Formerly Roboman, still
awesome Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
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I think Thunderbolt is a given (but then again, I thought a higher-res panel on the 13" MBP was a given...), and SSD as an option makes sense. I think it'll gain SDXC support, too, but Apple's been all over the place on that front lately. If sales have plummeted since the redesign they might try dropping the price back down to $599, but I don't think it's likely sales have plummeted. So yeah, the Mac mini is pretty awesome, and I don't see the need for a headless midrange desktop like I once did. I mean, desktops are such a small market these days, that you really only need three models — one entry-level model that's cheaper than a notebook could be, one pro workstation that's more powerful than a notebook could be, and one flagship all-in-one to represent the ideal home computing experience. and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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We're talking about the Mac mini in a Mac Pro thread, which hints at the problem facing the Mac Pro. Once upon a time you needed a powerful tower just to tinker with images or video, whereas today most photographers and videographers would be happy with a "maxed out" laptop. The latest MacBook Pros — with quad-core CPUs, dedicated video-encoding hardware on the die, and 10 Gbps expansion options — aren't going to halt this trend.
The Mac Pro will find itself in a smaller niche as time goes by, and I suspect Apple will eventually lose interest altogether. Hopefully that will take years, by which time Moogs and nikstar101 will have moved to a MacBook Air. More strictly on topic, I think future Mac Pros will have to capitalise more than ever on their more generous power envelope compared to laptops. Things like dual 100-watt CPUs and dual 200-watt GPUs are restricted to towers for obvious reasons, so that's where the Mac Pro's future must lie. Expandability is becoming less important because laptops will have Thunderfart and USB 3.0. Ultimately though, I suspect the tower PC will go the way of the minicomputer. |
Yarp
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Road Warrior
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On the one hand, there will always be tasks that demand as much processing power as you can possibly muster, but on the other hand, we're starting to get Mac Pro levels of processing power from mobile computers. I think that the niche for high-end workstations will continue to shrink, and although it may not ever fully disappear, I do question whether or not Apple will continue to support it for the long haul. I think the Mac Pro will continue to push itself away from the general public, both in price and in options, and it will find a space somewhere removed from the rest of the lineup. Much like how Dell and HP sell their Xeon workstations apart from their other lines.
We'll most likely see a 16-core model upon the next revision, with eventual 20 and 24 core models. An internal case redesign to allow for more RAM, HDD and PCI space is possible, also I wouldn't be surprised if the 'low-end' Mac Pro gets axed, at which point home users woul basically stop buying these things all together. |
Apple Historian
Join Date: May 2004
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Could someone please explain how the core thing works?
A processor can have multiple cores, if I understand it right? What is it, exactly, that a core does as opposed to a processor? "We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond." - Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration |
Ninja Editor
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
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Nothing, from the software's point of view. A processor is the entire physical chip. A core is the part of of the processor that does the processing. Practical issues aside, a processor can have as many cores as the designers want. Pretend the processor is a car engine. We've been driving cars with single-cylinder engines for so long that most people outside the engine companies don't know that engines and cylinders aren't the same thing.
