
Apple’s 2019 Mac Pro will be shaped by workflows - jbegley
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/05/apples-2019-imac-pro-will-be-shaped-by-workflows/
======
tambourine_man
What are Pros supposed to do in the mean time? Keep buying PCs I guess. Why
haven't they kept selling the cheese grater is beyond me.

They are spending a fortune to understand what Pros need, while we have been
screaming for the better part of the decade: lots of user accessible RAM,
storage, PCI & GPU. How much would it cost R&D to update the Mac Pro?
Teenagers can do it for peanuts, I'm sure the largest company in the freaking
world could manage. If they were truly sorry or marginally “cared”, that's
what they would have done years ago.

I'm fine with them playing the “let's reinvent the Pro computer” game as a
side project, they have this massive amount of money burning a whole in their
pockets after all, but some of us need to work.

~~~
gutnor
> What are Pros supposed to do in the mean time? Keep buying PCs I guess. >
> How much would it cost R&D to update the Mac Pro?

I hope/think that Apple is thinking that bringing back the cheese grater or in
other word a PC running MacOS is not going to be enough to bring back the pro.
They need to come back with something that has something unique.

The TrashCan failed but you can see where Apple was going. A small, silent,
powerful machine infinitely customisable on the fly via TB.

So of course if failed and this attempt has a good chance to fail too. I'm not
quite sure that Apple has in its DNA the deep understanding of the type of Pro
that are not content with either the iMac Pro or MBP in the same fashion they
get the consumer sphere. It is just that for a long period of time the
intersection between the 2 world was large but are now diverging. Perfectly
happy for me to be wrong though.

~~~
sangnoir
> I hope/think that Apple is thinking that bringing back the cheese grater or
> in other word a PC running MacOS is not going to be enough to bring back the
> pro.

Before they can think of "bringing back the pro", they need to stop the
bleeding: pros who need to upgrade this year have no choice but to go PC. An
upgraded cheese-grater would have been a good stop-gap while they go back to
the drawing board on their 2019 product.

~~~
copperx
Certainly.

Right now I program Rails on an old 2012 MBPr. I want to get a faster machine.
Possibilities:

1) Spend 5k on a iMac Pro. That's an absurd amount of money.

2) Get a new MBP limited by USB C, new keyboard, and the abominable Touchbar.
That's a lot of money for a downgrade.

3) Get a decent specced iMac or Mac Mini. Most viable option.

4) Ditch Rails, start learning .NET, so I can go Windows 100% to build my own
PC. I save money. I lose a lot of time.

5) Build PC, install Linux. Viable but might be a configuration nightmare. I
just want to work.

6) Run Linux under Windows host as a VM. Second most viable option.

I'm pretty frustrated. Suggestions?

~~~
untangle
> I'm pretty frustrated. Suggestions?

I suggest an upgraded 2009 Mac Pro.

The upgrades would include: flash to 5,1, 3.46 MHz Intel Hexcore proc, 32 GB
RAM, SSD on a PMCIA card, and 5770 GPU. This should cost $1K USD or less, dual
CPU (12 core) for a bit more. Mine Geekbenches at 3800 (S) and 17,800 (M).

I'm running one of these and it has been bulletproof and 100%
hardware/software compatible.

~~~
copperx
That actually sounds fantastic. Can it drive a 4k display?

------
ChuckMcM
Reading this it had me reminiscing about Sun back in its heyday as a
workstation vendor. Sun used to do this stuff, they would bring in a partner
who had some critical application and the Sun engineering team and the
partner's engineering team, and some "power users" of the tool would all work
through what it would take to make the tool work better on a Sun Workstation
than any other workstation. Sun engineering got a collection of bugs,
features, and investigations that would come out of those exercises. When my
wife was at Xerox they were doing similar sorts of studies for document
preparation and presentation.

You could do that when the workstation cost $25,000, (in 1990 dollars!) I'm
not sure how viable it is when the workstation is less than $5,000.

That said, I really miss using software products where that level of thought
has gone into its design. The three 'creative' apps I use (other than writing
code) are drawing, schematic capture/board layout (EDA), and writing. All
systems that benefit from people investing in how the flow of these things
work, and all of which have degraded over time.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I think there might be some people interested in a 25K machine, but only if it
really improves their workflow; don't think adding more money / processing
power does much for most people, maybe for 3d rendering but they have
specialized hardware for that, which gives them more raw bang for their bucks
than Apple could do.

I'm wondering if it'd be viable to have a 'compute unit' shared by multiple
users. i/o would probably be a bottleneck, so maybe have it link up macs via
usb-c? It might help with e.g. compile times (which last time I did iOS
development, two years ago, was kinda slow (>1 minute for our app, CPU
bound)).

But that's probably too specialized a thing. Apple wants to sell units by the
million, not the hundreds (if that). Which is why they discontinued the mac
pro and the 17 inch MBP.

~~~
andromeduck
Something like the dxg-1/dxg-2?

[https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-2/](https://www.nvidia.com/en-
us/data-center/dgx-2/)

------
drawkbox
Mac Pro cheese graters going away was a bad move and a missed opportunity by
Apple, today they already lost the power pro users and they had them for a
while.

Most Mac Pro users have moved back to PC, or iMac's/minis just for iOS/macOS
related dev, with most work being done on PCs.

Apple had a window where developers needed a heavy Pro Mac for iOS, nix
development like python/ruby/etc, even Unity dev back when it was only on Mac
(2007-2010 ish), it was also great to have a Mac after the 2006 Intel
processor move as it was the sexiest nix and great for developers from 2006
on, but those days are over.

