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The almost predictable death of the Mac Pro line?

It appears to be a possibility at least :-

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...of_mac_pro.html

Hardly surprising though.

I think I know one entire person who has one. I know tonnes with the laptops but the desktop versions are virtually non-existent. Why bother? I guess to run OSX. If Apple allowed the use of OSX on non-Apple hardware, not one of these things would sell. Not one.

What do they do though? They can't just abandon a desktop version entirely. I think they will refresh it but it would be stupid to drop it entirely.

how long is it gonna take a for new mac pro jesus

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz the desktop versions are virtually non-existent.

Not really. I wouldn't call the mac pros a consumer product, but every prepress department in the world is stocked with them and many professional designers use them for their home office. They aren't toys, and they're not a status symbol you can bring to your local trendy coffee shop.

relatively speaking, non existent but anyone successful in music has one or two. I have yet to walk into any studio, either home project or big studio that didn't have the unmistakable mac pro tower box. If you are running a PC , you have financial issues. I think they are going to lose much cachet by forcing pros to use PCs. IVe said it before but you once could say unequivocally that if you were to walk into any studio, they would be running a mac pro. That is branding power I don't understand why they would forfeit. Even to sell the cheap stuff. Sony was once miles ahead of everyone else yet the name still implies quality.

And that is just audio. Video will go the same route. They are going to kill their brand. Being known as the company professionals use is the kind of branding money can't buy at least not short term. They are throwing away over a decade of hard earned credibility.

Even just having them and not making a profit on the actual machines is worthwhile. Being able to say you are the best and the best use your stuff is just not something money can buy and while they had it a year ago, it doesn't seem to be that important to them.

Ya , they don't make money, but what prompted people to start getting macs. Ask anyone that knows nothing about audio or visuals what professionals use, they will say mac. How do they know ? Mac never made adds that pushed this concept.

Anyways, fuck mac. I will be switching to PC once they unveil their new turds.

Something else I was thinking as well, is that if they stop producing machines that studios will use then what's going to happen to Logic? I can't imagine people who buy iMacs and iPads are going to buy it in any great numbers so I suspect it's the nail in the coffin for that too.

What L4C said. Stopping production of the Mac Pro is like showing the big finger to the majority of media professionals (audio/video/online).

This is equivalent to stopping development on software such as Logic and Final Cut. These are used in lots of professional environments and are very much depend on raw performance (especially video-editing which is processing intensive, RAM intensive and requires a lot of HDD space). Mobile computers manufacturers still need to step up to be able to replace desktop computers fully.

I just think it's a nice rumour to keep the Applebrand in our heads for a little longer.

Edit: Seems Tehlord made had the same conclusion whilst I was writing my post .

its like poker. I honestly feel like they have their hand and we will find out. I hope they get all gay on Jobs and realize, hey , we are about the arts and not a money sucking corporate turd jobs hated. I'm sure shareholders would go along with that. Apple was always about thinking outside the box and that professional market is why they still exist.

Surely the film industry must have some sway on things. I mean isn't apple and pixar owned by the same people ? What ? you can't render your shit on our mac book anorexic ? Have you guys tried using that cloud thing we invested. its super cool. Garageband will be upgraded to basement studio, logic will become Adobe Soundbooth and despite all the bullshit, I still won't get a decent zombie killing game.

quote:

Originally posted by Looney4Clooney Anyways, fuck mac. I will be switching to PC once they unveil their new turds.

Got money troubles, have we?

I don't buy it - I reckon we'll see a new revision of the mac pros early next year.

The problem for apple is that they cost a lot to make, they sell a fraction of the unit numbers compared to their other lines and mac pros have a longer replacement life than than other products.

Most studios I know get at least 4-5 years out of a mac pro, whereas most people replace their laptops every 3-4 years.

The other issue is that the production environment (and I'm talking about design/video/music/printing/media/etc) has drastically changed, in the same way pro audio has - you now have people knocking out professional standard works on laptops and imacs.

For instance, one of my close buddies is head designer at Sketchers and they just use the large imacs, where in previous years they had to use mac pros. A big part of that is the increased processing power that is available in "consumer" grade products such as the imacs and macbooks.

10 years ago, having a studio capable of producing a professional sounding track all from your laptop was not viable, and now I know at least a dozen producers who just have a MBP, a good audio interface and a pair of headphones (albeit getting docked with studio monitors and outboard when the get back home).

