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E5 Xeons already shipping?
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[Christian Schumacher] “Dell and HP design the chassi and the motherboard, don’t they? Just like Apple does?”
Not the kind of R&D necessary to make an all-in-one or a ultra-thin laptop, that’s all I meant. Or even a dense server for that matter. Seems to me towers require the least R&D of any form factor. So much of their design is modular to common dimensions, hence interchangeable PSUs and mobos.
[Christian Schumacher] “look at their iMacs, soon these will have soldered RAM chips in them.”
Recent iMacs have easier to service RAM than previous case designs. The RAM is easier to service on the Mac mini now versus the old paint scraper methods needed on the originals. The only Mac with hard soldered RAM is the Air, and that is understandable given the goals of the design. Everything else from Apple has been very friendly to RAM swaps in recent years.
[Christian Schumacher] “I grant you that, Apple R&D in mobiles is great, indeed. Mac Pro? Not so much.”
They decided they would not bother with midrange towers, so there wasn’t much for them to R&D while Intel lagged on releasing the E5, was there? What more could they do, specs-wise, with the Mac Pro on the Xeon 5000 series that they hadn’t already done? They aren’t going to put a lot of effort into revving a product in between generations of the CPU they use, they’re going to put the effort in when there are next-gen guts to put in it.
[Christian Schumacher] “You know, the GPU has been lacking. And I wonder if that is just an accident too or it has been planned for a while.”
I’ve been looking into the GPU issue. It all seems to center around BIOS vs EFI. To date, almost all GPU cards are flashed with firmware that only supports BIOS, while Macs all use EFI. The GPU OEMs would need to sell EFI-enabled GPUs to work on Mac Pros, and the Mac Pro market for third party GPUs hasn’t been big enough to justify unique hardware SKUs. However, Sandy Bridge controllers ship with EFI plus a BIOS emulator for legacy support. So we could be at a turning point where the next generation of GPUs ship with firmware support for both BIOS and EFI. From there they only need to release drivers for OS X. According to reports, the most recent NVIDIA drivers for Lion enable the GTX580 to “just work” in Mac Pros (albeit without support for showing the Apple EFI bootloader screen since the drivers only load after the OS boots).
One or the other of us will be eating crow very soon. The E5s are coming, and Apple will either ship a new Mac Pro or not.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] ” I hope a Mac Pro with a standard PCIe GPU continues to exist and that we get something approaching parity with GPU support between OS X and Windows. Might be too much to hope for though.”
It will never be anywhere close to parity until I can uninstall a video driver on OSX and install a new one of a previous version WITHOUT doing a clean install of the entire OS. This, and their paltry lack of support for high end graphic cards is why my desktop workstation is and will continue to be Windows. I can put up with their lousy support on my MBP because there are specific tasks as well as software that I simply don’t or can’t run on my MBP so I just partition my work to know certain specific things have to be done on my workstation. It’s an aggravation but one I can put up with.
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[Andrew Richards] “One or the other of us will be eating crow very soon. The E5s are coming, and Apple will either ship a new Mac Pro or not.”
I’m betting they will, even if it’s in the same case design, although I wouldn’t expect any news this week as it’s the iPad 3 that will be stepping into the spotlight
Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television -
[Phil Hoppes] “It will never be anywhere close to parity until I can uninstall a video driver on OSX and install a new one of a previous version WITHOUT doing a clean install of the entire OS.”
This can be done, either by tracking down the files installed with something like pkgutil on the command line and then deleting them, or by making your own uninstaller .pkg using InstallEase. I agree though that OS X is long overdue for a built-in uninstaller based on package receipts and registered dependencies.
[Phil Hoppes] “This, and their paltry lack of support for high end graphic cards is why my desktop workstation is and will continue to be Windows.”
Is this Apple’s fault or AMD and NVIDIA’s fault? Or more accurately, is it the GPU OEMs just doing what makes sense for the mass market? The GPU OEMs have thus far only been shipping PC market cards that work on BIOS while Macs are all EFI. Many Sandy Bridge boards run EFI with a BIOS emulation and Windows 7 64-bit (and Windows 8 64-bit) supports installation on EFI. This should mean the GPU OEMs will not be able to ignore EFI like they have been. When they ship cards with EFI-capable firmware, they should be able to work on Macs without Mac-specific GPU firmware. I can’t find anything about the Radeon HD 7000 series being EFI-friendly and the GTX600 series isn’t out yet.
Best,
Andy -
[Steve Connor] “I’m betting they will, even if it’s in the same case design, although I wouldn’t expect any news this week as it’s the iPad 3 that will be stepping into the spotlight”
I’d say they will just appear on Apple’s site with no fanfare and they will launch as soon as inventory is in the channel. The iPad 3 is the media darling, but since Apple no longer does big reveals for Macs, there isn’t a reason to hold it back just because the headliner is also launching that week.