Somewhere in 2013, they just moved on from the cheese grater and Pro market
that included developers and content creators. Now they want to regain it?
There was so much momentum squandered here and hearing Tim Cook repeat "Post-
PC" and Apple messaging that desktops were like trucks, only developers need
them, caused them to move on, so did the pro users and developers. Apple even
watered down their developer laptops and Macbook Pros, 17" screens were
relegated to being 'lapzillas' and Apple went only mainstream. Content
creators and programming were not something they focused on anymore after the
iPhone took over, eventhough those influencers were always the focus. I
thought they would use the iPhone and iOS/macOS platforms to get more people
on their desktops as well, instead they went the other direction.

We used to be Mac Pro heavy now we just have iMacs/minis for the last mile or
iOS/macOS export and testing with performance heavy beefy PCs for most of the
day to day work. Additionally, taking your jet engine/trashcan new Mac Pro or
iMac to the mall for repairs instead of just popping in a new video card or
drive also sucks.

Developers can get two performance PCs for the price of one Mac Pro. Usually
you can get more power out of both as well since Mac Pros from 2011 on were
1-2 years behind. There is no getting back pro users such as devs/game devs
that had switched over and have now gone back to Windows/PC.

~~~
stiGGG
>caused them to move on, so did the pro users and developers

Wasn't there a statistic from github recently, that 75% of the PRs created in
2017, were done from Macs? They are bigger in the market for devs then ever
before, the thing is, that the majority of this peer group is totally fine
with a MBP. I see this whole new MacPro story more as a marketing campaign,
the driving factor behind this is not the demand from the market, it's only
for their long-term reputation.

~~~
drawkbox
Yeah Apple still owns the laptop market but even their latest Macbook Pro
wasn't really, more mainstream. Mac is still a better development environment
because it is nix based for most things webdev related and iOS appdev mobile
related.

At far as desktops though, even creative/advertising agencies are moving to PC
for 3d, photography, graphic design, audio production, video production and
more. These were always the target market of Apple but they lost many.

Apple iPhone lost ground to Android and laptops may also do so starting with
development. I see many devs that went from Mac to PC desktop go from Macbook
Pros to Surface Pros but that is just starting. Eventually it could also start
switching people from iPhone to Android/Samsung/Google hardware as well as the
hardware has caught up.

Apple being a hardware company, it is strange they did not take more advantage
of the desktop inroads they were making in 2006+ with Intel and iOS
development.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> At far as desktops though, even creative/advertising agencies are moving to
> PC for photography, graphic design, audio production, video production and
> more. These were always the target market of Apple but they lost many.

I don't think this is really true, all the creative agencies I'm aware of are
still firmly mac shops. Do you have a citation or anecdotes to back up your
assertion?

~~~
drawkbox
Most of them are still pretty Mac heavy, I said 'moving to PC'. The agencies I
work with and worked at have begun to purchase more and more PCs over Macs.

Adobe Creative Cloud apps tend to work better on PC now so this is a big
reason.

The areas I mentioned (video, photography, audio, gamedev, 3d etc) are moving
to hefty PC machines that need 64GB/128GB/256GB+ of ram, latest GPUs, many
drives and many cores (16-40+)[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], no iMac can do that
and Mac Pros have left the building. Many of the PCs are cheaper and more
powerful as well, custom built ones especially. Many web developers or graphic
designers still on iMacs, but the other areas on PC.

Basically, anyone that needed a Mac Pro, where an iMac or Macbook Pro was not
enough, has probably switched/back to PC. You'll see most people do this
around 2013-2014 when the Mac Pro was un-cheese grated and put in a jet
engine/trashcan, looks cool but too expensive and not for hands-on pros or
expanded easily.

One video/photography/3d guy I know is running 40+ core/thread machines 256GB
RAM, hard for Mac Pros to compete with that[9][10].

[1] [https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/the-digital-artists-
guid...](https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/the-digital-artists-guide-to-
switching-from-mac-to-windows)

[2] [https://www.slrlounge.com/apple-is-dead-to-me-trey-
ratcliff-...](https://www.slrlounge.com/apple-is-dead-to-me-trey-ratcliff-mac-
vs-pc/)

[3] [https://www.stuckincustoms.com/2017/02/10/switching-from-
mac...](https://www.stuckincustoms.com/2017/02/10/switching-from-mac-to-
windows/)

[4] [https://petapixel.com/2016/12/03/im-leaving-apple-
microsoft-...](https://petapixel.com/2016/12/03/im-leaving-apple-microsoft-
switching-photographer/)

[5] [https://petapixel.com/2017/07/18/5-reasons-pick-pc-
macbook-2...](https://petapixel.com/2017/07/18/5-reasons-pick-pc-
macbook-2017-photo-video-editing/)

[6]
[http://philipbloom.net/blog/makingtheswitch/](http://philipbloom.net/blog/makingtheswitch/)

[7] [https://uxdesign.cc/designers-workflow-on-
windows-57393856ae...](https://uxdesign.cc/designers-workflow-on-
windows-57393856ae59)

[8] [https://medium.com/charged-tech/why-i-left-mac-for-
windows-a...](https://medium.com/charged-tech/why-i-left-mac-for-windows-
apple-has-given-up-b48c0eaac64)

[9] [https://www.techspot.com/review/1218-affordable-40-thread-
xe...](https://www.techspot.com/review/1218-affordable-40-thread-xeon-monster-
pc/)

[10] [http://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-X399-Dual-Intel-
Xeon-E5-...](http://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-X399-Dual-Intel-
Xeon-E5-v4-Broadwell-EP-Wo-p/x399.htm)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Thank you, that makes sense. I haven't seen any Mac Pros or iMac Pros yet, so
I guess I haven't been exposed to that end of the segment yet.

------
tibbon
I switched to Apple product in 2002, because at the time they were absolutely
better than Windows 2000 for my needs (mostly Protools, and eventually Logic
7). Windows at the time was a mess and poorly supported most pro hardware and
vendors (specifically Avid) were slow to support releases.

It really felt like the best platform. I had a nice G4 tower, and eventually
used a G5 and then Mac Pro tower. Things generally just worked, and you could
expand things as needed.

Roll around to today, and it's a mess. Apple canceled a lot of their pro
products. Aperture? Dead. Final Cut got nerfed pretty hard. Logic is still
reasonably well maintained, but Ableton Live took over a lot for me.

The hardware options aren't that great right now for my needs. Last week, I
sold my 2011 Macbook Pro to a friend and switched all my audio stuff to my old
Windows gaming system. Picked up a Firewire PCI-E card for $20 and I was in
business. It's fast, has a ton of ram and is easily expandable. Windows 10
drives me nuts, but eh...

I've still got three Macbook Pros for software development, and they are
pretty great for that (minus the new keyboard, and that Tensorflow GPU has
dropped OS X support). I don't think I'll be switching laptops anytime soon.
But ugh, audio work on them just feels like an overpriced joke at this point.

I really never thought I'd be saying it, but for photography and audio stuff,
Windows seems to be the place right now!

