New Mac Pro

[Rob Anderson]

My Educational is more?

School's have different rates negotiated for discounts.

I've taught accredited college courses in vfx and motion graphics for almost 6 years between two schools. Students at one school would get cheaper Adobe software but the other got cheaper Apple products. No idea what the process involves for the schools negotiating for those discounts but I'm sure it has something to do with the institution's volume purchasing. Seems like an associated discount offered as an extension for their students. (Guessing.)

 

[Eric Santiago]

It feels like Christmas morning going through the configurator

And the only fruitcake is having to lower 3 x 8-cores down to 6-core to make space for 3 x 12-cores

 

[DJ Meyer]

On the store configurator page, Apple seems to confirm that both GPUs get x16 PCIe lanes: This is great news, since the GPUs then will have enough bandwidth to be serious computation devices, but on the other hand... this means that all the Thunderbolt ports get (at best) to share the remaining 8 PCIe lanes. That's some serious bandwidth throttle.

Don't forget the Flash memory, ethernet, USB 3 etc. So yeah should be throttletastic.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Has anyone looked into peripherals and converters?

We have a few Cinema 30s that would love to hang with the new nMP

 

[Justin Quinn]

This is ridiculous... the Mac Pro is NOT available today. It's available to pre-order today with shipping not until some undisclosed date in January. If you want a stock model the website claims that it will ship on December 30th.

This is such a let down... It was over a year ago, I think 18 months ago, when Tim Cook said that it would be available in 2013... Did anyone honestly think he meant December 30th, 2013. One day before the end of the year?

When they finally did make an official announcement, they claimed that it was coming in Fall of 2013... I think today is the last day of Fall... Then they said available December.... now they're saint shipping on December 30th? Is Apple really going to make the argument that they are "technically" accurate?

Apple is completely toying with their professional user market and it's really turning me off to the idea of purchasing this thing especially considering that I've stayed loyal to them for so long, even after the FCPX debacle and lack of basic upgrades for the existing Mac Pro line... still no USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, etc... Things like this make me regret investing so heavily in one ecosystem because it leaves you at their mercy...

 

[Andrei Mihailescu]

Don't forget the Flash memory, ethernet, USB 3 etc. So yeah should be throttletastic.

Well, not so much, since the PCIe SSD, Ethernet und USB 3 could all theoretically be on the additional 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes that are available from the chipset itself. Unfortunately, those 8 PCIe lanes are themselves limited by the DMI x4 link to the CPU, but it should be relatively OK: about 1 GBps from the SSD, 0.25 GBps for 2 x Ethernet and the rest for the USB 3.0 Controller should not be all too throttled. The x8 PCIe 3.0 lanes that come directly off the CPU could theoretically be all for the Thunderbolt controllers, though I am not sure how that works either, since each controller needs x4 PCIe 2.0 (no PCIe 3.0 Support unfortunately) links... so either Apple installed a PCIe switch, or the TB2 Controllers are even more downrated, by just using x2 PCIe 2.0 Connections.

 

[Michael Jarvis]

Hey Guys,

I have never personally owned a Promise Raid. What do you guys think of the Promise TB2 raids listed on there. I was thinking about pulling the trigger on a 12TB (6x2TB) drive. Right now I am using a G-Tech 6TB thunderbolt drive to work from. Are the Promise drives solid? Reliable? …and how would you configure a 12TB raid? Thanks for the advise.

I do keep loads of backup and storage drives but would am also thinking I could use this drive redundantly for the projects I am currently working on. I normally have about 3 projects (music videos) going on at any given moment.

Thanks

 

[Bobby Farokhzad]

My local apple retailer is now telling me february delivery which really means they completely missed the 2013 delivery date. Let's hope the unit does not disappoint.

 

[Jack Stenner]

My Educational is more?

2.7GHz 12-core with 30MB of L3 cache
64GB (4x16GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
1TB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
Apple care
________
$8,938.00

The way it works here, we submit our "quote" via the Apple Education online store (the price I quoted above), which gets forwarded to Purchasing. A few times it's come back even cheaper once our Purchasing people get involved (fingers crossed)! I'm sure it all has to do with the size of the university, etc. We're hoping to stock our lab with a pile of these next summer.

 

[Bob Gundu]

This is ridiculous... the Mac Pro is NOT available today. It's available to pre-order today with shipping not until some undisclosed date in January. If you want a stock model the website claims that it will ship on December 30th.

This is such a let down... It was over a year ago, I think 18 months ago, when Tim Cook said that it would be available in 2013... Did anyone honestly think he meant December 30th, 2013. One day before the end of the year?

When they finally did make an official announcement, they claimed that it was coming in Fall of 2013... I think today is the last day of Fall... Then they said available December.... now they're saint shipping on December 30th? Is Apple really going to make the argument that they are "technically" accurate?

Apple is completely toying with their professional user market and it's really turning me off to the idea of purchasing this thing especially considering that I've stayed loyal to them for so long, even after the FCPX debacle and lack of basic upgrades for the existing Mac Pro line... still no USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, etc... Things like this make me regret investing so heavily in one ecosystem because it leaves you at their mercy...

Look at the bright side… the are at least making a new Mac Pro, made in the USA, competitively priced, smaller and more energy efficient, not gouging on RAM, 4K ready. It's not all doom and gloom. Happy holidays.

