“If your Mac isn’t fast enough to edit 3D video, HP has a workaround to make it possible,” Agam Shah reports for IDG News Service.
“HP’s new remote graphics tool will allow Mac users to tap into the massive computing power of HP Z workstations, which can have up to 44 CPU cores,” Shah reports. “The Remote Graphics Software (RGS) turns the Mac into a remote desktop tuned for graphics. A ‘sender’ plugin on the HP Z links to a receiver on the Mac, allowing the computers to share screens and applications.”
“The Mac receiver is being released as HP announces new workstations with the latest CPUs and GPUs. The high-end HP Z840, equipped with Intel E5-2600 v4 chips and Nvidia Quadro GPUs, can outperform any Mac, HP claims,” Shah reports. “HP’s announcement is part of a campaign being waged by PC makers to draw users, particularly creative professionals, away from Macs. Apple hasn’t upgraded the Mac Pro since 2013, and RGS will provide access to new video editing software on the Z.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Apple hasn’t upgraded the Mac Pro since 2013…”
Patience, padawans. Always in motion, the future is. Much longer now, it will not be.
SEE ALSO:
Hey Apple, how about shipping a new computer sometime? – April 15, 2016
Don’t worry, the Apple Wath Pro is coming…
Watch Wath. Same thing.
Get in line for your new Apple Watch TM!
One thing is to love Apple products. Another is not to state the obvious.
Apple has been not paying attention to power users.
Some os us need power. And if Apple doesn’t provide a consistent and coherent solution to that market… well, guess what: Someone else will.
Two things could be happening.
One is, Apple doesn’t care about power users anymore. THe segment is perhaps too small in their bottom line.
Two, they forgot that segment exist and dropped the ball.
However it is, not updating the Pro line in 3 years is just unacceptable. Apple can do better. Apple MUST do better.
You answered your own question, the segment DEFINITELY isn’t a big factor in their bottom line, they forgot about it because of this. I agree that its ridiculous, and though Apple will probably release an update soon, they should do better to support their most loyal customers. It’s probably inevitable once a company moves beyond its formative years and the founder passes away that the odds of maintaining the values and quality that got them there isn’t much better than a coin flip.
There is zero reason why Apple cannot do micro updates to the Mac Pro offering faster processors and a USB-C port.
Sure there is: they don’t care.
Apple is doomed. (I hope this isn’t a prediction)
“Apple can do better. Apple MUST do better.”
Cannot agree with you more.
Starting price of $2999 is exactly the same as when it was released in Dec 2013. If they’re going to not update the tech specs for 2.5 years, the least they could do is drop the price a bit. As it is, you’d be insane to buy one now at the current prices, unless you’re desperate for a new one right away. Which just reinforces the false narrative that demand for Mac Pros is weak.
No, they’re weak because they’re overpriced for 2.5 year old machines, and the trashcan form factor didn’t meet the needs for many pros (easy internal expansion, etc) in the first place.
Good Grief! If HP can do it then where in the world is APPLE?
Come on, APPLE, we need you to give us a box that will make it easy for us to do the same thing HP is offering, but with you.
Give the GEEK-niche what it wants. It will payoff in word-of-mouth alone.
Amen to that. Woe be to the pro market that favors Macs if Apple doesn’t entice and make pro users REALLY happy with the next upgrade. Everything I see and hear as desired though would suggest a return to the Tower design, which isn’t likely. It would be so easy for them to make pro users happy so it’s unfathomable they wouldn’t make the effort. Slick surface design is not as important as usable, upgradeable, options-laden and powerful design. (Let’s make PC users salivate for a change.)
Indeed. There’s no question the Mac Pro looks nice sitting on a desk.
But only if it’s by itself. Start adding Thunderbolt and other expansion chassis to it, and it starts looking like a rat’s nest, except it’s sitting on your desk instead of under it, making it a far *worse* example of Apple industrial design (form over function) than even a basic tower.
Unfortunately Apple is only looking at the Mac Pro “Book” by it’s cover instead of it’s most desirable form factor with fewer peripheral wires. Ultimately Ives didn’t think this one out. It’s usually not a standalone device primarily because it IS a pro and not consumer device. No internal Nvidia CUDA (which is crazy) option and no PCIe 3 either (faster than Thunderbolt 1,2,3). Among other things…
The Mac Pro design is elegant and invites artistic participation. Peripherals and external cables are to be regarded like the blossoms and stems in a floral arrangement, more a creative opportunity in interior design than a limitation. One can purchase cable ties in a variety of sizes and colours for a tidy presentation. The old cheese grater models were boat anchors, sitting on the floor gathering barnacles and overcooking components in their growing layers of insulating dust, and nicking shins and fine Italian leather.
But then again, these aesthetic points don’t matter if the vast audience of creative professionals reject the design as deficient. Sales will tell. Next stop, WWDC 2016. It was at WWDC 2013 that Apple gave us a sneak peek at the Cylinder, just to quiet the impatient murmuring. I’m thinking we might be privileged to get an update on its sales, and prospects, this June 13. If I’m wrong add me to the list of grousers.
I must congratulate you, the sarcasm in the first half of your comment was extremely well done.
