“Ever wonder why there has been a massive slowdown in PC growth? Don’t blame Windows 8, blame Apple!” John C. Dvorak screams for PC Magazine.
“Apple has been the leader in tech and there is no indication that anything has changed. Dell is no leader, nor is Microsoft, Lenovo, or IBM,” Dvorak whines. “It’s Apple. And Apple went too long without showing something new, thus the desktop market slowed down.”
“So it finally rolls out what appears to be a spectacular desktop machine capable of delivering a whopping seven teraflops of processing power. This is obviously the future king of all multimedia work, especially video editing, which needs all the help it can get. I would also assume that sort of power would make any Adobe application pop. No waiting!” Dvorak yells. “The machine maxes out with 12 cores of Xeon E5 power and a souped-up RAM subsystem that will peak at 60 gigabytes per second bandwidth. It’s a total butt-kicker that has no peer today.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Shakey premise from the bloated gasbag, but positive nonetheless.
(PCs are trucks, tablets and smartphones are cars. The PC slowdown has nothing to do with Apple not showing the makers of crappy Windows PCs what to do for too long.)
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tom” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Apple’s new Mac Pro would rank as the 8th most powerful supercomputer on planet Earth in 2003 – June 10, 2013
We’re back to the “all style, no substance” Apple that most of us hoped we’d never see again. The new Mac Pro is the biggest disappointment imaginable. It is a rank lie to call it “expandable” when there is no way to expand it except by adding very expensive peripherals just so we can attach all the drives we once stored internally, so we wouldn’t have a cluttered work area. And all those internal drives will have to now be mounted in cases and plugged into a Thunderbolt/Firewire. And how are we supposed to Migrate with no ability to natively attach our old Mac Pro to the new…wi-fi…ethernet? And wait about a week for a 3TB drive to transfer data to a SSD that will be 1/3 the size (and 5 times the cost)!
This is as stupid as Apple gets. I’ll keep my old Mac Pro and live with Lion as the dead end OS.
This company really needs a wakeup call. They are not addressing the established Pro base at all. Wall Street is right: there’s no “there”, there!
+1. Not only that, we will now have to use cords to connect our devices that can be easily disconnected accidentally. No thanks Apple. You F’ed up yet again
You dont build a new system looking backwards. This will be the catalyst for a whole range of other devices that complement it. The current crop will become dated instantly and that will drive change and progress.
Definitely my Next Desktop. I’ll get at least one for my Brother if he”ll share. If he won’t I’ll buy 2. At 10″ by 7″ inches, (Somebody tell me if I’m wrong) it’s maybe 3X bigger than a 16 oz. soda can. I can’t wait to see this beautiful powerful beast of a MAC in person. Every PC box maker in the world are shaking in their boots. If it’s priced under $2500 bye bye PC.
no way is this priced at under $2500. Lucky if its under 3500. Apple is one thing and thats not cheap
WOW. If Dvorak likes the upcoming Mac Pro cylinder… I don’t care!
Personally, I like the little thing, despite the fact that it is not quite ‘pro’ and that its shape invites insult. Today I’m writing up an article about how to make it look like a nuke cooling tower on fire. Fun for the whole family. Run for your life 😀
A sad but true, and shameless, admission by Dborak that the rest of the industry doesn’t know where to ho unril Apple shows them the way.
So, if Apple stagnates in a product category, nobody can get ahead and take leadership?
Pathetic!
“Standing O” as in, “O Crap, Apple is again forcing us to buy new adapters and cables and docks”. Apple just screwed over anyone who uses DVI, PCI, SATA, eSATA, Firewire, and USB 2 devices. None of those are obsolete technologies, folks.
THE WHOLE POINT of a tower workstation is to allow the professional complete flexibility in plugging in anything you want, WITHOUT the hassle of external docks.
While the new machine’s performance cannot be denied, and many Pro users will just plunk down hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for the docks that will enable their legacy peripherals to work, Apple had better hope that Thunderbolt accessories become more plentiful & cost effective in the very near future. Think about it. Anyone with today’s Mac Pro can’t even plug in the current Apple USB keyboard into the new Mac Pro without an adapter, not to mention the many personal trackballs and unique input devices that Pros use. Instead now Pro users are already looking at the slim pickings for Thunderbolt docks with chagrin.
