Comments

VidMus wrote on 6/15/2013, 8:26 PM
The music is way too loud making it impossible for me to hear what is being said. My speech hearing is poor anyway but this makes it impossible.

Please duck the music.
john_dennis wrote on 6/15/2013, 8:34 PM
I think it's industrial art.

Hermes scarfs are beautiful, too, but I'm very unlikely to ever own one.
ushere wrote on 6/15/2013, 10:25 PM
form over function.....
TheRhino wrote on 6/17/2013, 4:32 PM
I agree, form over function with function taking a BIG hit... Even as a SFF design, it lacks the option to add multiple internal hard drives or an internal BR burner... IMO you are better off with a fast laptop...

The problem with Apple's space-heater design is that all of the external peripherals take-up a LOT more space individually AND cost tons more... In comparison, our current Win7 workstations have space for (15) hot-swap drives, (4) internal SSDs, and (2) Blu-ray burners.

If I need portability, I'll just take my laptops.

Workstation C with $600 USD of upgrades in April, 2021
--$360 11700K @ 5.0ghz
--$200 ASRock W480 Creator (onboard 10G net, TB3, etc.)
Borrowed from my 9900K until prices drop:
--32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3200 ($100 on Black Friday...)
Reused from same Tower Case that housed the Xeon:
--Used VEGA 56 GPU ($200 on eBay before mining craze...)
--Noctua Cooler, 750W PSU, OS SSD, LSI RAID Controller, SATAs, etc.

Performs VERY close to my overclocked 9900K (below), but at stock settings with no tweaking...

Workstation D with $1,350 USD of upgrades in April, 2019
--$500 9900K @ 5.0ghz
--$140 Corsair H150i liquid cooling with 360mm radiator (3 fans)
--$200 open box Asus Z390 WS (PLX chip manages 4/5 PCIe slots)
--$160 32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3000 (added another 32GB later...)
--$350 refurbished, but like-new Radeon Vega 64 LQ (liquid cooled)

Renders Vegas11 "Red Car Test" (AMD VCE) in 13s when clocked at 4.9 ghz
(note: BOTH onboard Intel & Vega64 show utilization during QSV & VCE renders...)

Source Video1 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 on motherboard in RAID0
Source Video2 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 (1) via U.2 adapter & (1) on separate PCIe card
Target Video1 = 32TB RAID0--(4) 8TB SATA hot-swap drives on PCIe RAID card with backups elsewhere

10G Network using used $30 Mellanox2 Adapters & Qnap QSW-M408-2C 10G Switch
Copy of Work Files, Source & Output Video, OS Images on QNAP 653b NAS with (6) 14TB WD RED
Blackmagic Decklink PCie card for capturing from tape, etc.
(2) internal BR Burners connected via USB 3.0 to SATA adapters
Old Cooler Master CM Stacker ATX case with (13) 5.25" front drive-bays holds & cools everything.

Workstations A & B are the 2 remaining 6-core 4.0ghz Xeon 5660 or I7 980x on Asus P6T6 motherboards.

$999 Walmart Evoo 17 Laptop with I7-9750H 6-core CPU, RTX 2060, (2) M.2 bays & (1) SSD bay...

rmack350 wrote on 6/17/2013, 7:47 PM
I was listening to our main editor (the person who signs my checks) and an audio finisher talk about this. Storage isn't really that much of an issue but the ability to accept an audio or video card is a concern. And it doesn't fit in a rack.

Essentially, this would get used a lot like a laptop. It'd be more powerful and you might have the monitor setup you want, but the thing is designed to sit out in the open like an SGI Onyx or something similar. This is a real classical Mac setup with a computer and stack of drives sitting on your desk. Makes me think back to their older pizza box designs, like the Quadra.

I don't think the target audience would want (15) hot-swap drives, (4) internal SSDs, and (2) Blu-ray burners.

Rob
Steve Grisetti wrote on 6/17/2013, 8:00 PM
I think this is hilarious, Savant3D!