All very interesting. Curious I went to the HP site and saw the rather impressive specs for the HP Z workstation but it was conceptually nothing out of the ordinary for high-end workstations over the years. People have been making super-processing powerhouses for years mostly in the Linux and Windows realm for various practical reasons. However trying to find out how much the starter Z workstation with 24 cores cost I was give a set of salespeople to contact, no prices. This is a very good sign that HP is targeting companies with money to spare, mostly in the entertainment industries if the MacPro vs HP Z workstation page is any indication. This is a very rarified place to try to sell high end equipment and Apple has historically not gone for it. That they have come out with this “RGS” shell sort of tells me that they are worried that getting people to dump their Macs, like that page is suggesting, isn’t so appealing.
The link just recycles back to this page for me.
@MDN: the link to the article is busted. Can you fix please? THX
Still broken? MILA Take: MDN=LAME
Would the Mac Pro sell more if it were updated? Maybe that’s the (business) issue at hand — they are just not selling enough to justify the investment. If Intel is indeed the hold-up, then it’s time for Apple to go full-bore on their own computer CPUs and stop being held up by Intel.
Refreshes every 9-18 months to take advantage of updated processors would be an easy investment to justify.
Even if Apple has to treat the Mac Pro as a “loss leader” so be it. It’s important for the brand to have a terrific pro presence and would cost them relatively nothing to do so. Not as though Apple doesn’t have a few dollars extra (chump change for them really) hanging around to make it happen. And who knows, a better Mac Pro pro might see more converts from the dark side.
the thing with the cylinder is that unlike previous Mac Pros you can’t even upgrade the video card. In the past you could at least upgrade the video and bear with it until the next Mac Pro model.
Now as Barefeats points out in GPU tasks a 5 year old Cheese Grater Pro with an upgraded card can be 2-3 times faster than a current cylinder Mac Pro and 5 times faster than a current Mac Book Pro. This is absurd.
http://barefeats.com/imac5k20.html
(note that also means of course that a new machine — which Apple does not have — with BOTH upgraded GPU and CPU would be really significantly faster than the cylinder which as others pointed out also hasn’t dropped in price)
IN the old old days I always accepted that there’s a rotational cycle in who is faster Mac or Windows (like Phones. For a few months Samsung might have the faster processor or better camera until the next iPhone kills it) but what’s happening to the pro Mac line is ridiculous.
I remember there was a time when Jobs would demo a Mac vs a Windows machine in Photoshop etc and show the Mac beating it….
Not much longer now? What was it, like 8 years between the last Mac Pro updates?
👞💥 Take that Apple! Get moving!
Let’s stop talking about how much money APPLE is going to make or lose on the Mac Pro. APPLE should consider it a lost-leader and be done with it.
As I have argued before in these comment sections, there is a small but notable niche of power users who want an easily expandable BOX that can be stuck under the desk (if large) and which allows the user to plug in and expand in any way he or she wants. I’m thinking specifically of scientist with grant money for their labs who want/need their own number crunching behemoth. APPLE may not make a dime off this niche, but the niche is so important to them in the area of mind share among power users and the education market that it will turn into fantastic PR for APPLE year in and year out.
Think back to the 80s, 90s, and earlier this century when APPLE released news items about the Macintosh in science. Those stories were great and it helped convince teachers, those in higher ed and others in industry that the Mac was the solution for their work. Good gosh, can you remember the endless stories about the super computer built at Virginia Tech? There must have been hundreds of stories about that effort and how this fellow created one of the fastest supercomputers on the planet using something like 500 macs.
That kind of story can be recreated over and over, and it can be done if APPLE gives the power users a number crunching beast that’s easily expandable. Make entry into this sector easy (i.e., relatively low cost) and then sell specialty card after specialty card so geekdom can turn it into their dream machine come true.
Come on, APPLE, dominate this space. You don’t have to worry about the money. It’s a pittance, and you know it. So throw a handful of engineers into one of your skunk works teams and let them have at it. Call them “Cluster Skunk.” lol
There is no need for a Mac Pro to be a “loss leader.”
I’m sure HP isn’t losing money on this machine.
Why can’t Apple compete?
Fire Tim Cook.
They need to re-release the last version of the Mac Pro, it was an awesome machine and more importantly for this particular market, it was upgradeable.
The latest Mac Pro is an impressive feat of engineering, of that there is no doubt. But it is not a professional machine IMO.
We are already ordering HPZ workstations to replace all our Mac Pro Towers. The Trash cans are a joke for getting any real kind of Film/Audio work done. At least in an actual professional setting. One thing they do really well though, is look very pretty on the desks in the front office for the Secretaries. Shiny.
CAN’T get to the article !!!!!! As I said before I edit in 3D using PowerDirector. The results are GREAT. You can burn your own 3D Blu-ray movies at 1920*1080P 24frs. My results are BETTER than movies I have bought. (as far as the 3D effect) These movies can play back on a PS3, PS4, Xbox One, or a 3d Blu-ray player. You do have to be running Windows on your Mac.
Why doesn’t Apple have Blu-ray support yet?
Fire Tim Cook.
How is it that HP is putting Apple to shame?
Fire Tim Cook.
To be fair HP Z class workstations have always wiped the floor with Apple Mac computers. But historically have been very expensive. But now it is definitely the Apple Workstation class machine that is vastly overpriced and underpowered and underupgradable.. but Thats ok, you got a shiny watch right?
Why doesn’t HP simply configure a Z Series system for Mac OS-X – that’s all us pro users really want anyway! We don’t care that much for its looks! We simply want speed and HP apparently has the components to give us that!! Apple could get the OS-X revenue. Oh, they don’t want HP to do that? Okay then, upgrade the MacPro.
Here – fixed it for you.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3057978/hardware/hp-brings-44-core-windows-desktop-power-to-macs-with-remote-desktop-tool.html