
New Mac Pro Tech Specs - arunmib
https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/
======
whywhywhywhy
Still don't understand the justification for this machine, I waited years for
a MacPro but when it became clear that Apple actually considered it a dead
product and behind the scenes were building the iMac Pro to fill the niche I
switched to windows and now run a dual 1080Ti workstation (Uses CUDA for 3D
rendering path-tracing) for around half the price of a iMac Pro.

Apple bloggers said time and time again the reason they were not making a
tower was that there isn't really a market for one anymore, yet when they
finally made it they decided to build something that only really serves the
highest of high end video editors.

Completely ignoring 3D, mid range video editors, developers who need high core
counts + ECC, deep learning, etc.

Before they made it we kept being told "There isn't enough of you to justify
them making it"

They finally make it and the narrative turns into "It's not for you it's for
people who edit Marvel movies"

~~~
swebs
Find me a comparable computer that:

\- Ships with anything other than Windows (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc)

\- Has a corporate warranty

You'll quickly find that Apple has this market cornered. To many people,
you're not paying the extra money for the goodness of Apple. You're paying to
avoid the badness of Windows. There's also some software that works on Macs,
but not Linux machines that may be necessary for the job.

~~~
ganonm
Apple service is atrocious. Don't they make you book an appointment and turn
up at their store just to get someone to look at it? I hear of people who
spend more time taking their laptops to the local Apple store than most people
with major illnesses spend going to the doctor...

I bought a Dell XPS13 laptop recently which unfortunately had a non
functioning motherboard. I contacted Dell and a technician came to my house
first thing the next day and replaced it, no questions asked. Totally hassle
free. I'd take that any day over having to book an appointment to see a
'Genius'.

~~~
maccard
> Apple service is atrocious. Don't they make you book an appointment and turn
> up at their store just to get someone to look at it?

I had a macbook pro with a logic board that died. I phoned Apple, they
couriered me a replacement device next day, and that courier picked up my old
device. Literally couldn't ask for better service.

~~~
nsxwolf
Seriously? My friend was forced to drag his 27 inch iMac into the Woodfield
shopping mall location, which if you've ever been there, is a quarter mile
minimum walk from the parking lot to the store.

~~~
xenospn
He probably chose to do that. You can't force someone to physically appear in
your store. What if they're disabled?

~~~
nsxwolf
Pedantry. They didn't give him an option besides physically bringing it into
the store.

Good question about accessibility. I have no idea. But it's not as though our
society is a perfect utopia for the disabled. I can only imagine it would have
gone far worse.

------
Corrado
I think they should include Apple Care for their professional equipment. This
won't put any any more money in Apple's pocket but I could see it being
another differentiator and a good bit of PR, especially to all of those price
arguments. Plus, it's only $300 and I'm sure Apple could suffer that "loss" on
a $6,000 - $30,000 purchase.

~~~
pier25
I've always argued that for the prices that Apple charges Apple Care should be
included in all its products.

The first Apple computers I bought lasted for years and I never thought Apple
Care was necessary, but since the fiasco with the 2011 MBP and the butterfly
keyboards I'm not buying another of its products without Apple Care. Yes,
Apple ended up doing the right thing in both cases but it took years after the
problems started and a couple of class action lawsuits.

~~~
lostlogin
It presumably is in some areas. In New Zealand we have The Consumer Guarantees
Act. Things are expected to have a reasonable life span. What this means is
not specified but is generally accepted to be relative to the price paid (eg
if it’s expensive, it should last). It’s a fantastic piece of legislation.
I’ve had a 2.5 year old iPhone covered for example.

~~~
slig
I believe that the parent meant that Apple charges enough (in the US), so it
should have the extended guarantee included there. In NZ, things cost extra
due to that law, correct? The difference: is everybody is paying for that
extra protection, there's no choice.

~~~
xupybd
We do have very high retail mark ups. Perhaps this is due to that law. But it
is very nice protection to live under.

~~~
AmericanChopper
Aside from the additional taxation and regulations in NZ, it does have some
pretty unavoidable issues which drive up the prices of consumer goods. It’s a
very small market, and very far away. Getting things there is just going to
cost more anyway, and the market isn’t big enough to invite significant
competition, so there’s usually a large (or at least larger than a lot of
other places) markup on imported goods.

