10 ms·

$2,999 Mac Pro to go on sale in December

132 points by _ks3e 13y ago

acomjean 13y ago
Quote: Dave Girard noted in his "Critical look at the new Mac Pro" that the machine has "a truly epic lack of expandability." I totally agree. As someone with a macpro1.1 I'm clearly looking elsewhere at this point. I take a lot of still photos and frankly I'm filling up 2 TB drives. Plus having a heavy bulky machine you can put a cable bike lock through makes it much less likely to be stolen.. The design is interesting though. I'm sure its crazy fast. Just odd that you'll need an expansion chassis for more drive space. Plus hdmi for external monitor support? Is every DVI monitor going to need an adapter?
- marcusestes 13y ago
  Isn't the idea with this model that storage moves all the way offboard via the bevy of new Thunderbolt ports? I'm using a fast Thunderbolt RAID drive on my iMac and for the first time, the cable isn't the bottleneck for file transfer.
  - acomjean 13y ago
    I think external storage is the idea, but the extra cost and outlets and cords seem to diminish the desirability. In time they'll probably be cheaper.
    - rdl 13y ago
      They are already pretty cheap -- the Areca ARC-8050 8 bay bare is $1499. A decent 8 bay NAS like the synology ds-1813+ is $999.
      - taspeotis 13y ago
        > They are already pretty cheap -- the Areca ARC-8050 8 bay bare is $1499. Are you having a giggle there, mate?
        Karunamon 13y ago
        To be fair, if you're the person that the mac pro is aimed at and you can drop $3k on a machine, another 1.5 for a decent drive array isn't that outlandish.
        taspeotis 13y ago
        I'm assuming "bare" means without drives. The cheapest 2TB drive I'd be willing to buy is this one [1]. Disregarding the "NAS Drive!!!" marketing junk, if you sort disk drives by price on Newegg this is the first one with a 5 star rating from 31 reviews. You could go cheaper and get a 3 star rating'd drive for $85 [2]. To fill your chassis with the Seagate: 1x$1499 plus 8x$119 = $2451 To fill your chassis with the Toshiba: 1x$1499 plus 8x$85 = $2179 [1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178391 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178... [2] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149407 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149...
        rdl 13y ago
        It's not really marketing junk -- different drive firmware does make a difference in NAS and RAID applications. I'd probably be looking only at 4TB Ultrastars to fill the ARC-8050, or SSDs. I might go with something lower end for an 1813+ since you're probably not buying a gig-e connected NAS for performance. (it depends, though -- if you're doing just huge volumes of audio, you probably only care about reliability and sustained performance, and not much performance at that; and even flac doesn't use much disk space. it's video or other info which requires high-speed direct-attach drives in 20TB chunks.)
        kayoone 13y ago
        Funny everyone assumes that "Pros" dont care about money. I just see this as 1500 bucks i dont have to spend when getting a workstation from another vendor.
      - kayoone 13y ago
        1500 you wouldnt have to pay if the Mac Pro had some form of support for internal drives. Its 1500 you have to spend because Apple sacrificed expandability for design, size and light weight in a workstation computer.. It really only makes any sense if you need to lug the thing around alot (in which case i would think a top of the line macbook pro would be the better choice), or you just dont care about the money.
        e40 13y ago
        This is true. I wonder what the profit margin is on the new Mac Pro vs the old? Was there a $2999 version of the old? If there was, I wonder if they're basically pocketing the difference in cost, because they've conditioned us to spend $2999 on them. (I'm assuming the new Mac Pro is cheaper to produce than the old, but I could be wrong.)
- ctdonath 13y ago
  The alternative is building a large machine containing vast empty space on the speculation that someone might fill it - leaving almost every unit significantly larger than necessary. TB2 is fast enough that putting the storage outside the box makes sense. Makes upgrades easy: plug it in, rather than having to tear the box apart.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I totally agree. The new Mac Pro is plenty expandable, the expansion just happens on the outside. I've had two Mac Pros so far. They're great, and I love the internal expansion... in theory. In practice, they never got any PCI cards beyond the graphics cards that came with them, and I used the hard drive bays more because I could than because I really needed it (e.g. keeping the old drive in the machine when upgrading storage and using it for secondary stuff). About the only problem will be GPU upgrades a few years down the line. TB2 is not quite fast enough to make that a good option. But most Mac Pro owners don't upgrade that, and it's plenty good for storage and other PCI cards.
  - KaiserPro 13y ago
    Or you can have a z820 which has much more space, cheaper, and has a much better warranty and support(next day engineer on site, for free.) want two GPUs? sure. want 96 gigs or ram? go for it. want three fusion io cards? you betya.
    - wonderzombie 13y ago
      On the other hand, if you prefer OS X as I do, you are SOL. :)
  - kayoone 13y ago
    > Makes upgrades easy: plug it in, rather than having to tear the box apart. In theory yes, in practice it comes with a hefty price tag. External thunderbolt disk arrays are quite expensive and something that would be unnecessary if the mac pro had some form of support for internal drives.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  Plus hdmi for external monitor support? Is every DVI monitor going to need an adapter? No: Thunderbolt 2, like Thunderbolt, has DisplayPort built in.
mtct 13y ago
More I look at it and less I like it. The design is weird and certainly not elegant. Try to imagine it with 5 cables that come out from the "back" (a cylinder don't have a real back).