Another puzzling thing is that, while the new Mac Pro finally has the GPUs to do serious 4k video editing, and Apple seems to be working on upgrading FCP to handle it, Apple did not announce:
– Thunderbolt-connected optical drives (Blu-Ray remains one of the best means of distributing cinema-length 4k video)
– a 4k resolution Thunderbolt display
MDN users, do please recommend what a current Mac Pro users should do with all one’s existing hard drives when attempting to upgrade to the latest Mac Pro. Apparently Apple thinks we’re going to take our current Mac Pros that DO NOT support Thunderbolt or USB 3, then transfer all our data onto flash drive of unknown size via ethernet file sharing, then throw away all our old hard drives? Or does Apple think pros will be dumb enough to sign up for the damn iCloud service? Or maybe Apple thinks we want to drop $200 a piece on LaCie Thunderbolt-equipped eSATA drive enclosures PLUS $50 on a new cable so that we can attach our $200, 2TB hard drives to the new Mac Pro?
Not well thought out, Apple. Clearly Apple has lost touch with the real world connectivity issues that pros face. More stupid forced obsolescence rammed down our throats. Nobody would have complained if the new cylinder was half as big as the old Mac Pro but supported at least some internal expansion and legacy Firewire and USB 2 connectivity.
“Apple just screwed over anyone who uses DVI, PCI, SATA, eSATA, Firewire, and USB 2 devices. ”
– DVI: HDMI-to-DVI adapter, $2.50.
– FireWire: Thunderbolt-to-FireWire adapter, $30.
– USB2: USB2 plugs right in to one of the four USB3 ports.
Do you even read what you’re writing?
Steve, you honestly think this is a comprehensive list? This isn’t even scratching the surface. I’m not even as much of a power user as those guys running fiber channels, but here’s a quick inventory of what’s hooked up to my old Mac Pro at this very second that cannot be directly plugged into the new Mac Pro without additional investment:
– 4 internal SATA hard drives
– 1 internal SATA SDD
– 2 external eSATA drives
– Firewire 400 link to external amplifier
– Toslink audio out to another external amp
We also hook up NAS, Firewire 800 gear, and all manner of client drives as well. The 6 USB3 ports will have to be hot swapped, just as we have to with USB2 cables today. Bottom line, until monday, Apple gave professional users ZERO time to prepare for an all-thunderbolt world.
I am sorry, but Apple’s new “Pro” is not a workstation by connectivity standards. Maybe this year peripheral manufacturers will suddenly spool up their TB models and competition will suddenly drop prices, but i strongly doubt it. At the present, for many (not all) professionals, TB represents a very real cost and logistical barrier to adopting the new machine. Like me, they will hang on to their old big aluminum boxes for a couple more years at least because existing peripherals require it, and there are no effective TB docks that offer the connectivity the old Mac Pro did.
At the very least, Apple should offer one workstation with an internal SATA and/or eSATA port for goodness sakes!
Let me get this straight, Dvorak contends it is Apple’s fault that all other manufacturers suck. Well, I am not certain it is Apple’s fault, but I agree the other manufacturers suck.
I have mixed feelings with this. Thunderbolt can daisy-chain, so you can put a lot of peripherals on the chain with only a single cable – stuff you don’t get into much (hard drive boxes, etc.) all disappears from view.
Cheap Thunderbolt adapters are available for USB, eSATA, Firewire.
Third-party hardware manufacturers (if they are smart) will be able to design some really amazing stuff to go with this. Imagine a round, conical matching base for this machine that can hold 2, 3, and/or 4 (RAIDable) drives, a connection hub (firewire, thunderbolt, USB ports), and an optical drive. Won’t be cheap, but it will be quite upgradeable, will obviate the need for lots of connection cables (for those who choose to avoid them), and will look cool as hell. It will basically be the other half of the new Mac Pro that people are missing. Honestly, if they were smart, Apple would create it themselves, since it would also be a handy peripheral for iMacs in those departments that use them.
I was shocked at first because this was so unexpected… But look at the last picture. Doesn’t this look like something from the Borg? 🙂