
All New Mac Pro Available Starting Tomorrow - zdw
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/12/18All-New-Mac-Pro-Available-Starting-Tomorrow.html
======
nakedrobot2
I'm typing this on a windows PC with 192GB ram. 64GB RAM LIMIT? WHY OH WHY? it
is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks.

(repost from a similar thread earlier today)

The RAM limits on laptops are nearly understandable. But on a machine like
this, it seems like obvious greed on the part of Apple to give this machine a
maximum life span of 3-4 years.

edit: spelling

~~~
jawns
Just out of curiosity, what sort of serious tasks does one use 192GB of RAM
for? (I'm not implying that there aren't any; just want some examples.)

~~~
nakedrobot2
I guess the industries that benefit from "the more RAM the better, with no
limit" would be 3d rendering, video editing, simulations, and large-format
photography. I am doing the latter, joining together thousands or tens of
thousands of images into a single seamless photo. for example:

[http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-
photo/](http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/)

[http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills-
mori...](http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills-mori-tower/)

[http://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-
panorama/](http://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-panorama/)

[http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov-
library.html](http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov-library.html)

I am aware that in many applications, the GPU has taken over for some of the
"heavy lifting", but that is not true in all cases. Given there are basically
no real power or thermal considerations limiting the RAM for a computer like
this, I would really like to know if this 64GB limit is real, or if it is due
to what RAM modules are available on the market now. Is it a limit in the OS?
Will the Mac Pro be able to have 256GB RAM in the future, or not?

~~~
mildtrepidation
_it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks._

You present a few valid examples. But I can't see how that represents "many"
tasks; it's a very, very small subset of the fields in which people use
computers for work.

If there were _no_ hardware out there that supports the RAM requirements
you're talking about, that'd be a great area for development. But if you're
suggesting everything -- or even most things -- should support what to most of
us is an over-the-top amount of memory, perhaps your niche is not quite as
major as you think.

~~~
sn0v
I agree that it's a niche application, but imho it's one of the target
demographics of a 4k+ USD workstation. I'd like to know the reason
(software/hardware) behind the 64 GB limitation as well.

~~~
scottlinux
There are only four ram slots. The largest ECC stick available now are single
16GB sticks. Just not enough room for slots on the board, is my guess.

------
cones688
I still find it incredulous people accept these are enterpise/workstation/pro
machines:

\- No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities)

\- 64GB limit on RAM (as mentioned)

\- Single power supply

\- "Your Mac Pro comes with 90 days of complimentary telephone technical
support and a one-year limited warranty" My toaster comes with a better
warranty than that...

Compare this to the dell workstations of 3yrs of next day onsite & 24/7
support, 4 hard drives and dual power supplies...

~~~
seiji
_No ability to have more than one hard drive (No RAID possibilities)_

That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps.

 _Single power supply_

Workstation, not server.

 _Compare this to the dell workstations_

Large, noisy, ugly, inefficient uses of power?

~~~
cones688
> That's why it has six external storage ports each capable of pushing 20GBps.

Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an
external drive...

> Large, noisy, ugly

Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become
"Super-compact" and "beautiful"?!

I would agree on the noise, except no-one has actual heard these things
running in a realistic environment so there is currently no comparison.

~~~
huxley
> Is it just me or something gives me the creeps about running an OS off an
> external drive...

The parent was talking about having your assets on externals if you had high
storage requirements, the OS can live perfectly fine with any number of apps
on the SSD.

> Since when did the requirements of a workstation class Xeon desktop become
> "Super-compact" and "beautiful"?!

We weren't always so utilitarian, Silicon Graphics did gang-buster business
for a long time selling style and compactness in the workstation class. Yes,
SGI eventually crashed and burned, but Apple is in a far better position to
experiment with this, given that they have about $147 billion of cash on hand.

~~~
gaius
SGI crashed and burned _because_ they stopped making beautiful MIPS boxes and
tried to make ugly Windows PCs.

When the company imploded, the CEO who made that decision went to work for
Microsoft. I'm not even kidding...

------
nwh
I'm incredibly surprised there's no Retina Display to go with this.

Buy our $5000 desktop computer, it looks best on somebody else's display.

