
Mac Pro 2 Concept Design - milen
http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html
======
greenspot
If you are a designer, this is _absolutely the best_ thing you can do to sky-
rocket your market value over night:

Create a concept design from a popular product and put it on a slick landing
page. It shows that you, as a designer, are proactive and think beyond
designing standard stuff (like webpages or mobile apps).

Moreover, you are not limited by any client restrictions[1] which hurt your
work (and portfolio), you learn 3D modelling if you haven't yet (it's not hard
just time consuming), if you are lucky with social news sites you get so much
free promo and finally, it's the eye-catcher on any CV.

[1] A classic and recommended post if we talk about clients restricting
designers:
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> Moreover, you are not limited by any client restrictions

But you must still limit yourself to sanity and physics. Too often, designers
don't have a clue what's actually going on behind the scenes, and embarrass
themselves.

This example puts 16 TB3 ports on a computer, because "consumers want it to be
very expandable" and "2 columns of 8 looks pretty". It also adds two graphics
cards but buries the connectors into the floor rather than making them
externally accessible.

Concept cars by designers may have faults such as zero visibility from the
drivers seat, have aggressively high front bumpers and low hood lines that
look designed to kill pedestrians, utterly lack necessary things like exhaust
pipes, crumple zones and spare tires, or have absurd specifications ("500
miles from the 2 cubic foot battery pack!" "600 HP V12 under the rear seat!")

Your target (other marketing departments) may not care. But it's also very
possible that they encounter these limits as a part of their daily work, and
will care, judging you for your lack of domain knowledge. Definitely create
some concept work for your portfolio. But don't stray too far from the realm
of the possible.

~~~
radley
Ugh - did anyone take a look at his portfolio? He designs for video games so
of course the specs are exaggerated.

He did something fun and most of HN is railing on him. The same criticisms
ought to be said here - if you're going to criticize, first take a look at the
whole picture and don't jump to conclusions.

~~~
AznHisoka
But part of me thinks he's an armchair product designer. Anyone can create a
cool looking mockup. But what about the actual thing?

~~~
adamlett
_Anyone_ , huh?

------
youdontknowtho
This kind of design is WAY more likely to come from a PC vendor than Apple.
The 16 TB ports was definitely kind of a LOL moment.

I dig it. They are useful, but that can't be done with "standard components".

The whole idea of a flexible and upgradeable PC is kind of against the Apple
"tightly coupled" software and hardware story. The reason that their user
experience has historically (I haven't used a mac in about a decade) been so
good was because they limit the available hardware for their testing purposes.
They don't have a lot of choice in hardware, but what they do support works
every time.

I don't know...I got off the Apple train a long time ago. I loved my Mac Pro,
but it just wasn't for me.

~~~
imtringued
16 TB ports is probably because they are also USB C ports and figuring out
which ports support TB and which don't may become a hassle.

~~~
pawadu
I think people are reading too much into these numbers.

The author is a game designer wanting to enter industrial design. It's just a
bunch of renders created for fun. Here is another one you might enjoy:

[http://pascaleggert.de/ThorA1.html](http://pascaleggert.de/ThorA1.html)

~~~
danudey
This seems like the kind of design you would come up with if you've never held
a rifle before, let alone tried to service one.

~~~
linkregister
It doesn't look that far off from the FN P90, which also appears to be
impractical on first look.

~~~
kec
Well, except for the ridiculous magazine design which looks to be aggressively
anti-ergonomic and couldn't actually work as rendered without bullets actually
passing through one another as they're fed into the chamber.

~~~
linkregister
I agree the magazine is user-hostile.

The FN P90 has a similar angled entrance to the chamber. The rounds are
perpendicular to the chamber while in the magazine, but are directed into
place. I never bothered to buy a PS90 (the U.S. semi-auto version) to find out
whether this design results in higher-than-typical stoppages.

------
shanusmagnus
I get that this is a concept not to be nitpicked to death for feasibility, and
I love it. I'm also struck by the fact that a fucking computer has produced
such heartache in people that somebody spent an ungodly amount of time on this
labor of love.

I don't care how little of their revenue comes directly from selling Mac Pros,
it's the feeling that could produce this response that they should be
optimizing for, not small-ness, thin-ness, or port-deletion.