~~~
blackoil
Is it really far from China compared to US/Europe?

~~~
bayindirh
My friend living in NZ has a fantastic quote about the distance:

> NZ is a fantastic place. It takes 24 hours to get anywhere around the world.

Yep, it's that far.

~~~
thelittleone
It’s far but 24hrs is a bit stretching reality e.g.

~12hrs to Santiago Chile. ~9hrs to Bali, Indonesia. ~13hrs to Los Angeles,
USA. ~4hrs to Sydney, Australia.

~~~
throwaway1777
Add a layover and you could easily be at 20+ hours (which is common since NZ
is small so there aren’t that many flights). Europe is well over 24 hours even
to the major hubs.

~~~
thelittleone
Granted, however the flights I listed are all non-stop.

~~~
AmericanChopper
There’s a non-stop Auckland > Denpasar flight?

------
mark_l_watson
A great machine to be sure for high end content creation but Apple is not
chasing the deep learning dev market because of the lack of CUDA. That market
is better served by Linux boxes with appropriate GPUs for TensorFlow, PyTorch,
etc. support.

~~~
Uehreka
Nvidia really has the GPU market under their thumb. It would be one thing if
their pitch was "We're not as good as AMD for games, but we've got CUDA for
professionals and researchers!". At least that way there could be some sort of
segmentation and I could tell people shopping for GPUs to "get the right one
for what you want to do!"

But that's not the world we live in. Nvidia's pitch is "We make the only
hardware that runs the framework used by almost all deep learning research and
media creation software, and we're also the only folks operating at our level
when it comes to high-end video game graphics, and if our high-end cards are
too expensive for you, we have cheaper ones. And when our competitors start to
think they can catch up, we'll drop RTX and Tensor Cores on their face."

AMD seems stuck on "We have great value middle-to-high-tier video game
graphics cards" at best. I have no idea how they can get out from under that
rock. They've been turning the CPU market upside down and smashing Intel's
once proud "near monopoly" status. Nvidia seems like exactly the kind of
prideful company that would be poised to fall, but I have no idea how AMD
could make it happen.

~~~
tracker1
I'd guess that within 2 years AMD will be competitive to Nvidia at the high
end. Their strategy is a bit different, they're delivering good value at 2/3
the way up the performance graph... not as big a markup as a $1200 RTX 2080
Ti, but the RX 5700 XT is decent, especially for the price.

Most people aren't spending over $500 on a GPU, so they get the volume sales.
The better aftermarket cards have been selling out pretty consistently. And
the longer term strategies are similar to how they approached Ryzen. So, I'd
think that Navi can definitely succeed in that light.

The real lock in for NVidia, is all the existing CUDA development. Intel and
AMD will have a lot of work, One API may help there, so long as Intel and AMD
can work together, without Intel's often and weird lock in attempts.

~~~
atemerev
Yes, because nobody replicated the pragmatism and power of CUDA. OpenCL is
much uglier and lower level. So AMD decided to do something about that... and
invented ROCm, which is somehow even uglier and more low-level! A reference
FFT implementation in CUDA is about 150 lines of code... and it is almost 10
times more in ROCm.

It was always about software. Granted, CUDA is not the best and most elegant
platform in the world... but AMD seems not to be able to reach even that
level.

------
lliamander
Slightly off-topic, but who here uses a HEDT (high-end desktop) or workstation
computer for software development? Does it make a significant difference in
comparison with a standard business laptop?

~~~
kbumsik
I don't have an HEDT but an outdated Haswell i5 laptop (not an Ultra Low
Voltage model at least, so it's quite fast). Last year I spotted a bug in
Firefox and I though it was time to put a line in the contribution section in
my resume.

The contribution experience was a nightmare because a full build of Firefox
took 3 hrs and running the entire testing framework took 4 hrs, though it
turned out that I needed to run only a part of the testing framework. Changing
a single line and building it again still took more than 30 minutes.

That was the first moment that I wanted a HEDT in my life. It feels like devs
who work with big C++ projects would want a bigger workstation because of the
significant build time.

