“Once upon a time, anyone who wanted a powerful Mac would choose the top of the line. So in the days before Apple went Intel in 2006, it was the Power Mac G5. It was a huge beast, weighing over 40 pounds, but it was extremely expandable. You could add multiple hard drives and PCI cards, and changing RAM was a snap,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “When Apple moved to Intel processors in 2006, the successor to that Power Mac, the Mac Pro, debuted. Externally it looked about the same, but the innards were more efficient because Apple didn’t need so much cooling hardware. It was expensive, powerful, and content creators loved them.”
“In early 2013, Tim Cook promised a major Mac Pro upgrade, and, sure enough, the spectacular ‘trash can’ version was demonstrated during the WWDC keynote that June,” Sternberg writes. “It didn’t show up until December of 2013, and volume shipments didn’t start until early in 2014.”
“It was a sea change, and not necessarily one that was welcome,” Sternberg writes. “The reaction to the Mac Pro has been polarizing… Ideally, if there must be a Mac Pro, maybe Apple could develop a different version, still relatively compact, which restores the internal expansion capability of the original Mac Pro. With Apple’s penchant for miniaturization, I bet they could deliver all that in a computer that weighs no more than 20 pounds or so. But is there enough of a market for such a machine — or the present day Mac Pro?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Mac Pro is revolutionary, but Apple could really stand to, you know, update the thing once and awhile. Not doing so makes it look like Apple regards professional Mac users as an afterthought. Sometimes Apple, the world’s most profitable and most valuable company, still operates as if they have five guys from NeXT working around the clock trying to do all the work on a shoestring budget… Read more in our full Take here.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s ‘new’ Mac Pro is a joke; a plain and simple failure – November 23, 2015
50,000,000 pixels: Apple’s Mac Pro powers six 4K displays (with video) – August 31, 2015
Apple may be prepping a Mac Pro refresh for early 2016 – August 25, 2015
What’s next for Mac Pro graphics cards? – August 13, 2014
First impressions: Apple’s new Mac Pro – June 20, 2014
Hardware.Info reviews Apple’s Mac Pro: Revolutionary, Apple reinvents the workstation – June 17, 2014
Houston Chronicle reviews Apple Mac Pro: Unmatched by any Windows system – March 12, 2014
Review: Apple’s $3999 6-core Mac Pro is an impressive computer – February 26, 2014
Ars Technica pro reviews Apple’s 2013 Mac Pro: Powerful, but it isn’t always a clear upgrade – January 28, 2014
T3 Mac Pro review: Unboxing, hands-on, and first impressions – December 20, 2013
ITProPortal reviews Apple’s Mac Pro: One of the best premium desktops we’ve ever tested – January 14, 2014
PC Magazine reviews Apple’s Mac Pro: Stunning, astonishing, Editors’ Choice – December 27, 2013
The New York Times reviews Apple’s Mac Pro: Deeply futuristic; extremely, ridiculously fast and powerful – December 26, 2013
The Verge reviews Apple’s new Mac Pro: Unlike anything the PC industry’s ever seen – December 23, 2013
Engadget reviews Apple’s new Mac Pro: In a league of its own – December 23, 2013
The first 24 hours with Apple’s new Mac Pro and Final Cut Pro X 10.1 (with video) – December 20, 2013
T3 Mac Pro review: Unboxing, hands-on, and first impressions – December 20, 2013
Apple’s powerful new Mac Pro a good value; far from the most expensive high-end Mac or high-end PCs – December 20, 2013
CNET hands on: Apple’s radically reimagined Mac Pro is a powerhouse performer – December 20, 2013
Good thing they priced it so that nobody could buy one
With a desktop, PCIe slots are absolutely necessary. The current Mac Pro design is more like a Mac Mini Pro than a Mac Pro. The classic Mac Pro’s expansion made it very versatile. You could upgrade the wireless card or graphics card just by swapping out PCIe cards and you could add things like sound cards and USB 3 cards. Thunderbolt is nice, but it doesn’t have enough bandwidth for high-end graphics cards. It’s fine for low- and mid-range graphics cards, but not high-end ones. Also, the lack of PCIe slots increases the price of expansion cards by requiring the use of a Thunderbolt chassis/adapter.
So I see MDN is running an anti Mac Pro campaign.