Best,
Andy -
I don’t care who’s fault it is. I simply need to have the choice that if I want a Quadro 6000 card I can use it and know it is supported. Apple’s squabbles with either AMD or nVidia are not my problem.
And on drivers, I’ve neither the time nor the patience to use hacks to uninstall drivers in pieces. Takes me 2 minutes to do that task on a Windows machine and I 100% know what I did was done correctly as far as the OS is concerned.
Look I do love many of Apple’s products (MPB, iPhone, iPad) and use them daily but your trying to defend the lousy job they have done with their architecture WRT high end workstations and there is nothing worth defending. It’s plain to see that they throw no resources at it. Their designs as far as features and performance are mediocre at best and very lacking vs what else is available. I understand completely where Apple targets their resources and why, which is also why I gave up 2 years ago on them for my workstation needs. Should they grace the market with a MacPro upgrade, which I seriously doubt, I’m completely positive I’ll be able to build an equivalent machine for 50% less and it will perform 20% better.
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[Andrew Richards] ”
Not the kind of R&D necessary to make an all-in-one or a ultra-thin laptop, that’s all I meant. Or even a dense server for that matter. Seems to me towers require the least R&D of any form factor.”Absolutely, but thinking in overall strategy HP, Dell and Lenovo are developing and releasing towers in a constant fashion, as opposed to Apple, which only puts effort into those portables. That’s evidence that contradicts what you have stated in this sub-thread, regarding Dell/HP. Perhaps these are considering to add more portables to their portfolio, and not to drop their entire desktop computer lines. That’s likely Apple’s goal.
[Andrew Richards] ” Everything else from Apple has been very friendly to RAM swaps in recent years.”
Yes, for now. Look at HDD replacement, the iMac’s hard drive has had further restrictions at its last iteration.
https://blog.macsales.com/10146-apple-further-restricts-upgrade-options-on-new-imacs[Andrew Richards] “They decided they would not bother with midrange towers, so there wasn’t much for them to R&D while Intel lagged on releasing the E5, was there?”
Not for dual-socket machines, sure. Meanwhile at Dell, HP and Lenovo there are new workstations released with Sandy Bridge Xeons, the E3s. As soon as the E5s are available, these companies will release them too. So which one of these major companies are NOT betting on the enterprise? The mobile one, yep that’s Apple. And It’s very telling that they haven’t considered that intermediate market for midrange workstations. Check what they have come up with; the beefed-up iMac/Macmini? p-p-please…That’s what fits in their walled garden.
[Andrew Richards] “One or the other of us will be eating crow very soon.”
It may surprise you, but if I would be the one eating crow, I’d be happy.
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[Phil Hoppes] “I don’t care who’s fault it is. I simply need to have the choice that if I want a Quadro 6000 card I can use it and know it is supported. Apple’s squabbles with either AMD or nVidia are not my problem.”
Your previous post laid the lack of GPU support at Apple’s feet, and you do so again here. GPU OEMs choosing not to support EFI with their firmware is hardly a squabble with Apple. It is market forces at work where Apple is not using the legacy BIOS that the rest of the x86 world used exclusively until Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipsets came along with EFI as standard. I get that it boils down to a pragmatic decision (which I agree with, by the way), but your language indicts Apple.
[Phil Hoppes] “I’ve neither the time nor the patience to use hacks to uninstall drivers in pieces. Takes me 2 minutes to do that task on a Windows machine and I 100% know what I did was done correctly as far as the OS is concerned.”
Removing files is not a hack, it is how you uninstall something on UNIX. There is no registry to edit. If you use the utility I linked to, it would also take you two minutes.
[Phil Hoppes] “your trying to defend the lousy job they have done with their architecture WRT high end workstations and there is nothing worth defending. It’s plain to see that they throw no resources at it.”
Again, I’m only pointing out what is actually going on. Apple’s Mac Pro rev cycle has been in lockstep with Intel’s Xeon 5000 series roadmap since the switch from PowerPC in 2006. I agree it would be great for video pros if Apple made an entry-level tower with a stack of PCIe slots and if the GPU OEMs made cards that were EFI-friendly. Your previous posts framed Apple as the lone bad guy when their sins are limited to ignoring the entry-level tower market. Intel is guilty of taking forever shipping a 5000 series Xeon successor and the GPU OEMs are guilty of nothing more than building a product for the mass market. I guess Apple could throw a bunch of money at the GPU OEMs to subsidize a range of EFI-friendly GPUs for Mac Pros, but then Mac Pros would need to cost even more and we’d be hearing even more complaints about the Apple tax on pro customers.
