Curtains for the Mac Pro? (1 Viewer)

[Carlo_M]

Not to make you paranoid, but when I sold my 2006 MBP I ran a program I had back then (not sure I still have it and if I could find it I'm 99% sure it wouldn't run on my new MBP/Mountain Lion) that did DOD level erasing of HDs. I know I logged into my bank, credit card, work email/sites so I was super paranoid not to just do a clean install. The program wrote zeroes up to 42 times on all the hard disk but that would have taken days. I think I settled for one-pass, where it wrote zeroes on all sectors of the hard drive once, and then installed the OS fresh on top of it.

 

[DaveF]

Not to make....Sam Posten...paranoid?Too late! Apple's standard Disk Utility does secure erase.

 

[Sam Posten]

Ohhhh maybe we don't have to wait for November after all!
http://www.mactrast.com/2013/05/mac-pro-seeing-widespread-retail-stockouts-ahead-of-wwdc/
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/05/31/mac-pro-supplies-tightening-as-wwdc-approaches/

 

[Sam Posten]

If we don't see the updated Mac Pro next week you can bet this is the reason:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57587687-92/intels-thunderbolt-2-official-coming-later-this-year/

 

[Carlo_M]

Hate to use it again...

 

[Carlo_M]

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/05/apple-planning-something-really-different-for-new-mac-pro/

Not sure how I feel about some of the rumors...

 

[Ted Todorov]

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/05/apple-planning-something-really-different-for-new-mac-pro/

Not sure how I feel about some of the rumors...

I'm hoping they are false, but unfortunately they are most likely true. My absolute favorite thing about my current Mac Pro is the super easily swappable 4 disk drive bays. I have 14TB of disk space at the moment.

My experience with 3rd party HD enclosures has been abysmal -- my Drobo unable to recover from a drive failure was what pushed me to get a Mac Pro in the first place. If Apple sold their own Apple care covered Thunderbolt drive enclosure fine -- though I still would prefer one box instead of two.

 

[Carlo_M]

I'm kind of with you Ted. If external TB enclosures were just as fast, reliable, and affordable as internal solutions (they're crazy expensive) then I'd be fine with the rumored "lack of internal expansion". Also, that phrase confuses me as I consider graphics cards, especially multiple PCIe slots, as a form of internal expansion.

I don't mind if they shrank the form factor some and maybe went from four drive bays to three, but to eliminate them all would be…well I'd say it's a bad decision but Apple has a history of making lemonade out of lemons, so let's see what shakes out.

 

[Nelson Au]

Have you guys considered the possibilty that the new Pro Mac could be in the form factor of the iMac? Or perhaps going back a few years and it being like the clear cube, but now in metal. Minimalizing the desktop to a screen and keyboard and small CPU enclosure.

 

[Sam Posten]

Yeah that doesn't seem to make much sense to me at all Nelson. We are all hoping for a smaller form factor but I very much doubt they would go to a sealed system on the pro line. Stranger things have happened tho.

 

[Carlo_M]

I think it'd be a funny April Fools joke to show a new "Mac Pro" as just a bunch of Mac Minis duct-taped together.

Oh wait, they better not do that at WWDC

 

[Nelson Au]

No thoughts on the new thermal core cylindrical design? 12 cores! External expansion. Etc. I'm glad i waited. I'm sure this won't make everyone happy, but I'm glad it's real now and coming.

 

[Craig S]

Want!

 

[Dave Upton]

I really don't like this. Good luck to anyone who wants to buy a high end video card in the future. Now Apple has guaranteed that you'll need to purchase their OEM overpriced parts for any kind of modular upgrades. Meh...

 

[Sam Posten]

I really don't like this. Good luck to anyone who wants to buy a high end video card in the future. Now Apple has guaranteed that you'll need to purchase their OEM overpriced parts for any kind of modular upgrades. Meh...

True, perhaps. We don't know the price yet, but based on what I've seen I am guessing the base model will be $2999 with a modest Xeon CPU, two of the lower end Fires, 16gb RAM and 256GB flash. Cheaper than that and things start to get interesting.

What I want is a Mac Mini based on these design principles. =)

 

[Carlo_M]

Well price and performance ratio will play a huge part in whether I upgrade to this or just get an iMac.

 

[KeithAP]

Anandtech has some Mac Pro pictures. It appears to have only 4 memory slots and the graphics cards don't look like standard PCIe form factor cards.

It looks cool and I bet they sell a bunch of them but to me, it looks like another redesign for the sake of having a redesign rather than improving the function of the device.

-KeithP

 

[Carlo_M]

One thing just occurred to me. For the products I use (Logic Pro & Pro Tools for audio production, Adobe Premiere for video editing, and Photoshop/Lightroom for photo editing) the new Mac Pro will give me something the older Mac Pro (and even the iMac to some extent) can't: portability.

Especially important for music and photos. I have a friend's place where I play in a [don't laugh] garage band. Literally, his garage. This new form factor makes bringing my recording studio over to his place very easy. And he has a monitor over there already (though I'll have to get an adapter because I'm sure it's an older/non HDMI/non Thunderbolt display). For photography, I can now shoot my friends' important events, like weddings, etc. and bring the studio over and give an "instant gratification" set of photos and videos over to them.

And before you say "oh you could use your laptop for photo/movie/music" already, I say to you: when you are working on hundreds of 35MB RAW files, 24 bit/96 khz multitrack recordings, and 1080p video, the last thing you want to be doing on the go, on a laptop, is rendering/handling those file sizes on a Macbook Pro, unless you plan on buying the top of the line one every other year and having massive external storage solutions. At that point you're probably spending more on equipment than if you just bought the Mac Pro. And with all those external drives you'd need in addition to the Macbook Pro, you're probably not saving much in terms of portability either.

The more I think about it, the more I'm intrigued at the possibility of the Mac Pro providing something I didn't know I needed from my power workstation: portability.

 

[KeithAP]

Isn't the portability aspect of the design somewhat marred by the lack of internal storage? I suppose you could get a large enough SSD from Apple that you could keep some current projects completely internal and not rely on external devices but that could be rather expensive.

-Keith

 

[mattCR]

Isn't the portability aspect of the design somewhat marred by the lack of internal storage? I suppose you could get a large enough SSD from Apple that you could keep some current projects completely internal and not rely on external devices but that could be rather expensive.

-Keith

And remember those external devices will need their own power supplies, etc. It would be a neat idea if you could mount internal storage, but without it, 256gb or 512gb isn't enough to do much video work