- nwh 13y ago
  It's about the same size as their G4 Cube really. It had cables coming out of it's bottom and it's back, and that never detracted from an incredibly amazing piece of hardware. The internals are fairly similar too, oddly enough.
hdevalence 13y ago
The design of the Mac Pro is certainly attractive, but since the only way to add on to it is through Thunderbolt, it seems a bit counterproductive. The sleek black tube isn't so sleek when you need to have a bunch of external drives sitting on your desk.
- sp332 13y ago
  Thunderbolt cables are long enough that you could hide the drives elsewhere, if appearance is the main concern. This would still take up a lot less room on a desk even with a bunch of drives.
  - marquis 13y ago
    I'm looking for a clever designer to kickstart a MacPro case - that beautifully fits in your lovely black computer on the desktop along with slots for drives and cables. Could be quite a new thing for the independent accessory makers.
  - rbritton 13y ago
    That doesn't solve the noise problem though. Internal drives are significantly quieter than external enclosures.
    - nsxwolf 13y ago
      How loud are external SSDs compared to HDDs? Do they need a lot of cooling?
      - mh- 13y ago
        SSDs are effectively silent; they have no moving parts. also, they don't require active cooling (because no moving parts; no friction, low power consumption)
      - rbritton 13y ago
        SSDs still aren't at the capacities of HDDs, which are needed when handling lots of photos or videos in a cost-effective manner.
checker659 13y ago
Hmm.. I wonder if it's going to be the end of December or the beginning.
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  Good question. They specifically listed Nov 1 for iPad but not so confident in the Mac Pro date, I guess.
- bdevine 13y ago
  Honest question: does it really matter? If you're obliquely referencing the holiday season, I have to think that the number of people for whom giving this as a gift is a viable option is basically a rounding error in Apple's customer base. I could be wrong, though.
  - rubberbandage 13y ago
    “Before the end of the year” is important in this case not for holiday sales, but for 2013 tax reasons. I doubt even seriously rich people would be buying this as a gift ;-)
MattRogish 13y ago
Mac Pro: 7 teraflops for a few thousand. Cray X1 in 2004 5.9 teraflops[1] for only ~$40M USD[extrapolating from 2]. Mind boggling what to expect 10 years from now. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray [2]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/15/cray_flogs_x1_supercomputer/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/15/cray_flogs_x1_superc...
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Hold on tight! It's going to be an awesome ride.
  - dmead 13y ago
    does the apple marketing department troll hacker news?
    - backprojection 13y ago
      Well, to be fair, it's more a comment on Intel's progress than Apple's. I'm sure you can throw together an ugly generic PC with the same parts for less. Anyway, workstations are supposed to look big and intimidating :)
      - mikeash 13y ago
        Can you? The CPU alone is unbelievably expensive. Two high-end GPUs are not cheap either. I would be interested in seeing the cost of a truly equivalent generic PC build. ("Truly" equivalent meaning no non-Xeon CPUs and other "almost as good" parts, something that's all too commonly done with Mac Pro comparisons.)
        ddoolin 13y ago
        Either you can or you can't, and I've never seen Apple sell hardware without significant markup. If I had a complete part list I'd be interested in seeing the difference as well.
baldfat 13y ago
I need to be upfront with my bias, I hate everything Apple. I also built and ran my own digital studio (Not Pro Tools). This lack of expandability for the Mac Pro is like the criticisms of the Chinese worker conditions, not Apple's fault. 1) This is industry wide, look at Intel with the soldered cpu in the next generation. 2) This is what Apple users want, a simple "just works" for most. 3) Any production Machine has a million things connected to it. So the fact that you have to plug in a million wires into the thing is a mute point. This is cheaper than I thought it would be. I still think anyone basing their video or audio off of Apple is insane since they have continued to show that they are more than willing to put pro users on the back burner for what 3 years and need I tell you the Final Cut Pro fiasco?
- sp332 13y ago
  "Most users" will buy iMacs. Mac Pros are for power users who have tons of hard drives and need 12 Intel cores.
- vehementi 13y ago
  > 1) This is industry wide, look at Intel with the soldered cpu in the next generation. Your flagship point is not really comparable. That whole story was overblown when initially posted and on further inspection makes perfect sense as more things move off the motherboard onto either the CPU or other modules anyway.
- dannowatts 13y ago
  2) This is what Apple users want, a simple "just works" for most. agreed. and it's one of the main reasons that I moved toward an exclusively apple-based workflow over the past 10 years. -- 3) Any production Machine has a million things connected to it. So the fact that you have to plug >in a million wires into the thing is a mute point. completely agree as well. most people plug a bunch of shit in, so complaining that they are going to have plug shit in and that will 'ugly' or 'clutter' it up, is definitely a moot point. -- This is cheaper than I thought it would be. i was a bit surprised as well. pleasantly! i was thinking starting price would be $3499, or even $3799. i still have my 2009 mac pro that i'm contemplating replacing with the new mac pro in december. -- I still think anyone basing their video or audio off of Apple is insane since they have continued to show that they are more than willing to put pro users on the back burner for what 3 years and need I tell you the Final Cut Pro fiasco? I love apple hardware and software, but i don't rely on their professional software. Before FCPX issues, i was running Final Cut 7 and Lightroom. Never really liked aperture (for a whole hosts of reasons) so that wasn't an issue. But once FCPX came out I switched to a mixture of Resolve and Premiere/AE. i actually see this HUGE update to the Mac Pro as showing professionals how they don't want us to be on the back burner anymore.