~~~
brianbreslin
doesn't apple sell a cinema display? or is the 27" not retina?

~~~
arrrg
No, it’s not, not really, at any rate. (The way Apple defines it, a retina
resolution is simply a resolution where individual pixels are not visible to
someone with normal sight at a typical working distance. I think it’s a quite
useful definition and I really want to use it outside the context of Apple
products. I want to steal this trademark from Apple by turning it into a
generic term. For example, at typical viewing distances 1080p TVs are retina
screens. That means going to 4k for TVs isn’t really worth it unless you plan
on getting a much bigger TV or sitting closer to your TV. But the following
text will focus more on the technical aspects of actually making retina happen
with OS X than this nifty definition of retina.)

Apple does quadrupling of the size of its UI (on their MacBooks and iOS
devices) when switching from non-retina to retina.

Consequently even 4k is not really enough if they want to replace their 27"
display. That 27" has a higher (physical and logical) resolution than 1080p
and quadrupling turns a 4k display merely into (about) a 1080p display when it
comes to its logical resolution.

You gain all that resolution but lose all that space. That’s in many ways an
icky tradeoff. Yeah, Apple has a hacky way that increases the logical
resolution, but it’s also an icky tradeoff. The UI is rendered at an higher
resolution (quadrupled in size and all) than the display can show and then
down sampled to display size – but that costs performance and also leads to
slight blurriness.

Both are not very big issues (the Mac Pro should have enough performance to
handle it and this is really more an issue on portable devices – but maybe you
can cause issues by connecting multiple 4k displays; the resolution of those
displays is so high that the slight blurriness is not very visible) but are
also not optimal.

OS X simply is not dynamically scalable. It’s quadrupling or nothing. And that
works very well, but it’s not as flexible as dynamic scaling.

Realistically Apple could go for a 4k 24" screen (where having merely about
1080p logical resolution would be acceptable) but I’m not sure if they want
to.

But going even higher than 4k? To 5120×2880 (that would replicate the logical
resolution of their current 27" at retina resolution)? I’m not sure whether
that’s realistic or even possible on that machine.

As can be seen on the 13" retina MacBook Pro, Apple is willing to make icky
tradeoffs in favour of less logical resolution (despite being their top of the
line 13" it has a lower logical resolution than the non-retina 13" MacBook
Air).

But it just seems that when it comes to the Mac Pro they currently don’t want
to play ball at all. It will be interesting to see how they handle this.

~~~
selectodude
>As can be seen on the 13" retina MacBook Pro, Apple is willing to make icky
tradeoffs in favour of less logical resolution (despite being their top of the
line 13" it has a lower logical resolution than the non-retina 13" MacBook
Air).

The 13" MacBook has always 1280x800, so it wasn't really a tradeoff. The Air
is the higher DPI version and has been all along.

~~~
arrrg
Well, yeah, but the 13" resolution has been an embarrassment for a long, long
time. It just made no sense, especially compared to the Air.

I think it’s a quite obvious tradeoff, Apple just decided on it early on so
it’s not as noticeable. (They must have known for quite some time that retina
screens were coming so they kept the 13" Pro at a level where they could
feasibly quadruple the pixels in the short run.)

That’s my little conspiracy theory for the day, and anyway, the logical
resolution of the 13" Pro is an embarrassment. That’s just how it is. It’s a
very real tradeoff (you get higher res for less logical resolution than is
usual at that size).

------
sergiotapia
Gorgeous, beautifully made - but god damn EXPENSIVE for the specs. Sheesh!
(disc: I own an iMac 27'' but will not be buying apple computers again)

~~~
mikeash
The breakdowns I've seen have the component cost much in line with the price
being charged.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, it's probably not bad value for money _if you need exactly one of the
combinations of components they offer, with nothing more and nothing less_.
Which basically means someone who needs an expensive Xeon workstation-class
CPU, dual AMD workstation class GPUs, and a fast SSD for the OS, but only
12-16GB of RAM and no RAID array or expansion cards.

