Apple: meh

[Jay Vaughan]

Okay, I've had a chance to re-evaluate my position, and I think I had an "oh shit, Apple have done something amazing" moment, since my initial criticism of the hype.

So .. What, exactly?

Well this little Mac Pro: its no longer going to be a single-user device.  In other words, got a small office of people working with each other?  Well, they can all log in to the Mac Pro.  2 to 4, or probably 8 people, one computer in the room, nice monitors, and so on.  Its a 'New Desktop' strategy: make users share a single 'super-'computing device, properly.

So, I think thats pretty nice, especially if the thing ships with 12 cores (or is it 16?) and fat RAM/SSD max'ed out, for a good price: a single machine that will support many simultaneous users.  Network not required.

Now, I know we've been able to do this with Linux (and its somehow possible with M$), but I think whats interesting is that Apple are up'ing the game on what constitutes the boundaries of 'the Desktop', which is clearly not yet a levelled playing ground.  

So maybe you M$ guys know whether Win8 supports this feature: one PC, 4 graphics cards, 8 monitors, 8 keyboards, 8 mice, independent login sessions, one computer, full 3d acceleration at each user?

Because I think that is the future of the Mac Pro, personally .. oh, there will always be the lone-wolf 'need-all-the-cpu-for-Me' use cases too, just that for the small office/business case, one machine and easy setup is a bit of a nice value proposition ..



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Jay Vaughan