Anm 13y ago
Capable of driving three 4k video signals. Amazing. Why can't the new Mac Book Pro drive just one?
- pkroll 13y ago
  It can: take a look at Tech Specs, it's listed (for 30hz): http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/
  - nsxwolf 13y ago
    Does the Mac Pro do 60Hz 4k?
    - wmf 13y ago
      With monster FirePros it better.
- rsync 13y ago
  Since a triple monitor configuration is a de facto standard for pro users, pro configurations, etc., I would disagree with your characterization of "three 4k" as being "amazing". I would characterize it as the absolute bare minimum to even be in this space. I have 5 monitors attached to my 2009 pro (3x 2560x1600 main displays, a 1920x1200 offset on the wall, and a 1920x1080 "tv" cabled out to another room) and I've considered adding a sixth. It's hard to say how many <4k displays you can add to the ports on the back in addition to the three primary 4k displays, but it had better be more than "zero".
  - bodhi 13y ago
    Are you disputing "amazing"-ness of 3 displays, or number of horizontal lines of resolution? Because I calculate your collection of displays at 7.08k, and 3 * 4k ~ 12k, or a 70% increase over your current count. ;)
    - rsync 13y ago
glitch 13y ago
For those looking for expansion: • (qty. 2) x8 + (qty. 1) x4 PCIe 2.0 w/ Optional built in drivebay for up to four (4) 2.5" SSD or SAS/SATA drives: http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t • http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Mercury_Helios/ http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Merc... (See also http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/ http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/ for other devices.) • http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresschassis.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresschassis.html
- Mankhool 13y ago
  The fan in the Sonnettech is very noisy. I don't want that enclosure in my edit suites.
pdknsk 13y ago
http://tubelor.neocities.org/ http://tubelor.neocities.org/
thinkpad20 13y ago
As sweet as this design looks, I can only imagine what the same amount of cash could buy you for a DIY Linux box. Of course, the available software is not the same... That said I'm a big fan of Macs; I own several. Great computers and the OS is stunning... so who knows.
- dan1234 13y ago
  I'd say the PCIe SSD, quad-core Xeon, dual FirePro graphics & 12GB ECC RAM are going to add up. Of course, not everyone needs all of those things.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Steko 13y ago
7 terraflops in 11 pounds; looks like it would fit many carry ons or a decent sized backpack. Good luck explaining what it is to TSA though.
ScottWhigham 13y ago
As the owner of a recording studio (VO, music work), I'd say that it disappoints me that I'm expected to pay $3000 for a top of the line video editing machine. I wish they'd found a way to make a $2000 or $2500 musician/studio version that didn't have three 4k displays + two GPUs...
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  As the owner of a recording studio, you know that you'll be paying at least $3k, if not much more, for software to actually go on this thing. Most AV professionals I know spend much more on software than hardware.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    As the owner of a recording studio I'd guess he already owns the software.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Site or per-seat? Also, I assume those licenses get upgraded every few years for lots of cash also.
  - ScottWhigham 13y ago
    Not really - I use hardware EQs, comps, etc. The only software costs are Reaper and a reverb (which I hope to replace with a Bricasti next year). I ended up dumping Pro Tools over about a two year period and switching back to all hardware. So it's a disappointment to me to see this pricing. It's as though they've said, "Musicians - they can just buy a regular Mac. The Mac Pro is for graphics and video people who need all this extra hardware."
    - bashinator 13y ago
      If all the heavy lifting in your studio is being done in hardware, why do you need a high-end workstation?
Arjuna 13y ago
Another Mac Pro configuration [1]: Available in December at $3,999 6-Core and Dual GPU 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM each 256GB PCIe-based flash storage [1] http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro
- wmf 13y ago
  The 12-core configuration is conspicuously absent. $10,000?
  - 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
    I doubt we'll see one. Not only that but the suspect geekbench scores for the new Mac Pro are timid. Apple is hurting the Pro line. If they just gave it a normal form factor and the best current hardware, I think it would be a better people pleaser. This is a mac-mini on steroids and I'm disappointed.
    - wmf 13y ago
      Apple announced 12 cores at WWDC, so I'm assuming it will ship but they just don't want to tell us the price.
  - guelo 13y ago
    A somewhat more informative specs page is up now and it mentions 12-core configurations, http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/
  - Arjuna 13y ago
    They also did not list the 8-core configuration pricing. There appear to be a current total of 4 available core configurations: 1: 4-core 3.7GHz for $2,999 2: 6-core 3.5GHz for $3,999 3: 8-core 3.0GHz for ? 4: 12-core 2.7GHz for ?
  - chm 13y ago
    So is the 8 core. I suspect they'll simply offer two "base" models, from which you can select an option to double the number of processors, and thus cores. Just like you can select a different processor on a MBP.
hglaser 13y ago