If you want anything more or less than that, you'll end up overpaying or just
plain not being able to get it at all. For instance, it's overpriced if you
don't actually need two workstation GPUs, or if you need more RAM than the
standard amount, or if you don't actually need a Xeon CPU, or if you have
different storage requirements. Expansion cards? Pay through the nose for new
Thunderbolt replacements or forget it.

~~~
mikeash
I agree, and that makes complaints about lack of options completely
legitimate.

But that's a completely different complaint from saying it's overly expensive
for what's actually included. That's what was being said in the comment I
replied to.

"Too expensive for my needs" is not the same as "too expensive for what's
included".

------
dm2
Personally, I really enjoy just building my own computer.

It's very easy, much cheaper, and extremely fun.

For $3,000 (Mac Pro base price) you can build a beast of a computer.

$2,500 with a Nvidia Titan GPU [http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/454052-small-
quiet-fast-build...](http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/454052-small-quiet-fast-
building-modern-gaming-pc/)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XnU8MPjp1Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XnU8MPjp1Y)
(Tested - How To Build a Kick-Ass Gaming PC 2013)

~~~
e40
Agreed, but: I'm weary of Windows. I've run every version except Vista and 8
on my home machine. I've been a total fan of Windows. I'm just really weary of
using it. I use Cygwin for scripting, but some things are really hard to do
even in Cygwin. I'm seriously considering the new Pro, but I have issues
(can't RAID1 the OS drive, what are those external enclosures really like?
Noisy??) so I'm not sure.

Ironically, I probably would have definitely upgraded if they had not changed
the form factor, since I know I'd be able to do what I want.

~~~
dm2
You don't have to run Windows, there's always Linux. Why are you weary of
Windows?

I have used Windows 7 and 8 and use virtual machines with Debian for
development. You could probably even install an OSX virtual machine if you
wanted to.

Just keep your files organized and don't install every too much crap and it'll
run beautifully.

I keep my files so that I can easily format the computer and start over fresh
in a couple hours.

I also run a software firewall so that I can keep track of all connections in
and out of my computer. Microsoft Security Essentials is sufficient for most
Windows users for antivirus purposes, just be smart about what you install, or
if you want to install lots of stuff run it in a virtual machine. I use Oracle
VirtualBox, it's lightweight and fast.

~~~
e40
Lightroom and some other programs. LR runs on both Windows and Mac, so I'm
tied to these.

For why I'm weary, see Cygwin comments in OP. And, this[1] (while I don't run
Windows 8 at home, I do at work). Microsoft could have bought Cygwin before
Red Hat. They could have embraced the differences between UNIX and Windows and
made me love Windows as a better UNIX. PowerShell? No thanks. Even if I didn't
hate it, it's Windows only. Give me Bash.

Windows is an inferior OS. When I start a Cygwin Bash process, there is a non-
zero chance that I won't get some memory I need. The fix is to shutdown all
Cygwin processes and to rebase ALL of the dlls used by Cygwin to different
addresses. Seriously, true virtual memory has been around for what, more than
30 years? Still today you can run/load a device driver that puts crap in the
middle of every program's address space. How is this tolerated??

I have two CentOS boxes at home, where I do lots of my work. Every night they
are updated with the latest rpms to fix problems. I only have to reboot when I
install a new kernel. Windows, on the other hand, needs to reboot for almost
every single Windows Update.

These are the reasons I'm weary of using this shit OS.

[1] [http://envoy510.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/windows-8-worst-
win...](http://envoy510.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/windows-8-worst-windows-
ever/)

------
tomphoolery
What a strange time to release something...a week before Christmas, after
Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and after the "deadline" of December 15 by which
most retailers guarantee delivery before Christmas.

~~~
potatolicious
It's targeted as a work machine, which isn't really subject to seasonal
Thanksgiving/Xmas buying, not much at least. I'm guessing the demographic of
people dropping $3-6K on shiny Xeon-shaped garbage cans as Christmas gifts is
pretty small.

That said, I suspect they wanted to release this one earlier but hit some
speed bumps.

~~~
dworin
The business equivalent of Christmas gifts is "we have to use up the whole
budget by the end of the year or we'll get a smaller one next year."

------
gonzo
Lots of bitching/moaning below about the inability to get more than 64GB of
ram, etc.

My only gripe: no 10Gbps Ethernet.

------
MWil
still one of the greatest Mad TV sketches of all time
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnxvNJcx1U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnxvNJcx1U)

------
gunmetal
There's a legal agreement to even look at the images.

~~~
jmreid
It's the PR site, not the marketing site. The users of this site are folks
looking for images to put in newspapers and magazines.

