# MacPros - looking ominous



## MacDoc

We are encouraging our high end clients to consider the current Westmere while still available as pretty substantive rumours that the new "whatever it is " will not play well" with existing gear.

Certainly it will be Lion only which will be a non-starter for many on that basis alone.
But a change in form factor may cause other issues with existing cards.

One very high end client had just visited Cupertino - he's ordered up 2 x 12 core and trying for another as he's confident of his info from there that it's not going to be pretty for some clients looking to move up in power.

The current line up is a bit frustrating as the current entry level is too highly priced against the iMacs for what you get.

The 2.4 8 core ( 16 processing threads ) is powerful but low clock and bloody expensive tho will deliver on programs like AfterEffects.

The 3.33 6 core ( 12 processing threads ) is still our pick for whiz bang do everything but again not cheap and getting the RAM optimized at 24 gigs is still not particularly low cost given it needs 8 gig dimms. XX)

The two best machines - the 3.33 and the 2.66 12 core which are CTO will not be available at all after a product change tho we do expect some of the 2.8 and 2.4 stock boxes.

Thoughts????


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## crawford

You're advising your clients to spend many thousands of dollars on new, potentially EOL equipment based on Internet rumours?


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## Jason H

crawford said:


> You're advising your clients to spend many thousands of dollars on new, potentially EOL equipment based on Internet rumours?


:clap:


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## G-Mo

crawford said:


> You're advising your clients to spend many thousands of dollars on new, potentially EOL equipment based on Internet rumours?


:clap: :clap:


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## Dennis Nedry

[deleted]


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## Guest

crawford said:


> You're advising your clients to spend many thousands of dollars on new, potentially EOL equipment based on Internet rumours?


You're obviously not a Mac pro user. As for the potentially EOL there are a lot of people that currently rely on the Mac pro form factor for various cards that they need to use for their everyday work which means get it now or you may not get it at all. On that front it's all good advice. If you can't understand that then go buy an iMac and stop criticizing what you (and others in this thread) obviously don't know about.


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## Rob

What's the rumour? Are they thinking the Mac Pro line will be eliminated entirely, or will it somehow be significantly different?

I'm not a pro user, but if I was, I'd certainly be worried if my investment in software and hardware peripherals was at risk of obsolescence at the whim of Apple. 

I hate to say it, but Apple has far better support for Windows XP, than they do for any of their own older software or hardware products. Whoever thought that Microsoft would be the leader in long term support. It puts Apple to shame.


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## screature

If the rumour is true, then I am more inclined *NOT* to buy now and stick with what I have for long as I can and then buy one of the current Mac Pros in the used market at a later date and save a bunch of money.

That is my thought.


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## Dennis Nedry

[deleted]


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## Guest

screature said:


> If the rumour is true, then I am more inclined *NOT* to buy now and stick with what I have for long as I can and then buy one of the current Mac Pros in the used market at a later date and save a bunch of money.
> 
> That is my thought.


Good in theory, but in practice I think if they do EOL them I don't think you're going to see a lot on the used market, and when you do they will be expensive and go quickly. Only time will tell and hopefully it won't come to that.

The new Mac Pro's are currently expensive as far as bang for the buck when compared with other Apple hardware when compared in terms of sheer CPU power. But it's also the only Apple hardware line that offers what it does (multiple internal drive bays, many ram slots, PCIe slots), which a lot of professional users need and with the way Apple has catering less and less to the pro market as time moves on ... I think the writing is mostly on the wall. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

Maybe Apple would do something super crazy, like license the OS, but only for hand picked partners that contractually won't compete with their consumer division and only make high-end hardware. That's likely a pipe-dream ... but with Apple you never know.

Of course this could all change with serious thunderbolt accessories as well if done right, but I think that it would be Apple that would have to lead the pack by building their own thunderbolt driven modules. If Apple built thunderbolt PCIe chassis and external storage "nodes" that just worked when plugged in with thunderbolt they could _*kill*_ in the higher end market, but I think those days for Apple are long gone, sadly.


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## jlcinc

This is an interesting quote from the Ken Stone site.

"Which is not very surprising indeed when you see that the new 27" iMac i7 we have recently bought is considerably faster than my full-featured 8-core MacPro test bay, both with FCPX and AE 5.5. Using one little Thunderbolt port we can connect Terabytes of RAID drives, multiple 27" screens and if needed any Thunderbolt enabled capture and playback card to the same iMac. The BM Ultra Studio 3D gives us HD SDI in and out. Using the Sonnet Thunderbolt expansion card we even can connect traditional capture cards to the machine. And the system really screams. So I see no objective reason why I would ever consider to buy a MacPro again. Bulky tower systems clearly are a thing of the past. I encourage this trend."

Re: My prediction seems to be coming true


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## screature

mguertin said:


> *Good in theory, but in practice I think if they do EOL them I don't think you're going to see a lot on the used market, and when you do they will be expensive and go quickly. * Only time will tell and hopefully it won't come to that.
> 
> The new Mac Pro's are currently expensive as far as bang for the buck when compared with other Apple hardware when compared in terms of sheer CPU power. But it's also the only Apple hardware line that offers what it does (multiple internal drive bays, many ram slots, PCIe slots), which a lot of professional users need and with the way Apple has catering less and less to the pro market as time moves on ... I think the writing is mostly on the wall. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
> 
> Maybe Apple would do something super crazy, like license the OS, but only for hand picked partners that contractually won't compete with their consumer division and only make high-end hardware. That's likely a pipe-dream ... but with Apple you never know.
> 
> Of course this could all change with serious thunderbolt accessories as well if done right, but I think that it would be Apple that would have to lead the pack by building their own thunderbolt driven modules. If Apple built thunderbolt PCIe chassis and external storage "nodes" that just worked when plugged in with thunderbolt they could _*kill*_ in the higher end market, but I think those days for Apple are long gone, sadly.


Sorry but I don't think this is even good in theory as when have you ever seen used computers selling more expensively than for their original purchase price in the used market?? Like never.

Fewer and few people are drawn to the Mac Pro line and I agree the writing is on the wall regarding their demise, at least in their current form, but I do not believe for a second that said demise will suddenly make them more desirable or expensive in the used market... we are going to have to agree to disagree.


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## screature

jlcinc said:


> This is an interesting quote from the Ken Stone site.
> 
> "Which is not very surprising indeed when you see that the new 27" iMac i7 we have recently bought is considerably faster than my full-featured 8-core MacPro test bay, both with FCPX and AE 5.5. *Using one little Thunderbolt port we can connect Terabytes of RAID drives, multiple 27" screens and if needed any Thunderbolt enabled capture and playback card to the same iMac.* The BM Ultra Studio 3D gives us HD SDI in and out. Using the Sonnet Thunderbolt expansion card we even can connect traditional capture cards to the machine. And the system really screams. So I see no objective reason why I would ever consider to buy a MacPro again. Bulky tower systems clearly are a thing of the past. I encourage this trend."
> 
> Re: My prediction seems to be coming true


At a price that adds half the cost of a Mac Pro and then you can do the same things with relatively inexpensive PCI cards and eSATA arrays on the Mac Pro... seems like a pretty fanboy post to me. If and when TBolt matures this will undoubtedly be true but right now, while it can be done it certainly *is not* cost effective.


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## Guest

screature said:


> Sorry but I don't think this is even good in theory as when have you ever seen used computers selling more expensively than for their original purchase price in the used market?? Like never.
> 
> Fewer and few people are drawn to the Mac Pro line and I agree the writing is on the wall regarding their demise, at least in their current form, but I do not believe for a second that said demise will suddenly make them more desirable or expensive in the used market... we are going to have to agree to disagree.


We will have to agree to disagree, but I didn't say that they would be more expensive than they are now, just trying to point out that they will be in great demand if they EOL which rarely means you will get a good deal and that they will go fast. Remember the last machines that could boot OS9 (mirror door G4's)? It was very similar with them when they went EOL.


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## Guest

jlcinc said:


> This is an interesting quote from the Ken Stone site.
> 
> "Which is not very surprising indeed when you see that the new 27" iMac i7 we have recently bought is considerably faster than my full-featured 8-core MacPro test bay, both with FCPX and AE 5.5. Using one little Thunderbolt port we can connect Terabytes of RAID drives, multiple 27" screens and if needed any Thunderbolt enabled capture and playback card to the same iMac. The BM Ultra Studio 3D gives us HD SDI in and out. Using the Sonnet Thunderbolt expansion card we even can connect traditional capture cards to the machine. And the system really screams. So I see no objective reason why I would ever consider to buy a MacPro again. Bulky tower systems clearly are a thing of the past. I encourage this trend."
> 
> Re: My prediction seems to be coming true


Fanboy for sure. The BM breakout box alone is almost $1000 USD (which is about double the price of a PCIe equivalent). The sonnet thunderbolt expansion he refers to is for an expresscard slot and as far as I know is still not available, so unless he has some expresscards he needs to run that's really going roundabout to get the job done. Lastly the argument to add thunderbolt raids is also an expensive venture ... right now there's one choice ... and that's the promise Pegasus, which is very overpriced for what it is. With all the "promise" (pun intended) of the potential throughput they are a BIG letdown. I installed one at a client's last week and benchmarked it. It's no faster than my eSata port multiplier RAID that I built for a fraction of the cost. Also consider that the Mac Pro can have 4 (5 really) internal drives and it almost makes the point moot.

It's pretty obvious that whoever wrote that post is not really on top of the pro market. Fine, if it works for them then good for them, but they basically just listed through the entire catalog of available (and overpriced) thunderbolt options. I'd also like to see them hook up "multiple" 27" monitors + a capture card + a RAID setup + an expresscard adapter to his iMac's thunderbolt and then see how he likes his new setup. Out with the old "bulky" tower (that can be neatly tucked away under or beside a desk) and in with the new highly jammed close together cord spaghetti on top of your desk.


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## jlcinc

> It's pretty obvious that whoever wrote that post is not really on top of the pro market. Fine, if it works for them then good for them, but they basically just listed through the entire catalog of available (and overpriced) thunderbolt options. I'd also like to see them hook up "multiple" 27" monitors + a capture card + a RAID setup + an expresscard adapter to his iMac's thunderbolt and then see how he likes his new setup. Out with the old "bulky" tower (that can be neatly tucked away under or beside a desk) and in with the new highly jammed close together cord spaghetti on top of your desk.


This guy is really the top of the pro market. He is and if you read the rest of the thread you might be interested to hear what he says. It may not be what we want to hear right now but the demise of 1 " machines wasn't what we wanted to hear then and people today don't want to think that tape will be useless in a few years things change.

John


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## screature

jlcinc said:


> *This guy is really the top of the pro market*. He is and if you read the rest of the thread you might be interested to hear what he says. It may not be what we want to hear right now but the demise of 1 " machines wasn't what we wanted to hear then and people today don't want to think that tape will be useless in a few years things change.
> 
> John


Of a particular part of the pro market maybe and it is still just his opinion... the set up he lists would be more than a similarly configured Mac Pro so yes he is a fanboy predicting what the futrure will hold. But right now TBolt is a prohibitively expensive route to go for many many Pros doing video editing and they are still better off from a bottom line $$ perspective going with a Mac Pro setup and that is not even mentioning, pro photograpers, pro audio, pro graphic designers, etc. etc.


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## screature

mguertin said:


> We will have to agree to disagree, but I* didn't say that they would be more expensive than they are now*, just trying to point out that they will be in great demand if they EOL which rarely means you will get a good deal and that they will go fast. Remember the last machines that could boot OS9 (mirror door G4's)? It was very similar with them when they went EOL.


Sorry my misinterpretation... If demand is a problem now for Apple I don't think being EOL will make them more in demand in the used market... at any rate we disagree and time will tell. 

At least for now we still have our beloved Mac Pros and don't have to buy one of those dreaded iMacs... I always said I would never buy an iMac and I hope that if the Mac Pro line dies, future Minis will be able to fill that gap for my needs. Gawd I hate the idea of having one of those behemoth mirrors on my desktop. XX)


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## jlcinc

I don't disagree, but I wouldn't want to go back to my G4 and FCP 1, things change and we will have to move forward sooner or later. The only question is do we pay for it now or later. I am not going to move to windows. (at least I don't think so)

John


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## screature

jlcinc said:


> I don't disagree, but I wouldn't want to go back to my G4 and FCP 1, *things change* and we will have to *move forward* sooner or later. The only question is do we pay for it now or later. I am not going to move to windows. (at least I don't think so)
> 
> John


Change is the only constant, but it isn't always positive. No Mac Pro would be a very bad thing for me and while I may some time in the future have to face that as a fact it doesn't mean I have to embrace it either...


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## Guest

jlcinc said:


> This guy is really the top of the pro market. He is and if you read the rest of the thread you might be interested to hear what he says. It may not be what we want to hear right now but the demise of 1 " machines wasn't what we wanted to hear then and people today don't want to think that tape will be useless in a few years things change.
> 
> John


He may say that he is, and you may think that he is, but he's not if his mirror front 27" iMac is impressing him and he wants the mac pro's to go away n favour of these iMacs. He runs FCPX and AE ... big whoop, so does my 17 year old neighbour who makes home movies. 

What do you think makes this poster "the top of" the pro market?? You do realize that the person who posted that comment you linked to is NOT Ken Stone, right? Someone named "ronny courtens" is who posted that statement.


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## Niteshooter

Thanks for the heads up MacDoc! We've been considering buying a new MacPro for a while but I've been keeping my ear to the ground to see if Apple was going to update the current ones. Rumors are tough, for example there were predictions of a new MacPro in Sept or there a bouts but that didn't happen.

A new architecture that could obsolete legacy devices is something I would be worried about and would push me to buy a current one vs it's replacement.

At work I'm getting a new iMac 27" to replace what I have now. I think the iMac is a dandy machine BUT it doesn't have the expandability of a MacPro and as mguertin points out any expansion options currently available for Thunderbolt are extremely expensive or still vaporware.

Plus adding or changing components in an iMac is far from simple topped off with the problem that Apple is using their own proprietary hard drives with proprietary cabling so you can't just go to the store and buy a bigger drive and slap it in.

On the Pro I pop off the side and everything is readily accessible plus I do make use of both optical drive mounts and all 4 hard drive bays so less clutter of cabling and dongles if I had to do the same thing with an iMac. 

And I guess the biggest reason that I am lukewarm about the iMac is that it's track record for reliability isn't exactly perfect granted nothing is but.... We have C2D iMacs at work and all are starting to come down with the same video issue (lines) and I read that some of the new ones had similar problems. 

