“Apple’s Mac Pro is aging fast, especially with screaming fast Windows desktops being announced in recent weeks,” Agam Shah reports for Digital Arts.
“Introduced in 2013, the Mac Pro was a top-of-the-line desktop at that time. It looked exquisite in its sleek cylindrical design, and it sported new features like Thunderbolt 2 ports, plus the latest CPUs, GPUs and NVMe storage,” Shah reports. “More importantly, it was a signal that Apple had not abandoned the professional computing market.”
“But the Mac Pro is again falling behind the competition, with powerful new workstations from Lenovo, Dell and HP carrying superior technology. The PC companies are waging an active campaign to tempt Mac Pro users, many of them creative professionals, to move over to Windows PCs with better CPUs, GPUs, and memory,” Shah reports. “The Mac Pro is still a fast machine, but creative professionals want the latest and greatest hardware, said Bob O’Donnell, principal analyst at Technalysis Research. ‘I compare it more to a low-end workstation,’ O’Donnell said… But patience has its virtues. If Apple hangs on before upgrading Mac Pro, some breakthrough technologies could put the desktop leagues ahead of its Windows rivals.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Here’s hoping WWDC delivers some Mac Pro goodness we’re sure developers and other pro Mac users would greatly appreciate.
Analysis: true.
Fire Tim Cook.
But Tim Cook will offer new Mac Pros in rose gold color schemes to match your Apple Watch. Can anyone else do that?
We need them. Mac Pro’s have been allowed to slip behind multiple times…yes even before Tim Cook took over.
Apple, give me a box similar in design to the old Mac Pro but make it 1/3 the size and allow me to drop the side so I can add components as needed. Also, design small blades that can be added to make it a cluster super computer. Enough with the trash can. You closed yourself in with that design. Don’t be afraid to go back to the old design. It was great. Just make the next generation box smaller.
From your lips to Tim’s ears. I would like a full tower though. I am tired of even thinking of going PC workstation. It’s sad when a 2012 Mac Pro can be updated to be as fast (or faster) as the current Mac Pro, and for less money.
Absolutely!!
I have an iMac 27 2012 I use for most of my creative work but I wanted a more powerful and flexible profesional machine. I ended building a small PC with a fast CPU, much, more powerful graphics, watercooling and a Lian Li mini ATX box. I love this PC machine but if Apple does what you say I will sell everything and buy one. “A smaller Mac Pro box with a side panel”, I don’t care to go “back”. And even if Apple updates the current Mac Pro I think I will pass and replace my iMac instead. I hate the idea of spending a great amount of money on a professional machine that can’t be significantly upgraded on the GPU components. Meanwhile I will keep using one powerful iMac and 1 powerful mini PC.
I’ve always wanted a 1/2 size tower.
1. Four memory slots (instead of eight)
2. Two PCI slots (instead of four)
3. One Optical drive (instead of two)
4. Two HD bays (instead of four)
In my opinion, the current Mac Pro achieves exactly opposite of what it is supposed to do–instead of an elegant little cylinder, you have an elegant little cylinder hooked up with a bunch of ugly wires to a bunch of other gear like raids, backup HDs, external optical drives and converter boxes for everyone who heavily invested in Firewire.
Fer crying out loud, why couldn’t they put a couple of frickin’ Firewire ports on the MacPro which every audio or video professional has invested in over the last decade!
Also still say the MacMini should have used 3.5″ drives which would have made it cheaper and more flexible to configure.
With all the resources Apple has, why offer only two headless desktop models? In addition to a simplified MacBook lineup and the iMac family, there should be 5 new Mac model lines for hardcore users:
1) all-new Mac Mini
2) revised Mac trashcan
3) all-new rack-mountable Xserve (which Apple can implement for its server farms immediately!)
4) all-new midsize Mac tower
5) all-new monster Mac Pro workstation
Until Apple gets off its increasingly fat asses and produces a full lineup of computers again, the Mac will continue to be a <10% market profit proposition. The answer is not to continue ignoring the market, Apple needs to cater to the needs of the huge market for real powerful computers!!!!
Mr Sculley!! What are you doing back here?
Actually a pretty good list! There is no one-size-fits-all for professionals. And Apple is doing a huge disservice to its Mac user base in just waiting for 3rd party companies to fill the void. The Apple factory machines are so far behind the Hackintoshes right now, it’s laughable.
I’ll bet the pent-up demand for at least some of those proposed configurations is enormous. Cook and his fashionistas would be shocked how many people are ready to buy new professional Mac models, if only Apple made them.
The reason Windows PCs are beating the Mac Pro is because they have upgradeability while the Mac Pro has very limited upgradeability.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Apple makes the vast majority of it’s money from iPhones. That’s the new reality.
People like me who make their living with Macs need to accept this new reality.
Just because you said so? Apple knows their entire line is important from pro to consumer. You apparently though know nothing and assume everything before it plays out. Let’s wait and see what happens at WWDC. They just may pleasantly surprise you.
I love your optimism and enthusiasm, but the reality remains that Mac Pro produces a negligible sliver of profits for Apple, which is why they can afford to build it in the US (margins are massive, volume is minuscule, so logistically, it isn’t a major challenge). We will all hope for that surprise in June, but one must temper expectations, after watching recent trends.
If would be different if Apple just didn’t have the resources or money to continue Mac Pro development but they do, in spades. So why the heck not? Profits hardly even matter in this instance. Reputation, prestige and the repercussions of having a limited “truck” for sale to professionals without a Mac Pro offering would matter more and certainly change professional opinion of Apple. Not everyone can get away with getting their work done with a fully loaded iMac or Mac Book Pro. A MacStation PC killer would be nice.
