The new Mac Pro + 6k monitor has landed - introducing the Cheese Graters

[Michael Steiner]

2 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

You realize that has been the entry price for the last couple MacPros, right? 

I think the 2009 MacPro I bought was $2800? Maybe $3000?

Acknowledging you royally screwed up with the Garbage Bin MacPro and, as part of trying to win people back, launching a MacPro that has worse specs than your best regular iMac (not even the iMac Pro!) and for twice the price is asinine. That it's upgradable is wonderful, but not $6k wonderful, and certainly not the $10k you'd have to spend to get the machine you'd really need. 

This is clearly a company that has lost its way. Style over substance to a ridiculous degree. That they've simultaneously done this while dumbing down/simplified their "pro" apps like FCPX makes no sense. 

The core of the Apple's creative community, and those that were most vocal about Apple losing their way, are the ones Apple has decided to ignore. 

Everyone in this thread complaining WANT to give Apple their money, FFS! 

Sorry, but your reply is just proof of my point. QED 

If you bought a Ford A in 1903, you paid less than a grand. Prices of 2009 mean nothing. Regulare Macs do now maybe 80% of what you needed a MacPro for back then. 

I fully agree with what Mr Stasianos wrote up there:

2 hours ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

When you are buying the base configuration of a Mac Pro, you are actually paying for things that you can't use until you stuff it with overpriced components. You are paying for the "fact" that your machine has the "ability" to get significant upgrades like 1.5 TB of Ram, 4 TB SSD, 4 x Vega's etc.

If you aren‘t at least relieved Apple brought this MacPro you‘re not the targeted customer for it. Go have a look at what the highend people think of it, there‘s quiet some excitement. For all normal creators I think the following is what Apple thinks too:

2 hours ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

The iMac 2019 right now is the perfect balance for almost any content creator that can't afford the new MacPro. iMac Pro is also overpriced for the majority of users.

You dont have to like apple. If you cant live with what they offer, it might be better to move on...

But stating they have lost their way is ridiculous. Thats what I mean by being personally offended. Dont extrapolate from your feelings.

[Sage]

I'd like to recommend this channel, which I find to be a lot of fun, and particularly this video which is quite relevant today:

I am planning to build a Pc this year with the upcoming Amd 7nm 12 core, and the forthcoming RTX 2070 Ti (my current build is quite old). It should, according to Puget Systems data, be a sweet spot for performing near the top of the charts in Resolve, without ballooning in price.

[Trek of Joy]

 

 

 

55 minutes ago, Mokara said:

Just a word of caution before you do that....those high core i9 based laptops usually throttle because of overheating, so performance is not necessarily much better than the i7 variants. 

If you want brute strength performance you need a desktop.

My projects are pretty simple compared to many - edits, transitions, grade and some titles, occasionally a few simple motion graphics, usually no longer than 3 minutes in length. I can do a lot with my iPad and Lumafusion too. I go back and forth, the new i9 iMacs also look pretty good and you get the 5k screen - it'll be one or the other. I have a dock with a fan that does a nice job of keeping things cool when working on a laptop. I just need to increase the speed of all time-sucking tasks like lightroom exports, video exports and so on, one of the i9 machines is in the cards sometime in the next few weeks.

Cheers

Chris

[joenyc]

I don’t think Apple has given up on the prosumer market (their laptops are huge among creative prosumers), so much as recognized that—of the people complaining about wanting a modular, upgradable Mac desktop—only the well-funded, professional clientele are guaranteed to actually buy one. This is a niche of a niche for Apple with zero economies of scale, so it needs to be built for success. If it meets with success, the features might be funneled back to a lower end Mac Pro offering at some point. This kind of high-end subsidization of prosumer products is common. If not, Apple will probably abandon the pro desktop market for good, as it is little more than a spec of dust on their bottom line. Apple goes where they can make a dent with design; middle of the road, headless desktop PC’s are a dull challenge and commodity product that aren’t in their wheelhouse. I’m frankly BEYOND shocked that they announced a return to the tower form factor at all!