~~~
cthalupa
As someone who uses a MBP as a daily driver laptop: Windows has been a better
platform for a lot of the photography software for over a decade. Photoshop
and Lightroom just work a ton better on Windows and have since right before
the CS days.

But the native terminal, etc, has won me over as a *Nix person for a long
time. I don't like Linux desktop interfaces at all, and the new Windows
linux/bash stuff hasn't been compelling or integrated enough for me to want to
switch (ConEmu and all of the terminal stuff being garbage is a big issue).
I'll be sticking with a MBP and OSX for my laptop and work related stuff, but
I don't understand why anyone would still be using OSX for a photography
workflow. It's just so much more polished on Windows.

~~~
wyoung2
> Lightroom just work[s] a ton better on Windows

That’s not my experience, at least with Classic.

Mine is a Mac house. My parents, though, are long-time Windows users; I only
managed to get my parents to run a single iMac, which they gave away as soon
as they could financially justify it.

I tell you that because that is where my cross-platform Lightroom experience
comes from: almost all Mac, with occasional mentoring/support sessions under
Windows at the parents’ house. With Lightroom on Windows, I’ve repeatedly
observed:

1\. Windows’ brain-dead default-mandatory file locking prevents perfectly
reasonable operations, simply because Lightroom is busy working with one or
more files in the background. Advisory locking as is default on POSIX type
systems allows many things that Windows refuses to allow by default. (E.g.
Rename a parent folder while a file in that folder is open for writing. Who
cares, the FD is still valid!)

2\. Lightroom can take a long time to shut down when it gets busy, as it too-
frequently does. On the Mac, the app icon remains marked “running” while
Lightroom grinds away, trying to figure out how to shut down, but on Windows,
the app icon disappears from the task bar almost immediately, but
Lightroom.exe remains running in the background, so that it is not obvious why
reopening the program fails for minutes at a time.

(And why reopen? Because relaunching Lightroom often solves slowdown problems,
and has for years upon years, which is a separate rant.)

3\. Some plugins simply won’t run on Windows, at least not without dragging
along a bunch of compatibility junk. Anything that depends on ExifTool, for
example, requires dragging over a whole Perl environment just to run the
plugin. If you have multiple plugins dependent on ExifTool, as I do, each one
usually comes with its own Perl environment. Compare macOS, where at worst you
have the CPAN module alone, and at best, it might simply require that you
install ExifTool separately, that being a reasonable user requirement on an OS
like macOS.

If your comment was referring to GPU acceleration and such, Adobe’s recent
focus on that isn’t helping me anyway. Almost all of my problems with
Lightroom’s speed are in the Library module, not the Develop module, where GPU
acceleration doesn’t help much anyway.

------
kbd
Please excuse the venting here for a minute.

After "can't innovate anymore my ass" Apple released their architectural dead-
end trashcan Mac Pro in _2013_ we have to wait until _2019_ for an update?
What am I supposed to buy? I'm certainly not going to buy anything with a
Touch Bar. It's 2018 and I had my job order me the 2015 Macbook Pro for my
work computer so I could skip the Touch Bar and still have USB ports.

What's going on at Apple?

~~~
CydeWeys
Don't forget the keyboard on the new Macs, which is the other big reason not
to get them (besides ports and touch bar).

~~~
JonLim
I really wish I could get the 2015 MacBook Pro with USB-C ports and Touchbar
MBP size.

As painful as it was to have to buy dongles and whatever else, having monitors
+ USB docks using USB-C has been pretty pleasant.

------
jnwatson
I hate to admit this, but Apple should sell off its Mac division. They are
simply not hungry enough.

For the first time in 33 years, I no longer have access to a Mac. Apple
doesn’t sell one that my employers nor myself want to buy.

That it has taken so long to course correct would have sunk most companies. It
is probably a couple percent hit on Apple revenue at most.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Wow, yes they've definitely lost their "eye of the tiger," haha.

Doubt there is a Lenovo waiting in the wings, nor would they allow it, a
shame.

------
jphoward
I wonder who the target market is, though? The iMac Pro can cost £5000, so I
assume more performance and hence price than that? The only users who I can
imagine willing to justify paying such a premium are those who feel they
_must_ remain at the cutting edge of performance and are willing to pay for
it, but surely they will have left the Apple ecosystem by then?

It's as if Apple are saying "we're making a computer for people who demand
peak performance, but are willing to use cheap outdated hardware until we get
round to it."

