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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 :)

Interesting future Mac Pro rumor

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Brian Timmons

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Been editing native R3d's over a SAS raid card connected through a thunderbolt enclosure on an iMac & it works just fine. With Thunderbolt's speed about to increase I don't see how external expansion is a bad thing for a majority of users. Seems like an inevitable evolution really.

I'm curious to see where this goes.
 
The problem isn't external storage. The problem is PCIe slots. RedRocket, Video cards from AJA, Matrox, Black Magic, and various audio cards, all require PCIe slots. Even once Thunderbolt increases (which won't be until at least next year) it'll still only be about an 8x PCIe slot equivalent; enough for the current Red Rocket, but not enough for an additional graphics card.
 
Nick Pasquariello said:
not enough for an additional graphics card.
Click to expand...

The article mentioned the ability to have multiple GFX cards so maybe it has 2 PCIe internally. One GFX card, One Rocket & everything else through thunderbolt?

As for FW800, I think USB3 kinda killed that off. Why not just use that instead, it's on the same reader.

**EDIT**
Nevermind, you said you use Red drives. Um, maybe a Thunderbolt hub then?
 
Whatever Apple releases, they could learn a lot by their past successes and mistakes.

Apple might consider keeping the existing towers around for a while they release this new Mac Pro
for the people that need that form factor.

This would be similar to the gradual transition we saw from OS 9 to OS X. That transition was handled well.

An example of a mistake is Apple releasing a forward thinking yet incomplete Final Cut Pro X and the immediate
EOL of the established Final Cut Pro 7. No need to go over how that went.

Pros are not consumers. Massive redesigns can be welcome but not if it suddenly upends the established system a business (post house, etc.) is based on.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA
 
Brian Timmons said:
Whatever Apple releases, they could learn a lot by their past successes and mistakes.
Click to expand...

Apple has a long track record of simply trashing the old in favor of the new. Remember colorful iMacs with no floppy drive? Laptops and iMacs without optical drives? They seem to enjoy moving on before their customers are ready, it's their way.

Hackintosh towers might be around for a long time.
 
What i would like to know is with PCie3 around, which is a lot faster, going thunderbolt wouldn't it be a step back? With thunderbolt 2.0 this would make sense, but when is this even becoming available?
 
Ethan Cooper said:
Apple has a long track record of simply trashing the old in favor of the new. Remember colorful iMacs with no floppy drive? Laptops and iMacs without optical drives? They seem to enjoy moving on before their customers are ready, it's their way.
Click to expand...

The irony is that that is precisely one of the things that makes them such a forward-thinking company, and the kind of behavior that initially drives many of us to take Mac/OSX for a spin.
 
Why?

Why?

I do think a modular approach is coming to the "pro" Mac design. Perhaps a high speed "bridge" of some kind will be used to "stack" the modules that is far faster than TB 2.0.

BUT

Considering the trajectory of the iMac, not to mention the laptops, what's the point of making a pro oriented machine that doesn't have serious expandability? Purely on logic - that's a fail.

Cheers - #19
 
Ethan Cooper said:
Apple has a long track record of simply trashing the old in favor of the new. Remember colorful iMacs with no floppy drive? Laptops and iMacs without optical drives? They seem to enjoy moving on before their customers are ready, it's their way.

Hackintosh towers might be around for a long time.
Click to expand...

They still sell the classic Macbook Pros. I also hope they keep an existing line of the current form factor, only updated. Would definitely show Apple which is more popular, the current MacPro, or whatever this new thing will be.
 
I don't usually condone this, but I'm going to quote myself in a post I made here in December, 2010:

I don't often start a topic here, but I had a really interesting conversation at lunch today revolving around "the next Mac Pro," and found my mind wandering into uncharted territory. So here's my predictions for this long awaited machine:

There won't be a next MacPro. If I read Apple correctly, they really don't have an interest in tower configurations anymore, and they might not even have enough sales volume to justify a separate "Pro" computer based on it. They did, after all, recently kill the XServe for just that reason. My prediction is that the next MacPro will be the iMac - but a radically reconfigured iMac, one with a built in bus-level expansion system, perhaps based on LightPeek technology as the interconnect. This would permit Apple to manufacture one form factor, one machine, with standard internals and features, perhaps with different screen sizes, as they do now. Expansion modules would be made available by both Apple and third parties for specific industry needs: PCIe slot modules for things like GPU and special purpose video cards (often the same thing), co-processing modules for adding CPU power and/or clustering, interface modules for things like FibreChannel or 10GigE connections, video I/O modules (perhaps built by companies like AJA and Blackmagic, providing the same functionality as today's PCIe cards, but in a self contained breakout box), and plenty of other things I can't think of. The key is the interconnect, and Apple loves to innovate and lead the industry in these things. Today, bus speed expansion is usually accomplished by either a PCIe connector, or in the case of some Linux based systems, either Infiniband or 10GigE connections. LightPeek could theoretically replace all of that, and do it using very thin, very inexpensive optical fiber. The use of optical fiber also eliminates some issues with the larger interconnects like PCIe and Infiniband, namely, cable length limitations. But the bottom line is that Apple would completely eliminate the need for separate, expensive case manufacture and assembly, as well as the need for a separate motherboard design and manufacture. The form factor of the current iMac is basically identical to the form factor of a typical monitor/keyboard configuration with a conventional computer. SSD's are becoming faster, cheaper, and can be manufactured in smaller form factors than current hard drives, allowing for multiple drive capability in the main case via "pop in" slots on the side of the case, much like the current DVD slot. In short, with Apple's history of innovation and design, I think it makes complete sense that they would eliminate the traditional PC tower design, centralize manufacturing on one desktop form factor, but implement new technologies to allow that form factor to serve all markets, from basic consumers to high end professionals, without compromise - and probably do it before everyone else. This would also explain the long delay in announcing any new "Pro" machines, both to allow for a redesign of the core iMac and also to allow Intel time to complete the optical interconnect technology they might use to make it all work. If they do all of this right, all current software and hardware (including things like Autodesk Smoke and DaVinci Resolve, which currently require third party hardware in specific slot assignments) will continue to work, although it might require some additional modules to house them. And it would allow for performance enhancements for these things that are currently impossible.

