Apple: meh

[Andrew Tarpinian]

My interpretation is more, 4 or 5 design types in a small office, all working on laptops but can jump/switch to the Mac Pro to render etc... All done via fiber, preferably. 

This machine is pretty perfect for me, I really wanted a mid sized tower with max power, and none of the bells and whistles really. The big thing is cost, that's gonna make or break it. What they showed was the top end model: single chip 12 core, dual amd firepro w9000 (most people have guessed.) those cards are $3000 a piece... I'm sure apple got a deal of course, especially since it seems that the gfx cards have to be proprietary for the machine. So that's probably a 6k+ machine. Apple has said a lot of "up to's," so there will be lower end configs, but dual gfx seem to be standard. 

I have heard the gfx will be upgradable, most likely only through official apple channels, ie nividia makes a card for apple, like the old days. 

My one concern was amd is into open cl, adobe likes cuda and nividia likes cuda. But apparently adobe is now going to support open cl, premiere already does. So yay. 

On Jun 12, 2013, at 9:52 AM, Tony Scharf <noisetheorem at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am not sure about that use case in 2013.  I think the Mac Pro is
> designed for the 'all for me' crowd with the minis and such being
> there for the rest.  I don't think apple is thinking enterprise.  If
> they did, I think the form factor would be a bit different.
> 
> Small offices go for SAS solutions using cloud based infrastructure:
> Google Docs, Windows Azure, Xen desktops, etc.   My company is fully
> virtualized (vmware) all servers and desktops with simple terminals to
> connect to the big machine in the server room.  We have a few sister
> companies (owned by our parent, but doing different work) that are
> hooked up to our network as well providing them full desktop
> infrastructure without needing anything but a good internet connection
> to access it. I am  considering putting more of our own infrastructure
> into the cloud as well since, if you do it right, the impact to users
> is minimal but you no longer have to worry about Disaster Recovery
> scenarios and the like and that saves you maintaining a offsite mirror
> location that never gets utilized.
> 
> In these scenarios, you can use just about anything as a good
> terminal.  My iPad hooked to a VGA monitor or TV is excellent, as the
> VMWare client turns it into a keyboard and touch pad.  It's actually
> pleasant to work on.  My iPhone can do this too, though I have yet to
> see a thunderbolt to vga cable that was cheap enough to be worth
> buying to test it.
> 
> Tony
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 5:38 AM, Jay Vaughan <jayv at synth.net> wrote:
>> 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 ..
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ;
>> --
>> Jay Vaughan
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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