~~~
andrei_says_
I think this is where Hackintosh comes in. You can buy top of the line, macOS-
compatible hardware for 1/3 of the Apple premium.

It takes effort to set up, but not that much.

~~~
ovao
I simply cannot imagine running something like that in a professional context.
For me, "maybe this next update will install correctly" is a non-starter.

For consumers who just _really_ want to run macOS, I can see the appeal.

~~~
jackhack
I agree, in an educational institution or large corporation, no way. But in a
small shop that lives and dies on productivity, where one can't (won't?)
migrate away from MacOS, a Hackintosh may be the only option available.

It's the market filling in the gaps of Apple's engineering & marketing plan.

~~~
saagarjha
> in a small shop that lives and dies on productivity

A computer that takes a bunch of fiddling to set up and might not work if
updated doesn't seem like a productivity booster to me.

~~~
walterbell
IT does the fiddling. Creators gain performance and productivity.

~~~
saagarjha
You're a small shop. Do you even have the funds for IT, or is it just one of
the hats that your main system admin or reliability engineer puts on?

~~~
walterbell
That depends how much your creators' time is worth, i.e. the return on
increased performance.

If Hackintoshes have motivated Apple to release a new Mac Pro after a multi-
year gap, then Apple-only shops will benefit from the Hackintosh investments
of other shops.

~~~
saagarjha
Yes, that's my point. How much money are you saving? Maybe a couple thousand
dollars? Balance this with the time you'd need to spend on setting this up and
getting it to work right–a couple days, a week? It's not obvious that this
would always work out, especially so if you don't have in-house IT and would
either have to get a creator to learn how to do something like this or hire
someone that does.

~~~
walterbell
Right, so those people keep using Apple and wait N years for a new computer.

Other people use a Hackintosh and help to define requirements for Apple's next
computer.

Apple gets free R&D. Those who need performance get it. Everyone eventualy
gets the benefits in the next computer.

------
GiorgioG
From 2007 to 2016 I was all-in on OS X / MacBook Pros / iMacs for work
(software dev.) Since then I've gone back to a Dell XPS 15 and a custom-built
AMD Threadripper machine. As much as I like the Mac hardware, I could no
longer justify the cost. The XPS is a nice machine and (no touchbar - it's a
feature) and my custom-PC is a monster. Windows 10 with all its warts is
plenty serviceable especially now with it's Linux Subsystem (primarily because
I prefer to use bash as my shell.)

I guess I'm no longer part of their target market for their computer systems.

~~~
asciimo
> Linux Subsystem

Wat.I just went googling after reading this comment and at first glance, it
looks like this is an officially supported method to run GNU apps in a Windows
terminal? Can you boot directly into Ubuntu desktop without messing with BIOS
and UEFI?

~~~
cthalupa
>Wat.I just went googling after reading this comment and at first glance, it
looks like this is an officially supported method to run GNU apps in a Windows
terminal?

It's hardly limited to GNU apps. Most of your Linux applications should work
fine on it. I've had no problem with all sorts of non-GNU releases when I use
it on my desktop.

>Can you boot directly into Ubuntu desktop without messing with BIOS and UEFI?

No, it is a Linux userland on top of the NT kernel with an emulation layer
written to handle all of the syscalls.

It works well. The only really glaring issue is ConEmu and related Windows
terminal ecosystem is still hot garbage compared to any Linux or OSX terminal.

~~~
wyoung2
> The only really glaring issue is ConEmu and related Windows terminal
> ecosystem is still hot garbage compared to any Linux or OSX terminal.

...and that bites you in a surprising number of ways.

I recently tried porting some software that runs just fine under Ubuntu-on-x86
to Ubuntu-on-WSL, and I found _three different failure modes_ in the
console/pty mechanism before I gave up. I then tried running it under Cygwin
and it ran correctly out of the box.

Perhaps the easiest way to see this is to try to run a program like GNU screen
under WSL, but the core problem isn’t any specific application. Any program
that does anything even moderately tricky with ptys is likely to fail under
WSL.

------
saagarjha
Reading this article was really annoying. First, there were grammatical issues
like these, which may have been intentional, but made understanding the
article difficult:

> I saw a bunch of them walking by in Apple park toting kit for an outdoor
> shoot on premises while walking

> Is it the OS is it in the drivers is it in the application is it in the
> silicon and then run it to ground to get it fixed.

Then, I clicked over my Hacker News tab and when I went back, the content was
replaced by another page (!). Apparently it was changed via JavaScript when I
reached the bottom of the page. This is stupid and user-hostile.

~~~
ng-user
I agree.

When scrolling to the bottom of the article the last thing I expected was the
entire content of said article to be replaced by headlines of other stories
from TC.

Viewing the article in portrait mode on desktop displays the main contents on
the left 50% and complete whitespace on the right 50%.

Overall the TC redesign is god-awful and has degraded usability substantially.

------
thirdsun
I think Apple is needlessly re-inventing the wheel here. While their intent to
analyze real world usage and optimize every detail by bringing in actual pro
users is admirable, I‘d prefer them to use a simpler, more streamlined
approach and have them release standard, state of the art hardware in a
tasteful, quiet case and continuesly work on optimizations on the software
side - a process that is required anyway and not exclusive to the Mac Pro,
which makes me wonder why it should dictate the Mac Pro roadmap and schedule
in such a significant way.

