MKBHD has a good video about the new Mac Pro. I largely agree with his point that it exists for the simple reason that many video and audio production uses include the need for PCI-e cards....
I largely agree with his point that it exists for the simple reason that many video and audio production uses include the need for PCI-e cards. There’s a lot of uses that require specialized cards to add things like SDI or other niche inputs. It’s much more reliable to have them internal and not dependent on external Thunderbolt connectors.
A few thousand dollars difference isn’t going to matter at all to even a small production house.
Indeed. The Mac Pro is a lower volume product for specialized users. The article talks about needing GPUs for machine learning, for which macOS isn't remotely in use. If you're doing ML beyond...
Indeed. The Mac Pro is a lower volume product for specialized users.
The article talks about needing GPUs for machine learning, for which macOS isn't remotely in use. If you're doing ML beyond what the accelerated portion of the M2 chips can do, you're already building a separate box running Linux, or maybe Windows, to handle the load.
Apple and Nvidia have a massive rift between them that isn't being amended anytime soon, even if the new Mac Pro did support GPUs they'd only be AMD ones under macOS, which already turns away basically all GPGPU workloads for lack of CUDA.
If you're doing "Movie FX rendering" you're either doing it at a small enough scale that your M2 laptop can handle it, you splurged on a Mac Studio to churn through it, or you have access to a render farm running regular Linux boxes full of GPUs.
If you don't see any use to PCIe slots other than GPUs—as this article does—this product isn't for you, it never was.
Yeah, the Mac Pro doesn't make much sense. Why buy a Mac Pro when the Mac Studio does the job? The Mac Pro is $11,799 maxed out while the Mac Studio is $8,799 maxed out and both have the same...
Yeah, the Mac Pro doesn't make much sense. Why buy a Mac Pro when the Mac Studio does the job? The Mac Pro is $11,799 maxed out while the Mac Studio is $8,799 maxed out and both have the same specs minus the PCIE slots on the Mac Pro. I guess the PCIE slots would be useful for sound cards and other applications. Still, if I had $12000 for a computer, I would buy a Mac Studio and a nice monitor.
I don’t want to come across as a pc master race type, because I really do see the benefits of both OS. Not to mention Mac is just better at some tasks. But seriously, at that price, how can anyone...
I don’t want to come across as a pc master race type, because I really do see the benefits of both OS. Not to mention Mac is just better at some tasks.
But seriously, at that price, how can anyone justify their computers? Pricing out a top of the line windows system comes in at half that price.
But for good performance, they’re both very overpriced these days. I’m really hoping intel will be able to come in and create a bit more competition which could hopefully lower prices accross the board.
But I don’t hold out much hope. Apple is in their own ecosystem, so they don’t really have to compete with the other guys.
A lot of the buyers are not individuals - for example at live gigs they'll often have a van of Mac Pros to do the necessary processing for audiovisual stuff.
A lot of the buyers are not individuals - for example at live gigs they'll often have a van of Mac Pros to do the necessary processing for audiovisual stuff.
The hint is in the names, these computers are for Pros and Studios where price doesn’t affect demand as much. Although you are still paying a bit of an Apple Tax on their consumer marketed...
The hint is in the names, these computers are for Pros and Studios where price doesn’t affect demand as much. Although you are still paying a bit of an Apple Tax on their consumer marketed products too, its not near as bad
The names get confusing, however, because Apple has put the "Pro" branding on a lot of products that do not target "professionals" at all. The AirPods Pro are a good example. They are a good...
The names get confusing, however, because Apple has put the "Pro" branding on a lot of products that do not target "professionals" at all. The AirPods Pro are a good example. They are a good product for their price point and what they set out to do, but no serious musician or audio engineer is using them for critical listening or mixing a new album. They are a consumer oriented product aimed at solving problems consumers have with regular earbuds.
I don’t know about that. I went and looked at dell’s site; i chose a single platinum xeon, two amd’s 192 gb standard ram and a single 4 tb ssd. Total price was $27k.
