Will Apple release a Mac Pro "mini" ?

[andrewhake]

"We are a mobile product company" - Steve Jobs

--- just saying

(I strongly believe we will see the demise of the Mac as a production platform in the coming 24 month - too many writings on the wall (xserve, lacking updates for proapps across the line, update frequency for tower getting longer and longer etc. etc.) - boy would I love to be wrong)

You are wrong, and so are all of the people that have been saying this since the first iPod was released... The only difference now is that they sell millions more Macs each year.

And just for the record, you guys do realize Apple DOES sell a Mac Pro with a Single Quad Core processor. Just because it doesn't have as many PCI slots as you think you need doesn't mean it doesn't exist...

 

[Bastien Tribalat]

You are wrong, and so are all of the people that have been saying this since the first iPod was released... The only difference now is that they sell millions more Macs each year.

And just for the record, you guys do realize Apple DOES sell a Mac Pro with a Single Quad Core processor. Just because it doesn't have as many PCI slots as you think you need doesn't mean it doesn't exist...

Don't get me(/us) wrong. When I started the thread I was talking about a (slightly) smaller and cheaper desktop tower. In fact, what I'd like would be an iMac in a case that allows to customise it (like everyone does on Windows PC).
And when I talked about a Core i7 processor (or a sandy bridge one... Can't remember and won't go check because I'm writing on an Eee PC which is very sloooooooooooooow) I wasn't even thinking about cores. But if I had to talk about it, I then would like a Cire i7 980X inside the machine.

Anyway, the key thing is : will Apple release someday a desktop tower less expansive than the Mac Pro which can intercut between the top end iMac and the first Mac Pro (or maybe even the 6 core westmere one ).

This fake ad is pretty interesting as far as design is concerned :

I think that kind of computer can find a really nice place into the Mac Family...

 

[Stephen Gentle]

(I strongly believe we will see the demise of the Mac as a production platform in the coming 24 month - too many writings on the wall (xserve, lacking updates for proapps across the line, update frequency for tower getting longer and longer etc. etc.) - boy would I love to be wrong)

Are you crazy? Not only are Mac sales expanding at a faster rate than quite a few other computer brands, but they still pull in more profit for Apple every year than a lot of companies make at all... Just because the iPhone and iPad sales are bigger doesn't mean that they don't care about Macs.

Also, you can only make iPhone and iPad apps on Macs. What are they going to do, release Xserve for Windows or something?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Apple won't kill the Mac Pro. Apple won't kill the Pro Apps. I find it funny that those rumors are so constant. Jobs, and everyone else at Apple, want to dominate every aspect of the creative process of media. They want to be the music player clipped on your shirt pocket, the phone in your pocket, the tablet computer on your coffee table, the notebook computer in your backpack, the workstation on your desk, etc.. Apple wants every piece of media that ends up on your iPhone/iPod to be graced by the Apple name the entire way through the production and distribution pipeline.

The thing is, Apple has a design philosophy of their own. It doesn't always jive with what the bleeding edge professional users think they want or need. That is us. Apple wants to make us happy, but we're also a very, very small percentage of the "professional audience". I can assure you that 90% or more of Mac Pro owners don't have an issue with too few PCIe slots, to name one of our common concerns around here. Within Apple's design philosophy is a trend of minimalistic approach, I can respect that. They also have a habit of establishing a great design, but running with it for too long. The Mac Pro is a great example of that. The new aluminum tower introduced for the G5 was perfect for its time (other than the rack-mount issue). It became the Mac pro tower with a few tweaks, also great for that time with the available hardware. But hardware has moved on and Apple's design has not. It will be interesting to see what they do with the upcoming Intel products this year. I really don't see how they can keep the same tower design. This design does not fit the current crop of system abilities, let alone what is to be unleashed in the coming months.

For cutting edge pro users, we need more slots. We need SSD as primary storage. 3.5" HDDs make sense for large external arrays, not so much sense for internal storage in a system unless we want to move a large RAID witin the confines of our workstation. That doesn't jive with Apple's approach. That was obvious with their own anemic attempt at a RAID card for the Mac Pro. ...Worst RAID product of the last 3 years from any computer component maker, bar none.

Apple really needs to plug the gaping hole in their product line between the iMac and the Mac Pro. I doubt they will, but they really should. Just because the range is covered with system pricing, does not mean the hardware adequately covers their users' range of needs. They are missing the boat on this and it's a big boat...