Good.
well, if so …. perhaps deservedly so.
it is a remarkable design in so many ways, but it takes us back to the day of problematic expandability and even worse, back to the snakes nest of cabling that was – and now seems to be again, at least in this case – the bain of desktop computer users.
not well enough thought out, despite its revolutionary design.
they really need to fix these shortcomings. (that never should have happened in the first place)
MDN’s campaign against Mac Pro does not focus on the actual problems with it — they keep complaining that the model is stagnating, but they haven’t yet called it out for what it is — a terrible design.
“Revolutionary” isn’t the same as rotational.
Ive at his looniest. The 2012 Mac mini is still the most powerful, we now have a 1 port MacBook that’s about as powerful as an iPhone, soldered in RAM pretty much everywhere, a seriously neglected OS X, pro apps vanishing or getting dumber and now a MaxiPad. When is management going back to doing amazing things with hardware and put Ive out to pasture where he belongs? He should have been measured for a straightjacket the moment he walked in the room with the plans for the Trashcan Pro.
Only 2 reasons to buy a Mac Pro:
Server, or Content Creation Workstation.
(Every other user can be better served by an iMac these days).
Both of these use-cases require large volumes of local storage. Elegantly managing this storage *should have been* Apple’s primary concern with this model. If they had nailed that, these would be flying off the shelves.
Too bad iMacs are so difficult to upgrade these days.
For most professionals, storage comes from the network. So no need for hard drive upgrades. Haven’t needed to upgrade memory in a Mac in a decade. The built-in screens are the best in the business and are *large*.
The iMac is basically an appliance, and it works well that way.
Not everyone wants, is comfortable with or has the room for an all-in-one appliance. I had one about 9 years ago and hated it. I’d rather deal with a laptop than put up with a monster on my desk that can’t be repaired or upgraded.
I’d put a MacBook setup in the same category as an iMac for the purposes of this discussion. The point is, it’s not a giant configurable box you can tinker with.
No, OWC is working on a SSD upgrade, plus a MBP is FAR more portable and convenient than an iMac. 4.5 lbs vs 21 lbs? Big difference to haul around, particularly if you don’t like or need giant monitors.
>>For most professionals, storage comes from the network
Baloney. For most professionals, speed matters above everything else. And the network is just too slow–and not by a little, but by an order of magnitude. The network is fine for end-of-day backup and minor collaboration, but a professional–whether graphics, audio or developer–needs a stack of honking fast local drives.
I would say that’s only true for hard-core content creators (video editors, sound engineers, motion graphics, 3D, photo editors).
For everyone else, the convenience of a network outweighs the speed of local storage. That’s especially true for professionals who don’t use anything more complex than a spreadsheet. But even if you visit an advertising agency these days… network storage.
Wow, you must have tiny data dude.
Professional computation: Engineering, graphics, science = lots of data.
Technologically, fast network connections do now exist, but to drop FibreChannel-8 (or better) connections on each node will,easily add $1K/seat .. the payoff in workflow had sure as heck be worth it, else the Accountants will flay you alive.
> for most professionals, storage comes from the network.
It depends on what the work is and the workflow … For heavier lifting, the content is preferentially to be created locally, as high performance local storage is more cost-effective…and then it is put into the corporate server. You don’t find many desktops (let alone laptops) connected by a FibreChannel-8 (or better) network connections.
> Haven’t upgraded to upgrade memory in a Mac in a decade ..
Oh, so you mean you’ve been buying it upfront with each set of new hardware, and paying Apple’s markup each time. Of course, a good piece of this is also because Apple has systematically removed such in-house upgrades as a customer option, so it really isn’t a “feature” differentiation point anymore.
I agree – the pain in connecting these together via fibre ($1000 thunderbold-2-fibre converter + extra electrical cable) is just a pain in the butt. Maybe the idea was that people would only have 1 of these and connect them directly via thunderbolt to a personal RAID system? It was a lot easier to just drop a fibre channel card into the old tower.
Mac as a Server ??
Imagine a major server OS upgrade every year.
Thanks god Linux is there.
“Only 2 reasons to buy a Mac Pro:
Server, or Content Creation Workstation.
(Every other user can be better served by an iMac these days”
Im Calling BULLSHIT!
Just because you may not need one does not mean some of us who are not Video Editors or Hosting are the only people who need it.
There is no effing way on Earth or any other planet that I am going to pay 27″ iMac prices for what are essentially laptop components in a glued shut box designed to please Jony’s drive to make stuff as skinny as possible.
I think Apple may have gotten carried away with the idea of making something really cool (MacPro can) rather than making something customers wanted and needed. Sometimes that strategy works, but I don’t think it did in this case.