Pricing out a top of the line windows system comes in at half that price.
I don’t know about that. I went and looked at dell’s site; i chose a single platinum xeon, two amd’s 192 gb standard ram and a single 4 tb ssd. Total price was $27k.
I guess it would be more accurate to say pricing an equivalent very high end system would be less. The PC ecosystem has so much more flexibility than the Apple one that you can go nuts with the...
I guess it would be more accurate to say pricing an equivalent very high end system would be less. The PC ecosystem has so much more flexibility than the Apple one that you can go nuts with the customization if you want - for example, what you quote (I assume with the Xeon Platinum 8280) has twice as much memory as the maximum possible for the Macs and over twice as many faster CPU cores with more cache. You can also get Xeon Golds with 90% the performancefor less than half the price. If you really crank a Precision 7820 you can get to nearly 100k. But you're also talking about essentially a rack server ML training node in tower form at that point.
So you are technically correct (the best kind of correct) but they still had a point in spirit.
Fwiw, i was, without any rigorous research, trying to spec an equivalent system-same number of cores, same amount of ram, etc. The “apple tax” his been largely exaggerated pretty much since the...
Fwiw, i was, without any rigorous research, trying to spec an equivalent system-same number of cores, same amount of ram, etc.
The “apple tax” his been largely exaggerated pretty much since the intel era. If you match on power, capacity, and build quality, the price is rarely off more than 10%. I am a fanboi, I’ll readily admit, although I haven’t gone to the mat for Apple in a long time, and my identity is far less tied to my choice of computer, although it is still a core identity principle that I think about my choice. I do, however, like to promote truth as I see it. I agree with tfa that this mac “pro” seems pointless (technical bars notwithstanding, why release without the ability to use gpu cards??), I don’t agree that it’s premium priced.
Well dell is notorious for overpricing and under delivering. One of the benefits of a pc is you can source the parts from dozens of companies, and end up with a better machine than dell can put...
Well dell is notorious for overpricing and under delivering.
One of the benefits of a pc is you can source the parts from dozens of companies, and end up with a better machine than dell can put out there, for much cheaper.
I really wouldn’t recommend dell as anyone’s go to brand.
As an aside (and I've made a couple of Hackintosh's) apple really has no "thing" they do better than anyone else on the desktop level. And a boatload of stuff that they kind of fail at, but I...
As an aside (and I've made a couple of Hackintosh's) apple really has no "thing" they do better than anyone else on the desktop level. And a boatload of stuff that they kind of fail at, but I think the ARM based space is interesting, and once "we" figure out how to put various things on them I'll take a look at how the hardware vs. the software really works out.
That was desktops, I do agree that their laptops do tend to prefer "better" for some tasks than PC laptops (though I will say my surface 8 running Debian is right up there with the MacBook, think it might be windows power demands in the ultrathin that really neutor the platform).
I am a PCMR dude, I build useless awesome looking PC's for fun, I have ironically non ironically installed a car radiator in a PC for cooling.
I used to hackintosh for my Mac desktops, but got tired of the various papercuts in the experience that I could never seem to fix (I never could grok the USB port enabler stuff even with community...
I used to hackintosh for my Mac desktops, but got tired of the various papercuts in the experience that I could never seem to fix (I never could grok the USB port enabler stuff even with community utilities, for example, despite being a software dev who’s built large complex apps).
My patience just kinda ran out. I still have a custom tower, but it dual boots Windows and Linux, with the former for gaming and latter for tinkering. My daily driver machine was previously a refurbished iMac Pro and now a 16” M1 Max MBP, and while neither tops the charts in terms of specs they “just work”, which I’ve now learned is valuable in a work machine.
I strongly considered getting a Mac Studio instead of the MBP but ultimately went for the MBP because of a rare deep discount on a built to order model with increased RAM and storage, making it better than a base model Studio for about the same price, but with added excellent screen, UPS in the form of a battery, and portability that occasionally is useful.
