Apple’s Latest Mac Pro News – TMO Daily Observations 2018-04-06
John Martellaro and Bryan Chaffin join Jeff Gamet to share their thoughts on Apple’s latest news about the upcoming Mac Pro, what they’re hoping for in the new machine, and what they think of its 2019 time table.
Show Notes
- Key Takeaways from Apple's Mac Pro News: 2019 Ship Date and Pro Workflow Team
- Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro Will Be Fundamentally Different
- TMO Daily Observations Twitter feed
Oh ya! John!
In 1999 the powermac supported 2Gb of ram and the sun workstation supported 4gb. Your memory is off. Even the much maligned 2000 G4 cube supported 1.5gb of ram
Great discussion, guys. Always appreciate your thoughts.
If you read the article carefully, modular seems to mean eGPU, not Expandable internally. Expandability is speculation, nothing grounded in what was seen. I know he can’t report anything not already public that he saw, but it’s pretty clear Modular at this stage is eGPU. There was a lot of “for the whole Pro line” whenever Mac Pro was specifically in the question, and much wild speculation NOT BASED ON ANYTHING.
Apple clearly marketed the 2016 MacBook Pro to developers and some video editors. That was their Pro market. It appears Mac Pro is looking at the Pros MacBook Pro and to some extent iMac Pro don’t serve. Music, as John Kheit is quick to point out, with realtime latency issues for Cylinder Mac Pro seems to be one of the areas, but again… nothing specific about Mac Pro, only “the whole Pro line”, so we wait to see what that means for Mac Pro.
Apple made a big deal about working with Pixar on Cylinder Mac Pro, so they always work with Pros, it just depends which Pros. Pixar is mostly render farms, needs grunt on the box, but not much in the way of peripherals – hence 2013 Mac Pro.
And this BS about being out of touch with Pros really has to stop. It’s been pointed out numerous times, that Apple’s own design team are still using cheese grater Mac Pros. Apple built a Mac Pro that even it’s own Pros don’t use. It shouldn’t take any genius to see that’s a dud! Apple knew. They had proof right there in the design team itself!!
So what must have happened is, word came down to the design team about what kind of Mac Pro (and presumably what Pros it was aimed at… i.e. Pixar) and the design team did what was asked of them… but had no intention of using those Macs Pro themselves. I bet they at least pointed it out, if not argued the point… but to use the now famous quote “the experts have taken over” and Apple Design did their duty. Given how personal the “my arse” comment was, I believe Marketing and Schiller specifically might be the culprits here. They don’t have Jobs laser narrow vision, but they THINK they do.
It’s a management issue… nay, a deliberate management decision, as have all the recent ‘out of touch’ decisions. Somebody thought they knew better and it’s taken years to realise (if that’s really happened) and will take years more to turn the ship (if that’s really what’s going to happen).
Just as “not this year” always meant 2019 at the earliest – because Apple didn’t SAY 2018, Modular is looking like eGPUs, BECAUSE Apple didn’t say anything else. Stop speculating based on personal dreams and LISTEN to what Apple is telling you. This happens over and over again, and “pundits” are surprised Apple didn’t listen to them… when it should have been the other way around. Apple is very deliberate when it speaks. We need to be more deliberate with our listening. There will be a lot less disappointment and much better quality discussion.
I disagree. I believe the Mac Pro had a marketing/pricing/configuration problem not a design problem. Few “pro” users will see the benefit of a xenon cpu and ecc memory over standard ram and an i7. But it adds 1500 to 2000 dollars to the price. Similarly, few will benefit from the fire pro cards over a high end gaming card, but that is another thousand dollars.
So what would fix the 2013 Mac Pro? Mass market. Ship a core i7 version, with a 2tb fusion drive and a good Gaming gourmet (with an SLI option) and then have your server/workstation configuration. This machines internals were easily accessible. Proprietary slots and maybe a bit too tight thermal limit were the big issues. Storage could have been handled with a thunderbolt connector on the bottom and a hard drive case/stand.
Bottom line is this machine should have price points from starting from under 2k and going to the stratisphear. Put it into the mass market so it is supported or it will have to stay over priced and under appreciated.
I like your thinking here. There’s a lot Apple could do, and they just don’t. Apple needs to think outside their own box.
And I love the idea of (perhaps) clipping an expansion cylinder underneath – so much neater.