Anyhow, since work is giving me an iMac I won't complain but if I'm buying something with my $$$ a MacPro is what I would get.


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## WCraig

I find it odd that people are complaining that TBolt peripherals aren't ready RIGHT NOW to obsolete the Mac Pro. But the Mac Pro hasn't been discontinued RIGHT NOW. Maybe, a bunch of TBolt devices will come to market just as Apple kills the Mac Pro?

Mac Pros are so gruesomely expensive that something has to happen. 

Trick out a 27" iMac:
3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5
$2,929

Sorta similar Mac Pro config:
One 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem”
16GB (4x4GB)
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
One 18x SuperDrive
Apple LED Cinema Display (27" flat panel)
$5,038

The Mac Pro is $2,109 more expensive. Right now, you could take $2,108 of that difference and use it to offset more-expensive Thunderbolt peripherals and still come out ahead. One would hope that the price premium for TBolt stuff will decline as volume grows. 

Ask yourself, what are the key advantages of the Mac Pro. Answer: high performance, options for lots of storage and specialized hardware *in the box*. TBolt makes it possible to have storage and specialized hardware *outside* the box. Really, you can have a more customized solution since you aren't limited by the number of hard drive bays and card slots. 

I would give Apple a little credit. If (when?) they discontinue the Mac Pro, I'll bet they will show you *more* versatile options. The dreamer in me hopes it'll be less expensive.

Craig


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## Guest

But you don't come out ahead in the grand scheme of things and the iMac is incapable of some of the most important Mac pro features -- or at least the most important to the pro market that are using them. For example how do you get 64G of ram into an iMac? Simple, you don't.

The iMac currently also has no option for the 4xPCIe slots -- if/when the thunderbolt based Magma chassis ships you will be able to add 3 PCIe slots and it will be almost $1000 and you don't even get a single 16x slot (which you do in the Mac Pro). You also lose out on the potential for 15TB of internal storage. Going the thunderbolt route and adding the 3 PCIe slot chassis and 4+ drive bays and you're already over the price of the Mac Pro in your comparison above and that still doesn't address the ram issue. 

An iMac, even a maxed out one, is nowhere near what the Mac Pro is in terms of expandability with or without thunderbolt add-ons and will not be capable of running a lot of pro solutions (for example, MacDoc mentions in another thread the Davinci colour system, good luck with that on an iMac).


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## MacDoc

> You're advising your clients to spend many thousands of dollars on new, potentially EOL equipment based on Internet rumours?


Clearly not a Pro user.

People are sitting on aging machines - they want new boxes to work with their existing cards not some Apple ****up ala FCP.
I have a machines to upgrade list from several pro video clients who are waiting on Apple.

It's not an "internet rumour" - it's from a client that buys 12 cores who was in Cupertino and there are numerous other channel sources with the same view. I didn't prompt him to buy the 12 cores - he came to us with the order.
After he got back from Cupertino he called and told me the situation.

What I AM telling clients is they take a risk that the 3.33 6 core and the 2.66 12 core may not be available if Apple decides to 
a) kill the line ( unlikely but not that unlikely )
b) revamp the configuration as to not be compatible.

Even if it is Lion only which is almost a certainty, it's a serious problem for many Pro users.

•••

BTW - comparing a 3.2 MacPro to anything is ridiculous and the 6 core 3.33 will eat any i7 iMac for lunch on apps like AfterEffects and others that actually use the architecture to the fullest.










Only apps that do not fully use the architecture are they comparable and the internal triple channel architecture is superior to the dual channel iMac.

Still it's $2500 with a screen versus $3800 without for the MacPro so it's still too big a gap.
At $2900 the 3.33 is a valid price point given the advantages.

The guys that are winners are the high end lap top users and that will continue once TBolt devices get sensible.


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## MacDoc

From the Ken Stone article



> Which is not very surprising indeed when you see that the new 27" iMac i7 we have recently bought is considerably faster than my full-featured 8-core MacPro test bay, both with FCPX and AE 5.5. Using one little Thunderbolt port we can connect Terabytes of RAID drives, multiple 27" screens and if needed any Thunderbolt enabled capture and playback card to the same iMac. The BM Ultra Studio 3D gives us HD SDI in and out. Using the Sonnet Thunderbolt expansion card we even can connect traditional capture cards to the machine. And the system really screams. So I see no objective reason why I would ever consider to buy a MacPro again. Bulky tower systems clearly are a thing of the past. I encourage this trend.


The problem is he is testing on the industry standard 8 core non Nehalem - NOT the current 2.4 Westmere 8 core ( 16 processing threads ) which will run circles around the iMac on AfterEffects.

Many users, even pro users do not understand multithreading.

The Westmere is at LEAST 400% faster on AE than is current 2.8 - likely more as the tests we did were on a 2.26 Nehalem versus an 8core 2.8 non nehalem.

Too many are staying in limbo ....buying the iMac without ever realizing the true power of the Nehalem and Westmeres and it's primarily due to price.

The guy we did the 2.8 non-nehalem versus the 2.26 bought the 8 core Nehalem on the spot .....400% speed gain was a no brainer.

The compounding issue in this is Apple and Adobe have been horrendously negligent in optimizing the software for the existing processors so clock speed becomes the performance determinant and most of the processing capacity is left idle.

In addition optimal use required 3 gigs of memory per core.
Guy came in the other day with a 2.66 Nehalem doing pro work....3 gigs of RAM and wondered why he was slow and his drive beat to bits.
Management too cheap to get the 12 gigs ( $120 ) he needed.

One of the major downsides of the iMac is the inability to put in a sizeable high speed drive sub system.

The difference in working with images on a Velociraptor 10,000 rpm RAID and a stock drive is massive.

Sure there might be work arounds via TBolt but that's all they are....work arounds and no matter how good TBolt might be relying on a single video output for up to 6 monitors ( which some clients use ) is ludicrous.
You still can't change the video ram/speed despite adding monitors.

Life will go on but Apple is being wrong headed on this.


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## WCraig

mguertin said:


> But you don't come out ahead in the grand scheme of things and the iMac is incapable of some of the most important Mac pro features -- or at least the most important to the pro market that are using them. For example how do you get 64G of ram into an iMac? Simple, you don't.
> 
> The iMac currently also has no option for the 4xPCIe slots -- if/when the thunderbolt based Magma chassis ships you will be able to add 3 PCIe slots and it will be almost $1000 and you don't even get a single 16x slot (which you do in the Mac Pro). You also lose out on the potential for 15TB of internal storage. Going the thunderbolt route and adding the 3 PCIe slot chassis and 4+ drive bays and you're already over the price of the Mac Pro in your comparison above and that still doesn't address the ram issue.
> 
> An iMac, even a maxed out one, is nowhere near what the Mac Pro is in terms of expandability with or without thunderbolt add-ons and will not be capable of running a lot of pro solutions (for example, MacDoc mentions in another thread the Davinci colour system, good luck with that on an iMac).


My premise was--and still is--that the Mac Pro's "advantages" may be eliminated in the near future. Going over 16 GB of RAM is a problem with CURRENT iMacs. Going over 3 PCI slots is a problem with CURRENT TBolt devices. 

Look at it another way: the Mac Pro has room for 4 PCIe cards. I don't believe there is a technical reason why TBolt can't support _5_ PCIe cards (or even 6 or 7). The current version doesn't support 16X slots--it is the first iteration, after all. Why can't there be an update? What if you have TWO TBolt connections? 

Your cost argument makes no sense. Suppose you want 15 TB of disk...the drives themselves are going to cost the same regardless of where you install them. You either pay a couple thousand extra to buy a Mac Pro with empty bays OR purchase an external TBolt box (sized to your needs) when you need it. If TBolt adoption grows, do you expect prices to get *worse*?

I can't say for sure that TBolt is going to take off. Product introductions and uptake has certainly been very slow so far. But it sure seems like it is a few baby steps away from eating the Mac Pro's lunch!

Craig


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## MacDoc

It's not capable without enormous kludge and any post house would laugh at the idea.
Even the architecture is not comparable.

••••



> Quote:
> Originally Posted by screature
> If the rumour is true, then I am more inclined NOT to buy now and stick with what I have for long as I can and then buy one of the current Mac Pros in the used market at a later date and save a bunch of money.
> 
> That is my thought.


You won't see CTO 3.33 and 12 core come on to the market.

There are scads of 2.4 Westmeres that will and at $1000 less they are sweet machines for some users but not comparable to the 3.33 or the 12 core.

One client right now is jumping to a 3.33 from a 2.8 8 core pre-Nehalem and not waiting - he cannot take the risk and wants nothing to do with Lion.


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## groovetube

This is somewhat interesting to watch. If Apple does indeed begin to start dumping the high end fast as hell boxes, eventually someone/something will fill that gap. Something has to because the real pros I know, would never settle for i7 iMacs for a minute.


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## MacDoc

They won't - they are already constricting the high end....if you want a 3.33 ( best for graphics, imaging and music business ) or a 12 core ( high end processing ) then NOW is the time

Amazon.com: Mac Pro Two 2.66GHz Six-Core Intel Xeon Westmere (12 cores), 6GB RAM, 1TB Hard Drive, ATI Radeon HD 5770, 18x SuperDrive: Computers & Accessories

Amazon already showing not available


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## i-rui

one other thing people seem to be missing. Mac Pros are designed to run under load 24/7. iMacs aren't, and would most likely wear must faster if they were used in that situation.

Hope apple doesn't dump the mac pro, but they've been treating the pro market as an afterthought for a few years now...


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## screature

i-rui said:


> one other thing people seem to be missing. *Mac Pros are designed to run under load 24/7*. iMacs aren't, and would most likely wear must faster if they were used in that situation.
> 
> Hope apple doesn't dump the mac pro, but they've been treating the pro market as an afterthought for a few years now...


I think those of us with Mac Pros just take that for granted, but you're right it hadn't been previously mentioned.


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## Guest

WCraig said:


> My premise was--and still is--that the Mac Pro's "advantages" may be eliminated in the near future. Going over 16 GB of RAM is a problem with CURRENT iMacs. Going over 3 PCI slots is a problem with CURRENT TBolt devices.
> 
> Look at it another way: the Mac Pro has room for 4 PCIe cards. I don't believe there is a technical reason why TBolt can't support _5_ PCIe cards (or even 6 or 7). The current version doesn't support 16X slots--it is the first iteration, after all. Why can't there be an update? What if you have TWO TBolt connections?
> 
> Your cost argument makes no sense. Suppose you want 15 TB of disk...the drives themselves are going to cost the same regardless of where you install them. You either pay a couple thousand extra to buy a Mac Pro with empty bays OR purchase an external TBolt box (sized to your needs) when you need it. If TBolt adoption grows, do you expect prices to get *worse*?
> 
> I can't say for sure that TBolt is going to take off. Product introductions and uptake has certainly been very slow so far. But it sure seems like it is a few baby steps away from eating the Mac Pro's lunch!
> 
> Craig


We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. It's pretty obvious at this point that you're sold on your idea but you clearly don't understand the fundamental differences between the machines, there's a LOT more than what I mentioned (see a lot of the info MacDoc has posted). I also need to point out that there is a lot of "ifs" and assumptions in your argument and then you even admit to not being sure if thunderbolt will take off. You argument assumes thunderbolt has taken off already, which it clearly hasn't. Given the issues that I've both seen and personally experienced with people using simple things like thunderbolt display setups I wouldn't be betting my money on it taking off in the near future. Factor in, as I said before, that the cost of a thunderbolt cable alone is $50 each and it gets less appealing all the time.

Also wanted to point out that there *is* a technical reason that the (unreleased) Thunderbolt Magma PCIe chassis only supports 3 slots ... it is because of the limitations in the chipset used -- it only supports 3 slots. If they waned to support 5 (or 6 or 7) they would have to start adding multiple controller chipsets which would double (or triple) the cost. Mac Pros have had 2 PCIe busses for a few generations now (as well as dual FSB, dual memory channels, 4xsata busses, etc etc). You get none of those with thunderbolt add ons.

What your suggesting is like a big trucking company deciding to save money by replacing all their full sized tractor trailers with cargo vans pulling a whole bunch of smaller trailers.


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## Guest

MacDoc said:


> They won't - they are already constricting the high end....if you want a 3.33 ( best for graphics, imaging and music business ) or a 12 core ( high end processing ) then NOW is the time
> 
> Amazon.com: Mac Pro Two 2.66GHz Six-Core Intel Xeon Westmere (12 cores), 6GB RAM, 1TB Hard Drive, ATI Radeon HD 5770, 18x SuperDrive: Computers & Accessories
> 
> Amazon already showing not available


Ouch ... yes. And the wording is ominous:



> Currently unavailable.
> We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.


----------



## screature

mguertin said:


> We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. It's pretty obvious at this point that you're sold on your idea but you clearly don't understand the fundamental differences between the machines, there's a LOT more than what I mentioned (see a lot of the info MacDoc has posted). I also need to point out that there is a lot of "ifs" and assumptions in your argument and then you even admit to not being sure if thunderbolt will take off. You argument assumes thunderbolt has taken off already, which it clearly hasn't. Given the issues that I've both seen and personally experienced with people using simple things like thunderbolt display setups I wouldn't be betting my money on it taking off in the near future. Factor in, as I said before, that the cost of a thunderbolt cable alone is $50 each and it gets less appealing all the time.
> 
> Also wanted to point out that there *is* a technical reason that the (unreleased) Thunderbolt Magma PCIe chassis only supports 3 slots ... it is because of the limitations in the chipset used -- it only supports 3 slots. If they waned to support 5 (or 6 or 7) they would have to start adding multiple controller chipsets which would double (or triple) the cost. Mac Pros have had 2 PCIe busses for a few generations now (as well as dual FSB, dual memory channels, 4xsata busses, etc etc). You get none of those with thunderbolt add ons.
> 
> *What your suggesting is like a big trucking company deciding to save money by replacing all their full sized tractor trailers with cargo vans pulling a whole bunch of smaller trailers.*


Exactly... a great analogy.


----------



## screature

MacDoc said:


> They won't - they are already constricting the high end....if you want a 3.33 ( best for graphics, imaging and music business ) or a 12 core ( high end processing ) then NOW is the time
> 
> Amazon.com: Mac Pro Two 2.66GHz Six-Core Intel Xeon Westmere (12 cores), 6GB RAM, 1TB Hard Drive, ATI Radeon HD 5770, 18x SuperDrive: Computers & Accessories
> 
> Amazon already showing not available


Do people actually buy Mac Pros from Amazon?


