Apple Introducing New Mac Pro, Pro iMacs and External Display Over Next Year | Hacker News Reader

Apple Introducing New Mac Pro, Pro iMacs and External Display Over Next Year

techcrunch.com

82 pointsuptown41 comments

Active discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031619

I've definitely struggled with getting a good bang for my performance buck on the macOS ecosystem for building a video editing or gaming rig. These days you can find a pre-made PC with 32gb RAM, GTX 1070, core i7 and more for $1400, but mac specs come nowhere close for that kind of price. Really don't want to move back to the Windows ecosystem but also paying over 2x for worse specs is silly.

Their desktops don't benefit as much from great power management, excellent hardware integration (trackpad especially), and general doing-the-right-thing when plugging in external devices (especially displays) as their mobile devices do. Even with missteps and price increases it remains difficult to leave the Macbook because their laptops are so good, and the competition still hasn't caught up. Desktops? Way easier to live with Windows (ugh) or get Linux working the way you want it and leave it alone there than it is on a laptop, since its environment is mostly static, its I/O devices are all replaceable, and power use matters way less.

It's much closer to a fair fight on the desktop front for Windows/Linux.

If you don't want to code on it, windows is fine. (and if you can get past them violating your privacy)

If you need to code on it.... just don't

I love my windows machine for doing all my leisure activities. Its a shame that after all these years they can't learn from linux/mac and make a decent dev environment

I remember how mind blowing it was to install pip/python on my windows when I was first starting out. Easily installing packages from the cmd, so revolutionary! /s

If you don't want to code on it, windows is fine.

If you need to code on it.... just don't

VirtualBox with Xubuntu Linux in Seamless mode for my Windows laptop. I bought a Windows laptop with a GTX 1070. Now I can do VR on my laptop, but bash in Windows was half baked. It's better to use VirtualBox!

> How to make Windows usable, step 1: install Linux.

FTFY

Windows 10 comes with Ubuntu installed.

No, it doesn't. It comes with a portion of Ubuntu tools available for install through some backwards way (or at least it was a few months ago when I installed it). The bash console is probably not as good as PuTTY for SSH management, and that was the big highlight of the functionality for me - being able to manage my servers without pulling out another computer. It's better than nothing, but it is no where near good enough for me as a dev who works in Unix from development to production. I do use the bash console for some simple server management when I am away from my work machine, but I could not imagine it ever being a worthy replacement for iTerm2 (or any console on Windows, really, not just the Bash console)

I find the window managers better in Linux, so there just isn't a replacement for me (on Windows, I have to install Alt-Drag [1], but it's super buggy), otherwise this would be super compelling.

https://stefansundin.github.io/altdrag/

That's why I moved to Linux :)

Since they tacitly acknowledge that it still makes sense for people to be on 5,1 graters, I hope this means those machines are officially supported for a couple more major OS X versions.

i.e. I don't want to see macOS 10.13 being "trashcan or newer".

As someone with the 6,1 and a recently upgraded 5,1 (single CPU tray to dual, GPU, RAM, SSD), I hope you're right. I like the idea of the 6,1 but in reality the 5,1 is what I'd expect from a pro machine. The upgrade procedures for a 6,1 are not ideal and in some cases almost impossible. That's not a 'pro'duct.

Hopefully you're right!

They really need to look at the Microsoft Surface line of products for some cues. Especially, the Surface Studio - it has some great features, even though I would consider it unforgivably underpowered/overpriced for what it tries to do.

Kind of makes me want to corner Jony Ive and ask him what the hell was he thinking letting Microsoft steal that march.

Don't hold your breath:

> It’s worth noting that, when asked about a touch display here, in the context of efforts like Microsoft’s Surface Studio Schiller replies “No.”

> “That’s a whole other long discussion we can get into, but suffice it to say, it’s not a big need of the Mac Pro customers that we’re trying to address,” he says. “You mentioned again how we’re talking about both the iMac and MacBook – I do think that we have a two-prong desktop strategy with both iMac and Mac Pro, we think are each going to be important for pro desktops.”

tl;dr : they designed themselves into a corner with the current Mac Pro, next ones will have modularity as a primary goal.

