Apple announces redesigned Mac Pro | Hacker News Reader

Apple announces redesigned Mac Pro

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63 pointsrunesoerensen50 comments

That whole segment was just pure computer-porn. I think that's what Apple needed to win back the confidence of Pro customers.

No NVIDIA, so no CUDA. (Of course, one can buy a card, but that was already possible with USB-C and an eGPU enclosure.)

Is there a particular reason they stopped shipping Macs with NVIDIA?

Apple has been pushing Metal for some time now, and I think the reasoning is that Apple historically likes maintaining a tight coupling between proprietary hardware and their software. CUDA has been around a long time, but Metal does provide a lot in terms of general purpose GPU work, performance shaders for machine learning applications, etc.

I've been working in a field that specifically requires CUDA for a few years now. I miss OSX with an Nvidia GPU so much. I'm just baffled by the dropping of support for the drivers. I would totally buy this computer... but as is I'm stuck using a System 76.

Apple dropped support for Nvidia CUDA card drivers? Do you mean Apple working on this support directly, instead of just Nvidia?

I dunno, but the PCI slots will make it much easier to add your own

Problem is there's no Mac drivers for the latest Nvidia GPUs. Bit of a problem that.

I am hoping that now that there's a Mac with proper PCIe slots it might make more business sense for nVidia to make drivers for macOS. Previously, there were Thunderbolt eGPUs which could allow using nVidia GPUs with (non-Hackintoshed) macOS but it may not have brought in enough sales to justify the cost of developing.

Didn't realize that.

But are their drivers?

Agree. It's what I wanted from them all these years. And they finally delivered.

I noticed that they addressed one of the major problems with the old (2003) design... the handles. The old handles would cut into your hands when you picked the computer up.

Looks like cheesegrater.

Seriously the specs look fantastic. 3 streams at 8K or 12 at 4k among others

I never used a Mac Pro but I'm surprised how many people are having issues with the price tag... Is 6K a lot for what they are providing? Most of the workstations I use at work average around $6K for heavy loaded work. Some of the render machines can go up to $10K [1]. Is their pricing off because it's geared towards "Prosumers"?

[1]https://www.boxx.com/systems

I think most of us recall the $1899 - $2499 Mac Pro entry point in the late 2000's and early 2010's. It's kind of a bummer - but you're correct that Pro performance has moved a bit up-market. Heck. The 8-core Xeon-W costs almost $3000 at retail.

> Is 6K a lot for what they are providing?

From other comments, 1k alone is for the display stand. So, yes.

How can apple justify $1000 for a stand?

You could hear the crowd gasp when they listed $999 for the stand.

In case anyone is wondering, this refers to the display stand. I guess you don’t pay the $999 if you already have a display arm.

They could have just charged an extra $1000 for it, but if you want to use a VESA mount you shouldn't have to absorb the cost of the stand.

Then you just have to absorb $199 for the VESA mount.

base price of $11k to have an Apple display + desktop. wow. no thanks.

When you're paying a graphic artist $80k/yr in salary, is $3k a year for 4 years for this tool really that out of line?

Sure a high end workstation can be a worthwhile investment but the internals are just extremely underwhelming for the price. Even the iMac Pro seems like an incredible bargain in comparison.

The base model Mac Pro is $1000 more expensive than the base model iMac Pro but has 1/4 the storage, a slower GPU, and lacks the presumably very expensive built in 5K display. RAM is the same and CPU appears to be similar.

Now they haven't revealed upgrade pricing but I'm sure they are going to charge a similarly large markup and the top models will probably be north of $20K. Clearly people are willing to pay a premium for MacOS but I think a lot of people will start asking themselves if it is really worth something like $5-10K over similar workstation hardware from other vendors.

What else can you get for $3k per year?

I was seriously thinking about revisiting the days of my old G5 cheesegrater, but once I saw the price... I just can't justify it.