~~~
_bxg1
Woof. I wasn't aware compilation times got that long for people who aren't
building a whole OS.

~~~
kbumsik
I wouldn't try contributing if I were aware of it too lol. Imagine that I did
it for Chromium. I was told that it takes about 20GB to build Chromium.

~~~
oldmanhorton
It's usually more, actually. We have seen 100+ GB build directories when
building the "all" target and a non-GOMA build easily takes multiple hours on
a desktop i7

------
coldcode
People here seem to think this is just a random set of components not as good
as X+Y+Z. This machine was designed and specced based on talking with the
people who will be buying them, not the general public. Complaining its not
X+Y+Z is like saying IBM didn't design a mainframe for your needs. Not
everything has to build for everyone.

------
ksec
330 Comments, No one asked why was this submitted.

We have discussions on HN [1] when it was announced. The Tech Spec page has
been there since day 1, I looked hard and dont see any significant changes, if
any changes at all.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20087315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20087315)

~~~
lm28469
That was 3 months ago, no one asked because no one remember it was posted.

~~~
ksec
That was not the point though, Its release were widely known and this spec
page isn't news. It is generally accepted on HN unless the last submission had
little to no discussion, and there is nothing new related to the topic, we
mark those as duplicate.

------
Hamuko
The starting 256 GB SSD sticks out like a sore thumb on a machine as expensive
as this. The barebones Mac Mini comes with 128 GB and 6-core Mini with 256 GB.
And upgrading it is gonna cost an arm and a leg.

~~~
sudhirj
Depends entirely on workflow. A lot of shops will have all of their stuff on a
10G NAS share, so you’re actually forbidden from copying to and from your
computer because it’s just stupid and sometimes slower to do so.

~~~
_ph_
Still, it isn't as if 1T of SSD is expensive. So if they set the entry price
to 6k, 1T of SSD would be an appropriate minimum.

~~~
sudhirj
Yeah, that’s what they give on the iMac Pro as base, so it’s not like they’d
never do it. But it’s clear they’re deliberately under configuring the base to
force complete customisation, which is what I assume the kinds of people
buying this will want.

I’d go so far as to say they should sell it without a default hard disk if
they could - let the buyers make the choice. I’m guessing it’s defaulting to
the smallest disk just for optics.

This is clearly a start with the skeleton and build it yourself kind of
machine, which is as it should be. It just looks odd when the selector
defaults to the lowest available option on every selection.

------
chx
It is still not shipping so there's not really a reason not to use a
Threadripper for lower price AND higher performance. Or even Epyc chips. We
know the Titan Ridge Thunderbolt controllers work on AMD motherboards. Alpine
Ridge had firmware problems but Titan Ridge is fine.

~~~
AceJohnny2
Apple & Intel are _deeply_ entwined, both at a technical and a contractual
level. There's a reason Apple has never made an AMD computer.

~~~
chx
Well, AMD had nothing to offer really especially in the low power space where
Apple mostly is but Sharkstooth and Rome so throughly trounces Intel high end
it's not even funny. (Yes, Sharkstooth is not yet out but already the Ryzen
3000 chips make a joke out of the lower end of Intel Xeons and leaking
benchmarks paint an interesting picture of the upcoming Threadripper 3000s.)

------
peignoir
I wish I could afford these, but I’m really curious to test a hackintosh with
threadreaper 3 following what they did on Linus tech tips with a virtualized
PC and Mac running at the same time on the same monitor
[https://youtu.be/EozeSDeV3Vo](https://youtu.be/EozeSDeV3Vo)

~~~
Pmop
Hackintosh allows you to have OS X on better hardware but these days it's
really unsafe, due to the possibility of Apple going full ARM in the near
future, dropping all the support for x86.

~~~
Sophistifunk
Not a chance, the Mac Pro isn't even out yet and it's Xeon, so x86 support
will be in Mac OS for at least the next 10 years. There's just nothing from
ARM that can compete with Xeon at any price. I wouldn't be surprised to see it
in the low-end laptops within 5 years, but x86 is still safe as houses.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
I'd argue that the software people run on a Mac Pro is a strict superset of
the software people run on a MacBook. Combine that with Apple's philosophy of
hiding technical details from users (e.g. with fat-binaries in Darwin), so if
Apple _does_ switch to ARM for the MacBooks that's not a problem: Microsoft
Office for Mac, Chrome for Mac, and the rest (if they aren't just Electron
apps like everything is thesedays) will have to be an x64/ARM fat-binary for
the Apple App Store - and no-one will complain about specialty pro-only
software distributed outside of the store only being available as x64.

------
bfrog
Doesn't a single thread ripper basically slay this thing?