----------



## WCraig

mguertin said:


> We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. It's pretty obvious at this point that you're sold on your idea but you clearly don't understand the fundamental differences between the machines, there's a LOT more than what I mentioned (see a lot of the info MacDoc has posted). I also need to point out that there is a lot of "ifs" and assumptions in your argument and then you even admit to not being sure if thunderbolt will take off. You argument assumes thunderbolt has taken off already, which it clearly hasn't. Given the issues that I've both seen and personally experienced with people using simple things like thunderbolt display setups I wouldn't be betting my money on it taking off in the near future. Factor in, as I said before, that the cost of a thunderbolt cable alone is $50 each and it gets less appealing all the time.
> 
> Also wanted to point out that there *is* a technical reason that the (unreleased) Thunderbolt Magma PCIe chassis only supports 3 slots ... it is because of the limitations in the chipset used -- it only supports 3 slots. If they waned to support 5 (or 6 or 7) they would have to start adding multiple controller chipsets which would double (or triple) the cost. Mac Pros have had 2 PCIe busses for a few generations now (as well as dual FSB, dual memory channels, 4xsata busses, etc etc). You get none of those with thunderbolt add ons.
> 
> What your suggesting is like a big trucking company deciding to save money by replacing all their full sized tractor trailers with cargo vans pulling a whole bunch of smaller trailers.


I hadn't seen the Magma product you referred to. Sonnet has also announced a range of TBolt products with "Early January 2012" availability:

Sonnet - Thunderbolt Storage, Adapters & Expansion Boxes

Note especially the Echo Express:



> Sonnet's Echo™ Express PCIe 2.0 Expansion Chassis with Thunderbolt™ Ports enable you to connect one high-performance PCI Express® 2.0 adapter card to any computer with a Thunderbolt port. Imagine using full-size professional video capture cards, 8Gb Fibre Channel cards, 10-Gigabit Ethernet cards, and RAID controller cards with your new iMac® or MacBook® Pro. The Echo Express expansion chassis makes it possible! Available in two sizes, the standard Echo Express PCIe 2.0 Expansion Chassis with Thunderbolt Ports supports one half-length, double-width, x16 (x4 mode), PCIe 2.0 card, while the XL model supports one full-length card; both models have fans to cool the cards. ...


So, it will handle 16X data rates.

BTW, your analogy about trucking is completely irrelevant. Capabilities of all computers keep increasing year over year--trucks, not so much. Just a few years ago, you would have been declared crazy to suggest that a laptop was powerful enough to do 'real work'. Will you concede that sound and graphics work is quite possible on a MacBook Pro now? The range of activities that demand a Mac Pro keeps getting smaller. A couple more advances (like TBolt) and the Mac Pro market will be awfully tiny. Apple isn't killing the Mac Pro--technology is.

Craig


----------



## screature

WCraig said:


> I hadn't seen the Magma product you referred to. Sonnet has also announced a range of TBolt products with "Early January 2012" availability:
> 
> Sonnet - Thunderbolt Storage, Adapters & Expansion Boxes
> 
> Note especially the Echo Express:
> 
> 
> 
> So, it will handle 16X data rates.
> 
> BTW, your analogy about trucking is completely irrelevant. Capabilities of all computers keep increasing year over year--trucks, not so much. Just a few years ago, you would have been declared crazy to suggest that a laptop was powerful enough to do 'real work'. Will you concede that sound and graphics work is quite possible on a MacBook Pro now? * The range of activities that demand a Mac Pro keeps getting smaller. A couple more advances (like TBolt) and the Mac Pro market will be awfully tiny. Apple isn't killing the Mac Pro--technology is.*
> 
> Craig


Meh!! Do you even own a Mac Pro? Do you have any idea of what you can do with it that you can't with an iMac? Have you even read the posts that Mac Doc and mguertin have been posting or are you just going on fanboy hopes and wishes for what TBolt may or may not provide. Have you seen the prices of the TBolt Sonnet arrays? Have you seen how pathetic the implementation by Sonnet of the PCI Express card is?

It is such a joke that you say technology is killing the Mac Pro. They have the fastest most robust CPUs (up to 12 cores) on the planet with the capability of having 96GB of RAM installed and you say technology is killing the Mac Pro??? What a joke, are you even paying attention to what you are saying and what has been said to you?


----------



## Guest

@screature: It's a waste of time, WCraig has decided he is right even though most of the peripherals he's basing his reasoning on don't exist yet (let alone have any pricing information posted) and apparently doesn't care to read any of the other evidence. 

WCraig: That (unreleased and at an unknown price) PCIe expansion you're talking about doesn't support x16. It's supports x16 _cards_ but in x4 mode only if you care to read it a little more closely, and even then maxes out at 1GB/second which is nothing to write home about. So to get closer to what my Mac Pro gives you'd only need 4 of them (and if you want full length slots you'll need the XL version which I'm sure is more money again). That takes up 4 of your 6 total potential thunderbolt devices. I also honestly wouldn't trust Sonnet as far as I could throw it when it comes to PCIe expansion for pro purposes ... Magma on the other hard is the industry leader and have been building these types of units for many years ... but I digress ...

Since we both are in Oakville maybe we should meet up for coffee and duke it out in person LOL  Just kidding, I wouldn't duke it out with you. You're entitled to your own opinions, no matter how misguided they are. You have fun with your iMac and desk full of peripherals attached with overpriced cables ($50 each) and I'll stick to my Mac Pro and still do circles around your "Van with trailers"


----------



## MacDoc

What is killing the MacPro is Apple's stupid pricing - nothing else.

If the 2.4 8 core Westmere was $2899 there would not be hundreds upon hundreds stranded in distribution.

Apple also might have made some effort to make FCP multithread/multicore aware. That fault also lays with Apple.

Adobe on the other hand COULD code for MP as they did with AE but nooooooooo. Didn't help.

So you look at Anandtech analysis 2.8 2008 versus 2010 2.4 westmere and the 2008 is faster on single threads....duh yeah - clock counts ....always,

Guy says why should I upgrade.


----------



## screature

MacDoc said:


> *What is killing the MacPro is Apple's stupid pricing - nothing else....*


I agree and thus it seems to be a deliberate policy one their part....

Why? I suspect it is the uber margin policy setup by Job's and the pricing on Mac Pro's is the only way to maintain those margins...

No disrespect to the dead, but maybe now that Job's isn't at the helm less doctrinaire heads may prevail and the Mac Pro may survive...

But you are totally right Mac Doc until the Mac Pro comes down to reasonably comparable margins to the PC universe I fear the Mac Pro line is doomed to EOL...

It would be a very sad day and one that would prove what every Mac Pro (and I mean person not the machine) has been saying for years now... Apple has abandoned the Pro market... the very market that gave them legs when they needed them but now it seems they don't need us so we get the short end of the stick.


----------



## bgps

WCraig said:


> BTW, your analogy about trucking is completely irrelevant. Capabilities of all computers keep increasing year over year--trucks, not so much. Just a few years ago, you would have been declared crazy to suggest that a laptop was powerful enough to do 'real work'. Will you concede that sound and graphics work is quite possible on a MacBook Pro now? The range of activities that demand a Mac Pro keeps getting smaller. A couple more advances (like TBolt) and the Mac Pro market will be awfully tiny. Apple isn't killing the Mac Pro--technology is.
> 
> Craig


I have to agree with the MacPro users....In my office I run MacPros and just recently added a brand new iMac. I can tell you from first hand experience there is absolutely no comparison. I do a lot of forensic work on computers, which involves heavy data recovery. The MacPro chews through this stuff like it's butter (and it's a heavy a load). The iMac does a pretty good job but heats up like crazy. 
There is little doubt that the iMac is a beautiful machine but for overall power it can't touch the MacPro. Remember heat is the biggest enemy to performance, and based on what I have experienced as the iMac heats up from use it slows down. 
On a side note we bought a Windows only machine last year that was spect out just like our new Mac Pro (2009) dual 2.93ghz 12gb ram; the Windows Machine was $5800, the Mac Pro was $6000. There is no comparison between the two. The Windows Machine sounds like a small plane taking off, and the MacPro is silent and stable. So in comparison to a lot of "consumer grade" computers such as the iMac it may be expensive but compared to other server grade computers....not so much. 

bgps


----------



## screature

bgps said:


> I have to agree with the MacPro users....In my office I run MacPros and just recently added a brand new iMac. I can tell you from first hand experience there is absolutely no comparison. I do a lot of forensic work on computers, which involves heavy data recovery. The MacPro chews through this stuff like it's butter (and it's a heavy a load). The iMac does a pretty good job but heats up like crazy.
> There is little doubt that the iMac is a beautiful machine but for overall power it can't touch the MacPro. Remember heat is the biggest enemy to performance, and based on what I have experienced as the iMac heats up from use it slows down.
> On a side note we bought a Windows only machine last year that was spect out just like our new Mac Pro (2009) dual 2.93ghz 12gb ram; the Windows Machine was $5800, the Mac Pro was $6000. There is no comparison between the two. The Windows Machine sounds like a small plane taking off, and the MacPro is silent and stable. So in comparison to a lot of "consumer grade" computers such as the iMac it may be expensive but compared to other server grade computers....not so much.
> 
> bgps


Thanks for the reality check bgps... and that doesn't even account for lesser Mac Pros that can still do much *more* than most iMacs (albeit not necessarily faster depending on the task) when the bigger picture is taken into account. 

Mac Pros are more flexible. Period, full stop. They may not always be the best bang for your buck depending on you needs but they provide much more versatility and that is a plain and simple fact.


----------



## WCraig

screature said:


> Meh!! Do you even own a Mac Pro? Do you have any idea ... What a joke, are you even paying attention to what you are saying and what has been said to you?





mguertin said:


> @screature: It's a waste of time ...


My, my. Bit over the top, aren't you guys? You'd think I was pointing below the belt line and chuckling! You don't have your manhood wrapped up in a little Mac Pro case, do you?

I've been working with computers since Visicalc on the Apple II and variously mainframes, minis, Windows (since 1.04) and Mac (since System 3/Finder 5.5). Back in the day, for grins, I taught myself 68k assembler. 

In my experience, the enormous advances in computer power have caused all sorts things to migrate from formerly ultra-high-end systems to users' desktops*. Since the Mac Pro was introduced in 2006, desktop systems have grown in power several-fold. So, they are now capable of handling stuff that only the Mac Pro could do before. Now, TBolt offers a way to do more of that stuff without needing the Mac Pro box.

From Apple's perspective, X% of users needed a Mac Pro in 2006. In the near future, that percentage is going to fall to a very small number. More and more of the former Mac Pro tasks will be able to be done on less-expensive hardware and _buyers_ are going to vote with their dollars. It costs serious money to design, develop, test, build, market and support the Mac Pro line. Apple either has to keep raising prices to recoup its up-front costs over the fewer systems it will be selling, OR kill the line. 

I have no axe to grind here. It doesn't matter to me whether the Mac Pro line stays or goes. All I'm saying is that if TBolt brings PCIe *outside the box*, then why do you need the box? Don't keep telling me what Mac Pro's can do now (as if I don't know). Tell me how Apple can justify keeping a Mac Pro line around when their other systems are increasingly capable of 'pro' work.

Craig
*One of the first system projects I was involved in was replacing a Wang word processing system. Wang offered a 12 station system for something over $250,000; plus, I think, 8% service per year. We used Mac SE's and II's to replace it for less third of the cost. We were told flat out that there is no way those 'toys' could replace an 'industrial-strength' system. Turned out that training and some really good templates were the keys to success.


----------



## Macfury

For my needs I agree with WCraig. It isn't that iMacs will replace Mac Pros--it's just that the group requiring MacPros only will continue to shrink. Been running a 2 X 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon for some time, but the machine has been hopelessly outclassed by the Mac Mini. I like the multiple drive bays but that's about all that's left. Upgrading to the latest Mac Pro each year or two simply isn't worth it for me--but it was a necessity a few years back.


----------



## MacDoc

It's not even close to outclassed by a MacMini - if it is for you then you don't need a MacPro.

The market is not "shrinking" for them .....every 2.8 8core we get in flies out the door in the $1800 price range.

The MacPros are too much money and Apple pooched it when they upped the price on the 8 core by $900. with a 20% slower clock speed.

When the machines are priced right they fly out the door as there is a strong pent up demand.

Apple sat on the 2.93 Quadcores for 18 months - then released the several hundred and they were gone in a heart beat.

6 gigs RAM 1 TB boot drive - nice quick 4870 card and dual optical drives $2450 - brilliant deal and wicked quick for music and graphics.
Set a few up with Velociraptors and clients were very pleased. One client switched out of her 27" iMac and was thrilled with speed with the VRs in the tower.
With triple bandwidth RAM set up no dual rig, iMac or MacMini will challenge the internal architecture.

Apple may indeed be forcing their pro-sumer concept on the market but it's NOT due to lack of demand - it's due to over pricing.

Comparing a mini to a tower is ludicrous and just means YOU don't need a tower, has nothing to do with the market out there.

Apple is over priced for what you get and they are authoring the situation themselves....










the guys that use the multi-threaded apps _*need*_ MacPros for a variety of reasons....

You don't - nor would the MacMini i7 run rings around yours..not even close....the 2.7/2.8 MacBook 13" will Turbo boost to 3.3-3.6 on 4 processing threads and with an SSD just fly on image edit. All under $2k
A proper high speed drive subsystem would transform your high clock MacPro.


----------



## Macfury

MacDoc, on matters of computing I bow to your greater knowledge. However, I don't see my model there--the MacPro1,1, Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 3 GHz.

On this compendium of Geekbench scores, my model gets a score of 5823, while the Mid-2011 Mac mini 4 core scores 8611.

Mac Benchmarks

From my perspective, the cheapest speed bump for me would be to buy a MacMini, not invest in another tower that will soon be eclipsed by the next MacMini. Even with 10 GB of RAM, the machine is bogging down on a lot of tasks.