[GiM_6x]

That's for real big movie makers.
Starting ar around 10-12 k$, but if you "upgraded" to full specs, over 50 k$ on it.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/19/06/04/1332234/apples-top-spec-mac-pro-and-pro-display-will-cost-at-least-50000

[fuzzynormal]

Ha!  I get to wear my old man badge now!

"Back in my day we spent over 100K for shitty 640x480 non-linear editing and we LIKED it!"

Hey, things are pretty sweet when you're on the other side of the gate.

[kaylee]

3 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Ha!  I get to wear my old man badge now!

"Back in my day we spent over 100K for shitty 640x480 non-linear editing and we LIKED it!"

Hey, things are pretty sweet when you're on the other side of the gate.

back in my day, my parents bought the house i grew up in for $150k. its worth $750k now

apple completely went back to their old design! ? talk about admitting defeat lol

[leeys]

11 hours ago, wolf33d said:

"I think Apple have made a bit of a misjudgement in not providing a competitive desktop Mac for the masses and smaller creative studios."

I do not think so. This is called the iMac and iMac pro. The latest 2019 iMac is very powerful, more than what most of "the masses" need. It bests the iMac Pro in many real world uses.
The iMac Pro will soon get an update and fill that gap as well. 

I recently invested in an iMac and I am amazed. I have a $500 4K 27" screen and it is such garbage compared to the iMac screen. You would spend $1000 for a similarly good screen. The power is amazing, havent restarted the computer in weeks, haven't had a bug since day one months ago, everything is blazingly fast and the system a joy to use. Also having such a clean and simple design of an all in one on my desk leaves room and is nice. I would absolutely hate to have a normal desktop, including the new iMac Pro which to me looks awful by the way. 

For work, I have from my company the latest Huawei Matebook Pro x which is considered by all major test website to be the best portable windows laptop on the market. It's such a garbage, full of bugs, have to restart it every week before it slows down too much. A PITA. Everything from the slow wake up time to the bad trackpad to the system is a pain.

People can continue to cry all day long about how Apple is expensive and I totally agree it is (sometimes justified, sometimes it's ridiculous). But it just works. 

By the way, the WWDC was the best in years. iPadOS is amazing. The new privacy features on iOS are incredible. Finally Apple is listening to customers.
I laughed good times with the $999 screen holder for the new iMac Pro. 

I always roll my eyes at Apple fanboy posts like this. If you like the UX of MacOS, that's fair, we all have different workflows and preferences.

But Windows bashing is so old. Haven't restarted my ancient system in weeks either. And that's only because I needed to install one of the monthly updates.

[kaylee]

to be fair, the new monitor DOES come with a free cleaning cloth

[Andrew Reid]

It it in the form of a gold leaf?

[nickname]

On 6/4/2019 at 4:02 AM, newfoundmass said:

One good thing about this announcement though is that they stuck with Intel. I know there were many in the Hackintosh community that were worried that they were going to start making their own processors again, with 2020 being the year a lot of them said it would happen. 

I wonder too if, by being more "modular", if this also makes building a Hackintosh any easier? I've really been thinking about building one as my current system gets older, I've just always been worried about something going wrong at a crucial point while working. 

My hackintoshes were always a pain to set up, but once they run they run. Just NEVER update the OS! :-) my first one was going for 5 years straight without any issues, upgraded cpu and OS last Fall, no problems since. Extremely reliable. 

Running an 8core xeon and a gtx780. can play 4k dngs in 24p in resolve. Basically the performance of the 2013 mac pro for very cheap. That's all that I need. Am still editing prores and grade in raw later. 

 

 

[newfoundmass]

19 hours ago, Michi said:

Sorry, but your reply is just proof of my point. QED 

If you bought a Ford A in 1903, you paid less than a grand. Prices of 2009 mean nothing. Regulare Macs do now maybe 80% of what you needed a MacPro for back then. 

You're comparing the price of a car in 1903 to the prices of a MacPro in 2009 and 2013? The US dollar in 2009 is equal to $1.19 today. Using inflation to justify this is ridiculous. 

Yeah, I could buy another iMac and experience the same limitations as before. Oddly buying a machine that's not easily/fully upgradable isn't high on my to do list though. Selling and buying a new work station every couple of years to avoid the increasingly rapid drop in value isn't appealing to me. 

