Retro Review: 2009 Mac Pro in 2018 | Hacker News Reader

Retro Review: 2009 Mac Pro in 2018

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42 pointsbluedino50 comments

I'm actually surprised at how much more I liked the last gen Macbook Pro than the new Touch Bar one. Almost everything from the larger touch pad to the new keyboard just feels worse and harder to use. The Touch Bar is useless garbage and all my worries about dongleopolis becoming my life have become true. Just yesterday I had to find adapters for a thumb drive and an HDMI cable -- which was absolutely infuriating.

I used to bring my rMBP everywhere with me for photography because I could easily just jam the SDcard in and transfer all my photos. Nope, need an adapter now.

Typing physically hurts on the new ultrashort throw keys.

The trackpad has moments where it just doesn't seem to want to work correctly for certain complex movements like drag and drop. I'm months in with this stupid thing and I still can't get it to reliable draw a box around a bunch of icons and drag and drop. Plus the fake click for presses feels just enough disconnected to make the whole process terrible.

I also get all kinds of external monitor flickering and resyncing issues, and I'm 3 different dongles in trying to get that stop.

If I could have kept my old rMBP for another lease period (they're work issued) I would have. I really really actively dislike this thing.

> The Touch Bar is useless garbage

I hate it too but you and I are not the customers for it: it's people who look down at the keyboard when they type (so looking down to see what the buttons do is not an inconvenience). Those folks seem to love it, and it helps upgrade people to MBPs. I think they were hoping developers would embrace it so that it would sell more machines. Hah.

(Honestly apart from booting into BIOS I doubt I've ever pressed an "Fn" key in my life (Emacs, baby!) so would be fine with a piece of tape over it to suppress spurious finger detection -- hmm, I should try this. The thumbpress is nice but now they have the watch-unlocking working pretty reliably it doesn't matter as much to me).

I actually think it's there literally for the Apple store experience. It seems cool and responsive in the store and it it's only after some time with it you realize what a gimmick it is.

FWIW my kid, a number crunching touch typist, thought it was a gimmick and recently told me that he was "forced to admit I really like it".

So maybe Apple knew what they were doing. Maybe.

>the new keyboard just feels worse and harder to use

I agree with this. The problem I'd want them to solve with the keyboard is better tactical feedback and no dust/water getting inside -- not "smaller height", which they seem to have focused on.

>The Touch Bar is useless garbage

I'd settle for either a physical Escape key in the same position as it was + touch bar, or for a wholly physical set of keys with changeable display (like the Optimus keyboard).

>and all my worries about dongleopolis becoming my life have become true. Just yesterday I had to find adapters for a thumb drive and an HDMI cable -- which was absolutely infuriating

The small USB+HDMI+USB-C adapter would cater to all of those, and is pretty much required for any MBP USB-C user:

https://www.apple.com/sg/shop/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digita...

Or you could go my route, and buy USB-C to X cables for HDMI, lighting, USB micro-B etc. No adapters required then -- you, just replace the existing cables on your peripherals with all USB-C ones (that would be ~$100, but for a $2k laptop, that's not much additional cost).

Thanks for the link. And you're right, it seems so essential that those ports feel like they should just be on the device.

> I'd settle for either a physical Escape key in the same position as it was + touch bar, or for a wholly physical set of keys with changeable display (like the Optimus keyboard).

I don't VIM all that much, so the ESC key works fine for me when I need it. It's just that I pretty much ignore the touchbar altogether and haven't found any compelling app or reason to use it. So it just sits there, draining power and costing money.

The trackpad is so large now that I wish that it had been replaced by a more general purpose touchscreen with app specific actions and status directly indicated on it (e.g. "ready to drag", video scrubber + volume control, move the finder there, etc.). It would make the use-cases for the trackpad more discoverable instead of remembering half a dozen gestures, and move space steal gui controls away from apps and down by your hands.