Furthermore it‘s concerning that the article mentions modularity mostly in
ways that involve external hardware and peripherals. If that turns out to be
the approach Apple is considering, it sounds worryingly similar to an iMac Pro
without the fanatastic display.

------
osteele
“And then we take this information where we find it and we go into our
architecture team and our performance architects and really drill down and
figure out where is the bottleneck. Is it the OS is it in the drivers is it in
the application is it in the silicon and then run it to ground to get it
fixed.”

This approach is reminiscent of Apple's approach to low-latency touch
scrolling on the original iPhone; to Quicktime and MIDI a decade and a half
before that; and, more recently, to the Apple Pencil.

I knew executives at Palm who were frustrated by the challenges that both the
tech stack and the organizational structure (Conway's Law) posed in the
(failed) effort to reduce touch latency to where it felt physical. I know that
it took Android many years to reach the point where objective observers
described it as equally “buttery”. IMO this full-stack integration and
optimization is one of Apple's core competences. It will be interesting to see
what it leads to this time. The effort may be too _late_ , but if the past
predicts the future, it will not be too _little_ too late.

------
whywhywhywhy
I waited and waited and waited. I liked the design of the Trashcan but by the
time I could afford one it was woefully out of date and I needed Nvidia GPUs
for the rendering engine I wanted to use.

In the end I moved my creative work over to PC and currently run a nice
compact mATX PC built for GPU computing with two 1080Tis. Still cost me less
than half the eventual iMac Pro and presumably this Mac Pro.

If this had been released a few years back maybe I'd never have moved to PC
but at this stage they'll have to be still supporting the new Mac Pro in 3
years before I even consider moving back at this point.

Been a Mac only user for 15 years now, I didn't move away lightly, but now
I've switched it'll be hard to convince me back.

~~~
wuliwong
I wonder at what scale has this occurred? Has video editing industry moved
away from Apple computers in a substantial way?

They have managed to keep the music recording industry; a new macbook pro or
imac is plenty powerful enough to be the heart of a recording studio.

~~~
ladzoppelin
Many people in the pro audio world have moved to Windows over the last 5
years. Apogee, who I think Apple paid to only support OsX at one time, now
makes Windows drivers and officially supports both platforms. MOTU has been
cross platform since like 2006. Logic is really the only audio product that
does not support Windows but only because Apple killed the pc version in like
2004. Logic pc was amazing and might even still run on Windows 10.

~~~
wwweston
The main reason I'm not using Logic right now on my MBP is that it doesn't run
on other platforms, and Apple's behavior over the last half-decade has
convinced me that after almost two decades of _knowing_ their platforms were
the right choice for me, I can't trust their judgment when it comes to
disruptive or dealbreaking changes to both hardware and software.

------
krylon
I do not need a Mac Pro, nor could I afford one if I wanted to (I _do_ own
one, though, albeit it is 11 years old, I got it preowned from a friend).

But I wonder what the hell the people at Apple were thinking when they put put
the "trashcan"-design. It looks awesome, I cannot deny it, and I imagine it is
very convenient to handle.

But something deep inside of me cringes when a computer in this price class
has everything soldered on and has no real option to extend it. You cannot
upgrade the CPU, the RAM, the GPU, nor can you install any additional PCIe
cards.

~~~
timc3
It wasnt that convenient when you wanted to put stuff inside it or rack it.
Hence the thirdparty rack chassis market.

~~~
krylon
When I said "convenient to handle", I was thinking, small enough to sit on top
of my desk, lightweight enough so I can carry it without breaking a sweat (the
cheesegrater is really heavy!), that sort of thing.

------
alkonaut
I just hope they don’t break _any_ new ground with it. Zero. Just make a big
tower that does excactly what a HP workstation tower would do, and match the
price. No need for _any_ Apple magic of any kind here. Don’t make a trash can,
don’t make a touch bar.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
That makes zero sense from a business perspective.

"I know, let's put out a boring commodity product that has no unique selling
points, doesn't match our ethos, and has a tiny niche market. And we'll sell
it at the same razor-thin margin that everyone else does!"

That couldn't be further from Apple's way of doing business.

If you want a cheap commodity tower, just buy one, but don't expect Apple to
make one for you.

~~~
alkonaut
Apples uniqueness here is their OS and the applications that run on it. That’s
why people would buy a Mac over an HP. Only that. If they want pros to keep
using Mac OS for video etc, then they need to have competitive hardware.

Apples other concern is the developer side and the app ecosystem: high end
build machines and developer workstations are also relevant for their _actual_
business which is selling apps and phones.

Computer hardware for professionals is just a boring service Apple needs to
provide in order to support the rest of their business. It’s not even a
visible product like a MacBook or an iMac- it’s designed to be hidden on the
floor because it’s huge and noisy (the trash can was a failed attempt at
working around that fact)

Edit: to follow up on the “powerful machines are a boring service” idea: If
Apple didn’t want to risk the brand damage of launching a boring product, they
could simply license dell or hp to sell certain servers and workstations with
Mac OS to let the highest end render machines and build servers etc run Mac
OS. They could easily charge a 20% premium and people would be happy to buy
them.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_" Apples uniqueness here is their OS and the applications that run on it."_

I really think you're wrong. Even a lot of people who run Windows or Linux
prefer Apple hardware.

~~~
alkonaut
I should clarify that I mean on high end workstations and compute/build
servers now. Machines that no one sees or touches, and are only required
_because_ you are already in the Apple ecosystem, and need to do e.g. builds
using xcode, or video rendering using some OS X software.

Apple make excellent laptops, phones etc. but those are products in a
completely different category.

I think lots of people use macs to run linux (especially developers). The
number of people that run Windows exclusively on Mac is probably pretty small
though.

------
specialp
Apple already lost the Mac Pro market when they made Final Cut Pro X, and
stopped regularly releasing Mac Pros. They completely disregarded the
professional market by killing functionality that was critical to the users.
That combined with the lack of powerful hardware made a lot of the
professionals go to PC and Avid. They addressed some of the issues in future
releases but it was too late.

Creators were pretty much the only people keeping Apple alive in the tough
years and they abandoned them.

------
torstenvl
So now, two questions:

\- Will the Mac Pro actually be Pro?

\- Will they ever bring back a Pro computer in a notebook form factor?

