2013 Mac Pro Announced at WWDC

[Nyctalopia]

I like it! I don't understand the design criticism all over the web, some people have their mind set to criticize whatever Apple makes.

 

[nobodynose]

Don't know if it's already been said, but my 2 cents on the matter:
I don't know why many people would buy this. The specs on it are great, but the price is going to be exorbitant. It's great that Apple is including some new hardware (better compatibility for future Hacks), but non-upgradeable, well, pretty much everything makes it a poor choice.
Not to mention the need for multitudes of Thunderbolt adapters, the single fan design (vacuums your work surface while you compute!), and the release of Mavericks (not entirely sold on that one).
That said, I don't dislike the looks of the thing.

I'm not an Apple "fanboy" by any means -- I love Mac OS X, but I *hate* iOS (I use Android) -- so my opinion is similar to yours. I agree that the specs are out of this world, but the price will be vulgar. However, it is most definitely *not* "non-upgradeable", as many people keep saying. For those who have the means to buy the new Mac Pro, upgradeability will not be a problem either, since practically anything can be attached to Thunderbolt for a price.

I agree though that having to have the clutter of lots of external devices hanging off the back defeats the whole purpose of a product with a minimalist, clean design. As for Mavericks? Well, I'll withhold my judgement until it's released and I've seen it, though I will say I really like the direction they're going with some of the new Finder features (tabbed folders, tags, etc.).

 

[djblastyfone]

Hmmm....ever heard of Final Cut Pro X?

Believe it or not, a lot of editors (myself included) love the new Final Cut. Work that would have taken me hours in FCP7 or Premiere can be done in a fraction of the time, and all the major missing features were added back in by version 10.0.3. The main problem is that the initial outcry from some video professionals, a good portion of which was simply reluctance to change to an unfamiliar workflow, was much louder than the "oh hey, this is kind of neat" that followed 3 to 6 months later.

The same goes for the new Mac Pro. After it's first month I'm predicting third or first party solutions addressing it's biggest shortcomings and incompatibilities, and after a year I'm predicting a dramatic increase in OpenCL support in applications that currently only leverage CUDA and/or single GPUs. Apple's made their move, now it's up to the the professional community to decide the workstation's fate.

 

[Newbie_McNoob]

Ivy Bridge-EP CPU?

I'm interested to see how Apple plans to cool all these components crammed into such a small space, and how loud said cooling system will be.

I know some professional video people who use PCIe cards with SDI and ASI ports. They will not like having to buy a Thunderbolt to PCIe enclosure.

 

[AllanMarcus]

you can expand with USB3 too.

 

[shijan]

[video=youtube;nLCxJN1qKeM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLCxJN1qKeM&noredirect=1[/video]

 

[aberracus]

Guys, I'm a professional post producer, I work daily with my MacBook Pro, my hackintosh and Final Cut Pro X, Motion, After Effects and Cinema 4D, right now I'm post producing a 2 hour length movie, in 4k. And really I would love to replace all of my hacks with NG Mac Pros, and really I'm starting to save to buy one.

Why?
PCIe and expansion cards are something of the past. I prefer to invest in hardware that I can share in my office, and with my MacBook Retina, recently I upgraded my hacks to Thunderbolt, and started buying thunderbolt devices, there are lots for us professionals, check blackmagic, gtech, matrix, LaCie, etc, I would love a thunderbolt Red Rocket, and I'm sure Red will launch one, that or I'm gonna have to buy some kind of enclosure, I really hate having the red rocket installed only on one machine. I would love to plug in any computer that needs it at the moment. That's exactly the same with my monitoring Blackmagic device, my disk raid, and the external disks, one standard to rule them all! The Thunderbolt, I love that.

This is the pro computer of the future.

And to people who says Final Cut Pro X is not good, I just don't believe you are professional or heavy user, and if you are and haven't tried it, please try it. It's amazing, I will say it have a lot of missings but its getting there and is perfectly usable right now and vastly superior to Premiere and final 7"

My 10 cents


Pd, I think the new Mac Pro will start in 2600 dollars, I think I have read the NG Mac Pro has 2 CPUs, I'm sure the video cards will be replaceable, maybe in an Apple Store, and those video cards are gonna be always in pairs, normal pciexpress cards with a proprietary connector, it's not like you can (normally) plug a windows video card in Mac Pro anyway.