In fact, that entire huge space beneath the keyboard should just be a giant touch screen.

Glad this isn't just me! It seems next to impossible now to drag and drop one handed. I'm sure there is a knack to it, but I can't figure it out.

I'm still using my 17" MBPs. The prospect of replacing them with newer models becomes less appealing with each new generation.

I wish Mac Pro range focused more on upgradeability, at least on desktop models, and less on thinness.

I don't use Macs anymore, but I still admire old Mac Pros. Good looking and incredibly functional.

I bought my first apple product (an iphone 5) a few years back, and have been slowly buying more and more into their ecosystem, which sounds like the opposite of what you did. I come from old ThinkPad laptops; I've been using thinkpads with the trackpoint for two decades now, and with lenovo now changing the keyboard, I bought a macbook maybe a year ago.

Interestingly, I got the iphone 5 because servicing anything else(beyond swapping batteries) was really difficult due to a lack of parts and information. the iphone is actually far more repairable than other cellphones.

> I wish Mac Pro range focused more on upgradeability, at least on desktop models, and less on thinness.

Right now? I think the mac pro desktop is mostly dead. Apple claims they will build another, but... we will see. The specs on the current mac pro are thoroughly obsolete.

I do agree that if you want me to buy an expensive desktop, you put it in a case and you let me upgrade it. I mean, I have a mac mini, too... but that is a lot cheaper, so I'll take some compromises.

Laptops, on the other hand? I understand there is a tradeoff between thinness, reliability, and upgradability. Every socketed part takes up more space, and a socketed joint is less reliable than a soldered joint.

That said, I think that the 'all usb-C' jump was a bad choice, and even if you agree with that vision, it was too soon; even today, I can't find a usb-C to wired ethernet adapter.

I also think the keyboards might be a mistake. I bought a macbook about a year ago, with the short throw keys. They were interesting and crisp, and generally okay in an interesting sort of way... but over time, they've been getting clogged up, and unlike a laptop I can take apart (I usually roll with older ThinkPads) I don't see any way to clean out this keyboard.

I guess the whole idea behind a mac product is that you bring it in to be serviced, and I did buy the extended warranty, so perhaps I just need to take the thing into the service center.

>That said, I think that the 'all usb-C' jump was a bad choice, and even if you agree with that vision, it was too soon; even today, I can't find a usb-C to wired ethernet adapter.

Where, in rural Freedonia?

https://www.apple.com/sg/shop/product/HJKF2ZM/A/belkin-usb-c...

http://www.belkin.com/sg/p/P-F2CU040/

https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Aluminum-1-Gigabit-Compatible-C...

https://www.amazon.com/Kanex-Gigabit-Ethernet-Adapter-Inches...

(And another 20 chinese models -- some for $10 or so)

http://simya.manufacturer.globalsources.com/si/6008829861312...

thanks. I could have sworn that I checked a few months back and apple wanted to sell you a USB A ethernet adapter and a c->a adaptor.

bought.

You could also use the Apple USB-C to ThunderBolt 2 adapter, and then use the ThunderBolt Ethernet adapter

> The Touch Bar is useless garbage

I think they probably realized this and then decided to put the escape key there to justify its existence.

So he plugs two modern GPUs into the PCIE slots and calls that

> Truly a testament to the engineering that went into designing the 2009 Mac Pro.

I'm sorry but you can upgrade any computer from 2009 in exactly the same way. That's the beauty of using standards you know?

Not really for prebuilts, most Dell or Asus systems will just have one PCIe slot, and if they have two they won't support Crossfire, not to mention they probably won't have enough 6-pin connectors.

It's disheartening how, while that generation of Macs from late 2000s to early 2010s is holding up (and perform quite well) as long as they don't suffer significant physical damage, models from the past few years are so limited in upgradability/mod-ability, they'll have the same paperweight fate of mobile devices.