~~~
rsynnott
What's non-'Pro' about the current 15" MBP that was 'Pro' about the previous
design? They're practically the same.

If you mean no SD card reader etc, it's my understanding that pro
photographers tended to use a USB3/thunderbolt reader anyway, as the
integrated reader was connected over USB2 internally and was far too slow for
pro use.

~~~
BuildTheRobots
My 9 year old toshiba has a pci based SD card reader. The possibility for it
to be internal and also offer reasonable speeds is not beyond the pale.

Some of the top end cameras use both CF and SD, so sure, it doesn't cater for
everyone, but SD has become so ubiquitous it seems odd it's missing.

~~~
rsynnott
Sure, it's definitely possible to have a fast SD card reader in a Mac laptop,
but no Mac laptop, even ones with Pro in the name, ever actually did.

(I'm actually not sure what the reason for this was; iMac SD card readers were
PCIe).

------
makecheck
This process is a mistake for two reasons.

The first is time. If they were ready to release a simple, expandable, better-
everything box a few months from now, _every single person who’s been chomping
at the bit for a new pro Mac would buy it immediately_. That would fix their
market, gain them goodwill and give them plenty of time to explore what all
these amazing professionals actually want to do, _later_.

Second, this just doesn’t seem like the hardest list of requirements to guess.
Heck, there are practically no constraints, not even price! It doesn’t have to
be thin, it can guzzle power, they don’t have to compromise on any ports (put
4 of everything you can think of in, old and new). Theoretically they could
build a slightly better box with some analysis but literally _no one_ is
asking for that gargantuan task to be done yet, at least not before 2022.

------
ericd
If they just make an expandable ATX/cheese grater style case with generous
cooling and allow top Nvidia GPUs, I will pay a large premium for this.
Ideally there would be the option for high end consumer gear (i7/i9, vanilla
RAM) in addition to the Xeons/ECC/FBDIMMs that get so expensive so quickly,
but two tiers with different architectures is probably too much to hope for.

------
endymi0n
Still hoping for a professional MacBOOK, but Apple doesn't ever listen to
their pro customers or do they?

~~~
BoorishBears
? Isn’t that a MacBook Pro?

~~~
torstenvl
You mean the one without a real keyboard or the one with only one port while
plugged in?

~~~
BoorishBears
I disliked my new MBP at first honestly it’s not that bad if you can bring the
rest of your hardware up to speed.

My monitor does video, charging, and USB 3 with full size ports with one
cable.

And the keyboard is subjective, I got used to it pretty easily. I actually
feel like it’s more tactile than the old one

~~~
nieksand
"it’s not that bad"

That is not the most ringing endorsement for a very expensive and supposedly
premium laptop.

------
namelost
I wish Apple would just make their own ATX case (or any other standard *TX
form factor), their own ATX motherboard with their TPM on it, and then use
commodity components for everything else. I'd pay a huge premium for that
product, but Apple is so far up their own ass trying to imitate themselves
they can't see what their customers really need.

~~~
pjmlp
They tried that in the past.

It was one of the first things Jobs "fixed".

~~~
namelost
If you mean the clones, that's not exactly what I'm suggesting. I want Apple
to continue building computers, but to use industry standard form factors, and
to use as many commodity components as possible.

They could get such a product out faster than 2019 and it would be better than
whatever they will end up announcing. Instead we have to wait a year for Apple
to figure out how to make a computer that is 'pretty' and 'innovative' enough
_for Apple_ , even when their professional customers don't give a toss how
pretty or innovative it is.

~~~
jonhendry18
Or at least _one_ computer in the lineup like this.

------
jnsaff2
What I read from the article is that Apple is working on finding a few
workflows and optimising the hell out of those instead of like creating an
awesome general purpose computer for which only users imagination is the
limitation.

Which obviously is a very Appley thing to do.

------
rch
It sounds like the next Mac Pro still won't handle ML workloads in a
meaningful way, but it will have a keyboard with a touchbar that works with
Garage Band. Pass.

~~~
saagarjha
You might get external GPU support if you're trying to do ML.

~~~
rch
Then I'll stick with a laptop. Probably my first non-MPB in over a decade.

------
prepend
I bet it’s going to be a sphere on a stick. Like the original LEGO Death Star
II. But if it had been completed all the way around.

[https://i2.wp.com/www.yuppiegadgets.com/wp-
content/uploads/2...](https://i2.wp.com/www.yuppiegadgets.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/Lego-Death-Star-II-10143-1.jpg?fit=500%2C450&ssl=1)

~~~
majewsky
What about the existing trashcan design, but instead of plugging in a monitor
and mouse and keyboard, the trashcan's surface is just one single touch
screen? That's much more user-friendly, you don't have to mess with cables at
all anymore.

~~~
prepend
Good point on user friendly. But I don’t think that’s really what they’re
going for.

Sphere on a stick would be cool to mount on a walk so it looks cool and then
have wireless video (or video through the stem) so you just remote into it
from your local network from tablets or light notebooks as terminals.

------
strictnein
I'm honestly confused by what Apple is doing here. Maybe it makes sense to
refine their software, but they're bringing in content creators to study their
workflow to inform their hardware design? What?