----------



## screature

WCraig said:


> My, my. Bit over the top, aren't you guys? You'd think I was pointing below the belt line and chuckling! You don't have your manhood wrapped up in a little Mac Pro case, do you?
> 
> I've been working with computers since Visicalc on the Apple II and variously mainframes, minis, Windows (since 1.04) and Mac (since System 3/Finder 5.5). Back in the day, for grins, I taught myself 68k assembler.
> 
> In my experience, the enormous advances in computer power have caused all sorts things to migrate from formerly ultra-high-end systems to users' desktops*. Since the Mac Pro was introduced in 2006, desktop systems have grown in power several-fold. So, they are now capable of handling stuff that only the Mac Pro could do before. Now, TBolt offers a way to do more of that stuff without needing the Mac Pro box.
> 
> From Apple's perspective, X% of users needed a Mac Pro in 2006. In the near future, that percentage is going to fall to a very small number. More and more of the former Mac Pro tasks will be able to be done on less-expensive hardware and _buyers_ are going to vote with their dollars. It costs serious money to design, develop, test, build, market and support the Mac Pro line. Apple either has to keep raising prices to recoup its up-front costs over the fewer systems it will be selling, OR kill the line.
> 
> I have no axe to grind here. It doesn't matter to me whether the Mac Pro line stays or goes. *All I'm saying is that if TBolt brings PCIe *outside the box*, then why do you need the box? Don't keep telling me what Mac Pro's can do now (as if I don't know). Tell me how Apple can justify keeping a Mac Pro line around when their other systems are increasingly capable of 'pro' work.*
> 
> Craig
> *One of the first system projects I was involved in was replacing a Wang word processing system. Wang offered a 12 station system for something over $250,000; plus, I think, 8% service per year. We used Mac SE's and II's to replace it for less third of the cost. We were told flat out that there is no way those 'toys' could replace an 'industrial-strength' system. Turned out that training and some really good templates were the keys to success.


You have been told over and over, by myself Mac Doc and mguertin... done talking with you as you choose to not listen. Bye.


----------



## screature

Macfury said:


> MacDoc, on matters of computing I bow to your greater knowledge. However, I don't see my model there--the MacPro1,1, Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 3 GHz.
> 
> On this compendium of Geekbench scores, my model gets a score of 5823, while the Mid-2011 Mac mini 4 core scores 8611.
> 
> Mac Benchmarks
> 
> From my perspective, the cheapest speed bump for me would be to buy a MacMini, not invest in another tower that will soon be eclipsed by the next MacMini. Even with 10 GB of RAM, the machine is bogging down on a lot of tasks.


Speed is one component... cheap expandability is another and why Mac Pros are still the choice of many pros. TBolt is not ready for prime time in this regard and may never be despite WCraig's hopes and dreams. If at some point TBolt is mature enough to actually mean that a Mini could be a viable replacement to a Mac Pro great... but until then personally I *need* a Mac Pro.


----------



## WCraig

screature said:


> You have been told over and over, by myself Mac Doc and mguertin... done talking with you as you choose to not listen. Bye.


Yes, you are clearly the magnificent source of all Mac wisdom and I should bow down and soak in your reflected glory.

Get over yourself.

Craig


----------



## screature

WCraig said:


> Yes, you are clearly the magnificent source of all Mac wisdom and I should bow down and soak in your reflected glory.
> 
> Get over yourself.
> 
> Craig


Quite the opposite and you should heed your own advice. Two other senior members here who I suspect have every bit as much knowledge as you do completely disagree with you and yet you feel your opinion is superior. So you are the one who is professing to be the magnificent source of all Mac wisdom and you should get over yourself.


----------



## Macfury

screature said:


> Speed is one component... cheap expandability is another and why Mac Pros are still the choice of many pros. TBolt is not ready for prime time in this regard and may never be despite WCraig's hopes and dreams. If at some point TBolt is mature enough to actually mean that a Mini could be a viable replacement to a Mac Pro great... but until then personally I *need* a Mac Pro.


Yes, I mentioned that the advantage was the easily swappable storage--one of the reasons I put up with the bogging on heavy Photoshop work.


----------



## screature

Macfury said:


> Yes, I mentioned that the advantage was the easily swappable storage--one of the reasons I put up with the bogging on heavy Photoshop work.


But it isn't only storage it is other peripheral devices connecting to PCIe cards.

What size of files are you working on? I have essentially the same Mac Pro as you do and 11GB of RAM, (I do have an SSD as my boot drive which I think is a difference) and I have not experienced any bogging down of Photoshop (using mostly CS5 and occasionally CS4 for some plugins that are not CS5 compatible).


----------



## MacDoc

> -one of the reasons I put up with the bogging on heavy Photoshop work.


a lot of that is your drives nothing else


----------



## MacDoc

MF- your's is an 8 core 3 gHz - rare bird - most of the 2008 spec will apply - your ram is a tad slower.


----------



## MacDoc

> My, my. Bit over the top,


he doesn't own a MacPro tho it was quite vociferous dodge of the question....talk about pontificating on thin air....

Msr Craig perhaps listen a bit to those that DO own MacPros.....and sell to the high end market that make full use of them......

If I even mentioned an iMac to Technicolour for pro work Julian would laugh me out of the building.

The iMacs and the MacBook Pros can do some pro work and much more than they used to. Some video and audio add ons have moved external -.

They do NOT replace an open architecture tower with a superior triple channel bus and numerous other advantages simply not available in any other model.

Kludged up Rube Goldberg iMac be damned. XX)


----------



## Macfury

screature said:


> What size of files are you working on? I have essentially the same Mac Pro as you do and 11GB of RAM, (I do have an SSD as my boot drive which I think is a difference) and I have not experienced any bogging down of Photoshop (using mostly CS5 and occasionally CS4 for some plugins that are not CS5 compatible).


Files up to 1 GB to begin with, at times. Handbrake bogs as well, but....



MacDoc said:


> a lot of that is your drives nothing else


If that's the case, perhaps I'll do something with the main drive.


----------



## screature

Macfury said:


> Files up to 1 GB to begin with, at times. Handbrake bogs as well, but....
> 
> If that's the case, perhaps I'll do something with the main drive.


I should mention that aside from my boot drive being an OWC SSD all my data drives are striped RAID 0 arrays, so as Mac Doc mentions that could easily be where you are bogging down.

I work on files 1GB in size occasionally usually topping out more often in the 500 - 750 MB range... Things do slow down a bit when working on files of this size but I allocate as much RAM as possible when working on files of this size and because all my drives are RAID 0 arrays I have fast (relatively speaking) scratch disks for when working on large files.


----------



## WCraig

MacDoc said:


> he doesn't own a MacPro tho it was quite vociferous dodge of the question....talk about pontificating on thin air....
> 
> Msr Craig perhaps listen a bit to those that DO own MacPros.....and sell to the high end market that make full use of them......
> 
> If I even mentioned an iMac to Technicolour for pro work Julian would laugh me out of the building.
> 
> The *iMacs and the MacBook Pros can do some pro work and much more than they used to.*[emphasis added] Some video and audio add ons have moved external -.
> 
> They do NOT replace an open architecture tower with a superior triple channel bus and numerous other advantages simply not available in any other model.
> 
> Kludged up Rube Goldberg iMac be damned. XX)


Finally, an admission. Next up, please note that I have always talked about the FUTURE: so iMacs, etc, will INCREASINGLY be capable of pro work. The issue is that "Julian" is too small a market for Apple to keep supporting a line of tower Macs. 

You and Screecher seem to be determined to attack me personally because I have a different opinion than yours. I'm not the only one saying these things. There are several postings on the Macintouch site, for example, that substantially agree with me. 

Macintouch Reader Reports -- Apple

See especially Lyman Taylor's note (including grating typos) and Thom Hogan's analysis. Yes, that Thom Hogan:
Thom Hogan's Nikon Field Guide and Nikon Flash Guide

And spare the rolleyes about owning a Mac Pro. What do you expect me to do--use a forklift to go from client to client?

Craig


----------



## screature

WCraig said:


> Finally, an admission. Next up, please note that I have always talked about the FUTURE: so iMacs, etc, will INCREASINGLY be capable of pro work. The issue is that "Julian" is too small a market for Apple to keep supporting a line of tower Macs.
> 
> *You and Screecher seem to be determined to attack me personally* because I have a different opinion than yours. I'm not the only one saying these things. There are several postings on the Macintouch site, for example, that substantially agree with me.
> 
> Macintouch Reader Reports -- Apple
> 
> See especially Lyman Taylor's note (including grating typos) and Thom Hogan's analysis. Yes, that Thom Hogan:
> Thom Hogan's Nikon Field Guide and Nikon Flash Guide
> 
> And spare the rolleyes about owning a Mac Pro. What do you expect me to do--use a forklift to go from client to client?
> 
> Craig


There have been NO personal attacks... NONE... you were the first with the comment:: 



> Yes, you are clearly the magnificent source of all Mac wisdom and I should bow down and soak in your reflected glory.
> 
> Get over yourself.


All other posts have been relative to your comments, not you as a person.

We can all talk about the future but it is only worth the paper it is written on, for those of us who make money from our hardware what matters is what *is* in the here and now.

Keep pontificating all you want about how wonderfully bright the future of TBolt is, but for those of us living in the present an iMac or Macbook Pro or Mac Mini with TBolt doesn't come close to replacing a Mac Pro... not even by half.


----------



## Dennis Nedry

[deleted]


----------



## Guest

WCraig said:


> Finally, an admission. Next up, please note that I have always talked about the FUTURE: so iMacs, etc, will INCREASINGLY be capable of pro work. The issue is that "Julian" is too small a market for Apple to keep supporting a line of tower Macs.
> 
> You and Screecher seem to be determined to attack me personally because I have a different opinion than yours. I'm not the only one saying these things. There are several postings on the Macintouch site, for example, that substantially agree with me.
> 
> Macintouch Reader Reports -- Apple
> 
> See especially Lyman Taylor's note (including grating typos) and Thom Hogan's analysis. Yes, that Thom Hogan:
> Thom Hogan's Nikon Field Guide and Nikon Flash Guide
> 
> And spare the rolleyes about owning a Mac Pro. What do you expect me to do--use a forklift to go from client to client?
> 
> Craig


Here's a question for you WCraig, since you seem to keep avoiding answering anything I've asked so far or admit that I was right about anything I've posted.

How many iMacs and thunderbolt peripherals do YOU OWN right now? If the answer is as I suspect 1 or less then you are talking completely out of your a$$, predictions of the future or not. You are really drinking up all that marketing kool-aid and absolutely nothing more.

P.S. That link you gave to macintouch are reader reports that are all about reading epub format on OSX apparently. Also random people sending emails to macintouch means pretty much zero these days. If you consider that site a good resource for staying current with the mac world you're really showing your age there buddy. The first couple of years when Ric actually still ran it was ok but since then they'll print/post just about anything.

No one ever said that an iMac or a Macbook were incapable of doing "real" work ... what we said is that an iMac or a Macbook is NOT a replacement for a Mac Pro.

P.S.S. I've been around in computing at least as long or longer than you. When I started there was an Apple II and a PET and that was pretty much it. I learned Pet Assembly for fun too and even contributed to Waterloo Structured Basic 1.0 for the commodore line of machines. I was also the original moderator (in fact I started the room) for Macintosh discussions on fido-net. First one that existed "internationally" ... we can stop bandying about experience and how long we're been around now, ok?


----------



## MacDoc

You seen any triple channel iMacs around?? 

Only on Westmeres and Nehalems you say.... Pity.


----------



## broad

bgps said:


> I have to agree with the MacPro users....In my office I run MacPros and just recently added a brand new iMac. I can tell you from first hand experience there is absolutely no comparison. I do a lot of forensic work on computers, which involves heavy data recovery. The MacPro chews through this stuff like it's butter (and it's a heavy a load). The iMac does a pretty good job but heats up like crazy.
> There is little doubt that the iMac is a beautiful machine but for overall power it can't touch the MacPro. Remember heat is the biggest enemy to performance, and based on what I have experienced as the iMac heats up from use it slows down.
> On a side note we bought a Windows only machine last year that was spect out just like our new Mac Pro (2009) dual 2.93ghz 12gb ram; the Windows Machine was $5800, the Mac Pro was $6000. There is no comparison between the two. The Windows Machine sounds like a small plane taking off, and the MacPro is silent and stable. So in comparison to a lot of "consumer grade" computers such as the iMac it may be expensive but compared to other server grade computers....not so much.
> 
> bgps


great post.


----------



## WCraig

screature said:


> Meh!! Do you even own a Mac Pro? Do you have any idea of what you can do with it that you can't with an iMac? ...
> 
> It is such a joke that you say technology is killing the Mac Pro. ... What a joke, are you even paying attention to what you are saying and what has been said to you?





screature said:


> There have been NO personal attacks... NONE... you were the first with the comment::
> 
> 
> 
> All other posts have been relative to your comments, not you as a person.
> 
> We can all talk about the future but it is only worth the paper it is written on, for those of us who make money from our hardware what matters is what *is* in the here and now.
> 
> Keep pontificating all you want about how wonderfully bright the future of TBolt is, but for those of us living in the present an iMac or Macbook Pro or Mac Mini with TBolt doesn't come close to replacing a Mac Pro... not even by half.


Funny how your first quote directly contradicts the second.

Take a look at the title of this thread: "MacPros - looking ominous". So we are talking about the future and have been since the beginning. In case you've forgotten, there is a rumour that Apple may kill the Mac Pro line. I pointed out some trends that MAY make the Mac Pro a dwindling market for Apple. A few people have jumped up and down saying THEY NEED the Mac Pro. Apple MAY listen--but they didn't listen to the noisy folks that wanted Xserves continued. I think the Mac Pro is next (be that 2012, 2013 or even 2014) and I think Apple is/will push TBolt hard to soften the blow. 

Craig


----------



## WCraig

mguertin said:


> Here's a question for you WCraig, since you seem to keep avoiding answering anything I've asked so far or admit that I was right about anything I've posted.
> 
> How many iMacs and thunderbolt peripherals do YOU OWN right now? If the answer is as I suspect 1 or less then you are talking completely out of your a$$, predictions of the future or not. You are really drinking up all that marketing kool-aid and absolutely nothing more.
> 
> P.S. That link you gave to macintouch are reader reports that are all about reading epub format on OSX apparently. Also random people sending emails to macintouch means pretty much zero these days. If you consider that site a good resource for staying current with the mac world you're really showing your age there buddy. The first couple of years when Ric actually still ran it was ok but since then they'll print/post just about anything.
> 
> No one ever said that an iMac or a Macbook were incapable of doing "real" work ... what we said is that an iMac or a Macbook is NOT a replacement for a Mac Pro.
> 
> P.S.S. I've been around in computing at least as long or longer than you. When I started there was an Apple II and a PET and that was pretty much it. I learned Pet Assembly for fun too and even contributed to Waterloo Structured Basic 1.0 for the commodore line of machines. I was also the original moderator (in fact I started the room) for Macintosh discussions on fido-net. First one that existed "internationally" ... we can stop bandying about experience and how long we're been around now, ok?