~~~
Captain_Usher
>it's the feeling that could produce this response that they should be
optimizing for

As near as I can tell, this is exactly how Apple got to be Apple and they
already know how it's done. When people I know who have owned non-recent macs
describe them, it's like they're having some kind of profound emotional
experience. They don't even talk about it like it's a computer. I've never
heard them say things like "having all the applications go to the blue
'Applications' icon on the dock is great," even though that's a useful feature
they seem to understand and enjoy using, they say "it's so easy to find
things" or "it just works". I know a longtime OSX user who is particularly
detail-oriented and I asked him why he liked working with Sprinter vans[1] as
opposed to trucks. He explained that they handled more like big cars than
trucks, which is handy for maneuvering in cities and backing into cramped
loading docks. He had no problem discussing his preference in detail without
any prompting, the same way I'll tell anyone who asks that I like headset
microphones to desktop ones because it's one fewer peripheral to manage and I
have my desk laid out just right. When he talks about his Apple products being
good, he just says they "work."

So clearly they've succeeded in the past at giving people things that they
really really like. They like them so much that they don't even dwell on the
specific things that make them so likeable. I've never made anyone like
anything that much in my life, and if I had a process for it I can't imagine
why I'd stop.

[1]: A variety of tall cargo van, which may or not be an actual Mercedes
Sprinter: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-
Benz_Sprinter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter)

~~~
shanusmagnus
I'm a pretty die hard Apple guy starting from the mid 80s, and I find a lot
resonates with your friend's "they work" example. Me, I love the fact that the
machines are beautiful, but also functional in these subtle ways. Like the
fact that you can open the laptops with a finger -- they're balanced
correctly, the hinges are and the closing mechanism are calibrated s.t. you
can lift the lid without the base coming up. Such a pointless bit of design,
really, but it's so satisfying that somebody spent a bunch of time working on
that. To say nothing of the trackpads, which were just an order of magnitude
better than any trackpad on any other brand of laptop I've ever used. Maybe
high end PCs have caught up by now, I don't know. Yet.

There's something about things made with such passion, such attention. They
stir up the religious impulse. I really feel that, for the first time since
the Jobs comeback, I'm on the verge of losing that religion, at least wrt the
Mac line. (The iPhones still seem obsessed over in all the right ways, as far
as I can see.)

------
k1lly
That's why this is a work of an aspiring designer, not an (apple) product
designer: can someone point to a motherboard with 16 dedicated thunderbolts,
such many lanes of PCIE, and answer why should 850 evos be used instead modern
M.2 SSDs? The coolers/fans are OFF - they're not positioned above the GPUs,
but above SSDs (which produce almost no heat at all), and the SSDs themselves
are located around the thermal core triangles, why? And GPUs are facing
opposite directions, therefore, air streams are broken. I know I've shouldn't
be pissed that much by a stupid render, but this person could dedicate his
time to make something meaningful and smart. Instead, he's just pushing the
dribbblisation of the design forward. My call: this is stupid, meaningless
work

------
asd
> 50% of the site was black background + scrolling for me, but I think I can
> get the gist of it. Nice design + expansion capabilities, right?

Apple's Industrial Design group needs to get it through their skulls that
folks doing ___REAL_ __pro work still need traditional expansion capabilities.
At the very least, pro users need to:

1) Have the ability to expand RAM

2) Have space for two video cards (ThunderBolt 3 + video card enclosures is
_not_ a desirable solution)

3) Have space for at least a couple internal hard drives

For some reason, I don't think this will ever happen because the end result
would probably be bigger, noisier, and uglier than what the ID group would
allow. But, man.. wouldn't it be nice to be able to purchase a base config Mac
Pro 2 with one stick of RAM, shipped with integrated graphics and the user
could drop in any graphics card(s) they wish?

Hackintoshes can work fine for some, but oftentimes we just want to be able to
run software update without the fear that a patch will break our bread-and-
butter making machines.

~~~
nine_k
I wonder what OSX-specific software keeps professionals on machines that they
feel are underpowered, even if it's a rather mighty Mac Pro?

All the graphics and video editing suites, AFAICT, are now also available for
Windows, too. For audio editing one probably does not need two video cards.

