#92

Thatā€™s a very valid point. It needs a bit of effort to not letting the machines become obsolete because of the software side of things. Itā€™s doable, but you need to be very deliberate about it.

Iā€™m still running most of my graphic design business on a mid 2010 Mac Pro, with the lousy AMD 4870 GPU and only 12Gb of RAM. Of course I donā€™t do 4K Video editing, and my use of Blender is very limited. Most of the Adobe CC applications which I heavily rely on, run just fine and I can keep Photoshop, Illustrator and other stuff open at the same time. I usually refuse to update if I donā€™t have to. Last year I updated to Sierra because some software would not run anymore.
I could probably keep using this for a bunch more years, except I need to update to Mojave for a project now, but Apple wonā€™t let me, because of Metal.
So Iā€™m getting a Mac Mini and will perhaps expand it over the years with some more RAM and an eGPU (though I need to figure out if the latter will be worth it).
I have the feeling that itā€™s getting harder to keep these machines from falling into obsolescence, right now itā€™s probably still doable if you restrain yourself a bit, but who knows what the future will bring. What will the computing landscape look like in 5 years? And in 10? Hard to say.

Itā€™s been often said that the Mac Mini is the Mac Pro for the rest of us. Itā€™s relatively upgrade-able and has a good value for the money. I hope I can make it last at least 6-7 years.

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#93

Sometimes software is the culprit and although with some things you can just not upgrade with a lot of production level software, Maya, Blackmagic etc. you are tied to keeping current to be able to deliver the expected part in the correct format when collaborating, so if I was going to buy a computer for say freelance or collaborative work I would want to know that it would be able to handle whatever changes were coming. Having an large and expandable chassis, ram etc would make it possible. No matter what we think today about good enough, the target is moving. I think things like virtual sound and vr will be driving the platforms forward especially on the creator side. Sure, the consumer level of playback is going to be affordable but thinking more about being on the creator side means 8k video, 192K audio etc. not to mention things like being able to test vr and games while also recording them for clients itā€™s pretty easy to see what type of computer will become necessary. So, will my 4.7 ghz i7 be obsolete, yep pretty sure in about 2 years if I want to do things that involve realtime surround sound.
So it really depends on your strategy, if you are recording acoustic instruments in 48k then probably a very long time but reactive sound or vision is coming and the hardware will be changing.

#94

I guess Iā€™m way in the minority on this. Itā€™s the first mac in many many years that doesnā€™t make me angry. This is an upgradeable machine for very demanding video work that I canā€™t do on any existing mac. Itā€™s going to be popular with people who do what I do using Avid, Resolve and Fusion. I suspect the main market is not individual users, but post houses. It may be too little too late to stem the tide of windows-switching in this field though.
As for the price, the fact that this is the equivalent of a boutique product for a very small market is, I suspect, responsible. I see the premium as the cost of having the FPGA/Afterburner for ProRes (that doesnā€™t mean it reflects actual parts/labor/design cost).
IF the monitor is what it claims to be, the price might be justifiable (not the stand though), but Iā€™m skeptical. Real hi-res monitoring for grading theatrical films is extremely expensive.
I would never even consider this machine for audio work of any kind, though. Or even for most other video applications. You donā€™t need it to edit or do the most commonly used effects / compositing / etc.
Maybe Iā€™d feel differently if I was a big Adobe user. I donā€™t imagine it has great advantages for AE or Premiere Pro, but could be wrong - I donā€™t use them much anymore. I may not ultimately buy one, but it is exactly what Iā€™ve wished theyā€™d make for a long time.
Now back to my griping about the T2 chip rendering my 2018 MBP useless.

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#95

Correct me if Iā€™m wrong, but Iā€™m pretty sure Linus tech tips broke it down and said that the baseline Mac pro would be nearly 3000 less or half as expensive if you built a PC with the same parts.

Obviously there are some big advantages to the Mac OS system already for a good portion of users, and the I/O + extreme pcie stuff is worth something.

Iā€™m just hoping the gap closes a bit on the higher end ones but I wont hold my breath.

Edit: that being said I do commend Apple for the upgradeability at least. A huge step in the right direction.

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#96

These comparisons are always a bit of a mixed bag. For example it might be hard to find a ā€œDIYā€ PC casing solution that will equal that of the Mac Pro. Though of course one can counter-argue that the case is maybe not what one would throw money at. The same could apply for other components.

#97

FYI, you can definitely upgrade to Mojave on a 2010 Mac Pro. There are plenty of how-tos out there.

Get a new GPU, check this thread.

Get some RAM if you want. Cheap on eBay to find 32GB or 64GB kits for reasonable money. ($50-150)

You might need some new power cables to power the GPU. ($20)

Cheaper than a new Mac Mini, by far, and it will last you a few more years.
Spend the money saved on some music gear :slight_smile:

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#98

Totally aware of that and actually that was my initial plan. I ended up deciding against it and in favour for the Mac Mini for a series of reasons. The Mac Pro will now move on to my wife and we might indeed upgrade it a bit.

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#99

Yesterday I spent way too much time catching up on WWDC media, and I noticed that Apple personnel have made several informal statements that new Mac Pro technology would ā€œtrickle downā€ into future products. Given how Apple rolls, I would not at all be surprised to see a scaled down ā€œMac Pro Miniā€ next year. Unlike the unsexy Mac Mini, a scaled down Mac Pro would be something they could crow about. It would still be expensive, but by then they might be able to put together an entry level configuration around that $2500 price point they love so much.

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#100

Not sure how they would scale it down unless they will finally bow down to the ā€œxMacā€ that people have been clamouring for.
The entry level Mac Pro isnā€™t exactly super high spec (8c CPU, 32gb RAM, 256gb SSD, 580X) as the iMac Pro has a higher level of SSD and GPU which is $1000 cheaper with a display.

What I expect is that the design will filter down. Maybe offer a ā€œprosumerā€ display.

#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

Iā€™m not up on the depth of Intelā€™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 pointā€”I guess thatā€™s more or less the ā€œxMacā€ notion. If some MPX compatibility could be maintained, that might be good for MPX.

Hereā€™s a recent editorial on the topic:

As discussed earlier in this thread, thereā€™s not much obvious point in Apple making their own prosumer display, because the market is already awash in options. The XDRā€”assuming the actually deliver what they promiseā€”is (for the moment) unique.

#103

Nice article. Reading through it, the ā€˜xMacā€™ to me right now is the Mac Mini since you can use an eGPU and upgrade the RAM. Odd that thereā€™s no mention of that since that is a big deal for expandability.

#104

Thereā€™s plenty mention of the Mac Mini earlier in the thread. The Mac Mini is actually a pretty nice machineā€”for the momentā€”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, thereā€™s no PCI card support. Itā€™s still a bit limited on RAM capacity. Fundamentally, itā€™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 ā€œtrash canā€ 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. Itā€™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 weā€™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 itā€™s true they donā€™t go into much actual detail about it.

#107

A good sign is that the 6 and 8 core MBPs were released relatively quicklyā€¦ 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, youā€™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 theyā€™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 theyā€™d drop the price, as it was almost certainly intended as a stop-gap machine. The Mac Pro certainly makes sense for animators. But Iā€™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 youā€™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. Itā€™s complicated; which is why Iā€™m letting others be the beta testers this time around :hugs:

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