Hope springs eternal ’tis true. ‘Til June then… 🙂
Mr. Blood, you are right on the money.
I agree, it is a niche market and there is little profit to be made, but APPLE, that little niche consists of the artists, designers, scientists and university educators who talk about and help sell your line to others. Many of them are the opinion makers in their little universe of professionals. Don’t give them a second class machine for doing their work. Give them something they talk about with pride. Give them something they point to and brag about. Some people might say that scientists are above bragging about their computers. Ha! Give me a break! That’s one of the things they most love bragging about. And if the box under their desk isn’t worth computing-shit while their colleague across the hall is using a Windows box that crushes their machine, well, then everyone in the department and at this year’s conference on “Why the universe will end in 2025” knows about that difference.
APPLE, give the geeks of the world a machine they can be proud of and can use in wondrous ways. If you do, they will sell your line with even more gusto than they do now. And, more importantly, they will sleep better at night knowing that the CPU under their desk is 50% mightier than the CPU under their colleague’s desk.
Here here!! 🙂
I think it looks quite clear that, in the car / truck analogy, Apple chose to offer a BMW, rather than a limited, high-end truck. To Jobs, trucks will always be trucks, and him having grown up in suburbia, the common association with trucks was a ‘redneck’… After all, he himself drove a Mercedes.
Apple’s general æsthetics gives us strong signals that the old-school user-serviceable tower computers are history and will never return to the Mac product line.
We can still hope…
I touched on that yeah, they wouldn’t want to go back but maybe they can go sideways with a new form factor that is more in long the lines of what Pro’s need.
…a used BMW.
Agreed.
Who won that battle a long time ago, Job’s or Woz? Woz wanted everything upgradable, Job’s not so much.
The battle still rages on but which makes the investors more money?
Apple always used to care about professionals and served their upgradability needs, right up until the time Jobs left us. Then immediately Apple turned its back on pros and gave us nothing but soldered solid-state disposable computers that cannot be economically upgraded by the user.
Soldered memory and lack of internal expansion may be what it takes for Ive to squish his grey boxes and sell more neutered MacBooks, but it makes professional users puke.
On most basic performance measurements, the entire Mac lineup is severely outclassed in the market. What’s more, OS X has become a creaky, bloated imitation of itself. It’s file system is actually inferior to the competition and the built-in freebie ware is for the most part ugly, poorly designed, and unusable. It’s inexcusable. Cook needs to fix it now or get the boot.
Apple made many decisions that angered professionals during the years that Jobs was in charge. I miss Steve, too, but revising history to made the 2000s seem like the proverbial “good ole days” is unfair to Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple team.
As I have said many times before, Apple can and should do better in supporting professionals by providing cutting edge equipment and maintaining software tools and development, regardless of the profitability. Apple used to publicly laud the performance of its systems. In the Intel CPU age of the Mac, Apple appears content to settle for mid-range.
Peter … unfortunately, “theyreallyareamoungus” is 100% spot-on: the content that the traditional Power User Mac was built for isn’t sufficiently compelling for Apple to support anymore – – if nothing else, wake up and realize that Aperture was EOL’ed.
And while I’d certainly love to have a new MP at WWDC for me to drop some cash on to replace my 2012, my reality is that current PC offerings – – – and increasingly, the non-Mac **ecosystem** is a better fit for my workflow needs than what Apple is choosing to sell.
And that sort of statement coming from a 3+ decades Apple customer is not great news for Apple … and that’s even before how I point out how the 2013 Mac Pro represented huge decline in customer value for my applications: I did a quick assessment in late 2015 and found that the $5.5K that my 2012 did cost would cost $7.3K for an _equivalent_ (no, not “better”) 2013 … that’s a 30% price increase (or a 30% decline in product value)…or I could switch to Windows and retain the $5.5K price point. Unfortunately, I see it as only a matter of time at this point.
I think you both are suffering from “premature doomulation.” You are guessing. For me the “put up or shut up” comes at WWDC this year and determines for many the platform direction they will, or must, go. (Also is you notice Mac sales remain YOY ascendent as the trend for PC’s is on the down low even though the numbers are bigger.) Different strokes for different folks and it should always be that way. Believe me I know the allure of the dark side but frankly I can easily build a $10-20,000 PC workstation too. We shall see soon enough.
Call it what you wish, but the reality is still that the 2013MP design resulted in it servicing an even-narrower niche of Pros, and it hasn’t received any attention.
In the meantime, OS X 10.11’s disk utility has been dumbed-down, which has telegraphed that Apple’s intended path ahead is for systems which only contain but a single logical drive…no RAID support, etc, which again is depleting the toolbox for Pros.
Now granted, I do agree with you that WWDC is going to be a milestone decision point for a lot of Pros … but that’s effectively just an arbitrary line in the sand – – there will be some who decide to move on, just as there will also be some with rose-colored glasses who will try to kick the can out to whatever the next Apple event after WWDC is.
