Apple Mac Pro Ping!
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Posted on 06/10/2013 12:52:41 PM PDT by Yossarian
Apple plots new Mac Pro, eyes desktop innovation
Summary: Mac Pro looked a bit like something Darth Vader would use to operate the Death Star and is an eighth the size of the previous version.
By Larry Dignan for Between the Lines | June 10, 2013 -- 18:12 GMT (11:12 PDT)
Apple said that it will keep the Mac Pro alive---even though it hasn't been updated forever. In a sneak peak, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said it rethought what a desktop should be.
The Mac Pro, which caters to video editors and folks that need more horse power, was outlined in a sneak peak from Schiller. The desktop is a black cylinder looking thing. "Can't innovate anymore my ass," said Schiller.
Mac Pro looked a bit like something Darth Vader would use to operate the Death Star and is an eighth the size of the previous version. The latest Pro will have the latest Xeon cores, ECC memory and Flash internal storage with PCIe controller. Expansion is external for RAID and other additions with Thunderbolt 2.
Meanwhile, there are dual workstation GPUs. The Mac Pro more than doubles the performance of the previous model and supports 4K displays. Final Cut Pro 10 will updated for the new Mac Pro.
Schiller said that Mac Pro will appear later this year. Pricing is to be determined. "This is without a doubt the future of the pro desktop."
From All Things Digital:
Calling last year’s Apple Mac Pro an upgrade is being pretty generous. Aside from a slight bump in processor speed and built-in RAM, there wasn’t much new about the desktop PC. But Apple CEO Tim Cook tried to smooth ruffled feathers by saying that the company was “working on something really great” in 2013.
Well, we got our first glimpse of what Apple’s been working on, and it was a showstopper.
Apple’s Phil Schiller gave WWDC attendees a sneak peek at the new Mac Pro, and gone is the large, industrial tower (which was often compared to a cheese grater) and in its place is a sleek, black cynlindrical device that’s one-eighth of the volume of the current model.
“Like with the MacBook Air, our engineering team has thought about the technology today and what would be possible with a new Mac desktop,” Schiller said. “It is a Mac unlike any we’ve ever made,” he added later.
Built around a new thermal core, inside the machine is a 12-core Intel Xeon processor, which offers double the CPU power of the prior model. Rather than a hard drive, the new Mac Pro uses high-speed flash memory, and it’s the first Mac to come with dual AMD FirePro GPUs for 2.5 times the graphics performance of its predecessor.
The Mac Pro is also be equipped with six Thunderbolt 2 ports for faster transfer speeds (20 Gibabits per second, to be exact), and can be used with super-high-definition 4K displays out of the box. Apple made no mention of an optical drive, but other connections include four USB 3.0 ports and two Ethernet jacks. More of a whizz-bang feature than anything, when the computer senses that you’re turning it around to access the ports, it will automatically illuminate them, so you can more easily plug in cables.
Though the Mac Pro is still aimed at professionals rather than consumers, the unique design of the computer is sure to draw the curiosity of many. To punctuate that point, Schiller said, “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass,” taking a jab at its competitors.
Earlier in the keynote, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “For us, it’s never been about making the most. We care more that the Mac is number one in customer satisfaction and quality.”
He noted that the MacBook is the number one notebook in the U.S., and said in the last five years Mac has been growing 15 percent per year, compared to an average of three percent a year for the PC market.
Assembled in the U.S., the Mac Pro will be available later this year, but pricing was not announced at this time.
Processor is server version of IVB with no on-chip graphics
With wheels and a new paint job, it’s R2-D2.
Some people are complaining that it’s not expansion-capable. Apple argues that the speed of Thunderbolt means you can expand outside the cylinder.
Then people complain that this means a rats-nest of wires on the desktop. To those I say, buy an old Mac Pro chassis and put your new Mac Pro inside it, along with all your expansion devices.
jealosy is not an embarrassing emotion, no?
At first I wondered how they could possibly get enough cooling with a single fan pulling air up that triangular stovepipe. Then I realized that with the right fan design they could create a vortex inside the stovepipe that would cause the air to contact the heat sinks multiple times as it snakes its way up.
Ha! Between you two, we could open up a Mac Pro accessory shop....
I wonder how much the replacement nuclear fuel rods for the Mac Pro will cost.
There’s an E-Cat in there, doncha know!
That’s why it won’t be out till fall — they’re waiting on Andrea Rossi.
>> Cant innovate anymore my ass, said Schiller.
>> you can stop talking out of your ass
It’s packed with a lot of expensive, ass-kicking gear.
I like the idea of a large, unified cooling core which makes sense with the hardware wrapped around it. The cylindrical packaging is neat looking for the desk environment, but not so good for the rack.
I’m curious about airflow dB.
My only problem with that is no ports on the front. None. Need to plug in a USB flash drive, etc. spin the whole thing around, bulky power cable and all. Not smart.
Yeah, I hear you. What I did for my laptop-turned server is add a USB hub that goes to an "low visibility" shelf below the desk surface the machine sits on.
This way I can plug in a number of USB items - some temporary - (flash drives, graphics tablets, memory card readers, Blu-Ray drive) while still keeping a clean uncluttered surface in front of the machine. (This surface inevitably gets filled with paperwork and other junk.)
Mac Pro looked a bit like something Darth Vader would use to operate the Death Star and is an eighth the size of the previous version... more than doubles the performance of the previous model and supports 4K displays. Final Cut Pro 10 will updated for the new Mac Pro.
I’m still using a G5 at work and it’s still fast for Photoshop, although I’m not trying any video. IMHO, at the high end, the number of applications that really demand the latest and greatest keep diminishing.
I have a cheap Core i5 laptop that does 1080P video from my DSLR without complaint. I do most of my basic video editing on my iPhone, which is a far cry from a Mac Pro.
Sad but true (this coming from a G5 owner) - every (Intel-based) Mac Mini put out the last 3 years will lay waste to the PowerMac G5.
The flip side is you don’t have an oversized mostly empty box trying to contain everything, much of which still lives outside it anyway.
Essentially, the new Mac Pro moved all the mass storage except for the initial SSD mass storage to external devices, connected by the Thunderbolt 2.0 connection running at 20 gigabits per second data transfer rate (which is over three times faster than the 6 gigabits per second transfer rate of Serial ATA III used by high-end desktop PC’s). I can see a lot of demand for RAID 5 storage arrays connected back to the this new Mac Pro storing several tens of terabytes of data.
They really could have used a few PCI slots for things like 10GB or 40GB ethernet, and whatever comes down the pike. I wish they still kept the “big box” format around in conjunction with the new “tube” design....
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