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All New Mac Pro Available Starting Tomorrow

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53 pointszdw94 comments

I'm typing this on a windows PC with 192GB ram. 64GB RAM LIMIT? WHY OH WHY? it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks.

(repost from a similar thread earlier today)

The RAM limits on laptops are nearly understandable. But on a machine like this, it seems like obvious greed on the part of Apple to give this machine a maximum life span of 3-4 years.

edit: spelling

Just out of curiosity, what sort of serious tasks does one use 192GB of RAM for? (I'm not implying that there aren't any; just want some examples.)

I guess the industries that benefit from "the more RAM the better, with no limit" would be 3d rendering, video editing, simulations, and large-format photography. I am doing the latter, joining together thousands or tens of thousands of images into a single seamless photo. for example:

http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/

http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills-mori...

http://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-panorama/

http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov-library.html

I am aware that in many applications, the GPU has taken over for some of the "heavy lifting", but that is not true in all cases. Given there are basically no real power or thermal considerations limiting the RAM for a computer like this, I would really like to know if this 64GB limit is real, or if it is due to what RAM modules are available on the market now. Is it a limit in the OS? Will the Mac Pro be able to have 256GB RAM in the future, or not?

it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks.

You present a few valid examples. But I can't see how that represents "many" tasks; it's a very, very small subset of the fields in which people use computers for work.

If there were no hardware out there that supports the RAM requirements you're talking about, that'd be a great area for development. But if you're suggesting everything -- or even most things -- should support what to most of us is an over-the-top amount of memory, perhaps your niche is not quite as major as you think.

I agree that it's a niche application, but imho it's one of the target demographics of a 4k+ USD workstation. I'd like to know the reason (software/hardware) behind the 64 GB limitation as well.

There are only four ram slots. The largest ECC stick available now are single 16GB sticks. Just not enough room for slots on the board, is my guess.

It's a $4000 workstation. You buy it to run big jobs. Your department buys 10 or 20. In 3 or 4 years, the amount of "big data" grows and now you need more RAM. Do you simply spend another $100k to buy all new machines? You are just thinking about today's needs but a few years out memory needs always grow.

Not disagreeing with the memory point... just pointing out that a 12 core processor would, most likely, not be sufficient to the cause in 3 or 4 years if your memory needs grew that much. So wouldn't you buy new machines anyway every 4 years if your department were doing that sort of work???

The Mac Pro itself is a niche machine and priced as such, though. I mean, it uses a Xeon workstation/server-class CPU - how many computer users need Xeon and wouldn't be just as happy with a much cheaper high-end desktop CPU?

Off topic, but that tokyo tower panorama is super cool. You can see people in buildings and in cars really far away, and they look recognizable.

Is it an absolute requirement that the machine on your desk is the powerful one? For example, lots of scientists and engineers rely on massive computing power to do their work, but that power is in a server room somewhere. They often have modest laptops on their desk.

It's not unheard of for Macs to be limited in how much RAM they'll recognize, but it's not common. The maximum is typically limited by the number of RAM slots and the largest modules on the market. The Mac Pro has 4 slots and 16GB modules are the biggest out there at the moment. I would put good odds on it being able to take e.g. 128GB when 32GB modules become available. But there's no guarantee.

Opening more than one tab in Chrome.

Bioinformatics uses lots of memory. 3-4 years ago people were buying 512GB machines for it, and I'm sure it's crazier now.

I doubt most people doing bioinformatics are doing their number crunching on the machine in their office. They're probably using a cluster that's maintained in a server room.

Keep in mind that these are workstations, not servers. They are intended to be used by an individual who, for whatever reason, has interactive applications with large compute requirements.

Most bioinformaticians don't know how to code very well in my experience. (Some yes, but the majority I have worked with, no).

Many scientific computing tasks are memory intensive - operations on large matrices, R and Python both tend to keep their data in memory rather than writing it to disk, heavy simulation, etc.

I've slammed a cluster node with 1 TB of RAM pretty hard, I can easily see exceeding the 64 GB the Mac Pro comes with. Though my solution to this is admittedly "Toss it on the cluster".

