Impressive industrial engineering

Post #384,697 by pwhysall 12/28/13 5:54:58 AM Reply	Impressive industrial engineering I think buyers (and maybe even Apple) may come to regret some of those design choices, though. It is clear that this product is in part designed to push Thunderbolt as a storage connection method, given that most Mac Pros will be sold to people who have lots of big files, and you cannot fit any additional internal storage. It is also clear that second-hand values of these things will drop off a cliff in a couple of years, because while at the moment they're very powerful, GPUs are advancing at a hellish rate (CPUs a bit less so, but still), and whatever the Mac Pro has got, you're stuck with, forever. My PC is a whole different beast, but is similar in size, shape and role to the old Mac Pro. And like the old Mac Pro, I can fit a lot of storage and compute in it - I've got six free internal drive bays, a slot for another graphics card, the CPU will talk to 32GB of RAM (that's an i5 limitation, apparently) etc etc. The Mac Pro is an odd product. The iMac makes sense; it eliminates wires, gives you an instant piece of room art, requires nearly no setup or assembly. Its limitations are justifiable given the benefits. The Pro, on the other hand, only looks good for the few minutes before you introduce a boatload of wires into the equation, and then it looks like an art deco electric ashtray. And there are some bizarre constraints. Only 64GB of RAM. The graphics cards are workstation models, so won't be noticeably better than a much cheaper regular card for most things. A removable CPU has added complexity to the motherboard, but there's no indication that Apple will support upgrading it. And the Xeons they've selected aren't that quick, either. And the lulz don't stop there. When you buy a computer for £4,000, Apple will still ding you for another £40 for a keyboard. They don't chuck in £200 of AppleCare, even if you spend ten large. twenty five quid for a half-metre Thunderbolt cable. There's no on-site or next-day service for your computer you just spent a car's worth of money on. It looks great, and it's incredibly clever, but as a value proposition? I'm not seeing it.
Post #384,699 by pwhysall 12/28/13 6:18:59 AM Reply	Side Note I'm seeing some chatter about how you can't build a PC with equivalent performance and features for the same money. Now, this appears to be on-the-face-of-it true. However, one thing that needs to be borne in mind is that Apple don't pay the same prices as we do for components, even when we're shopping at NewEgg and getting things cheap. They pay less. A LOT less. We don't know what Apple pay AMD for D700 GPUs, nor do we know what they pay Intel for E5 Xeons, but you can bet your last Rolo that when Apple take £4000 off you, they didn't just spend £4500 to do it. And these components are all brand shiny new - in six months, the Mac Pro spec will be the same as it is today, yet the components required will have become cheaper at retail. Interesting and thoughtful critique at Engadget: http://www.engadget....comment=124618941
Post #384,731 by Ashton 12/28/13 10:44:16 PM Reply	IOW it's a beautifully-sculpted server/frozen-in-time with limited RAM (for those who want infinite), modest storage (for those who want PBytes) and pretty-fast (for those who--sometimes in rendering?--want Space Balls-grade ludicrous speed. And its wired-in display card is an evanescent thing subject to guaranteed quick-obsolescence. (Buy another machine. to stay current--send all your stuff There, thunderously.) Methinks that Steve would have loved the whole spec-opera, probably despite above--as We Know they want (if possible: Only) one to buy the next New one, passing-on this one to steerage when the warranty runs out--if there is a warranty on niche experimental items? (Wonder what exchange-cost is, of a mobo with one failed capacitor. You Can rework such things, if Apple would.) Anyway, I Like artful miniaturization (in electronics too) and this is shiny-shiny, there. Maybe in a few years a few C-notes might buy a low-end surplus one.. Could have a Veyron web-surfer for the price of a commodity. Drill hole in teak desk, route that spaghetti through complementary shiny-pipe; add orchid in fluted crystal vase, a bottle of 1961 Ch. Haut-Brion in cooler at side (now worth ~cost of entry-level.) Et Vilola! Walter Mitty's very own CIEIO Center-of-Power. Fingers crossed.
Post #384,732 by pwhysall 12/29/13 3:07:28 AM Reply	TBH It'd make a brilliant regular desktop, because you'd be more than adequately served by what's in the box. Tube. Whatever. And you'd only have to have KVM wires, and even then you could go wireless for the KM. The 64GB RAM limit thing is baffling. I'm going to upgrade shortly to 24GB in my desktop PC because I'm hitting 8GB regularly, and that's just doing 20MP photo work - still images! Video people - at whom this box (tube, whatever) is aimed - buy things with Xeons in not for compute performance, but because the Xeon platform can talk to more than 64GB RAM.
Post #384,752 by Ashton 12/29/13 6:24:25 PM Reply	GMTA; whenever later you find Two.. penuriously-Cheap: Call!
Post #384,703 by Another Scott 12/28/13 9:41:52 AM Reply	It's a niche product. They're assembling them in Austin, TX. It's optimized for video-ish things. It's a unique case design with some cutting-edge internals. And it's easy for them to upgrade over time (e.g. upping the RAM limits) while a bit of a pain for customers to do so (the Engaget piece says GPUs are upgradeable) - though less than in iMacs. It fits with their previous efforts (the Cube, the Aluminum Mac Pro) but may have a longer life than them. Smaller is better for them (and us), and the unique design catches eyeballs. The reviews mention lack of optimized titles. As we know, software almost always lags hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if the $28k+ video app vendors will be happy to sell you an upgrade in very short order that runs very well on this beast. http://www.bhphotovi...inci_Resolve.html ;-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,704 by pwhysall 12/28/13 9:56:10 AM Reply	I think component upgrades from Apple are likely moot Apple aren't interested in selling you a faster GPU; they want to sell you a new system. Also, another interesting omission is the lack of 10G ethernet. For a box that is utterly dependent on external connectivity, this is an unusual choice.

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