EDIT - I just thought about it some more. Apple is saying this is modular. If they support this thing for 5-10 years, allowing for upgrading the CPU, etc. Maybe it can pencil out. I want to know what socket that Xeon is, and if Intel will keep producing chips for a long time on that socket. If Moore's law is dead...

Considering what you can get for $3k a year from a non-Apple builder, I think it is out of line, unless you _really_ need Mac OS.

Puget Systems for example sells purpose-built systems optimized for a particular application. A 3D design and animation workstation goes for ~$3k: https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems...

True, in cases like that it's an investment.

But if I didn't _need_ macOS I'm not sure I'd go Mac Pro over a HP Z8 G4.

If you're paying £11k for a workstation you might as well get one with 28 cores and 96GB of RAM.

what exactly does someone need a mac like that for? what kind of software that only runs on mac os needs a computer like that?

Good question, and I don't know. There are some tools like Final Cut that won't work on Windows but most creative pro tools are cross platform.

I didn't make it clear in my post above, but I was speculating. I definitely don't need macOS for anything. The only reason I have a MBP is for Capture One which won't run on Linux.

Video editing?

adobe premiere runs on windows?

no, it is not, but they are pricing out the "prosumer" and small business and leaning quite hard into mid-size and above professional.

In terms of relative purchase power, in 1987 you could build a "newest processor" 80386 with a then-huge 80Mb drive in a tower case with you basic setup and pay about $3,000 when building it yourself. According to my inflation calculator, that's $6,182.61 in today's dollars.

In 1987, PC's Limited (later renamed Dell) 386-16 included a 16MHz Intel 80386 CPU, 1MB RAM, a 1.2MB floppy drive, a 40MB hard drive, and a monochrome video card for $4,799.

We just tend forget how powerful and cheap Moore's law made things. In terms of relative inflation-adjusted dollars, many of us old-timers have already spent as much or more than Apple is asking multiple times on 'prosumer' machines.

So you’re not the target market. Apple didn’t become the most valuable company in the world by making products for everyone.

When they did that they were never more than 10% of the personal computer market much less the world.

Making products for everyone is exactly how they did it, with universally popular iPods, iPhones, and wearables. The two biggest revenue drivers for them are iPhones and Services(Music, Pay, App Store, etc) (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q2%20FY19%20Consolidated...), they sell almost as much in iPads alone as they do in Macs. Those are all services that they famously made broadly popular and target towards the average consumer. It's only really in the Mac space that they target primarily the "high end" consumers.

They didn't? I thought they became the most valuable company in the world by making smart phones, a product for everyone.

Edit: Product page up now https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

More details: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/apple-unveils-powerfu...

It would have been a really pleasant (and highly unlikely) surprise if Apple also re-introduced the plain old "Mac" at $1499-$1999 using prosumer-grade SKUs and PCIe expandability. Think of it as a big brother to the Mac mini - and parallel to the iMac 27". It would sell better than all Mac Pros ever sold. Really a damn shame.

Target user for $6000 computer???

Video editors? Recording studios?

My thoughts exactly! Don't they have render farms for this sort of thing? What's the value of having all that power under your desk to get turned into so much slag with one beverage malfunction!

Video, photo, and iOS developers.

Plus anyone with a really high end designerly interior design.

The old cheesegrater look is back. Its almost like how the car companies bring back the old car with a redesigned look.

Coca-Cola “Classic” is the new Mac Pro to the trash can’s “New Coke”.

I was surprised that it ever went out. Even when the last Mac Pro was introduced the cheese grater look was a very nice looking machine.

Sounds like what a lot of devs wanted except the GPU cards look like they need to be Apple specific versions? Also no Nvidia support mentioned yet

Nothing has really changed on those fronts. (i.e. I think they've always required Apple-specific versions of cards and nVidia support has been an issue for much of the past decade as the two companies effectively stopped working with each other)

I remember the famous video where Linus said that Nvidia has been the single worst company he ever had to work with. I assume it's not just the linux kernel, but also companies like apple.

This new thing is a completely proprietary connector though, meaning you'll need Apple-specific cards, not re-flashed PC cards.

Optional wheels!

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