#101

Honestly the best thing that has come from this is that Apple has finally shown that they care somewhat about cooling now. If what @mdoudoroff mentioned is true then hopefully they will start putting out more products that compromise aesthetics over better temps to prevent thermal problems.

#102

I’m not up on the depth of Intel’s product line. Scaling down might mean dropping back down to the Core architecture, or using a cheaper Xeon. Regardless, focusing on expandability (RAM, PCI and internal storage) and heat/noise management at a lower price point would be the point—I guess that’s more or less the “xMac” notion. If some MPX compatibility could be maintained, that might be good for MPX.

Here’s a recent editorial on the topic:

As discussed earlier in this thread, there’s not much obvious point in Apple making their own prosumer display, because the market is already awash in options. The XDR—assuming the actually deliver what they promise—is (for the moment) unique.

#103

Nice article. Reading through it, the ‘xMac’ to me right now is the Mac Mini since you can use an eGPU and upgrade the RAM. Odd that there’s no mention of that since that is a big deal for expandability.

#104

There’s plenty mention of the Mac Mini earlier in the thread. The Mac Mini is actually a pretty nice machine—for the moment—although its minimalism is also the source of many complaints. For one thing, almost anything you want to add leads to untidy spaghetti, and external interconnects can be reliability problems. This is particularly a problem with storage. Obviously, there’s no PCI card support. It’s still a bit limited on RAM capacity. Fundamentally, it’s a product unloved by Apple. It is minimal, but it is neither elegant nor exciting.

One of my main concerns about investing in the Mac Pro (and the Mac Mini) would that Apple has often neglected these models for long stretches of time. For example, the “trash can” Mac Pro was never really updated after it finally got to market, meaning that Apple was (is) still selling (in dwindling quantities, I hope) an out-of-date computer, years later. It’s one thing to offer something new and shiny, but is it a flash in the pan, or is it an investment you can rely on down the road?

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#105

Oh, I realize that we’ve mentioned it here, but thought it was an odd omission in the article you linked.

#106

The Mac Mini is mentioned throughout the article, but it’s true they don’t go into much actual detail about it.

#107

A good sign is that the 6 and 8 core MBPs were released relatively quickly… however, Apple has called out Intel a couple of times recently for missing targets. Maybe souring their relationship.

#108

So, it is turning out that the Mac Pro follows the expected, well-established pattern of previous Mac Pros: the XEON cores run significantly slower on their own than the regular CPUs available for, say, the iMac. The upshot is that unless you have truly well-optimized multithreaded applications to run and the data to push through them, you’re probably much better off saving your money and buying a maxed out iMac.

https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2020/20200104_2246-2019MacPro-slower-cores-more-cores.html

Right now, the main strike against the iMac is that it only has one Thunderbolt 3 bus.

#109

Interesting. I run a post-production team, and we are really on the fence about the new machine (vs, say, an iMac Pro). Kind of waiting to see what others say once they’re in the field. Thanks for this!

#110

Hard to see any up-side to an iMac Pro. Old, un-upgradeable, expensive, future uncertain. Current iMac trounces it for most purposes.

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#111

Yeah, I hear you. We were hoping they’d drop the price, as it was almost certainly intended as a stop-gap machine. The Mac Pro certainly makes sense for animators. But I’m still weighing the pros and cons for editors. Part of me thinks that hot-rodded iMacs on shorter upgrade cycles makes more sense. In my experience, clock speed/disk speed matters most within Premiere, unless you’re constantly debayering R3D or some other flavor of raw. And since we edit from a central server, clock speed might be king.

Part of this, though, is me being gun shy from dropping $30k on trash can Mac Pros 5 years ago; which resulted in nominal performance gains. I understand that part of that equation was the thermal debacle. It’s complicated; which is why I’m letting others be the beta testers this time around :hugs:

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#112

Even if Apple offered a fire sale the iMac Pro, you’re still probably better off with a loaded iMac, and it would probably still be cheaper.

For the obvious reasons, if you were using Final Cut X, then chances are highest that the Mac Pro will deliver useful performance advantages, particularly if you could benefit from stuff like Afterburner and the display.

I haven’t seen any credible performance testing around Premiere, yet. Adobe does not have a great track record when it comes to multithreading, but every product is different.

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#113

A quick trip to the Apple website confirms that you are correct! Great thought. Thanks for your help!

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#114

Yeah the Mac pro is only worth it if you were already planning to spend tens of thousands on a PC and you need features like ECC ram, 28 cores, 8 pci-e x16 slots, dual 10gb ethernet etc.