~~~
crazydoggers
Different market segment. The Mac Pro has 64 PCI lanes, and eight PCI slots,
along with supporting 1.5TB memory. 3900x for example only has 24 pci lanes
and 128GB memory support.

Edit: My bad... I misread thread ripper for Ryzen for some reason

~~~
ericd
The 2nd gen Threadripper has 64 PCI lanes, FWIW, haven't seen specs for 3rd
gen yet.

------
hinkley
This thing is pulling almost 12 amps by itself. Add a couple monitors and
hopefully you have recent vintage wiring in your office...

~~~
Marsymars
Presumably that's with the dual-GPU, 28-core processor model under full load
(and the MPX module drawing its full 500W, among other peripherals). An office
with this kind of workload is going to require robust wiring regardless of
which particular workstations are installed.

~~~
m0zg
And robust air conditioning, too. Source: worked in an office full of dual-GPU
deep learning workstations. We had to bring in those gigantic rental portable
conditioners in the summer, and re-do pretty much all of the existing wiring
in the office, because electricians who installed the first iteration could
not conceive of having two dozen ~900W workstations cranking away 24x7x365 in
a single open office plan.

~~~
chrisseaton
Why do you have the GPUs inside the office with the people rather than in a
server room under temperature control?

~~~
m0zg
There's _also_ a sizable server room with temperature control (which was also
woefully underpowered when we moved into the office). It's just more
convenient for researchers to have a couple of GPUs locally.

~~~
chrisseaton
You can remote GPUs pretty far these days - it’s possible to have a local
system and have the cards still connected with PCI but on the other side of a
wall.

~~~
m0zg
You'd need 100GbE NIC and network fabric for that to not be a waste of time
though. That costs more than renting an industrial portable air conditioner.

------
m0zg
And all of that will be pretty laughable compared to the stuff AMD is
releasing later this year.

~~~
dragontamer
The AMD Vega II appears to be a higher-end Radeon VII except with 32GB of HBM2
(instead of 16GB like the Radeon VII). So not really. AMD VegaII Duo (the
dual-Vega II) is going to be far more powerful than anything AMD releases in
the near future. 64GB of HBM2, 28+ TFlops single precision, etc. etc.

CPU-wise, probably. Xeon W 28-core is still quite good from Intel however,
with AVX 512 support and such.

~~~
snvzz
I would think he's referring to Zen2-based Threadripper.

~~~
m0zg
Not just Threadrippers, but better EPYCs as well. More PCIe lanes, more cores,
cheaper (hence higher profit margin), and the only thing you really lose is
AVX512 which hardly any software besides Intel MKL makes use of anyway.

~~~
snvzz
Keep in mind EPYC are not workstation CPUs. They can be used like that, but
they are not made for that. Different tradeoffs.

~~~
m0zg
Yes, lower frequency, more cores, more PCIe lanes, more throughput. Sounds
good to me, as long as they use SKUs that aren't too low in frequency.

------
dev_dull
> 802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networking

Surprised there's no 802.11ax/wifi 6. Why not use the same wifi chips as the
iPhones?

~~~
mihaaly
perhaps it is not that mobile

~~~
scep12
It does have wheels, which is an upgrade on mobility from the previous
generation.

------
cgb223
Is this saying that I can have 1.5 _TERABYTES_ of RAM?

That’s wild

What’s the professional use case for that?

~~~
QuinnyPig
Slack.

~~~
Bantros
Underrated comment

------
jagger27
I'm bummed out that there's no sign of Navi cards as an option. The 5700
series seems right at home in this machine.

I'm still holding out for a Navi product from Apple. There's some mention of
support in the Kexts but alas my 5700 XT does not work in Mojave or Catalina
(Hackintosh).

~~~
frou_dh
> The 5700 series seems right at home in this machine.

Isn't the Navi architecture gaming-focused? Vega might still be superior for
the "compute" workloads of pro apps.

Edit: Although I guess the base-spec comes with an ancient Polaris card, not
Vega. Cheap bastards.

------
joncrane
Why do the different processor quantities have different base frequencies
(higher for lower CPU count) but the same "Turbo Boost" frequency of 4.4 GHz?

If you ran Folding@Home on one of these, would you get sustained 4.4GHz clock
speeds?