So, what's your use case? Just curious.

~~~
cschep
I write software for iOS / Mac as my day job and it's really gotten to a point
where it feels like writing C# on Windows used to feel (which is not a bad
thing). The big difference is that back then I could build a powerhouse PC for
$1500 and have a handful of big monitors and really feel ahead of the power
curve.

I don't feel like I have the option to do that these days, and I'm pretty
disappointed by it. $4,000 on a laptop is my best attempt and it's still not..
quite. there.

~~~
beefsack
Apple's vendor lock-in strategy geared towards developers appear to really be
bearing fruit at the moment.

They've shifted most of their hardware lineup towards consumers and is the
weakest it's been for developers in a long time, but developers are still
hanging around because they have to if they want to target the Apple
ecosystem.

People who've been in the industry for longer than 15 years would remember the
last time this happened.

~~~
cschep
Perhaps this isn't the right place for this, but I'd be interested in a
broader discussion about this. What do we do about it?

Even if we see it coming a mile away, or if we wake up and look around and see
it happening.. what can we do?

Go back to the web is always an option, but I don't like it. I still genuinely
believe that the experience I can deliver writing software for iOS is higher
quality than what I can deliver on the web.

Has anyone found a secret third option yet? :)

------
jamesfmilne
I appreciate it's just an industrial design concept, but the problem with off-
the-shelf GPUs is that you need to route the DisplayPort connectors back to
the motherboard in order to mux them with the Thunderbolt ports.

The Thunderbolt add-in cards have DisplayPort inputs for this purpose.

The GPU & motherboard vendors should agree on some extra headers to allow you
to route these DP signals without ugly jumper cables on the outside of the
case.

~~~
kogepathic
> but the problem with off-the-shelf GPUs is that you need to route the
> DisplayPort connectors back to the motherboard in order to mux them with the
> Thunderbolt ports

If the Intel CPU supports integrated graphics (which I realize a Xeon may not)
there is actually support for sending display streams over PCIe, so it
wouldn't be necessary to route DisplayPort cables from the card output to the
motherboard.

The eGPU guys are doing this to display the output of an external GPU on the
internal LCD of the laptop. [0] It does slightly reduce the PCIe bandwidth
available as you need to transfer the rendered data back via the PCIe, which
is then output from the IGP to the display. [1]

However this is still limiting because it means you're stuck with the display
outputs supported by the IGP, so if you want to upgrade the video card to
support a newer standard (e.g. HDMI 2.0) you'd be stuck.

[0]
[https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/9658-egp...](https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/9658-egpu-
experiences-version-20/)

[1]
[https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1006857](https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1006857)

[2]
[https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/83-diy-e...](https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/83-diy-
e-gpu-projects/)

~~~
xenadu02
Have you tried this? The amount of bandwidth consumed is non-trivial and
especially impacts compute workloads or anything that does read-back from the
GPU.

~~~
kogepathic
> Have you tried this?

I have not used this feature myself because I'm not aware that it's supported
in Linux, and I don't use Windows.

> The amount of bandwidth consumed is non-trivial and especially impacts
> compute workloads or anything that does read-back from the GPU.

Given that the most typical use case of this technique is for people gaming,
I'd say that the amount of data being read back from the GPU in a gaming
situation is quite small, so this doesn't have a significant performance
impact for its intended audience.

Since I don't use my dGPU for anything but gaming, do you have any more
information on the performance impact on compute workloads?

------
super_mario
Real Mac Pro would be an aluminum "cheese grater" large quiet box that sits
under the desk that I never see or hear unless I want to upgrade something.

The trashcan is at most Mac Mini Pro. Having thousand cables and external
boxes sitting on your desk to expand it is not practical nor elegant, and gets
out of date pretty fast. And quite frankly it's ugly as well.

~~~
terinjokes
I have a G5 from the last generation of the cheese graters under my desk right
now. The case has seen better days, so I might have to source a better
preserved one soon, but I can say it runs Linux just fine.

~~~
throwawayish
The power-to-POWER ratio of these G5s was a joke.