Absolutely. I have a 5k iMac and I love everything about it except I made the mistake of getting the 512GB SSD and I already need more space. But I'm fucking stuck with it. So now every few weeks I have to go hunting for things to clean off of my disk.

If you have an iMac, not the iMac Pro, you can increase storage quite straightforwardly by adding a SATA SSD (or replacing the PCI-e blade SSD, but that's much more costly). [I think you may need to buy a proprietary cable too if it's not shipping with an HDD/"Fusion Drive", but that wouldn't be too hard.]

The machine is much easier to work on than it seems at first. You just need some good double-sided tape to put it back together.

> by adding a SATA SSD (or replacingthe PCI-e blade SSD, but that's much more costly)

I think that's all true. Also note that the external SATA SSD is going to be much slower (500 GB/s) than the internal (1700 GB/s or even higher).

This is one place the drawback of the Apple branded, unibody iMac strategy reveals itself. In a more roomy, user-friendly, conventional box case with standard parts, the consumer has a much more reasonably priced way to increase storage capacity without sacrificing speed or paying two times as much per GB.

Fast M.2 SSDs (e.g. Samsung PRO series) are almost as expensive as Apple's proprietary SSD that you can find on the market. It's a fair point that one cannot opt for cheaper M.2 SSDs and has to either settle for the very high end or cheap SATA.

This is the tape I used a few times to attach the display back to the case. It's slightly thicker than the original tape but works well nevertheless. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HLY50P8/ref=oh_aui_deta...

Simple, just void the warranty on your brand new $5000 computer. Something you can't easily get parts for, and Apple is the only person who can repair it. It's not worth it.

Empirically, I have brought modded Macs to Apple Stores and they have fixed unrelated issues without saying a word. IANAL but there are consumer protection rights keeping your warranty rights depending on where you live if you don't actually cause a damage while you're adding a HDD (FFS, it does not even need soldering or anything; more like playing with Legos: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K+Di...).

BTW, iMac 5Ks have been out for a few years now. Many of them are probably out of limited warranty anyway. $5k is quite a bit of stretch on the price approximation for an average iMac out there too.

In my experience, going to an Apple Store as opposed to an authorized repair shop is the way to go (I have had bad experience with the latter). Charming the "genius" on the other side of the bar is not a bad idea either. :)

How about the much simpler and safer solution of just adding some external storage?

I thought this website was titled Hacker News. :-)

I sure like my iMac with 8TB extra storage not to waste additional space on my desk and be connected via a fast and reliable SATA bus as opposed to USB-3 or super expensive Thunderbolt.

Just duct-tape it to the back of the case /s

I use an external Samsung SSD as my boot disk. USB3 isn't as fast as native, but its pretty darn fast. This iMac came with a spinning disk drive which is worse than useless so it was a major upgrade.

based only upon personal experience but consistent with your "paperweight hypothesis," the build quality seems lower than it was three or four years back.

and i think maybe Apple has squeezed component suppliers too hard. some components (e.g. power supplies) seem to be junkier than in the past.

> Recently, I noticed that although the eGPUs allowed for my MacBook Pro to have access to a full fledged GPU, the performance was nowhere near that of a GPU that is housed on a regular PCIe slot.

Doubtful. Benchmarks show the difference to desktop even when using only 16Gbps Thunderbolt (TB3 using PCIe 3.0 x2 or TB2 using PCIe 2.0 x4) to drive an external display is below 20%. https://www.notebookcheck.net/eGPU-Two-PCI-e-lanes-no-proble... https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/pcie-slot-dgpu-vs-thunderbo...

And, while in the Mac world there might be little choice, in the PC world I would not recommend anything older than Sandy Bridge. Sandy Bridge, on the other hand, both in laptops like the ThinkPad T420 and X220 (which still have the best keyboard on any laptop) and off lease HP/Dell workstations sporting high frequency Xeons are an astonishing price/value bargain (the cheapest E3 1270 workstations with motherboard, CPU, cooler, chassis and PSU are about the same cost as the roughly equivalent i5 7400 CPU alone). Yes, the wattage has dropped significantly but the IPC only grew by 20% from Sandy Bridge to Kaby Lake https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/01/13/kaby_lake_7700k_v...