~~~
sedatk
I guess Turbo Boost works only for short intervals, not continuously.

------
initself
Looks like a company finally listened.

~~~
_ph_
Very little. Yes, they finally made a Mac Pro that is extensible and up to
date. Basically everything the 2008 Mac Pro already was. On the downside, they
doubled its price so for the non-Hollywood customer, there still isn't a
desktop machine. Even 3k is much for a deskop machine, but I had set some
money aside to get a Mac Pro, if it had started around its predecessor price.
There was even a time in the past, when a Mac Pro would start below 2k and
consequently was very popular.

~~~
rangibaby
> on the downside, they doubled its price so for the non-Hollywood customer,
> there still isn't a desktop machine. Even 3k is much for a deskop machine

I think there were more benefits to an ordinary user to getting a tower in the
past then there are now.

In the past even a hobby or prosumer photographer would see a big benefit from
getting a Mac Pro. Nowadays an iMac or Macbook Pro with very normal specs can
edit large RAW files without breaking a sweat.

The extra HDD bays on a Mac Pro were great because you didn't have to mess
around with USB2 (cheap but slow) or FW (fast but expensive). Now you have
USB3 (cheap and fast) or TB (very fast but expensive).

I guess that leaves upgradeable graphics cards, at this point it is easier to
just get a PC or try a hackintosh build if you want a beast GPU for the latest
games.

> There was even a time in the past, when a Mac Pro would start below 2k and
> consequently was very popular.

2006:

Mac Pro base model: $2,199 ($2,800 in 2019 dollars)

30" Cinema Display: $3,299 ($4,198)

Soundsticks (Of course!) $169.99

2019:

iMac 27" 5K base model: $1,799

iMac Pro base model: $4,999

~~~
_ph_
Internal storage is a huge thing. I have external storage attached to my 27"
iMac, but it is not completely reliable (disks get ejected occasionally) and
completely beats the purpose of an elegant desktop machine. So I really would
like a machine with several drive spaces, especially if I can access them. I
could have lived reasonably by upgrading the internal storage of my iMac, if
there was any way for me to access it.

Graphics cards is another thing, but also the plain ability to clean fans when
they start to clog up. The limitations of the iMac are amplified by Apple
making the interior inaccessible.

Finally, while the screen of the iMac is great, I would like to have a larger
screen.

So there are plenty of reasons still to have a bit more than the iMac can
deliver.

~~~
aldanor
Disagreed.

I've had BlackMagic 1U SSD rack with a few drives connected to my 2013 iMac
27'' via Thunderbolt since like... 2013, and not a single time did they
disconnect. It just works.

The rack is under the table so it doesn't "beat the purpose of an elegant
desktop machine" either.

~~~
_ph_
Lucky for you that you had no disconnects. But getting those limits which
files you can put on the external disk if you need them available all the
time. E.g. when my external disk gets disconnected, EyeTV stops working as its
work directory is no longer existant. Also, I don't see how having an
additional large box (which by itself costs as much as many PCs) doesn't
defeat the purpose of an all-in-one machine.

I am not arguing that the iMac shouldn't exist, I just listed a few points
which can be better addressed with a proper desktop machine. Why I would be
willing to spend quite a bit of money for that convenience.

------
hyperactive
Not impressive. New MacPro hosts only PCIe gen3 when all PC motherboards are
on gen4 already. New MacPro is old and it did not come out yet.

~~~
movedx
It's not targeting you.

~~~
hyperactive
No it's not. I like MacOS and use their laptops, but Apple proprietary
approach does not work for me when it comes to desktop. Their development
lifecycle must be very long if they missed advancements in the CPU space.
Ryzen to the masses.

~~~
movedx
But it does work for many others and/or certain industries, and that's fine.

------
e12e
Surprised no one(?) commented on the case yet - looks like they came to their
senses and went back to the "old" case design.