Pro users want a machine where they can get inside and easily change cards when new stuff comes on the market. The old Pro tower allowed that in a slicker form than any Windows machine.
Because the new Pro is cool but not really as usable by pro users, pros are migrating to Windows and Linux machines they built themselves. And when enough pros leave OS X, so will the high end software developers.
I think they forgot that “cool” can be different things in different contexts.
On the desktop or in your pocket, a sleek slab is the way to go.
In the server room or under a workstation, tinker-toys are cool. The original X Serve understood that (but was a pain outside of a server rack). I think they would have sold a lot of machines if they had developed a new X Serve, and an accompanying Drobo-like RAID unit that were designed to work both in and out of a server rack.
Now they still wouldn’t have sold millions of them, but they could have kept those two markets very happy.
I don’t like the idea of a sleek slab on my desktop, I want something I can open and drop a new network card or more RAM or add a USB-C card or upgrade a drive. As it stands, the entire system, monitor and all, needs to be upgraded. A horrific waste of money.
Cool or not, there is no excuse for not speed bumping the MacPro when the Haswell XP came our in June.
Once in a while…
“Once and awhile” would mean to update it once, but take some time doing it…?
Sincerely, the Grammar Police.
To correct and to serve.
Now is the time to get stories like this it, because it will be less relevant come early 2016. And no, stories like this are not going to influence the design of the next Mac Pro, that design is already cast in stone – whatever the design is.
Hmm, lots of complaining and whining about the MacPro lately.
1) Thunderbolt to PCIe Expansion chassis exist starting around $300. What is wrong with these?
2) Internal hard drives are overrated. I work in professional video and external drives or network storage are the way to go. You can never have enough internal drive capacity these days.
3) There are always people with exceptional needs (nothing wrong with that) and the open wilds of custom PC boxes run by Windows or Linux have always been the way to go for these needs. Apple cannot be expected to provide an integrated environment for those people unless it can be proven that they will make back their investment in hardware and software integration over the course of three to five years. My experience is that the high end professional needs have been changing faster than that recently. If you have 1,000 people spending $5000 each and combined hardware, development and other costs for your dream tower are less than $5,000,000 then maybe you have an argument.
1) They start at $300. They weren’t necessary prior to the goofball design.
2) I prefer internal drives. External and network drives are better for backups.
3) Apple did just fine with towers with slots for many years.
“1) Thunderbolt to PCIe Expansion chassis exist starting around $300. What is wrong with these?”
Thunderbolt 2 don’t offer nearly the throughput to utilize PCIe cards in an expansion chassis to their full potential. So while you can use them, they’re being choked by TB2.
I knew somebody would make the speed comparison. Who needs this sort of throughput? How many professionals, are you one of them? Congratulations for doing work of this calibre. I know there are many high-end applications where the highest throughput is needed but how many people need it? Please provide statistics.
If there was a huge need for this level of speed somebody would come up with a dual TB2 PCIe box similar to the 5K monitors that use two TB ports to get that resolution.
The only thing stopping Dell, HP or others from making a tower for Mac is Apple and I would gladly buy a proper OS X workstation from Dell than the Trashcan or an iMac.
Just went over to Apple and Dell and can configure a Xeon Dell Tower with a 2GB nVidia Card and 4k 27″ Monitor for less than a 27″ iMac with Iris Pro Graphics and a Core i5. The Dell also was speed with FireWire and Thunderbolt.
If the Market is too small for Apple to bother with, Apple should license OS X for WORKSTATIONS so we can get a decent box. I could not give a shit what it looks like.
After X Server and 10.6 server OSX, that was the end of enterprise.
I’d agree (as would everyone) that today a “real server” is Linux.
But there’s still a place for a Mac in a server room (as a file server). And there’s still a need to put a Mac in an equipment rack (at a studio). And there’s certainly a need for an expandable Mac under a desk as a content creator’s workstation.
Has anyone noticed how Internet writings have taken on a sort of voice transcription feel to them?
Twice this week MDN has used the phrase “once and awhile.” Of course, they meant to write “once in a while.”
This is the sort of thing that happens when people who are not used to writing type out a phrase based on how they speak it.
It just makes me wonder about the age of the writer, and the power of today’s social media to modify the language over time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few decades we’ll have to read text aloud just to figure out what the writer is trying to say.
So I actually own and use one of these.