That said, I want to see a smaller, leaner Mac Pro this next time around. Something with 6 to 8 PCIe slots, but more directed and encapsulated cooling, 2.5" internal storage trays, single optical bay that can house an optical drive or multiple additional 2.5" storage devices.

...Would be great to see an even smaller companion system to that. With a single processor, fewer RAM sockets, 3 or 4 PCIe slots, bay for slot-load optical drive or 2 x 2.5" devices along with 3 or 4 dedicated 2.5" trays. Price it closer to the iMac. It's more powerful, but doesn't include the monitor. Keep it simple, just call it the "Mac". It's not an iMac, it's not a Mac Pro, it's just a fucking Mac. Done. The iMac just doesn't work for a lot of uses. And yet, the Mac Pro is overkill for so many of those same intended usage scenarios. Not everyone needs a dual-Xeon capable behemoth under their desk with a $2500 base price when what they probably need is that 27" iMac if it only had an eSATA port and an available PCIe slot for a RED Rocket card.

If Apple could offer a smaller Mac like that, with single 6-core (or upcoming 8-core) desktop class CPU like the i7980X. 8GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm 2.5"HDD and slot-load super-drive with ATI 5980 GPU 3 empty PCIe slots and 3 empty 2.5" device trays. base config like that for $995 or so... They would sell like hotcakes laced with meth. If they had the same build quality of the Mac Pro and typical AppleCare support, I'd be buying them for most of my Windows boxes too, which I typically build myself anyway since none of the big guys like Dell or HP can seem to get it right either.

For those of you wondering why I'm ranting about 2.5" storage devices here, SSDs are about to get a whole lot better and cheaper. The days of 3.5" HDDs in systems for capacity and performance are numbered.

 

[Stephen Lovett]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...



One of my favorite Mac's of all time.

A modern version of the IIcx would be a welcome addition to the product line, and would sell like CRAZY.

But Steve likes simple, Steve doesn't like configurable or expandable hardware.

I had this very argument with him an even longer time ago about the ability to expand the 512k Mac, and lost that argument, ultimately we ended up with the Plus which at least had a SCSI port. This particular issue has been a sore point for decades.

Hard to argue with his design sense on many fronts, and I wouldn't have bet the farm on the iPod when I first saw the specs. He did, and created an entirely new ecosystem that I would have missed.

Mac Pro's aren't going to disappear, but I'd be astonished to see a mid tower while Steve is still running the show.

It's one of many points about which I'd love to be wrong.

RED to me is much like that early Macintosh experience, I had to take a second on the house to buy a Mac II an 8 bit color card, and a color monitor. People thought I was crazy.

One of the best decisions I ever made, and here I am getting that kind of chance again, thanks RED.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming,

Steve

 

[Bastien Tribalat]

Apple won't kill the Mac Pro. Apple won't kill the Pro Apps. I find it funny that those rumors are so constant. Jobs, and everyone else at Apple, want to dominate every aspect of the creative process of media. They want to be the music player clipped on your shirt pocket, the phone in your pocket, the tablet computer on your coffee table, the notebook computer in your backpack, the workstation on your desk, etc.. Apple wants every piece of media that ends up on your iPhone/iPod to be graced by the Apple name the entire way through the production and distribution pipeline.

The thing is, Apple has a design philosophy of their own. It doesn't always jive with what the bleeding edge professional users think they want or need. That is us. Apple wants to make us happy, but we're also a very, very small percentage of the "professional audience". I can assure you that 90% or more of Mac Pro owners don't have an issue with too few PCIe slots, to name one of our common concerns around here. Within Apple's design philosophy is a trend of minimalistic approach, I can respect that. They also have a habit of establishing a great design, but running with it for too long. The Mac Pro is a great example of that. The new aluminum tower introduced for the G5 was perfect for its time (other than the rack-mount issue). It became the Mac pro tower with a few tweaks, also great for that time with the available hardware. But hardware has moved on and Apple's design has not. It will be interesting to see what they do with the upcoming Intel products this year. I really don't see how they can keep the same tower design. This design does not fit the current crop of system abilities, let alone what is to be unleashed in the coming months.

For cutting edge pro users, we need more slots. We need SSD as primary storage. 3.5" HDDs make sense for large external arrays, not so much sense for internal storage in a system unless we want to move a large RAID witin the confines of our workstation. That doesn't jive with Apple's approach. That was obvious with their own anemic attempt at a RAID card for the Mac Pro. ...Worst RAID product of the last 3 years from any computer component maker, bar none.

