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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 :)

New Mac Pro

Jay Gannon said:
Not an options for many of us unfortunately, we have to labour with this rubbish upgrade.
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Why is that, Jay?

Come on over to the PC side. The water is warm and lovely! :ihih:
 
I expected this release.
USB 3 is not coming to Macs. I reckon Light Peak will be included in the next release in 2011 which will be a complete re-design. I think we will also see more drive bay options, 3.5 and 2.5", more pcie slots or if not more Light Peak ports.
I think Apple will push Light Peak in a big way in 2011/2012. With new displays 2-4K around the corner it is the only logical choice for carrying this amount of information, especially when Apple are the ones pushing this technology with Intel. I can't see Apple implementing a standard like USB 3 that competes with their own roadmap and plans.
In my opinion Light Peak is the next logical step, and one that fits into Apples design and thinking.
ie: give them the fastest transfer speeds, let it carry power and be compatible with other standards, and finally make this the last type of universal cable you will need.
 
I think it is a decent upgrade, all considered. Those who have invested in the Final Cut workflow will be compelled to upgrade. PC users wouldn't really care. The problem remains the lack of a high-end desktop model. Most of us don't need Xeon CPUs or ECC RAMs. We would prefer high performance.

Regarding PCI slots. It has only 1 PCI-e x16 slot! Just a single one. The other two are PCI-e x4. Not sure about regular 32-bit PCI slots.
 
Tom Lowe said:
Why is that, Jay?

Come on over to the PC side. The water is warm and lovely! :ihih:
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Hehe, I have a wicked PC here beside me for some jobs, but for others (Mostly cinema + broadcast with a post facility involved) FCP is the name of the day still. And I could probably come up with workarounds but an ad agency or post supervisor is going to be expect me to work on a Mac...

I hope more facility's move to CS5 as then I cam use the Mac Pro for when I want to and the PC when I want to totally interchangeably. And I still haven't found any laptop half as nice as my 13" Macbook Pro.

So personally I'll stick with a mixed Mac/PC system and the lovable idiosyncrasies that come with it, as I've had to have for a while now, but life would have been easier with USB 3.0 and an extra PCI slot, not a huge amount to ask for. But Apple won't be getting my money on this upgrade, might have a look at the 27" LED screen though.
 
Those of us that have invested in the Final Cut workflow are seriously starting to feel left behind by Apple. They need to address the MANY issues with Final Cut ASAP.
 
I'm really confused as to why BlackMagic is supporting DaVinci on Mac at all... They should have just offered a single-GPU license for the existing Linux product and made it upgradeable to the next two stages.

As for this update from Apple... It's too little, too late to really be of interest to most. I wonder what Apple will do come October when the newer CPUs and chipsets are in the channel? I suppose they could offer yet another update, which they should, but it's so unlike Apple to do updates that close together. The next round of CPUs / chipsets will require new logic boards. Which is a good thing as there will be hope for another PCIe slot or two. I'd love to see Apple go back to a single optical drive space in the Mac Pro and give us another 2 PCIe slots. The upcoming chipsets (due to ship to OEMs in September) support more lanes... At that point, there will be no excuse to not have enough slots.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I'm really confused as to why BlackMagic is supporting DaVinci on Mac at all... They should have just offered a single-GPU license for the existing Linux product and made it upgradeable to the next two stages.

As for this update from Apple... It's too little, too late to really be of interest to most. I wonder what Apple will do come October when the newer CPUs and chipsets are in the channel? I suppose they could offer yet another update, which they should, but it's so unlike Apple to do updates that close together.
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As per protocol, Apple is likely to offer those updates sometime in the middle of 2011. These 12 core Xeons have been out since March. Radeon HD 5700/5800 since September/October 2009. Just as PC users are preparing to upgrade to Sandy Bridge / Fusion and Radeon HD 6800, Mac finally get up to the last generation. But that is normal, Apple being nearly a full generation behind. If Apple can get their act together and introduce new Macs early in 2011, I will be pleasantly shocked.

And, in the middle of 2011, PC users will be preparing to upgrade to AMD's Bulldozer or enthusiast Sandy Bridge. And 28nm GPUs. It's a cycle.
 
Subhadip Sen said:
As per protocol, Apple is likely to offer those updates sometime in the middle of 2011. These 12 core Xeons have been out since March. Radeon HD 5700/5800 since September/October 2009. Just as PC users are preparing to upgrade to Sandy Bridge / Fusion and Radeon HD 6800, Mac finally get up to the last generation. But that is normal, Apple being nearly a full generation behind. If Apple can get their act together and introduce new Macs early in 2011, I will be pleasantly shocked.

And, in the middle of 2011, PC users will be preparing to upgrade to AMD's Bulldozer or enthusiast Sandy Bridge. And 28nm GPUs. It's a cycle.
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A profitable cycle for Apple. Sales of Macs are still up, even tough they are behind PC.

"International sales accounted for 52 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple sold 3.47 million Macs during the quarter, representing a new quarterly record and a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter."
 
