A Flood of Fawning Reviews For Apple's Latest 501
Like many other review sites, it seems that MacWorld can hardly find enough good things to say about the new Mac Pro, even while conceding it's probably not right for many users. 9to5 Mac has assembled a lot of the early reviews, including The Verge's, which has one of the coolest shots of its nifty design, which stacks up well against the old Pro's nifty design. The reviews mostly boil down to this: If you're in a field where you already make use of a high-end Mac for tasks like video editing, the newest one lives up to its hype.
Re:Will it blend? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a great value, in my opinion (Score:5, Informative)
- Only a single CPU, despite using the more expensive line of dual-CPU capable Xeon E5 processors (so you are paying for the added circuitry to handle dual procs without the corresponding benefit).
- Dual video cards, despite this not being a gaming system. Granted, some media editing applications can utilize multiple GPUs for computing - like Adobe Premiere Pro CC - but many cannot, and even ones that can don't necessarily get a doubling of performance from the second card.
- Only room inside for a single drive, so any serious storage has to be external (adding wires and cluttering up things, rather than saving space like this small form factor seems to be designed for).
- 64GB of RAM maximum, despite the CPU's ability to handle more.
- Upgrades overpriced... and this is coming from someone who works at a custom system builder, and we sometimes get dinged by folks for charging more than Newegg. Obviously things like labor, support, warranty, etc have to be factored into the parts costs, but Apple charges more than any other company I've seen for that 'value add' (this is not new news, though - just a continuation of what they have always done).
I've already had customers of mine asking for price and performance comparisons, and the good news? We always come out on top! I love PCs :)
Sheer ridiculous stupidity... (Score:5, Informative)
...coming from someone with a 2012 Mac Pro dual hex core.
I know it's been said before, but for God's sake people - paying Apple's RIDICULOUS prices for SSD, RAM, processors, is just insane.
I like OSX, and Apple's laptops are sometimes the best choice, but as a desktop or dev box? Last choice by a wide margin. I only had to buy one for very specific (unhappy about it) reason and hopefully will never need to buy one again.
Just an example of the obscene pricing from Apple, 24GB of RAM from Apple was going to cost me almost $2000 at the time. TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS. I bought better RAM, ending up with 26GB, with better performance and all the same trimmings (ECC et cetera), and it cost me $400.
I wonder if their SSDs are made out of solid gold as well... Oh, and good luck with upgrading your graphics card in a year.
Re: Video editing... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not a great value, in my opinion (Score:5, Informative)
This is a bit of a bummer, but I think they nonetheless went with the Xeons over the desktop-class Intel processors because of the support for ECC RAM.
Re: Video editing... (Score:3, Informative)
Equivalent video cards alone cost $1400 or so, so you most definitely cannot build an equivalent pc or half the price. Perhaps you could wind up cheaper, but not nearly by as much as you suggest.
Re: Sheer ridiculous stupidity... (Score:2, Informative)
32GB is $400.
64GB is $1200.
Re: Video editing... (Score:5, Informative)
I've just specced out a Dell, and the Dell is $1016 more expensive. Add to that, the Mac Pro only consumes 450w versus the Dell's 1500w, which in turn will save $1040/year in power.
While the others will probably come down in price in a few weeks to months, at this moment Apple does have the edge on price.
Now, when you compare to build-it-yourself, you are absolutely correct that Apple is more expensive, but so is everyone else too.
I can believe the pricing (though I had a hard time finding a Dell with equivalent specs - can you post the configuration here?), but I'm having a hard time believing that a Dell with equivalent hardware specs to the Mac Pro uses 3 times more power, since the underlying hardware is, well, equivalent.
Re:Advancing in what direction? (Score:1, Informative)
Rackable? It's a workstation not a server.
Internal expansion is the dirty past. Let it go. It's about as relevant electric drill attachments for sawing and sanding.
Total memory is the significant metric, not the number of slots it fits into. And that's 12/16 GB vs 6/12GB for the older versions.
Sockets? The old Mac Pro didn't have any ThunderBolt sockets. This one has 6 ThunderBolt 2 sockets (supporting up to 36 devices).
It also has 4 USB 3 sockets (vs 5 USB 2 sockets on the old model.) Which presumably is the straw you're clutching.
Your complaints are without merit.
Re:Not a great value, in my opinion (Score:3, Informative)
They could have gone with the cheaper Xeons. Not all the Xeons are dual-socket.
Re:Will it blend? (Score:1, Informative)
Re: Video editing... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to talk about power supplies... You are confusing the maximum available spec with the normal power draw of the system. I have an 800W power supply in my reasonably overpowered Wintel gaming box. It draws ~160W during normal use, up to 300W while gaming. Most people will be fine with a 450W power supply unless they add a whole bunch of extra hardware, especially hard drives. The other benefit you usually see with a higher-wattage power supply is that it's typically built with better power filtering and more efficient components, so you would save money with a more efficient power supply even though it is rated for higher maximum available power. It's not totally intuitive. The more you know!
Re: Video editing... (Score:5, Informative)
The Dell consumes 1500W, or it has a 1500W power supply? Those are not the same thing.
Mac Pro icon for OS X (Score:4, Informative)
How can I replace my OS X trashcan icon with a small Mac Pro?
http://jonathanhirz.com/macprotrash-icon/ [jonathanhirz.com]
Re:Sheer ridiculous stupidity... (Score:5, Informative)
Try again... Go price a PCI connected SSD that can do 1200MB/sec. There are several available from Intel, FusionIO, and others. You will find that they are more expensive than what apple is offering. A 1TB Intel is around $3500
Re:Advancing in what direction? (Score:4, Informative)
We can assume you don't do any pro video work (In the field or in the studio). In the new one you pull out your case, plug the single thunderbolt cable into the back and call it a day.. Several companies already make portable racks preconfigured with the thunderbolt cable and everything.
Re:3.5GHz quad core for $3000? Way overpriced. (Score:5, Informative)
You can get two D700's for $225? Please tell me where. the closest card I can find to that is a W9000 and the best price for 1 I have seen is $1300.
Re:Advancing in what direction? (Score:4, Informative)
That is talking about the OLD times when you could not get a laptop that could do field editing. Today you would be a fool to try and carry that with you for a field shot that needed editing, every crew I see uses laptops. I have not seen what the Verge article talks about in over 5 years now. You can carry your entire editing suite + storage + backup drives all in a backpack.
This is 2013 absolutely nobody drags a huge rack of gear on location anymore for field editing.
Also that pricing is misleading (Score:4, Informative)
Apple fans love to demand an "equal for equal" spec for comparisons, but that's silly. Party of the reason Macs often cost so much is you have to get a ton of shit you don't need. Ya, dual video cards cost a lot. Guess what? Next to nobody needs them. If you don't, they are wasted money. In a Dell, you just don't order one. With Apple? You get what you get and fuck you otherwise.
So they often lose out on pricing bigtime when you compare actual task needs. Like let's say I need a system with a fast CPU and reasonable bit of RAM. I want to run some Cadence (ok you can't do that on a Mac, but whatever). A fast quad core and 32-64GB of RAM. The Mac Pro is good there. However video needs are minimal, integrated graphics is fine, as is a $50 GPU. Oh, well there I'm screwed. While the dual GPUs won't hurt, they won't buy me anything either. So I'm paying for them and can't make use of them.
That is a problem, if money matters at least. You want to spend it on the useful things, and save it on the shit you don't need.