New Mac Pro's, iMacs and Apple Displays

[Gigamaxx]

Thanks for posting WD! Agreed- next year's Mac Pro 'modular' redesign might mean great stuff for our community including this:

Apple patent application illustrates Touch Bar and Touch ID on Magic Keyboard
https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/04/magic-keyboard-with-touch-bar-and-touch-id/

This could solve the screen flicker with HD 530 graphics, lol!

The modularity sounds great, I wonder if they will allow for mobo upgrades to allow for new socket/CPU combos.

Did anyone catch the statement about CannonLake with HBM2 integrated into it? That doesn't sound right, unless they're planning on a thick chip.

 

[pastrychef]

That's a really sexy keyboard, but I'm really attached to my mechanical keyboard... Maybe we will be able to rip the Touch Bar portion of the keyboard and jury rig it to our own keyboards of choice...

 

[benvigil]

Honestly, I don't think Apple is much concerned about "the Pros" not being satisfied as much as they are frightened by the prospect of pros dumping the Apple ecosystem entirely.

There must be some pretty damning internal numbers for Tim Cook to explicitly mention addressing the needs of pros in February's earnings call, and then for Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and John Ternus to meet with selected journalists to openly discuss their plans. I'm guessing they're trying to stop the bleeding and give themselves time to come up with a decent game plan.

I've seen a spate of articles lately from a variety of creatives (photographers, designers, video editors, etc.) blogging about dumping Apple in favor of Windows. Last week I put together a Windows 10 system for my sister and I gotta be honest here... I was fairly impressed with Windows 10. Give it some decent hardware (in my sisters case, about $600 worth of hardware), and you're golden. For the average [non-hack] person, that's basically impossible to do in Apple-land.

And for most people, it's about the apps anyway...

Photogs have Lightroom or Capture One (both of which run on Windows too), after Apple so ceremoniously dumped Aperture, and videogs have flocked to Premier (which runs on Windows too) when Apple released FCPX iMovie edition. Audio studios have a TON of options, most of which run on Windows too. IOW, there's not much to keep a pro, or budding pro, from jumping ship to Windows. And Windows is looking fairly good now with the Surface Studio hitting the streets.

 

[nutjob]

Thanks for posting WD! Agreed- next year's Mac Pro 'modular' redesign might mean great stuff for our community including this:

Apple patent application illustrates Touch Bar and Touch ID on Magic Keyboard
https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/04/magic-keyboard-with-touch-bar-and-touch-id/

Would you really buy one of those? Touchbar is arguably a gimmick.

 

[pastrychef]

Honestly, I don't think Apple is much concerned about "the Pros" not being satisfied as much as they are frightened by the prospect of pros dumping the Apple ecosystem entirely.

There must be some pretty damning internal numbers for Tim Cook to explicitly mention addressing the needs of pros in February's earnings call, and then for Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and John Ternus to meet with selected journalists to openly discuss their plans. I'm guessing they're trying to stop the bleeding and give themselves time to come up with a decent game plan.

I've seen a spate of articles lately from a variety of creatives (photographers, designers, video editors, etc.) blogging about dumping Apple in favor of Windows. Last week I put together a Windows 10 system for my sister and I gotta be honest here... I was fairly impressed with Windows 10. Give it some decent hardware (in my sisters case, about $600 worth of hardware), and you're golden. For the average [non-hack] person, that's basically impossible to do in Apple-land.

And for most people, it's about the apps anyway...

Photogs have Lightroom or Capture One (both of which run on Windows too), after Apple so ceremoniously dumped Aperture, and videogs have flocked to Premier (which runs on Windows too) when Apple released FCPX iMovie edition. Audio studios have a TON of options, most of which run on Windows too. IOW, there's not much to keep a pro, or budding pro, from jumping ship to Windows. And Windows is looking fairly good now with the Surface Studio hitting the streets.

Windows has been an option for decades. Building a Windows box has pretty much always been a far less expensive option than buying a Mac. Adobe has always had Windows versions of their software. There's nothing new here.

What it boils down to is how comfortable each individual is with the operating systems of their choice. Personally, I like macOS. macOS makes sense to me. I enjoy using macOS. I don't want to use any other operating system. Switching to Windows was never an option for me.

To those who can stomach Windows, I always encourage them to stick with Windows and wish them luck. I don't try to switch them and stop them in their tracks when they try to do it to me.

