New Apple Product 6-19: Mac Pro, et al.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Finally I'll be able to use my ipad Pro as a second screen for my MBP. I had software to do it, but that got wonky. Can't wait to run a dual monitor set-up when I'm on a plane.

That Mac Pro seems to have really upped its game?

Big processors
Over 1TB of RAM possible?
Video cards that can have up to 56 MFLOPs
Never mind a 6K monitor for $5k, ikes.
Lots if interchangeability and configurability of components. That is a big change it would seem.

On the 56MFLOPS, that would put the video cards on par with the fastest super computers in 2004? Am I reading that right? They tout the cards graphics ability, but they also allude to them being used for machine learning and other tasks? Can a techie explain that?

That seems to be the big difference to me. They used to tout faster and bigger memory- and this definately does that, but the raw processing power seems to have taken a quantum jump??

When the new MacOS comes out, my computer is already warning me that old programs (and older version of MS Office) and Light Room 6 need to be updated or something? Are they going to stop working?

Man, just thinking back to my TI99/4A and cassette drive, and dot matrix printer.... dreaming of a getting a 300 baud modem...

[Honu]

The new iPad 2nd screen was nice to see besides the two other 3rd party options available and IMHO the subscription on the one is to much for what it does :) but yeah going to make laptop life much better

The thing is few folks need Xeon machines these days and many programs do not use all the cores that well and once you get over 2 or 4 cores (actual not virtual) many gains you get drop to very little % gains and those that do use them are often more specialty 3D apps etc... so this is very very niche product and IMHO so so so overpriced this time around which is sad cause in the past they usually do a good job meaning you can configure a dell workstation that can run up to 40k easy so workstations no matter who puts them out can be expensive so its one of those if you are not sure you don’t need it and those that are sure know what they need and for %95 of folks Xeon are slower and overkill for what they do

Our studio has 3 mac pros a windows box that has intel 7820x with a 1080 gpu I recently built as a capture machine for a piece of software I use almost daily and a new Mac mini with a external gpu

Really the new Mac mini with a egpu is a great option for many folks these days as are the base iMacs still a nice machine

My reason for liking the Mac mini is I can put in what GPU I want pretty much so not stuck to a proprietary apple one and with the new modules in the new Mac Pro they are going to be insane priced and with the T2 chip I am afraid they are going to limit 3rd party cards but I could be wrong ? So will have to wait and see
Our Mac mini eGPU has the same GPU model as the Mac Pro does and its a good card basically one of the reference cards used in early apple development for the eGPU
I can replace the GPU or the monitor or the main mini box as I need to or want to and I can just use external storage since the thunderbolt on the mini is two channels/controllers were the regular iMac only has one and the iMac pro has two no idea what this new Mac Pro will have ?

The problem with the high end gpu setups again are they do not help most folks as much as they would think depending on the program and many high end programs cad 3D etc... require certain cards and the high end cards are more about stable drivers and certain features 10 bit color etc... then speed
Think of it as a fleet truck vs a normal IMHO the fleet would not be as comfy as a daily driver as just a nice featured truck but it might have 3x the payload so what is the use ?

The monitor ? It’s nice but the Eizo is a better monitor and apple has never made a monitor that bested Eizo or NEC ever and I hope they do but I doubt it. No hood a huge thing for creatives once you use a good monitor with a hood you will never go back and what are the actual calibrated numbers going to be ? And do you need 6k over accuracy so again such a tiny niche I see the monitor are more a cool thing to have in a tech company that has to much money but this is the society we live in today with YouTube influencers using 80k camera setups and driving exotic cars etc... all for what showing them doing things on YouTube ? These folks will have these cause they look cool and are expensive so makes folks wan them I guess
The Eizo also comes with a built in hardware calibrated etc... there highest end one is about 6k though so super high end monitors can run a lot ?


Back to the Mac Pro and its options ? The previous mac pros you could upgrade and tweak and change things with some limits but again the T2 chip might lock down a lot of that and even in the stock configuration the memory is 6 channel and it ships with 4 sticks :) hahahahah typical modern apple sadly and the ECC memory for the Xeon will be $$$$$ to upgrade even 3rd party
The SSD are not as fast as the iMac SSD even ?

