Nobody should be trying to swap cpus during the first 3 years assuming you get Apple care.
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MP All Models This new Mac Pro makes me really really happy
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Nobody should be trying to swap cpus during the first 3 years assuming you get Apple care.
I'll be asking these questions before I buy the damn thing... because yes, at some point a CPU upgrade would be worth it for me.
I don't see many people buying it - it has a $3K Apple tax, compared to equivalent Intel/AMD boxen. It's a dongle for FCX and Logic, just like the trash can.
$6,000 for an 8 core system - in 2019.
256Gb SSD - in 2019.
PCIe 3.0 - in 2019
Polaris based video card - in 2019.
Based on updates in the Tim Cook era of Apple, I wouldn't bet on this thing ever being upgraded. So, 1 - 2 years from now when everyone is moving to PCIe 5.0, these things will be 2 generations back.
The fundamental problem is that the iMac Pro is an answer to a problem that no one had, just like the trashcan was an answer to a problem that no one had.
Had they been geared toward actual users, instead of Ive's fantasy users, no one would complain about Apple releasing an over the top computer. Together, they leave a big gap in the line-up, and that's what we're mad about.
Had they been geared toward actual users, instead of Ive's fantasy users, no one would complain about Apple releasing an over the top computer. Together, they leave a big gap in the line-up, and that's what we're mad about.
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Not sure what your point is here, as Apple has never released a device with an "officially user upgradable" CPU. The quad-core Mac Pro 5,1 wasn't "officially user upgradable" either, but many people have upgraded the 5,1 Mac Pros once out of warranty (and once the cost of the CPUs had dropped considerably) and extended their life by quite a bit.
Compared to an HP Z....? Do we know the exact W processor in the new MP?
PCIe 4.0 will be short lived...... then there will be PCIe 5.0 in couple years and it will be backward compatible.
Have to wait until the final release but I'll go with no issues with Apple selling many of the new MP's.
I hope that 1K stand is a brilliant sales strategy:
Announcing it for 1K and when the time comes selling it for 500$. Tim will attract so many customers
You forgot about the $1K nano option. You hoping Tim discounts that when they click the bundle option?
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And that it can drive 2-3 Pro displays
It isn't 2016 anymore - Who cares what Intel is offering? They are now in the boat AMD used to be in.
If your workflows need cores & ram, staying with Intel is foolish.
PCIe 4.0 may be shortlived, but PCIe 3.0 is getting EoLed now.
Since Tim Cook took over, Apple's target audience for the Mac Pro has shrunk.
It is way too expensive. This should have come out at $3k tops, with options to configure it beyond. Either way, we finally have a beast Mac in the lineup again, something that’s been sorely missing.
How is sticking with intel foolish? Because they are expensive?
9980xe 36 threads 4.4ghz... We run 8168 at work and we have zero issues.
Totally agree, I mean how long is your warranty going to be? The standard one is what 12 months max, unless you get Apple care which is then 4 years total possibly? Either way you can upgrade it after like many in here do to the old Pro. But if it’s a big company they’ll just have their IT staff do it or buy a new machine.
It will sell very well, just like the trashcan did at the beginning, but that is not significant. What happens after that will be interesting.
I wasn't really suggesting they could or should make the CPU upgradeable.
However, in other threads, people have been trying to defend the $6000 entry-level price by pointing to the extreme upgradeability of the system (and it does have more PCIe and RAM slots than your $3500 HB Z4). Trouble is, the sort of users who are going to (say) load this up with quad GPUs, an afterburner and 1.5TB of RAM (which the entry-level can't actually handle) will typically (a) also want something better than an 8-core processor and (b) not be the sort of users who would consider a DIY warranty-voiding upgrade to save a few bucks.
Sure, 3-5 years down the line, when used MP7.1s start popping up on ebay, upgrading the CPU will become a useful consideration.
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If you're talking about the "pro" market at which this machine is supposedly aimed - i.e. the customer is a business rather than a private individual - then it will be very common to take out 4 years of Applecare or get a third-party service & support contract that covers the planned useful life of the equipment. A lot of businesses will lease the equipment rather than buy it outright (far more tax efficient) probably with service&support built-in.
The sort of IT support that can (or, to be fair to the IT crowd, is allowed to) change a CPU is increasingly rare these days - and if you're that lucky, why not have them whip up a custom PC precisely tailored to your needs?
NB: We've been talking a lot about 'upgradeability' when what we really mean - if we're accepting that this is a 'serious callers only' machine - is configurability - the ability to buy a machine with the specification that meets your needs and into which you can install any specialist hardware you require.
The problem Apple faces is that professional-grade PCs, workstations and servers are almost infinitely configurable from a vast range of motherboards, CPUs, GPUs, cases etc. and if you can't build one your self there are plenty of specialist companies that will build and support something to your particular needs. The $3000 entry-level graphic designer's workstation doesn't have to share a chassis, motherboard or even CPU family with the $15,000 racks in the render farm. With the MP, Apple produced a one-size-fits-nobody chassis and motherboard which is over-specified and over-priced as a entry-level system but won't compete with custom PC builds at the high-end.
What Apple really needs to do now, I think, is find a way of licensing MacOS on generic PC hardware - rather than trying to force people who need a pick-up-truck to buy a gull-winged luxury SUV. OK, that went badly last time, but the market has changed beyond recognition since - Then, pro media workstations were Apple's bread and butter. Now, Apple has a huge 'consumer' customer base who want laptops, minis and all-in-ones. Then, PCs were still running a warmed-over version of DOS that barely supported 32-bit processors and Apple had a superior RISC-based architecture. Now, hate all you want, but Windows 10 is actually a pretty solid, modern OS at its core, and at the end of the day Macs are technically little more than PCs in nice boxes with a different OS - and while you can sell laptops and iMacs on nice design, as you move upscale and function becomes more important that form, it becomes more and more obvious that hardware assembled from off-the-peg components cost less for the same technology than Apple's bling-y 'bespoke' machines.