Workstation tasks involve as much ram as possible 1) Physics simulation

2) Large image manipulation ( what I do)

32GB is what my laptop has, for this reason I cannot take this as a serious machibe.

Large image manipulation has been done for years now, no? If we managed it ten years ago on comparably puny machines, what has changed? Images bigger I guess is one thing, but does that account for advances in RAM?

(Saying that I am amazed at how my desktop slows down with 4gb of RAM these days.)

Back in 1995, Toy Story was rendered with a server farm of 87 dual-processor 100MHz SPARCStations w/ 192MB of RAM and 30 quad-processor 100MHz SPARCStations w/ 384MB RAM.

I used to do professional digital video editing on Media 100s and Avids with 80-96 MB of RAM back in the mid-90s.

It's amazing how quickly top-of-the-line becomes crap.

>The RAM limits on laptops are nearly understandable. But on a machine like this, it seems like obvious greed on the part of Apple to give this machine a maximum life span of 3-4 years.

Or, you, know, basic market research that shows you're some freaky outlier, and not even 0.1% of their customers will ever attempt to add that.

Not to mention, adding tons of RAM (for multi thousand dollars) and complaining of the machine having a "maximum life span of 3-4 years"?

Why would a pro that has an actual need for a Mac Pro saddle himself with it over 3-4 years? 3-4 years are like forever in tech. There'd be new memory speeds, new CPUs, new GPUs, new SSDs, new buses and such. If he's doing stuff the Mac Pro demographics does (video, audio etc), he'll want to update anyway...

> it seems like obvious greed on the part of Apple to give this machine a maximum life span of 3-4 years.

Yeah, obviously they are evil. 64GB is clearly not enough. 192GB is totally common place.

Let's quit hyperbole everytime something from Apple is mentioned. The specs are solid for the majority of the use cases.

We used to run print production for a major advertising agency mailing millions of pieces per week using 8gb of ram with Dual Core G5s. This machine is aimed at designers/agencies with fat budgets that might need to do Video editing / light 3D work / After Effects every now and then. That was always the bread and butter of the previous Mac Pros, it's also why they tried to make it look nice on your desktop (though I think they failed)

Honestly, Apple is not worried about the segment of the market that needs 192GB of ram - I'm sure it's orders of magnitude smaller then the ones who need 64GB.

It's limited by the system rather than OS. I'm typing on an HP Z420, and there's a 64GB limit too.

Nothing to do with Windows and Mac OS.

Apple is also a hardware vendor

So is HP. My point is that it's not uncommon for a workstation class computer to have 64GB memory limit in 2013.

They also offer machines that go over this.

From what I can tell, the HP Z420 is under half the price of the base Mac Pro. I'm not sure they're even in the same market segment.

Supporting more memory carries significant performance penalties. Until they make jumbo DIMMs which are as fast as smaller ones, perhaps it's not a good idea to offer the option.

I'm struggling to think of tasks that necessitate 192GB of RAM that are really best suited for a Desktop machine and not for a server cluster.

I'm sure that form factor is an issue. 10 inches long x 6 inch diameter. That's tiny - less than half the volume of a 1u rack server.

Not if your short-depth 1U is < 8.5".

(relax, I'm agreeing with you.)

Do they make DDR3 ECC sticks bigger than 16GB?

The major disadvantage seems to be bandwidth and cost though, only 1333MHz.

http://www.transcend-info.com/Press/index.asp?LangNo=0&Func1...

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Transcend-memory-32-GB-DIMM...

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT32G3EL...

I still find it incredulous people accept these are enterpise/workstation/pro machines:

- No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities)

- 64GB limit on RAM (as mentioned)

- Single power supply

- "Your Mac Pro comes with 90 days of complimentary telephone technical support and a one-year limited warranty" My toaster comes with a better warranty than that...

Compare this to the dell workstations of 3yrs of next day onsite & 24/7 support, 4 hard drives and dual power supplies...

> No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities)

The video production houses I've worked in the past had no local storage. Everything was over fiberchannel.