They are nice but they need to have two builds one with Xeon for the tiny niche that needs then and another series with i9 etc... and normal GPU not a module (will see what happens when they finally get released)
So I do not see the new mac pros like I do the old ones I see them more as the 6,1 or trash cans sadly

I do love the looks of them :)


My biggest yeah was column view for the new finder on the iPads and the remote screen and bummed no true mouse support limited in accessibility mode or whatever its called though some guys were showing drag and drop on the beta builds with a mouse?
We have both the current and the 2nd gen iPad pros 12.9 and I recently started to try to leverage the iPads for stuff like this and consuming stuff

The capture program I use is Capture one a raw editing setup and I love the iPad as I can hand to clients to see what I am getting without them hanging around the computer and I can also use it for some remote control of the camera !

I really hope we see more push on the iPads and I do think they have lots of room to be better but still need a bit more OS tweaks to ever replace a laptop or computer for certain work but they are at the point they can replace a laptop for many folks so glad to see them pull the OS apart and now have a iPad OS again like they did in the beginning and hope they leverage it now to do its own things :)

I love love tech stuff and am kinda the target market full time creative studio but know way will I buy the monitor or the Mac Pro and will stick to the Mac mini’s and eGPU and laptops and iPads and like my current power box I will either hackintosh that or just run it as PC for the few programs that need that and save a ton of money

I am really bummed at the Mac Pro this time around while I love it its so so so niche its stupid and short sided and typical modern apple again snubbing the original apple folks and kinda clueless to what they need

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I was looking at replacing my Synology NAS drive with a 10GB Mac Mini and some thunderbolt3 drives hung off of it in place of a NAS. A lot more flexability and some pretty good speeds too, considering all my legacy Macs are 1GB ethernet anyways. An external GPU for it is really interesting.

3D printing and photography are my other habits. Any suggestion for a photogramery based 3D scanning native to Macs?

[Honu]

Almost got the 10g but really do not need it maybe should have :)
Cause everything else is not but have to start sometime I figure I will get a thunderbolt adapter if when I go that route

I keep debating about a Synology but networking our computers has worked so far

I used to have 8 bay Areca Raid setup and network that for mass safe storage was also loaded with Plex for media etc....
These days multiple 8GB WD external drives and main working files are on SSD or NVME drives and just long term or pending is on the spinning along with media

Recently been keeping a working files folder on all computer synced through Gdrive business since for $10 unlimited storage with them
Takes a long time to get it up but so far happy (no personal or financial info)

I do think the Mac mini server things are sweet with the Mac mini having dual thunderbolt controllers over many that have a single controller you could have a ton of bandwidth for the drives and with the eGPU using one and your drives on the other and or usb 3 even for spinning drives

We are using a 2TB Samsung T5 drive for working on the mini and just the os on the internal

Don’t really know the 3D scanning apps we do photography and design so main programs are capture one photoshop for photography and design wife uses in design and illustrator the most

3D printing would be fun for sure




I was looking at replacing my Synology NAS drive with a 10GB Mac Mini and some thunderbolt3 drives hung off of it in place of a NAS. A lot more flexability and some pretty good speeds too, considering all my legacy Macs are 1GB ethernet anyways. An external GPU for it is really interesting.

3D printing and photography are my other habits. Any suggestion for a photogramery based 3D scanning native to Macs?

[chadbag]

The new Mac Pro, at the moment, is geared to big $$ customers who need that much power, which is not most of us. If you regularly edit full quality 4K and 8K video, non compressed, or run music with 100s of channels, or analyze huge data sets, you are the target customer. I would love to have one though :)

I have a sneaking suspicion that in a year or so, when production is up and the initial wave of need is met, they will introduce lower end versions (still high end, but $3200 or so starting price instead of $5999, with appropriately less performance).

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Trying to defend the $1000 monitor stand.....

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-monitor-stand-price-reaction-misses-point-2019-6?utm_content=buffer33e50&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-ti&fbclid=IwAR2xSR7VDV4qpLJr-OGVgSmB1U9DIcXmFjeCmeSPGBf7nudxiENeaM4BklM