Great job! You had me laughing out loud.
Serena wrote on 6/17/2013, 9:58 PM
yes, nice!
Perhaps an Apple marketing guy noticed a Cray in a museum. "Cool", he said. Steve was very good at recognising great ideas, but maybe that was a skill he took with him.
Seth wrote on 6/18/2013, 3:41 PM
I'm sorry about that: I usually duck music much more, but knew that my primary audience would be watching this video on a cell phone, so I was a little more aggressive on this one.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/20/2013, 6:03 AM
My only comment on the video is that I feel that it failed to convey it's message because I had to watch it twice. Once to read the messages which I had to pause quite often because they weren't on the screen long enough for me to read and then I had to watch it again to listen to what the announcer was saying. I could not read the messages and listen at the same time. I don't know if anyone else had to do this but I shouldn't have to pause a video or watch it twice to get the message. Maybe if the words were in a balloon so that I didn't have to figure out which white letters were your message and which were the original? I don't know. It was just too fast for me and hard to figure out what was what. I got the parody but if I had only watched it once I would have missed a lot of the messages. Maybe slow it down a bit? Maybe I'm just too old. lol

As for the Mac Pro, I applaud Apple for taking leaps forward unlike Microsoft who in 2013 is still making 32-bit operating systems and fracturing the market by not taking a firm stance on new technology. IMHO Windows 7 should have only come in a 64-bit version forcing all software manufacturers to update their software but Windows 8 continues the mess that we have today with some plug-ins being 32-bit and others being 64-bit. Apple just made OS X 64-bit and never looked back. That's what Apple does. They force you into the future. Some people don't like to be forced. That's fine they don't have to buy it.

The Mac Pro is everything I was hoping for. I have a Mac Mini and prior to the Mac Pro announcement I was thinking to myself, why the heck do I need that big Windows refrigerator-like box that I just built for Vegas? I wish the Mac Mini had a more powerful processor and GPU and I'd be all set. That's essentially what the Mac Pro is. All I would need to do is plug in my existing RAID 5 enclosure and I'm all set to edit. I don't see a need for internal hard drive bays but maybe that's because I already love my Mac Mini which doesn't have them?

~jr
pwppch wrote on 6/20/2013, 8:14 AM
@JohnnyRoy WRT MacPro

+1

What I have always wanted, and exactly what I had hoped Apple would do.

Peter


Rob Franks wrote on 6/20/2013, 9:59 PM
"form over function....."

I think that sums it up quite nicely.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/21/2013, 12:12 AM
The air cooling design is pretty neat.

So it doubles as an air purifier too!

However, I'd prefer if PC case modding was left to the hard core users & fringe companies.
Laurence wrote on 6/21/2013, 11:49 AM
While I agree with all the previously stated criticisms ... wow is that sexy! OMG, I want one!
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/21/2013, 4:09 PM
The more I think about the design, the more I think you could get really good cooling that way. Having your drives slide in around the base, the MB in the middle of it all, your ports around the outside. You could get really good forced airflow.
HyperMedia wrote on 6/26/2013, 7:08 AM
Agreed with Johnny Roy I love my iMac. I was waiting for a updated version of the Mac Pro. With this computer being much smaller. I see bringing this with a monitor out on certain location.
riredale wrote on 6/26/2013, 10:27 AM
Form over function, agreed. I think Apple's next move should be to make a Mac in the shape of a pretzel, just to show it CAN be done. Or a gorgeous chrome cone shape with a pointy top that serves to hold your breakfast doughnut. THAT would be cool.

Perhaps it's factors like the new shape that are changing people's perceptions of the company and driving the stock price down.
rmack350 wrote on 6/26/2013, 11:47 AM
The more I think about the design, the more I think you could get really good cooling that way

It's kind of a chimney. If they made it taller they might get more velocity out of the airflow.

Not so great for mounting in a rack in a rolling anvil case but it might look okay on a desk and if you set your tea on top of it maybe it'll stay warm. And Apple stopped making anything rack mountable when they discontinued the Xservers so rack mounting may not be as much of an issue any more if people have given up on it.

People who had Mac Pros were definitely looking for an update to the hardware. However, I look down the room at our own systems and consider that they have AJA cards and Fiber networking cards in them. Upgrading to these new units requires getting new hardware to replace this stuff. It's galling, and it's the main reason we said "never again"* when Apple's hardware updates made our Media100 hardware unusable.

* Famous last words.

Rob