And on YOY sales performance, that’s a red herring unless you can substantiate that the performance is in Pro-grade products. The growth could be all MacBooks being sold to school systems (or Air’s going to college students) and we have no way of knowing that there’s any uptick – – or even any benefit – – to Pros. If you want to interpret this lack of data as good news, you’re welcome to do so, but let’s make an assessment based on known facts, which here also has to include the observation that the headless Macs are all quite long-in-the-tooth since their last hardware upgrade (545 and 846 days .. that’s 100 and 400 days longer (slower) than their historical product cycle time averages)
I agree with the neglect in today’s pro market and also letting the usual Apple urge to downsize and make stylish (or over-Ivesed) get the better of them. Pro’s don’t care about fashion when it comes to the heavy lifting – they want options and upgradeability. So it is illogical to force something different on them. A total misread of that market space.
Yep hate the new Disk Utility too, they need to add an “Advanced” section to bring back everything, and then some.
A friend of mine who won a VFX Academy Award for the original Star Wars has used Macs a long time but was starting to reconcile he would have to move to a PC workstation. He did get one (a very high end one) but had so many problems (Windows 10 being part of the culprit) he went back and got a 2012 12 core 3.47Ghz Mac Pro with Titan-X from Create Pro in the UK and other speed enhancement technology that brings it up to date (except no Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 needs a PCI card). I am tempted but at the same time why should we have to do this? I may still jump ship. But I am hoping Apple will have updated the Mac Pro and made it more pro attractive again.
The YOY is for overall Mac sales, I wasn’t referring to specific pro sales. Who knows how many 2013 MP’s they sell? All I know is my Macs last a VERY long time (though the G5 Mac Pro was a steaming pile of Power PC junk) so the cost factor really isn’t a factor. Also there are caveats as some graphics apps DO work better with PC’s (or are exclusive to that platform, as FCPX is to Macs) but OS X is so much more delightful to work with. I was reminded of this at a friends with many Windows machines over last weekend watching the convoluted way he had to go through to simply transfer some files from a USB device. Spare me!!
WWDC is an pro platform choice divergent point for Mac Pro’s to be sure. I wonder how much Apple is aware of that? Thanks for your views!
FWIW, I also think that one final element of this longstanding dialog regarding the 2013 redesign is anger at when Phil Schiller threw down his snarky “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass!” remark: given just how obviously that Apple leadership has misread their Pro customer, if there’s ever going to be an admission that they made a mistake, it is going to also have a big old serving of crow to be eaten as part of the apology.
The real cultural question for Apple is if they’re going to be smart enough to admit that they screwed up, or if they’re going to deny & double down. Given how the Mac is an increasingly smaller fraction of the iOS Corporation, they could choose to remain silent and in denial, believing that there’s no downside loss risk to them…which is a dangerous attitude for any business to have, even if other factors indicate that they’ll survive for the next decade — but then again, there were times where no one expected Nokia or Blackberry to fall from grace, either.
Not having a Mac Pro that is the dream of the industrial professional won’t bring down Apple but neither will it enhance their reputation with pro’s or business. With the XServer gone and a neglected & design misguided Mac Pro it only leads one other platform direction left for many. Audio professionals must love the newer quiet design but really Apple needs to offer up more than one take on the Mac Pro form factor, but doubtful they will.
“They just may pleasantly surprise you.”
Or they may not. Place your bets.
The word “may” is a modifier that implies either way Captain Obvious. Of course it may not turn out to be our delight and satisfaction in spite of all the inevitable & usual product introduction bravado said with a brave face. I can only hope they’ve gotten an earful about it and done their due diligence within the pro industry of, hey, ASKING pro’s what they need rather than foisting their choices on them.
If Apple places all its eggs in the iPhone basket the company will lose.
Pro desktop machines need to have user expandability. Thats why they are pro machines, for pros who don’t mind to tinker. Otherwise get the Macbook pro. Or kill the MacPro off. But Jeez Apple, do something right for once in this regards.
You get a “super-yep.” Every pro I know who I uses Macs laments this. Surely Apple has gotten plenty of feedback on this folly and misread of the pro market by now. But you know they would be loathe to take a step backward (that would be admitting failure). Let’s hope they step gracefully sideways with a new form factor that appeases all.
Apple.. Please take the “pro” acronym a bit (umm a lot) more seriously.!!!
All of the Adobe software I rely on every day is limping along on my aging Mac Pro and the newer Macs don’t appeal to me. All that software runs great under Windows. Next upgrade cycle might see me shoved over to the dark side.
Move over to windows – please. Get yourself one of those superfine microswift machines. Amaze us with your creativity. But really, just go. Go away. Be gone.
APPLE WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE “PRO” OR ENTERPRISE-CENTRIC. Apple is for the “rest” of us. The LAST thing I want to do is open up a computer. I just want to use it for my reasons. Please go away.
You are wrong. Quadra, PowerPC 9500, G3, G4, G5 Toweres, and 5 models with two form factors of MacPro destroy your ignorant assessment that Apple was never meant to be Pro. I would know, because I have owned every single model that was pro with the exception of the 2013 MP, which I had to pass because my workflow is to dependent of nVida GPUs that did not support with that model.
Actually Apple was always the high end boutique option for the artistic creative market. even though most windows machines can outgun and out power and outperform pretty much any mac on the market ever.. its the User Experience that appeals to us creative non technical thinkers… overpriced but easy to use.
that said i’d rather have a powerful laptop with the option of running added GPU/PCIe devices via TB3..
Yea, no kidding. The Mac Pro is obvious. But, so is the MacBook Pro as well.