When I was a kid, people who did wrong were punished, restricted, and forbidden. Now, when someone does wrong, all of the rest of us are punished, restricted, and forbidden... and the one who did the wrong is counselled and "understood" and fed ice cream. |
Veteran Member
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I am afraid to say you are probably right. My ritual buying of a new PowerMac/MacPro every 5 years may soon come to an end. If the Mac Mini did get an i7 Quad Core 2.93Ghz processor and equivalent graphics card there would be very little to stop me buying that instead. The reason for buying a MacPro is that it is one of the few computers that will last 5 years and still be relatively fast. Plus as HDs get bigger they can be easily upgraded. But with processor speeds reaching a plateau and local storage becoming more network based, those things are becoming less important. Even now i am using nearly 1TB of network storage rather than local storage. But then again you buy things because you love them, not because you need them, so while Apple still makes them, I'll (foolishly) buy them! |
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Formerly Roboman, still
awesome Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
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Quote:
For the price of buying one Mac Pro every five years, you could buy a Mac mini every fifteen months — and that's not including money gained from selling each replaced Mac mini, or money saved on OS/iLife upgrades. (You could probably get every new Mac mini as Apple released them.) Compare a theoretical spring 2011 Mac mini — ~2.3 GHz i5, 4GB RAM, DisplayPort/Thunderbolt, HDMI — with a base Power Mac G5 from spring 2006 (a 2GHz G5, a 160GB HDD, 512MB RAM, and no WiFi). Performance is only part of the picture — the PMG5 would also lack the Mac mini's modern I/O (and, if I'm not mistaken, a dual layer SuperDrive) and it wouldn't even be able to run 10.6, much less 10.7. And think of the power savings! I'd rather have the Mac mini. The reason to buy the Mac Pro — the only reason — is because you need high performance or expandability options that aren't available in a compact form factor. Overbuying in the hopes of making a computer last longer is very expensive, and it ignores the possibility of the introduction of new technologies. and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong |
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Veteran Member
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Robo, i do sort of agree but only post 2010. Prior to this i think consumer models just can't last.
I mean using your model, when i upgraded from my PowerMac Rev A 2.0Ghz in March 09, instead of buy a £2461 MacPro Quad 2.93Ghz (with maxed out everything-ish), i should have bought a 2.26Ghz Core2Duo Mac Mini with GeForce 9400M sharing my RAM, 320Gb HD. Costing approx £800. Additionally i need to buy an external drive to match the capacity required (but we will forget that). Thats one heck of an upgrade and the only IO port that would make any difference is the FW800. And Aperture, Photoshop (OK high end), iPhoto, Garageband and the likes run a bit faster than the PowerMac but a lot slower than the MacPro. Ok so 20 months later (£2400/£800 = 3) i buy the next Mac Mini. I get he best spec machine which is a Core2Duo 2.66, 500Gb HD (still need external to match MacPro), GeForce 320M sharing my RAM, once again costing £800. Compared to the older MacMini it runs thing marginally faster but compared to the MacPro much slower. In fact i cannot play my favourite games such as Starcraft 2, Supreme Commander 2 or Football Manger. So basically the third and final Mac Mini that i buy in July 2012 has to be at least a Quad Core 2.93Ghz machine with independent graphics card and at least 640Gb drive to even compare to the machine that i could have bought 40 moths ago?!!?! While i think by this time it will have finally reached those specs i have spent a long time with machine that aren't fast running the programmes i want, can't even run any games and i end up having to buy a shed load of external HDs. OK i haven't included the money saved buy selling my computers (generally because i don't and i haven't factored in selling my Mac Pro after 5 years either), but even if it did make economical sense, i would have spent extra hours (over the years) running Aperture, Pixelmator on a MacMini. Plus radical new IO ports don't come around every two years. But coming back to your point, i think 2011 will be a turning point. I think that the latest Quad Intel chips will last a long time as the power of CPUs has reached a point where they are not the bottleneck and if Apple chucks in a decent graphics card then the MacMini would actually become a very good purchase. Plus from 2010, network storage is became a cost effective for home solutions, therefore i don't think people will need massive internal HDs. They would prefer smaller ones with all their data held centrally. So on reflection i am happy with my MacPro and think it will certainly survive 5 years and still be handy compared to a MacMini. |
Subdued and Medicated
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Ninja Editor
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
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Quote:
When I was a kid, people who did wrong were punished, restricted, and forbidden. Now, when someone does wrong, all of the rest of us are punished, restricted, and forbidden... and the one who did the wrong is counselled and "understood" and fed ice cream. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Lots of sites jumping on Brian Tong's tweet about new hardware.
I was under the impression that there are no new chips ready for a new Mac Pro. |
Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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Beat me to it. Well, Apple usually gets first crack at releasing workstations with the Xeon derivative of whatever new chip is being used, so not surprising you haven't heard of other companies using them / there being availability.
