in that case

Oh I see, 1280MB/s is fast enough for us 😀 My gripe was about having loads of boxes on the desk rather than cards in the PC (and paying a premium for the privilege!)

As someone who’s at the crossover of a high-end consumer or a low-end workstation, I can see something like this new MacPro being very attractive if the price is remotely reasonable. But at the same time, I can also see that for true high-end workstation users, the limits on upgradability might finally move all those users hanging onto their old MacPros into the Widows / Linux domain once and for all. That, would be pretty unfortunate for us moderate power users on the next rung or two below who don’t want iOS everything, but do like OSX and have come to expect top-end machines that will run it.

Indeed, for that use-case it is quite interesting.

Looks awesome.

[Apple] clearly saw the innovative cooling solution as a more important part of the design than conventional internal upgradability.

How is it innovative?

Damn, just bought two super pimped mac pros, should of waited.

Go talk to them in-store. They’ve been known to swap things for new version if you bought things close enough to the press-releases in the past.

Cold air goes in the bottom and out the top. Like my PC. And my media center. And every 19″ rack cabinet ever made.
But they are square and fans are round, like fitting a round peg in a square hole, so not as efficient?

But they are square and fans are round, like fitting a round peg in a square hole, so not as efficient?

I wish fluid dynamics was that simple 🙁

You can go all geeky about it and ramble on about it not being innovative, their not being enough ports, blah, blah, blah…. and completely miss the point

The bottom line here is that every graphic designer and art director (which lest we forget, is the target market here) has taken one look at that thing and involountarily groaned lustfully, then creamed their silkies.

They’ll be obscenely expensive, and still Apple won’t be able to make the bloody things fast enough. Because everyone in their target market, and quite a few besides, now wants one. A bit good at that type of thing, are Apple

Oh naturally Binners! Just don’t go claiming it’s something it isn’t! 🙂

I wish fluid dynamics was that simple

That’s why I do space stuff. No fluids to be dynamic. Just conduction and radiation to worry about. (We’ll conveniently forget about heatpipes though)

They’ll be obscenely expensive, and still Apple won’t be able to make the bloody things fast enough.

2 grand each give or take would be my bet. Or about 4x the price of my brushed aluminium (but square) computational device.

They would have gone for hexagonal for its superior tessellation efficiency, but we have prior art on that 😉

The “not being able to make things fast enough” is classic marketing though. Nintendo have prior art on that (too). They DO make more than enough but stifle supply to make it look like they’ve sold out, then drip feed. Only the Raspberry Pi was properly produced in massively insufficient numbers in recent times.