The mechanical design is quite sound (forgetting about the HDD cage for a
second), though, and they look fetching, even today. (imho much better than
the trash cans)

~~~
rhinoceraptor
There are some really nice PC/Hackintosh builds with hacked up G5 cases. You
can even get custom-built motherboard trays that are meant to go in those
cases:

[http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-modular-
removable-...](http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-modular-removable-
motherboard-tray-p-56.html)

------
sparky_
Here's my concept design for what I want in a new Mac Pro:
[https://cdn.arstechnica.net/reviews/hardware/mac-
pro-2g-revi...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/reviews/hardware/mac-
pro-2g-review.media/macpro.jpg)

~~~
markcerqueira
Got one of these in my closet that I use as my home server. Made in 2008 and
the thing is still a beast!

~~~
macjohnmcc
I have the early 2009 model but I primarily run Windows 10 on it as a file
server/plex server. I was having some file system corruptions on Mac OSX and
decided to go the NTFS route on Windows.

------
fuzzy2
Looks nice.

But where is all the bandwidth for 16 TB 3 ports supposed to come from? That’s
64 PCIe 3.0 lanes, mind you.

Adding to that, 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes for the graphics cards, 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes
for the TB 2 ports, 2 PCIe lanes for the Ethernet ports, 2 PCIe lanes for the
USB ports.

That’s 64 + 32 + 16 + 2 + 2 = 116 PCIe lanes

Guess not?

~~~
matheweis
Absolutely doable. The modern i7's have 40 PCIe lanes. If you built a quad
processor system you would have 160 PCIe lanes... Have a look at the obscene
number of PCIe lanes in modern server architectures.

The bigger issue would be memory bandwidth, but I think that could also be
engineered around.

Edit: SuperMicro sells a system with 8 PCIE 3.0 x16 + 7 PCIE 3.0 x8 ... 184
lanes not counting the other onboard peripherals. So it basically exists minus
the Apple form factor.

~~~
fuzzy2
> Edit: SuperMicro sells a system

Which product is that, specifically?

It’s of course achievable with any CPU using PCIe switches. However, they
don’t magically increase bandwidth.

Two CPUs is probably all that can be crammed into a case that small, so 80
lanes (+ ~8 via PCH) is as good as it gets.

~~~
matheweis
A very ugly 7U server:
[https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/7U/7088/SYS-7088B...](https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/7U/7088/SYS-7088B-TR4FT.cfm)

The point was less about the form factor and more about the number of PCIe
lanes that can conceivably be available and the associated memory/bus
bandwidth that is possible.

~~~
fuzzy2
Haha, I see. That's a blade center with 8 "PCs", each supporting one PCIe x16
card and some supporting an additional x16 card (with only 8 lanes connected).

It's not really comparable to this project.

------
intoverflow2
Just spent £2000 on a PC after 17 years of purely Apple because I wanted CUDA
cores for my creative work.

If Apple had something like this as an option I'd have easily gone upwards of
£4000 to foolishly stay within their ecosystem. Guess my wallet is better off
in the universe where Apple doesn't want my custom.

~~~
Lio
I feel very much like doing something similar but I'm reticent to move away
from macOS because of privacy concerns.

If I moved to Linux I would still need some commercial software available on
macOS but not on Linux. The obvious thing to do would be to supplement Linux
with Windows 10 but I worry about privacy in Windows 10.

This maybe obvious to long term Windows users but I can only find examples
from Microsoft about what they collect/track, not a definitive list[1].

Also if anyone knows, I'd also like to find out if it's possible to stop
Microsoft Support from remotely accessing files on a Windows 10 machine and if
you need a particular version of Windows 10 to do that. e.g. Is Windows 10
Home more or less secure than Windows 10 Enterprise.

So for the moment baring in mind I don't do CUDA I'm sticking with my slow old
Mac. I should probably should build a dual booting hackintosh but I think if
would be a lot of trouble to keep going (and also breaks the licensing terms).