Some thoughts:
1. I don’t want internal storage. I can nicely sit the trash can Mac Pro on my desk for access and put the external drive array and other peripherals under the desk via super fast Thunderbolt cables. I much prefer the compact design to the gargantuan boxes that used to sit under my desk and get constantly kicked and rammed with my chair.
2. Why on earth would anyone think that the Mac Pro needs to be updated on a cycle even close to consumer-end Macs? The market for a Mac Pro isn’t that big and people who have them probably can’t afford to upgrade on anywhere near the consumer cycle. The damn thing is so powerful and capable, I would have no need for incremental upgrades. Let it go on a 2-4 year upgrade cycle when the bump would be justifiable to senior management.
Come on, Apple. Just take the old box, reduce it in size by half or more. Stuff it with all of the basics. Make it easily expandable, allowing the power user to add in what they like. Make it rectangular so it can be stacked. Think of making a box that when combined with several other such boxes will make a cluster super computer. The trash can suggests otherwise given it’s shape.
Aim for making a super computer. Let the buyers dream of having their own super computer. They will say to themselves, I can only afford one right now, but if I get that grant I will be able to buy four more and have a smokin’, super cluster!
You don’t need to get too fancy on appearances. Frankly, the trash can was just not what many/most of us wanted. I wanted an updated version of the old box filled with the latest technology but crammed into a smaller container. There is no need to make it black. Plus, it makes the machine look gimmicky rather than what it should be, Apple offering hardcore, raw computing power.
Again, think cluster.
Amazing how many here can make comments, not having or most likely ever tried, let alone worked on a Mac Pro.
And more than likely, know the workings of the any PROFESSIONAL video editing studio.
Having worked, directed and even owned in this area, I don’t know of any studio that could immediately upgrade or for that matter take advantage of every opportunity that came about.
Many of us literally invested tens or for that matter hundreds of thousands of dollars for hardware, software, as well as time required learn and incorporate the ever expanding ‘superior?’ technology that we were presented. And for these reasons, most studios, didn’t upgrade immediately, and for many of the ‘older/experienced’ never. They didn’t need to.
For those who were or are fortunate to get a Mac Pro and in particularly adopt the likes of Final Cut Pro, there wasn’t much of a need to further ‘update/upgrade,’ if at all.
And, before any of you decide to comment negatively on my meanderings, perhaps you should look here, i.e., http://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/in-action/. These are examples of some of the few that have the wherefore all and means to use the Apple technology to its fullest. Keeping in mind that there are a lot more that have achieved as much and some even more with what some would call ‘legacy’ systems by equally profession editors and artists.
I absolutely love my MacPro… Sits beautifully on my desk. Powerful enough for my intense photo editing needs. Allows for a color critical wide gamut monitor. Expandable out to external equipment. Wont need to upgrade for years.
But I do understand. It does not meet everyone’s needs.
The Mac Pro is arguably the thing that should get updated most often. It could be a flagship device, almost a folly to show the absolute limits of what Apple can do, something to satisfy the bleeding edge users who will pay big money to make use of the newest, fastest, best. It’s not as if they have to upgrade everything about it, just put the newest tech in (I’m aware it’s not just a case of sticking in a new chip and putting it on sale).
If it were up to me, I would make a “MacStack Pro”
Buy the modules you want and stack them up on top of each other like a pile of books. Each book might be the size of a MacMini or so. If a person wanted PCI slots, that longer case could go at the bottom of the stack.
This may sound cool, until you realise that this would mean another custom-made GPU which can’t be upgraded without Apple’s reluctant approval.
I love OS X, but I want something I can tweak and change over time. An older iMac worked for me because they were easy enough to open up, but these latest ones are too impractical.
When my current machine decides to pack up, I think I’ll just get Mac minis and trade them up every two years (which seems to be their upgrade cycle these days). I’d keep them longer but they’ve suffered the lockdown treatment as well!
It saddens me that some of Apple’s most loyal customers (pros) are considering walking away from the platform due in part to the utter inadequacy of Apple’s hardware offerings – the very same people who stuck with Apple during its brush with death in the late ’90s.
“The Mac Pro is revolutionary, but Apple could really stand to, you know, update the thing once and awhile. Not doing so makes it look like Apple regards professional Mac users as an afterthought. “ —MDN
Apple does regard professional Mac users as an afterthought—without a doubt.
True pros ARE an ” after thought” at Apple now !
Its more than clear with every step they take and every product they choose to call Pro.
Its going to backfire on them sooner or later.
Prowess Reputation at the Pro level is the foundation for everything else.
Apple is shoting itself in the foot by ignoring this !