> Benchmarks show the difference to desktop even when using only 16Gbps Thunderbolt [...] to drive an external display is below 20%.

Average FPS benchmarks can be misleading, intermittent stutters can severely impact perceived performance without necessarily reducing the average FPS by much.

More rigorous testing shows that eGPUs can cause pretty severe stuttering: https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/External-Graphi...

I was just going to say I never experienced any performance issues using a Gigabyte eGPU with the latest MBPro as well as an Intel 7th gen NUC. For $699, it’s the cheapest way to get “desktop like GPU performance” on a laptop or small factor PC.

> Sandy Bridge, on the other hand, both in laptops like the ThinkPad T420 and X220 (which still have the best keyboard on any laptop) and off lease HP/Dell workstations sporting high frequency Xeons are an astonishing price/value bargain (the cheapest E3 1270 workstations with motherboard, CPU, cooler, chassis and PSU are about the same cost as the roughly equivalent i5 7400 CPU alone). Yes, the wattage has dropped significantly but the IPC only grew by 20% from Sandy Bridge to Kaby Lake

The older laptops are fine if you are looking for something you can plug in and work on, and have fairly minimal requirements for a GPU. The newer laptops are much better for those who want to compute on the go, without being tethered to a wall plug, and have made huge strides in graphics capabilities/efficiency.

This is compounded by old/failing batteries and the fact that it's nigh-impossible to source high-quality aftermarket replacements. Most of the aftermarket batteries on eBay/Amazon will have cells start to die or drift out of balance within a month or less. Really the only option seems to be to buy the OEM part... but even from someone like Amazon it could be contaminated by commingling. There is a widely-acknowledged gap in the market here that some startup could exploit.

Going from a W510 with Nehalem and non-switchable discrete (circa-2006) Tesla uarch graphics, to a modern ultrabook or workstation laptop with a Kaby Lake and switchable Optimus graphics (or a reasonably capable iGPU) is like triple the battery life, and unlocks a whole world of applications that simply won't run without DX11 support. And if you want discrete graphics, Pascal alone is pretty much a game-changer.

There is finally a reasonable enough feature-increment to consider an upgrade from the old Sandy Bridge/Nehalem stuff.

You can use ExpressCard to connect an external GPU. https://egpu.io/external-gpu-buyers-guide-2018/#expresscard2...

Even Thunderbolt speeds can bottleneck a GPU. The effects are particularly severe on minimum framerates/frame-times, as opposed to averages.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/External-Graphi...

That's PCIe 3.0x4 speeds. In comparison, ExpressCard is either PCIe 1.1x1 speed or PCIe 2.0x1 speed. That means they have 1/16th of the throughput on older models, or 1/8th on Sandy Bridge.

It's a cute way to get GSync monitor support in a laptop (this was not included in mobile until Pascal - yet another reason to upgrade), or to sidestep lack of support for DX11/DX12, but the performance is not fantastic (although surely better than a circa-2006 uarch).

Given the size and price of the eGPU solution you are practically better off doing a compact mITX build in something like the Dan SFX-A4 or Silverstone RVZ01. You get desktop GPUs and desktop processors (TDP is still king of performance, and laptop CPUs are very TDP-limited). The only thing you lose is the integrated display, which you can't really use with an eGPU anyway, since sending back a display stream chokes the link for bandwidth even harder (the link I provided is measured by an external display). So yeah, either get a new laptop or get a new (small) desktop, I don't find the eGPU option all that compelling. Nehalem and Sandy Bridge are still tolerable, that doesn't make them ideal.