I'm honestly kind of amazed that my early M1 Macbook Air is running just as well as when I first got it. Granted I used to buy super cheap budget computers in the past that would always break down...
I'm honestly kind of amazed that my early M1 Macbook Air is running just as well as when I first got it. Granted I used to buy super cheap budget computers in the past that would always break down on me fairly quickly. I'm not sure how much it has to do with how good the M1 was at launch and how much of it has to do with the slower pace of the greater "computer economy".
The efficiency:power ratio of the M1 is a big part of the picture for sure, particularly for laptops where Intel and AMD have traditionally skewed too far in either direction. For the Air...
The efficiency:power ratio of the M1 is a big part of the picture for sure, particularly for laptops where Intel and AMD have traditionally skewed too far in either direction. For the Air specifically, no fan means dramatically reduced dust buildup which makes for a more static performance profile… the only thing there to degrade is its thermal paste, and that usually takes a lot longer to dry up than it does for enough dust in a laptop with a fan to accumulate and negatively impact cooling (and thus performance).
In my experience the workflow is often just smoother on macOS. Window management aside, at least. But there's many more things that you can expect to just kinda work that you don't get on Windows....
In my experience the workflow is often just smoother on macOS. Window management aside, at least. But there's many more things that you can expect to just kinda work that you don't get on Windows. Drag and drop operations are typically more supported and support more edge cases than I recall being able to coax out of Windows, and in general Adobe software has been much more stable on my MacBook and my university's iMacs than it is on the Windows machines at my place of work. Somehow I get better performance on my MacBook and its wimpy integrated graphics in Illustrator than I do with my work PC's 1030 that theoretically should run circles around it.
macOS also has a ton of little power user features tucked in all over the OS many of which are broadly supported by third party apps, and once you're used to using them their absence elsewhere is...
macOS also has a ton of little power user features tucked in all over the OS many of which are broadly supported by third party apps, and once you're used to using them their absence elsewhere is missed.
As far as Mac window management goes, I'm personally not even bothered by that. With a utility to window snap once in a blue moon (it's not actually a feature I need often) I find myself on average a lot less frustrated trying to get real work done under macOS than I am under Windows. Linux comes closer but even with the flexibility it's famous for, I can't coax any of its desktop environments to bend entirely to my needs.
Honestly when I got used to how MacOS treats it's windows, I kind of grew to like it. It's not quite as slapdash as people like to think it is. The fact that they don't "maximize" like most other...
Honestly when I got used to how MacOS treats it's windows, I kind of grew to like it. It's not quite as slapdash as people like to think it is. The fact that they don't "maximize" like most other window managers operate is a feature, not a bug.
I would not say that the way it works is "optimal", but I really don't think there is an optimal solution. Everyone works different ways.
These computers aren't targeted at consumers, they are targeted at businesses and professionals who rely on these machines to make money. Pricing works a little differently in that world. For a...
These computers aren't targeted at consumers, they are targeted at businesses and professionals who rely on these machines to make money.
Pricing works a little differently in that world. For a tool you or your employee relies on to do their job, an extra $6,000 for something that imrpoves their productivity by only a few percentage points can be well worth the investment.
Even in that market however, I think the Mac Pro will prove a very niche product and most buyers will opt for the Studio instead.
There comes a point where you can just throw power at something and brute force it on a M$ machine vs spending an assload of money on a Mac. But as you said. Mac just works better for some tasks.
There comes a point where you can just throw power at something and brute force it on a M$ machine vs spending an assload of money on a Mac.
But as you said. Mac just works better for some tasks.
My guess is that it was actually supposed to have a more powerful chip that got cancelled (as per the rumors) and then when they couldn’t do that, they just hustled it out the door with PCIE slots...
My guess is that it was actually supposed to have a more powerful chip that got cancelled (as per the rumors) and then when they couldn’t do that, they just hustled it out the door with PCIE slots as a differentiator just so they couldn’t be accused of ignoring the Mac Pro for years again. I feel like there will be more of a reason for its existence in future years.