The base model is ridiculous though, it’s pricing make little to no sense, so if you want to go with the mac pro route, either go all out or don’t go at all.

If not, the imac would probably be the best PC Apple is offering in terms of price/performance.

#115

I’m probably stating the obvious here, but this website gives you a nice overwiew of the performance across the Mac range:
https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
Interestingly for single core duties you only get a very minor performance advanges by buying an iMac compared to the Mac Mini.
Multi-core is a completely different story, but as others have said, it’s a bit of a complicated matter.

#116

I’m not a videographer or a big budget film scorer, so the Mac Pro has no appeal. Rather, I was looking forward to the next iMac Pro. Research led me to conclude a topped up 2019 iMac would stead me well for a good many years. So plunge taken.

The iMac’s single T3 bus, as mdoudoroff intimates, might be a significant negative for some folks. In my case, not. On one iMac TB3 port are two UAD Apollo X8p and a TB3 500 GB SSD for recording at the end of that chain. On the other TB3 port is a TB3 dock, to which an RME UFX is attached via adaptors. So far the UFX is used only for listening to music, not recording, i.e., when in use, the other iMac TB3 port is not active. I only set up the UFX because I had it and the adaptors. I could just as easily use an Apollo for listening. Feeling no constraint.

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#117

The base model never makes sense as-is. But I would generally buy as little direct from Apple as possible, and buy the rest (e.g., RAM) from third parties. Lots to think through.

General tests like Geekbench can be revealing in a general way, but if you’re buying pro gear for a pro purpose, they tell you not that much. You need to test the actual application in question. The results can be “surprising”.

That’s fair. Outside some relatively exotic situations, the main problem with having only one T3 bus is if you attach a big second monitor. A monitor on your Thunderbolt bus will gobble a ton of the available bandwidth, and can put a real squeeze on your external disk I/O and such. As always, it’s in the details of your setup.

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#118

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image3024×4032 4.34 MB

Work upgraded my trash can Mac Pro.

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#119

We ended up replacing two of our trash cans with spec’ed out iMacs. Render tests revealed these new machines to be about twice as fast as our trash cans. And the editing experience is much better as well.

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#120

Hackintosh is the way to go for independent artists who want a desktop Mac today. Particularly in a small form factor case like a Ghost S1, the whole sff/mini ITX scene is very endearing, giving you that mid range performance you need in a cool and elegant form factor. The old days of a clunky old PC tower are over if u want them to be, and there’s a lot of fun to be had building a system. It actually reminds me a lot of the eurorack scene, gotta start with a case, buy all your components, do your build etc. And the cost is comparative for a small system. I’ve actually been wavering between building a sff hackintosh and a small eurorack setup lately, currently the modular has the lead.

But arguments around Apple offering a mid tier desktop - they already did. It was the Trash can, which at heart was a brilliant sff mini ITX machine. Sleek, quiet, with great performance for artists who need more than a laptop for their productions. And I don’t really buy into Apples arguments about locking themselves in a thermal corner or whatever. They’re two different formats - the new Mac Pro is a full blown ATX size machine that u can barely lift, the Trashcan was a portable pipebomb u could literally take in your duffel bag with u on the plane. Apple just chose never to update or improve it, and with continual nanometer improvements, there’s no reason we couldn’t have a 2020 Trashcan with a host of modular or user selectable components. So now we have the iMac Pro which is essentially a Trashcan locked inside a chassis behind a screen.

The only Apple desktop machine I would buy today is the Mac Mini, but which is also in need of some higher core count upgrades, and which offers pretty great performance for what it is, and can be combined with an eGPU - at least that part is upgradeable. A small form factor Hackintosh still wins on price and flexibility for the hobbyist, and if any of the AMD cpu Mac rumours are true at the mo then the hackintosh community could see a lot of benefits from being able to natively utilise modern Ryzen chips with Navi GPU’s, the whole AMD side of things could improve rapidly.

I still like Apple but I feel like they are a bit of a weird Frankenstein of a company these days. The Tim Cook era is certainly different and we dont have the Jobsian style rock n roll artist focus anymore. In any case most people don’t need stacks of power, an iMac would probably do for most users. What Apple don’t see is users still want to use their platform, they’re just turning away from the hardware.

Anyway if anyone is interested in the kindve developments going on in the sff scene check out Optimum Tech’s channel, it’s a great resource.

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