I think it's clear Apple has no interest in the high end and if you want to work on Mac OS you need a Hackintosh or except the many limitations.

Else it's time to move to Linux
Good thing is Hackintosh gives you the option of using both Mac OS and Linux on the same machine.

Apple just lost me on their hardware.
 
Carmel Bruno said:
A profitable cycle for Apple. Sales of Macs are still up, even tough they are behind PC.

"International sales accounted for 52 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple sold 3.47 million Macs during the quarter, representing a new quarterly record and a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter."
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Yes, it is profitable, no doubt. Apple is a mean marketing machine. Why innovate when you can keep selling inferior products!?
 
Subhadip Sen said:
Yes, it is profitable, no doubt. Apple is a mean marketing machine. Why innovate when you can keep selling inferior products!?
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I never mentioned money. The words said Apple sold more units, more Macs, as in computers (not iPhones, etc). I like Macs. Had them since the last millennium. Seldom had problems with them and eventually, when they outlasted the software (still in good working order), I shelved them. Things of beauty to me. Old power Macs, G3, G4...
 
Subhadip Sen said:
As per protocol, Apple is likely to offer those updates sometime in the middle of 2011. These 12 core Xeons have been out since March. Radeon HD 5700/5800 since September/October 2009. Just as PC users are preparing to upgrade to Sandy Bridge / Fusion and Radeon HD 6800, Mac finally get up to the last generation. But that is normal, Apple being nearly a full generation behind. If Apple can get their act together and introduce new Macs early in 2011, I will be pleasantly shocked.
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Can't agree with all of that. Apple's first two generations of Mac Pro were ahead of the general PC market as they had some exclusive release deals with Intel. Apple was the first vendor to ship the 3.2GHz quad-core Xeons and had a 30-day exclusive with Intel ahead of HP. Apple's release of their Nehalem towers in '09 only lagged behind the release of dual Nehalem motherboards by SuperMicro and Tyan by about 30 days and Apple was shipping the 2.93GHz models right from the start while HP and Dell only took pre-orders.

When it comes to Mac Pro timing, Apple has been really good until this last iteration of CPUs. It's literally just an EFI update to support the 6-core CPUs and some new-old GPU options. The lack of USB3 and Firewire 3200 completely boggle the mind. I'm assuming their take on that is similar to Blu-Ray, they're crap solutions that will be obsoleted within the next year. And that is true, but I don't see how having those wouldn't be better than having nothing.

On the topic of the iMac, Mac mini, Macbook... You are correct, they are almost always a generation behind. Actually the last two iMac updates have been only 30 to 60 days behind for CPUs, but the GPU selections are dreadful.

Macbook Pro systems have been current generation and kept up to date reasonably well. The last few updates all feel like compromises though. Killing off the ExpressCard in the 15" was the completely wrong thing to do and once again, where's the USB3 / FW3200???

I wanted to order a new iMac, but can't. No updates to connectivity and the new models have no nVidia option so can't run CUDA.

Anyway, I've got plenty of PCs to pick up the slack. I just don't understand Apple's thinking on these last few rounds of updates with their pro lines. It makes sense when you look at sales numbers, but that will only work for so long before the real pros go somewhere else.
 
reading posts here on REDUSER it seams to me that we are never satisfied. Manufacturers always seems to come up short. We always want that something else. It is the same with the RED camera and now with EPIC/SCARLET. Great, but what if we had.....
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Can't agree with all of that. Apple's first two generations of Mac Pro were ahead of the general PC market as they had some exclusive release deals with Intel. Apple was the first vendor to ship the 3.2GHz quad-core Xeons and had a 30-day exclusive with Intel ahead of HP. Apple's release of their Nehalem towers in '09 only lagged behind the release of dual Nehalem motherboards by SuperMicro and Tyan by about 30 days and Apple was shipping the 2.93GHz models right from the start while HP and Dell only took pre-orders.
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Well, that sounds like a long time ago. Perhaps you are referring to the very first Mac Pro.

Starting with the 2008 Mac Pro, Apple have been consistently behind the curve. It released in January 2008 with Harpertown CPUs Intel had been shipping since Q4 2007. I remember it came with 2600 XT, 8600 GT or 8800 GT - all 2007 mainstream products. Granted, here, we are just one quarter behind on the CPU, two on the GPU. Fair enough.

Moving on to the 2009 Mac Pro in March/April, we have Bloomfield from Q4 2008 and HD 4870 from June 2008. Now we are two quarters behind on the CPU, three on the GPU.

2010 Mac Pro - Gulftown/Bloomfield and HD 5000 from Q3 2009. Now, we are two-three quarters behind on the CPU, nearly four on the GPU.

The pattern is clear. Apple is falling behind. They might have had an advantage in 2006/07, but that is history.

Edit - I just checked up Wiki, which has a decent history of Mac Pro's revisions. Pretty much supports what I have been saying. I think you were talking about the April 2007 Clovertown refresh of the Mac Pro. Yes, I agree, they were ahead at that time. But that is a long, long time ago in this industry. Let's see the recent past.
 
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