I'm sorry I'm not as understanding of Apple shafting their customer base as you are. 

I love Mac computers, but there's nothing Apple apologists won't defend, huh? 

[Goose]

$1000 for a monitor stand...  that tells you all you need to know about Apple.

[kye]

On 6/5/2019 at 1:29 AM, newfoundmass said:

This is clearly a company that has lost its way.

In a sense I'd agree, but the bigger picture is a bit more complicated.

Over time computers have been getting smaller and cheaper.

Early computers were custom built, cost millions of dollars, and took up entire floors of buildings.  They were run on valves (tubes for you US folk), needed huge amount of power, created amazing heat, and were subject to all kinds of issues like valves burning out, dust making faulty connections and insects getting in (where the phrase "a bug in the code" comes from).
Then with the microprocessor revolution desktops appeared and eventually became cheap enough for domestic use.  There were early portable computers around that required mains power but had integrated CRT monitors and keyboards, which were the first step towards portable computers.
Laptops became feasible when battery technology and LCD displays reached sufficient maturity and low enough cost.
Smartphones appeared when touchscreens and miniaturisation technologies matured.

You can look at it like this, people do, but there are some wrinkles in here.  For example, laptops are basically mobile phones with a huge screen, huge batteries, and keyboard.

In many cases the hardware involved is the same, and phones can easily be made to run the same operating systems.

Those with laptops who (like me) use them on the go but then 'dock' them to a larger monitor, storage, and potentially eGPU hardware etc, are essentially bridging the gap between laptops and desktop computers.  The only limitation is the comms standards (like USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt 3) and software support.  Smartphones have this potential as well - plug in your phone at home and run Resolve on it for example..  We currently turn our phones into laptops quite commonly:

So, in the current marketplace laptops are sort-of desktops, and phones are sort-of laptops, what is the future of the desktop?  Is it that desktops will be sort-of super-computers?  If so, why shouldn't they be designed to be far more powerful than laptops, and priced accordingly?  In a world where things are sort-of the next size up, it sort-of makes sense  

 

[thephoenix]

On 6/4/2019 at 10:29 PM, Sage said:

I am planning to build a Pc this year with the upcoming Amd 7nm 12 core, and the forthcoming RTX 2070 Ti (my current build is quite old). It should, according to Puget Systems data, be a sweet spot for performing near the top of the charts in Resolve, without ballooning in price.

got myself a new pc few monthes ago. 1920x and 2070. it performs quite well

[Michael Steiner]

On 6/5/2019 at 5:38 PM, newfoundmass said:

You're comparing the price of a car in 1903 to the prices of a MacPro in 2009 and 2013? The US dollar in 2009 is equal to $1.19 today. Using inflation to justify this is ridiculous. 

I wasn't referring to inflation but arguing more along the line of "times change"... (and admit it wasn't the best of analogies) 

But when you look at the current prices of MBP, iMac and iMac Pro I still think it was naive to hope for a 3000$ entry price for this machine. 

On 6/5/2019 at 5:38 PM, newfoundmass said:

I'm sorry I'm not as understanding of Apple shafting their customer base as you are. 

I'm absolutely fine with that, don't be sorry ? 

My main point was and still is that some people just need to manage their expectations a little better for the sake of their own health and for the benefit of more pragmatic discussions in these forums. 

Be it Apple, Canon, Sony or whatever company – crying "rip off", "they lost touch", "they're doomed", "they don't know what they are doing" and whatnot every time they launch a new product is annoying. And it is mostly based on individual and highly unrealistic expectations and the wrong assumption that the personal needs are those that any company has to fulfill. It's just a stupid, never ending discussion running in circles.

Sure, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. But most of the time these opinions reflect just some weird feelings. If there was any valuable expertise behind these outcries you'd better start a consulting company in Silicon Valley.  

Cheers

[webrunner5]

Kind of funny in almost the same year, 1981 as he did I paid $7000.00 Dollars for nearly the same system! So he might be right It could be a bargain. I made a Lot of money with mine.

 

[William Koehler]

I would like to personally congratulate Apple on making a custom fully loaded ThreadRipper system look like the bargain basement option.