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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

End of Mac Pro???

Jaime Vallés said:
That would seriously rock. BOXX (or some other boutique PC company) getting a license to build OSX Workstations only. Not laptops, not all-in-ones, just desktop workstations. Apple wouldn't be in charge of service, BOXX would be. Available only online, not at the Apple retail stores. And it wouldn't be a hackintosh.

I'd buy one in a heartbeat as well.
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+1. Despite Jobs' vision of strict integration and not licensing, I do feel this is the one product Apple should seriously consider outsourcing the hardware. Because for them, a $100 million or so annual business (or whatever the MP does in sales) is chump change, but for another company they would be absolutely thrilled to focus exclusively on high-end hardware that integrated with OSX. So I feel like the right company would really pour their heart into and bust their ass to make it the best possible product.

Make it modular/upgradable and sell it exclusively through the Apple store or perhaps a few dealers, it would do well. I would buy one in a heartbeat as well.
 
Chad Lancaster said:
if that happens, you got one customer here!
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If it does happen, it won't happen overnight. I'm not going to be another BOXX, VooDoo (defunct / absorbed by HP), Alienware (absorbed by Dell), etc.. I won't be going into business to sell off-the-shelf parts in a semi-custom case. The world doesn't need another workstation integrator using commodity parts and installing a commodity OS on it. The world doesn't need another operating system, there's already three great choices out there, plus some lesser ones. Apple may not have the latest, most powerful system you can buy. But they have style and they know how to tune their hardware. With SGI gone, Sun relegated to making Oracle appliances and if Apple shoots the Mac Pro in the head, then all we have is common PC's. I'm sorry but installing transparent side panels, black-lights, colored cables and having stupid graphics and decals all over your video card's, does not make your system cool.


Gavin Greenwalt said:
If Apple discontinues the Mac Pro a lot of people will learn a valuable lesson in vendor lock-in. The lesson isn't that you can't rely on PCs, it's that you shouldn't rely on a single PC manufacturer.
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Sure, but many of us don't rely on a single one. There's more going on here than vendor lock-in. That's just one side-effect that will be mostly visible on the indie owner/op and small boutique level. For those of us who run every platform as it is, life just goes on... Doesn't mean we will be happy about it. Apple killing the Mac Pro would in turn kill a lot of other great products that were built around it. I seriously doubt they will kill it off... I do believe that it will undergo a major change in the near future. And it needs to. The current design is pretty stale.


Gavin Greenwalt said:
http://boxxtech.com/
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I'm not trying to bash the BOXX here, but meh...


Maxi Claudio said:
Who cares about the maker of an Intel box?
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People should. If they did, they might actually see who does what to tune for performance. They might see who just throws commodity parts into a commodity case, after paying too much for the parts, then places a huge mark-up on it.

Even though I have been out of the custom workstation and performance PC biz for close to 12 years, I still build all the PCs used by myself and those who work for me in my various other businesses. But even with that, building workstations where I pick all the parts, I still am unable to build the systems that I REALLY WANT TO USE! There are parts I want that just don't exist. Some of my first goals would be to address those issues.


Anyway, now I'm talking a bit crazy. I'm actually thinking I might want to throw my hat back in the ring here, regardless of what happens anywhere else. May as well, right? I just don't know if that's what I want right now. I'd better go walk it off before I get serious.
 
Apple are freakin idiots if they think they should stop selling Mac Pro's because they have declined in sales the last two years... They haven't upgraded it since summer 2010!!!
Of course people won't buy hardware today that's not on par with what you get on the market. They still have the same price. I bought a PC-system recently that was three times faster then a $6000 Mac Pro and I got it for half the price. People aren't stupid and buy it just because it has an Apple on the cover, if you buy a Mac Pro you look at what's inside, you care about performance and you know it's too old. Macbook Pro's has been updated, they are pretty up to date so of course people who bought Mac Pro's before start buying Macbook Pro's instead.

Yes, I understand that Thunderbolt might kill the Mac Pro because you could in theory create a system that works in the same way with external PCI-E boxes and such, but if Apple renewed the Mac Pro with up to date hardware, they will see that they will sell. The whole reason I bought a PC was because Apple didn't have that hardware and I needed more then a Macbook Pro.

But then again, Apple doesn't care about professionals, they care about profit and they aren't a company who works towords professionals as their main base customers, remember that.
 
jake blackstone said:
If Apple decides to discontinue the Mac Pro series and then separates OSX from their hardware sales, users will be able to make an educated choice of hardware, OS and software. The fact of the matter- all of today's 3 main operating systems- OSX, LINUX and WIN run on the same hardware. I would love to be able to choose my own hardware. No one will ever will have to worry about inferior GPU support on a Mac or any other craziness, that Apple tends to go through periodically. Personally, I feel it will be a relief not to use Mac Pro hardware anymore...
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I agree heartily, especially with your comment on inferior GPU support!
 