I’m no CPU architect, but I don’t think either M1 or M2 were built with PCI-E GPUs in mind at all, to the point that implementing support for them (if it’s even possible) would be a massive hack...
I’m no CPU architect, but I don’t think either M1 or M2 were built with PCI-E GPUs in mind at all, to the point that implementing support for them (if it’s even possible) would be a massive hack with tradeoffs big enough to make using a PCI-E GPU pointless. It’s an area where the M-series’ iPhone roots is probably most visible.
If PCI-E GPU support is coming it’s probably going to be in a full redesign generation like M3 is expected to be, rather than a minor bump like M2 was.
It seems like Apple likes to try to use up part inventory too, which is part of the reason why you get oddballs like the 13" M1 Pro MBP which use old (sometimes notably flawed) form factors. They...
It seems like Apple likes to try to use up part inventory too, which is part of the reason why you get oddballs like the 13" M1 Pro MBP which use old (sometimes notably flawed) form factors. They might've had a warehouse full of Mac Pro cases that needed using before e.g. rolling out a redesign or revision for the M3 version a year or two from now.
Which seems kind of crazy to me. I thought the whole point of the metallic cases was to make them more environmentally friendly. As in, able to be melted down and reformed into something better.
Which seems kind of crazy to me. I thought the whole point of the metallic cases was to make them more environmentally friendly. As in, able to be melted down and reformed into something better.
While you can do that with these aluminum chassis, it is still far cheaper (and therefore cleaner) to re-use them in their existing form rather than melting them back down and machining new parts.
While you can do that with these aluminum chassis, it is still far cheaper (and therefore cleaner) to re-use them in their existing form rather than melting them back down and machining new parts.
But I thought the problem was the form was causing overheating issues, since they didn’t account for proper venting on the units. I guess they could find a way to double machine them to add in...
But I thought the problem was the form was causing overheating issues, since they didn’t account for proper venting on the units.
I guess they could find a way to double machine them to add in some heat dissipation maybe?
It's not an issue with the M1 chips. That is the solution. The "issue" with the old 13in chassis is that compared to the redesign, it still has the touchbar instead of the function row (minus the...
It's not an issue with the M1 chips. That is the solution. The "issue" with the old 13in chassis is that compared to the redesign, it still has the touchbar instead of the function row (minus the escape button) and the bezels on the screen are a bit antiquated now.
But overall, the 13'' m1 MBP is a great recycling example, since the old chassis main issue is no longer one.
It doesn’t make sense for the consumer. However, if corporations are paying the bills… My company bought me a new M2 MacBook Pro and will be getting me a Mac Pro within the next year. When you...
It doesn’t make sense for the consumer. However, if corporations are paying the bills…
My company bought me a new M2 MacBook Pro and will be getting me a Mac Pro within the next year. When you edit videos everyday, time savings pay.
What software are you editing with? We're running Avid and Resolve on both Mac and PC, and the PCs always win out against the Macs, even though they came with a cheaper price tag. We're just now...
What software are you editing with?
We're running Avid and Resolve on both Mac and PC, and the PCs always win out against the Macs, even though they came with a cheaper price tag. We're just now testing the newer Mac Minis to see if they'll be good going forward as they're a lot cheaper than the Dell and HP Avid models we're buying, but when it comes to management, Windows is still the winner for mass deployments. So much to balance out.
Premiere Pro and the rest of the Adobe suite. The new Apple Silicon chips just tear through video rendering like butter. My PC, running a 3070Ti is much slower in comparison.
Premiere Pro and the rest of the Adobe suite. The new Apple Silicon chips just tear through video rendering like butter. My PC, running a 3070Ti is much slower in comparison.
I think Apple has priced out their audience. 7$k USD for a laptop is way too high. For reference, when I bought my 2016 MacBook Pro, it was 2$k USD. A 3.5x price increase seems absurd, especially...
