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Well it looks like Apple may not go ahead with an updated Mac Pro! I would be very sad to see the Mac Pro canned, but from the statistics i can certainly understand why Apple would. And i have a worrying feeling that this new Apple (OK over the last 5 years) will make radical changes to suit its profitability.
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/31/...-mac-pro-line/ |
Veteran Member
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As much as I don't want the Mac Pro go away I realize the possibility exists. A well specc'd iMac 27 has more than enough horsepower for all but say 5% of Professionals. It can run two additional monitors and RAID storage at incredible speeds.
At some point it's just going to make sense to kill the Mac Pro. But what about the Server market? Focus more on Grid computing and a fast fabric that can tie a bunch of Mac mini together delivering more speed and flexibility than a megawatt behemoth. Companies are already doing this with Intel Atom and ARM processors. "Apple would never do that!" Some of you may say that but look at what Apple snuck into OS X Lion. Core Storage a volume manager http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/06/06/...c-os-107-lion/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/...rage-commands/ Thunderbolt allows EVERYTHING to be external. Storage, GPU, Networking. Why stuff it all in a huge and expensive box? omgwtfbbq |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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And that's the crux of the matter: how many Mac Pro owners will switch to PCs rather than, say, a six-core iMac, if the Mac Pro is abandoned? Even the Mac mini can replace a Mac Pro for lots of users (e.g. photographers who have an EIZO/NEC/LaCie display but don't need a lot of processing power). Another thing to keep in mind is that "creative" types by and large don't need a tower anymore. These are the users who brought a certain panache to Apple in the past, and these people are now using MacBook Pros and even MacBook Airs. Most of them won't be lost if Apple ditches the Mac Pro. I think most people who really would switch to PCs work in labs of one kind or another. These users are not sexy enough for Apple to particularly care about, beyond the sales they directly represent. |
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Ninja Editor
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
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Someone's patience (or lack thereof) aside, it all comes down to "time is money". If you're not busy enough to have the next project waiting on you to complete the current one, then yeah, sure, a Mac Pro might be overkill for you. But if you, like several of my friends, are that busy, then a computer that has enough RAM to prevent frequent VM paging and enough processing power to keep everything running smoothly will pay for itself long before it's time to replace it. I am not suggesting that every audio engineer, photo editor, or video editor needs a Mac Pro, I'm not even saying that I really needed one, but the people whose gear choices decide what everyone else lusts after do often need a Mac Pro. If Apple is unwilling to help them, they'll find a company that is and take their industry's yearnings with them. 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: May 2004
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Yeah, just looking at it from my perspective, my aforementioned studio is an ad design studio. So we create ads, counter cards, taxi toppers, bus sides, things that need to be printed, so we have to work with high resolution photos and files. And then we also do large pieces like the bus sides and full size billboards that are print rez.
So we do very processor intensive work, and then we have an incredibly fast paced and tightly packed workflow. In a given day we usually crank out anywhere between 200 and 300 jobs every single day, with about 20-25 people doing the actual design work. iMacs are not sufficient for our needs at this point in time. We create anywhere between 20-30GB of new work every single day, and that's just the finished product. It doesn't include the hundreds of GBs of bandwidth used shuffling photos and previous reference jobs around, not to mention the CPU power it takes to open and manipulate everything, combine it, resize it, touch it up, whatever to get the finished product in the first place. Even on Mac Pros we have people sitting around waiting 3-5 minutes for files to open, for changes or effects to render etc., and when we have to do hundreds of jobs a day literally every second counts. I don't really care if Apple keeps the tower form factor since memory is getting denser and very high speed external storage is feasible, making an all in one type of unit a possibility - but I need the memory bandwidth and raw processing chutzpah of the Mac Pros, not to mention the expanded memory capacity. If they can do that in an iMac, I won't mind switching everybody to iMacs. But I can't take a processing power/speed/mem bandwidth hit anywhere along the line. |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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I take your points, Dave and Xaqtly, but we should keep in mind that Apple will almost certainly add higher-performance models or configurations of other products if they ditch the Mac Pro. So comparing the Mac Pro to today's iMac isn't all that useful.
Personally, I doubt we've seen the last of the Mac Pro just yet, but it's hard to imagine it being around in five years. |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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So perhaps an "iMac Pro" makes sense? At first as something between an iMac and a Mac Pro, basically taking the place of a low end Mac Pro configuration and price point, with traditional multi-CPU boxen above it.