So what's the future of the MacBook Air at this point? Does the Retina MacBook Pro just keep getting thinner until the Air is obsolete? Is there some fundamental technical reason they can't keep iterating the Air thinner and put a Retina display on it? Or a business reason why that's not a priority?
- nXqd 13y ago
  Air still gets its place on the market. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57588850-37/why-the-macbook-air-didnt-get-a-retina-display/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57588850-37/why-the-macboo... Due to this blog post, power consumption seems to be the most important factor why they don't put retina on Macbook Air. I will double check the 13" new Macbook Pro to decide to get it or 13" lightweight Air :P
- msoad 13y ago
  Everyone wants 911, no matter they have $60k or can afford $200k. "Pro" is the same. Everyone wants the "Pro" thing. No matter if they will just browse Facebook or run serious business on it
- Tyrant505 13y ago
  That is the ultimate future, or rather ideal future, but yes: You get it.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  The current MacBook Pro is probably the thinnest and lightest laptop possible with a Retina display. They've already taken out the spinning HD, optical drive, ethernet port, and removable battery, which are what they took out to make the original Air so thin and light. If they want to make a Retina Air as thin and light as it is now, they need some sort of breakthrough. One option that has been mentioned is to power the Air with ARM instead of Intel--like an iPad. But that would that probably would require a heavy software translation layer to run OS X apps like Office or Photoshop.
ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
The Mac Pro would be awesome...if it were the Thunderbolt dock to a meat and potatoes box I could store out of the way and expand whenever I saw fit. If you want to innovate, give me a way to separate the things I need to use my computer FROM my computer.
nsxwolf 13y ago
Anyone know: Is the 4-core version faster than the 6-core version for single threaded operations?
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  I would assume so - it's a 3.7gz quad core and a 3.5ghz hex core
  - nsxwolf 13y ago
    To me, that makes the entry level a pretty good value for a developer workstation that will occasionally dabble in video editing and graphics. The only other option for a headless Mac is a mini, and even a fully decked out one isn't as fast and starts getting expensive.
- wmf 13y ago
  No. http://ark.intel.com/products/75779/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1620-v2-10M-Cache-3_70-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/75779/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-... max turbo 3.9 GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/75780/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v2-12M-Cache-3_50-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/75780/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-... max turbo 3.9 GHz
  - nsxwolf 13y ago
    So, what does that mean exactly? When are they not running in turbo? The 4 core is clocked higher in non-turbo, that makes no difference?
    - wtallis 13y ago
      Turbo modes are opportunistic based on temperature and short-term power draw, so you can't be 100% definite about the speed the processor will run at. But generally speaking, when that 6-core processor is only running 4 threads, it will turbo up to the same speed that the 4-core operates at fully loaded, and they'll both hit the same peak for a single-threaded workload.
apendleton 13y ago
FYI for others looking for more specifics, there's now a specs page up (separate from the store): http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ And there is, indeed, a 12-core configuration option listed.
smegel 13y ago
How much Mac software can take advantage of 2 gpus for processing, rather than 8 or more cores? I have a dual socket Mac at work with 12 cores total, not sure this would feel like an upgrade.
- grecy 13y ago
  They mentioned all the Apple pro apps are getting updates to take advantage of the Mac Pro.
smcl 13y ago
Random selection of USD prices for the base model from different Apple online stores, for the curious: $4,053 in UK $4,010 in Czech Republic $3,880 in Australia $4,257 in New Zealand $4,300 in Sweden So to US-based guys intending to buy one: hope you spend your ~$1k on something nice :)
- wmf 13y ago
  Including VAT?
  - coob 13y ago
    Yes those prices are including VAT. So, $4053 - 20% ~= $3377, still an extra $378 because 'fuck you' :)
    - Wingman4l7 13y ago
      AU's GST is 10% so it's a $493 'fuck you' Down Under.
- PilateDeGuerre 13y ago
  What is the Sweden price on the new iPads?
l33tbro 13y ago
Enjoy the specs while they're hot, as I doubt they'll update for another 3 or 4 years.
otikik 13y ago
My MBA is doing everything I need it too, for a fraction of that cost. So I'll totally skip this one.
- theseoafs 13y ago
  You are quite obviously not in the target audience of this machine if all your computing needs are being satisfied by an MBA.
KVFinn 13y ago
Disappointed in the GPU configuration. I would much prefer a single fast GPU like a D700 (same hardware as 7970, R9 280X) over two slower GPUs like the D300 (R9 270x) in the lower configurations. And even the high end options -- the D700 is the pro version of a GPU currently retailing for only 300 dollars. Nvidia has the Geforce 780 and AMD has the R290x at twice that cost. Reportedly the GPUs are downclocked as well.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  Isn't the point of the FirePro line that they come with ECC? I can sorta understand higher prices and lower performance from such things.
  - KVFinn 13y ago
    >Isn't the point of the FirePro line that they come with ECC? I'm pretty sure they use regular ram, but even if were the case, I'd still prefer a single high end one.
beedogs 13y ago
That's awfully expensive for something with zero internal expandability that looks like a tiny wastebasket.