I don't understand the fuss that surrounds the Surface Studio. When the computer portion of that device becomes obsolete, you're going to have to trash the whole thing. On the other hand, if you get a Mac Mini with a Cintiq, you can keep the Cintiq in definitely and always upgrade the computer portion. You may argue that this scenario is no different from an iMac, but iMacs are also much less expensive.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Schiller & gang said that they were looking at making iMacs more pro, as they have realised that a lot of what they consider to be pro users are now using iMacs.

You can interpret that two different ways (Or maybe a bit of both), but in either case it is good for us.

One scenario is that they are genuinely admitting they did not do as well as they could have with the most recent Mac Pro. In its current form, as admitted, there is little more they can do with it. A new more modular form, with those single more powerful GPU's - thats gotta be a positive step forward not only for the mac faithful out there but also for us as a community. It is unusual for Apple to publicly admit they got something wrong, but if I was an investor in Apple, I would see this admission positively.

Scenario two is that those users have/are genuinely making that switch to iMacs. Putting the Mac Pro design aside, we then come to the current desktop iMac. Its been around for a few generations, it still looks the part, and they still have plenty of room in there to make them 'more pro'. They can do the simpler stuff like increasing mass storage (2Tb & 4Tb SSD drives have been around for a while now), increase maximum system ram to 64Gb (We know the chipsets are out there already to support this).

They could also make use of Xeon chips and ECC ram (This is probably less likely so as to keep the two product lines clearly defined and maintain a degree of separation).

And of course they could also use much better performing GPUs. Apple have stated they have a definite interest in AR but not VR; both require a decent graphics setup. Continuing to use mobile class graphics chips in the iMacs would hamper their efforts in making it 'more pro'. We dont need ludicrous overclocks in graphics processing or graphics memory, but we do need to see more robust graphics options and to take the iMac in a more pro direction, that is likely to mean some form of desktop class graphics. The newer generations from both nVidia and AMD are far more efficient at power and cooling than previous ones were, and there is plenty of room left inside the iMac chassis for a more elaborate cooling/heatpipe system. Being realistic, it makes no sense saying they want to make it more pro, then handicap it with crappy graphics.

Whatever the truth is surrounding Apple's unexpected and uncharacteristic statement on future plans regarding both the iMac and Mac Pro, it is going to be a positive result for anyone involved in the mac ecosystem, assuming that the statement is indeed true. You could be forgiven for not totally believing it due to Schiller's regular comments over the past year or two about having amazing stuff in the pipeline etc. But the unusual way this has been made public makes me think that it is absolutely true and that Apple have finally begun to realise what we have all known for some time now; that is the pro users have felt left out, almost to the point of abandonment (Whether true or not) and that the performance and price differences between the iMac and Mac Pro make it more difficult to justify the limitations of the Mac Pro as it stands. The fact that Apple have committed to updating them both is a win-win situation.

Keep the Mac Pro with workstation class GPUs, and give the iMacs the option of desktop (Not mobile) GPUs, and Apple will once again succeed in making a lot of users very happy indeed.

Throw in the mix a new Apple monitor of some kind and that will be the icing on the cake.

Apple already know they have great software and services, its now quite rightly time for them to bring the hardware bang up to date.

Anyone care to comment on whether they think Apple will stick with AMD, or bring nVidia back into the fold ?

 

[Pospik2705]

ok lets build more hackintoshes nice times for us

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

ok lets build more hackintoshes nice times for us

Yes, the future suddenly looks bright once again.

 

[krizparker]

To be honest i think this is only a publicity stunt by Apple marketing. They wanted to get rid of the >1200 days since last update on macrumors. Marketing and investors didn't like that i guess. Only Apple could get away with "it´s gonna be great, but it takes more than a year....". Well they had a couple of hundred days to plan something at least.

 

[pastrychef]

When they stated that they will be making the product line "more pro", I had hopes of seeing Apple use the "E" series of Intel CPUs, i.e. Broadwell-E. Whether this be in a high end iMac or "entry level" Mac Pro doesn't matter to me.

As for GPUs, of course, we would all like to see more Nvidia options from Apple. I think they can easily pull Nvidia back in to the fold simply by putting PCI-e slots back in to Macs, dedicate a team to writing and maintaining drivers, and remove the need for custom video card firmware to get boot screens. This could benefit both AMD and Nvidia by offering them another market to which they can sell graphics card.