The Reason . . . Apple has delayed new Mac Pros as they were waiting for Intel to release Thunderbolt 3. The upcoming Mac Pros will have USB-C Thunderbolt 3 connectors (instead of the current mini-displayport connectors) . . . These new connectors allow for external docks, external video cards, etc. Most importantly (if you are a video editor), you can run numerous 4K displays.
weak excuse. Apple skipped multiple chances to upgrade its Macs and is doing next to nothing to enable a healthy aftermarket for the Mac. Cook has turned his back on pros and is putting all his attention on iOS gadgets. If this continues much further, many of us will have no choice but to abandon Apple. The Mac needs to be maintained as a cutting-edge professional computing option.
won’t beat up Tim Cook too much here as I was pleased how he handled the FBI thing ….
BUT..
we still have to point out that as Barefeats has shown the current Mac Pro is way outdated. Barefeats tests show in GPU tasks a 5 Year Old previous generation Pro with UPGRADED video card being 2-3 times faster than a current Pro and 5 times faster than a current Macbook Pro.
http://barefeats.com/imac5k20.html
As I’ve posted before:
1) for the fashionistas who like the cylinder Apple can keep making them. Visually they are beautiful machines…
but:
2) for the true high end who want expandability bring back the Tower, (you know Apple had the iPod ‘classic’ for a long time). Make it lighter than the cheese grater with state of the art subsystem.
3) Mid Tower Pro
Priced between the crippled Mac Mini and the crippled current Mac Pro. One WORKSTATION multicore processor, upgradable Ram, Video Card , maybe one extra slot, Thunderbolt 3…
(I WILL BUY THIS MACHINE RIGHT NOW IF THEY HAD IT).
( note that most Macs today have very weak video, either integrated or a best a modified ‘mobile’ card. Desktop cards can be larger than the entire processor section of a Macbook and are designed for different uses. Many mac users today don’t realize they are having so many problems (including freezes and burnouts) because they are using their weak Macbook cards to play high end games on big monitors… )
forgot to add:
tower options will cost Apple practically nothing in R&D
(hacktintosh guys can cobble together towers that are faster than the current Mac Pro in their basements… )
I’ve been told that the new Mac Pro will be 40% thinner. It will also ship with only 1 revolutionary port: USB-C.
Its design will be unapologetically plastic, like a finely crafted jewel.
It will also double as a recycling bin. Simply drop your old iPhone into it and a revolutionary robot Liam will disassemble your phone. Only Apple.
I’ll say this again, we have no problems with the Mac pros we bought in 2014. They replaced ’08 pros and are worlds faster. Honestly the internal expandablity isn’t an issue for us at all, and the graphics performance has been terrific.
Maybe we are in the minority, but between the Mac pros and the 2015 27″ iMacs we have now, there is far more computing power than 7 years ago. And now that there is a 4TB drive for the “trash can” Mac Pro’s they’ll be able to sticks around a lot longer. (The 4TB drive is from OWC) plus they handle twin 4K displays without issue. Our 12 core systems benchmark around 30,000 which is more than double our 8 core ’08 systems. I honestly don’t understand all the complaining.
Maybe I’m wrong, but we’ve been exceedingly happy with the ’14 systems. Some of the ’08’s are still around as media servers, and will last a lot longer in that role, but we’re happy with the “trash can” pro.
My experience is similar to yours, for many of the same reasons, so I suppose I am in the same minority. Also, I believe that the nMP’s radical design, tooling, and manufacture stateside are signs of greater things to come… Maybe that belief puts me in another minority group, one that harbours naïve hope in a stagnant tide rather than sailing off in the direction of Redmond.
I was over at Best Buy this weekend and there were 5TB and 8TB external drives for sale.. O_O
your argument is self defeating.
“Our 12 core systems benchmark around 30,000 which is more than double our 8 core ’08 ”
supposing somebody had written in 2013 (paraphrasing you) : “I’ll say this again, we have no problems with the Mac pros we bought in 2008. I don’t see why the fuss is that they need to build a NEW MAC , a cylinder one at that ! My 2008 Mac which is faster than way faster than my 2001 mac is fine for my needs. I’m a PRO, I write a financial newsletter and my cheese grater works FINE for ME ! The new cylinder is just overkill .. ”
see at that time 2014 you were happy to get a upgraded cylinder but not everybody needs the cylinders horsepower and some would have argued then that the new cylinder was unneeded . Today you are satisfied with your machine like my fictional guy is happy with his 2008 purchase, and you are poo-pooing others. Being happy with yours with what YOU are doing that does NOT mean that SOME people don’t want DOUBLE THE POWER of the Cylinder for the same price which is possible…
when you are in say the 3D graphics business for example and your rivals can do stuff faster than you on more cost effective machines (and thus cheaper for the client) on their PCs you are in serious trouble…
I am in 3D graphics… We are an architectural firm and do a fair bit of rendering. And if you need a lot of graphical horsepower it’s much more effiecient to have a render farm of daisy changed machines that can crunch things extremely fast. We use a cluster of old Xserves for this purpose and have no need to replace them.
Your argument about the fictional pro in 14 saying he was happy with the 08 performance is a false equivalency. Our fastest 08 pro topped out at a little over 14000 in bench marks, which is roughly equivalent to our new quad core iMacs. The processors of that generation aren’t hyper threaded and this can’t transcode as many things at once. The performance jump for us was substantial in ’14 and has saved us a ton of money. Also, the new Pro’s are more energy efficient saving us on electricity. And they’re quiet, which is a huge plus. In orde for us to see a substantial increase in performance we would need machines that would provide roughly the same jump in performance that we got in 2014… And by 2020, that should be possible. But processor technology hasn’t gotten appreciably faster in the last 2 ½ years, so a major upgrade isn’t that necessary.