[1] [https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-
us/privacystatement/](https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/)

~~~
universenz
Look into Windows 10 LTSB (Long Term Service Branch). It's rock solid, doesn't
auto-update (only critical security patches), as part of the installation
process you can switch off everything, doesn't have Edge or Cortana or any
other guff. It was made for ATM's and single purpose machines. I use one for
my Plex Media Server and XProtect / Sighthound Server etc.. all rock solid.
The "apparent" disadvantages listed against LTSB I actually believe are
advantages. Like, want new Windows 10 features? Sorry you'll have to reinstall
the latest full release of Windows 10.1 LTSB.

[http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-
cruft...](http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft-
windows-10-ltsb-explained/)

------
mrweasel
Where would the CPU go?

I do understand the reluctance from Apple to built upgradable computers. They
make their money on hardware sales, and an upgradable system would hurt those
sales. At the same time their "Pro" gear simply isn't iterating fast enough,
perhaps because not using standard components slows them down.

It's not Apples style, but it wouldn't hurt if they gave their professional
customers a three year roadmap, just so people would know that they plan to
move forward, and in which direction.

~~~
rtkwe
> Where would the CPU go?

Under the memory probably. It looks like the basic idea is saw the current Mac
Pro down the middle and shove some graphics card slots there.

------
roryisok
I smiled at "Standard components ... exceptionally futureproof". The way Apple
are going the next mac pro will probably run an ARM CPU and have the RAM
soldered on

Assuming they ever make another mac pro of course

------
agumonkey
Almost hug to death, enjoy the
[http://archive.is/XkCPO](http://archive.is/XkCPO)

------
anonymoushn
[http://i.imgur.com/tkwUICK.png](http://i.imgur.com/tkwUICK.png)

I am glad to learn the dard Components are Exceptionally Futur.

~~~
freehunter
Ha I thought it was a Safari problem on my machine and I was going to say "I'm
pretty sure Apple would make the website render properly in Safari".

------
haylem
I have to say, it's the first time I see a Peter Dinklage used as a unit of
measure:

[http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html](http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html)

------
robotjosh
This type of design isn't useful. Round things don't fit neatly anywhere on a
desk. Air cooling makes no sense when your design goal is high performance in
a small space. What would really be useful is something 2.5" thick and as long
and wide as necessary. Think about it you could lay it flat on your desk and
put your screen on top of it, stand it up behind your screen, hang it on the
wall behind your screen, bolt it to the under side of your desk, bolt it to
the back of your desk, or bolt it to the side of your desk.

~~~
cr0sh
So something like a 1U server?

~~~
RandomOpinion
More like the early Sun "pizzabox" SPARCstation workstations, I would think.

Example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5)

------
andkon
For a while, most non-Macbook Air 'ultrabooks' were hampered by the fact that
they had to have an ethernet port, or I guess enterprises wouldn't buy them?
It was weird. The whole entire computer ended up being designed around its
biggest single constraint.

This is exactly what's going on here. "Bigger is better" is an attempted
rationalization for the fact that graphics cards are determining the design of
this computer. But then look at the Mac Pro: they solved a core problem of
performance machines (cooling) with its weird looking design. There was a
functional reason for its' looking like a turbine. Here, the rounded ends are
pointless (haha design joke).

Edit: there's an interesting problem at the intersection of industrial design
manufacturing process that this does solve for. The Mac Pro design process was
obviously very involved, and it required lots of folks' attention. They
obviously aren't paying attention in the same way, so the care that is needed
to make something performant and beautifully designed isn't happening, and the
releases aren't happening. This guy's design does an end-run around Apple-like
industrial design, and in choosing compatibility with off-the-shelf stuff,
probably makes the product more likely to be relevant to folks in the future
than Apple's Mac Pro, which is just languishing in long product update cycles.

~~~
white-flame
That's a strange definition of "hamper" you have there. What's being optimized
for a "pro" computer or "ultrabook"? It's computing power, and expandability.
Looks & portability play second fiddle there, although it certainly helps to
have something as sleek as can be managed. But not at the expense of technical
features.

------
ryantownsend
Are 16x TB3, 4x TB2 AND 4x USB3 actually achievable with current/near-future
hardware?

If Apple were to implement this, I'd imagine it would be N x TB3/USB3 USB-C
format ports, an ethernet port and maybe HDMI (though a dongle would possibly
negate that – if 2.1 can be achieved that way)

Otherwise, looks good to me.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Not feasibly.

If you really wanted to do it, the biggest processors have 40 lanes of PCIe.
Intel's Xeon E5's can be dual-socket mounted, for a total of 80 PCIe lanes.
Adding PCIe switching, like two Avago/PLX PEX9797s (see
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx-
pex97...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx-
pex9700-series-pcie-switches), particularly the diagram at
[http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG](http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG))
can get you there in the end.