I do not now own a Mac Pro or Thunderbolt accessory. Why do you think that matters? This thread is about the outlook for the Mac Pro. It doesn't exist in a vacuum that only the initiated may appreciate.

Do you think the Mac Pro is the only high-performance workstation of any merit? Have there never been any other platforms with comparable characteristics? Are there now, or have there ever been, computer systems with greater performance than the Mac Pro?


Back to the subject of this thread, however. How many tens of millions of dollars does Apple have to invest in every refresh of the Mac Pro? They have to decide if there is a good reason to put out all of that money. Are there GOING TO BE enough sales, at a sufficient price, to make that a worthwhile investment? I think the trends say no.

So, suppose Apple kills the Mac Pro. There will clearly be certain use cases that WILL NOT run acceptably on prosumer Macs. Those folks can (will!) make a lot of noise but it won't matter. So they'll have to either wait for prosumer Macs to grow sufficiently capable or migrate to another platform. 

You may hate those alternatives but isn't it better to have at least had the thought now rather than being blindsided in the future?

Craig
(You can thank me later.)

PS Keep scrolling down on Macintouch or search for Lyman or Thom's name. And yes, there is a lot of chaff on Macintouch but there are also a few kernels of wheat. We can open a separate thread regarding relative signal-to-noise ratios of ehMac and Macintouch.


----------



## Guest

WCraig said:


> I do not now own a Mac Pro or Thunderbolt accessory. Why do you think that matters? This thread is about the outlook for the Mac Pro. It doesn't exist in a vacuum that only the initiated may appreciate.


I think it matters because without that experience you have zero basis for comparison and it tells me that you are indeed speaking out your a$$. I own a couple of mac pro's, an iMac, and even a thunderbolt accessory, as well has having used a couple of other thunderbolt accessories (in professional capacity). You seem to have ... read some sales literature?



> Do you think the Mac Pro is the only high-performance workstation of any merit? Have there never been any other platforms with comparable characteristics? Are there now, or have there ever been, computer systems with greater performance than the Mac Pro?


That run OSX? No, no and no. That's the entire point of this discussion.




> Back to the subject of this thread, however. How many tens of millions of dollars does Apple have to invest in every refresh of the Mac Pro? They have to decide if there is a good reason to put out all of that money. Are there GOING TO BE enough sales, at a sufficient price, to make that a worthwhile investment? I think the trends say no.
> 
> So, suppose Apple kills the Mac Pro. There will clearly be certain use cases that WILL NOT run acceptably on prosumer Macs. Those folks can (will!) make a lot of noise but it won't matter. So they'll have to either wait for prosumer Macs to grow sufficiently capable or migrate to another platform.
> 
> You may hate those alternatives but isn't it better to have at least had the thought now rather than being blindsided in the future?
> 
> Craig
> (You can thank me later.)
> 
> PS Keep scrolling down on Macintouch or search for Lyman or Thom's name. And yes, there is a lot of chaff on Macintouch but there are also a few kernels of wheat. We can open a separate thread regarding relative signal-to-noise ratios of ehMac and Macintouch.


Yes, back on the topic at hand. We are both saying that the outlook for the Mac Pro seems ominous, but you seem to think that it's not a big deal and that an iMac and a couple of external devices can fulfill that gap. They can't. Simple as that.

If there are no longer viable hardware alternatives you may be right, a lot of the pro market will move elsewhere. This will hurt the Apple userbase whether you realize it or not. Personally in 5 years I'd like to see Apple still building computers and not just handheld and portable appliances and I think that the demise of pro users will be the first step in the slippery slope. You probably are oblivious or think that it doesn't matter, so whatever you think is fine as it seems you and your Macbook(?) know better than the Mac professionals discussing this with you.

I think the only thing I'll thank you for is for making it clear to me that I need to add you to my ignore list  So ... thanks for that  It'll certainly drop the signal to noise ratio considerably, or at least in this thread.


----------



## Guest

Lastly I hardly think that Apple spent tens of millions of dollars on the last couple of Mac Pro refreshes -- considering they were nothing more than a motherboard/processor swap especially. Had you beed following the discussions you might have known that...


----------



## screature

WCraig said:


> Funny how your first quote directly contradicts the second.
> 
> Take a look at the title of this thread: "MacPros - looking ominous". So we are talking about the future and have been since the beginning. In case you've forgotten, there is a rumour that Apple may kill the Mac Pro line. I pointed out some trends that MAY make the Mac Pro a dwindling market for Apple. A few people have jumped up and down saying THEY NEED the Mac Pro. Apple MAY listen--but they didn't listen to the noisy folks that wanted Xserves continued. I think the Mac Pro is next (be that 2012, 2013 or even 2014) and I think Apple is/will push TBolt hard to soften the blow.
> 
> Craig


Nope, you are wrong... I didn't say you were a joke I said your comment was a joke... see the difference, no personal attack, an "attack" (if you feel the need to use that word) on your comments. If you are so thin skinned and don't want to hear dissenting opinions then you are on the wrong forum.


----------



## screature

mguertin said:


> I think it matters because without that experience you have zero basis for comparison and it tells me that you are indeed speaking out your a$$. I own a couple of mac pro's, an iMac, and even a thunderbolt accessory, as well has having used a couple of other thunderbolt accessories (in professional capacity). You seem to have ... read some sales literature?
> 
> That run OSX? No, no and no. That's the entire point of this discussion.
> 
> Yes, back on the topic at hand. We are both saying that the outlook for the Mac Pro seems ominous, but you seem to think that it's not a big deal and that an iMac and a couple of external devices can fulfill that gap. They can't. Simple as that.
> 
> If there are no longer viable hardware alternatives you may be right, a lot of the pro market will move elsewhere. This will hurt the Apple userbase whether you realize it or not. Personally in 5 years I'd like to see Apple still building computers and not just handheld and portable appliances and I think that the demise of pro users will be the first step in the slippery slope. You probably are oblivious or think that it doesn't matter, so whatever you think is fine as it seems you and your Macbook(?) know better than the Mac professionals discussing this with you.
> 
> I think the only thing I'll thank you for is for making it clear to me that I need to add you to my ignore list  So ... thanks for that  It'll certainly drop the signal to noise ratio considerably, or at least in this thread.


+1 on all fronts... it seems according to WCraig all you have to do to present a cogent argument is to be able to read, first hand experience is next to meaningless. I hope he doesn't go into job interviews only armed with reading as his background....


----------



## screature

mguertin said:


> Lastly I hardly think that Apple spent tens of millions of dollars on the last couple of Mac Pro refreshes -- considering they were nothing more than a motherboard/processor swap especially. Had you been following the discussions you might have known that...


Once again bang on... Apple isn't designing or building the Mac Pro from scratch anymore and hasn't been since 1.1 and even then the form factor and case design were very similar to the Power Mac G5.

Apple does not design or manufacture the CPUs, hard drives, RAM, optical drives, chipsets or video cards for the Mac Pro. They design the motherboard in conjunction with Intel and Intel manufactures them. The cases of the Mac Pro are just about the only truly unique component of the Mac Pro (along with OSX). So where exactly does WCraig think Apple is spending 10s of millions of dollars on every iteration of the Mac Pro??

Quite frankly it seems quite apparent that he has no idea of Apple's development costs associated with new iterations of the Mac Pro and is simply pulling a number out his hat to try and defend his argument.


----------



## WCraig

mguertin said:


> I think it matters because without that experience you have zero basis for comparison and it tells me that you are indeed speaking out your a$$. I own a couple of mac pro's, an iMac, and even a thunderbolt accessory, as well has having used a couple of other thunderbolt accessories (in professional capacity). You seem to have ... read some sales literature?
> 
> ...
> 
> Yes, back on the topic at hand. We are both saying that the outlook for the Mac Pro seems ominous, but you seem to think that it's not a big deal and that an iMac and a couple of external devices can fulfill that gap. They can't. Simple as that.
> 
> If there are no longer viable hardware alternatives you may be right, a lot of the pro market will move elsewhere. This will hurt the Apple userbase whether you realize it or not. Personally in 5 years I'd like to see Apple still building computers and not just handheld and portable appliances and I think that the demise of pro users will be the first step in the slippery slope. You probably are oblivious or think that it doesn't matter, so whatever you think is fine as it seems you and your Macbook(?) know better than the Mac professionals discussing this with you.
> 
> I think the only thing I'll thank you for is for making it clear to me that I need to add you to my ignore list  So ... thanks for that  It'll certainly drop the signal to noise ratio considerably, or at least in this thread.


The crux of our disagreement is that you think "the demise of pro users will be the first step in the slippery slope". Sorry, this is wrong. I understand that you make your living--and you like doing it--using Mac tools. You're in the small group that will be affected. A group that gets smaller as the prosumer machines get more capable. 

Keep in mind who will be deciding whether the Mac Pro stays or goes: a small executive group at Apple. Not video or audio jockeys, not imaging or graphics people. I've been there at meetings where product lines are added or killed. People rely on my recommendations. Appears I have more in common with the decision makers than you!

And BTW, I have NEVER said that prosumer machines can replace EVERYTHING now done with Mac Pros. So stop setting up and knocking down straw men.

Craig


----------



## WCraig

mguertin said:


> Lastly I hardly think that Apple spent tens of millions of dollars on the last couple of Mac Pro refreshes -- considering they were nothing more than a motherboard/processor swap especially. Had you beed following the discussions you might have known that...





screature said:


> +1 on all fronts... it seems according to WCraig all you have to do to present a cogent argument is to be able to read, first hand experience is next to meaningless. I hope he doesn't go into job interviews only armed with reading as his background....


Apple spent $1.3 Billion on R&D in 2009 and that rose to $2.4 Billion in 2011. 

http://files.shareholder.com/downlo...2-6FA28DFB546D/Three_Yr_Financial_History.pdf

As has been shouted so loudly (and so often) in this thread, the Mac Pro has a unique architecture in the Macintosh family. I think you two are lacking any comprehension of the costs to bring a product to market or keep it there. Just for example, say testing. Every build of Mac OS X would have to be tested on all the supported Mac Pro configurations. Oh, but wait, the Mac Pro is the only one with PCI slots. How many cards (and combinations of cards) ALSO have to be tested on the various generation of Mac Pro's before Apple can be reasonably sure. That's just the cost to keep supporting existing configs. How many prototypes do you think they go through in developing a new model? With extensive testing each round to ensure compatibility. So testing burns money at a furious rate. 

We haven't even talked about gearing up for production. Do you think assembly lines spring up for free? How about documentation? Training for support staff? Marketing? Remember these are sold worldwide so everything has to be translated into, what, more than a dozen languages? 

I can tell you that $1 million doesn't go very far in developing a new liquid detergent bottle. Just a bottle and a cap! If you think you can refresh the Mac Pro line for less than $10 million, I'm sure Apple would love to know how. Drop them an email and then report back, would you? 

Apple isn't a charity, a benevolent society or your best buddy. They are a business with the objective of making a profit. All big consumer companies try to fool the gullible into thinking something different. Apple does a pretty good job of it--are you two taken in? If it doesn't make strategic sense to keep the Mac Pro line, they will drop it. 

Craig


----------



## Guest

Ahh, the thread is so much nicer already


----------



## WCraig

mguertin said:


> Ahh, the thread is so much nicer already


Wow, that's too bad. I was just about to admit that he was right all along and offer a big jug of his favourite tipple as a penance. Guess he'll never know! 

Craig


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## Dennis Nedry

[deleted]


----------



## gwillikers

Personality conflicts aside, you guys created a really interesting and informative thread on a subject that is dear to me. :clap:

Being stubborn, I'm holding out hope that Apple creates another pro tower. But I'm not holding my breath. 

_... as he bends down and hugs his 2.8 Octo Mac Pro..._


----------



## Macfury

Damn! I just put everyone on Ignore Permanently and even though the thread is really calm now, I feel I'm not getting much out of it.


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## Dennis Nedry

[deleted]


----------



## Chimpur

Ok so it appears that the Mac Pro still has a place with the Pro Mac community. But that place is a select cream of the crop with heavy lifting requirements. 

The new MacBook Pros and iMacs are capable of some of the tasks formerly reserved for the Mac Pros or Power Macs. 

With the Mac Pro in a niche role at the top it may become expendable to Apple. However, I think it should be used by Apple to showcase the latest and greatest hardware they can cram in that aluminum tower that they can!


----------



## MacDoc

Yup - good summary.
What irks me is Apple is authoring the demise by claiming sales are slow when in fact demand is high if the price reflects value for money over previous models.

The model will change and the Westmere 2.4s stuck in inventory will fly out the door. Just how is Apple ahead when they know they have to discount hundreds of machines eventually.

Better to lower the price now and move them through.......


----------



## screature

MacDoc said:


> ...Better to lower the price now and move them through...


+1 Agreed. 

Again, I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but I think this is the right course of action but I doubt it would have ever occurred under SJ's watch.... and it still may not occur and that would be indicative of his lingering affect at Apple... Politically there are going to be many Job's mindset supporters still in place so change may come slowly if at all...

At this point the discussion becomes very political and not at all necessarily straight forward (I have been there and done that at the time of a shift in leadership in a corp/gov). Time will tell..


----------



## i-rui

found this take on the issue from MPG

Macintosh Performance Guide: End of Life for the Apple Mac Pro?


----------



## screature

i-rui said:


> found this take on the issue from MPG
> 
> Macintosh Performance Guide: End of Life for the Apple Mac Pro?


Pretty much says everything Mac Doc, Mguertin and I have been saying all along....


----------



## hayesk

I seem to remember the Mac mini going through the same discussion a couple of years ago. This is all speculation at this point.


----------



## Chimpur

hayesk said:


> I seem to remember the Mac mini going through the same discussion a couple of years ago. This is all speculation at this point.


Very true.. I think this was when it still had the original Core Duo cpu's and everything else had moved onto Core 2 Duo's...


----------



## groovetube

this is true.

I have a hard time believing apple will ditch the mac pro without some solution for this even small, segment. It isn't like it's that hard to put in an updated motherboard and cpu etc. Hardly a costly product redesign.


