-
The Cheese Grater is back
-
-
Exactly. My first reaction – helicopters!
Doug Metz
Dalton+Anode
-
As I was watching this in awe, I keep thinking we were being punked with the config then price.
It’s like, hey you want something modular…suck on this ????
Now to convince the upper foreheads that I need a half dozen of these 😛However, I am out of the display league 🙁
-
Forget the wheels, I’m gonna put mine atop a Roomba that’s programmed to follow me around the house as I edit 3 8K streams using Magic Leap VR goggles.
Might need to move to a ranch house though…
\”Constituo, ergo sum\”
Bob Woodhead / Atlanta
CMX-Quantel-Avid-Premiere-FCPX-AFX-Crayola
\”What a long strange trip it\’s been….\” -
[Steve Connor]”Cue “it’ll be too expensive” and “it doesn’t run Nvidia cards”
Thanks Steve. That saved a lot of us the time to make the obvious comments. However, if you are a pro you can afford it. I did ten years ago with the last MacPro. NVIDIA is a deal breaker for me and I’m sure many Resolve users will be torn.
It looks fantastic and well done Apple for building a grunt glam box. I wonder if it comes with a rack mount kit or will we just saw the handles off? (Just kidding)
-
There’ll be a rack mount version of the new Mac Pro so no sawing needed 🙂
-
Finally… meaningful post-production news from Cupertino! ????
Some less-obvious observations, from a post I wrote for CML:1. That Cheese Grater Shape
You’ll find some “Krafty” comments about the “cheesy” design… still debating if Apple messed up again or if it’s charming retro. But then it dawned on me… it’s all about being able to pop off the entire external case – it’ll be easy to design alternative 3rd party casings! I’d be surprised if Sonnet and OWC aren’t already thinking those up. (Unless the case latches employ a 2048-bit encryption scheme with special T2 chips, of course. ☺ )One more concern, and reason for a 3rd-party shell: If I’m seeing what I’m seeing… you have to disconnect all cables and peripherals before opening the computer. Just look at the way the case wraps below the rear ports…
2. Expansion
8 PCI slots! I don’t think any Mac ever had more than 6 expansion slots, and I also counted up to 12 Thunderbolt ports. That’s some scary expansion capability.2 10Gbase-T ports (actually Nbase-T, meaning you can do 10, 5, 2.5, or 1 Gb Ethernet) are a welcome addition for shared editing workflows.
3. Storage
You get 2 M.2 ports for SSD’s, but that’s it. I’m not seeing any provisions for mounting internal SATA drives. There’s a large unexplained empty space above the PCI slots with what looks like 2 SATA ports, so you may be able to mount 2 SATA drives of your choice. But it’s notable that with a machine as big and heavy as the classic Mac Pro, there’s less space for storage. Apple apparently counts on you using a big external RAID chassis.4. Rackmount
I got all miffed about how they screwed up again (the chassis itself is 17.1″ – but the handles it’s 20.8″), but thanks Andre for pointing it out – there will be a rack edition. It’s not in the specs, but in the press release.5. $$$
Is Apple out of touch again, or is this a good value for the extreme specs? Everyone will have their opinions on that. Personally, I’m happy with my 2009 Classic Mac Pro which is churning along just fine. You can kit it to newer firmware, CPUs, modern GPUs, USB3, SATA6, SSDs… That makes me hope that this new Mac, in a welcome departure from Apple’s glue-all philosophy, could be useful on your desk 10 or 12 years from now. It’s been a while since we were able to consider Macs as such a long-term investment.6. Pro Display XDR
The Dolby Vision specs for a reference monitor are SMPTE 2084/PQ, >1000 nits, P3 gamut, and 200,000:1 contrast. This display satisfies all those specs. Assuming you can feed it accurate color (no SDI ports here ☺ ) this could be a good budget Dolby Vision monitor. $5-$6K is insane for a GUI monitor, but a bargain compared to a $30K Eizo CG3145.We had our expectations set a certain way after the trashcan Macs… and while Apple would never admit it, they actually went retro for once. A modular, expensive, top-spec beast that’s every bit as big and heavy as the 2003-2012 Mac Pros. Now we just gotta get our hands on the production units…
-
[Michael Gissing] ” NVIDIA is a deal breaker for me and I’m sure many Resolve users will be torn.”
The same is probably true for a lot of people doing 3D work. The most popular 3D renderers require CUDA cores, or benefit heavily from dual processor machines. This is why so many motion graphics and 3D artists have left the Mac platform… for Redshift, Arnold, Octane and other Nvidia or CPU hungry applications.
Shawn
-
[Drew Lahat] “5. $$$
Is Apple out of touch again, or is this a good value for the extreme specs? “In fairness, this price at most reasonable configurations is in line with the current pricing on the trash can Mac Pros and on the iMac Pros. It’s also comparable to a similarly configuration high-end PC, such as from Dell, HP, Puget, etc.
It’s worth noting that Intel gets a premium for Xeon chips. These generally add $1K to the price over an equivalent Core i7 or i9. That’s in part responsible for the price difference between an iMac and an iMac Pro.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
-
BTW – speaking of the trash can Mac Pro, it appears to have been removed from the Apple website. I guess you can now only purchase refurbished units from their website going forward.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up