33 replies to this topic

[sduf]

Hiya,

Hey wondering if anyone has opinion on this 'rumour...'

I pretty much just use my laptop for everything these days and an old powerpc for a server...  anyone gaming on mac-pros?

s

[pantherv]

Well i would agree that the tower is in the twilight of its career, i still like having a tower i can configure and mix and match a bit, i love having a dual boot system on 2 separate drives.

[Janichsan]

That would be one more step for Apple away from a professional computer manufacturer to a pure toy maker.

[Wumpus]

I've never owned a Mac Pro, always work/game on an iMac or laptop.

[Sneaky Snake]

tBH i don't think it would be that huge of a deal. I've heard rumors that they are looking to introduce high end mac mini and iMac to try to match some of the need of the high end users. (hopefully they release a Mac Midi!! )

The current iMac with thunderbolt is a hugely powerful machine. It can easily satisfy 99% of the high end market. The highend iMac is actually a more powerful option right now then the base Mac Pro

Base Mac Pro ($2600 CDN):
Quad 2.8 Ghz Nehalem
5770 1 GB
3 GB of RAM (lol)
1 TB HDD
no display

Top End iMac (configered to $2509 - $100 cheaper)
Quad 3.4 GHz Sandy Bridge CPU - significantly more powerful architecture then nehalem
6970M 2 GB
8 GB of RAM
1 TB HDD
27" Apple Cinema display ($1000 value)

Literally every spec on the iMac as just as good, or better then the Mac Pro's

Now obviously the Mac Pro configered up in 6,8, 12 core options is a beast of a machine. But it's also costing $3500 and up at that point. Your market is getting pretty small.

Also, consider the rise of thunderbolt. It allows me (in the very near future) to plug in the latest and largest GPU to my iMac via thunderbolt, and drive a ton of displays off of it, offload some of my number crunching to the GPU, or whatever I see fit.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Devil's Advocate here... To be honest with you it's not just specs and upgradability which are big deals to some people being able to use the same standard PCI cards that the PC uses. The Mac Pro also had a big case with a lot of airflow to help keep the components cooler. So an iMac may have better specs on the box but then have to throttle them down to keep them from overheating. That is unless Apple engineered some better cooling to go along with upping the specs. My iMac sounds like a wind tunnel if I'm doing anything but leaving it to idle and the top is always quite hot.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

The iMac vs. Mac Pro specs mostly just show that Apple isn't much interested in keeping the MP up to date. There's still quite a lot that can be done in a tower that will never be possible in an all-in-one or portable. Still, pro users are hardly being addressed, and they've priced the MP out of the high-end consumer range, so it would hardly be surprising if sales are suffering. I'm not going to be willing to give up a tower for a long time, but I also see absolutely no reason to buy one from Apple when I can get better specs (for my needs - I don't need multiple CPUs or ECC RAM) for half the price by building my own.

[Eric5h5]

What I primarily need is 1) a decent graphics card, which rules out the Mac mini, and 2) not having a built-in screen, which rules out the iMac.  Secondarily, decent internal expansion, which also rules out both of those, and it's nice to add stuff like RAM and HDs in less than a minute.  I don't care about the Mac Pro so much as it exists in its current form, as long as they have some kind of headless option that's not horrible for specs/expansion.  Do we really need Xeons at this point?

--Eric

[Sargiel]

Didn't Apple Insider also predict the death of the Mac Mini ? And here we are two significant updates later .. I'd take it with a pinch of salt.

[devSin]

Yeah, but the Mac mini actually sells. They're just low margin kit.

If true, it's a shame. I was curious to see what they were going to do about Thunderbolt.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

Not having a built in screen is a good point too. I mean what other Mac can you get to use with whatever screen you want and have a high end experience? Certainly not a Mac Mini...   I mean some people use Mac Minis as Home Theater Computers but they are not high end play all your games in 1080p HD resolution deals.

Anyway I would take this rumor as just what it is... a rumor.

BTW, it's true that the Mac Pro is more expandable but you can upgrade the RAM on the iMac in less than a minute too... in fact that's the only thing you can upgrade in less than a minute. There's a hatch on the bottom of the unit that opens up easily and you can slide in the RAM into the easily accessible RAM bay at the bottom. A lot easier and quicker than upgrading the RAM on a Mac Mini.

[Sneaky Snake]

Well there's currently nothing to upgrade the Mac Pro to, other then a slight GPU speed bump. It's using the latest and greatest generation of Xeon's that have been released so far. Intel is taking absolutely forever to get the Xeon variant of Sandy Bridge out. It's coming in a few months.

They could upgrade the GPU's, but the 5870 is still a very potent card. It's the same level of performance as a 6950, so you wouldn't see that tremendous of gains going to a 6970, other then maybe 2 GB's of VRAM. I really wish the would bump the minimum amount of RAM to at least 6 GB's in the Mac Pro, it's tri-channel. So it's best if you have sticks in multiples of 3 (eg: 3 or 6 sticks)

In the case of the iMac, I don't see it having the screen built in as a negative. It's got the best rated screen on the market under $1200. I guess if you want to use an inferior screen go ahead.