> 64GB limit on RAM (as mentioned)

Well there is theoretical and there is supported. My office Dell only supports 12GB. It currently has 16GB installed. My Macbook only supports 8GB it has 16GB installed. 16GB ECC DIMMs aren't exactly in high demand.

> Single power supply

I haven't found a "workstation" this is doing redundant powersupplies. No, the 2U Supermicro under a desk is not a workstation.

> 3yrs of next day onsite & 24/7 support

$249 for Applecare. It's cheaper than what I'm paying for my servers but more than I'd like for a desktop.

No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities)

That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps.

Single power supply

Workstation, not server.

Compare this to the dell workstations

Large, noisy, ugly, inefficient uses of power?

> That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps.

Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an external drive...

> Large, noisy, ugly

Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?!

I would agree on the noise, except no-one has actual heard these things running in a realistic environment so there is currently no comparison.

> Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an external drive...

The parent was talking about having your assets on externals if you had high storage requirements, the OS can live perfectly fine with any number of apps on the SSD.

> Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?!

We weren't always so utilitarian, Silicon Graphics did gang-buster business for a long time selling style and compactness in the workstation class. Yes, SGI eventually crashed and burned, but Apple is in a far better position to experiment with this, given that they have about $147 billion of cash on hand.

SGI crashed and burned because they stopped making beautiful MIPS boxes and tried to make ugly Windows PCs.

When the company imploded, the CEO who made that decision went to work for Microsoft. I'm not even kidding...

Everyone in my office has a workstation under the desk. Note that it's a workstation not a server.

So people do care about form factor, power usage, and acoustics.

But the OS can't be raided, since it's on the single, internal SSD.

EDIT: OK, I suppose you could run it on an external drive.

Good point. The best answer there is: that's what Time Machine backups are for. Time Machine backups lag your actual storage by 10 minutes to an hour, but it's okay for most uses.

If you're worried about important data, you'd want to use external storage arrays to store your pictures/videos/genome data. Then your redundancy is handled in individual storage chassis configurations. Promise and LaCie have popular faster-than-a-single-ssd thunderbolt arrays.

Just saying, but if I was selling computers and toasters, I too would offer a longer warranty for toasters.

Apple should have dropped the price tag a bit (2-3k USD maybe?) and targeted the entry level workstation demographic, or bumped up the customization limit (additional RAM etc) and most definitely included a two year minimum warranty on the Mac Pro.

But that's just my two cents.

I'm incredibly surprised there's no Retina Display to go with this.

Buy our $5000 desktop computer, it looks best on somebody else's display.

I'm sure they will be soon.

I totally agree. It doesn't make any sense. Now people who buy Mac Pro need to buy 4k monitors from Dell and/or ASUS.

incredibly surprised ? Apple thinks their 27 inch Thunderbolt Displays are still good enough, and they aren't really that bad. The Mac Pro wasn't really cutting edge for years and the new one, while being very capable, isn't the best workstation you can buy either.

They show it off with 4K monitors, just not their own. For a machine that's specifically slated to use them (6 thunderbolt ports, two GPUs) it's extremely strange behaviour.

Are they "good enough"? I don't think there's a compelling reason to invest in one for my Late 2013 rMBP. And less to do so with the Mac Pro - I get a USB2 hub, no USB3. I have to use an adapter to use my Magsafe adapter. And if I have a Mac Pro, I get TB1, not 2.

Apple showed off Mac Pro with 4k screens, and advertised that the machine supports 3 4k monitors.

They have to ship their 4k monitors soon.

doesn't apple sell a cinema display? or is the 27" not retina?

The 27" Thunderbolt Display (Cinema Display was discontinued in '11) has a smaller resolution than a 13" Retina Macbook Pro.

It depends on what "Retina" means. It's resolution is close to the MacBook Pro, arguably it'll look just as good since it's further from your face. Or not.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC914LL/B/apple-thunderbol...

