What the 2013 Mac Pro will really look like with external accessories...

[gorg]

Haters said the same about MacBook Air ...

 

[Tylerrouse]

Even my Apple hater friends admit it's a beast. If I could afford it there's no doubt I'd buy that work of art.

 

[Adrian B]

Haters said the same about MacBook Air ...

They were not very kind about the iPad either, although I seem to remember that even I thought that people would buy a cheap windows laptop than spend similar money on an Apple iPad. The sales record and number of people that I know who opted for the laptop proved everyone except Apple was wrong. Even Apple seemed to be surprised at the uptake. I am not suggesting that the Mac Pro will sell in similar numbers to the iPad. But I would be surprised if the new Mac Pro didn't change many peoples minds on what a modern powerful computer should look like.

Box shaped pc cases will start to look so last century very quickly.


Adrian B

 

[Goekeli]

So funny!! 3 steps forward, 4 steps back. Give me the big box any day.

 

[PJALM]

So funny!! 3 steps forward, 4 steps back. Give me the big box any day.

Why do you say that? ODD it in the past not future as you see in all other newer Mac models. Only thing I would need is storage and I can either use my server or an external USB3/Thunderbolt drive for that.

I bet one of the external storage manufacturers will make an external drive same shape as the new Mac Pro that the Mac Pro will sit on top of and be bus powered too so no AC adapter.

 

[Bansaku]

One thing that we are all forgetting is that we are all taking about our "personal" desktops and how they would be cluttered. Ever seen a professional setup before? Clean, tangle free, neat, essentially a place for everything and everything in it's place. Usually, especially if multiple MacPros are involved, there is one "master" unit for the user, with a wall/shelf/rack of the slaves with all of the hard drives neatly stacked for easy access. I have personally seen this typical setup in numerous professional businesses from Doctor's offices to Engineering companies. If you think that all new MacPros will end up like the pict in post #1 one really needs to stop and think of a more logical, up to date, modern solution. (ie wait for Vantec to release a circular black HDD enclosure).

 

[Detosx]

My first thought when I saw it was 'oh rude-word' and 'but it's pretty' and 'perhaps there would be room in a current Mac Pro, if you hollowed it out, to put the new Mac Pro in it, along with some drive bays and a DVD writer and... and I hope it doesn't overheat easily like my iMac does when under load'. The lack of an intake fan at the bottom makes me wonder how noisy the outflow fan would be when under load. In and of itself, it's a nice piece of design compared to some of Apple's early plastic misfires, that leaves a gap in Apple's market? If anything, looking at it makes me lust after the old model's case. My favourite mod of the old mode's case is the one where it's polished to a gorgeous mirror finish.

 

[gorg]

Being a G4 Cube owner and a computer enthusiast for decades, I envisioned a cylindrical Mac 10+ years ago when I realised we are never going to get a decent PC case and cooling solution from the lame PC case market. Windows fanboys were making fun of Apple Cube, iMac G4, PowerMac/MacPro while at the same time they were buying ugly LianLi and CoolerMaster cases (or even worse). Most modders were just interested in silly cathode lighting, ugly windows and overclocking rather than elegance, compactness and quietness, too.

I remember a cylindrical mac concept in an iCreate magazine years ago and I wondered why Apple didn't do it. Apple Cube was a missed an opportunity; it was too expensive, too early, too unexpandable to replace a PowerMac. It did wonders later in the 2nd hand market, being an advanced MacOSX capable desktop that was more flexible than an iMac, more quiet than a PowerMac, classier than anything else for a HTPC. While I would like to see the new MacPro as a product between the old model and the iMac, I really appreciate Apple for putting effort into building something fresh and I hope they still believe there is a future for the desktop PC.

Personally, I don't care about PCIe, internal HDDs, optical discs as much as I don't care about California, but I understand that many people do. Nevertheless, you couldn't replace CPUs in the old MacPros, GFX cards were few and ridiculously expensive unless you started flashing PC cards, the trend for a/v equipment is going external with firewire/usb/thunderbolt peripherals, internal RAID for data might not be as safe as external solutions. I would take OpenCL over CUDA for the future anyday. But I am going to miss the 8 RAM slots. I hope SSD is user replaceable but it will be expensive. Anyway, it would be cool to have an option for a 24core "old" MacPro with thunderbolt, or even better, a 64core (hello AMD), 256GB RAM beast ;-)

 

[hardtac0]

Being a G4 Cube owner and a computer enthusiast for decades, I envisioned a cylindrical Mac 10+ years ago when I realised we are never going to get a decent PC case and cooling solution from the lame PC case market. Windows fanboys were making fun of Apple Cube, iMac G4, PowerMac/MacPro while at the same time they were buying ugly LianLi and CoolerMaster cases (or even worse). Most modders were just interested in silly cathode lighting, ugly windows and overclocking rather than elegance, compactness and quietness, too.

This case is pretty much what I envisioned the new Mac Pro should have been like. In fact, since Apple designs the whole package, I'd have gone one step further for compactness: mount the CPU's + memory on the opposite side of the motherboard than the PCI-E expansion. The result would be discrete isolation of the CPU and GPU into unique thermal zones. The front fan would be huge (230 mm ?) and run at a low RPM for low noise operation. This fan would also feed air into both sides of the motherboard. Exhaust in the CPU area would be handled by low RPM 140 mm fans. Anyway, it is just a dream of mine.

Nevertheless, you couldn't replace CPUs in the old MacPros, GFX cards were few and ridiculously expensive unless you started flashing PC cards, the trend for a/v equipment is going external with firewire/usb/thunderbolt peripherals, internal RAID for data might not be as safe as external solutions. I would take OpenCL over CUDA for the future anyday. But I am going to miss the 8 RAM slots. I hope SSD is user replaceable but it will be expensive. Anyway, it would be cool to have an option for a 24core "old" MacPro with thunderbolt, or even better, a 64core (hello AMD), 256GB RAM beast ;-)

The CPU's of the 2009/2010 Mac Pro's were socketed and thus replaceable. The heat sink assembly had to be removed first and was different than the standard mounting mechanism than ordinary socket 1366 chips. Conceptually it was the same on the PC side. The catch is that only recently have socket 1366 Xeon chips been relatively inexpensive to merit upgrades from stock configurations.

Several PC video cards do work in the 2009/2010 Mac Pro's without flashing. The catch is that they may not produce a proper boot screen until the driver loads. This also means that success is dependent upon what drivers OS X has (Radeon 7000 series drivers didn't exist until OS X 10.8.4 for example, nearly 18 months after being on the market).

There is no difference in reliability of the RAID itself between it being internal or external. The biggest reliability factor will be the drives themselves which is independent of where they're located. Other factors like PSU quality and cabling are comparatively minor but if they fail, data can generally be recovered regardless if the drivers are internal or external. The only reason to go with an external solution would be portability or there is a need for more bays than what can fit internally.

CUDA works only on nVida cards where as OpenCL works across Intel, nVidia and AMD GPU's (and CPU's too!). The best option is be able to have a choice if you need to use CUDA but the new Mac Pro would require an external PCI-E chassis to do it and at reduced bandwidth compared adding an nVidia GPU to a 2009/2010 Mac Pro.

 

[duncanroller]

I've also thought about the possibility of crescent shaped accessories to slide right up against the front of the MacPro creating something like a bubble cluster. Ultimately though, with the advent of cloud storage, Pegasus TB arrays, and NAS systems, I don't see a lot of additional needs for the majority of users. We'll see where the market goes.