That's just my own prognostication, based on nothing other than my own observations, and with absolutely no basis in any announced actual fact. Apple has a history of throwing away the rule book when they've deemed it necessary or desirable. Hell, they even changed their entire design to a new processor, requiring a completely new motherboard design, new peripherals, and a complete rewrite of the operating system. And they did that twice. You don't get any more radical than that. They completely replaced a working operating system and all of its development tools with a BSD Unix system that required an object oriented development approach and an entirely new interface - and they made it able to run programs from the old system. Apple really loves introducing things that are not only unexpected, but have never been seen before and will likely not be implemented by other manufacturers very quickly. Personally, I would find it all pretty exciting, but I'm curious to hear what others think.
Click to expand...

I like when I can look back at something I said quite some time ago and smile. It doesn't happen very often.
 
With a post like that, quoting yourself is more than acceptable.

Right now, I don't really have a solid prediction for what Apple is going to do. I see a lot of plausible possibilities (many of them outlined right above), but a few of them contradict each other.

We may get a clear picture of the future in 7 days. Or we may have to wait a few more months.
 
I have thought about Mike's post quite a bit (yes, I should get a life ;-). While I could pull on a few loose threads in the concept, it really does make a lot of sense.

Ultimately power users may no longer be able to enjoy the Apple experience in professional applications that require high throughput, and that's a shame - at least in MHO.

Cheers - #19
 
The only constant is change

The only constant is change

I get the idea that technology obsoletes form factors and the venerable tower might become an anachronism like the main frame that needs its own room. (Yes, I know there are still a few around).

I also get that Apple is a mainstream computer and device company that targets the consumer market.

Since Mike posted 2.5 years ago it looks like Apple has been stringing along the pros until they could offer workstation class power in the iMac and laptops. As he suggested Thunderbolt (trade name for Lightpeak) is the enabling technology - at least in theory. As many RedUsers are aware, the reality is that the data throughput and processing demands of our little slice of the world have become so high that even TB 2.0 is barely enough today, let alone in the "big data" future.

Perhaps Apple and pros like us are over.

Most likely, if I'm betting: Apple will create a Maxi-Mini or muscular iMac (as Mike suggested) with TB 2.0 and accept the fact that the sliver of users for whom that is insufficient is too small to worry about. If rumors are true that they will release a "desktop" with 2 internal GPU slots and everything else via TB that fits the concept while dealing with the problem of trying to run GPUs too far from the mobo.

Apple could create a proprietary expansion chassis with onboard processing and an ultra high speed plug that allows you to use their consumer units as "front ends".

Better still would be a mid-case tower (rack mountable for god's sake) that housed PCIe 3.0 slots and drive bays and used an internal "switch"(perhaps hybrid CPU) to rout data - your laptop, iMac, iPad or AppleTV (plus keyboard/mouse) would be the UI portion and could carry enough information on board for things like proxy editing. It's basically "flying the saucer section" with the tower as a data appliance. Using WiFi and Cloud infrastructure there would be a ton of ways to remotely drive the appliance. I can easily imagine next generation gesture and voice based UI topologies as well, further enabled by processing muscle in the data appliance which lives "in the closet" or some other convenient place.

Still not sure there's enough market to support anything like I'm imagining in numbers Apple would consider interesting. Maybe the best case is for Apple to spin off a proper "Pro" division that either designs and sells the "data appliance" or tightly manages third party production to stringent specs. At the end of the day I'm still a UNIX fan, love the reliability of the Mac platform and despite recent wobbles still consider it the best UI around.

It's worth noting that up until recently the top of the consumer market and the bulk of the pro market had quite a bit of overlap in terms of genuine need for what only towers could do. Those days are over and we just might have to accept that the extreme needs of post pros are too far off the bell curve for anyone but specialty vendors. Reach for your wallets my friends, or hope H.265 and other advanced compression options make TB 2.0 fast enough for what we do.

Cheers - #19
 
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