A normal upgrade cycle for pro’s is 6-8 years, they simply last a very long time.
Now, as I ALSO stated… Some of those 08’s are sticking around as media servers, and will last well over a decade. I dodnt belittle anyone else, I simply am having trouble understanding all the complaining on this forum. For us, and we again, may be in the minority…. But are very content. And the ability of having iMacs that can now transcode and render every bit as fast as our workstations from 08 has increased our productivity, cut our energy bills, and saved us all from a lot of fan noise.
And the overall build cost was LESS than it was the last time we built our infastructure in ’08. (Note the Xserve cluster was not cheap but it will last a very long time, and it is also augmented with ‘2015 mac minis)
like I said you are addressing YOUR own needs and poo-pooing others.
” We use a cluster of old Xserves for this purpose and have no need to replace them.”
supposing I don’t have ‘OLD xserves’ or don’t want or have the space to put them?
etc.
I ask you are 3D games or movies MORE or LESS complex than they were 4 or even 2 years ago. Just saying that you do 3D in an ‘architectural firm’ doesn’t say much.
You’re saying there’s no need for anyone to get more horse power is silly.
The frictional pro in my example who was happy with his 2008 machine can also say “for my financial newsletter i do 3d Logos! the 256 MB card is more than sufficient !! . I can’t imagine anyone else needing more horse power. If you need it why don’t they just daisy chain a bunch of xserves?”
just for a gamer if you look at the bare feats article that I pointed out:
http://barefeats.com/imac5k20.html
the 5 year old mac pro with UPGRADED card is 2-3 times faster than a CURRENT mac pro for GPU tasks.
this is absurd.
so are you saying that the Gamer or a particular graphics pros who need fast GPU should be SATISFIED with that performance or his needs are irrelevant or can he ‘cobble together’ a bunch of serves?”
That’s not what I’m saying at all, and you’re both missing the point.
A graphics cards raw compute power is almost irrelevant. Drivers are more important, and for rendering or transcoding a project floating point performance is more important that raw graphical horsepower. And in that article you’ll notice that the R395x that is in the 2015 iMac performs extremely well in gaming tasks and rendering. That’s why we bought them… They have helped a lot.
When we bought the machines in 14, the nvidia k5000 was available as an upgrade to our 08 systems. It cost around ~$2000.00 at the time, after buying an extra 32GB of ram, PCIe SSD’s, and 10,000rpm hdd’s, the bill to update the systems would’ve been about 5500/piece. Plus those systems, and the then still basically new 2012 Mac pros still used 3Gbps sata drives, which even when raided together the throughput is a severe bottleneck when it comes to workflow. An all PCIe drive structure is much more efficient. So the buying decision was based on a cost benefit of render times being reduced, and performance increasing productivity.
For a professional environment the current pro is a big improvement in performance over the previous system. Also, thunderbolt SSD arrays are faster than the internal drives you could put into the old system. Also, external graphics cards exist that can run through the thunderbolt port, they perform decently and can help.
As to your comment about not having old Xserves around… No, that’s not a typical thing for a one person operation. But most pro studios have such a setup, if they don’t send the raw files to a massive render farm off site.
The 3D work we do involve motion graphics, complete building modeling down to the studs and electrical wiring and plumbing, and many layers of cad drawings. We also do topographical mapping for the usgs in a separate division, and have found that the compute power we have now far outstrips our needs.
Again, we may be the minority. And we do have the budget to purchase a pretty large setup, albeit only once every 6 years or so but I take your point about that. But the original question was do you pros feel the same. And honestly we don’t. There’s nothing wrong with having a different use case, but it seems if you say something positive that you’re derided for ‘poopooing’ other people’s requirements. I am not doing that at all, I am simply stating why we are happy, and the reason why we probably won’t upgrade until 2020. Also why financially it didn’t make sense to keep an aging system around.
your statements :
“A graphics cards raw compute power is almost irrelevant. ”
“And in that article you’ll notice that the R395x that is in the 2015 iMac performs extremely well in gaming tasks and rendering. ”
when the Game is GPU intensive:
BAREFEATS:
2010 Mac Pro with Upgraded card:
Diablo 3 FPS: 181
2015 iMac (base price $2299) FPS : 74
a FIVE YEAR OLD MAC beats the top of the line 2015 iMac 2.5 times.
(in the Barefeats tests the iMac does well when it is CPU intensive as obviously the iMacs newer CPU will outperform the 5 year old Mac Pro. But a brand new card is like I said twice or more faster in GPU)
the thing is apple can EASILY make a Mac that can beat those specs today i.e with a fast CPU AND GPU. But they haven’t.
I sort of rest my case here.
Yeah in that one game with optimized drivers. And in the footnotes of that barefeats article they state that. Diablo was running under Windows with optimized direct X drivers for the gtx980 they tested. That’s completely different than running Lightroom, final cut, auto cad under OS X and open gl. If you are a gamer, boot the system into Windows and optimize the drivers for the graphics card. Also in that article they state that the new Mac Pro is hard wired in crossfire mode, which is true, and the OpenGL drivers don’t take full advantage of that. It’s a different use case, and I understand your point it’s just not our experience or use case. Do I wish more games were optimized for OS X using OpenGL? Yes, I do. But the hardware isn’t the barrier. And ae you really going to run a game at 181fps?