I've been seriously considering a second-hand, early Mac pro - just for the
case. Not sure if they fit regular/modern psus - but those cases were very
nice.

Good riddance to the trash can design...

Now, if these wouldn't be priced like a car, and came with some proper AMD
cpus ...

~~~
grenoire
It's the good ol' cheese grater, the case design was known for a while.

------
kristianp
Still no Nvidia cards?

~~~
ScottFree
Still no Nvidia drivers.

~~~
mises
Doubly sad for those for us who like hackintosh.

~~~
arvinsim
Lots of people are holding out for Navi support.

------
DoctorPenguin
Please forgive my ignorance but the specs on this are just average in my
opinion. Why would I choose this over a custom build pc with almost the same,
if not better, components?

My experience with all apple products at work has been quite bad so I might be
a little biased.

~~~
acdha
Try to build a custom PC with equivalent specs, paying attention to the
expansion options and I/O characteristics, and you'll end up with similar
pricing. People who need professional workstations are in a different market
than gamers or almost all software developers — the question is kind of like
asking why anyone buys a semi-truck when your pickup can beat it off the
light.

------
esmi
I was very skeptical of this machine and the whole Mac Pro as concept car idea
[1] but the Afterburner Accelerator Card has me wondering if I was wrong.
Especially if Apple finds a way to support more works flows and applications
with it. That could be a real advantage moving forward and it’s not hard to
understand how it could trickledown to other products.

[1] [http://hypercritical.co/2013/03/08/the-case-for-a-true-
mac-p...](http://hypercritical.co/2013/03/08/the-case-for-a-true-mac-pro-
successor)

------
baroffoos
The only shocking things here are the lack of ports. Only 2 usb A and 2 usb c
ports. Its basically required to use a usb hub on this device since once you
plug in a proper mouse and keyboard you only have the usb c ports left

~~~
servercobra
I don't think they're expecting you to plug in a "proper" keyboard and mouse
since it comes with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Plus it appears you get
another 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports on the front as well.

~~~
benburleson
Which is insane.. do people really use the wireless capability of their
keyboard or mouse? Especially when you can't use your freaking mouse when it's
charging? Serious insanity.

Edit to add: of course I know people use those keyboards... I meant are people
actually moving with them in ways that makes the wireless capability useful?
Do most users not stay in a pretty close proximity the whole time?

~~~
chrisseaton
> do people really use the wireless capability of their keyboard or mouse?

Yes. Why wouldn't you? Why do you think the downsides are?

> Especially when you can't use your freaking mouse when it's charging?

I charge it for about ten minutes every month while I'm out. It doesn't
interfere with anything.

~~~
benburleson
The downside is requiring charging or batteries. I just have a hard time
justifying the hassle when I have no need to make those devices wireless.

And my battery always (when I had one) died mid-day, so it forced a work
break, which isn't always bad anyway

~~~
chrisseaton
These devices use so little charge that they basically need no charging. You
can literally do it once a month for a couple of minutes.

The justification is not having any messy cables on my desk, where space is a
premium and mess distracts me.

~~~
baroffoos
The problem is you forget every time so once a month you are in the middle of
doing something and you have to stop, turn your mouse upside down and then
wait.

~~~
crazygringo
You get a "low battery" warning that pops up when it's got a day or two of
charge left so it's fine.

Don't need to stop anything, just plug it in at your next lunch break or when
you leave for the day.

It's just not really an issue as far as I can tell.

------
hartator
I like it. You pay the Apple tax for sure but the design makes sense _and_ is
nice. I wonder thought when they are gonna to announce the new MacBook 16”. It
has been rumored a lot.

------
rosege
I wonder what a maxed out one will cost

~~~
NeedMoreTea
The Rolls Royce model of pricing: "If you have to ask, you can't afford it".

~~~
octomiao
This is how I feel when boston dynamics released spotty.

------
jaynetics
"Maximum altitude: tested up to 16,400 feet (5000 meters)"

Does anyone know how or where they do this testing? Seems quite bothersome to
do.

~~~
ghego1
This made me wonder, why is max altitude a limit? Is it due to cooling (less
air)? I'd be glad to know more if anyone has some insights

~~~
Shaddox
I'm not a specialist, I just read up about it some time ago so take what I say
with a grain of salt.