----------



## hayesk

Agreed. Occam's razor: Apple's waiting on Intel for a new chipset due out in January 2012.


----------



## MacDoc

Yes that would be the normal expectation and NOT doing a redesign would make a ton of sense.
But they have to get the cost down.

What is the situation on the video card front?


----------



## screature

MacDoc said:


> Yup - good summary.
> *What irks me is Apple is authoring the demise by claiming sales are slow when in fact demand is high if the price reflects value for money over previous models.*
> 
> The model will change and the Westmere 2.4s stuck in inventory will fly out the door. Just how is Apple ahead when they know they have to discount hundreds of machines eventually.
> 
> Better to lower the price now and move them through.......


Don't know why I didn't comment on this before.. Too much scanning I guess...

This is exactly the problem and we have referred to it earlier in the thread.

Despite WCraigs pontificating about a prosumer produt being the one solution to rule them all, this has never been the case...

Look at photography and it's history... despite it's "democratization" there are still Pro camera's being made and consumed that represent the "best of the best" and yes sometimes price outstrips value BUT the Pro market is what leads the way for both the consumer and prosumer markets.

If Apple abandons the Pro market they will effectively give up the leading edge to someone else. WCraig doesn't see this as a problem becuase he believes TBolt is the be all and end all technology for computers. I and others believe this fundamentally wrong not only based on the technology but also on principle.

If Apple abandons producing a high-end pro product they will cease to be technology leaders and will simply become another Microsoft... pandering to the masses, abandoning thinking differently and simple catering to the "average" user, i.e. a dumbing down of development and product.


----------



## hayesk

I think Apple's investment in Thunderbolt proves they're still interested in the professional market. If Apple only cared about consumer products, why wouldn't they just stick in USB3 and/or eSATA and be done with it? It's not like those are not perfectly capable and easy-to-use technologies in their own right. You don't invest millions in a pro-level technology and only serve it to consumers.

Maybe the Mac Pro will be discontinued, but if it is, it'll be replaced with something else for the high end market. That may be where the rumor came from — someone only heard half of it.


----------



## screature

hayesk said:


> *I think Apple's investment in Thunderbolt proves they're still interested in the professional market. *If Apple only cared about consumer products, why wouldn't they just stick in USB3 and/or eSATA and be done with it? It's not like those are not perfectly capable and easy-to-use technologies in their own right. You don't invest millions in a pro-level technology and only serve it to consumers.
> 
> Maybe the Mac Pro will be discontinued, but if it is, it'll be replaced with something else for the high end market. That may be where the rumor came from — someone only heard half of it.


You clearly haven't been following along if you think Apple has any interest is USB 3 or eSATA... they aren't propitiatory and they have no financial interest in those technologies... 

TBolt has next to nothing to do with serving a pro clientele and everything to do with Apple trying to make money on a technology they share a financial interest in...


----------



## hayesk

screature said:


> You clearly haven't been following along if you think Apple has any interest is USB 3 or eSATA... they aren't propitiatory and they have no financial interest in those technologies...
> 
> TBolt has next to nothing to do with serving a pro clientele and everything to do with Apple trying to make money on a technology they share a financial interest in...


Screature, can you disagree without being so condescending? Clearly I haven't been following along? ? Really?How about you re-read my post since you misunderstood it.

Or allow me to rephrase.

Yes, I know Apple has no interest in eSATA and USB 3 - well, they're ambivalent about USB3. That was my point. They invested in a pro level technology because they wanted something that goes beyond the consumer space. The average consumer is not going to buy much Thunderbolt stuff, if any. Apple's not going to make much money on Thunderbolt from the average consumer, i.e. most of their customers. They're going to make money from their high end users - the professionals and geeks. If Apple planned to give up on them, then there would be no point in investing in TB development, because they'd be abandoning the group of customers that would buy TB peripherals.


----------



## i-rui

Interesting point hayesk

I think TB has a lot of potential so i'm not going to hate on it, but i also think anyone suggesting it can do *everything* at the same level of other current technologies can do is putting *way* too much faith in it. I'm happy that Apple is developing it, but not if they abandon the current workflow that most pros are now using.

If TB really can do everything that's been promised, and do it better than the current tech, then Pros will happily switch over to it. But i'm guessing we're still years away from that even being a possibility.


----------



## screature

hayesk said:


> *Screature, can you disagree without being so condescending? Clearly I haven't been following along?* ? Really?How about you re-read my post since you misunderstood it.
> 
> Or allow me to rephrase.
> 
> Yes, I know Apple has no interest in eSATA and USB 3 - well, they're ambivalent about USB3. That was my point. They invested in a pro level technology because they wanted something that goes beyond the consumer space. The average consumer is not going to buy much Thunderbolt stuff, if any. Apple's not going to make much money on Thunderbolt from the average consumer, i.e. most of their customers. They're going to make money from their high end users - the professionals and geeks. If Apple planned to give up on them, then there would be no point in investing in TB development, because they'd be abandoning the group of customers that would buy TB peripherals.


I apologize haysek... you're right my tone was not called for, sorry my bad. 

However, if TBolt were truly about serving the Pro market then why put it in ever consumer grade computer they sell? 

The point that I was making and that you seemed to miss is that if Apple abandons the Mac Pro they *are *effectively abandoning the pro market as the Mac Pro represents the flagship of the technology that is available and Apple utilizes and has always been the most robust and reliable of all Macs (since having gone Intel). 

Effectively it has represented the "space program" of Apple, sure it serves a rarefied crowd but as I said it is the developments that are made to serve that rarefied crowd that work their way down to also serve the consumer and prosumer.

TBolt does not even begin to make up for all the other losses in architecture that come with a Mac Pro. The only thing that TBolt provides is PCIe expansion out of the box... that's it, that's all.


----------



## screature

i-rui said:


> Interesting point hayesk
> 
> I think TB has a lot of potential so i'm not going to hate on it, but i also think anyone suggesting it can do *everything* at the same level of other current technologies can do is putting *way* too much faith in it. I'm happy that Apple is developing it, but not if they abandon the current workflow that most pros are now using.
> 
> *If TB really can do everything that's been promised, and do it better than the current tech, then Pros will happily switch over to it. But i'm guessing we're still years away from that even being a possibility.*


But that is the thing TBolt can't do anything *better* than the technology that is in the Mac Pro, all it does is bring PCIe expansion outside the box and clearly there is no reason why TBolt could not be added to the next gen of Mac Pro. 

TBolt does nothing in terms of workstation grade CPUs i.e. Xeon processors, it does nothing regarding the amount of RAM than can be put into a machine, it does not


> "replace an open architecture tower with a superior triple channel bus and numerous other advantages simply not available in any other model."


(Mac Doc)

For *some * pros, depending on what they do, TBolt may make it such that a Mac Pro is no longer a necessity and they may move to a lesser Mac to save money, but therein lies the rub. Mac Pros are overpriced and have been for years and it will not be TBolt that will bring about the demise of the Mac Pro (as has been said many times here) it will be Apple's own pricing regime for the Mac Pro.


----------



## i-rui

i think hayesk's point was he saw apple's commitment to thunderbolt as evidence that apple was not going to give up on the pro market & if the mac pro was ever discontinued it would be replaced by another machine geared to pro needs.


----------



## screature

i-rui said:


> i think hayesk's point was he saw apple's commitment to thunderbolt as evidence that apple was not going to give up on the pro market & if the mac pro was ever discontinued it would be replaced by another machine geared to pro needs.


i-rui I know that is what haysek was saying, I am saying I don't think TBolt is evidence for Apple not giving up on the pro market as it fails to address key fundamentals to working pros as I and others have outlined. Again, all TBolt does is bring PCIe outside of the box.

If the Mac Pro is replaced by another pro machine great, but no iMac or Macbook Pro, even with TBolt is a Mac Pro replacement as their overall architecture is no match for a Mac Pro when it comes to extremely heavy lifting, reliability and adaptability.

TBolt makes the closed architecture of the iMac, Macbook Pro and Mini more open but still no match for a Mac Pro as a workstation.

At any rate time will tell, I think this thread has pretty much run its course for now, at least until we learn more or see something new as there is nothing new being said, just a rehashing of the various points that have already been made.


----------



## bgps

screature said:


> For *some * pros, depending on what they do, TBolt may make it such that a Mac Pro is no longer a necessity and they may move to a lesser Mac to save money, but therein lies the rub. Mac Pros are overpriced and have been for years and it will not be TBolt that will bring about the demise of the Mac Pro (as has been said many times here) it will be Apple's own pricing regime for the Mac Pro.


This is true. I have just setup MacServers with 2 Promise RAIDS hooked up using fibre with 2 other MacPros and a Windows Machine attached, I doubt that this could be accomplished so seamlessly through an iMac using a TBold attached drive. Not say that it couldn't be done it's just that in it's current setup the iMac is not designed to replace a Pro computer. Just like you wouldn't buy a MacPro if you were just going to surf the web and do some some photo editing using iPhoto. The power that an iMac packs is impressive, but the architecutre of the system is not meant for more than consumer use, this is different than a MacPro. 

I'm really not sure about this MacPro overpriced thing. I mentioned earlier in these posting that I have a Windows only boxed specked out exactly like a MacPro and their prices were very close to one another. Keep in mind the MacPro contains a server board, server memory, and server (Intel Xeon) processor(s). Server grade parts are always more money than consumer grade parts. So if you compare an iMac to MacPro it is over priced. But when you compare apples to apples (sorry about the pun) a Windows Box with virtually the same setup as a MacPro then guess what they aren't that over priced. 

bgps


----------



## i-rui

screature said:


> If the Mac Pro is replaced by another pro machine great, but no iMac or Macbook Pro, even with TBolt is a Mac Pro replacement as their overall architecture is no match for a Mac Pro when it comes to extremely heavy lifting, reliability and adaptability.


well, yes, that is what hayesk suggested :



hayesk said:


> Maybe the Mac Pro will be discontinued, but if it is, it'll be replaced with something else for the high end market. That may be where the rumor came from — someone only heard half of it.


i think we all agree that if apples kills the mac pro and doesn't offer a replacement then that would be a terrible move by apple and pros would have to re-evaluaate their commitment to the platform.


----------



## screature

i-rui said:


> well, yes, that is what hayesk suggested :
> 
> 
> 
> *i think we all agree that if apples kills the mac pro and doesn't offer a replacement *then that would be a terrible move by apple and pros would have to re-evaluaate their commitment to the platform.


*Most* of us seem to get that at least...

Again to emphasize, TBolt alone does not make a pro machine, otherwise, the iMac, Macbook Pro and Mini are all now pro machines and I can say without any doubt that the film/video industry, high end audio, high end graphics/photography, 3D/gaming industry, high volume software developers etc. are not moving to these platforms because of TBolt.

TBolt offers potential, but as of yet it is to be realized and especially at a price point that makes any sense to move away from a Mac Pro if you are doing heavy lifting and need workstation reliability, easy and cheap added storage, hardware RAID, oodles of RAM, workstation grade CPUs and high end dedicated graphic cards etc. etc.


----------



## screature

bgps said:


> This is true. I have just setup MacServers with 2 Promise RAIDS hooked up using fibre with 2 other MacPros and a Windows Machine attached, I doubt that this could be accomplished so seamlessly through an iMac using a TBold attached drive. Not say that it couldn't be done it's just that in it's current setup the iMac is not designed to replace a Pro computer. Just like you wouldn't buy a MacPro if you were just going to surf the web and do some some photo editing using iPhoto. The power that an iMac packs is impressive, but the architecutre of the system is not meant for more than consumer use, this is different than a MacPro.
> 
> *I'm really not sure about this MacPro overpriced thing.* I mentioned earlier in these posting that I have a Windows only boxed specked out exactly like a MacPro and their prices were very close to one another. Keep in mind the MacPro contains a server board, server memory, and server (Intel Xeon) processor(s). Server grade parts are always more money than consumer grade parts. So if you compare an iMac to MacPro it is over priced. But when you compare apples to apples (sorry about the pun) a Windows Box with virtually the same setup as a MacPro then guess what they aren't that over priced.
> 
> bgps


You could be right on this front as it has been a long time since I priced out a high-end PC box... 

However, the pricing regime of the Mac Pro relative to the developments of the platform has certainly maintained its premium price relative to other improvements in Apple's Mac lineup that are not in keeping with the value offered by those other products, so if it is a perceived lack of value that is "killing" the Mac Pro, then Apple needs to step up its game when it comes to the Mac Pro and it is that lack of "stepping up" that makes some us feel it is a deliberate attempt on the part of Apple to bring about the EOL of the Mac Pro.


----------



## MacDoc

Client pulled the trigger on a 12 core today - as it happened we'd been double shipped and they needed the exact thing with the 5870 card which was a nice boost to cashflow BUT

Guess who is side grading to Avid. .....

Then there is the Protools 10 that requires Nehalem machines.....



> * Apple Mac Pro (Nehalem/Westmere models only)
> * Mac OS X Lion (32- or 64-bit)
> * 2 GB of RAM (4 GB or more recommended)
> * Minimum 15 GB free hard disk space for Pro Tools installation
> * USB port for iLok authorization (plus, Internet connection for software download)


Interesting times.....


----------



## hayesk

I'm not suggesting that TB can substitute for a everyone's use of a Mac Pro, but certainly a subset. And screature, I think the reasons they are putting it in their entire line are that it can replace technologies that are already in the entry level products at little or no cost increase, and it makes the technology more ubiquitous. Pros are more likely to buy a TB peripheral if it can be used on all of their Macs, not just the pro-level Macs.


----------



## screature

hayesk said:


> I'm not suggesting that TB can substitute for a everyone's use of a Mac Pro, but certainly a subset. And screature, I think the reasons they are putting it in their entire line are that it can replace technologies that are already in the entry level products *at little or no cost increase*, and it makes the technology more ubiquitous. Pros are more likely to buy a TB peripheral if it can be used on all of their Macs, not just the pro-level Macs.


To Apple perhaps but certainly not to the end user... This simply isn't true right now for the consumer... a TBolt cable alone is $50.... 

Like I said TBolt has potential but for now, even among pros the cost of entry even for just storage devices is prohibitively high for many at this point in time.


----------



## screature

MacDoc said:


> Client pulled the trigger on a 12 core today - as it happened we'd been double shipped and they needed the exact thing with the 5870 card which was a nice boost to cashflow *BUT
> 
> Guess who is side grading to Avid. .....
> 
> Then there is the Protools 10 that requires Nehalem machines*.....
> 
> 
> 
> Interesting times.....