132 points by _ks3e 13y ago

Quote: Dave Girard noted in his "Critical look at the new Mac Pro" that the machine has "a truly epic lack of expandability." I totally agree. As someone with a macpro1.1 I'm clearly looking elsewhere at this point. I take a lot of still photos and frankly I'm filling up 2 TB drives. Plus having a heavy bulky machine you can put a cable bike lock through makes it much less likely to be stolen.. The design is interesting though. I'm sure its crazy fast. Just odd that you'll need an expansion chassis for more drive space. Plus hdmi for external monitor support? Is every DVI monitor going to need an adapter?

marcusestes 13y ago
Isn't the idea with this model that storage moves all the way offboard via the bevy of new Thunderbolt ports? I'm using a fast Thunderbolt RAID drive on my iMac and for the first time, the cable isn't the bottleneck for file transfer.
- acomjean 13y ago
  I think external storage is the idea, but the extra cost and outlets and cords seem to diminish the desirability. In time they'll probably be cheaper.
  - rdl 13y ago
    They are already pretty cheap -- the Areca ARC-8050 8 bay bare is $1499. A decent 8 bay NAS like the synology ds-1813+ is $999.
    - taspeotis 13y ago
      > They are already pretty cheap -- the Areca ARC-8050 8 bay bare is $1499. Are you having a giggle there, mate?
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        To be fair, if you're the person that the mac pro is aimed at and you can drop $3k on a machine, another 1.5 for a decent drive array isn't that outlandish.
        taspeotis 13y ago
        I'm assuming "bare" means without drives. The cheapest 2TB drive I'd be willing to buy is this one [1]. Disregarding the "NAS Drive!!!" marketing junk, if you sort disk drives by price on Newegg this is the first one with a 5 star rating from 31 reviews. You could go cheaper and get a 3 star rating'd drive for $85 [2]. To fill your chassis with the Seagate: 1x$1499 plus 8x$119 = $2451 To fill your chassis with the Toshiba: 1x$1499 plus 8x$85 = $2179 [1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178391 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178... [2] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149407 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149...
        rdl 13y ago
        It's not really marketing junk -- different drive firmware does make a difference in NAS and RAID applications. I'd probably be looking only at 4TB Ultrastars to fill the ARC-8050, or SSDs. I might go with something lower end for an 1813+ since you're probably not buying a gig-e connected NAS for performance. (it depends, though -- if you're doing just huge volumes of audio, you probably only care about reliability and sustained performance, and not much performance at that; and even flac doesn't use much disk space. it's video or other info which requires high-speed direct-attach drives in 20TB chunks.)
        kayoone 13y ago
        Funny everyone assumes that "Pros" dont care about money. I just see this as 1500 bucks i dont have to spend when getting a workstation from another vendor.
    - kayoone 13y ago
      1500 you wouldnt have to pay if the Mac Pro had some form of support for internal drives. Its 1500 you have to spend because Apple sacrificed expandability for design, size and light weight in a workstation computer.. It really only makes any sense if you need to lug the thing around alot (in which case i would think a top of the line macbook pro would be the better choice), or you just dont care about the money.
      - e40 13y ago
        This is true. I wonder what the profit margin is on the new Mac Pro vs the old? Was there a $2999 version of the old? If there was, I wonder if they're basically pocketing the difference in cost, because they've conditioned us to spend $2999 on them. (I'm assuming the new Mac Pro is cheaper to produce than the old, but I could be wrong.)
ctdonath 13y ago
The alternative is building a large machine containing vast empty space on the speculation that someone might fill it - leaving almost every unit significantly larger than necessary. TB2 is fast enough that putting the storage outside the box makes sense. Makes upgrades easy: plug it in, rather than having to tear the box apart.
- mikeash 13y ago
  I totally agree. The new Mac Pro is plenty expandable, the expansion just happens on the outside. I've had two Mac Pros so far. They're great, and I love the internal expansion... in theory. In practice, they never got any PCI cards beyond the graphics cards that came with them, and I used the hard drive bays more because I could than because I really needed it (e.g. keeping the old drive in the machine when upgrading storage and using it for secondary stuff). About the only problem will be GPU upgrades a few years down the line. TB2 is not quite fast enough to make that a good option. But most Mac Pro owners don't upgrade that, and it's plenty good for storage and other PCI cards.
- KaiserPro 13y ago
  Or you can have a z820 which has much more space, cheaper, and has a much better warranty and support(next day engineer on site, for free.) want two GPUs? sure. want 96 gigs or ram? go for it. want three fusion io cards? you betya.
  - wonderzombie 13y ago
    On the other hand, if you prefer OS X as I do, you are SOL. :)
- kayoone 13y ago
  > Makes upgrades easy: plug it in, rather than having to tear the box apart. In theory yes, in practice it comes with a hefty price tag. External thunderbolt disk arrays are quite expensive and something that would be unnecessary if the mac pro had some form of support for internal drives.
twoodfin 13y ago
Plus hdmi for external monitor support? Is every DVI monitor going to need an adapter? No: Thunderbolt 2, like Thunderbolt, has DisplayPort built in.