I think Apple has priced out their audience. 7$k USD for a laptop is way too high. For reference, when I bought my 2016 MacBook Pro, it was 2$k USD. A 3.5x price increase seems absurd, especially since it’s unlikely to 3.5x better than competing Windows laptops.
That probably would be too high. Good thing they don't sell a $7k laptop, then? Looks as if that price in 2016 would have been the 13" model. Whereas today, the 14" macbook pro costs... still $2k....
7$k USD for a laptop is way too high.
That probably would be too high. Good thing they don't sell a $7k laptop, then?
For reference, when I bought my 2016 MacBook Pro, it was 2$k USD. A 3.5x price increase seems absurd
Looks as if that price in 2016 would have been the 13" model. Whereas today, the 14" macbook pro costs... still $2k. Meaning that, after adjusting for inflation, the price has actually decreased by ~21%.
I'm a little confused by this statement, since their current laptops don't start anywhere near $7k. I presume you're talking about one that has been fully upgraded, but a maxed out 2016 MacBook...
I'm a little confused by this statement, since their current laptops don't start anywhere near $7k. I presume you're talking about one that has been fully upgraded, but a maxed out 2016 MacBook Pro was setting you back far more than $2,000 back when it was new as well.
I'm not so sure it's a joke so much as a product with an unproven market. $3,500 is out of reach for most people, but that doesn't mean it is overpriced. The problem with trying to assess the...
I'm not so sure it's a joke so much as a product with an unproven market. $3,500 is out of reach for most people, but that doesn't mean it is overpriced.
The problem with trying to assess the value of the headset is that there are no comparable alternatives yet. There are $1,500 headsets today, but they aren't nearly as capable as what Apple is promising. The closest competitor seems to be Microsoft HoloLens, which presently commands a similar price but with a much more limited feature set.
Well I still consider the price a bit much. Give it another five years and all their competitors will have options closer to the price point I’m suggesting. At least if it takes off and is...
Well I still consider the price a bit much. Give it another five years and all their competitors will have options closer to the price point I’m suggesting. At least if it takes off and is popular. But time will tell.
I’m confused what you’re talking about. The Mac Pro is not a laptop. The Macbook pro starts at ~1400 for the 14 and 2k for the 16 just as you remember, and for that matter they’re not a bad deal...
I’m confused what you’re talking about. The Mac Pro is not a laptop. The Macbook pro starts at ~1400 for the 14 and 2k for the 16 just as you remember, and for that matter they’re not a bad deal all things considered, as you just can’t match their power combined with battery life at the moment.
MKBHD has a good video about the new Mac Pro.
I largely agree with his point that it exists for the simple reason that many video and audio production uses include the need for PCI-e cards. There’s a lot of uses that require specialized cards to add things like SDI or other niche inputs. It’s much more reliable to have them internal and not dependent on external Thunderbolt connectors.
A few thousand dollars difference isn’t going to matter at all to even a small production house.
Indeed. The Mac Pro is a lower volume product for specialized users.
The article talks about needing GPUs for machine learning, for which macOS isn't remotely in use. If you're doing ML beyond what the accelerated portion of the M2 chips can do, you're already building a separate box running Linux, or maybe Windows, to handle the load.
Apple and Nvidia have a massive rift between them that isn't being amended anytime soon, even if the new Mac Pro did support GPUs they'd only be AMD ones under macOS, which already turns away basically all GPGPU workloads for lack of CUDA.
If you're doing "Movie FX rendering" you're either doing it at a small enough scale that your M2 laptop can handle it, you splurged on a Mac Studio to churn through it, or you have access to a render farm running regular Linux boxes full of GPUs.
If you don't see any use to PCIe slots other than GPUs—as this article does—this product isn't for you, it never was.