Apple really needs to plug the gaping hole in their product line between the iMac and the Mac Pro. I doubt they will, but they really should. Just because the range is covered with system pricing, does not mean the hardware adequately covers their users' range of needs. They are missing the boat on this and it's a big boat...

That said, I want to see a smaller, leaner Mac Pro this next time around. Something with 6 to 8 PCIe slots, but more directed and encapsulated cooling, 2.5" internal storage trays, single optical bay that can house an optical drive or multiple additional 2.5" storage devices.

...Would be great to see an even smaller companion system to that. With a single processor, fewer RAM sockets, 3 or 4 PCIe slots, bay for slot-load optical drive or 2 x 2.5" devices along with 3 or 4 dedicated 2.5" trays. Price it closer to the iMac. It's more powerful, but doesn't include the monitor. Keep it simple, just call it the "Mac". It's not an iMac, it's not a Mac Pro, it's just a fucking Mac. Done. The iMac just doesn't work for a lot of uses. And yet, the Mac Pro is overkill for so many of those same intended usage scenarios. Not everyone needs a dual-Xeon capable behemoth under their desk with a $2500 base price when what they probably need is that 27" iMac if it only had an eSATA port and an available PCIe slot for a RED Rocket card.

If Apple could offer a smaller Mac like that, with single 6-core (or upcoming 8-core) desktop class CPU like the i7980X. 8GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm 2.5"HDD and slot-load super-drive with ATI 5980 GPU 3 empty PCIe slots and 3 empty 2.5" device trays. base config like that for $995 or so... They would sell like hotcakes laced with meth. If they had the same build quality of the Mac Pro and typical AppleCare support, I'd be buying them for most of my Windows boxes too, which I typically build myself anyway since none of the big guys like Dell or HP can seem to get it right either.

For those of you wondering why I'm ranting about 2.5" storage devices here, SSDs are about to get a whole lot better and cheaper. The days of 3.5" HDDs in systems for capacity and performance are numbered.

Agreed. Totally.... Nearly, since I'd like to see nVidia back in business on Mac because I still prefer their cards for the Cuda stuff on Adobe CS5 and because it seems that Avid is not a big fan of ATI Cards (I know it's just more of a deal with nVidia than a question of taste or Avid's capability to make Media Composer more ATI/AMD Friendly). But I might be wrong, maybe those ATI Cards are killer cards and maybe Adobe and Avid will work well on those.
Speaking of graphics cards, it's fun to see that Mac OS 10.6.7 supports a lot of of-the-shelf ATI Cards. Like seen on Mac Rumors :

The following graphics cards appear to be natively supported:

ATI Radeon HD 5630 Device ID 0x68D8
ATI Radeon HD 5630 Device ID 0x68D9
ATI Radeon HD 5670 Device ID 0x68D8
ATI Radeon HD 5730 Device ID 0x68D8
ATI Radeon HD 5770 Device ID 0x68B8
ATI Radeon HD 5850 Device ID 0x6899
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Device ID 0x6898

AMD Radeon HD 6850 Device ID 0x6739
AMD Radeon HD 6870 Device ID 0x6738
AMD Radeon HD 6970 Device ID 0x6718

Fun. I'd love to see the same thing about nVidia's... Or not. Don't know.

By the way, does anyone have any idea with the rumors telling that Apple might switch again from Intel processors to AMD's ? (That, to me, would'nt be a great move since I think the best Intel's beats the best AMD's)

 

[andrewhake]

So you guys want it to be smaller, you want to rack mount it, you want more PCI slots, and you want a new design? Uh huh.

No one in their right mind can look at the current Mac Pro design, internally or externally and say it is out of date compared to other systems. It may be less capable in very specific areas but the internal design is a thing of beauty for anyone not freaking out about a ton of PCI slots.

I don't know I understand that you would like to see something that fits your very exact and very specific needs, but making your voice heard here does nothing, at all, to change this. Let Apple know, they make it easy to do so. I am all for discussion, but this is just beat to death, dug back up again, defibulated, and beat to death again...

This isn't a big market they are missing out, I am sorry, but it just isn't. The "market" that wants this is very very niche, whether it be the gaming crowd, the creative crowd, whatever. Like all of you, I think it would be cool to see this happen, but if what you want doesn't exist there are ways to change it. Also, everything you guys are asking for is technically and quite inexpensively possible, except more PCI slots, with the current Mac Pro.