Goodbye macpro towers…

[Jamie Franklin]

Yes Bill…I notice where this is trending. I disagree, or don’t have an appreciation for it simply for the very fact it’s just a silly gimmick to throw an edit suite on an 9inch pad and would be nothing more than a toy…. You want it, all the power to you…hope you get it…more gadgets NEED MORE GADGETS! I hope it makes pancakes too

[Bill Davis]

[Jamie Franklin] “Yes Bill…I notice where this is trending. I disagree, or don’t have an appreciation for it simply for the very fact it’s just a silly gimmick to throw an edit suite on an 9inch pad and would be nothing more than a toy…. You want it, all the power to you…hope you get it…more gadgets NEED MORE GADGETS! I hope it makes pancakes too”

All I can tell you is that everyone want to tell time.

Once, that meant you had to look at the sun or the shadows and guesstimate.
That led to sundials. Then clocks. Then digital clocks.

Now, you probably have fifty clocks in your life. Your computer has one, your microwave has one, your phone has one.

The utility of the clock was strong enough to adapt that from a “specialist” tool in the tower in the center or town, into something that migrated to the class of “people who NEED to monitor time” like train conductors or a watchmen – then it spread out to the general population.

If you don’t think manipulating time based visual information (of which video is ONE form) will become a general purpose task, fine. I do.

Just like magic markers made “sign construction” a thing that could be done by any shop keeper who cared to. Yeah, there are still pro sign painters. But the service is not RARE anymore – there’s an AlphaGraphics (or 20) in every community of size on the planet. Signs are a Commodity.

Face it. Video is becoming exactly that..

A few firms have the expertise to put gigantic signs up on stadiums. And some folks with superior artistic chops make really, really pretty ones. But day to day – you need a simple sign, you pull out a magic marker and make your own or perhaps have a buddy who has some modest artistic talent make one for you (nearly everyone knows someone like that in the modern world). Cuz once the world is awash with magic markers – it’s not exclusively a specialists task anymore.

Simple as that.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Jay Levi]

Dream on

Apple is dropping pro support period, they decided to stick with providing as many tablets to the world as fast as possible while the rest catch up, which means this will continue for another year, then mayb then after tablets drop prices into the 50 buck ranges will we see something crazier, maybe nano cards with processors attacked to canon cameras with wifi to LCD screens, who knows

[Martin Curtis]

Several things come to mind when discussing the future iterations of the MacPro.
What does a Mac Pro have that no other Mac has?
I’d say high speed expansion. Whether it is additional hard drives (SATA) or expansion cards (PCI) no other Mac has the ability to give you access to such speed. Until Thunderbolt came along.

I’d also say cores, lots of cores. It seems that the latest high speed chips from Intel may either be frightfully expensive (in the thousands, sorry I can’t remember where I saw that) or not as fast as we would like. I think these two factors, and the increase in speed from the cheaper CPUs and the increasing utilisation of the GPUs, will see the end of the high end chips. Did anyone ever buy the $10 000 Mac Pros you could spec up?

Who needs the most speed? Word users? emailers? Twitterers? Nope, editors. For rendering, and rendering being what it is this is something that may be able to be farmed out across Thunderbolt. Perhaps that is what’s coming next.

The 99% is happy with i5s – a quad core i7 is even faster. I would miss the presence of the towers, but I haven’t actually bought one since the G4s.

Mac in a 1U rack; Mac Mini + . Who knows. It looks like 2012 is shaping up to be just as tumultuous as 2011.

[Craig Seeman]

I think you’re close to the truth.
It’ll have more CPU/GPU power than a Mini, it’ll be rack mountable, clustering will play a roll in expanding power and, of course, Thunderbolt.
This is how you build a commodity computer with expandable power for “Pros.”

[Ray Wang]

Mini in a 1U rack.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html

I do remember reading comments in the past that the pros demanded ECC memory (only supported by workstation class CPUs), fiber channel card (which still outperforms TB), workstation class GPU for 3D work and 64Gb+ memory (for Photoshop work). None of which will likely to fit into a small factor desktop / notebook.

I am not in the business but I will be looking for something along the lines of Mac Pro due to the following shortcomings of my current MBP:
– Fan noise. In FCP X GUI gets jerky and fan is on most times (background rendering is off)
– Heat. CPU throttle means I am not getting 100% performance out of the CPU
– Spiderweb of peripherals with its own power supply. Much “cleaner”/compact desk space and cheaper to have everything in one box

Rather than connecting TB to Raid why not buy Mac Pro and do raid internally?

—
Ray

[Craig Seeman]

And you’re not capable of backing your comments with any fact or even a reasoned supposition. That’s business acumen? Apple computer revenue just about matchers their iPad revenue. That’s already been posted.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Craig Seeman] “It’ll have more CPU/GPU power than a Mini, it’ll be rack mountable, clustering will play a roll in expanding power and, of course, Thunderbolt.”

There was another thread where we went in to detail about what Thundebolt really is in this current 10Gb config. Really, it hobbles the machine to 4x PCIe so with multiple GPUs in particular, this might get a little bottlenecky.

It’s great for portables that have never had access to the bandwidth, but in this config, it’s not really ready to be a bandwidth aggregator.

I do think that Apple will figure out a way to sell more “MacPro” like devices, but do you think they can do that yet with the current thunderbolt tech?

If you read the paper that Walter Soyka linked to, it reads to me as its made specifically for portable computers, not desktops.

Here’s the thread (it’s long, sorry): https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/20226

Here’s the paper: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-technology-brief.html

Here’s the pertinent quote:

“For some power users, optimal workflows can be had with workstation performance and expandability while using a thin and light laptop. Thunderbolt technology enables using the thinnest and lightest laptops, connected, with “in the box” performance over a single external cable, to high-performance external media drives, HD displays, HD media capture and editing systems, as well as legacy I/O hubs and devices, for the utmost in performance, simplicity and flexibility.”

Do you think thunderbolt is viable for clustering at this point in time?

[Frank Gothmann]

So, Craig, if your envisioned Mac-Mini with TB connectivity and dreams of clustering is such a great replacement for those oldfashioned towers… how come Apple is using server grade Xeon hardware with pcie connectivity and Isilion storage for their own icloud services.

No Minis there, no Thunderbolt, no OSX Lion Server. Or are you telling me that next year, when your Super-Mini shows up they’ll toss it all out and put your Minis in.
Or is it rather that the Mini (and current Mac Pro btw) just doesn’t cut it in high performance computing and storage environments including high-end broadcast (which also what Isilion is used for)?

[Craig Seeman]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I do think that Apple will figure out a way to sell more “MacPro” like devices, but do you think they can do that yet with the current thunderbolt tech?”

GPUs, by the nature of the beast for example, will still require PCIe. That won’t go away. My guess is the new machine will have two PCIe 16x slots. Some will use it for 2nd GPU, others may use them for fiber for example.

It’s why a stackable Mini is not sufficient and why I think there WILL be a replacement for the MacPro with a rack mount form factor.