New Mac Pro

[ChrisW]

Can't be bothered to trawl through the 9+ pages on Gearslutz, with equal measure hyperbole and negativity.
So what are the more sober pros and cons?
I'm potentially a customer, but costs also have to be justified.

[Alistair]

Looks like a good system but no PCI slots from my very limited perusal.

[Text_Edifice]

Should be quite quick with loads of power (but then so's my laptop).

Flash drives as standard (super quick sample playback?).

Will likely require use of a magma expansion chassis or similar for anything PCI related.

Interesting fan design (in the middle of the machine) - may make for quieter cooling or be a huge pita. Not sure how being tubular works in terms of fitting the thing into a rack space / studio desk / etc but I guess it's small.

No pricing - if it's expensive you could probably get similar power in a pc for much less.

[Drumstruck]

Xeon CPUs, multiple thunderbolt ports, multple graphics processors..... all good so far. Design (cylindrical) to start discussion..... smaller, more powerful

Haven't seen a photo of the I/O yet - I hope it's not on a dongle......

$?

[ChrisW]

Nothing I use is PCI.
I'm hoping Apple aren't going to change all the OS and connectivity standards again. Much software is still struggling to catch up with 64bit. There's very little available that is Thunderbolt.

[ether]

From the web site and watching the keynote:

4 x USB 3 (backwards compatible to USB 2 and 1 I'm sure)
6 x Thunderbolt 2 (backwards compatible to TB 1, and to FireWire 400/800 with a simple adaptor)
2 x Gbit Ethernet
HDMI
Headphones
Probably basic digital audio I/O (TOSLINK / SPDIF) but not sure.
Website specifically mentions PCI expansion chassis's (sss's's'ss????) via Thunderbolt. I wouldn't be surprised to see an Apple branded expansion thingy.
Dual video cards, tons of RAM, SSD, ... I think they've covered all the bases.

I didn't detect anything that would point to radical changes in OS X.

I'm more than happy with my brand new iMac though. Screams along.

(Just don't mention Logic. Grrr...)

[gigpiglet]

i certainly wouldn't be doing anything (well im not anyway - i knew this was coming, which is why i just done my very cheap "new" pci rigs in 3.1 build pros) till after PT11
but i would guess - that the 11 build will "work" with a lot of the improvements here (and maybe be thunderbolt based?)

[ChrisW]

As I said, there are few peripherals that are Thunderbolt, and we're already on to Thunderbolt 2?
It's a little concerning.

[ether]

As I understand it, TB2 is pretty much 2 x TB1 cables side by side, and fully backwards compatible. There's actually a controller chip inside the cable, so it's way more than just a different cable though. Also TB1 and TB2 are very compatible. You plug a TB2 cable into a TB1 equipped Mac, and it works as TB2, and vice versa.

I think.

Don't shoot me if I'm wrong though

But I agree there's not enough peripherals in general though. All I really lack for is a TB UAD Satellite box though, not having any ProTools investment to worry about.

[Sammas]

As I said, there are few peripherals that are Thunderbolt, and we're already on to Thunderbolt 2?
It's a little concerning.

There isn't anything to worry about. Thunderbolts evolution has been road mapped from its introduction. Thunderbolt 1 is the first step of about 10 in the grand scheme of its implementation. The overall plan is a multiple lane fibre optic connection... backwards compatibility is part of the plan.

[Thirteen]

And 3 separate Thunderbolt controllers. The machine has almost no internal upgrade or swap capacity other than RAM, you can't replace the graphics card for example. Basically they have put in huge Thunderbolt capacity so that you can hang ridiculous amounts of peripherals off the tower. It's a new paradigm, more of a processing hub for connected external devices. It looks really cool if you can get your head around the concept. Of course they will cop serious flack from the PC builder brigade who hate anything that they can't spend endless hours tinkering with. It is a bit of a throwback to the old Apple days where you were locked out of the machine as far as upgrades and swapping faulty parts. Time to buy shares in a popcorn factory, this is going to have computer forums flaming for months.

[Ender]

Just noticed today, Thunderbolt chassis are already part of the Apple solutions it seems - if you go to their store today and select a Mac Book Pro for example, the TB hard drive chassis is an upgrade option. Possibly Apple taking this step away from PCIe will give manufacturers a bit more incentive or reassurance to commit to TB versions of their devices.. will be interesting to see where that goes.

OS wise, it sounds like the new one (Maverik?) seems to be focused on further iOS integration, so hopefully not too many changes to the core OSX. Power and price will be a big factor.. without the upgradable element, what will it really offer over the new MBP/iMac given they are both pretty beastly machines these days (besides a little more grunt of course)?

Looks interesting, but it could be a good time to buy a cheap current model MacPro when they sell them off.

[Sammas]

I knd of like it. It became kind of apparent that this was the way apple were heading with the last mac book pros design. Highly engineered. Few upgradeable parts, etc. it is very modern in the components it uses and supports. Like the single pci-e slot for the flash ssd card.

I think you are going to have to pin your ears back and wear a helmet when you use this thing. It is going to be fast! 12 cores. 6gb VRAM (with potential use in audio processing - Some plugins have supported CUDA for a long time). Up to 500gig ssd drive... And just 1 single moving component.

This plus a HD native thunderbolt system would be impressive!

[Bent my VU]

Looks like a great system for video. If people start coding audio software to take advantage of a GPUs that would be seriously fast.