Or it will be very thin and pretty :-)

> next ones will have modularity as a primary goal

For apple engineers or for the customers? The words from apple make it seem like the goal is to improve modularity so that apple can make easier changes.

Subtext: they don't actually have anything to show. There are no next ones yet. They planned themselves into a corner by assuming no one wanted this stuff, realize they're screwed, and are trying to spin their way out with press hits like this one to keep developers from jumping ship.

I read somewhere that Apple's products are in the pipeline for at least 2y before they ship, so you might be a wee bit harsh on them.

Topic title is incorrect; Schiller said "longer than this year", nothing about it being next year necessarily.

Federighi pretty much confirms this; in the 4 years since the Mac Pro, they realized that the Mac Pro won't handle hotter GPUs. But rather than immediately beginning work on a Pro that would handle better GPUs, they just thought better iMacs would be good enough "and really put a lot of our energy behind that". They thought iMacs would be "pro" enough, until the backlash got too much and now they're scrambling to regain developer/professional confidence.

They thought iMacs would be "pro" enough, until the backlash got too much and now they're scrambling to regain developer/professional confidence.

Yet another indication of how out of touch with their customer base they've gotten?

Yes. They live on laptops. They develop on Macbook Pros, with (Linux!) servers in a private cloud for heavy computational lifting.

The key idea of the Macintosh and the NeXT---the personal computer---is no longer foremost. Maybe it's time to swing back that way again.

All that money and design talent, and they couldn't have come out with something like this in the interim?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdtZEcppLQY

More than that, I think they've only just realised they have a serious problem, and just started the MacPro redesign process within the last month or so.

So this is a panic PR move to stop core content creator loyalists jumping ship. If they were further advanced they'd be previewing stuff, not just bumping the trashcan specs a little.

I'm still not sure this is very developer friendly. Developers are a niche within a niche, although a disproportionately influential one. Developers probably care more about the MBP than the MacPro, and the MBP is where it is.

For the MP - I would guess we'll see previews in the autumn, with shipping early next year.

"There’s music creators, there’s video editors, there’s graphic designers — a really great segment with the Mac. There’s scientists, engineers, architects, software programmers — increasingly growing, particularly our App development in the app store"

This is going to be great for software developers.

How good is the performance bump they just announced for the Mac Pro? It's also cheaper, right?

Is it just me or do they go to extreme lengths to avoid talking about machine learning as a 'pro' workload? Surely there are more people doing ML and BI on this class of machine ($6-12K) than there are producing high-end digital cinema.

Yeah. They didn't get Nvidia cards on the MBPs either. They did acknowledge in response to a question by Gruber that developers were the largest/fastest growing segment of pro users.

I'd be fine with AMD kit if Apple helped make OpenCL a first-class citizen.

For the dev segment, I hope they look at Homebrew stats and not just regular XCode users.

> Apple is acknowledging that the Mac Pro they introduced in 2013 has run aground on the cleverness of its own design

Seriously? They're blaming it on "the cleverness of its own design"?

I really wish state of Linux is better. Nothing else comes to mind.

Linux works for me. Even the photography tools are pretty cool nowadays.

I wish this was true. I got myself a nice set of tools and plugins for Lightroom, it is not easy to just transfer. I have Luminar for example and full suite from Macphun, that is not easy to replace.

But, I do plan to get a new big monitor, and will connect this to new machine running Linux and I can slowly start my transition. That way I can move without fear of missing anything.

This is my thinking at the moment.

I've heard good things about Darktable. I'm still a Lightroom user though so far.

Well, minor mention of MacBook Pros too.. I'm saving & hoping for new Macbook Pros this summer. I'll be really sad if i have to wait even longer.

They just released new ones in September (the ones with the emoji bar)

I've been unhappy with the specs and unhappy about the keyboard/touchbar/touchpad/etc. I'm hoping for improved version identifying the vast number of complaints about that macbook.

$500 off the price tag would help with regaining customer confidence

lololololol

It will be $500 more expensive since "pro" users can afford it.

Can't innovate anymore, actually yes! :P

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