Here’s my point, In that article they say very clearly that “it depends” on what you want to do. And if you go past the Diablo chart you’ll find that the cards all perform differently in different tests. So it depends. There is no one size fits all solution, but usually the cards apple uses are for the majority of pro customers who need a specific type of performance. Could they put in gaming cards? Sure. But that wouldn’t help with a lot of scientific or modeling apps, or editing suites.
I understand the want of a mid tower that is user upgradable, however it’s a small segment and for a significant majority the iMac is a better solution since it includes a 5k display as well. For us to have purchased a tower with the iMac specs we have (4.0 ghz i7, 64GB ram (via OWC), r395x 4GB graphics, 1tb PCIe SSD and a 5k display that uses the same amount of electricity would’ve cost us 4-5 grand easily. Our iMacs cost 3100 each with the business discount.
My point is that they do know what they’re doing when it comes to the pro market, and typically ahead of the curve. Sometimes they’re too far ahead, but everyone else eventually copies what they’re doing. Again, we’re very happy and if you have a different use case then that’s fine.
“in the footnotes of that barefeats article they state that. Diablo was running under Windows with optimized direct X drivers for the gtx980 they tested. ”
I don’t see that anywhere on the page.
maybe you can point out where that is or cut and paste it?
“If you are a gamer, boot the system into Windows and optimize the drivers for the graphics card” ”
if Apple made an adequate mac or if there was Mac that had Upgradable Cards (none exist now unlike the old Mac Pro) we won’t have to do that (“boot into Windows) , also we should be able to put in different cards as you say yourself “There is no one size fits all solution ” and “That’s completely different than running Lightroom, final cut, auto cad under OS X and open gl.”
you sort of defeat your own arguments above: you say uses are different yet (there are newer specialized cards for 3D now) yet you say Apple is right in making a PRO Mac and a high end iMac that you can’t change the cards (re: “My point is that they do know what they’re doing when it comes to the pro market” )
talking to you is pointless, you are happy with what you have ‘cobbling together xserves’ (which Apple no longer makes by the way) and you sort of dismiss the rest we want more saying ” it’s a small segment ” that’s what people (who were happy with small phones) said about the big iPhone or a stylus for the iPad too.
I’m not dismissing you at all, I’m simply stating the use case and that a lot of pro customers are happy with the offerings. I said that if you have a different use case then that’s fine, I’m not even arguing with you. This isn’t an argument, I said that I understand the want for what you’re describing. But it is a small market segment, that is the truth of the matter. I’m pretty sure that if apple had say 150,000-200,000 customers in a given quarter (about Mac Pro / Mac mini sized markets) who would buy and wanted such a machine that they would make one. That isn’t an insult it’s a statement of fact.
You also seem to think hanging on to 2009 Xserves is stupid even though they still perform incredibly well, and even though they’re not made anymore they are supported and getting parts is easy. Plus they’ll easily last a decade, and again are augmented with minis. It’s a budgetary decision and it works, so why change it of its not necessary.
The citation from barefeats article is located at the bottom of the page in “footnotes” below the conclusions section.
“The citation from barefeats article is located at the bottom of the page in “footnotes” below the conclusions section.”
sorry, still can’t find it:
http://barefeats.com/imac5k20.html
there’s not even a “conclusion section”, the last paragraph is Insights .
i cut and paste the entire bottom section:
——-
“INSIGHTS
QUESTION: “Which is the fastest gaming Mac?”
ANSWER: “It depends on what game(s) you are running.” Some games are more CPU intensive. Some are more GPU intensive.
Our sample of four games had built-in benchmarks.
We included the fastest Mac laptop to illustrate that desktop Macs are preferred for gaming.
The pricey 2013 Mac Pro cylinder with dual FirePro D700s only makes sense if you run your games under Windows OS in a Boot Camp partition. Why? Because its two FirePro GPUs are hardwired into Crossfire mode.
Some games are much faster on a Hackintosh. We have been toying with one in our lab. With the GTX 980 Ti installed, it ran Batman: Arkham City 80% faster and Dirt 57% faster than the 2010 Mac Pro tower with the same GPU. However, Diablo III and Tomb Raider were only 2% and 4% faster respectively.
RELATED GAMING ARTICLES ON BAREFEATS
5K gaming on iMacs and Mac Pros
Five 2015 iMacs compared running Diablo, L4D2, and Tomb Raider
Comments? Suggestions? Feel free to email me, Rob-ART, Mad Scientist.
Follow me on Twitter @barefeats”
———-
ELSEWHERE a different bare feats article states this:
“However, in 2 out of 3 cases, a 2010 Mac Pro with a single NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti overclocked GPU beat the 2013 Mac Pro. And in the case of Diablo III, the 2010 Mac Pro ran Diablo III faster booting into OS X than the 2013 Mac Pro with two CrossFired FirePro D700s booting into Windows “
also:
“You also seem to think hanging on to 2009 Xserves is stupid ”
I’m not saying it’s stupid I AM saying not everybody has Xserves lying around (one more time they don’t make them anymore), and hunting around for used parts to make something which easily solvable by Apple isn’t ideal. Also some people don’t want to cobble render farms together. You seem to be fixated that your solution (you have old xserves etc) is so ideal for many pros which isn’t.
you’re also making broad based assumptions : “I’m pretty sure that if apple had say 150,000-200,000 customers in a given quarter they would make one. ” without any supporting documentation likes surveys. What is true though is that apple has NOT even tried to make a Mid Tower between the mini and the Mac Pro — so sales guesses don’t exist (it’s not as if Apple cancelled a mid tower) .