Now having said this, mac pro's are the defacto standard for protools, and every pro studio runs protools. Now that PTHD has gone native, people wanting to set up a pro studio for less, can do so if they have enough host CPU processing power, which the new Mac Pros will evidently deliver.

For applications where you need huge multiple drives (samples for composing, HD video compositing, etc), the Mac Pro has it's place bought and paid for.

It's not just wank factor that production houses have mac pros - it's because of stability. Sure our macs have crashed from time to time but it's a 30 second restart, to get it back on track and time is big money in a pro studio. I once watched one of the top score engineers walk out of a studio and take the rental somewhere else, due to stability issues taking his support engineers more than an hour to resolve. That two week rental cost the studio over $35,000 in lost business.

It's also the fact you can plug a drive in and not even think twice about getting a virus, or further, have to worry about keeping virus database definitions up to date, or that antivirus program sucking some of your available CPU power.

Bottom line, Mac Pros have their place until Apple can achieve the same goal with other products, which even though they are getting close, it's not quite there, especially in terms of storage and performance.

The new Mac Pros, will however be blisteringly fast - the new sandy bridges are benching ridiculous figures, and thunderbolt is like adding a turbo to the whole data bus architecture.

I actually revived my old PC from about 6 years ago and it is actually pretty fucking fast. It was a monster at the time tho. 4 gigs of ram!!! a Lian Li case that was the bomb. 100% cracked software. lol. Some asshole gave me a sonar project. What the fuck is sonar. lol.

I think the fact is that a cheap PC is most likely more than almost any home producer would ever need, which means that a Mac Pro is almost impossible to sell outside a professional studio. And that's a shrinking market for sure.

I specced a Pro last year without looking at the cost, just picking what i'd want for a kickass home DAW and it came to a ridiculous £11k. An almost identical spec (component for component) from a very reputable (ie expensive) specialised DAW builder was £4.5k. I really don't see why the Mac's are so expensive. They even charge at least double the norm for hard drives, memory etc. It's stupid.

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord I think the fact is that a cheap PC is most likely more than almost any home producer would ever need, which means that a Mac Pro is almost impossible to sell outside a professional studio. And that's a shrinking market for sure. I specced a Pro last year without looking at the cost, just picking what i'd want for a kickass home DAW and it came to a ridiculous £11k. An almost identical spec (component for component) from a very reputable (ie expensive) specialised DAW builder was £4.5k. I really don't see why the Mac's are so expensive. They even charge at least double the norm for hard drives, memory etc. It's stupid.

But this is the old mac vs PC price comparison which doesn't work as you're paying partly for the OS features with mac - if you were just going to run windows on both, then you'd have an argument, but even then there's the point that macs are designed far better in terms both of form and function than top spec PC parts.

I mean just open up a mac pro and look at the quality of the materials and even how fucking advanced just the case is. Now try to buy a PC case that matches that and you're parting with serious money. In fact all the expensive PC cases I've ever seen are all those LED laden gamer cases that look like souped up honda civics (i.e. lame).

With mac, and especially the mac pros, you're not getting great value in terms of processing, but if your criteria is in terms of design, stability, never having to worry about the thing again; then mac pros are excellent value.

For instance - we have at least a dozen Mac Pros at work. Not one of them has had a major issue in three years of constant (24h) use, except some weird video issue that turned out to be a faulty video card.

So when a studio room rents for $3k per day, that top spec mac pro pays for itself in three days of saved downtime.

Now calculate the saved time not having to do maintenance (at least 100 hours per year between the machines) that we would have to do with PC's, and then calculate the time saved when we need to go to a new OS (2-3 hours per machine for all software opposed to a day for a similar PC with all the win updates/patches/sotfware/drivers/etc). Now calculate up those man hours spent not fucking about and the mac pros are cheap.

For home use, forget it, but if you're a pro, making money from production with limited time, they pay for themselves.

I totally agree, I'm just illustrating the point of the average end user that isn't running a professional studio.

Would I personally like to have a Mac Pro? Of course I would, but it'll never happen as I don't need it that bad.

All the added features you correctly point out are mostly irrelevant for the mass market that aren't buying Mac Pros.

i think it is just the concept of a desktop. I like having a box. The imac is just too hmmm, how will I cut my zuchinni, ohh kittens, i will just check my widget and omg, i am missing gossip girl. Common Todd, its starting. Well ok richie, but only if we can watch a rerun of Kell on Earth. I love you Todd. I love you Richie. kiss.



