Resurrect Steve Jobs

[Darryl Ramm]

Again 12 physical core/24 virtual sharing a common on-chip cache is going to be pretty powerful. Wanting more than that assumes you have a workload that scales and scales in a price/performance justifiable way (think >$2k for a bare second chip even if there was somewhere to put it) including taking the possible performance hit for the inter chip NUMA communication (but some workloads might benefit from improved aggregate memory bandwidth and cache size they are still unlikely to scale that well). We'll need to wait and see actual performance results but I think it is misleading just to assume now this system might be under powered. Expensive quite likely, but underpowered ah not do fast. Lack of PCIe3 slots, limited internal PCIe-Flash, silly round packaging (non-rackable, no front panel convenience connectors, etc.) are more absolute issues to me and I expect others. The price may be an issue as well...

Darryl

[Bob Olhsson]

I don't understand why they would use a year old Xeon if it's only single CPU. The real Mac Pros introduced brand new, more powerful Xeons prior to them becoming generally available. This sounds like they took some leftover Xeons, and added faster memory and storage to make it feel like an upgrade. I think I remember reading that Intel made the real Mac Pro motherboards. They've announced they will no longer be making motherboards so that may also be part of this story. This thing also appears to only have five year old Ethernet while there is a speed revolution going on in that world audio-wise.

I think Apple has grossly underestimated the importance of slots as opposed to CPU and GPU horsepower. People who don't just move to a PC are far more likely to buy a mini and an expansion chassis with the idea of replacing the mini every couple years.

In my experience only audio people are really hung up on using Macs. Real Final Cut Pro created the possibility of pros editing video at home. It was a Nikon that could do a job that had previously required a Hassleblad. I never met anybody who has used both that didn't think Media Composer wasn't better, only that it was too expensive for an individual to own. Now Apple has replaced the Nikon SLR with a point and shoot and they've replaced the Mac Pro with a Swiss Army Knife.

[Philthy]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

I don't understand why they would use a year old Xeon if it's only single CPU. The real Mac Pros introduced brand new, more powerful Xeons prior to them becoming generally available. This sounds like they took some leftover Xeons, and added faster memory and storage to make it feel like an upgrade. I think I remember reading that Intel made the real Mac Pro motherboards. They've announced they will no longer be making motherboards so that may also be part of this story. This thing also appears to only have five year old Ethernet while there is a speed revolution going on in that world audio-wise.

I think Apple has grossly underestimated the importance of slots as opposed to CPU and GPU horsepower. People who don't just move to a PC are far more likely to buy a mini and an expansion chassis with the idea of replacing the mini every couple years.

In my experience only audio people are really hung up on using Macs. Real Final Cut Pro created the possibility of pros editing video at home. It was a Nikon that could do a job that had previously required a Hassleblad. I never met anybody who has used both that didn't think Media Composer wasn't better, only that it was too expensive for an individual to own. Now Apple has replaced the Nikon SLR with a point and shoot and they've replaced the Mac Pro with a Swiss Army Knife.

A system with 2x $500 video cards is not the right tool for most audio production setups. I don't get the feeling that Apple was thinking of us when they designed this. Having Pixar pimp it kind of tells me where their thinking is. This is one audio guy who is not hung up on Macs any longer. I say get out of Apple's way and let them focus on making phones and gadgets.

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by Philthy

A system with 2x $500 video cards is not the right tool for most audio production setups.

I say get out of Apple's way and let them focus on making phones and gadgets.

Yep

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

I don't understand why they would use a year old Xeon if it's only single CPU. The real Mac Pros introduced brand new, more powerful Xeons prior to them becoming generally available. This sounds like they took some leftover Xeons, and added faster memory and storage to make it feel like an upgrade. I think I remember reading that Intel made the real Mac Pro motherboards. They've announced they will no longer be making motherboards so that may also be part of this story. This thing also appears to only have five year old Ethernet while there is a speed revolution going on in that world audio-wise.

What year old Xeon? Where does this misinformation keep coming from? What Apple have described is a 12 physical core Xeon E5. That would be new technology from Intel. 12 physical cores, 24 virtual cores on one chip.

Expect this box to have WiFi 802.11ac, 10Gbit Ethernet is another issue. Lots of places are on 1Gbit and its unclear what copper or optical interface to put on a box like this and pluggable media interfaces tend to be expensive. Do many folks have 10Gbit to their DAW boxes today? Copper or optical? I expect Apple's answer will be to connect via Thunderbolt... oops need a thunderbolt-2 10Gbit interface... they exist e.g http://www.sonnettech.com/product/ec...beadapter.html. My biased thinking is 10Gbit starts to get most interesting for large NAS users and most users across all fields won't use this on a workstation today. PCIe card slots would be my preferred way to add to a system.

Darryl

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

PCIe card slots would be my preferred way to add to a system.
Darryl

Which is why everybody wants to resurrect Steve Jobs on this thread

But in the act of all fairness Steve did a lot of unpopular things as well

[Darryl Ramm]

The irony is Jobs loved the closed box. The whole Mac vs. Lisa thing and more. I expect he got to see/influence the early thinking of this box and I wonder if Apple designers are bravely (and badly) trying to carry on his beliefs.

[Kasper]

It's the Cube all over again.

Apple will loose a ton of money on it and never recoup it's R&D.
And probably never make a true pro machine again.

But ultimately they won't care. Because they'll make a few billion on the iWatch that quarter...... (we are chump change at Apple)

However, I do believe they seriously underestimate the trickle down effect.
Apple has had a darling relationship with media professionals for a long time. As less of us use their machines, it will have an impact. Unfortunately, not a good one.


kasper

[EdFaris]

Don't get me wrong, the design is cool, I just think for them to say that it will sit on the desktop as a selling point or that being part of the design is not that big a deal to me.
I guess the thing i want the most out of my desktop is my hardrive expandability. I used to have all four hardrive slots filled, and I had TDM cards and a UAD quad card.
I was hoping to go HDX but now I don't care and i'l never do a windows based machine.
So I guess it is HD Native from here on out.

[BobbyDazzler]

I'm really not that interested in having a black bucket with a million peripherals hanging off it (no matter how quick it is).
I'm guessing my current Westy will be my last Mac...or at least Mac Pro.