Apple Announces Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR to Ship in December

[arch1t3cton]

Price is not an issue for pros in the construction business.

For architects and engineers this new Mac Pro is simply not powerful enough. Not even close.

Apple should have gone with AMD for the cpu as well.

 

[DoofenshmirtzEI]

I feel like I need to elaborate on my analogy. All humans need food, but no one will say no to good food. So not all pros need the latest and greatest GPU, but no pros will say no to it.

You say that like the "good food" comes "free". I don't need a latest and greatest GPU, and I sure as hell don't want to pay for it. I didn't buy a 6,1 because it shoved "good food" I had no desire for into the base config, and it sure as hell didn't come free.

 

[Apples Apples Everywhere]

it‘s the least they could do.
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The problems start when you compare it to the component-prices for a 32-core Threadripper system.
Of course, nobody makes such a nice TR system - but still.
Those things have PCIe4.0!

It takes a lot of guts to ship PCIe3 and 802.11ac.

 

[Ryox]

I come here often for news on the Mac Pro, and every comment section makes the same tired jokes about pricing. I don't understand why this blows any pro user's mind. Apple offers a $1700 trade-in rebate on my trash can 12-core, and the Apple Education Discount already puts the Mac Pro at $5,500... So by the end of all of that it starts out at $3800, which to me is extremely reasonable. For those who don't realize—and I'm not trying to be condescending but the same people keep making the same joke—ANYONE can buy from the Education Store, it doesn't require verification of any kind.

I bought my trash can Mac Pro in 2014: 6-core, D700, 64gb of RAM, and Apple Care for $6700. I eventually installed the 12-core Xeon myself to keep pace with editing 6K and 8K RED footage and it can edit that footage decently on components from 2013! I'm upgrading to get the hell away from the soldered graphics cards that could potentially burn out any day now, otherwise I'd keep the damn thing another few years.

I know a lot of pro users didn't make the switch to the trash can, and I don't blame you because with your upgrade freedom on the original cheese grater Pro's you could damn near match the trash can speed for speed—and with an NVIDIA card. For those that don't have the trade-in as an option you also wouldn't expect Apple to buy back Pro's from that long ago. So for y'all, yes it's steep, but you know if your 2012 Pro lasted you this long than this new bad boy is a long term investment that will easily pay for itself with freelance work and time savings.

If you do edit RAW video from Arri, RED, Sony, etc., then you know what this beast can do for you. I suspect my "dream" config of 16-cores, 96gb of RAM, Vega II, and 1TB SSD will probably cost $3500 in upgrade BTO (judging from the upgrade prices on the iMac Pro and Newegg component prices) but that puts the final total at $7300 with the aforementioned discount, plus tax and Apple Care it'll probably be close to $8,000. Had I bought a 12-core in 2014, it would be close to or far more than that. So in my opinion this Pro is priced exactly how it should be for those who edit pro video like me, and it could last me 6+ years easily—especially with Thunderbolt 3 external GPU upgrades and internal modularity, and the ability to clean the damn thing easily whenever I want. It would be $9,700 for 2012 Pro users but again, it'd last you longer than any other Mac and the speed savings from old hardware will more than make up for that if you're getting consistent work.

TL;DR Please stop making overblown jokes about a computer being overpriced when it will save pro users valuable time (thus money) and is priced where they'd expect, and considering some of us have insanely priced cameras it's (unfortunately) a drop in the bucket for the industry we're in. If the price makes your eyes bleed then you probably never bought the other Pro's and definitely don't need this one, and it wasn't made for you.

Where do you live? In the uk, first thing you see is verify you are a student on the Education store

Apple Store for Education - Student Discounts

Save when you buy a new Mac or iPad for university with Apple Education Pricing. Discount available for students, teachers and staff.

www.apple.com

 

[AWW_13]

So 3D artists who use a MacOS system mainly to actively Model, Sculpt, Texture, Light, Animate (rather than a focus on render time) - which do you choose?

*edit*
It's my understanding that quick, responsive interfacing with your 3D work requires a high processor speed. (And high core count helps when the computer is rendering animations or encoding video, etc)

Would this mean that the iMac Retina 5K with the 3.6GHz Intel Core i9 would be more suitable than (or even equal performance to) the Mac Pro with the 3.5GHz Intel Xeon W?

Would the low processor speeds of the iMac Pro mean that it's not an ideal option for this kind of work?

 

[Abazigal]

I feel like I need to elaborate on my analogy. All humans need food, but no one will say no to good food. So not all pros need the latest and greatest GPU, but no pros will say no to it.

I guess the point is more that some workflows simply will not benefit from from of a certain spec. IIRC, music creation doesn’t really tax the GPU all that much. That’s what is being sold here - a basic core which pro users can then upgrade in accordance with their needs.