This is probably a testament more to Apple not having enough time to sprinkle in their proprietary magic dust following the transition to Intel x86 CPUs. Giving Apple credit seems a bit misplaced if he had to jump through hoops just to install a few basic hardware upgrades and the most recent OS to work. It's a testament to how good the x58 (or the Xeon version (5520?)) chipset was, which spans Macs and PCs. My x58 PC lasted me ~7 years in grad school and the only reason I upgraded was opportunity/boredom.

There was a ton of headroom with those 36 PCIE lanes and the longevity of those systems probably contributed to the relative stagnation of PC consumer hardware pre-Threadripper rumors. Intel even said (sometime around 2009) that they were predicting 50 core CPUs by ~2015, but then released nothing but 4-core and special edition 6 and 8 core CPUs. They didn't need to push things further because these early Core i supporting chipsets met the needs of most PC users.

I run a 2010 MacBook pro which I have upgraded the RAM and swapped out the disk for an SSD (luckily 2010 was pre motherboard soldering nonsense). It still runs like a champ 8 years later.

Impressive! My main gaming rig is a custom build from 2011 with an i7 2600k. Besides upgrading the GPU once, it's still going strong.

He doesn’t even upgrade the CPU or the old SSD, he just adds a pair of AMD video cards.

I’d like to see how an old Pro with those upgrades compares to a trashcan pro, as well as a cost comparison.

My home laptop is a 2011 Asus ultrabook. I've upgraded to an SSD and installed more RAM, and it works fine. In fact, it's more than fine - the CPU benchmarks are only ~10% less than the 2016 XPS13 I'm using at work. I have to put up with a relatively poor monitor and the occasional spinning fan, but otherwise it works fine.

I'm vaguely considering upgrading for a 5 year old Lenovo with a higher resolution screen. PCs really haven't changed much recently!

Great review! We have a 2011 Macbook Pro that I have since upgraded from an HDD to SSD and installed 16gb of RAM and I must say its still alive and well.

I think the moral of this story is that Apple's hardware was _too_ good 10 years ago -- you could upgrade it almost indefinitely. The soldered components these days definitely make more sense to drive new sales.

I tried to install Linux on a Mac Pro that looked like the one in the article. It turns out that it didn't support booting from USB. I didn't have any blank CDs nor a CD burner (does anyone?) so I gave up and it sat in a corner.

I still use a 2009 MacBook Pro daily - it only had the HDD swapped for a 128GB SSD few years ago, but it still runs perfectly fine and is quick enough for daily use/web browsing/programming.

I use a 2009 macbook (not pro) daily running High Sierra, indeed fine for normal basic browsing and enterntainment consumption

I'm in the same boat. My daily driver is a 2008 Macbook that I added another 2gb of ram and a SSD to - works great! I highly recommend opening it up and cleaning out the fan if you haven't, that made a huge difference in how often the fan spins up.

The Mac lineup is just in sad shape right now -- except for the iMacs.

The MacBook Air is overpriced and has worse specs than a mid range Windows PC.

The MacBook is under-powered and only has one port.

The MacBook Pro line forces most people to have a hodge podge of dongles and has an unreliable keyboard.

The Mac Mini hasn't been updated in 4 years.

The Mac Pro is just sad.

The iMacs are great computers, and I will probably end up dropping $3K on a pretty beefy 27 inch iMac by the end of the year, but I understand an all-in-one isn't everyone's cup of tea.

I use a 2009 iMac daily. I've upgraded it to 8GB ram & a 1TB SSD and it works great.

My in-laws have a 2009 iMac that's still going strong. Last year I replaced the HD with an SSD (nervously using suction cups to get the screen off while my F-i-L watches over my shoulder...)

My wife's 2011 MBP also gained a new lease on life with an SSD.

Similarly, I put 8GB ram into my 2009 iMac (I like the 24-inch screen), but only needed a 256 GB SSD. I'm quite satisfied and glad the machine has lasted this long.

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