mtct 13y ago

More I look at it and less I like it. The design is weird and certainly not elegant. Try to imagine it with 5 cables that come out from the "back" (a cylinder don't have a real back).

nwh 13y ago
It's about the same size as their G4 Cube really. It had cables coming out of it's bottom and it's back, and that never detracted from an incredibly amazing piece of hardware. The internals are fairly similar too, oddly enough.

hdevalence 13y ago

The design of the Mac Pro is certainly attractive, but since the only way to add on to it is through Thunderbolt, it seems a bit counterproductive. The sleek black tube isn't so sleek when you need to have a bunch of external drives sitting on your desk.

sp332 13y ago
Thunderbolt cables are long enough that you could hide the drives elsewhere, if appearance is the main concern. This would still take up a lot less room on a desk even with a bunch of drives.
- marquis 13y ago
  I'm looking for a clever designer to kickstart a MacPro case - that beautifully fits in your lovely black computer on the desktop along with slots for drives and cables. Could be quite a new thing for the independent accessory makers.
- rbritton 13y ago
  That doesn't solve the noise problem though. Internal drives are significantly quieter than external enclosures.
  - nsxwolf 13y ago
    How loud are external SSDs compared to HDDs? Do they need a lot of cooling?
    - mh- 13y ago
      SSDs are effectively silent; they have no moving parts. also, they don't require active cooling (because no moving parts; no friction, low power consumption)
    - rbritton 13y ago
      SSDs still aren't at the capacities of HDDs, which are needed when handling lots of photos or videos in a cost-effective manner.

checker659 13y ago

Hmm.. I wonder if it's going to be the end of December or the beginning.

ScottWhigham 13y ago
Good question. They specifically listed Nov 1 for iPad but not so confident in the Mac Pro date, I guess.
bdevine 13y ago
Honest question: does it really matter? If you're obliquely referencing the holiday season, I have to think that the number of people for whom giving this as a gift is a viable option is basically a rounding error in Apple's customer base. I could be wrong, though.
- rubberbandage 13y ago
  “Before the end of the year” is important in this case not for holiday sales, but for 2013 tax reasons. I doubt even seriously rich people would be buying this as a gift ;-)

MattRogish 13y ago

Mac Pro: 7 teraflops for a few thousand. Cray X1 in 2004 5.9 teraflops[1] for only ~$40M USD[extrapolating from 2]. Mind boggling what to expect 10 years from now. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray [2]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/15/cray_flogs_x1_supercomputer/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/15/cray_flogs_x1_superc...

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Hold on tight! It's going to be an awesome ride.
- dmead 13y ago
  does the apple marketing department troll hacker news?
  - backprojection 13y ago
    Well, to be fair, it's more a comment on Intel's progress than Apple's. I'm sure you can throw together an ugly generic PC with the same parts for less. Anyway, workstations are supposed to look big and intimidating :)
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Can you? The CPU alone is unbelievably expensive. Two high-end GPUs are not cheap either. I would be interested in seeing the cost of a truly equivalent generic PC build. ("Truly" equivalent meaning no non-Xeon CPUs and other "almost as good" parts, something that's all too commonly done with Mac Pro comparisons.)
      - ddoolin 13y ago
        Either you can or you can't, and I've never seen Apple sell hardware without significant markup. If I had a complete part list I'd be interested in seeing the difference as well.

baldfat 13y ago

I need to be upfront with my bias, I hate everything Apple. I also built and ran my own digital studio (Not Pro Tools). This lack of expandability for the Mac Pro is like the criticisms of the Chinese worker conditions, not Apple's fault. 1) This is industry wide, look at Intel with the soldered cpu in the next generation. 2) This is what Apple users want, a simple "just works" for most. 3) Any production Machine has a million things connected to it. So the fact that you have to plug in a million wires into the thing is a mute point. This is cheaper than I thought it would be. I still think anyone basing their video or audio off of Apple is insane since they have continued to show that they are more than willing to put pro users on the back burner for what 3 years and need I tell you the Final Cut Pro fiasco?

sp332 13y ago
"Most users" will buy iMacs. Mac Pros are for power users who have tons of hard drives and need 12 Intel cores.
vehementi 13y ago
> 1) This is industry wide, look at Intel with the soldered cpu in the next generation. Your flagship point is not really comparable. That whole story was overblown when initially posted and on further inspection makes perfect sense as more things move off the motherboard onto either the CPU or other modules anyway.
dannowatts 13y ago
2) This is what Apple users want, a simple "just works" for most. agreed. and it's one of the main reasons that I moved toward an exclusively apple-based workflow over the past 10 years. -- 3) Any production Machine has a million things connected to it. So the fact that you have to plug >in a million wires into the thing is a mute point. completely agree as well. most people plug a bunch of shit in, so complaining that they are going to have plug shit in and that will 'ugly' or 'clutter' it up, is definitely a moot point. -- This is cheaper than I thought it would be. i was a bit surprised as well. pleasantly! i was thinking starting price would be $3499, or even $3799. i still have my 2009 mac pro that i'm contemplating replacing with the new mac pro in december. -- I still think anyone basing their video or audio off of Apple is insane since they have continued to show that they are more than willing to put pro users on the back burner for what 3 years and need I tell you the Final Cut Pro fiasco? I love apple hardware and software, but i don't rely on their professional software. Before FCPX issues, i was running Final Cut 7 and Lightroom. Never really liked aperture (for a whole hosts of reasons) so that wasn't an issue. But once FCPX came out I switched to a mixture of Resolve and Premiere/AE. i actually see this HUGE update to the Mac Pro as showing professionals how they don't want us to be on the back burner anymore.