Apple has "different" clients now we had our time. Its all about i not Pro.

iMovie Pro (hahaha) should have been an indication.(I refuse to call it FCP)

Good thing Red is working on a T-Bolt rocket. I was looking forward to getting another tower guess I'll have to stick wit the lappy and iMac. That dragon DIY kit is looking more and more tempting.
 
Josh Snyder said:
Get PC with Windows 7. The most pefect machine for creative inviduals. You have the most power and control you can get with any computer that can run needed softwares. PC gives you the freedom Apple doesn't have.
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Amen, I've been a Mac fan boy since '92 when I was a kid. I understand where apple currently stands in the computing world and have moved on. I use both Mac and PC I own 6 computers half and half its the only way to go. Just wait until windows 8 comes out its written from the ground up OSX was written ten years ago and you can tell. Have any of you guys gotten a chance to play with the developers W8 its amazing. Windows is gonna make a come backin the creative world. At the end of the day a computer is a computer.

Jeff how is Boxx meh? Explain your logic?
 
Christoffer Glans said:
Apple are freakin idiots if they think they should stop selling Mac Pro's because they have declined in sales the last two years... They haven't upgraded it since summer 2010!!!
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...Never mind that there was nothing newer or faster to upgrade it to. At least not until just under 3 months ago when the new E-series 8 and 10 core Xeons showed up in the channel. And they're not voltage compatible with the current Mac Pro hardware and super expensive. Their GPU selection could use some serious work... I feel it's more dismal now than it has been in a long, long time... Probably since '06. There are two faster Xeon 6-core offerings they could provide. The 3.06GHz option is no improvement over the 2.93GHz, but at a higher price, so why bother? The 3.4GHz option is there, but like most PC vendors, Apple is ignoring it. Why? Because it's not cost-effective. Sure, if they offered them, people would buy them, but whatever...

Of course people won't buy hardware today that's not on par with what you get on the market. They still have the same price. I bought a PC-system recently that was three times faster then a $6000 Mac Pro and I got it for half the price.
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What is this magical PC you speak of that is 3X faster than a $6K Mac Pro? I know what $6K buys me in the Mac world... There's nothing else out there that's "three times faster" for less than the Mac Pro price. Faster for a bit less, sure. three times? nope. If you're talking about an overclocked i7 desktop system, you're delusional.

Yes, I understand that Thunderbolt might kill the Mac Pro because you could in theory create a system that works in the same way with external PCI-E boxes and such
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I can assure you that Apple is not thinking about PCIe expansion boxes via Thunderbolt. They like self-containment. If they're going to connect something to Thunderbolt, it's going to be a self-contained appliance type device. Self-contained RAIDs and such.

but if Apple renewed the Mac Pro with up to date hardware, they will see that they will sell. The whole reason I bought a PC was because Apple didn't have that hardware and I needed more then a Macbook Pro.
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So, what is Apple going to upgrade the Mac Pro with? You do realize that the latest and greatest server/workstation chipset they can use is still the Intel 5500 series, namely the 5520. The chipset that has been in the Mac Pro (and every other good Xeon-based system) for the past 3 years now... right? Intel has yet to release something to replace it. They have pushed dates back multiple times and now it looks like they may have canceled the next iteration altogether and will be skipping a generation, releasing the following one early next year along with the upcoming CPUs, that seem to be ready now. So, until updates their chipset and CPU offerings, you won't see a new Mac Pro. You won't see new workstations from HP, Dell or others, either. Oh sure, you'll see some new model numbers and a few changes to component selection, but nothing really new. As for those E-Series Xeons that are out now, I don't see Apple wasting resources to support them. An even smaller cross-section of the Mac Pro market would be interested in them and they would have to produce a new logic board and cooling system to accommodate them for relatively little gain with most software.

But then again, Apple doesn't care about professionals, they care about profit and they aren't a company who works towords professionals as their main base customers, remember that.
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Apple does care about professionals. The issue is that they don't care about them in the way that many professionals would like.

As for the comments on GPU support for Apple. It is indeed a software support issue and the hardware vendors are as guilty as Apple on this one. In many ways, more so... especially over the past few years where Apple has done more to open up driver development for video cards. As it currently stands, any vendor can create OSX drivers for a new video card. It must be approved by Apple in order to say it's "Mac Compatible" or similar and to sport the Mac logo on the package. But the initiative lies squarely in the laps of the graphics card makers. What I really think it comes down to is two things. One, this is a recent policy change at Apple -- up until the past 2 years, Apple wrote all the video drivers themselves, period. The other issue is market share and market volatility. It takes extra resources to create and maintain an OSX driver base for a product family, create the requisite EFI support for the video cards, test them, etc.. With Apple not offering system designs that are friendly to multiple GPU installations and being made of a user-base that doesn't tinker with the hardware much, there's not a whole lot of incentive or real market for aftermarket video cards. The card makers just don't have the incentive to put in the effort.... IMO, this is where Apple is falling short. They need to be shmoozing these developers a bit and giving them a good reason to place some of their top of the line GPU options into the market for the Mac. In the end, I believe it would sell both more GPUs and more Mac Pro systems...
 