Apple , Tim, Phil, Team
Listening?
The Mac Pro is NOT a ‘misfire’. It is however being ignored, left to antiquate while the world of pro computers passes it by, leaving it in the dust. Apple lost interest, killing its own sales potential.
it’s the new Cube. A cool but crappy design that will live on in history. Sadly the Cube was just part of the lineup not the whole shebang.
It is time Apple licensed Mac OS X for Workstation class hardware to Dell or HP- someone who would gladly jump on board. It would serve everyone’s needs.
We would get the powerful boxes we need without Jony’s fluff. The licensees would get a great product to market to the scientific, engineering, production and content creation markets for both sales and service.
My trusty Mac Pro died recently and it has been shipped off for an upgrade. Meanwhile, I am using a Late 2014 Mac mini 2.6 Core i5 booting off of a USB 3 connected SSD to bypass the slow internal drive and a ProBox with 4 HDs that have been backing up my Mac Pro.
I have a MacBook Pro (latest) but rarely use it as I prefer Desktop to laptop almost always. Yes Tim, I have an iPad Air 2 and an iPhone 6 and still want a new Mac Pro that is actually a Mac Pro.
Good on you DavGreg! I have my old Mac Mini 2011 as my server and, since I enjoy traveling around a lot for the sake of creativity, my main machine is my 2013 MBP. I have two older Mac laptops kicking around for running olde stuff, but rarely use them these days. I dumped my maxed out monster 9600 last year and was kind of glad to see it go.
The Mac Pro 2010 had a traditional hard drive, which was slow. A few years later and now one can install a pci card with nvme flash on it and attain 100 time disk access speed. Bam, your Mac Pro classic is now flying.
Or upgrade processors, or add more ram.
How would anyone upgrade a $7500 trash can 2 years from now ?
My theory is that apple knows all this and is acting on purpose. The only machine worth to them is the IMac and the mbp, the rest are getting the silent treatment. They are not ‘canceling’ them, they are simply ignoring them.
Death by neglect. No one at Apple cares about Macs anymore, they’re a phone company now.
For me, the design of the MacPro just proves how out of touch Apple is with demanding professionals. Who designs a workstation which excludes pros to upgrade and/or modify the internals? Furthermore, who the fuck designs a workstation limited to a custom-designed AMD card? »CUDA you say? I’m sorry but we don’t support the industry standard for 3D apps«.
And don’t get me started on Cupertino’s take on workflow. Seriously, 10 years ago, Pathfinder made more sense than today’s Finder.
With Thunderbolt 3 in the works, utilizing the USB-C type connector, and having backwards compatibility with pretty much everything, not to mention a 40Gbps transfer rate, I see no reason why Apple doesn’t include this type of connection in the next Mac Pro.
Make it happen, Apple.
Except … is there even a USB-C to Thunderbolt adaptor yet …at **any** price for MacBook buyers to use? Or for MiniDisplayPort (mDP)?
Do also keep in mind that the MacBook has been available now for 235 days (7 months).
The grim reality is that Apple’s track record on physical interconnects is a nightmare of excessively short-lived proprietary products, each of which usually costs at least $29 for an adaptor (if one even exists): since 2008, there’s been the micro-DVI, mini displayport (mDP), thunderbolt (TB) and now USB-C — that’s four (4) interfaces in only seven (7) years, which is utterly insane.
As such, the launch of the USB-C connector is yet another big old FAIL by Apple leadership, for not even having all of the necessary adaptors in place at time of release.
Hardware engineers are a scarce resource at Apple. The same guys can develop a new Mac Pro, or a new iMac. One sells by the thousands. The other sells by the millions. It’s not at all surprising that the Mac Pro doesn’t get updated more often: it’s the same reason that Apple quit making the Xserve.
-jcr
One hopes that when Apple makes some more money so they will be able to afford a few more hardware engineers and maybe a few more software engineers.
…
15 years ago apple was 100 time smaller and their hardware engineers at the time created the power mac g4 if you remember. during those days they gave a damn, now they take all they can.
Well, when they have two ‘Lead Engineers’ working on just the Magic Mouse 2 … because it didn’t “sound right” … the supposed ‘scarcity’ of hardware engineers doesn’t sound like a particularly plausible excuse: it sounds like a misallocation of resources by VP’s Croll & Schiller.
Apple can contract out the design just like they contract out manufacturing. Flextronics builds the trashcan.
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/06/cook-visits-mac-pro-factory/
They could easily do the engineering as well.