Anm 13y ago

Capable of driving three 4k video signals. Amazing. Why can't the new Mac Book Pro drive just one?

pkroll 13y ago
It can: take a look at Tech Specs, it's listed (for 30hz): http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/
- nsxwolf 13y ago
  Does the Mac Pro do 60Hz 4k?
  - wmf 13y ago
    With monster FirePros it better.
rsync 13y ago
Since a triple monitor configuration is a de facto standard for pro users, pro configurations, etc., I would disagree with your characterization of "three 4k" as being "amazing". I would characterize it as the absolute bare minimum to even be in this space. I have 5 monitors attached to my 2009 pro (3x 2560x1600 main displays, a 1920x1200 offset on the wall, and a 1920x1080 "tv" cabled out to another room) and I've considered adding a sixth. It's hard to say how many <4k displays you can add to the ports on the back in addition to the three primary 4k displays, but it had better be more than "zero".
- bodhi 13y ago
  Are you disputing "amazing"-ness of 3 displays, or number of horizontal lines of resolution? Because I calculate your collection of displays at 7.08k, and 3 * 4k ~ 12k, or a 70% increase over your current count. ;)
  - rsync 13y ago

glitch 13y ago

For those looking for expansion: • (qty. 2) x8 + (qty. 1) x4 PCIe 2.0 w/ Optional built in drivebay for up to four (4) 2.5" SSD or SAS/SATA drives: http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t • http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Mercury_Helios/ http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Merc... (See also http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/ http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/ for other devices.) • http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresschassis.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresschassis.html

Mankhool 13y ago
The fan in the Sonnettech is very noisy. I don't want that enclosure in my edit suites.

pdknsk 13y ago

http://tubelor.neocities.org/ http://tubelor.neocities.org/

thinkpad20 13y ago

As sweet as this design looks, I can only imagine what the same amount of cash could buy you for a DIY Linux box. Of course, the available software is not the same... That said I'm a big fan of Macs; I own several. Great computers and the OS is stunning... so who knows.

dan1234 13y ago
I'd say the PCIe SSD, quad-core Xeon, dual FirePro graphics & 12GB ECC RAM are going to add up. Of course, not everyone needs all of those things.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Steko 13y ago

7 terraflops in 11 pounds; looks like it would fit many carry ons or a decent sized backpack. Good luck explaining what it is to TSA though.

ScottWhigham 13y ago

As the owner of a recording studio (VO, music work), I'd say that it disappoints me that I'm expected to pay $3000 for a top of the line video editing machine. I wish they'd found a way to make a $2000 or $2500 musician/studio version that didn't have three 4k displays + two GPUs...

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
As the owner of a recording studio, you know that you'll be paying at least $3k, if not much more, for software to actually go on this thing. Most AV professionals I know spend much more on software than hardware.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  As the owner of a recording studio I'd guess he already owns the software.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Site or per-seat? Also, I assume those licenses get upgraded every few years for lots of cash also.
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  Not really - I use hardware EQs, comps, etc. The only software costs are Reaper and a reverb (which I hope to replace with a Bricasti next year). I ended up dumping Pro Tools over about a two year period and switching back to all hardware. So it's a disappointment to me to see this pricing. It's as though they've said, "Musicians - they can just buy a regular Mac. The Mac Pro is for graphics and video people who need all this extra hardware."
  - bashinator 13y ago
    If all the heavy lifting in your studio is being done in hardware, why do you need a high-end workstation?

Arjuna 13y ago

Another Mac Pro configuration [1]: Available in December at $3,999 6-Core and Dual GPU 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM each 256GB PCIe-based flash storage [1] http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro

wmf 13y ago
The 12-core configuration is conspicuously absent. $10,000?
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
  I doubt we'll see one. Not only that but the suspect geekbench scores for the new Mac Pro are timid. Apple is hurting the Pro line. If they just gave it a normal form factor and the best current hardware, I think it would be a better people pleaser. This is a mac-mini on steroids and I'm disappointed.
  - wmf 13y ago
    Apple announced 12 cores at WWDC, so I'm assuming it will ship but they just don't want to tell us the price.
- guelo 13y ago
  A somewhat more informative specs page is up now and it mentions 12-core configurations, http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/
- Arjuna 13y ago
  They also did not list the 8-core configuration pricing. There appear to be a current total of 4 available core configurations: 1: 4-core 3.7GHz for $2,999 2: 6-core 3.5GHz for $3,999 3: 8-core 3.0GHz for ? 4: 12-core 2.7GHz for ?
- chm 13y ago
  So is the 8 core. I suspect they'll simply offer two "base" models, from which you can select an option to double the number of processors, and thus cores. Just like you can select a different processor on a MBP.