But the sacrifice is that you actually only have 80 lines of PCIe, and it all
has to be coordinated. Dual-socket computing does not quite double your
processing power, and a switch adds latency. Your overall bandwidth will still
be limited to what you have coming from the processor.

------
chlordane
I can dig this, but the next Mac Pro needs to compete with the current line of
HP Z840:

[http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04400043.pdf](http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04400043.pdf)

~~~
cschneid
God, I always lol at HP URLs. What a mess.

~~~
throwawayish
At least they're stable. I have bookmarks on HP datasheet pages from the early
2000s that still work.

------
jpalomaki
Instead of fancy design, I would rather see some fairly boring box that would
enable Apple to use almost off-the-shelf hardware. Kind of hackintosh, but
made by Apple. This way it would be much easier for them to bring regular
(yearly) hardware refreshes.

------
iddqd
> Sometimes bigger is actually better

Well that's definitely something we'll never hear Apple say.

~~~
stcredzero
They used to say it about their 17" laptop.

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

------
iplaw
Just pointing out that it says 4x HDMI ports, but the rendered model only has
2x.

~~~
satysin
Yeah I noticed that also. Seems strange to make such a mistake with so much
attention to detail.

Pretty design but by my count that machine would need to be a quad CPU (not
core) system to support all that I/O. Where are those 4 CPUs gonna fit and how
are you gonna keep them cool?!

------
gallerytungsten
Only 24GB of RAM?

The current Mac Pro officially supports 64GB and 3rd parties offer upgrades to
128GB.

Even the 2006 models can be upgraded to 32GB.

~~~
jamesfmilne
He means 24GB of video memory.

------
acomjean
I like the size of this. The expandability of the machine is nice considering
the current lack of refresh on current apple desktop hardware. I'm not holding
my breath though.

I have the old mac-pro (cheese grater), and it was remarkably expandable (and
easy to do so). Its remarkably heavy (theft deterrent).

You can go see what the hackintosh people are building with commodity
hardware:

User Builds: [https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/user-
builds.28/](https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/user-builds.28/)

------
dom0
So basically a bigger trash can without a proper cooling system. Yikes.

~~~
yoz-y
From what I gather the ONE great thing about the trashcan design is its
cooling system.

~~~
dom0
Reading comprehension: "bigger trashcan without a proper..." means that this
is a bigger trash can that does not have a proper cooling system. The regular
trash can thus has.

~~~
yoz-y
Aha! It looks like there is no space for huge fans from one of the angles, but
then, this is a magic concept for already impossible tech.

------
2ion
Somehow the grey metal Mac Pro case shown beside the current Mac Pro and this
Mac Pro concept design looks to me much better and functional than any of the
other two.

It makes a much more professional, high-quality, clean impression and has
definitely the potential to house at least the same if not more hardware than
the cyclindric ones.

------
c3833174
I don't undestand, the CPU would rely on convection+fans while the more
powerful GPUs just push air to the bottom.

------
sonalkeshav
Looks nice but I don't think that's practical (or realistic).

That's way too many USB ports, SSDs on one machine.

BTW for devs out there that need that much horsepower, what do you do? (I
understand needed 32 GB of ram which was not available in the latest MacBook
pros, but when do you need that much storage?)

~~~
nine_k
Re storage: video editing readily comes to mind.

~~~
Miredly
And multitrack audio recording.

~~~
nine_k
...which can also be taxing on CPU / GPU if you apply effects to a lot of
tracks, and can't render them (yet) because you're tweaking the whole.

------
mavis
Gigabyte announced a similarly shaped product last week at CES.

[http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-
page.aspx?pid=6151#...](http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-
page.aspx?pid=6151#kf)

------
spaetzel
Problem being that the current Mac Pro is already the 2nd
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro)

------
gallerdude
Funny enough, the thing that had me thinking the most was the double ethernet
ports. What would that be for? Two different networks? When one cuts out you
just switch to the other one?

~~~
kennell
The current real Mac Pro actually has two ethernet ports too. There are a
number of ways this could be useful.

