Mac Pro: 7 teraflops for a few thousand.<p>Cray X1 in 2004 5.9 teraflops[1] for only ~$40M USD[extrapolating from 2].<p>Mind boggling what to expect 10 years from now.<p>[1]<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray</a>
[2]<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/15/cray_flogs_x1_supercomputer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/15/cray_flogs_x1_superc...</a>
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Dave Girard noted in his "Critical look at the new Mac Pro" that the machine has "a truly epic lack of expandability."<p>I totally agree.<p>As someone with a macpro1.1 I'm clearly looking elsewhere at this point. I take a lot of still photos and frankly I'm filling up 2 TB drives. Plus having a heavy bulky machine you can put a cable bike lock through makes it much less likely to be stolen..<p>The design is interesting though. I'm sure its crazy fast.<p>Just odd that you'll need an expansion chassis for more drive space.<p>Plus hdmi for external monitor support? Is every DVI monitor going to need an adapter?
The design of the Mac Pro is certainly attractive, but since the only way to add on to it is through Thunderbolt, it seems a bit counterproductive. The sleek black tube isn't so sleek when you need to have a bunch of external drives sitting on your desk.
I need to be upfront with my bias, I hate everything Apple. I also built and ran my own digital studio (Not Pro Tools).<p>This lack of expandability for the Mac Pro is like the criticisms of the Chinese worker conditions, not Apple's fault.<p>1) This is industry wide, look at Intel with the soldered cpu in the next generation.<p>2) This is what Apple users want, a simple "just works" for most.<p>3) Any production Machine has a million things connected to it. So the fact that you have to plug in a million wires into the thing is a mute point.<p>This is cheaper than I thought it would be. I still think anyone basing their video or audio off of Apple is insane since they have continued to show that they are more than willing to put pro users on the back burner for what 3 years and need I tell you the Final Cut Pro fiasco?
For those looking for expansion:<p>• (qty. 2) x8 + (qty. 1) x4 PCIe 2.0 w/ Optional built in drivebay for up to four (4) 2.5" SSD or SAS/SATA drives: <a href="http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t" rel="nofollow">http://www.magma.com/expressbox-3t</a><p>• <a href="http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Mercury_Helios/" rel="nofollow">http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe_Chassis/Merc...</a> (See also <a href="http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/" rel="nofollow">http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/</a> for other devices.)<p>• <a href="http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresschassis.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresschassis.html</a>
Another Mac Pro configuration [1]:<p>Available in December at $3,999<p>6-Core and Dual GPU<p>3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor<p>16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory<p>Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM each<p>256GB PCIe-based flash storage<p>[1] <a href="http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro" rel="nofollow">http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro</a>
FYI for others looking for more specifics, there's now a specs page up (separate from the store):<p><a href="http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/</a><p>And there is, indeed, a 12-core configuration option listed.
As the owner of a recording studio (VO, music work), I'd say that it disappoints me that I'm expected to pay $3000 for a top of the line video editing machine. I wish they'd found a way to make a $2000 or $2500 musician/studio version that didn't have three 4k displays + two GPUs...
As sweet as this design looks, I can only imagine what the same amount of cash could buy you for a DIY Linux box. Of course, the available software is not the same...<p>That said I'm a big fan of Macs; I own several. Great computers and the OS is stunning... so who knows.
Random selection of USD prices for the base model from different Apple online stores, for the curious:<p>$4,053 in UK<p>$4,010 in Czech Republic<p>$3,880 in Australia<p>$4,257 in New Zealand<p>$4,300 in Sweden<p>So to US-based guys intending to buy one: hope you spend your ~$1k on something nice :)
More I look at it and less I like it.<p>The design is weird and certainly not elegant.<p>Try to imagine it with 5 cables that come out from the "back" (a cylinder don't have a real back).
So what's the future of the MacBook Air at this point?<p>Does the Retina MacBook Pro just keep getting thinner until the Air is obsolete? Is there some fundamental technical reason they can't keep iterating the Air thinner and put a Retina display on it? Or a business reason why that's not a priority?
The Mac Pro would be awesome...if it were the Thunderbolt dock to a meat and potatoes box I could store out of the way and expand whenever I saw fit.<p>If you want to innovate, give me a way to separate the things I need to use my computer FROM my computer.
How much Mac software can take advantage of 2 gpus for processing, rather than 8 or more cores? I have a dual socket Mac at work with 12 cores total, not sure this would feel like an upgrade.
Disappointed in the GPU configuration. I would much prefer a single fast GPU like a D700 (same hardware as 7970, R9 280X) over two slower GPUs like the D300 (R9 270x) in the lower configurations.<p>And even the high end options -- the D700 is the pro version of a GPU currently retailing for only 300 dollars. Nvidia has the Geforce 780 and AMD has the R290x at twice that cost. Reportedly the GPUs are downclocked as well.