hglaser 13y ago

So what's the future of the MacBook Air at this point? Does the Retina MacBook Pro just keep getting thinner until the Air is obsolete? Is there some fundamental technical reason they can't keep iterating the Air thinner and put a Retina display on it? Or a business reason why that's not a priority?

nXqd 13y ago
Air still gets its place on the market. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57588850-37/why-the-macbook-air-didnt-get-a-retina-display/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57588850-37/why-the-macboo... Due to this blog post, power consumption seems to be the most important factor why they don't put retina on Macbook Air. I will double check the 13" new Macbook Pro to decide to get it or 13" lightweight Air :P
msoad 13y ago
Everyone wants 911, no matter they have $60k or can afford $200k. "Pro" is the same. Everyone wants the "Pro" thing. No matter if they will just browse Facebook or run serious business on it
Tyrant505 13y ago
That is the ultimate future, or rather ideal future, but yes: You get it.
snowwrestler 13y ago
The current MacBook Pro is probably the thinnest and lightest laptop possible with a Retina display. They've already taken out the spinning HD, optical drive, ethernet port, and removable battery, which are what they took out to make the original Air so thin and light. If they want to make a Retina Air as thin and light as it is now, they need some sort of breakthrough. One option that has been mentioned is to power the Air with ARM instead of Intel--like an iPad. But that would that probably would require a heavy software translation layer to run OS X apps like Office or Photoshop.

ChikkaChiChi 13y ago

The Mac Pro would be awesome...if it were the Thunderbolt dock to a meat and potatoes box I could store out of the way and expand whenever I saw fit. If you want to innovate, give me a way to separate the things I need to use my computer FROM my computer.

nsxwolf 13y ago

Anyone know: Is the 4-core version faster than the 6-core version for single threaded operations?

ScottWhigham 13y ago
I would assume so - it's a 3.7gz quad core and a 3.5ghz hex core
- nsxwolf 13y ago
  To me, that makes the entry level a pretty good value for a developer workstation that will occasionally dabble in video editing and graphics. The only other option for a headless Mac is a mini, and even a fully decked out one isn't as fast and starts getting expensive.
wmf 13y ago
No. http://ark.intel.com/products/75779/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1620-v2-10M-Cache-3_70-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/75779/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-... max turbo 3.9 GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/75780/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v2-12M-Cache-3_50-GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/75780/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-... max turbo 3.9 GHz
- nsxwolf 13y ago
  So, what does that mean exactly? When are they not running in turbo? The 4 core is clocked higher in non-turbo, that makes no difference?
  - wtallis 13y ago
    Turbo modes are opportunistic based on temperature and short-term power draw, so you can't be 100% definite about the speed the processor will run at. But generally speaking, when that 6-core processor is only running 4 threads, it will turbo up to the same speed that the 4-core operates at fully loaded, and they'll both hit the same peak for a single-threaded workload.

apendleton 13y ago

FYI for others looking for more specifics, there's now a specs page up (separate from the store): http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/ And there is, indeed, a 12-core configuration option listed.

smegel 13y ago

How much Mac software can take advantage of 2 gpus for processing, rather than 8 or more cores? I have a dual socket Mac at work with 12 cores total, not sure this would feel like an upgrade.

grecy 13y ago
They mentioned all the Apple pro apps are getting updates to take advantage of the Mac Pro.

smcl 13y ago

Random selection of USD prices for the base model from different Apple online stores, for the curious: $4,053 in UK $4,010 in Czech Republic $3,880 in Australia $4,257 in New Zealand $4,300 in Sweden So to US-based guys intending to buy one: hope you spend your ~$1k on something nice :)

wmf 13y ago
Including VAT?
- coob 13y ago
  Yes those prices are including VAT. So, $4053 - 20% ~= $3377, still an extra $378 because 'fuck you' :)
  - Wingman4l7 13y ago
    AU's GST is 10% so it's a $493 'fuck you' Down Under.
PilateDeGuerre 13y ago
What is the Sweden price on the new iPads?

l33tbro 13y ago

Enjoy the specs while they're hot, as I doubt they'll update for another 3 or 4 years.

otikik 13y ago

My MBA is doing everything I need it too, for a fraction of that cost. So I'll totally skip this one.

theseoafs 13y ago
You are quite obviously not in the target audience of this machine if all your computing needs are being satisfied by an MBA.

KVFinn 13y ago

Disappointed in the GPU configuration. I would much prefer a single fast GPU like a D700 (same hardware as 7970, R9 280X) over two slower GPUs like the D300 (R9 270x) in the lower configurations. And even the high end options -- the D700 is the pro version of a GPU currently retailing for only 300 dollars. Nvidia has the Geforce 780 and AMD has the R290x at twice that cost. Reportedly the GPUs are downclocked as well.

thrownaway2424 13y ago
Isn't the point of the FirePro line that they come with ECC? I can sorta understand higher prices and lower performance from such things.
- KVFinn 13y ago
  >Isn't the point of the FirePro line that they come with ECC? I'm pretty sure they use regular ram, but even if were the case, I'd still prefer a single high end one.

beedogs 13y ago

That's awfully expensive for something with zero internal expandability that looks like a tiny wastebasket.