Number one would obviously be to connect to two different networks. It could
also be useful in a scenario where the machine is used as a server and you
want a semi-redundant backup network line. It could also be used to directly
connect to a NAS box via Ethernet.

~~~
skiril
you can bridge network cards to double your connection speed. You can connect
to 2 different networks (load balancing or 2 different Internet Server
Providers). You can run multiple virtual machines on your mac and separate
traffic instead of putting all into one adapter. Multiple LAN is a norm now,
especially if you in IT.

------
al_biglan
Looks great... just needs 10GbE instead of 1Gb. Add an SFP port and a RJ45 if
all you got is a 1Gb or want to try your hand at getting 10GBASE-T working.

------
rubyn00bie
While I really like the aesthetics of this, I think it still suffers the same
problems as the current Mac Pro.

It needs more PCI card slots. It needs to support more than two GPUs. To
suppprt that it's also going to need one helluva power supply... it needs its
workstation credibility back more than it needs a beautiful design.

I still think the previous generation of Mac Pro look great. They'd look even
better in Space Gray.

------
sailfast
The Mac Pro design was fun to look at, but the concept firearms on this site
were the most impressive to me. Well thought out and engineered from a concept
perspective, addressing pain points for the customer that requires some pretty
serious knowledge. I'm surprised somebody hasn't tried to manufacture the Thor
A1 at this point, as they seem to fit a pretty sizable PPW market.

------
ksec
I think the next Mac Pro will need to fit within the Rack.

Basically merging the Xserve and Mac Pro together. It will need Dual CPU and
Dual GPU space.

But May be the consumer Mac and iPhone is simply too large of a market, where
even small minor profitable business like Server and Pro market are being
ignored. But sometimes it isn't about profits, but ecosystem.

------
RichardHeart
Looks great, it will take one hell of a custom riser to orient those video
cards like that. [https://hardforum.com/forums/small-form-factor-
systems.102/](https://hardforum.com/forums/small-form-factor-systems.102/) has
the best collection of Super small custom form factors in the world.

------
jimjag
I don't want a system that "anticipates" what I may need. I want a system that
allows me to update and upgrade easily based on what my needs are, and how
they may change. In that way, the cheese-grater Mac Pro was ideal. Apple needs
to get back to that mode for the _desktop_ Power user.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
Not bad. Reminded me of the internal arrangements in the MSI Nightblade MI2, a
pleasant small desktop gaming machine. You can buy some of them for under 1k
USD.

( [https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Nightblade-
MI2.html](https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Nightblade-MI2.html) )

------
SippinLean
Top 80% of the page is just black for me. I hit the spacebar 7 times until I
saw "Built-in handle" ?

~~~
starquake
I also had one big black page. I thought it was a joke and it meant the author
thought there was no Mac Pro 2 coming. Then I remembered this is not Reddit
and there are no funny links on HN.

------
pacomerh
Great design work, as for the idea, I don't think Apple would roll with the
alien/spaceship/ninja vibe [http://d.pr/i/jzcl](http://d.pr/i/jzcl)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
GTX 1080? That seems like an unlikely choice to me. Apple prefer AMD GPUs, not
NVidia's.

The GTX 1080 is also part of NVidia's consumer line, whereas the current Mac
Pro has FirePro chips, which are from AMD's workstation graphics line.

~~~
mwfunk
I don't know where you get this impression from unless you're only looking at
what's currently (or recently) shipping. They've always used both and played
them off against each other. Which vendor is used for a given model changes
from one year to the next, although sometimes there will be long stretches of
seemingly only using one or the other. There've been plenty of times over the
last 15 years where one or the other has been predominant in shipping
products, but it never lasts more than a couple years. There've also been
plenty of times when the currently shipping product line featured both
vendors.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Oh, right. I didn't realise they'd switched more than once.

------
gbrown_
Looks like this is getting the HN hug of death, anyone have a link to a cached
copy?

~~~
SlySherZ
There you go:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170112152448/http://pascalegge...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170112152448/http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html)

Edit: fixed wrong link

------
oliv__
This looks cool...but the inside of the machine is so unlike Apple. It is
scary and futuristic in an Alienware way. Apple's design (even inside) is
always more human and approachable.

------
bitmapbrother
Nice work, but it looks like it's transitioning from a small circular garbage
can to a rectangular garbage can. The original aluminum Mac Pro shrunken down
would have been the ideal design IMO.

