Andrew Richards
Forum Replies Created
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I just want the new Mac Pro to fit in a rack, not require one. It will usually be a mini tower. Heck, the current case is already a 3ishU 19″ square if you remove the pointless “handles” that are little more than a visual homage to the old plastic G3 and G4 cases. They could stick with the current form, but when better than now with a disruptive tech like Thunderbolt to redesign the case?
Best,
Andy -
You beat me to it.
If it is another G5-esque tower I will be disappointed. I want a 19″ x 19″ (or less) 2U box with twin 16x PCIe 3.0 slots and at least two discrete Thunderbolt busses along with all the usual I/O. An all new form factor would portend a much longer tail than one more cheese grater.
Best,
Andy -
Do you mean an equipment rack? The EVO is a self-contained unit and only needs a rack to live in (though it will work without one too).
Best,
Andy -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “Particularly when they are basically re-jigging iMovie.”
Not so. iMovie is 32-bit and built around QuickTime. FCPX is 64-bit and built around AVFoundation. They likely share very little code in common. They share very high level UI concepts in common, but in the nuts and bolts where the coding happens they share next to nothing in common. The work that went into iMovie was not there to build upon in FCPX (simply owing to how they respectively draw upon the APIs in OS X), despite outward appearances.
[Aindreas Gallagher] “It was not conceived as broad scale editing software product – it was intended to monetise casual enthusiast video work within their growing consumer base. “
I agree this is undoubtedly one reason they did it the way they did it, but I disagree it is the reason, or even the top reason. It is the reason best suited to cynical analysis though.
Best,
Andy -
[Craig Seeman] “That’s not profitable. Apple is a hardware company. There would be no point to invest the R&D they have for that.”
Apple’s software business is dwarfed by its hardware business, but I doubt their software products are a cost center. They apparently do turn a profit after covering development and marketing costs.
Here is an interesting interactive graph charting Apple’s recent financial info. Note the “GM” category (gross margin contribution %) compared to Gross Margin (the total dollar figures). Software ranks rather low compared to the main hardware products, but beats the waning iPod in terms of gross margin. But it dominates in terms of gross margin contribution (though the numbers for the iPhone are staggering given the nature of the product). So software does very nicely for itself within Apple, but it is still dwarfed by the money the hardware brings in. Granted we don’t see a breakdown of software, so we are getting Lion lumped in with FCPX.
Best,
Andy -
[Craig Seeman] “I don’t think it’s about “importance” per se. It’s the economy of scale. High volume sales mean high volume parts orders generally means lower price per component costs. Apple’s component costs on MacPro may not warrant the cost of new parts orders. Just a guess but I think it’s more about business supply pipeline costs than “importance.” Maybe a better way of putting it as that such changes are not “cost effective.””
The two are intertwined- the Mac Pro isn’t as important to Apple because it sells in low volumes, therefore Apple has no incentive to engineer minor revs like an updated SATA bus or higher speed PCIe lanes for slots 3 and 4.
Best,
Andy -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I was wondering if I was missing something. It’s pretty much just speed bumps, and maybe a GPU update? I can’t remember. There’s also some more movement in that sector. The jump from Core Duo, to Core 2 Duo, to quad core. But maybe I am missing something crucial!”
You’re not. Your comment prompted me to look back at the minor bumps, and they do tend to be CPU bumps. Maybe during the Core2Duo era there was a GPU bump or two since it went on so long. But as far as I can tell, architectural leaps in recent Macs like 6G SATA or higher bandwidth RAM is almost always tied to major CPU generational shifts. This is no doubt a byproduct of Intel revving the rest of its components which Apple also makes extensive use of.
The one exception with the Mac Pro is GPUs. No other Mac has a GPU as a user-replacable card, and I have no idea what it is that keeps AMD and NVIDIA from shipping drivers for OS X on more of their products. The work isn’t worth the tiny market share? Do they only do it when Apple subsidizes it? Whatever it is, the GPU gap on Mac Pros vs generic PC towers really sucks. Lots of other card OEMs don’t bother writing OS X drivers either, despite maintaining various Linux and Unix drivers.
Best,
Andy -
Touché.
Best,
Andy -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I didn’t mean to imply this was tied to intel’s roadmap, but rather it’s being held back as a result of intel’s delay. They can still be mutually exclusive, but not the way Apple works.”
It does reveal something about how important the Mac Pro is to Apple bottom line compared to other Macs. There are relatively frequent minor revs to iMacs and MacBooks (roughly twice a year), but on the Mac Pro, lately it seems like nothing gets refreshed until everything gets refreshed.
Best,
Andy -
[Walter Soyka] “Thunderbolt launched sometime in February. That’s between 9 and 10 months on the calendar, so that’s five and a half years in computer industry time, right?
The saving grace for the TB-less Mac Pros has been the glacial launches of Thunderbolt peripherals. If Thunderbolt peripherals were more ubiquitous today, it would hurt a lot more to not have Thunderbolt available on the Mac Pro.”
I completely agree the lack of 6G SATA and up-to-date GPUs should not be tied to Intel’s roadmap, but Thunderbolt absolutely is. Thunderbolt is Intel tech and requires Sandy Bridge, and unless Apple were to drop the Xeon for a Mac Pro refresh, we have to wait for Sandy Bridge Xeons to get Thunderbolt on a Mac Pro.
Best,
Andy