What would this iMac look like? Would probably need a very fast 6 core CPU at a minimum, maybe 8 cores. Potentially a slightly thicker case for cooling. Display? Probably a matte screen option, maybe with a wider aRGB colour space? A fast standard SSD, more thunderbolt ports, and cheaper/larger standard and upgrade RAM options. ......................................... |
careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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The iMac is already upspec enough for most pros. The defining factor of the Mac Pro is its ridiculous expandability. Think of the basic Mac Pro as the building block...it's the catch-all for everyone who needs something more than the iMac. These people don't care about the cost. The Mac Pro starts out with a basic configuration, but can also hold 64GB of RAM and 4 HDDs. It has 4 expansion slots and plenty of airflow to hold it all in one clean, clutterless enclosure. You have the option of mating any display you want to it. There is no way an "iMac Pro" can do all of these things right now.
Last edited by Eugene : 2011-11-04 at 06:55. |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Toronto
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I don't think Apple is trying to "kill" the Mac Pro, per se.
They do realize, however, that an iMac with a Thunderbolt port means it is essentially a Pro machine. The Pro lineup must therefore change. |
Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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Dave, I understand all your points and remember I am a Mac Pro guy. I am typing this on one just expanded with a USB 3 card to run my external RAID backup, etc... I just suspect that over time, a lot of bandwidth will open up and compute-intensive stuff may be offloaded somewhat to GPUs. There will always be specialized tasks that need the mega-ports, etc... but is that enough to keep a product line open if 97% of the user base gets by without the Mac Pro equivalent?
...into the light of a dark black night. |
Ninja Editor
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Bay Area, CA
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The first race car only had 4HP and could only average 7.5MPH; today's consumer cars have much more power and speed (and climate control). But tell me, if you were to go down to the Indianapolis 500, would they be driving right-off-the-lot Kias because those are better than what race cars used to be, or would they pick something a bit more cutting edge because then they can get it done faster and go home sooner? Yes, it is. As soon as Apple drops its profession-level offerings, they go back to being seen as expensive toys. I've seen it happen first-hand when Apple discontinued the Xserve. My IT buddies immediately lost most or all of what little respect for Apple that they'd gained (though my understanding is that the Xserve wasn't nearly as competitive as the Mac Pro is, so that might have something to do with Apple's decision to pull it). 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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Sub-PowerBook Lobbyist
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Washington, DC
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Has anybody brought up the iMac's built-in display, i.e. the all-in-one design, as a significant downside for Pro users? At least some pro users upgrade their CPUs much more often than they upgrade their displays. With an iMac, even if it is sufficiently powerful to do everything you need, you'll still be forced to get a new display at the same time as you get a new processor.
Even as a consumer, I hate the idea that I will have to get rid of a perfectly good 24" LCD when the family's iMac stops being powerful enough to run whatever software or games the kids will be running in a couple of years. IMO, Thunderbold isn't just a great prospect for (formerly internal) expansion. Thunderbold makes a "prosumer" or "headless" iMac an excellent proposition. One wire to connect your display (incl. USB, FireWire, built-in speakers and network camera) to your headless iMac or Mac mini certainly won't clutter your desktop like an old PC with a bazillion wires used to... I've been waiting for a true sub-PowerBook for more than 10 years. The 11-inch MacBook Air finally delivers on all counts! It beats the hell out of both my PowerBook 2400c and my 12-inch PowerBook G4 -- no contest whatsoever. |
Hates the Infotainment
Join Date: May 2004
Location: NSA Archives
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Yah iMac displays are crap for professional purposes other than audio. That's one thing that always bugged me about MBPs too... they'd spin them as video pro machines and it's like... no video pro in their right mind is going to try to color grade clips on a laptop screen. Similarly professional photo editing isn't likely to be done on laptop screens either unless user isn't aware of color mgmt principles.
Hopefully one day all screens are 10 bit, 100+% Adobe RGB and we can just forget about worrying about that part of the equation. ...into the light of a dark black night. |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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Quote:
I have an EIZO CG223W, a relatively cheap ColorEdge model that's perfect for my needs. It's a beautiful thing: covers 95% of the Adobe RGB colour space, has hardware calibration via a 16-bit lookup-table, supports 10-bit input (not that I can use it on my Mac mini), also has built-in brightness and colour uniformity correction, brightness stabilisation for time and temperature changes, etc. You just don't get these perks on an iMac. The point remains, though, that I use the EIZO with a Mac mini and have no earthly purpose for a Mac Pro. |
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