...into the light of a dark black night. |
Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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More on teh Mac Pro... possibly using custom CPU part. (Seriously doubt it but makes for a fun rumor...)
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/20/...-time-capsule/ ...into the light of a dark black night. |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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I wonder if an iMac type machine is in a similar position to "capitalize on the power envelope" as compared to a mini/laptop. The iMac I use in the lab never goes into jet turbine mode, whereas CS5 easily prompts my MBP fans towards take-off speed...
I read about a Eurocom mobile workstation the other day. 6 core CPU, 3-4 internal HDDs - a thick ugly brick of a machine, about 12lbs and 2.5" thick, probably crappy battery life, but interesting nonetheless as an attempt to cram a "workstation" class machine into something mobile. I don't know if they sell, or who uses them, but it wasn't cheap either. Got me thinking, if Apple expanded the case of the iMac just a bit and switched a few key components for something a bit hotter, what sort of iMac "Pro" could be built for the 2499 entry price of the current Mac Pro? ......................................... |
careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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Adding a bulge to the current iMac would ruin its aesthetics completely. And for what, so hardcore gamers might use it? They still won't. In order for me to switch back to using a Mac full-time it would need to be capable of fitting a standard double-width ~12" long high-end video card, otherwise I will continue to use my PCs almost exclusively.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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Apple may feel that technology like Tubemaster adequately solves the storage issue for laptop/desktop and workstation computers.
Whether an iMac Pro makes sense, I guess, depends on how we see the workstation computer. Does it continue to sit at the operators desk, or does it become something remote, accessed through a lighter machine? And two more questions: 1. Who is the "pro" who will buy such a machine? 2. What do you have to give them over and above a top level iMac to justify the price increase? In the first case, I think we're talking about Apple's traditional markets. Mainly creative industries: graphic arts, design, film, video, music etc... but also scientific applications. Probably an iMac can already do all of those things, so this would have to be a machine for those who want to do it A LOT faster, which leads us to 2. Feature-wise, given the integrated display, and the visual art bias of their customer, a higher precision display is in order - 10 bit precision, matte screen, AdobeRGB gamut would do, you can get more, but the costs rise dramatically. Probably the case has to be bigger - enough to accept and cool higher wattage CPU and GPU components - but not excessively so. Perhaps not 12" long gfx cards... Bear in mind that if you option up the current iMac 27" to top-line CPU/GPU, then it's a 2299 machine, though the standard top line 27" remains $1999. So, what could Apple include for $2499 in an AIO form that a pro might buy instead of a tower? The aforementioned pro-spec display; dual multi-core CPUs into a slightly thicker iMac-like form; more RAM slots (8 or 6 vs 4), a maxxed-out vid card, and an extra TB port might do it. I could see buying such a thing for heavy CS5 and FCP projects. ......................................... |
Sneaky Punk
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Apple seems to like Cloud storage, but for people working with a lot of sensitive data, it isn't a good idea. Not to mention that many ISPs have data caps, which makes such use expensive, so having the ability to have multiple drives in your machine is attractive, even today. Thunderbolt is could solve the problem, but who wants a bunch of lose drives? I currently have five external drives, and although having them there isn't a problem it is a waste of desk space, which could be better utilized by, say a second LCD.
Also, many working pros want their OS on one drive (SSD), while having work data on one or two others, or in other words scratch drive(s). |
careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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Quote:
Someone with a specific list of needs is going to have looks on the back end of priority. The iMac is only an option because it's cheaper and in some ways more practical in tight spaces. However after 3 years, if it explodes, the investment you made into the screen disappears. We are finally at the point where external buses cover all your current needs except graphics. The only devices in most pro and consumer computers that require an x8 PCIe slot's worth of bandwidth are video cards, that's why gamers are the primary target of a SoHo headless desktop. Why would people here suddenly switch sides and start pimping internal expansion? It made sense when FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 weren't good enough...no longer. Quote:
Last edited by Eugene : 2011-06-22 at 17:56. |
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