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Pretty amazing Thunderbolt demo.
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We’ve thrown down the gauntlet to Sir Jonathan Ive. Let’s see if the Knight can come to the rescue with brilliant industrial design.
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[Craig Seeman] “Drop the Optical Drive, drop the hard drive and PCIe expansion for the most part.”
We’ve had this argument over and over. The things you want to eliminate from the Mac Pro in order to create a SuperMini aren’t the things that add cost or space to the Mac Pro.
What does a DVD burner cost today? $20?
Drop the hard drive? And replace it with what? An SSD? That costs more money. A notebook HDD? That underperforms and still costs money.
Drop the PCIe expansion? That’s the cheap part of the motherboard. You’ll still need an expensive motherboard if you want dual-socket Xeon support, you’ll need the hot and expensive Xeons themselves (one of which by itself costs more than half of your target price point), and you’ll need expensive ECC RAM, a big hot power supply, a big cooling system, and enough space for all that plus airflow.
[Craig Seeman] “If Apple can drop the base price from $2500 to $2000 anticipating increased volume, they may make more. If they anticipate increased volume it may mean lower component costs.”
If HP, Dell, and Lenovo, the numbers one, two, and three manufacturers of workstations respectively, can’t get better component pricing on Xeons with all their volume, why do you think Apple would?
For Apple to build a system similar to what you envision at that form factor and price, it will have to be based on a single-socket Core i7 (and there are many PC systems much like this today).
You could pull everything but the CPUs, RAM, power supply, cooling, and a couple of Thunderbolt controllers out of the box, and it would still cost a lot of money relative to a well-equipped Core i7 system. Why would Apple expect increased volume on this system? The only advantage it would have over an existing workstation tower form is a slight size decrease, but it would also sacrifice internal expansion. You’d have to pay the same, but you’d get less for your money.
If you’re going to build a performance computer, you need expensive components, and they still take up a lot of space. Dropping the optical drive, the hard drive, and two PCIe slots will not instantly halve the price or the case displacement.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Craig Seeman] “Let’s see if the Knight can come to the rescue with brilliant industrial design.”
That design is most certainly long done and a prototype sitting on Cook’s desk waiting for a “thumbs up” or down from the emperor.
John
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Feel free to to use the “THUNDER WARS” term – it came blurting out of my mouth during a Intel meeting (got a few laughs) I was conducting a few months ago discussing how this stuff connects together and why we don’t have real notes/whitepapers.
ping me anytime – I think you know how get ahold of me at Adobe-
BTW – I don’t get on threads often, as I’m usually swamped with internal questions on workflow in my own Adobe inbox as Premiere gets pushed up the Pro workflow chain.
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The reduction in materials used in the case and internals. Increase in orders, possible lower per unit shipping costs, other “inexpensive” reductions add up.
The original 2008 MacBook Air started at $1800 with Core2Duo without SSD in the base model and certainly without Thunderbolt. It had an 80GB HD 4200rpm PATA drive.
Now the base 13″ model at $1300 is Dual Core i5, 128GB SSD and Thunderbolt.
For $1700 add Dual Core i7 and 256GB SSD, still less than the original model.You’d think even holding the price would be a challenge given SSD and Thunderbolt implementation.
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[Craig Seeman] “The reduction in materials used in the case and internals. Increase in orders, possible lower per unit shipping costs, other “inexpensive” reductions add up.”
Craig, assuming you were kidding about Apple selling a computer with no hard drive, you are talking about what, a hundreds dollars at best? For the system you describe to meet your price point, you’d have to lose a thousand or two. And what have you done to save that $100? You’ve eliminated a lot of the features (massive memory capacity, internal storage, internal expansion) that a modern workstation offers in the first place.
I get that sometimes smaller or cheaper is better than bigger or more powerful. Your dream system exists today with PCs, but they use Core i7 in order to remain affordable. You just cannot get the same performance at half the price in a case half the size by eliminating the HDD and two PCIe slots.
It’s not an issue of purchasing power or bad industrial design. Xeons themselves simply start at 3x the price of an i7. You pay for multiprocessing support, ECC RAM support, access to more RAM, improved memory bandwidth, and improved reliability.
[Craig Seeman] “The original 2008 MacBook Air started at $1800 with Core2Duo without SSD in the base model and certainly without Thunderbolt. It had an 80GB HD 4200rpm PATA drive. Now the base 13″ model at $1300 is Dual Core i5, 128GB SSD and Thunderbolt. For $1700 add Dual Core i7 and 256GB SSD, still less than the original model. You’d think even holding the price would be a challenge given SSD and Thunderbolt implementation.”
No, I would expect the price to be lower, because all the component prices are lower today than they were in 2008.
Workstation component prices are actually higher today than they were in 2008. Correspondingly, workstations are also more expensive.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I have no idea why Apple does this, but my feeling is that it’s a practical one. An iMac is not a practical DIY machine, however.
It’s not a big deal if you want to use an iMac. You shoud know going in that the iMac is a rather limited computer if you need to get to the guts of it, but thunderbolt opens it up to greater opportunities.”
I agree Jeremy, which is why I dot buy iMacs. However, if they kill the MacPro it’ll become kind of a mandatory thing won’t it? Then this kind of thing takes on new significance.
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” – Winston Churchill
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[Mitch Ives] “I agree Jeremy, which is why I dot buy iMacs. However, if they kill the MacPro it’ll become kind of a mandatory thing won’t it? Then this kind of thing takes on new significance.”
I do think we will see another MacPro or two.
If they do decide to kill the MacPro, I think they will offer some sort of replacement that isn’t an iMac.
Some people still need a headless system and the Mini doesn’t cut it.
Thunderbolt looks to be pretty awesome, but we aren’t ready for an all internal PCIe-less world quite yet.
Jeremy
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[Walter Soyka] “For the system you describe to meet your price point, you’d have to lose a thousand or two”
Dropping a $2500 base system to $2000 is not half the price. I think a bit of nip tuck and case redesign can do it.
[Walter Soyka] “You’ve eliminated a lot of the features (massive memory capacity,”
I didn’t mention that at all. That wouldn’t change.
[Walter Soyka] “You just cannot get the same performance at half the price in a case half the size by eliminating the HDD and two PCIe slots.”
I think there’s more to be saved in a case redesign that’s not quantifiable in limiting HDD and PCIe internal expansion.
[Walter Soyka] “No, I would expect the price to be lower, because all the component prices are lower today than they were in 2008.”
I suspect manufacturing process has something to do with it as well although I can’t prove it.
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[Craig Seeman] “Dropping a $2500 base system to $2000 is not half the price. I think a bit of nip tuck and case redesign can do it.”
You’re average consumer PC costs what? 600 bucks. And it’s the same tower form factor, with optical drive, hard disc, pcie etc. So those bits are obviously not responsible for the price of the Mac Pro or any other workstation. The only way you can save is by going with a desktop class processor and that means only one cpu, less memory etc.
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