Bye!

 

[Midphase]

And to people who says Final Cut Pro X is not good, I just don't believe you are professional or heavy user

You're gonna make me pull my L.A. card out aren't you? I can tell you with strong confidence that around here pretty much all of the post houses are either still on 7 or on Avid. Premiere is still on the outskirts too, but making slow inroads with that crowd.

It's not just about the GUI, it really comes down to a lot more than that which most people don't realize high end post houses need. FCPX has been out for 2 years already, and just now it's starting to feel like a somewhat workable editing environment (OMF export, machine control, external monitor support, etc). Meanwhile Adobe's been really aggressive with updates to their suite, and Blackmagic and Autodesk aren't sitting around either.

Perhaps FCPX will regain its crown at some point, but Apple's going to have to try a lot harder than they have been while everyone else will have to start slacking.

 

[spence4]

As one might guess from my signature (the Cube hack) I am a big fan of this new Mac Pro. I understand people's concerns about its limited internal expandability and the seemingly counter intuitive external expandability concept it promotes - obviously the point of shrinking the Mac Pro to 1/8th the volume of the old tower was to make it look sleek, cute, and be able to hang out unobtrusively on one's desk. However, once you start adding TB devices and their power bricks you are still going to have that rat's nest of wires and less sleeking looking boxes stacked somewhere. Perhaps the idea is for cloud storage and all the hardware - CPU, GPU, RAM - inside the MP is enough. As a Cube lover and Apple fan, I think the design is sh!t-hot. As a modder of old Apple products with PC innards I am upset. The only way you're gonna get a hack into this case is by sticking an Intel NUC or Gigabyte BRIX in there and let's be honest that is going to be a much bigger step down than the 2500K in my current Mac Pro case.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this computer is that it is going to be made in the USA. I apologize to all non-US members if this offends them, but I am happy to see any US company, especially the largest one, bring some manufacturing back to the US. Due to the likely high cost, I imagine they won't be building millions of these, and it is most likely a publicity stunt, but I do appreciate the effort and do plan to give them whatever they are charging for the base model. If we are supposed to protest with our wallets we should probably support with them too. I figure the base model is all I need since the only thing I do on the computer is email and watching iTunes - figure the current rig is pretty overkill already.

 

[MysticalOS]

I love how many chime in and criticize the people complaining about internal expansion who clearly didn't even read the explanations WHY TB2 doesn't work.

You do realize that a video card over TB2 is gonna run at 2x speed? yeah that'll work.....sure. Homepage at netkas truly explains this best.

You do realize that TB2 cases are expensive, often require their own power and everything else? that's what everyone wants, tons of external cases, power cords, wires connecting these cases to mac pro.

This thing is nothing short of an abomination. I have a 2008 mac pro that is still great today, why? because I have had good upgrade options. I have a current generation video card in there that screams. So, 5 years later i'm still running latest and greatest video card. Can you say that with a new mac pro? Hell no. What you get is a throw away machine who's video card will be obsoleted within a year, 2 years later you're gonna have imacs that are faster than your mac pro. 3-4 years later macbook pro's are going to be faster. You will never upgrade your video card because the bandwidth of TB is not adequate. The internal specs ARE great, but they are not upgradable, THAT is the flaw. This talk of TB2 upgradability is an illusion perpetrated by the misinformed and the ignorant. Do some homework first before critiquing people who know what they are talking about and know this is a failure. no one is saying it's not powerful or a solid machine offering. They are saying it won't stay that way the way technology moves and lacking proper tower upgrade options, is a **** poor investment unless you just like throwing money at new cylinders every 1-2 years just so you can upgrade your internal non upgradable parts.

Conclusion, no thanks. I'll build a hackintosh in a minute before i buy one of these every 2 years just to upgrade my video card. My work requires video cards that can handle the latest cutting edge games at all times. When my pro can no longer run games well, i cannot do my work. Hell, even the firepro's aren't exactly the cutting edge cards for gaming. They are opencl powerhouses, but are only comparable to a basic upper range 7000 from ATI when it comes to actual opengl application and game rendering.