New Mac Pro

[Polygon]

I know, that's why i was stoked when i first booted.
Probably was a slow tb/sata converter in the external drive..
That's why i said just from personal experience.

Still, it is still my opinion that this is not a PRO machine.

[thepanache]

Apple is completely moving away from user upgradable hardware so you'll end up being forced to pay the ridiculous prices to upgrade the hardware when you buy the kit.

Keeps people buying new gear regularly rather than upgrading components.

They've got us mac users by the balls!

[makar1]

Silverstone has already developed an external TB enclosure for graphics cards and hard drives.

[deevey]

I know, that's why i was stoked when i first booted.
Probably was a slow tb/sata converter in the external drive..
That's why i said just from personal experience.

It could also have been the fact you were loading windows and not OSX ? ... just a thought but would the windows TB drivers be an issue perhaps ?

Silverstone has already developed an external TB enclosure for graphics cards and hard drives.

And Sonnet - Which was Demo'd with a REDRocket Graphics card to display 4k video playback without any stutter on a macbook air (a year or two ago). I can only imagine with TB2 that it would be even more impressive on the new Pro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKx-cr4bi74&noredirect=1

Keeps people buying new gear regularly rather than upgrading components.

Buying re-usable external enclosures rather than needing to keep upgrading the internals on towers I would have thought is a much more cost effective investment in the long run. I have 12 year old USB enclosures that keep on giving rather than keep on upgrading my (expensive) internal drives.

Upgrade tower in 5 or 6 years - reuse everything peripheral

so you'll end up being forced to pay the ridiculous prices

However you'll still be able to sell it for a ridiculous price once it reaches time to upgrade.

[Polygon]

Don't get me wrong here, i absolutely love the new pro's design and how compact it is.
But i just cannot think of this as a pro product.
I'd rather have it called The Mac.

Just think about upgradeability, as panache said.
Is your system getting old? Here, buy another one.

[makar1]

12 Xeon cores and dual Fire Pros certainly aren't for consumers. What would you personally upgrade that is impossible to do with the Pro?

[Polygon]

12 Xeon cores and dual Fire Pros certainly aren't for consumers. What would you personally upgrade that is impossible to do with the Pro?

the point i'm stressing here is not upgrading as much as customizability of the thing. Do you have an idea how much this is going to cost?
I don't know how to say this otherwise, but paying 4k for a dual gpu rig when you're never going to use even one of the gpus to their full potential is pointless, and not many people can afford to throw money away like that.

[makar1]

The Fire Pros are there for compute performance more than anything. If you don't need such high performance, then you obviously wouldn't buy the machine.

Being able to "afford" something like this doesn't really apply in the same way as a typical computer as they are not consumer-oriented.

[deevey]

the point i'm stressing here is not upgrading as much as customizability of the thing. Do you have an idea how much this is going to cost?
I don't know how to say this otherwise, but paying 4k for a dual gpu rig when you're never going to use even one of the gpus to their full potential is pointless, and not many people can afford to throw money away like that.

Then you buy an Imac or a Mini ... also with thunderbolt connectivity and lower specs.

Is your system getting old? Here, buy another one.

Thats pretty much were we always stood with the old pro's as well - with the exception of storage and graphics which are now handled as peripherals rather than internally, what exactly would you upgrade ?

I'm guessing we are also going to see server racks pop up with these in mind as well .. it'll look like the Queens Nest in Alien :P

[R01]

I'm actually with Polygon on this one.

Anyone using audio DSP cards looks to be left out in the cold. Which is pretty much anyone using large Pro Tools I/O's or other pro level audio converters. It really is quite a bummer because I was looking forward to seeing a more powerful Mac Pro that would add to the processing power of utilizing DPS cards.

I'm not excluding the options of adding something like the Silverstone PCI-E expansion chassis to this product. We'll just have to wait and see how that ends up working out. If anything I'm just a little disappointing that this Mac Pro has lost this built-in functionality.

In terms of audio, all I really care about is latency + processing. I'm sure thunderbolt is a great transfer method, it just lacks the power you get from DSP cards. I'm only saying this because I've mixed movie scores that have 100+ tracks, and then processing + latency becomes pretty crucial. Chiming in because I consider that pro level work if anything.

In all honesty I was just expecting to see the same old Mac Pro design with beefier CPU, Memory and HD options.