Although I don’t have polls or surveys either I bet a Mid Tower with upgradable card would outsell the cylinder. I think Apple doesn’t make the towers not because of sales but because the design team isn’t interested as there’s no design challenge.
Ok I misread the section. Somehow I transposed the gtx980ti with the section about crossfire and Windows.
And I’m not saying our solution is the best, and I also said that for a single pro it may not make sense. However it works for us and is typical of a lot of shops.
There a lot of services that can render your content for you if you upload your files to them. And a lot of independent graphics and video pros do that. When I’m talking about render farms that’s what I mean, one example is render rocket. It’s inexpensive and can process files much faster than doing it locally. If you don’t have one that’s in house companies will use these services.
I’m just saying that there are many factors for use case, and if you have a different one that’s fine. But when you’re running a business you look for the most cost effective and productive solution and that doesn’t always mean upgrading systems with 1,000.00 graphics cards ever couple of years. Now if you’re a gamer and want to play things on 4K @60fps you need something very powerful at vector graphics and has a lot of compute cores. And the computers processor is not important as long as it can meet the basic requirements.
But going back to your example of 3D pro’s and rendering scenes and images, floating point is more important as is multithreading and hyper threading. So just take that into account and stop using the same 5 devices to down vote comments of people who have a different opinion.
It is nice that the 2013MP can now take a larger internal SSD … of course, it is unfortunate that it is 3rd Party (not OEM),plus it takes a big 30% performance hit.
Although in counterpoint, a pre-20132MP was capable of running at 85% (6/7th’s) of the speed of the above SSD solution, plus if more than only 4TB was desired, could also swallow “bigger local internal storage” needs too – – for example, one of my MP’s currently has 17TB internal … and if I were to swap around some existing hardware, it could be 20+TB internal without even reallocating either optical drive bay.
But YMMV, of course: if this magnitude of local (& internal) data storage is desired or needed comes down to the individual ‘Pro’ use case…but the same point is also true for those who point out that a 2013 is easier than a tower to carry between various work sites: not all Pro’s need that sort of transportability capability either.
” needed comes down to the individual ‘Pro’ use case”
like I pointed out in my post above, why doesn’t Apple KEEP the cylinder AND make a Tower Mac (which will cost them practically nothing in R&D) and satisfy everyone? (like I said Apple had the iPod ‘classic’ for years to satisfy users who needed the old format)
It’s really baffling because when Tower Macs come out , (see the first page here) posts get dozens of 5 star approvals so there is demand which Apple can EASILY and CHEAPLY satisfy but for some reason (too much focus on iOs ‘cars’ vs ‘trucks’ ?) Apple chooses not to.
I’m afraid the reason why we can’t have both is part of Apple’s DNA from its survival from the Skully years: they had too much proliferation and the reason why Apple survived (besides Steve and besides the iPod) was because they streamlined and simplified down to just a few models.
Now given since that period the market has changed from desktops to laptops, the number of permutations of desktops has shrunk too. For example, no more fruity colors.
And from an R&D standpoint, the reality here is that we also need QA too, and more designs // more design permutations (such as through PCIe cards) // etc … all means more variations that need to be tested & fixed today … so “fewer” means lower developmental costs – – and an example of this is how Disk Utility no longer is supporting RAID … “streamline” to get rid of the feature and the OS becomes cheaper to maintain.
Now the problem with this approach is that you can easily simplify/streamline yourself into a corner which contains nothing. Apple could literally suspend all hardware & OS development and shut everything down, just living off of the interest earned on their $Billions in the bank. Historically, General Motors (GM) actually reached this point some years ago – – the GM Finance division was doing much better than selling cars, so they were actually thinking of discontinuing their entire automotive manufacturing business and just becoming a bank.
You’re absolutely right. What raid configuration are you using to achieve that kind of throughput? I’m asking because we can’t seem to get our older systems to produce that level. We do see that kind of performance with PCIe SSD’s however
I’m using (since 2012) the original PCIe based “Accelsior” SSD blade, which I’ve seen 600 MB/sec reads in Blackmagic. The URL for the newer (current) version is:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDPHWE2R960/
…and their website reports some higher numbers too: ~675 MB/sec.
IIRC, you can also RAID0 a pair of them across two PCIe slots and push it higher…close to 800 mB/sec, if memory serves.
Overall, one can pretty easily see that if the job requires it, one could fill up a classic mac pro tower with 2TB SSDs … 4+2 bays, plus two 1TB Accelsiors, plus two more PCIe’s with SATA adaptor cards for at least 2 * 2TB more … one could do 18TB internal, all in SSDs, right now today for a bit under $5K.
Thank you for the info! Took a look at it and will be giving it a try.
Windows users get to buy 2017 fully loaded Tundra pickups, while the Apple showroom only has old Ford Rangers adjacent to bunch of Teslas and BMW sedans.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Haven’t you heard!? No one needs trucks anymore! Just disposable short term widgets that need total replacement to upgrade! No one needs to do any actual work! Just play flappy bird and be happy like the rest of the drones!
Creator’s that use those Window’s machines typically use products by Adobe… See other post on MacDailyNews
The Foundry, Autodesk, Houdini.. etc etc.. i could go on and on about all the pieces of software pros use that work better on windows then they do on mac…
That’s not really apples fault. It’s those companies not developing their software for true cross platform compatibility. Adobe is the worst offender of this as they use the latest DirectX for graphics vectors but are always way behind with OpenGL support. Apple could use the highest end components on the planet and those applications would still be slower under OS X because of driver and graphics language issues.