No, it’s not, not really, at any rate. (The way Apple defines it, a retina resolution is simply a resolution where individual pixels are not visible to someone with normal sight at a typical working distance. I think it’s a quite useful definition and I really want to use it outside the context of Apple products. I want to steal this trademark from Apple by turning it into a generic term. For example, at typical viewing distances 1080p TVs are retina screens. That means going to 4k for TVs isn’t really worth it unless you plan on getting a much bigger TV or sitting closer to your TV. But the following text will focus more on the technical aspects of actually making retina happen with OS X than this nifty definition of retina.)

Apple does quadrupling of the size of its UI (on their MacBooks and iOS devices) when switching from non-retina to retina.

Consequently even 4k is not really enough if they want to replace their 27" display. That 27" has a higher (physical and logical) resolution than 1080p and quadrupling turns a 4k display merely into (about) a 1080p display when it comes to its logical resolution.

You gain all that resolution but lose all that space. That’s in many ways an icky tradeoff. Yeah, Apple has a hacky way that increases the logical resolution, but it’s also an icky tradeoff. The UI is rendered at an higher resolution (quadrupled in size and all) than the display can show and then down sampled to display size – but that costs performance and also leads to slight blurriness.

Both are not very big issues (the Mac Pro should have enough performance to handle it and this is really more an issue on portable devices – but maybe you can cause issues by connecting multiple 4k displays; the resolution of those displays is so high that the slight blurriness is not very visible) but are also not optimal.

OS X simply is not dynamically scalable. It’s quadrupling or nothing. And that works very well, but it’s not as flexible as dynamic scaling.

Realistically Apple could go for a 4k 24" screen (where having merely about 1080p logical resolution would be acceptable) but I’m not sure if they want to.

But going even higher than 4k? To 5120×2880 (that would replicate the logical resolution of their current 27" at retina resolution)? I’m not sure whether that’s realistic or even possible on that machine.

As can be seen on the 13" retina MacBook Pro, Apple is willing to make icky tradeoffs in favour of less logical resolution (despite being their top of the line 13" it has a lower logical resolution than the non-retina 13" MacBook Air).

But it just seems that when it comes to the Mac Pro they currently don’t want to play ball at all. It will be interesting to see how they handle this.

>As can be seen on the 13" retina MacBook Pro, Apple is willing to make icky tradeoffs in favour of less logical resolution (despite being their top of the line 13" it has a lower logical resolution than the non-retina 13" MacBook Air).

The 13" MacBook has always 1280x800, so it wasn't really a tradeoff. The Air is the higher DPI version and has been all along.

Well, yeah, but the 13" resolution has been an embarrassment for a long, long time. It just made no sense, especially compared to the Air.

I think it’s a quite obvious tradeoff, Apple just decided on it early on so it’s not as noticeable. (They must have known for quite some time that retina screens were coming so they kept the 13" Pro at a level where they could feasibly quadruple the pixels in the short run.)

That’s my little conspiracy theory for the day, and anyway, the logical resolution of the 13" Pro is an embarrassment. That’s just how it is. It’s a very real tradeoff (you get higher res for less logical resolution than is usual at that size).

It's not retina. 2560 x 1440 is the highest resolution.

Gorgeous, beautifully made - but god damn EXPENSIVE for the specs. Sheesh! (disc: I own an iMac 27'' but will not be buying apple computers again)

Yeah, I thought it would be CHEAPER than their laptops, at least base price. I could be wrong, but isn't that how most desktop PCs are priced? I mean of course the specs are much, much better, but I thought you pay a premium for the laptop body, and so the desktop is naturally cheaper.

That's true, and that's why Apple's cheapest desktop (the Mac Mini) is cheaper than Apple's cheapest laptop.

The Mac Pro, however, is not designed to be cheap. It has Xeon CPUs, ECC RAM, two high-end GPUs, large amounts of RAM, etc.

The Mac Pro is built to be powerful. If you want cheap, you want an iMac or a Mac Mini.

Why you won't buy Apple - too expensive for the specs or you had some other issues?

Yes it's too expensive for the specs.

but will not be buying apple computers again

Why not? There aren't any alternatives.