I don't know Mac Doc... somehow I think one has to be "in the know" to have a hope in hell of understanding what you are trying to say with that post... It's greek to me at least.


----------



## MacDoc

a) the Final Cut Pro debacle is coming to roost so client is moving to Avid on a side grade.

b) Pro Tools 10 now REQUIRES Nehalem and up leaving 10s of thousands of 8 core 2.8 users out of it. They are outraged.

A 2.8 8 core 3,1 easy has the horsepower as it's more powerful than the Nehalem 2.66 Quad.

But - sorry - SOL for the industry standard.


----------



## steviewhy

sudo rm -rf /


----------



## MacDoc

Thanks for that clarification on 10 and 10HDX


----------



## screature

MacDoc said:


> a) the Final Cut Pro debacle is coming to roost so client is moving to Avid on a side grade.
> 
> b) Pro Tools 10 now REQUIRES Nehalem and up leaving 10s of thousands of 8 core 2.8 users out of it. They are outraged.
> 
> A 2.8 8 core 3,1 easy has the horsepower as it's more powerful than the Nehalem 2.66 Quad.
> 
> But - sorry - SOL for the industry standard.


Thanks for the clarification...


----------



## WCraig

screature said:


> Don't know why I didn't comment on this before.. Too much scanning I guess...
> 
> This is exactly the problem and we have referred to it earlier in the thread.
> 
> Despite WCraigs pontificating about a prosumer produt being the one solution to rule them all, this has never been the case...
> 
> Look at photography and it's history... despite it's "democratization" there are still Pro camera's being made and consumed that represent the "best of the best" and yes sometimes price outstrips value BUT the Pro market is what leads the way for both the consumer and prosumer markets.
> 
> If Apple abandons the Pro market they will effectively give up the leading edge to someone else. WCraig doesn't see this as a problem becuase he believes TBolt is the be all and end all technology for computers. I and others believe this fundamentally wrong not only based on the technology but also on principle.
> 
> If Apple abandons producing a high-end pro product they will cease to be technology leaders and will simply become another Microsoft... pandering to the masses, abandoning thinking differently and simple catering to the "average" user, i.e. a dumbing down of development and product.


Ah Screecher, are you simply unable to understand what has been written or are you deliberately twisting my words?

"WCraigs [sic] pontificating about a prosumer produt being the one solution to rule them all". Never said that. What I did say was that prosumer machines keep growing in power and capability and eating away at what used to be the market for Mac Pros. No one in their right mind would suggest the Mac Pro market is growing. (See, the door's wide open for you, Screecher.) What about after the Ivy Bridge Macs come out next year. Or after the generation after that?.

"WCraig ... believes TBolt is the be all and end all technology for computers." Never said that. What I did say is that if TBolt works, there will be fewer and fewer cases where internal PCIe slots are needed. And so the dwindling sales of Mac Pros will be so small that Apple will kill the line rather than pour millions in to support a handful of (noisy, arrogant, demanding, whining, ...) users.

Craig


----------



## screature

WCraig said:


> Ah Screecher, are you simply unable to understand what has been written or are you deliberately twisting my words?
> 
> "WCraigs [sic] pontificating about a prosumer produt being the one solution to rule them all". Never said that. What I did say was that prosumer machines keep growing in power and capability and eating away at what used to be the market for Mac Pros. No one in their right mind would suggest the Mac Pro market is growing. (See, the door's wide open for you, Screecher.) What about after the Ivy Bridge Macs come out next year. Or after the generation after that?.
> 
> "WCraig ... believes TBolt is the be all and end all technology for computers." Never said that. What I did say is that if TBolt works, there will be fewer and fewer cases where internal PCIe slots are needed. And so the dwindling sales of Mac Pros will be so small that Apple will kill the line rather than pour millions in to support a handful of (noisy, arrogant, demanding, whining, ...) users.
> 
> Craig


And yet once again you fail to address the real issues being raised. :clap:

Congratulations with your personal snide insults I will be joining mgeurtin and adding you to my ignore list as trying to engage with you is about as pleasant and fruitful as banging one's head against a brick wall....


----------



## WCraig

screature said:


> i-rui I know that is what haysek was saying, I am saying I don't think TBolt is evidence for Apple not giving up on the pro market as it fails to address key fundamentals to working pros as I and others have outlined. Again, all TBolt does is bring PCIe outside of the box.
> 
> If the Mac Pro is replaced by another pro machine great, but no iMac or Macbook Pro, even with TBolt is a Mac Pro replacement as their overall architecture is no match for a Mac Pro when it comes to extremely heavy lifting, reliability and adaptability.
> 
> TBolt makes the closed architecture of the iMac, Macbook Pro and Mini more open but still no match for a Mac Pro as a workstation.
> 
> At any rate time will tell, I think this thread has pretty much run its course for now, at least until we learn more or see something new as there is nothing new being said, just a rehashing of the various points that have already been made.


TBolt is not the only technology making the Mac Pro a dinosaur. You like multiple cores working on certain tasks, right? And the faster the better, right? So instead of 12 cores, how about 200 or more? How about 10X the GFLOPS?

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review

Get your software vendors to support OpenCL. Why keep paying for crazy expensive 'workstation class' processors when they offer far less power than commonly available graphics processing units? All your friends are going to upgrade their software when they find out their renders and whatnot can be done in a fraction of the time. Are you going to cling to your Mac Pro screaming: "but that's not a workstation!?

Oh, I know, you can't do it *right now*. Pop quiz: is Apple known for obsessing about "right now" or "what will be"?

Craig


----------



## WCraig

screature said:


> And yet once again you fail to address the real issues being raised. :clap:
> 
> Congratulations with your personal snide insults I will be joining mgeurtin and adding you to my ignore list as trying to engage with you is about as pleasant and fruitful as banging one's head against a brick wall....


And it is OK for you to set up straw man arguments that you attribute to me?

Craig


----------



## WCraig

Since words don't seem to working too well here, perhaps a couple of simple graphics will help. In the first, the classic Apple product matrix ala 1997. But that is a long time ago. Portables are now 75% of Apple's volume. The iMac has become capable of certain formerly Pro-only tasks. The Mini (in regular and server forms) is also used in certain low-end Pro applications. 

The second graphic is an interpretation of the current product matrix. The viewer's assignment is to visualize the product matrix next year or the year after...

Craig


----------



## i-rui

just pointing out that in 1997 there was no iMac. 
or mac pro.
or macbook.
or macbook pro.

but i know that's not the point you're trying to make.

anyways, as has been pointed out before if apple does drop the mac pro without a proper replacement they would lose more than just that tiny market share :



> Dumping power and elegant products is a slippery slope that breeds other poor decisions for other parts of the user base (What should we drop next? Which pro software should we dumb-down or drop or alter beyond recognition, showing disdain for our users who make a living using it?).





> No company prospers forever, and the first step is failing to honor apparently small market segments that matter much more than bean counters realize.


so yes, losing mac pro sales alone wouldn't affect apple much at all. losing the *perception* that apple is the choice of professionals would.


----------



## Guest

I can tell from all the ignores that WCraig is back. What a threadcrapper. Lemme guess .. blah, blah blah blah, thunbderbolt rocks, blah blah iMacs will r00l! Get a life buddy.


----------



## Guest

I know a LOT of people in the biz that are pretty much ready to bail on ProTools. It's not going to happen overnight, but I think the exodus has already started and this new move will only speed up the process. They are no longer the only "pro" caliber suite in the game, and they are the _only_ ones that tie you to strange addon hardware that you do not need with all the computer horsepower we have these days. The only reason to keep people stuck on their DSP is to keep people buying into their (very overpriced) platform.


----------



## screature

i-rui said:


> just pointing out that in 1997 there was no iMac.
> or mac pro.
> or macbook.
> or macbook pro.
> 
> but i know that's not the point you're trying to make.
> 
> anyways, as has been pointed out before if apple does drop the mac pro without a proper replacement they would lose more than just that tiny market share :
> 
> *so yes, losing mac pro sales alone wouldn't affect apple much at all. losing the perception that apple is the choice of professionals would.*


Exactly! What pro will want to do business with a company that doesn't value their patronage and quite frankly is among the most loyal and longest standing or their users/buyers.

Not to mention, a point that seems to fail to register with the deaf... 

Pro users constitute the bleeding edge of technology... if and when Apple abandons them (some say they already have and I tend to agree, or at least they care about them less and less) then the race to the bottom is on for Apple, something no one ever thought they would engage in... 

I would hate to have to move back to a PC but with systems that are completely wide open from a hardware point of view and the fact that MS is at least partially starting to get it's act together it may not be so bad after all...

This is the slippery slope that mg was talking about and that WCraig in his pigheaded posts fails to recognize.

Apple, from a temporary standpoint, may stand to benefit by abandoning the pro market... not prosumer market which are completely different segments... but the effects will ripple through their business over time and they will not longer be seen to be market leaders... Instead of being Maserati they will become Ford... which if that is the direction they want to take fine, the share holders maybe happy and the deafening crowd maybe as well, but for those of us who love(d) Apple because they seemed to have standards that set themselves apart form the rest, it will be a very sad day indeed.


----------



## screature

mguertin said:


> I can tell from all the ignores that WCraig is back. What a threadcrapper. Lemme guess .. blah, blah blah blah, thunbderbolt rocks, blah blah iMacs will r00l! Get a life buddy.


You forgot to mention blah, blah blah blah,_ prosumers_, blah blah...

As I pointed out earlier by way of analogy in photography (and which WCraig avoided completely because he knows it is a fact) every major camera manufacture still races to the top in terms of serving pros as that represents what they are capable of and in the end it serves both the prosumer and the consumer markets as the technology trickles down.

If you abandon the truly pro market to the exclusion of pandering to the prosumer market you have effectively given up on being the bleeding edge and leading the way.

I sure as hell hope their are more visionary product line managers in place at Apple other than those who think like WCraig who would follow an all too fluctuating bottom line in favor of a future that is worth pursuing in terms of development and leading the way...

Nothing wrong with making things better and cheaper for prosumers but if the cost is abandoning the top rung, then the cost is too high even if it isn't immediately obvious on a year over year balance sheet... it will come to bite Apple in the ass over time, if they choose to go this route I can almost guarantee it.


----------



## WCraig

screature said:


> Exactly! What pro will want to do business with a company that doesn't value their patronage and quite frankly is among the most loyal and longest standing or their users/buyers.
> 
> Not to mention, a point that seems to fail to register with the deaf...


So, as a loyal pro with longstanding patronage, what has that got you? A couple of tee shirts? There's a bus roaring down the street towards you and Apple's hands are on your back. You may think you're going to get a massage--I think you're going to get shoved!

"Maserati"! Please. Ever heard of Cray?

BTW, you're strangely silent about OpenCL. Or did you just not understand?

Craig


----------



## monokitty

I'd like to know what the dedicated Mac Pro users in this thread will do if the Mac Pro is discontinued entirely and not replaced. Chime in, please? Just curious if you're all going to jump ship to a Windows 7 unit or actually settle for 'less' with a different Mac. I'm generously curious here, not creating confrontation. (Long term solution w/o a Mac Pro - not buying a last generation Mac Pro and hoping it'll last you the next ten years and no longer supporting the latest versions of OS X.)


----------



## WCraig

screature said:


> You forgot to mention blah, blah blah blah,_ prosumers_, blah blah...
> 
> As I pointed out earlier by way of analogy in photography (and which WCraig avoided completely because he knows it is a fact) every major camera manufacture still races to the top in terms of serving pros as that represents what they are capable of and in the end it serves both the prosumer and the consumer markets as the technology trickles down.
> 
> If you abandon the truly pro market to the exclusion of pandering to the prosumer market you have effectively given up on being the bleeding edge and leading the way.
> 
> I sure as hell hope their are more visionary product line managers in place at Apple other than those who think like WCraig who would follow an all too fluctuating bottom line in favor of a future that is worth pursuing in terms of development and leading the way...
> 
> Nothing wrong with making things better and cheaper for prosumers but if the cost is abandoning the top rung, then the cost is too high even if it isn't immediately obvious on a year over year balance sheet... it will come to bite Apple in the ass over time, if they choose to go this route I can almost guarantee it.


I didn't comment on high-end photography because I don't follow it to the same extent I do the personal computer marketplace. My impression is that the highest end cameras still provide real differences in lens quality (aperture, clarity), focussing speed, ruggedness, shot-to-shot time, etc. Stuff that working news and sport photographers need and can't currently get in consumer gear. And there is a gadget-lover segment of the camera market that is more significant. Plus, the competitive landscape is completely different with multiple larger and smaller players competing for mind share. 

I think you're engaging in wishful thinking that the glamour appeal of a line of high-end workstations is a big deal to Apple. It is Intel pushing new generations of hardware and they only do that to keep ahead of AMD. Where's the glory for Apple in saying: "Yeah, we've got Intel's latest generation in our boxes, uhmmm, too!"?

Craig


----------



## broad

its easy to draw comparisons as well towards things like car manufacturer's racing programs, where they spend oodles of money on R&D and testing (which some would say is a waste) but then apply the things they've learned to the cars we drive every day 

that said, its also easy to see how fast the mac pro is fading. i would guess easily more than half of the people who bought a mac pro in 2008 didnt *need* a mac pro, they just needed something more than an imac. now that the imacs are capable enough of doing what those people (prosumers i suppose) do those people have dropped the pro like a hot rock due to price (as screature said). 

itll be interesting to see what the next month or two holds. like i think the chief peddler said a few posts back if they do decide to EOL them the mad scramble of people to buy up whats left is going to be pretty epic. i am imagining fisticuffs and people swarming resellers like boxing day at macy's haha


----------



## Guest

Lars said:


> I'd like to know what the dedicated Mac Pro users in this thread will do if the Mac Pro is discontinued entirely and not replaced. Chime in, please? Just curious if you're all going to jump ship to a Windows 7 unit or actually settle for 'less' with a different Mac. I'm generously curious here, not creating confrontation. (Long term solution w/o a Mac Pro - not buying a last generation Mac Pro and hoping it'll last you the next ten years and no longer supporting the latest versions of OS X.)