~~~
macintux
Some hardware questions I'd think working with content creators could help
with (disclaimer: not a hardware guy)...

Are external GPUs fast enough? What internal architecture do they need to make
them so?

How much L1/L2/Ln memory do they need for serious workflows?

Is Thunderbolt <whatever> fast enough?

How well do professional apps really scale with multiple CPUs? Benchmarks are
one thing, seeing people use the software in production is something else.

Anyway, just random speculation.

------
nottorp
So they're optimizing for video/photo work. What about the rest of the "pro"
users? They've given up on them?

~~~
jonhendry18
Yes, what about developers, scientists, etc.

------
electricslpnsld
> We’ve been focusing on visual effects

Are any visual effects or animation shops still on macOS? I was under the
impression that this world was mainly Linux (Pixar, Disney, Weta, ILM, etc,
are all on Linux).

~~~
jjeaff
The major studios are still using Maya, Photoshop, and other commercial
software that doesn't work on Linux. They are using Linux for render farms and
some custom software.

~~~
electricslpnsld
> The major studios are still using Maya, Photoshop, and other commercial
> software that doesn't work on Linux.

Maya/Houdini/Modo/etc run on Linux (this is what Weta, Disney, and Pixar do).
Creative Cloud definitely does not, which is a bit of a problem.

~~~
jjeaff
Are you sure?

This page seems to indicate that Maya is not compatible with Linux.

[https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/troubleshooting/...](https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Operating-
system-compatibility-for-Autodesk-Maya.html)

~~~
electricslpnsld
Positive — I used to develop Maya plugins on Linux. That page is perplexing!

~~~
jjeaff
Oh, upon closer reading, that page just says it doesn't work on 32 bit linux.
Why they are even including that is beyond me. Who is working on Maya with a
32 bit system?

------
humbleMouse
Just make it a cool looking square and shove tons of hardware in it. The whole
circle thing is such a bad design.

~~~
peatmoss
NeXT.

Though the big aluminum desktops they made years ago were probably a high
point for balance of beautiful and functional.

~~~
danieldk
_Though the big aluminum desktops they made years ago were probably a high
point for balance of beautiful and functional._

This. I think existing and potential future Mac Pro users would be perfectly
happy with a cheese gater that has 2018 innards (ok, they could make it Space
Gray).

When it comes to Pro hardware, I think that Apple has lost the balance between
aesthetics and functionality. The trash can Mac Pro is a good example of this
- it's beautiful, overheating all the time and not extensible. So is the new
MacBook lineup, they are beautiful. But really? 1 USB-C port on the MacBook
12" and 2 USB-C ports on the MacBook Pro Escape? I don't know of any MacBook
12"/Pro user who doesn't dislike the port selection.

~~~
schraeds
Don't know where you bought your laptop, but my MacBook Pro has 4 USB-C ports.

------
yolobey
I think I'll be out of the Mac ecosystem soon. The writing is on the wall. I
still don't like any Linux DE and I hate the eternal config hell I end up in,
but the effort to have a functional Mac is starting to catch up to it.

I'm still using a 2015 MBP and a Hackintosh desktop (Old Intel 3770k + Titan
Xp) but this year was the first time after the 2006 release of the MBP that I
bought a non-Apple notebook... I needed something to replace my 11" MacBook
Air that I use for travel, and the new keyboards just aren't usable for me.
Bought a Thinkpad X1C6... Great machine except a few baffling design
decisions, and appears to be borderline impossible to Hackintosh for now - but
the keyboard is my tool of the trade. I need a good one.

------
tptacek
This is a lot of copy for some pretty simple updates:

* 2019 release data

* Modular architecture

* Probably a heavy bet on eGPU and TB3

* iDevices as additional inputs

~~~
pvg
_Probably a heavy bet on eGPU and TB3_

I'm not sure that's really about the Mac Pro itself - the article doesn't say
that.

~~~
tptacek
I got the impression it was about the Mac Pro, but you're right, it doesn't
say that, and it's kind of hard to tell.

------
chris_wot
If Apple say they want to look at workflows, and winkle out bugs, then I've
got a good one - but incredibly specific to LibreOffice.

If they get the LibreOffice git repository, then run:

    
    
      make sw.all
    

eventually it will get to the unit tests and one of our exports kills the
display server. Only happens if you run it on a iMac Pro 4K screen running max
resolution.

We know it's something we are doing around graphics, but for the life of us we
can't work out what that is. But also: I would have thought killing the
display server like this should be something that shouldn't be possible...

~~~
majewsky
I'm making a guess that the explanation is going to be as hilarious as the
infamous "LibreOffice cannot print on Tuesdays" bug, which ended up being a
problem with file(1).

~~~
chris_wot
Almost certainly :-)

For anyone who wants to find out about the above-referenced bug, see:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8171956)

------
dmix
> He stresses that it’s not just Apple’s applications that they’re testing and
> working to help make better. Third-party relationships on this are very
> important to them and the workflow team is helping to fix their problems
> faster too.

This is great. Sounds a lot like Microsoft's recent change in culture away
from using Windows as their worldview lens for everything to seeing their work
as being platform agnostic (with non-Windows OS, mobile, IoT, watches, cars,
etc).

------
random3
While the article mentions a refresh of MacBook Pro, "Mac Pro" gets mentioned
36 times in the article while "MacBook Pro" is mentioned 8 times. I hope the
refresh will not be about completely removing the underpowered "no touch bar"
13" MacBook Pro and instead adding an on-par configuration without the touch-
bar-from-hell :/

------
vondur
Jeez, just freaking put new components/IO in the old MacPro tower. That would
make everyone happy and it could've been done years ago. This is ridiculous. I
still have a 2010 MacPro tower. Still runs Ok, but CPU and NVME storage leave
it really lacking.

------
kokey
I'm really glad to see that Apple is paying attention again to what have been
their long time core users. First with the new iPad for the education market
and now revealing strategies for creatives in design and audio.

------
crstinin
Wait a minute, wasn't it supposed to be 2018?