------
youdontknowtho
503? Looks like its down.

~~~
petercooper
I think the entire product design team at Apple are scraping it for ideas.

~~~
dpark
Yeah, because Apple designers are too daft to come up with something this
derivative on their own.

------
wildchild
More top overpriced GPUs, computer must cost more than automobile.

~~~
sp332
That's nothing, the server I'm dialed in to right now cost 30x as much as my
car. And we have racks and racks of these...

~~~
dpark
Is your car an entry-level bicycle? What kind of servers are you running that
cost 30x an actual car? We run some expensive servers but none that cost
anywhere near 30x the cost of my car.

~~~
sp332
I'm including the support contracts in both numbers. I work for an ISP, so our
storage systems are both large and very sensitive to downtime. You don't want
x0,000 customers calling about their email, HBO Go, and billing logins
failing. So the support contract is a bit extreme to match. The exact price is
under some kind of NDA but let's say my car was a bit over $30k.

~~~
dpark
That must be some impressive support contract. For close to a million dollars
per server I hope they come with an indentured engineer who lives in your colo
ready to do a hot swap at any moment.

~~~
sp332
Close, the SLA is four hours call-to-repair.

------
gigatexal
looks great but will never happen -- the mac pro is not a priority for Apple
-- sometimes I wonder, what, if anything outside of the iPhone, really is a
priority for them.

------
phaed
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

------
colemannerd
Just use the design of the old G5 Tower, but a bit smaller! And in Silver,
Space Grey, and Jet Black.

------
corn13read
In reality it will only have a power adapter "port" and they will call it
portless and amazing

------
late2part
Come on man. 10gig ethernet please.

------
sengork
No RAM/Memory specifications? Surely it ought to showcase at least 64GB DDR4
RAM.

------
j-pb
Why for the love of god would a beast like that still have two shitty gigabit
ports.

~~~
BillyParadise
First thing I noticed, too. You beat me to it! A PC can't possibly be
considered pro without a couple of CXP connectors.

;)

------
vlunkr
I think at least one USB C port would be appropriate. Very nice though!

~~~
alfredxing
Thunderbolt 3 uses the same connector as USB C, and it supports the same USB
functionality. ([https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-
c-d...](https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-
all))

------
eva1984
2 GTX 1080 in this small box? Nahh, this is going to be smoking hot.

------
bparsons
You could build the PC version of this for about a 1000 bucks.

------
mluu510
cool but if you can upgrade the gpu and storage, than you should also be able
upgrade the cpu, ram and psu? at that point, it's just the old ATX mac pro
design

------
whatnotests
Looks like what Darth Vader would have on his Destroyer.

------
ldev
Is HDMI 2.1 now superior to DisplayPort?

------
kyled
I thought that was a camera lens.

------
skiril
I like it.

------
ohples
Why woukd you have HDD?

------
matthewhall
i like it

------
simonhamp
It irritates me that this page was clearly designed on/for a super wide high-
res display

~~~
Raphmedia
It's heavily inspired by Apple's own page for the Mac Pro.

------
pil4rin
No USB-C? also, what's the point of including the Thunderbolt 2 ports, I
thought Thunderbolt 3 was backwards compatible. Sweet design other than that.

~~~
simonhamp
Thunderbolt 3 is USB-C

~~~
ff10
Thunderbolt 3 can facilitate the USB-C connector.

~~~
artimaeis
This seems like a fun ladder of pedantry, count me in!

Thunderbolt 3 is an extension to the USB 3.1 standard which utilizes the USB-C
connector and implements USB Power delivery.

------
exabrial
The next Mac Pro will just be really really thin, have no ports, and gets it's
power wirelessly from a mat underneath it, but no batteries. It'll have 8
cores and max out at 13g of ram

~~~
exabrial
I forgot to mention it _will_ include nerfed NFC, so you'll be able to Tap and
Pay with with Apple Pay.

------
stevefeinstein
Oooh, an artist spend 20 minutes with PhotoShop and now Apple can just take
his pretty pictures and start pumping out new computers. It's not like anyone
needs to actually create an actual prototype, source components, set up
manufacturing, market and deliver anything.

~~~
kermire
20 minutes? What are you even talking about?! This would take days if not
weeks.

