Andrew Richards
Forum Replies Created
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “It mightn’t have quite iOS numbers, but it’s worth pursuing right?.. OSX could build a nice, maybe quarter sized market share there?”
Absolutely. Just because it is only a quarter of their revenue, that is still several billion dollars annually.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “a dagger in your heart redmond… a steve jobs shaped dagger in your mediocre heart.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4boTbv9_nU
Best,
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[Walter Soyka] “I have a different version of the question to ask: What if Apple actually does release a new Mac Pro?”
I almost started a topic like this in response to “What if there is no new Mac Pro?“. I’m glad you brought it up.
[Walter Soyka] “Will you buy one?”
I have a 2010 Mac Pro, so probably not.
[Walter Soyka] “Will it indicate to you that Apple does care about providing solutions for your needs, other recent software and hardware EOLs notwithstanding?”
It depends very much on what it looks like and what it contains. If it is a brand new case design with crazy-good guts, I think it is a signal Apple sees a long tail for this class of product. If it is another iteration of the 9-year-old cheese grater hulk chassis, my inference is that they don’t see much of a future for that class of product at Apple.
[Walter Soyka] “What features would you want to see on the 2012 Mac Pro?”
I want a merger of Xserve and Mac Pro. A tower with hard points that allow for rack-mounting (3U 19″x19″ seems reasonable).
Here are the upgrades over today that are almost certain to be in one if they make it: E5-2600 series Xeons and least two channels of 6G SATA. I wouldn’t be surprised if the internal HDD count drops to 2 because of Patsburg’s limited on-board support for 6G SATA. Patsburg will have built-in hardware support for RAID-1, so that might be a nice complement. They could always go with a beefier storage controller, but that would be a departure from the norm.
As to its internals, I want it to have at least two full-length PCIe 3.0 16x slots (at least one with a blank above to accommodate a double-height GPU). An additional PCIe 2.0 8x slot would be nice, but that eats a lot of space and seems unlikely to me.
Thunderbolt replaces 4x slots, so four TB ports across two TB controllers would be good. Not sure how that would work with a GPU on a PCIe card. We may even see an embedded GPU as standard and the cards would primarily act as an OpenCL or CUDA coprocessor. Very curious to see where that goes.
Another wildcard could be the on-board NICs. They could standardize on Intel’s new X540 and really shake things up.
More DIMM slots would be nice, but not essential for sock rocking.
There will probably not be USB 3.0 since Intel is not supporting it in Sandy Bridge EP.
[Walter Soyka] “What software would you run on your 2012 Mac Pro?”
[Walter Soyka] “Does Thunderbolt let you consider an iMac or even a MacBook Pro instead of a Mac Pro for your work?”
No, but then I’m in server land and have much higher I/O requirements. I maintain that Thunderbolt is not a replacement for PCIe, but rather a huge improvement over FireWire for Macs that never had PCIe anyway.
[Walter Soyka] “If the current trends of the Mac Pro’s relatively limited internal expansion, limited processor choice, limited GPU choice (and poor GPU performance) continue, what would make you want to buy a Mac Pro over a PC workstation like the upcoming Z820? FCPX? Mac OS X? Fear or loathing of Windows?”
I’ve speculated in perhaps all the threads you linked to above that the limiting factor in GPU choice is and has been EFI. Now that EFI is getting a foothold beyond Apple, we really ought to see better 3rd party support for GPUs and not just the few models Apple subsidizes for use as factory options. But to answer your question, yes, OS X is the key. I don’t fear Windows, but I do absolutely loathe using it.
[Walter Soyka] “In short, what’s the 2012 Mac Pro’s value proposition?”
To keep OS X viable for big work. Xcode developers (including those who focus on iOS), research scientists, and creatives are the traditional Mac Pro constituencies and all of them are underserved with something less than a Mac Pro.
Tangentially, on OS X:
Apple clearly did shift resources away from OS X to focus heavily on iOS from 2008-2010. Snow Leopard was just the start of a very long internal renovation of OS X that is still going on. Look what they have been shedding since Leopard: QuickTime, 32-bit kernel, any 32-bit software in user-space (the included apps of OS X, including Finder). They still have a long way to go, like with OpenGL and most of all with filesystems. HFS+ is now the biggest liability of OS X.