Yeah, the Mac Pro doesn't make much sense. Why buy a Mac Pro when the Mac Studio does the job? The Mac Pro is $11,799 maxed out while the Mac Studio is $8,799 maxed out and both have the same specs minus the PCIE slots on the Mac Pro. I guess the PCIE slots would be useful for sound cards and other applications. Still, if I had $12000 for a computer, I would buy a Mac Studio and a nice monitor.
I don’t want to come across as a pc master race type, because I really do see the benefits of both OS. Not to mention Mac is just better at some tasks.
But seriously, at that price, how can anyone justify their computers? Pricing out a top of the line windows system comes in at half that price.
But for good performance, they’re both very overpriced these days. I’m really hoping intel will be able to come in and create a bit more competition which could hopefully lower prices accross the board.
But I don’t hold out much hope. Apple is in their own ecosystem, so they don’t really have to compete with the other guys.
A lot of the buyers are not individuals - for example at live gigs they'll often have a van of Mac Pros to do the necessary processing for audiovisual stuff.
The hint is in the names, these computers are for Pros and Studios where price doesn’t affect demand as much. Although you are still paying a bit of an Apple Tax on their consumer marketed products too, its not near as bad
The names get confusing, however, because Apple has put the "Pro" branding on a lot of products that do not target "professionals" at all. The AirPods Pro are a good example. They are a good product for their price point and what they set out to do, but no serious musician or audio engineer is using them for critical listening or mixing a new album. They are a consumer oriented product aimed at solving problems consumers have with regular earbuds.
I don’t know about that. I went and looked at dell’s site; i chose a single platinum xeon, two amd’s 192 gb standard ram and a single 4 tb ssd. Total price was $27k.
I guess it would be more accurate to say pricing an equivalent very high end system would be less. The PC ecosystem has so much more flexibility than the Apple one that you can go nuts with the customization if you want - for example, what you quote (I assume with the Xeon Platinum 8280) has twice as much memory as the maximum possible for the Macs and over twice as many faster CPU cores with more cache. You can also get Xeon Golds with 90% the performancefor less than half the price. If you really crank a Precision 7820 you can get to nearly 100k. But you're also talking about essentially a rack server ML training node in tower form at that point.
So you are technically correct (the best kind of correct) but they still had a point in spirit.
Fwiw, i was, without any rigorous research, trying to spec an equivalent system-same number of cores, same amount of ram, etc.
The “apple tax” his been largely exaggerated pretty much since the intel era. If you match on power, capacity, and build quality, the price is rarely off more than 10%. I am a fanboi, I’ll readily admit, although I haven’t gone to the mat for Apple in a long time, and my identity is far less tied to my choice of computer, although it is still a core identity principle that I think about my choice. I do, however, like to promote truth as I see it. I agree with tfa that this mac “pro” seems pointless (technical bars notwithstanding, why release without the ability to use gpu cards??), I don’t agree that it’s premium priced.
Well dell is notorious for overpricing and under delivering.
One of the benefits of a pc is you can source the parts from dozens of companies, and end up with a better machine than dell can put out there, for much cheaper.
I really wouldn’t recommend dell as anyone’s go to brand.
As an aside (and I've made a couple of Hackintosh's) apple really has no "thing" they do better than anyone else on the desktop level. And a boatload of stuff that they kind of fail at, but I think the ARM based space is interesting, and once "we" figure out how to put various things on them I'll take a look at how the hardware vs. the software really works out.
That was desktops, I do agree that their laptops do tend to prefer "better" for some tasks than PC laptops (though I will say my surface 8 running Debian is right up there with the MacBook, think it might be windows power demands in the ultrathin that really neutor the platform).
I am a PCMR dude, I build useless awesome looking PC's for fun, I have ironically non ironically installed a car radiator in a PC for cooling.
I used to hackintosh for my Mac desktops, but got tired of the various papercuts in the experience that I could never seem to fix (I never could grok the USB port enabler stuff even with community utilities, for example, despite being a software dev who’s built large complex apps).