Or, just make a decently-powered Xeon/i9/AMD tower (which, in 2019, isn't going to appeal to iMac customers, but will be much easier to design) from generic components in a nicer-than-average case and charge a reasonable premium for the ability to run MacOS.
I don't think the new 2019 Xeon-W models have started cropping up in the online configure-your-BigCorp-workstation pages yet, so a 1-1 comparison isn't really possible... AFAIK its basically the 2019 version of the processor in the iMac Pro, though, and what really hurts is the way that - once you factor in the GPU and SSD - the MP spec is worse than the iMP (which is $1000 cheaper and includes a relatively expensive display).
...but then some of the people shut out by the $6k entry point were only considering buying Xeon/ECC because Apple weren't offering an i9 or AMD headless desktop, so playing Top Trumps between a HP Z4 and a MP7.1 sorta misses the point... Even if the 7.1 MP justifies every penny of that price tag that just means its been over-engineered for entry-level MP customers.
They tried licensed copies in the 90's. It nearly killed them off. Apple will NEVER do that again.
Back then they pretty much only used to sell computers. Now is a different story.
But yes, you are right, I don’t see them licensing macos.
...and you ignored all the arguments in my post about why things might be different now. ISTR the idea behind the 90s licensing scheme was to let the clone makers produce cheap, mass-market Macs while Apple kept the "workstation" business to themselves. (Duh! macs were PPC-powered then so you couldn't just throw together generic parts, so of course the cloners went after the high-margin workstation market).
This time round, it would be rather the opposite - "hey Dell/Lenovo etc. - here's a way to charge a premium for generic PC workstations that need zero R&D apart from sticking to our list of supported parts... and if you do cannibalise iMac sales, well, frankly we make our money from mobile phones and services these days."
Other than MacOS, Apple don't have a Unique Selling Point over generic PC towers these days. You can build a thinner, lighter laptop, a sleeker all-in-one, but ultimately, a "Mac Pro" is just a box with a regular Xeon and regular PCIe slots that sits under the desk running Adobe CS/Pro Tools/Avid/whatever. If Apple won't put their name to a generic PC tower then they need to get someone else to do it for them.
This class of buyers never bought the base models in the past, and they have the money to upgrade it to the specs they need at the time of purchase even if it doubles the cost of the Mac. They are not going to be caring or complaining about the $6,000 starting price.
Those who are complaining about the starting price mostly reside in the power user / home professional class of buyers. Some of them could end up getting a base model, but this $6,000 starting price has priced most of this group out of ever getting a Mac Pro 7,1, except later on at used prices (which is when the DIY CPU upgrades happen).
Because Intel no longer provides a good price to performance ratio.
If your workflows are based on ram & cores - you get more cores and ram for less money with AMD.
I do 3d art - if my render solution is GPU based, then I need Nvidia, which means Windows. If my render solution is CPU based, then AMD provides a better solution - 24 (Eypc) to 36 (Threadripper) cores (for the same $6,000 - along with 128Gb of ram & a 1Tb Samsung NVMe), which also means windows.
Neither the Mini or the iMac are usable, since they are thermally throttled - they are not designed to do anything that needs horsepower.
Apple is abandoning whole markets, because Tim is a bean counter.
The new Mac Pro will be nothing more than a rather expensive dongle for Final Cut X and Logic. It simply doesn't make financial sense to stay with Apple if your high end software isn't made by Apple.
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I don't have a problem paying $6,000 for a computer.
I have a problem paying $6,000 and getting so little in return.
We don't know how much any of the upgrades will cost yet. Graphics cards in MPX format will inevitably cost more than regular PCIe ones, and Apple's SSD upgrades for other machines carry a hefty markup c.f. even comparable NVME sticks. These "pro" buyers - if they exist - certainly won't be the ones doing DIY CPU upgrades, so they'll have to pay what Apple asks for those.
But, of course, all these True Pros are doing serious business for serious money, have an infinite supply of ready cash or cheap credit, don't have to justify their purchases to a higher-up, let alone get competing quotes for orders over $xxx (...and probably have Tim Cook on speed-dial).
Yeah.
Amen.
It's a matter of high-end pros needing MacOS vs. not needing MacOS, as you already said in your initial analysis. Apple is advertising a misleadingly low base price with the assumption that most buyers will upgrade as needed at the time of purchase.
I've argued before that it's nonsensical Apple decided to solder a Core i3 into a pro-focused Mac mini which happens to carry Apple's most expensive Mac mini starting price yet, but to Apple the logic here has always been to make more money by upselling higher-end models, even if the starting price is already high enough to cover the cost of upgrades and the value of the products suffers as a result.
@ssgbryan and others who don't need or prefer MacOS are usually able to get better value out of a Windows or Linux workstation. This has been the case for a long time, even going back to the 5,1 days.
Sure they have. My PowerMac 7300 has its CPU mounted on a daughter card which is easily swapped for another one.
Apple has never supported or encouraged the user to upgrade the CPU themselves, and not at the time of purchase or through an AASP or Apple technician, even though CPU upgrades have been possible with various Mac models for a long time. This is the distinction the poster I quoted was trying to make.
...Not that its relevant to a discussion about Intel Macs in 2019 but, for the joy of pedantry, you're wrong about that - processor and/or motherboard upgrades were available in the PowerMac era. If you look up the PowerMac 7300 manual online you'll see a reference to a processor card upgrade kit. Of course, back then the speed of processors could double during the working life of a computer, so it was a different world.