... what if the imacs, minis and airs (or PHONES) of tomorrow are so much more powerful than the big and heavy boxes of the past ...

and do the magic we all need via thunderbolt cables ...

:-)

i love my macs, .. (!)

and never go back to the PC / windows world ...
it sucks my brain out and cramps my nails every time i see the logo ... just to see if a website runs in native explorer ....

lol
 
Cid J Salcido Uyarra said:
Just wait until windows 8 comes out its written from the ground up OSX was written ten years ago and you can tell. Have any of you guys gotten a chance to play with the developers W8 its amazing. Windows is gonna make a come backin the creative world. At the end of the day a computer is a computer.
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It isn't written from ground up - it is still under NT 6 family - starting with Vista. I have been playing around with Windows 8 Dev Preview on my MSI WindPad. I neither want to hijack the thread, nor judge a preview, but after a month, I am still totally blow away by the Metro UI. This is the future, there's no doubt. The classic UI side of things is boring and I am not sure how relevant Metro is to desktops. But we know Microsoft is replacing Aero with a new desktop UI as well - probably by the first public beta. I have subscribed to the Building Windows 8 blog and thus far this is definitely the most excited I have been for a piece of software. There's still a lot we don't know about, and Microsoft does have a killer app they haven't talked about - Kinect. Windows 8 has conquered touchscreen, mouse and keyboard. Let's see how it deals with touchless interfacing. Anyway, sorry for the off-topic, and as much I would love to talk about Windows 8, I will stop here.

As for the GPUs, I agree with Jeff, ultimately it is up to NVIDIA and AMD. Their driver teams are so totally committed behind Windows that they often tend to ignore other OS. Let's also not forget that the only applications for high performance GPUs till very recently were gaming, CAD and to a lesser extend DCC. And really, for these applications Windows was the only rational solution. Most of the top software in these areas - DirectX games, 3ds Max, SolidWorks, SolidEdge etc. - can only run on Windows. The ones that are multi-platform offer greater performance in Windows. As a result, almost every high-performance GPU ATI or NVIDIA made ended up in a Windows machine. Of course, with unified shaders and parallel processing things have opened up a bit, but it's a matter of supply and demand in the end - NVIDIA and AMD driver teams have to concentrate on Windows drivers. I like how Linux distros have open source drivers and their developers collaborate closely with AMD/NV and that's why Linux drivers are much more stable than OS X ones. I suppose the final conclusion is - if you are working with anything to do with images, graphics and visuals - Windows is by far the best ecosystem.
 
To add to the GPU discussion: Apple constitutes perhaps 10% of the PC market (less if you look at installed base). Apple users constitute substantially less than 10% of the PC game market. The revenues just aren't there for GPU manufacturers or game developers to drive the same kind of development that occurs for Windows. This is not going to change any time soon. Drivers and graphics hardware innovation on PC's will continue to focus on Windows for the forseeable future - the economics guarantee it.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
...

Even though I have been out of the custom workstation and performance PC biz for close to 12 years, I still build all the PCs used by myself and those who work for me in my various other businesses. But even with that, building workstations where I pick all the parts, I still am unable to build the systems that I REALLY WANT TO USE! There are parts I want that just don't exist. Some of my first goals would be to address those issues.


Anyway, now I'm talking a bit crazy. I'm actually thinking I might want to throw my hat back in the ring here, regardless of what happens anywhere else. May as well, right? I just don't know if that's what I want right now. I'd better go walk it off before I get serious.
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Can you expand on what are the missing parts you would like to exist and use? Just curious Jeff! :smile:
 
Just seems like a different focus for Final Cut and Premiere. One is, you have a Mac, AND you need to edit video. The other is, you need to edit video. Period. Final Cut is targeted at Mac owners that want to edit some video. Premiere is targeted at video editors, whether you own a Mac or a PC, doesn't matter.

So if you're not going to release a PC version of Final Cut, you're targeting Mac owners, not just video editors. Mac owners in general probably have different needs than the group that wants an NLE regardless of OS.

Look at it this way. Adobe did the promotion to lure customers away from Final Cut. A nice deal for people that switch from Final Cut to Premiere.

Final Cut can't do the exact same thing. Premiere said, what's your OS? Mac or PC? We'll sell you whichever version you need if you switch.

Final cut would have to say, switch to Final Cut, AND (for a lot of people) switch to a Mac. So Final Cut is about owning a Mac, whereas Premiere is just about editing.
 
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Josh Snyder said:
Get PC with Windows 7. The most pefect machine for creative inviduals. You have the most power and control you can get with any computer that can run needed softwares. PC gives you the freedom Apple doesn't have.
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gross. I will go linux before I go back to pc. Way too bulky for me.
 
Josh Beadle said:
Joint venture with RED and other Hollywood market makers and there is a solid business plan there. Rack mount / raw performance and reliability
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Totally Agree. Would LOVE a debian based rig too.
 
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