That's a tough call but I imagine there will be a split. Some will settle with lesser models, others will bail on the OSX platform completely. Sadly I think it's the people doing the higher end production work that will end up bailing completely on the platform, which would be a bad day for Apple .. as previously pointed out Apple has always been the platform that the people "in the know" have used to create their content, but without those people OSX's will then end up starting to be perceived as the "dumbed down" platform and the creative professionals will move onto other things.

For me personally anything in the current Apple lineup that is less than a Mac pro is just not going to cut it for my studio which means I'll run my current Mac pros into the ground before I make the move, but when the time comes I'll probably have to bail on the OSX platform and use windows (if that's even a viable alternative when the time comes). An iMac, no matter how much external crap I can plug into it via thunderbolt is going to be a problem for me to be able to run all of my (very expensive) outboard gear.


----------



## steviewhy

sudo rm -rf /


----------



## MacDoc

Short term there will be powerful machines still available as many apps have not been optimized for the power already there.

We have clients doing high end pro work and still using G4s and G5s - they have outboard cards that still do the job.

One client just bought a Nehalem 2.93 after an 11 year run with his G4s and G5s. Card supplier is offering a sweet deal for his outboard cards so he is moving up now.

Some of the developers like Protools are moving lagging clients forward with deals on cards and more and more processing 

There is a strong supply of MacPros both used and sitting in distribution and in Apple's own warehouses.

There is NOT a big supply of leading edge 3.33 and 12 core 2.66 as they are CTO.

If it gets silly I'm sure we will see some creative use of potential processor upgrades - recall those days??

I had another client who just retired her 533 Dual G4 - perhaps the nicest computer of the day. Moving to a laptop for her work.

So this will not be an immediate doom and gloom except for the very highest end users that need the horsepower and they may indeed have to move to an alternative for their card sets.


----------



## i-rui

Lars said:


> I'd like to know what the dedicated Mac Pro users in this thread will do if the Mac Pro is discontinued entirely and not replaced. Chime in, please? Just curious if you're all going to jump ship to a Windows 7 unit or actually settle for 'less' with a different Mac. I'm generously curious here, not creating confrontation. (Long term solution w/o a Mac Pro - not buying a last generation Mac Pro and hoping it'll last you the next ten years and no longer supporting the latest versions of OS X.)


I'm still happy with my mac pro, and i imagine i still will be for at least a couple of years.

If apple was to abandon the mac pro and not offer a suitable replacement I would build my own custom PC to the specs I'd want.

If the software i wanted to use was still running strong on OS X, i'd make the custom PC a hackintosh, and hopefully continue with my workflow as is.

If the software has migrated to windows or linux then I'd dual boot the machine to help with the transition.

The interesting thing will be when CS6 comes out next year. If Apple really has killed the mac pro and it comes time for me to upgrade, i'd have to choose to stick with OSX or switch my upgrade to windows (yuk).


----------



## Macfury

I have stuck with a MacPro for years, but if the MacPro line-up ended, I would try to work with a lesser Apple machine first. Probably a maxed-out Mini with gobs of external storage. But I'm not doing heavy-duty video editing, either.


----------



## MacDoc

You on Lion yet?? - SOL for 10.6.8 on the Mini. Good bang for the buck but some limitations. By the time you get it rigged with i7 ram and drive it's treading on the portable turf.

You might consider a high clock 13" laptop much easier to configure with multiple drives and up to 16 gigs of RAM and you can work remotely. You would find the 2.8 13" i7 with 4 processing threads pretty similar to what you are used to with yours but adding an SSD to the mix would make magic.

and it runs 10.6.8 just lovely.


----------



## Macfury

MacDoc, I'm going to take your suggestion and throw a Raptor or other fast HD into this machine first. That's a small investment, even with HDs as pricey as they are.


----------



## mrjimmy

MacDoc said:


> I had another client who just retired her 533 Dual G4 - perhaps the nicest computer of the day. Moving to a laptop for her work.


Used this machine for years and loved it! It powered it's way through processor intensive tasks. 

Sold it in 2009 and went to a 2.8 24" iMac. Sometimes I swear it's slower...


----------



## monokitty

Macfury said:


> MacDoc, I'm going to take your suggestion and throw a Raptor or other fast HD into this machine first. That's a small investment, even with HDs as pricey as they are.


Is your boot HD an SSD yet?


----------



## screature

Lars said:


> I'd like to know what the dedicated Mac Pro users in this thread will do if the Mac Pro is discontinued entirely and not replaced. Chime in, please? Just curious if you're all going to jump ship to a Windows 7 unit or actually settle for 'less' with a different Mac. I'm generously curious here, not creating confrontation. (Long term solution w/o a Mac Pro - not buying a last generation Mac Pro and hoping it'll last you the next ten years and no longer supporting the latest versions of OS X.)


I have had my Mac Pro for 5 years. Mainly because it is significantly upgradable. I have upgraded the RAM, the video card the hards drives, both HDs and the boot drive to an SSD and even upgraded the CPUs which I can still upgrade even further to a pair of quad 3.0 GHz CPUs, although at this point in time due to those processors still holding their value it would be too much money for not enough bang for the buck. I have added two eSTAT port multiplier cards and run 12 HDs off of them and could run a total of 20 all at a very reasonable cost.

TBolt does not and will not at any point in the near future allow me to do any of this, most notably at a reasonable price, so if the Mac Pro goes EOL I will continue with the Mac Pro line as long as I can by purchasing within the used market. I would say for me that is at least another 3-5 years maybe more maybe less.

If TBolt matures enough to allow me to have the flexibility that I need in this time frame and the Mini develops enough I could go for a new Mini with TBolt then (if it is still around then) but I will never own an iMac as I do not ever want to be stuck with the limitations that an iiMac presents.

Worst case scenario would be that in 5 years time I may go back to a custom built PC and Windows... I would hate for that to come to pass though.


----------



## screature

broad said:


> its easy to draw comparisons as well towards things like car manufacturer's racing programs, where they spend oodles of money on R&D and testing (which some would say is a waste) but then apply the things they've learned to the cars we drive every day
> 
> that said, its also easy to see how fast the mac pro is fading. i would guess easily more than half of the people who bought a mac pro in 2008 didnt *need* a mac pro, they just needed something more than an imac. *now that the imacs are capable enough of doing what those people (prosumers i suppose) do *those people have dropped the pro like a hot rock due to price (as screature said).
> 
> itll be interesting to see what the next month or two holds. like i think the chief peddler said a few posts back if they do decide to EOL them the mad scramble of people to buy up whats left is going to be pretty epic. i am imagining fisticuffs and people swarming resellers like boxing day at macy's haha


Some things but far from all, like uprgading your GPU, you can't go over 16GB RAM, no inexpensive and vast amount of storage addition as well as other PCIe card expansion possibilities (at least as of now). Also the highest number of cores you can get in an iMac is 4 while it is 12 in a Mac Pro and even then they are i7s not Xeons.

Undoubtedly some "prosumers" who don't care about having a mirror for a monitor have and will see the iMac as an alternative to the Mac Pro because their needs aren't intensive enough and if they don't mind being stuck with the limitations of an iMac then they have a very nice alternative. 

But I still say for the multitude of reasons that I and others have already expressed abandoning the "high-end" pro market would be a mistake for Apple in the long run. Time will tell.


----------



## broad

> Undoubtedly some "prosumers" who don't care about having a mirror for a monitor have and will see the iMac as an alternative to the Mac Pro because their needs aren't intensive enough and if they don't mind being stuck with the limitations of an iMac then they have a very nice alternative.


this is the essence of my point. at this point in time it seems to me that there are a lot more people willing to make those compromises than those who arent.


----------



## MacDoc

You need two Raptors and we think the 450s are at a sweet price point.

To test the theory you are welcome to arrange to borrow a 240 SSD - stick it on a sled and put a fresh OS, your main app and a few key files and see how you fare.
Then report back on the results for your actual workflow.

2 x 450 Velociraptors will give you about the same sustained speed as the single 240 SSD.


----------



## Guest

broad said:


> this is the essence of my point. at this point in time it seems to me that there are a lot more people willing to make those compromises than those who arent.


Lots comes down to price. It's a hard sell to get the budget for Mac Pro's these days (even when they are honestly needed) when the bean counters, who think they are educated enough about "commuter things" look at the iMacs and say "Look, it's got a big screen and it's fast and it's 1/3 the price of what you're asking for, so just buy that one instead."

I'm hoping that all this is misinterpreted signs and that there is in fact something setup and waiting to be the successor to the Mac Pro and not just Apple EOLing it. While it would suck to have a lesser machine at least it might be semi-salvagable in that the new machine will have at least _some_ of the Mac Pro features. It could also mean that a new machine will have some of the features, but at the same time Apple might actually roll out (or work with a good company to roll out) some real Thunderbolt stuff that will fill the gap. I'm not 100% against thunderbolt by any means, it has some great potential ... but at this point it's still potential.

I've heard rumblings for years about rack mounted machines designed to replace Mac Pro's AND X-serves .. since the X-serves are gone I don't know how viable that whole approach would be, but if Apple is indeed still going to target the true Pro market with these then an optionally rack mountable setup would not be amiss in most setups, especially if it doesn't have to be rack mounted. Apple has usually been pretty good for that stuff, and since they are not going for density it wouldn't be like the X-server (one rack space). There are some viable potential directions they could take that, while not perfect, might still give the pro's a choice of something besides iMacs, Mini's and portables. Also prosumers have wanted something "bigger" than an iMac but cheaper than a mac pro for years ... maybe Apple will take this opportunity to fill that hole here. Something with a couple of drive bays, a couple of PCIe slots and some RAM slots (more than 2!) might be enough for them to spread this out over the pro and prosumer market -- especially like I said if they also work with someone to get some real viable thunderbolt stuff shipping that could fill the gaps (and not cost an arm and a leg).


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## MacDoc

_when you wish upon a star_......da da da


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## ScorpioCa

Since I got my new MacPro and put those two Raptors in Raid thanks to MacDoc, I've almost double my work capacity... too bad they are 300s compared to those new 600s - but I'm now doing twice as many tasks in the same amount of time - things as simple as saving a document when from 10 seconds to barely 2 - and I can compare it easily with my other "normal" drives. It's truly worth it. And the 6-core is doing a great job at 3.33 and 24 GB ram. NO Way can you get this kind of result on an iMac... plus I'm running 6 monitors... 

Mac Doc has really outfitting and customized my MacPro for me and the investment has been nothing compared to the results and gains... I'm doing twice the work which means twice the $$$/per hour.:heybaby:


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## MacDoc

Thanks - if you look at the other Nehalem thread the video guy is also blown away by the 3.33.

That said the 2.66 12 core will Turbo -boost to 3.33 when all cores are not in play and will walk away from the 3.33 in AfterEffects or any other application that uses all the processing threads.

ALL clients have been very pleased with twin 10K Velociraptors when doing any sort of imaging work.


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## broad

aaaaaand just like that the intelligent discussion ends and we're back to once more hearing about what "clients" have been pleased with


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## broad

screature said:


> Some things but far from all, like uprgading your GPU, you can't go over 16GB RAM, no inexpensive and vast amount of storage addition as well as other PCIe card expansion possibilities (at least as of now). Also the highest number of cores you can get in an iMac is 4 while it is 12 in a Mac Pro and even then they are i7s not Xeons.
> 
> Undoubtedly some "prosumers" who don't care about having a mirror for a monitor have and will see the iMac as an alternative to the Mac Pro because their needs aren't intensive enough and if they don't mind being stuck with the limitations of an iMac then they have a very nice alternative.
> 
> But I still say for the multitude of reasons that I and others have already expressed abandoning the "high-end" pro market would be a mistake for Apple in the long run. Time will tell.


fwiw screature the current models will actually go up to 32GB of RAM. the rest of your points are totally valid and i am 100% on board, but just FYI...


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## screature

broad said:


> fwiw screature the current models will actually go up to 32GB of RAM. the rest of your points are totally valid and i am 100% on board, but just FYI...


Yes I stand corrected.. I recently saw that myself but the max RAM of a current iMac is still a third of that of a current gen top of the line Mac Pro... price aside, at 96GB.


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## ehMax

broad said:


> aaaaaand just like that the intelligent discussion ends and we're back to once more hearing about what "clients" have been pleased with


broad, we've spoken about this before, and resulted in a 3 day ban from ehMac. Feel free to ignore any particular member on ehMac in your user profile. You need to knock it off with the abrasive tone to other members like Macdoc and PM-R. This is the 3rd warning and next one will result in a much longer ban.


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## Niteshooter

Lars said:


> I'd like to know what the dedicated Mac Pro users in this thread will do if the Mac Pro is discontinued entirely and not replaced. Chime in, please? Just curious if you're all going to jump ship to a Windows 7 unit or actually settle for 'less' with a different Mac. I'm generously curious here, not creating confrontation. (Long term solution w/o a Mac Pro - not buying a last generation Mac Pro and hoping it'll last you the next ten years and no longer supporting the latest versions of OS X.)


That's a good question, OS support would probably become the reason we have to consider getting rid of our Mac Pros though having said that I still use a G5 tower at home.

I have win 8 dev on a laptop it's ok..... But it's sure not OSX....

My gut feeling is to stock up if the bottom falls out of the market.


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## hayesk

broad said:


> aaaaaand just like that the intelligent discussion ends and we're back to once more hearing about what "clients" have been pleased with


So what? Do their opinions not matter? If he needs a Mac Pro to please his clients, then it's valid.


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## WCraig

Is the Mac Pro dead? | ZDNet



> _Summary: Apple’s iconic tower system, the Mac Pro, is the slowest selling Mac. With the advent of ultrafast thunderbolt I/O on everything from the MacBook Air to quad core iMacs, do users need the Mac Pro anymore?_


Nothing in this article that we haven't covered but a fairly concise summary of the issues. And the 'Talkback' comments descended to name-calling just as fast as the discussion here! ;-)

Craig


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## Lawrence

I think that if it was unsuccessful it would have been discounted on Black Friday.


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## Lawrence

ehMax said:


> broad, we've spoken about this before, and resulted in a 3 day ban from ehMac. Feel free to ignore any particular member on ehMac in your user profile. You need to knock it off with the abrasive tone to other members like Macdoc and PM-R. This is the 3rd warning and next one will result in a much longer ban.


I tend to concur, ehmac is a place to help others, Not to attack others that are offering help,
I find it sad that some of our members have time on their hands to attack others,
Rather than offer positive help themselves.

Sometimes a wake up call is a good thing, Take note.

Thank you ehmac, The best community on the web for help.


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