OS X still has a couple warts, but I’ll take it any day as my daily driver.
Many observers suppose that superficial features like Launchpad and the Mac App Store signal a clear intent on Apple’s part to eventually merge OS X with iOS. Perhaps Microsoft thought so too, and it looks like they are trying to out-flank that scenario with Windows 8. The problem is there is no real evidence that Apple is phasing out OS X. On the contrary, they have doubled down on the desktop and will be releasing a new major version every year like they have been with iOS.
Best,
Andy -
[Shawn Miller] “It will be interesting to see in the coming years how much of Microsoft’s profits shift between its Server &Tool, Business and Online Services Businesses… which are all up from last year BTW.”
It could actually be a very bad sign if Server & Tools gets a larger share of MSFT’s income if it is because overall income fell with a decline in their best-earning divisions, Business (which includes Office, Exchange, & SharePoint after all) and Windows. Rumors of Office for iPad have been floating around, and I think it would be very wise for Microsoft to embrace other client platforms for Office, as that is now its most significant single division in terms of revenue and profits.
Best,
Andy -
[Shawn Miller] “Microsoft’s real strength is on the backend. Sure, they can deploy 20,000 desktops in your company, but that’s just the tip of the spear… MOM, Sharpoint, Lync, Azure and a whole host of technologies, platforms and services you probably never heard of are what pays the bills. MS, probably does’nt care much if you bring your iDevice into the office… I think they’re much more concerned with all the data, security and services needed to support those devices. Either way, Microsoft wins.”
You sure about that? Microsoft makes 74% of their profits from Office (Business Dvision) and Windows and only 20% from Servers.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Kimery] “Sure, we would love it ’cause it could be the best of both worlds. But why would Apple love it?”
Bingo.
Best,
Andy -
[Ronald Lindeboom] “We’ll see, won’t we?”
We will, very soon. I’d say if we don’t have a new Mac Pro come NAB, then you can write it off and make your plans. And if we do get one, you’ll have a pretty clear picture of Apple’s attitude. If it is an all new form factor like Craig and I have speculated, I think that augurs well for the product having a long tail. If it is another G5 cheese grater with some Thunderbolt ports tacked on, then I’d be inclined to believe that would be the last Mac Pro we’ll ever get. Of course, even if there is a new one with an all new design, if it is lacking some key spec that is essential to your business, it won’t matter much to you.
Best,
Andy -
[Ronald Lindeboom] “Okay Andrew, now you have to explain this phrase for those of us in the back of the class.”
It is in reference to an urban rite meant to remember the dead. It is sort of like leaving an empty chair at the table for a deceased friend of relative.
Best,
Andy -
[Steve Connor] “what will you do if there is no new Mac Pro?”
Pour a 40 on the ground.
Best,
Andy -
[Frank Gothmann] “- MacPros have four PCIe slots running at 16/8/4/4 lanes.
The z800 has one legacy PCI slots and 6 PCIe slots running at 16/16/8/4/4 so more expansion and faster”Yeah I caught that myself and added an edit to the post while you were responding.
[Frank Gothmann] “- You can add up to 9 internal drives in a z800. There are four at the bottom but are forgetting the expansion bays in the front for which you can get, from HP or elsehwere, hot-swap bays for additional five drives. And there are three of those 5,25 bays, not just one.”
I said one additional bay, and that expansion chassis is not listed on the spec sheet I was reading.
[Frank Gothmann] “In addition to that, you have SATA and SAS headers on the mainboard (plus lots of them), a RAID chip on board including RAID5 as well as HP options for eSATA on USB3.
Of course, with the z820 things are a bit different. Even faster PCIe, USB3 built in etc.”Yes, fine, the Z is better workstation hardware owing to the additional slots and drive capacity. I was wrong on that. But I’m not wrong about OS X never being licensed and that it would not benefit Apple.
Best,
Andy -
[Don Walker] “Anybody here been in the business long enough to remember the Ampex label on a SONY BVW-75 Betacam SP deck. Never understood that one either.”
It’s got Sony guts, man!
Best,
Andy