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The Mac pro Lives 
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http://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives

Interesting story - it seems Apple are part way into completely redesigning the Mac Pro along more standard workstation lines and have basically had to admit that the current Mac Pro was a very nice piece of design but in reality a rather poor piece of engineering. Also revealing are some of the stats mentioned - that the Mac pro is a fraction of a fraction of Apple's Mac business, which would probably make it a rounding error is Apple's accounts overall.

Looking forward to see what they come up with, even if it will still probably be out of my price range.


Tue Apr 04, 2017 3:07 pm
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Excellent news.

I'm still running 2008 (3,1) Mac Pros because they have the expandability I need. I could have stuck with a 2006 model if it had supported El Capitan.

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Tue Apr 04, 2017 5:00 pm
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Apple's obsession with making everything smaller, sleeker and less heavy is at odds with the pro market who would happily sacrifice some desk space or floor space for a machine with better upgradability and raw processing power. The new Mac Pro looks beautiful and is highly engineered, but it's too expensive and not upgraded easily.

The main problem is the outgoing G5/MacPro design was so good - yes, it was a hulk of a machine which weighed a ton due to the all-metal construction, but it offered the best upgrade options and was really accessible like the G4 PowerMac case before it.

The newer Mac Pro was more of a consumer design, but with a professional price tag - you'd think Apple would have learnt from the G4 Cube experience, both great machines but totally wrong for the market it was designed for.

Apple's biggest gamble was relying on Thunderbolt for expandability, which really hasn't caught on in the mainstream market - I think they were hoping for a repeat of when they gambled on USB 1.0 with the original iMac. Instead, the market has taken a different route with USB 3, ironically!

Oh, well, at least Apple are working on a whole new design and haven't (yet) pulled out of the high-end professional market. I hope they learn from their mistakes.

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Sun Apr 09, 2017 2:30 pm
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But they've known for more than a week, that they can't upgrade the Mac Pro, so why does it take another year to come out with an alternative?

It sounds more like they wanted to let the Mac Pro slowly stagnate and EOL it at some point, then noticed that pro users were still moaning and looking at jumping ship, now they are scrambling to contain the bad press and ill-will, whilst they try and come up with a solution. If pro users were really a priority, they could've had a new cheese-grater style Mac Pro up and running a couple of years ago, even if it was just as a stop-gap solution until a "new" generation could be brought out.

With the improvements on the Windows side of the fence (touch screens, pen computing, Surface Studio, HP Sprout, decent workstation etc.), plus the fact most of the professional software is now cross-platform, this sounds more like desperation. Why did they only invite a handful of bloggers and not their usual "favourites" from the press?

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Last edited by big_D on Tue Apr 11, 2017 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.



Tue Apr 11, 2017 9:43 am
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I suspect most of the usual press aren't that fussed about the Mac Pro. IN any case their method of distribution still had it showing all over the place.

Yes, they could have slapped together something in the old Aluminium MP case but however well specified it was they'd get hammered for having run out of ideas. That would be the ultimate admission of abject failure of the round MP. You may have noticed Apple really doesn't like admitting they've got stuff wrong. Here they didn't actually say they got it wrong as such, just that it wasn't popular with their whole pro market.

I suspect they've been motivated by the prospect of significant numbers of content creators actually jumping platform and they'd be twicthy about too many iOS developers buggering off. Plus Microsoft has been genuinely making big progress with their Pro hardware and looking like they've been out-innovating Apple at an end of the market they thought was theirs. That can't have been going down well in Cupertino.

Whatever they end up coming out with I doubt it'll look anything like the current or previous Mac Pro. I wouldn't be too surprised if they were coming up with a really modular design, probably using Thunderbolt 3 (or maybe 4 by then) interconnects although as it's Apple it would be mad to rule out a good old proprietary interconnect for some bits.

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Tue Apr 11, 2017 10:22 am
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Quote:
I wouldn't be too surprised if they were coming up with a really modular design,

You mean like the HP Elite Slice?

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Tue Apr 11, 2017 12:58 pm
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big_D wrote:
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I wouldn't be too surprised if they were coming up with a really modular design,

You mean like the HP Elite Slice?

In principle yes but with more of a focus on being able to add more things that Pro's want/need like a second cpu or gpu, more PCIe slots etc

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Tue Apr 11, 2017 2:09 pm
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big_D wrote:
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I wouldn't be too surprised if they were coming up with a really modular design,

You mean like the HP Elite Slice?


I hope not. A Mac-Mini rip off with some distinctly non-pro add ons.

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Tue Apr 11, 2017 2:29 pm
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I meant more for the concept. The Elite Slice is limited to audio/video conference addons, multimedia, DVD drive. Adding graphic modules, storage modules would be the next logical step, for example.

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Tue Apr 11, 2017 2:31 pm
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