No to a Mac Minitower

Dan Frakes at Macworld has now written 2 articles on how now is the time for a Mac Minitower (one is here, and the second is the editorial in the June 2013 issue of MacWorld), and I have to say I think he could not be more wrong!

Apple has already almost completely killed the current MacPro. It hasn’t truly been updated in many many years, and is no longer even on sale in the EU due to environmental regulations, and seems like Apple killed it, but Tim Cook has said that we should expect “something really great” sometime in 2013.

From what it sounds like while the MacPro does not lose money, it is not a money maker either, not like Apple’s other products, so they don’t need any stupid mini tower to split the market and make a MacPro that much less of a moneymaker.

What Apple needs to do needs to do is at the June 10th WWDC, announce their new MacPro, which should be a serious upgrade to the new MacPro, with the ability to use the latest and greatest video cards and pci cards (and I am talking the NVIDIA TITAN HERE) as well as having Thunderbolt technology and USB3 and yes still Firewire 800, as so many of us still use it (though SATA ports would be great too). And as many hard drives as they can cram in there. I would love an SSD for my system and an addition 6 drives spaces for a hardware raid 5, and yes I still want an optical drive, but can live with that externally if it means more drive space!

Apple please do not listen to Mr. Frakes! Don’t split your pro market, just make a new MacPro so that I don’t have to make my next tower a Windows machine, because once us high end graphics people, editors and designers all move to windows Apple will lose a lot of it’s cool!

Mac Vs. PC from Social Meteor

Social Meteor has an a good look at how the divide between using a Mac or a PC has mostly gone away for designers.

I totally agree, which is why I have been considering a PC for my next Mac. Sure there are things I like better on a Mac, but on a PC I can buy any video card I want, and get a huge powerful tower with many internal hard drives. And since Mac seems to have basically given up on MacPro’s (I know they are supposed to announce a new on this year, but with this long wait I am kind of thinking why bother, when PC’s seem to run faster).

AppleInsider Speculates on MacPro

AppleInsider has a 2 page article speculating on the new MacPro.

Talking about the very small size of the market for the MacPro, and how Apple could do something small and modular.

If it is true, it is time to move to a PC for me. As a video professional I need a big tower with as many drive bays internal as possible and as many PCI expansion slots as I can get, and maybe 2 CUDA video cards with 4-6GB of RAM if I can afford it. And if Mac isn’t going to offer it, then it is time to make the jump to PC.

Apple Announces WWDC in June, does that mean new MacPros?

Apple has announced the WWDC, or World Wide Developers Conference for June 10th-14th. 

This would be a perfect place to announce a new MacPro as these are Developers, and this has been a venue in the past, though Tim Cook in his recent call said that they had new things for the fall.

Honestly if there is no MacPro announced at the WWDC, it is time to start thinking of moving to PC, as I just can’t trust in Apple anymore. And they have had years to work on a new MacPro and the current model currently can’t even be sold in Europe! They need a new model and it needs to be before the Fall (if it is even then, as all we know is that Tim Cooke said something about a new MacPro this year).

The only thing that gives me hope are the new video cards, the NVIDIA Quadro 5000k and the GTX 680 being released for Mac.

Bare Feats has posted a part 2 to it’s EVGA NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680 Review with Professional Apps

Bare Feats has posted it’s second part of it’s Geforce GTX 680 Review and the results are mostly good. It does get beat in Cinema 4D and Motion 5 by the GTX 680MX in the top of the line iMac, but that is likely because of the older hardware and buss speed of the now ancient MacPro over the newer hardware in the iMac. Still it does win for DaVinci Resolve, After Effects, and Octane. Hopefully it would really whoop ass in a new MacPro if that ever happens.

Awesome to have the choice now and not have to get something off of ebay that is many generations old!

Barefeats speed test the EVGA NVIDIA Geforce GTX 680 Mac Edition and it is good!

Barefeats has some speed tests and things are looking good for gaming, though I would like to see some Premiere Pro and After Effects Speed tests (especially with the Quadro 5000K in the tests).

Now if only Apple would allow more than 2GB of RAM (yes I know the QUADRO 5000K has 4GB of RAM, but you still have to hack your mac to get a PC NVIDIA card to run that has more than 2GB of RAM).

PVC on using a Hackintosh

Mark Christiansen at the Pro Video Coalition has a good article on running a Hackintosh instead of a MacPro. Well worth the read, and I especially like the ending.

Let’s be clear: the situation with Apple and the Mac Pro right now is identical to what was going on with Final Cut Studio in the years between its final version and Final Cut X.

In other words, there’s no reason for Apple to be stealthy or mysterious with its plans, unless they are likely to upset a large set of Mac users

Or dislike it, but agree. If Apple really is going to release an amazing new MacPro that will please professionals, why not just talk about the damn thing. Sure they won’t sell any more MacPro’s, but the ancient machines can’t be selling too well as is, and has already been pulled from Europe.

It would be so nice to know if it is time to move to windows (ugh, I do really hate Windows 8) and be able to run inexpensive but powerful NVIDIA cards to propel Adobe programs to insane speeds.

Apple has better make the announcements at the WWDC rumored to be in June or it will be time to really think giving up on Mac all together, no matter how much I don’t want to!