I don't have the need for mobility anymore. I work from home. I can build myself a beast of a machine with 60% of the cost of this desktop or an iMac. Don't get me wrong, I love my iMac but it beachballs way too often; enough for me to notice - and it's an iMac from Feb 2013. To me that's sort of unacceptable given the price I paid for it.

I then built myself a desktop with $1000 and it's a beast, full SSD 16GB ram the works. Never stalls, always keeps up with my chain of thought. You would think it doesn't make the difference but it does and it's noticible.

That's a great reason. I did the same back in 2009 when an iMac couldn't support the displays I wanted along with CPU/RAM requirements. I find my computing drifts when I do that — I end up with a lot more flac music that doesn't port back to iTunes easily.

But these days, I can grab a rMBP, hook up three 27" external monitors (plus the built in 15" HiDPI display, plus the rMBP can use an AppleTV as an external monitor, not just a mirror now), have a 1 TB internal PCIe flash setup, have 16 GB RAM, and four 2.6GHz (~8 with HT) cores to do my bidding.

Plus, the Linux box was about two feet tall and acted as a noisy space heater even in the summer. :-\ (but, I had it crammed full of 2 TB drives. but, rMBP has USB 3 and Thunderbolt for easy expansion. It's more difficult for me to justify large computers for non-compute-intensive tasks these days.)

thats true and very compelling, still your 15inch rMBP is at least twice as expensive as a more powerful desktop.

But, it's smaller, outputs less heat overall (though, the keyboard is often too hot to touch if you rest your hands on keys or—god forbid—if you accidentally touch metal between keys), and it sometimes stalls all display output for 30 to 60 seconds at a time while running all cores at 100% for no discernible reason at all between once a week or 15 times a day depending on its mood.

Let's see your tower do that.

Stockholm Computing Syndrome?

As far as price: company bought it. Always change jobs right before an Apple hardware refresh event. If it wasn't essentially "free" from my end, I'd have gone with a 27" iMac.

i dont understand !? What you describe doesnt make the rMBP look very good. Runs hot, stalls all displays ?

I am not a native speaker so i might not get the point here ;)

The breakdowns I've seen have the component cost much in line with the price being charged.

Yeah, it's probably not bad value for money if you need exactly one of the combinations of components they offer, with nothing more and nothing less. Which basically means someone who needs an expensive Xeon workstation-class CPU, dual AMD workstation class GPUs, and a fast SSD for the OS, but only 12-16GB of RAM and no RAID array or expansion cards.

If you want anything more or less than that, you'll end up overpaying or just plain not being able to get it at all. For instance, it's overpriced if you don't actually need two workstation GPUs, or if you need more RAM than the standard amount, or if you don't actually need a Xeon CPU, or if you have different storage requirements. Expansion cards? Pay through the nose for new Thunderbolt replacements or forget it.

I agree, and that makes complaints about lack of options completely legitimate.

But that's a completely different complaint from saying it's overly expensive for what's actually included. That's what was being said in the comment I replied to.

"Too expensive for my needs" is not the same as "too expensive for what's included".

To what degree? I'd love to see one of these breakdowns if you have a link.

I'm having trouble finding anything "official", I think I may have just seen them in comments here and elsewhere. It's all a bit imprecise as well, since not all of the components are completely clear (e.g. the GPUs are some custom Apple-specific model, which appears to have a generic PC equivalent, but it's not completely solid).

My vague recollection is that the GPUs alone are something like $700 each, and you get two, and the rest goes from there. Depending on the assumptions you make, you can get a $3,000 Mac Pro costing more than $3,000 for an equivalent PC, or less. Just beware of people comparing the Mac Pro with builds using non-Xeon CPUs, gaming GPUs, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with that sort of configuration, and personally I wish Apple offered some middle ground with high-end consumer components, but it doesn't give a good guide to what this actual machine costs to put together.

Personally, I really enjoy just building my own computer.

It's very easy, much cheaper, and extremely fun.

For $3,000 (Mac Pro base price) you can build a beast of a computer.