My patience just kinda ran out. I still have a custom tower, but it dual boots Windows and Linux, with the former for gaming and latter for tinkering. My daily driver machine was previously a refurbished iMac Pro and now a 16” M1 Max MBP, and while neither tops the charts in terms of specs they “just work”, which I’ve now learned is valuable in a work machine.
I strongly considered getting a Mac Studio instead of the MBP but ultimately went for the MBP because of a rare deep discount on a built to order model with increased RAM and storage, making it better than a base model Studio for about the same price, but with added excellent screen, UPS in the form of a battery, and portability that occasionally is useful.
I'm honestly kind of amazed that my early M1 Macbook Air is running just as well as when I first got it. Granted I used to buy super cheap budget computers in the past that would always break down on me fairly quickly. I'm not sure how much it has to do with how good the M1 was at launch and how much of it has to do with the slower pace of the greater "computer economy".
The efficiency:power ratio of the M1 is a big part of the picture for sure, particularly for laptops where Intel and AMD have traditionally skewed too far in either direction. For the Air specifically, no fan means dramatically reduced dust buildup which makes for a more static performance profile… the only thing there to degrade is its thermal paste, and that usually takes a lot longer to dry up than it does for enough dust in a laptop with a fan to accumulate and negatively impact cooling (and thus performance).
In my experience the workflow is often just smoother on macOS. Window management aside, at least. But there's many more things that you can expect to just kinda work that you don't get on Windows. Drag and drop operations are typically more supported and support more edge cases than I recall being able to coax out of Windows, and in general Adobe software has been much more stable on my MacBook and my university's iMacs than it is on the Windows machines at my place of work. Somehow I get better performance on my MacBook and its wimpy integrated graphics in Illustrator than I do with my work PC's 1030 that theoretically should run circles around it.
macOS also has a ton of little power user features tucked in all over the OS many of which are broadly supported by third party apps, and once you're used to using them their absence elsewhere is missed.
As far as Mac window management goes, I'm personally not even bothered by that. With a utility to window snap once in a blue moon (it's not actually a feature I need often) I find myself on average a lot less frustrated trying to get real work done under macOS than I am under Windows. Linux comes closer but even with the flexibility it's famous for, I can't coax any of its desktop environments to bend entirely to my needs.
Honestly when I got used to how MacOS treats it's windows, I kind of grew to like it. It's not quite as slapdash as people like to think it is. The fact that they don't "maximize" like most other window managers operate is a feature, not a bug.
I would not say that the way it works is "optimal", but I really don't think there is an optimal solution. Everyone works different ways.
I’d be very interested in seeing that build with the car radiator haha
The Mac Studio is fairly price competitive. Mac Pro less so, but it is a market with more inelastic demand.
These computers aren't targeted at consumers, they are targeted at businesses and professionals who rely on these machines to make money.
Pricing works a little differently in that world. For a tool you or your employee relies on to do their job, an extra $6,000 for something that imrpoves their productivity by only a few percentage points can be well worth the investment.
Even in that market however, I think the Mac Pro will prove a very niche product and most buyers will opt for the Studio instead.
There comes a point where you can just throw power at something and brute force it on a M$ machine vs spending an assload of money on a Mac.
But as you said. Mac just works better for some tasks.
My guess is that it was actually supposed to have a more powerful chip that got cancelled (as per the rumors) and then when they couldn’t do that, they just hustled it out the door with PCIE slots as a differentiator just so they couldn’t be accused of ignoring the Mac Pro for years again. I feel like there will be more of a reason for its existence in future years.
I mean sure, the ultra didn’t materialize. But these don’t support graphics cards in all those pcie slots. What gives there?!
I’m no CPU architect, but I don’t think either M1 or M2 were built with PCI-E GPUs in mind at all, to the point that implementing support for them (if it’s even possible) would be a massive hack with tradeoffs big enough to make using a PCI-E GPU pointless. It’s an area where the M-series’ iPhone roots is probably most visible.
If PCI-E GPU support is coming it’s probably going to be in a full redesign generation like M3 is expected to be, rather than a minor bump like M2 was.