~~~
MBCook
They never said that, they only said it was not going to be in 2017. The
article says this was always their timeline.

If you believe that.

But they never said 2018 and I remember people being very skeptic le that 2018
would happen last year when they first announced they were working on a new
Mac Pro.

~~~
strictnein
Yeah, it was "not 2017" and now they're saying:

> We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so
> we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product

By "transparent and open" I guess they meant wait a year to tell people it's
going to be another year?

------
deltron3030
Will they enable workflows, or will they control workflows? That's what I'm
asking myself, especially in the light of ditching Intel one year later.
Controlling workflows would mean an iOS on steroids, or an appliance for pros.
Yeah you could get certain stuff done faster if you follow best practices, but
you might run into invisible walls.

------
qaq
I have 2009 flashed to 2010 with 64GB RAM and modern GPU and SSD and to be
honest I don't see a need to upgrade.

~~~
drawkbox
Apple is going to EOL Mac Pros to 2011 via the next OS and have done for many
of the older Mac Pros [1]. It is a shame because many can still run it just
fine. I have a 2012 I got in 2013 which is our last Mac Pro and I am not going
to be happy the day they do it.

[1] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201624)

~~~
overcast
My 2008 is running the very latest version of High Sierra without any issues.
It's a _very_ simple hack to make it work. So you can get more life out of it
easily.

------
Corrado
I think the new Mac Pro will be modeled after a stack of Mac Minis. Imagine
being able to add processors just by stacking them up. Need more storage? Add
a SAN module! Need a better GPU? Grab an NVIDA module! Hook them up with USB-C
and Thunderbolt 3 and you're good to go.

------
mistrial9
happily using Mac OSX 10.7 on three or four machines today, and avoiding for
years the variously awful MacOSX experiences of intrusive and superficial
"improvements"; I believe I am not alone in this point of view. Hefty hardware
is only part of the story here.

~~~
jaxondu
If you develop iOS app, Apple is forcing you to use at least Sierra 10.12 for
XCode 9 and the need to support iPhone X screen.

------
cJ0th
The big question is: Will it still come with an Intel cpu?

~~~
wlesieutre
If Apple switches to some other CPU architecture, the Mac Pro will be the very
last thing to change, assuming it does at all.

The processors they've developed for iPhones and iPads are getting into laptop
territory, but it's a big step from there to 2x 6-core Xeons.

------
pkamb
"Apple Performs Usability Testing"

------
stcredzero
Apple has had a long history of "innovation" which only has longevity in the
form of museum pieces.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G4)

------
ericzawo
I wonder if they'll force users to purchase dongles for their new desktop
machines, too.

------
redial
Let's not kid ourselves, 2019 means December 2019, so...2020.

------
kylehotchkiss
Yay, a Mac made to run JS development tools.

------
jdlyga
The Mac Pro is a great piece of hardware. I'm using one at work. I put linux
on it, and I use it for Qt development.

------
homulilly
Better late than never, I guess?

~~~
k_sze
Except if they are _too_ late.

Take a look at the new Dell XPS 15” 2-in-1, with Intel Core i7-8705G (with AMD
Radeon RX Vega M GH, 4GB of dedicated HMB2), e.g.

That thing ticks most checkboxes of a pro machine, except for the “is a Mac”
and “runs Mac-only software” ones.

And I imagine that an upgraded version will come out in 2019. Honestly, I find
both Windows 10 Pro and Ubuntu very usable nowadays. I don’t really find much
reason to stick with a Mac anymore.

~~~
zokier
> That thing ticks most checkboxes of a pro machine

Except for little things like (workstation) Xeon CPU and pro graphics (Quadro
or whatever ATi is calling their FirePros these days).

If you want a actual pro system, check out Dells workstation line, e.g.
Precision 7520. Sure, its not light and pretty like a XPS, but you can load it
with fairly serious amount of stuff and as a cherry on top it comes with Linux
support out of the box.

Workstations are just a different class of computers.

~~~
zokier
Oh, and actual desktop workstations (which Mac Pro would be competing against)
are yet another class. I just had some fun at Dell website, and you can
configure a desktop system with dual Xeon Platinum (lol) 8180 CPUs. Those have
28 cores each. The memory configuration taps out at 12x32 GB. With 384 GB of
RAM and 112 HW threads, you might be able to even run Atom and Slack
simultaneously.

------
nkkollaw
I wonder what "pro" means to Apple anymore.

The Macbook Pro is unarguably _not_ pro. Maybe anything above $4,000..?

------
Lapsa
what on earth is "promunnication"?

~~~
saagarjha
Professional+communication?

------
m3kw9
ALL I need to know!

------
foobaw
It will still take a while to penetrate the gaming market. A $3000 desktop can
play most games at the highest settings right now including VR.

A $3000 mac would be lucky if the games even supported OSX.

~~~
saagarjha
Why do you you think Apple is trying to enter the gaming market?