I would absolutely love a 'Mac Midi': Standard processors instead of Xeon, and decent graphics options, all in a smaller form factor then the Mac Pro, but still a tower. They could easily do some sort of mini-ITX build that would be about the size of 4 Mac Mini's stacked on top of eachother, but would allow for any CPU and GPU, as well as 2 HDD bays. Only downside is they typically only have 2 RAM slots. For me it wouldn't matter, cuz I'm fine with 8 GB, but for many pro users they require tons of RAM. ( I don't consider 8 GB sticks an option cuz they cost an arm and a leg)

[Smoke_Tetsu]

I'm not speaking for myself when I say this but some people care more about screen size and price than resolution or quality. I know... shocking right? There wouldn't be such a huge market for HDTVs if that wasn't true and none of the mass market ones one typically gets go above 1080p resolution even those 70+ inch ones.

Also the 27 inch iMac display is a great one but it's not perfect and can easily get defects I have noticed.... I had my display replaced once and I'm having a defect with the replacement panel which I can't have replaced at the moment because I just had the drives replaced and applecare is not "all you can eat" apparently.

[Marathon4ever]

Eric5h5, on 01 November 2011 - 01:28 PM, said:

What I primarily need is 1) a decent graphics card, which rules out the Mac mini, and 2) not having a built-in screen, which rules out the iMac.  Secondarily, decent internal expansion, which also rules out both of those, and it's nice to add stuff like RAM and HDs in less than a minute.  I don't care about the Mac Pro so much as it exists in its current form, as long as they have some kind of headless option that's not horrible for specs/expansion.  Do we really need Xeons at this point?

--Eric

I agree. As long as Apple has an expandable tower of some sort with slots for a full video card (or multiple ones), then I don't care what they do with the "Mac Pro".

And I also never was keen on the Xeon/server parts that the Mac Pro used from the beginning.  I was always hoping they would throw a Core 2 Extreme chip in there.  I'm not sure whether there's a i7 extreme CPU, or not, but that would be much better than some new Xeon.  The next tower Apple releases should be made of high-end desktop parts, like the towers of the past, not more unnecessarily expensive server parts.

[Sneaky Snake]

The Xeon CPU's are required if you want dual socket (8 core and up), they also offer better performance over standard CPU's (not sure in what, but I know they do)

However, I would love to see them drop the Xeon CPU's as well. Personally I'm fine with just 4 cores. Very few tasks will use more then that (especially since the newer intel i7's hyperthread: 4 core, 8 thread.) The cost of a 2500 (3.3 GHz 4C/4T, 2600 3.4 GHz 4C/8T, and 2700 (3.5 GHz 4C/8T) is $200, $300, and $400. Compared to prices in the the Xeon chips which start at like $500 and go right up to $1500.

Imagine putting that extra couple hundred into an SSD or a better GPU. Your computer would be a way more well rounded machine

[edddeduck]

The most powerful iMac is a 3.4GHz 4 Core machine with 16GB of RAM. The most powerful MacPro is a 3Ghz 12 Core machine with 64GB of RAM.

The market for a Pro is more in high end studios and development, the thing with a MacPro is you can set one up and then it does not get old for years. I have an original 8 core MacPro (2007) and even today it is faster than the latest iMac (with the CPU upgrade) for every high performance task from compiling to video encoding. That is a 4+ year old machine folks!

I don't think Apple will spend lots of money on the MacPro line but with a few small updates to the motherboard (Thunderbolt etc) Apple will be able to have the high end workstation for the people that really need it. For your average person a 27" i7 iMac will be enough but if you need REAL power combined with lots of RAM then the MacPro (even the current 18 month old model) blows the latest iMac out the water! I think we have to note that if you do buy a MacPro unlike the iMac's it will last for years, my work machine has lasted for 4 years so far and is still crazy powerful! This longevity is one of the reasons for the lower sales once you own one you don't need to buy another one for years.

Edwin

[The Liberator]

edddeduck, on 03 November 2011 - 08:58 AM, said:

The most powerful iMac is a 3.4GHz 4 Core machine with 16GB of RAM. The most powerful MacPro is a 3Ghz 12 Core machine with 64GB of RAM.

The market for a Pro is more in high end studios and development, the thing with a MacPro is you can set one up and then it does not get old for years. I have an original 8 core MacPro (2007) and even today it is faster than the latest iMac (with the CPU upgrade) for every high performance task from compiling to video encoding. That is a 4+ year old machine folks!…

For the little I know of video production, I agree.

Lib.

[Tibur]

Remember when Apple told us we didn't need floppy drives anymore?  It appears to me Apple is looking at the post-PC world and realizing that, for the vast majority of people out there (i.e., not including those who develop games, edit videos, desktop publish, etc.), all we will need (and all we will want to pay for) in that world is a fast, reliable, secure connection to the cloud and a means of interfacing with it.

[Eric5h5]

Tibur, on 03 November 2011 - 01:01 PM, said:

for the vast majority of people out there (i.e., not including those who develop games, edit videos, desktop publish, etc.)

It wasn't so long ago that Apple was all about enabling all users to be the ones editing videos, desktop publishing, etc.  Now they're all just content-consuming sheep?

--Eric

[Janichsan]

Tibur, on 03 November 2011 - 01:01 PM, said:

Remember when Apple told us we didn't need floppy drives anymore?  It appears to me Apple is looking at the post-PC world and realizing that, for the vast majority of people out there (i.e., not including those who develop games, edit videos, desktop publish, etc.), all we will need (and all we will want to pay for) in that world is a fast, reliable, secure connection to the cloud and a means of interfacing with it.

By that logic, it would make more sense for Apple to keep the Mac Pro. Video editing, developing programs – that's exactly the stuff that need all the power it can get. For the mere consumer, cloud based "post-PC" toys might be sufficient, but those aren't the target audience for the Mac Pro.