Basically there's two issues affecting electronic chipsets at high altitude :
air density and cosmic rays.

The reduction of the air density can mess with the cooling system.

Cosmic rays contain radioactive particles which can cause soft failures to
occur in solid state electronics.

EDIT : Found an interesting paper about it with more details :
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6046/529f05a65e182ac9323ef8...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6046/529f05a65e182ac9323ef8eb26b2075d0e13.pdf)

------
hello_tyler
I wish Apple would just sell me the damn OS and let me install it on whatever
hardware I want.

------
proee
This page would look better if they used high-quality 3d animated renders
instead of the simplified 2D-graphics. Someone on the design team thought this
was a great idea? It looks unpolished and out of place (in comparison to other
well-done Apple product pages).

~~~
1123581321
There are already two other pages about the Mac Pro (linked at the bottom)
with the more luxurious consumer feel to them. I think the functional look of
the flat art is totally appropriate for such a text-heavy page—and the
illustrations still animate seamlessly as the user scrolls.

~~~
saagarjha
> and the illustrations still animate seamlessly as the user scrolls

Not on my computer if you scroll too fast :/

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betimsl
Imagine having to hibernate a 1.5TB RAM machine :D

~~~
masklinn
FWIW by default desktops are configured to just sleep (hibernatemode=0 =
suspend to ram).

Laptops default to persisting memory & sleeping (hibernatemode=3, a sleep
which falls back to hibernation in case of complete power loss e.g. run out of
battery). Both can be configured to regular hibernation (hibernatemode=25,
persist memory then shut down).

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SCdF
So apart from the pleasure of being able to use MacOS, I presume it will be
cheaper to just put these parts together myself, yes?

If the form factor is just a tower, well I can buy a tower myself. What is the
advantage of paying for Apple a (presumed) bunch of money to build it for you?

If you don't want the hassle of building a PC (which is fair) there are an
endless supply of places that will put PCs together for you, with (I'm
presuming) a much smaller cut than Apple.

~~~
htfu
The amount of time I’ve had to fiddle with my audio/video editing beast of a
hackintosh tower is quite insane really.

Both necessary and well worth it, as Apple simply wasn’t selling anything
appropriately powerful for like five years (also why x99 was so tricky until
more recently - no equivalent hardware of theirs), but by any other
calculation if you actually put the value of your own time anywhere close to
any professional scale (or see it as a hobby) it will very likely end up
costing way more to do yourself.

~~~
arvinsim
I could understand that you would want a proper Mac for work. But I think that
time is well worth spending on a personal machine, especially when it is
easier nowadays.

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imagetic
For that price, it should come with Apple Care, Final Cut Pro X, and Logic Pro
X included.

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visionscaper
> Configure two MPX Modules with up to four GPUs

That's total, right? Not 4 GPUs per MPX module?

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EricE
Still waiting for my xMac; the spiritual successor to the IIcx/IIci :(

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techstrategist
What’s the best explanation as to why Apple is not supporting Nvidia GPUs?

~~~
sdan
Legal issues. Think they had some clash a while back.

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larrik
So I can easily make a machine with more RAM than hard drive space...

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siquick
What are people doing that require such high-powered desktops?

~~~
readbeard
I am working on a project right now where I am rendering atmospheric effects
(lots of clouds). Even on a 12-core workstation, it takes a very long time to
render a single frame to even be able to get a good idea as to what things
will look like, so I'm doing a lot of changing something, waiting… changing
something, waiting.

Most of the final rendering can be offloaded to a farm, but being able to
quickly and interactively get a good idea of what something will look like is
extremely helpful and time-saving. Right now, I'm doing some of the work on an
EC2 instance with 48 cores (96 vCPU) to help with this—cost-effective for
occasional use, but I can certainly see the appeal of a machine like this. And
for task like compositing where you need access to a bunch of huge source
files, or where maybe you have a specialized video I/O device you need to use,
running in the cloud might not be practical at all.

~~~
kristianp
I'm curious, is gpu-based rendering not an option for you?

~~~
readbeard
Not for the renderer I am using (Terragen), which has specialized features for
rendering skies. I do normally use GPU rendering when it is an option though.

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phillco
And next to each component, "Market Price"

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lwansbrough
Kind crazy you can’t configure this thing with an NVMe drive even if you’re
ready to drop $30,000 on it.