That seems correct. But it seems baffling to release it that way. Maybe they had production contracts that would have cost too much to cancel.
It seems like Apple likes to try to use up part inventory too, which is part of the reason why you get oddballs like the 13" M1 Pro MBP which use old (sometimes notably flawed) form factors. They might've had a warehouse full of Mac Pro cases that needed using before e.g. rolling out a redesign or revision for the M3 version a year or two from now.
Which seems kind of crazy to me. I thought the whole point of the metallic cases was to make them more environmentally friendly. As in, able to be melted down and reformed into something better.
Well, there's still the energy required to process them and melt them down so ultimately it's probably better if they're used.
While you can do that with these aluminum chassis, it is still far cheaper (and therefore cleaner) to re-use them in their existing form rather than melting them back down and machining new parts.
But I thought the problem was the form was causing overheating issues, since they didn’t account for proper venting on the units.
I guess they could find a way to double machine them to add in some heat dissipation maybe?
It's not an issue with the M1 chips. That is the solution. The "issue" with the old 13in chassis is that compared to the redesign, it still has the touchbar instead of the function row (minus the escape button) and the bezels on the screen are a bit antiquated now.
But overall, the 13'' m1 MBP is a great recycling example, since the old chassis main issue is no longer one.
Oh that’s good to know. Haven’t needed a Mac in years, so wasn’t up to date on their current issues like when the 13in was new.
The overheating issues were solved by moving from inefficient Intel chips to Apple's in-house ARM chips.
It doesn’t make sense for the consumer. However, if corporations are paying the bills…
My company bought me a new M2 MacBook Pro and will be getting me a Mac Pro within the next year. When you edit videos everyday, time savings pay.
What software are you editing with?
We're running Avid and Resolve on both Mac and PC, and the PCs always win out against the Macs, even though they came with a cheaper price tag. We're just now testing the newer Mac Minis to see if they'll be good going forward as they're a lot cheaper than the Dell and HP Avid models we're buying, but when it comes to management, Windows is still the winner for mass deployments. So much to balance out.
Premiere Pro and the rest of the Adobe suite. The new Apple Silicon chips just tear through video rendering like butter. My PC, running a 3070Ti is much slower in comparison.
I think Apple has priced out their audience. 7$k USD for a laptop is way too high. For reference, when I bought my 2016 MacBook Pro, it was 2$k USD. A 3.5x price increase seems absurd, especially since it’s unlikely to 3.5x better than competing Windows laptops.
That probably would be too high. Good thing they don't sell a $7k laptop, then?
Looks as if that price in 2016 would have been the 13" model. Whereas today, the 14" macbook pro costs... still $2k. Meaning that, after adjusting for inflation, the price has actually decreased by ~21%.
I'm a little confused by this statement, since their current laptops don't start anywhere near $7k. I presume you're talking about one that has been fully upgraded, but a maxed out 2016 MacBook Pro was setting you back far more than $2,000 back when it was new as well.
Agreed. Even their new Apple glass thing looked pretty cool. At $1500 if still would have felt a bit overpriced. $3500 is a joke.
I'm not so sure it's a joke so much as a product with an unproven market. $3,500 is out of reach for most people, but that doesn't mean it is overpriced.
The problem with trying to assess the value of the headset is that there are no comparable alternatives yet. There are $1,500 headsets today, but they aren't nearly as capable as what Apple is promising. The closest competitor seems to be Microsoft HoloLens, which presently commands a similar price but with a much more limited feature set.
Well I still consider the price a bit much. Give it another five years and all their competitors will have options closer to the price point I’m suggesting. At least if it takes off and is popular. But time will tell.
It’s an early adapter tax.
I’m confused what you’re talking about. The Mac Pro is not a laptop. The Macbook pro starts at ~1400 for the 14 and 2k for the 16 just as you remember, and for that matter they’re not a bad deal all things considered, as you just can’t match their power combined with battery life at the moment.