I acknowledge your point, but I think that’s where your thinking probably diverges from Apple. You are likely thinking “I don’t need so much spec, but I won’t mind getting it for free since there is no downside to it”.

Apple is likely thinking along the lines of “if I give the consumer too good of a machine, that means the consumer is potentially being overserved because I am bundling better specs than what is strictly necessary”. I know it sounds like Apple is deliberately being a miser here, but I think that part of understand pro workflows means also being aware of what specs benefit it the most.

If you don’t need a good GPU, then there is no reason for Apple to give it to you. And those who do can always spec it accordingly at the time of purchase.

That’s my guess at least.

 

[lilkwarrior]

Very exciting!

It starts at $5999 but I think the average unit will sell for closer to $30,000

I'd like to see an update in the iMac Pro - it came out in December 2017

I personally like that computer a lot better since it comes with the screen built-in..

The screen being built-in is exactly why it's not better: The versatility of better screens to swap in w/ the pro computing hardware over time is what made the lack of updates to the Mac Pro particularly frustrating for professionals.

The built-in iMac Pro screen is limiting for a wide variety of professionals + waste of real estate for them. It's a middling screen when it come out, and even more so now.


For example The PA32UCG would be a much better screen for some pros—including even the Pro Display XDR depending on their profession (i.e. Interactive Entertainment professionals / Gamers)

 

[AWW_13]

Same question for 3D artists - this time about graphics cards:

In the Houdini forums, someone pointed this out to me:
"At this stage, you should only use a ‘Supported OSX Graphics Cards’ which at the moment is AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64. Support actively rejects bug submissions based on systems with non-supported graphics cards."

I guess that would be the iMac Pro then - but again, check at their processor speeds.. (3.2, 3.0, 2.5 or 2.3 GHz)

 

[PickUrPoison]

The screen being built-in is exactly why it's not better: The versatility of better screens to swap in w/ the pro computing hardware over time is what made the lack of updates to the Mac Pro particularly frustrating for professionals.

The built-in iMac Pro screen is limiting for a wide variety of professionals + waste of real estate for them. It's a middling screen when it come out, and even more so now.


For example The PA32UCG would be a much better screen for some pros—including even the Pro Display XDR depending on their profession (i.e. Interactive Entertainment professionals / Gamers)

That looks really nice. Any idea when it will ship or how much it’ll cost? Should be quite a bit less expensive than Apple’s 6K display, and a good alternative for a significant number of users.

 

[basehead617]

For architects and engineers this new Mac Pro is simply not powerful enough. Not even close.

This is nonsensical. The 28-core Xeon W-3275 is not even listed on cpubenchmark.net yet right now for example but is likely to be right near the top below only the brand new AMD (64-core) EPYCs. on what planet is that not powerful?

 

[arch1t3cton]

This is nonsensical. The 28-core Xeon W-3275 is not even listed on cpubenchmark.net yet right now for example but is likely to be right near the top below only the brand new AMD (64-core) EPYCs. on what planet is that not powerful?

EPYC is a server class cpu not suitable for workstations. I assume you are referring to the yet unreleased Threadripper 39xx series.
Based on the performance of the desktop class Ryzen 3950x 16-core cpu, Intel’s 28-core model will, at best, be on par with the Threadripper 3960x which is a 24-core part. Nevermind the performance of the rest of their lineup.

it’s just not a good time for intel right now.

 

[ikir]

A three-year old gpu architecture in the base model at $5,999?

View attachment 876820

Radeon Pro 580 is stil very capable. For sure I was expecting a Radeon Pro 5700 or Vega 56 for base model but the point here is architecture, expansion bandwidth, super CPU. For most of uses Radeon Pro 580 will be great.

 

[cmaier]

Price is not an issue for pros in the construction business.

For architects and engineers this new Mac Pro is simply not powerful enough. Not even close.

Apple should have gone with AMD for the cpu as well.

As an engineer, the new Mac Pro is plenty powerful enough.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

it’s just not a good time for intel right now.

View attachment 878614

Which is, of course, why Intel has a market cap about 5x that of AMD.

And why all other computer manufacturers are falling over themselves to switch to AMD, right? Oh, wait - they’re not.

 

[lilkwarrior]

It's coming by mid-2020 ideally according to Asus; they've been shaky at times with their release dates, but it makes sense for them to target by May/June 2020.

 

[Shaggymax]

Still can’t believe that at this price point, it comes with only a 256GB SSD.

Since today is "launch" day, i glazed over the specs again...and nearly spit out my coffee! 1TB should be a starting point for this point in time, for this caliber of hardware. 256gb sounded good when this was conceptualized a few years ago...but in 2020 it doesn't fly.