[Phil Hoppes] “Should they grace the market with a MacPro upgrade, which I seriously doubt, I’m completely positive I’ll be able to build an equivalent machine for 50% less and it will perform 20% better.”
That’s a bold claim. Let’s price components for a DIY dual proc Sandy Bridge E5 Xeon workstation vs whatever becomes of the Mac Pro, should Apple grace us with one. If history is any guide, 50% less cost and 20% better performance will be extremely optimistic. The reason you are able to do that today is because Sandy Bridge is such a leap beyond Nehalem that the E3-1200 even outperforms the 5000 series Xeons. When you’re building from the same parts bin, I don’t think you’ll get near that kind of a price/performance delta. Are you able to build your DIY workstation for 50% less than an spec-similar HP and bench it 20% faster?
Best,
Andy -
[Christian Schumacher] “Absolutely, but thinking in overall strategy HP, Dell and Lenovo are developing and releasing towers in a constant fashion, as opposed to Apple, which only puts effort into those portables. That’s evidence that contradicts what you have stated in this sub-threat, regarding Dell/HP. Perhaps these are considering to add more portables to their portfolio, and not to drop their entire desktop computer lines. That’s likely Apple’s goal instead.”
HP, Dell, and Lenovo (and Acer) ship a box with just about every single iteration of Intel’s and AMD’s product offerings. This is the only way they can drive sales since there is little else to differentiate them from each other or their previous offerings. They all sell boxes with the same OS made of parts from the same OEMs. Apple does mostly sell to consumers, and consumers are overwhelmingly shifting their general purpose computing to portables. I agree the Mac Pro is a bone thrown to pro users and not the centerpiece of Apple’s product portfolio like the G3 and G4 once were. This is why they don’t bake a box out of every range of components Intel produces and limit their tower offering to 5000 series Xeons. They have been consistently following this limited tower strategy since before there even was an iPhone.
[Christian Schumacher] “Yes, for now. Look at HDD replacement, the iMac’s hard drive has had further restrictions at its last iteration.”
That’s what RAM installation was like on the iMac G5. Now there is a little panel with captive screws. The original Mac mini required a putty knife to get at the RAM, now it requires only opposable thumbs.
[Christian Schumacher] “So which one of these major companies are NOT betting on the enterprise? The mobile one, yep that’s Apple. And It’s very telling that they haven’t considered that intermediate market for midrange workstations.”
Apple hasn’t sold an entry-level workstation (that’s how Intel describes E3 Xeons, as “entry workstation”) since switching to Intel. Apple has also never done more than flirt with “enterprise” products (I’m including the Xserve and Xserve RAID in that characterization). Apple has had a very consistently limited good/better/best single-range tower PC product since Jobs returned, so what is so telling that they haven’t changed course? The only thing that would be telling of Apple walking away from the workstation business would be a conspicuous absence of a new Mac Pro once HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Acer start shipping E5 Xeon boxes.
What is telling is that IBM sold their PC business to Lenovo. HP was on the verge of walking away from the PC business altogether, fired its new CEO because of it, and may yet find the PC business is fading to the point that it isn’t a viable business any more. Dell is now telling everyone “We’re no longer a PC company, we’re an IT company.” Microsoft is taking Windows 8 in a very touch-centric tablet direction, even more than Apple is marrying iOS to OS X. Herb Sevush made a good point elsewhere, and I agree with it: the days of mass market PC workstations are probably numbered, and heavy duty NLE work in a few years may all be taking place on server hardware. And who knows what the OS landscape will be like. If I were Adobe and Avid, I’d be looking very hard at porting my products to Linux. Now that would change things!
Best,
Andy -
Ok so I just did a price comparison to a 2×2.9Ghx MacPro with a 1tb Drive, 32gbram and the 5870 ATI card. I can build a system at Newegg for about 30% less including a 256gb SSD with 2×3.3Ghz Xenon Westmire CPU’s which should deliver close 15% overall better performance, so yes, my 50% less and 20% more is too inflated. I’ll take 30% less and 15% more all day long.
On the drivers, where pray tell, since every driver package I’ve ever gotten from AMD or nVidia are all bundled inside of installers, do I get the magic files that I need to replace?
In the end, we could do this all day long. You like MacPro’s and you feel a need to defend your position. I’ve moved on from MacPro’s and could not be happier. I still use a MBP for a portable solution and love it. I have a windows main workstation network with windows rendering servers (1U Asus rackmounts) and I use Deadline as a render manager. This is the slickest thing since slice bread and I do it at a fraction of the cost of buying off the shelf hardware. It works for me and makes my workflow efficient.
For your sake and the others that really want to continue to use MacPro’s I really hope that Apple does do a refresh for you. If they don’t I can see where a lot of people, again, are going to feel really screwed. Me, I could care less, as no matter what they do it won’t affect a thing I do.
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