~~~
pram
The storage is NVMe, though? All of Apple's recent SSD storage is.

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bitxbit
Or they can just open up OS X to more hardwares.

~~~
scep12
Handling the burden of hardware fragmentation will reduce their quality and
velocity. It's not in their DNA and definitely not in their strategy to make
this happen.

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jibanes
reminds me of a sun ultra 45

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thesquib
What happens when Apple drops Intel and these become obsolete? I wonder if you
can even boot Linux and use the internal storage...

~~~
_ph_
The Mac Pro obviously shows that Apple isn't planning to completely drop Intel
(as in x86) anytime soon. At minimum, new OS releases are going to support x86
for the next 10 years.

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jasoneckert
At the base configuration (single 8-core Xeon W) with 256GB SSD and 32GB RAM
for $6000, it's about twice what it should be. I could build a faster dual
Xeon Silver series with more cores, Nvidia graphics, much larger SSD and 32GB
RAM in a nicer case for around $3000. So, that Apple logo and macOS are the
other $3000.

~~~
jasoneckert
I love how any post I make that is critical of something Apple always gets me
some negative points here on Hacker News - I actually made a point of showing
my tech class this social phenomenon a few weeks back and we had a good
discussion that explored possible reasons why it happens.

~~~
skellera
No one is going to disagree that you could build the same thing for cheaper
and the point has been made over and over again.

Apple isn’t selling for your use case.

~~~
mseidl
It's actually reasonably priced compared to other workstations. Plus, I'm
pretty sure you get the accelerator card which is pretty amazing.

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jaequery
The biggest new feature im looking for is the removal of the touchbar.

Until then, I’m going to just buy upgraded but used 2012-2013 macbook pros.

It’s one of those sounds good on paper but useless in real life. Not only
that, it’s a hindrance for coders like me who need to be able to hit the
escape button and other top buttons quickly with force feedback.

~~~
bradly
There is no touchbar included with new Mac Pro.

~~~
jonplackett
but there's never a bad moment to complain about the touch bar.

~~~
thrwn_frthr_awy
This is the frustrating part. The amount of innovation pushed forward in
desktop computing in the past 20 years and every once in a while they get some
things wrong and people just can't believe it. Manufacturing and component
commitments make "Oh just remove the touchbar" comments lacking of substance.
Same with removing the headphone jack conversation–no one wants to talk about
the trade-offs in making a phone waterproof whether they trade a headphone
jack for a waterproof phone. Most people would, probably, which is why it is
gone.

Sorry, I'm new here and half the comments I read are bickering about some
feature a someone doesn't think it optimal for how they use their device.

~~~
m45t3r
> Same with removing the headphone jack conversation–no one wants to talk
> about the trade-offs in making a phone waterproof whether they trade a
> headphone jack for a waterproof phone.

This is not true at all. There are multiple Android phones that have
waterproof and they have headphone jacks.

~~~
thrwn_frthr_awy
What did they sacrifice for that? Nothing is free and those plugs are large.

~~~
tstrimple
They replaced the headphone jack with a barometric vent which other phone
manufacturers just put in a different location. Apple didn't have to get rid
of the port. They decided to get rid of the port because they knew that their
users would buy the phone anyway and then have more of a reason to buy
AirPods. There is plenty of space in that corner though. Some guy wanted to
see if he could add the headphone jack back and was pretty successful for a
hand crafted solution.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA)

~~~
dpkonofa
That is nonsense. He butchered that phone and definitely, 100% ruined the
waterproofing function of the phone. Additionally, I'm curious which
manufacturers you're speaking of because, the last time this type of comment
came around, there was a distinct response of "most other phones don't include
a barometric vent".

~~~
tstrimple
All waterproof phones with barometers would include similar technology. Phones
like the Galaxy S7 which was also waterproof and which also had a headphone
jack. The video is an individual messing around with a dremel and soldering
gun. Of course it's not waterproof at that point, that was never his goal.
It's ludicrous to believe that Apple _had_ to remove the headphone jack when
other companies showed it can be done just fine without and others have shown
just how much space is still available in the phone. Your assertion that it
had to be done isn't supported by evidence.