We use auto desk, and they have been improving a lot in the last 5 years. The newest version is just as fast on Mac and Windows.
Those same companies probably feel the extra R&D cost for developing their software for Mac would be hard to make back given the smaller market. At the same time if they don’t develop for Mac it keeps that market small.. A vicious circle. The Mac Pro losing the expandibility it once had doesn’t help matters.
Why do I sense a PC Workstation will be in my future after a disappointing 2016 Mac Pro reveal at WWDC? Problem is I hear the horror stories of Windows 10 and most of my very pro 3D graphics oriented friends are sticking with Windows 7.
Windows 10 is just like Windows 7. Windows 8 was the oddball.
Not what I’ve heard. Problems with high end graphics, 3D and editing applications. There are many who stay with Windows 7, the last straight forward Microsoft OS before they slapped on all that tile nonsense no one wanted.
Horror story? Reminds me of a movie I thrilled to—House of Frankenstein (1944): a hunchback, a criminally insane scientist, the Frankenstein monster, the Wolfman, and Dracula. And all we have is a torch.
No pitchforks or enraged villagers?
My analogy was that commenters are the enraged villagers conducting flame wars with torches, you got that right. The monsters are the flavours of Windows running on screamer PCs, the mad scientist is Tim Cook and the hunchback is the reviled Mac Pro hoping for a new body…
didn’t follow the thread so won’t comment on the issues but you get my praise for creative description ” monsters are the flavours of Windows running on screamer PCs, the mad scientist is Tim Cook and the hunchback is the reviled Mac Pro hoping for a new body”. Now I’ll keep getting flashbacks of that scene….
I appreciate your forceful arguments in this forum, Davewrite. They coax out the most detailed defences, and as a result we all learn so much more in the way of intricate details.
In like kind, you appreciated my monster analogy. Thanks for that. In the solitude of my laboratory, I stroke the ego of Igor, my Mac Pro, promising him redemption one fine day. You do know that talking to your equipment helps reduce machine anxiety, don’t you? It’s the same with plants: instead of cursing them for failing to fruit, talk to them as you would a child or lover, and reap a bounty later. Come to think of it, that principle seems to work everywhere with every life form. Odd that no one’s tried it in Politics…
” You do know that talking to your equipment helps reduce machine anxiety, don’t you? ”
eh, when I was young and trying to keep macs (before OSX) alive at a graphics shop I put pyramids on top of them. It was joke to show the boss that not everything was under my control but maybe it worked…
yes, today I give thanks for my macs ( I believe to a certain extent about the new thinking about the quantum universe that thoughts and intent can alter inanimate objects. They’ve done all those experiments with crystallizing water, make subatomic particles react with thought etc) anyhow I’m beginning to ramble.
Keep enjoying Apple stuff…
I find this absurd:
“…creative professionals want the latest and greatest hardware, said Bob O’Donnell, principal analyst at Technalysis Research.”
Spoken as if software and operating systems don’t matter. “Sure I want bigger hardware, viruses and instability, because I am getting way too much work done as a creative professional.”
WTF
Oh wait, that’s why Bob O’Donnell is an “analyst” instead of being a creative professional. On the other hand I have to acknowledge the creativity of his BS..
Wanting to be able to run Mac OS on the highest end GPUs and GPGPUs is not about ignoring the software.
People who ignore the usability of the OS wouldn’t be complaining here, they would just be using Windows 10 with nVidia Tesla GPGPU’s. etc.
Please Apple, bring back towers.
Apple needs to return to a tower focused on upgradability and performance. They need to change their graphics processing so that the bit order is the same as with PCs, so that Windows cards work with Macs without a speed hit. Plus, if there is a technology that is impractical to support, make it so that the cards still work, even if a certain capability may be missing.
As for expanding the current MacPro, Sonnet makes an expansion chassis that the MP fits into and which provides a power supply and slots for drives and PCIe cards. It is not ideal, but it addresses a number of issues.
Apple abandoned the Professional Market when the Trashcan was released. No upgrades, no internal storage, no internal cards. It is a nice engineering exercise, but hardly a professional box.
I called it the Mac Mini Pro HTPC back then and stand by my decision.
I work in Radiology where we use a lot of computers to do just about everything from charting to billing to storage and transmission of images to review, dictation and signing of the reports. Not a Mac in sight. That is the case at most Hospitals and clinics worldwide. That despite the fact that most Doctors have Macs as their home PC and iPhones for mobile.
We need workstation grade HW that will accept third party cards that cost more than a standard Trashcan Mac Pro. They do not fit and nobody wants a collection of wall warts and a spaghetti bowl of cables- they want it inside. Dell, HP and others get all the love and Apple is leaving all that money on the table.
Every Digital X-Ray Machine, every Ultrasound machine, every DEXA machine, every CT Scanner, every MRI, every PET Scanner, every Gamma Camera, every C-Arm and every Radiation Therapy Machine has one or more computers onboard. The PACS system that stores, communicates and displays the studies is built upon numerous computers and servers. The EMR systems all use numerous computers from tablets to servers (some of these support iPads as thin clients).
This stuff is all high dollar, needs to be highly secure and reliable, and easy to fix. It cries out for a stable UNIX based OS. Steve Jobs went after the Radiology Market with NeXT way back in the day, so why has Apple abandoned the market?
Not everybody is editing movies or laying out magazines on Pro HW, some of us need a fucking tower. If Apple will not or can not do it, license the Mac OS to Dell or HP for desktops and let them sell it. I could not care less about Jony’s svelte iMacs.