2013 Mac Pro Announced at WWDC

[scorza]

IMHO, the saving grace for this machine would be if Apple prices it in a relatively affordable range (i.e. below $2k) so that the limited expandability or expensive upgrades are mitigated by a lower entry fee. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that this puppy will be pricey. Considering that right now, an aging 12 core Mac Pro with no solid state drive and an outdated GPU can't be had for less than $3800, I can't imagine that the 12-core dual GPU new Mac Pro will sell for less than that...which leads me to ask, who was this computer designed for exactly?

That's the question. I could be miles off-base here but I think the price point will be at or even below the current Mac Pros. Apple knows they're losing some market segment by doing away with upgradeability/PCIe slots/etc, so I see the form factor as a way to grow in its place the prosumer-ish area of users who need something more powerful than an iMac, but not as infinitely customizable as Mac/Hack Pros.

How that jibes with the made in the USA thing I um well WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE?!?! But you don't radically overhaul a moribund product line without asking "who's buying this?"

 

[spence4]

Hrm...that would be "assembled" in the USA actually...big difference.

Yes, I understand that they have not contracted Intel to make the Xeon CPUs for the Mac Pros in the US. I also imagine the Foxconn motherboards will not be "made in the USA." However, the fact that they are going to be assembled in the USA is still nice to see, even if the demand for such a high priced toy will not be high enough to keep the assemblers employed for long. Appreciate your semantic argument though. English teacher? Philosophy perhaps?

 

[Hall8000]

this is true, Tunderbolt 2 is 20Gbit/s byte (1 byte=1)
PCIex16 / 16GB/s bytes (1 bytes=8)

20(Gbit(byte)/8(bytes)=2.5 GB/s the new Tunder2 buff!, apple are crazy if you want to take PCIex16

 

[Midphase]

Not that I disagree with you, but in all fairness most graphics cards nowadays only take advantage of about 4Gb/sec speeds...so 16X is overkill. However in the future I assume cards will get faster and quickly demand such speeds.

 

[Koalaman]

White Mac Pro or trash can? That is the question...

 

[Kartenlehrling]

[video=youtube;SQl2FjaKCAQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQl2FjaKCAQ[/video]


New James Bond ?

 

[Tylerrouse]

I watched the keynote and I didn't get the sense that he didn't like it. Woz just likes tech. Carries like 4 phones around with him all the time and is always interested in all aspects of the industry, not just Apple. I actually got the impression that he liked it a lot and was hiding a slight smile under his hand and you could see the gears in his head turning. He hasn't made up his mind on it like a lot of us because, we just have a lot of unanswered questions.

Wozniak on new Mac Pro

“I get off into thinking about things. I saw the Mac Pro – and I’m very familiar with workstations – Apple used to own that market, for things like Final Cut Pro, and now HP owns the market. And I have seen HP, their machines, the engineering of them; y’know, you can take two hours to replace a hard disk inside an iMac, [HP] has one which looks like an iMac, you just tilt it, press one button, it opens and you pull out the hard disk. Six seconds. It’s the engineering quality and level. They have the highest level of the Xeon processors; the highest level of the NAND memory cards for them; and graphics, the highest level graphics processors. So in that market, I was trying to decide, is this machine going to be as good, and as capable as, say, at least a low-level HP, or maybe a mid-level one.”

“The Cube is one of the biggest heart-felt memories of my life, and [the new Mac Pro] reminded me of the Cube. I was probably off thinking about something; people have sent me that picture and I’m just looking at it, and I’m not applauding. Sometimes, when I’m thinking, I’m not applauding because it depends on what the statement that was made right then,” he concluded. “I don’t just applaud at just everything that says ‘it’s time to applaud.’ It’s got to be the right point.”

Here's the link to the full interview

http://www.slashgear.com/steve-wozniak-talks-in-car-tech-google-glass-and-the-new-mac-pro-27288151/

 

[Middleman]

I am concerned that maybe the new Mac Pro is going to be rather underpowered and lacking and not as 'amazing' as it should be.

Some folks have mentioned that the Mac Pro's use of AMD FirePro graphics basically renders Nvidia cards (and thus CUDA) useless; and that the Mac Pro maxes out at 12 cores instead of PC's 16. Does this mean that for future Mac Pros/Macs (which will likely use AMD chips), Apple may no longer support Nvidia cards, which in turn may mean future Hackintoshes may not be able to run Nvidia cards? Also with the lack of upgradeability for the Mac Pro's graphics (because it is fixed) as well as storage, this possibly gives very little options for changing the graphics card. Unless Apple decides to release a video card upgrade for the new Mac Pro, MP users have very little in terms of upgrade choices...

 

[Kris404]

I am concerned that maybe the new Mac Pro is going to be rather underpowered and lacking and not as 'amazing' as it should be.

Some folks have mentioned that the Mac Pro's use of AMD FirePro graphics basically renders Nvidia cards (and thus CUDA) useless; and that the Mac Pro maxes out at 12 cores instead of PC's 16. Does this mean that for future Mac Pros/Macs (which will likely use AMD chips), Apple may no longer support Nvidia cards, which in turn may mean future Hackintoshes may not be able to run Nvidia cards? Also with the lack of upgradeability for the Mac Pro's graphics (because it is fixed) as well as storage, this possibly gives very little options for changing the graphics card. Unless Apple decides to release a video card upgrade for the new Mac Pro, MP users have very little in terms of upgrade choices...

They still use Nvidia cards in the 27" iMac (700 series) and rMBP 15".

The initial rumored Geekbench reports are promising for such a portable system. Why don't we wait till the machines are out to make a judgement about performance.