Ha .


you just read a gay romance narrative. Fags.

One would definitely presume you to be good at that.

writing gay romance that is.

When I said virtually non-existent, it was implied that of course there were still plenty in pro-grade but not really in consumer which is where the money is. You think giant corporations give a shit about their long term customers? They do but only to a degree. It's a line that isn't selling well in the consumer market, so I can see the rumours flying about a cut.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN I mean just open up a mac pro and look at the quality of the materials and even how fucking advanced just the case is. Now try to buy a PC case that matches that and you're parting with serious money. In fact all the expensive PC cases I've ever seen are all those LED laden gamer cases that look like souped up honda civics (i.e. lame). With mac, and especially the mac pros, you're not getting great value in terms of processing, but if your criteria is in terms of design, stability, never having to worry about the thing again; then mac pros are excellent value.

Not really. There are plenty of great quality cases made from aluminium and sound-proofing is easily done. I have a Lian-Li case at the moment that has extremely good build quality and customisability, for only a couple of hundred bucks. Had I wanted a silent case, that would not have been an issue to find a good one. Also looks? What? The Mac Pros are fucking horrendous!

The parts? They are all the same, same factories same everything. Where have you been living over the last decade? It's just that Apple charges you a premium for absolutely no reason other than they can. Stability comes primarily from OSX, not from the parts. The only advantage Apple has is the low amount of different configurations which makes it easier to code a more stable OS.

As has been said, Laptops are where Apple is strong and it's their bread and butter. Their desktops are becoming obsolete in the grand scheme of things.

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz When I said virtually non-existent, it was implied that of course there were still plenty in pro-grade but not really in consumer which is where the money is. You think giant corporations give a shit about their long term customers? They do but only to a degree. It's a line that isn't selling well in the consumer market, so I can see the rumours flying about a cut.

Corporations do and they don't - it specifically depends on their business model. Some brands make products with an emphasis on longevity, and a premium is worked in to the sale price. I believe this to be a factor with the mac pros (and to some extent with most of the higher priced macs) as nearly every person and business I know hangs on to them longer than they do other computers or electronics. This is reinforced by the fact Apple puts a fair effort in to maintaining legacy compatibility (technology allowing, like the G5 to intel jump) and that the more expensive Apple products are built to, and use materials, that last.

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz Not really. There are plenty of great quality cases made from aluminium and sound-proofing is easily done. I have a Lian-Li case at the moment that has extremely good build quality and customisability, for only a couple of hundred bucks. Had I wanted a silent case, that would not have been an issue to find a good one. Also looks? What? The Mac Pros are fucking horrendous!

I hear this all the time but it's just not true IMO. The cases just look tinny and cheap with gay LEDs or try to do the monolith look like matt black surfaces. Not original or particularly good looking.

Even that said, just look at the new Lian Li XBOX case - it's a low rent, tacky rip off of the Mac pro made out of cheap materials.

Who said anything about silent case? The mac pro happen to be very quiet but the thing has vents all over it so it's not a design factor as such. And yes, seeing I used to Manage Carillon Computers, the first commercially available silent/Audio PC brand, I am aware that silent cases exist

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz The parts? They are all the same, same factories same everything. Where have you been living over the last decade? It's just that Apple charges you a premium for absolutely no reason other than they can. Stability comes primarily from OSX, not from the parts. The only advantage Apple has is the low amount of different configurations which makes it easier to code a more stable OS.

But this is where your logic is wrong - with Mac, you can't separate the OS from the Hardware. That's the entire point with apple.
The components may be the same, but the stability come from the fact the OS only has to factor a very small range of specifically chosen components, and does not have to be all things to all manufacturers at once, like with windows. Essentially the chances for conflicts, either between hardware and hardware and/or software is massively reduced as they are building for the their choice of hardware and software at the same time. That's why macs are more stable.

I already said that if this was like for like (windows for windows) then it's a completely different story, but all apple products are made for a integrated user interface and hardware experience. If you don't get that then you really don't understand their business model or products at all.

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz As has been said, Laptops are where Apple is strong and it's their bread and butter. Their desktops are becoming obsolete in the grand scheme of things.

I agree, and I've always said that the Mac Pros are the worst value product in terms of performance vs cost that apple make.