$2,500 with a Nvidia Titan GPU http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/454052-small-quiet-fast-build...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XnU8MPjp1Y (Tested - How To Build a Kick-Ass Gaming PC 2013)

Agreed, but: I'm weary of Windows. I've run every version except Vista and 8 on my home machine. I've been a total fan of Windows. I'm just really weary of using it. I use Cygwin for scripting, but some things are really hard to do even in Cygwin. I'm seriously considering the new Pro, but I have issues (can't RAID1 the OS drive, what are those external enclosures really like? Noisy??) so I'm not sure.

Ironically, I probably would have definitely upgraded if they had not changed the form factor, since I know I'd be able to do what I want.

You don't have to run Windows, there's always Linux. Why are you weary of Windows?

I have used Windows 7 and 8 and use virtual machines with Debian for development. You could probably even install an OSX virtual machine if you wanted to.

Just keep your files organized and don't install every too much crap and it'll run beautifully.

I keep my files so that I can easily format the computer and start over fresh in a couple hours.

I also run a software firewall so that I can keep track of all connections in and out of my computer. Microsoft Security Essentials is sufficient for most Windows users for antivirus purposes, just be smart about what you install, or if you want to install lots of stuff run it in a virtual machine. I use Oracle VirtualBox, it's lightweight and fast.

Lightroom and some other programs. LR runs on both Windows and Mac, so I'm tied to these.

For why I'm weary, see Cygwin comments in OP. And, this[1] (while I don't run Windows 8 at home, I do at work). Microsoft could have bought Cygwin before Red Hat. They could have embraced the differences between UNIX and Windows and made me love Windows as a better UNIX. PowerShell? No thanks. Even if I didn't hate it, it's Windows only. Give me Bash.

Windows is an inferior OS. When I start a Cygwin Bash process, there is a non-zero chance that I won't get some memory I need. The fix is to shutdown all Cygwin processes and to rebase ALL of the dlls used by Cygwin to different addresses. Seriously, true virtual memory has been around for what, more than 30 years? Still today you can run/load a device driver that puts crap in the middle of every program's address space. How is this tolerated??

I have two CentOS boxes at home, where I do lots of my work. Every night they are updated with the latest rpms to fix problems. I only have to reboot when I install a new kernel. Windows, on the other hand, needs to reboot for almost every single Windows Update.

These are the reasons I'm weary of using this shit OS.

[1] http://envoy510.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/windows-8-worst-win...

What a strange time to release something...a week before Christmas, after Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and after the "deadline" of December 15 by which most retailers guarantee delivery before Christmas.

It's targeted as a work machine, which isn't really subject to seasonal Thanksgiving/Xmas buying, not much at least. I'm guessing the demographic of people dropping $3-6K on shiny Xeon-shaped garbage cans as Christmas gifts is pretty small.

That said, I suspect they wanted to release this one earlier but hit some speed bumps.

The business equivalent of Christmas gifts is "we have to use up the whole budget by the end of the year or we'll get a smaller one next year."

Hey office IT department. Spent all of your 2013 budget? About to have a 2014 budget become available to you? Look what we've got!

Nice way as a contractor to knock down your taxable income for 2013...

Is it really? Look at the bundled software, iMovie and Garageband and all the rest.

It's a consumer machine, like the G4 Cube, not a professional workstation.

For some reason I don't see $5000 computers with workstation-class dual-GPUs being popular stocking stuffers.

On the other hand, they are one of a very small number of workstation-class machines that might fit in a stocking.

Apple did say "December". They dident say you would GET it in December, but it would be available to PURCHASE in December... Same with iPhones these days... order online, 3-4 weeks before you get it...

Well, being able to purchase it in Dec 2013 vs Jan 2014 may be very significant for budget or tax reasons, regardless of when you take delivery.

Think of it as a holiday surprise.

Lots of bitching/moaning below about the inability to get more than 64GB of ram, etc.

My only gripe: no 10Gbps Ethernet.

still one of the greatest Mad TV sketches of all time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnxvNJcx1U

There's a legal agreement to even look at the images.

It's the PR site, not the marketing site. The users of this site are folks looking for images to put in newspapers and magazines.

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