 

[Glen Powell]

This is ridiculous... the Mac Pro is NOT available today. It's available to pre-order today with shipping not until some undisclosed date in January. If you want a stock model the website claims that it will ship on December 30th.

This is such a let down... It was over a year ago, I think 18 months ago, when Tim Cook said that it would be available in 2013... Did anyone honestly think he meant December 30th, 2013. One day before the end of the year?

When they finally did make an official announcement, they claimed that it was coming in Fall of 2013... I think today is the last day of Fall... Then they said available December.... now they're saint shipping on December 30th? Is Apple really going to make the argument that they are "technically" accurate?

Apple is completely toying with their professional user market and it's really turning me off to the idea of purchasing this thing especially considering that I've stayed loyal to them for so long, even after the FCPX debacle and lack of basic upgrades for the existing Mac Pro line... still no USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, etc... Things like this make me regret investing so heavily in one ecosystem because it leaves you at their mercy...

The time between now and February will give me a chance to figure out the TB2 peripherals - since none of them have really been 'released' yet either.

Anyway - food in my belly, roof overhead, heat from the furnace, no-one is shooting at me, no floods... life is great! So what if a computer doesn't ship until February; BFD.

 

[Eric Bowen]

AE Multithreads fine and actually better when plugins are not used. The Player will even multithread when Multiprocessing is not enabled. However the performance is better when Multiprocessing is checked since frames are now given to each thread.

 

[Isaac Marchionna]

Actually, Jeff, mind checking your ETA. I technically ordered yesterday, and before you and it's saying February for delivery. Odd.

Bummer. But at least it's ordered.

 

[M Most]

This is ridiculous... was over a year ago, I think 18 months ago, when Tim Cook said that it would be available in 2013... Did anyone honestly think he meant December 30th, 2013. One day before the end of the year?

I would say that anyone who deals with technology products on a regular basis completely expected that to be the case. Ship dates are always very optimistic, especially when they're announced a year before the shipping product actually exists, and are regularly missed by every technology company in existence, regardless of whether they happen to manufacture computers, video game consoles, or, yes, cameras. It's not "ridiculous," it's a common situation across all technology businesses. Technology today is increasingly complex, even as it continues to appear simpler and simpler to users. When things are complex, unexpected bugs turn up with great regularity, and unforeseen difficulties always emerge. That's the nature of these products. It happens to Red, it happens to Blackmagic, it happens to Arri, and it happens to Apple.

 

[Isaac Marchionna]

At least the price didn't jump up by nearly 50 percent...*cough* dragon *cough*

Jeff, I asked you about the Dell 4K displays, and you said they could be driven off HDMI. Just checking, but this only has one HDMI. So what solution do I have for driving TWO Dell 4Ks?

 

[Mark Andersen]

Actually, Jeff, mind checking your ETA. I technically ordered yesterday, and before you and it's saying February for delivery. Odd.

Bummer. But at least it's ordered.

I ordered in the at 2:00 Am pacific, and was told delivery in january (in store pick up in Feb.) by 8am apple.com was quoting a February delivery, so it seems that the inventory at this moment is relatively small, they are not treating these like iPhones ;-)

 

[Eric Bowen]

Jeff reminded me of something that likely is part of the delay. Apple uses Hynix ram and they are current missing 2 Fabs due to a very bad fire.

 

[Bob Gundu]

I must have just made it in the initial window. I ordered 7:30am EST timezone and got January delivery.

 

[Isaac Marchionna]

I have a feeling my date my move up, because I ordered before most everyone else. Odd, but then again I don't really trust apple's ETA on their CTO page.

 

[Justin Quinn]

I would say that anyone who deals with technology products on a regular basis completely expected that to be the case. Ship dates are always very optimistic, especially when they're announced a year before the shipping product actually exists, and are regularly missed by every technology company in existence, regardless of whether they happen to manufacture computers, video game consoles, or, yes, cameras. It's not "ridiculous," it's a common situation across all technology businesses. Technology today is increasingly complex, even as it continues to appear simpler and simpler to users. When things are complex, unexpected bugs turn up with great regularity, and unforeseen difficulties always emerge. That's the nature of these products. It happens to Red, it happens to Blackmagic, it happens to Arri, and it happens to Apple.

Thanks for your reply, Mike. Perhaps I wasn't clear about what I found to be so ridiculous...

I agree with pretty much everything you say, except in this case I would argue that Apple has a very strong reputation of bucking this industry trend. They're not the type of company advertising vaporware, like so many others. I'm a life-long Apple user, and my experience has been that they are extremely reliable and transparent, once of course, they announce a product.

What I find ridiculous is the prevaricating semantics of this release... they said something really special for 2013... then Fall 2013... then December... then wait until the last day of Fall to "release" which really isn't a release at all. The stock model is shipping December 30th, so will definitely not arrive anywhere in 2013. Apple has known this all along, and they could easily have updated their professional user base, but the chose not to do so. Sure, it's their business and they have the right... and technically they are releasing the mac pro in 2013... but it's all just a word game and I've come to expect more from Apple.

So my issue isn't so much with it being late, that's understandable. I appreciate the handwork and complexity of technology; my issue is with how they are handling it. I expect more from them. I was really looking forward to this product. I think all the naysayers are crazy not to see the potential it offers... and I really appreciate how you have gone out of your way on reducer to dispel all the misconceptions about his awesome little workstation..

But yeah, you're absolutely right about technology being predictably late... now I can just lump Apple in the same category as BMD, Red and Arri... it wasn't like that before.