With laptops becoming as powerful as desktops and small form factor drives becoming larger, there's less and less need for desktops as a concept. Even if you want a desktop based computer with a larger screen you can always add another screen or get an Imac (conversely the best value Mac that apple sell).

my lian li case was 400 bucks. Maybe they started making shit but they once where good. My case is black aluminum with a layer of sound insulating space polymer or something. Altho to be honest, the Mac Pro case is a work of art. I mean the interior is just so nice and perdy.

I'm fucking sick of tigers and lions. Honestly, they need to stop with the cats and go with predator birds. Or sharks. Put a lion and a shark in a big pool and the shark will kick its ass. I mean they go Tiger which is the coolest one then leopard , which i mean ok snow leopards are pretty cool but then lion which is a step down. Lions just sound soft. Although to be honest, given what i've seen from lion , they should of called it gay ass blue jay that forgot to migrate and is going to freeze to death.

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord Something else I was thinking as well, is that if they stop producing machines that studios will use then what's going to happen to Logic? I can't imagine people who buy iMacs and iPads are going to buy it in any great numbers so I suspect it's the nail in the coffin for that too.

The advantage the Mac Pro had over the iMac was expandability. Thunderbolt has just removed that advantage the Mac Pro has. Unless you're a composer for hollywood films who needs at least 40gb+ DDR3 Ram, 4 x SSD in Raid 0 with 5+ displays, an iMac is more than enough, especially since an iMac is faster than a 8-core Mac Pro.

You'd be surprised about what the iPad can do. You can actually make music with it. Maybe in the future we're going to see Logic on the iPad too, just like Garageband.

quote:

Originally posted by Timothy The advantage the Mac Pro had over the iMac was expandability. Thunderbolt has just removed that advantage the Mac Pro has. Unless you're a composer for hollywood films who needs at least 40gb+ DDR3 Ram, 4 x SSD in Raid 0 with 5+ displays, an iMac is more than enough, especially since an iMac is faster than a 8-core Mac Pro. You'd be surprised about what the iPad can do. You can actually make music with it. Maybe in the future we're going to see Logic on the iPad too, just like Garageband.

I was just looking at the Thunderbolt setups oddly.

You can grab a 13" MBP with a 128GB SSD and i7, a Thunderbolt 27" docking display and a Thunderbolt 4TB storage bay for about £3k.

That's pretty tempting.

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz If Apple allowed the use of OSX on non-Apple hardware, not one of these things would sell. Not one.

If they allowed the use of OSX on non-Apple hardware, not one of those machines would work. Not one.

I read on one of the sub-forums in an underground producers forum about one of the major DAWs are going Linux. Logic for Linux certainly has a nice ring to it.

quote:

Originally posted by Looney4Clooney I'm fucking sick of tigers and lions. Honestly, they need to stop with the cats and go with predator birds. Or sharks. Put a lion and a shark in a big pool and the shark will kick its ass. I mean they go Tiger which is the coolest one then leopard , which i mean ok snow leopards are pretty cool but then lion which is a step down. Lions just sound soft. Although to be honest, given what i've seen from lion , they should of called it gay ass blue jay that forgot to migrate and is going to freeze to death.

So not the time to try and convert you to Ubuntuism then?

Ubuntu 11.10 - Oneiric Ocelot

quote:

Originally posted by Looney4Clooney I'm fucking sick of tigers and lions. Honestly, they need to stop with the cats and go with predator birds. Or sharks. Put a lion and a shark in a big pool and the shark will kick its ass. I mean they go Tiger which is the coolest one then leopard , which i mean ok snow leopards are pretty cool but then lion which is a step down. Lions just sound soft. Although to be honest, given what i've seen from lion , they should of called it gay ass blue jay that forgot to migrate and is going to freeze to death.

I propose to turn the lion example the other way around. Put the shark in the savanna.

Or you can always look out your windows

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord I was just looking at the Thunderbolt setups oddly. You can grab a 13" MBP with a 128GB SSD and i7, a Thunderbolt 27" docking display and a Thunderbolt 4TB storage bay for about £3k. That's pretty tempting.

Don't do it just yet Geoff - this is first Gen thunderbolt and the first time apple has incorporated. I expect to see a big shift in processing power and system resources in the next release of imacs, macbook pros and mac pros (if they ever get released).

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