So the new MacPro is available for preorder and it isn’t cheap

The Apple MacPro is available for preorder, and it is expensive. In fact fully loaded without the 6k monitors it is $52,748.

Still I wish I could afford one, though I would go much cheaper. I would go 12 core, 192 gb of memory, 1 Radeon Pro Veg II Duo, 2TB of storage, and the Apple Afterburner card, but that comes to $17,999.00 Holy shit! Hopefully you could of 3rd party ram and save some cash, considering it is $1000 to jump from 32gb to 92Gb and $3000 to jump to 192GB! That is nuts!

I am most excited about the 64 Gigs of video memory and the Afterburner card.

Can’t believe the cheesegrater is back!

My faith in Apple mostly restored with the new Mac Pro!

So Apple officially showed off the new MacPro at the WWDC, and it is pretty F***ING AWESOME!!!!

First off it looks like a Cheese-grater, which was literally to please the fans of the old Cheese-grater!

And it has handles, and you can even get wheels. And the metal case comes off so you can access it from all sides.

It has 8, 12, 16, 24 or 28 core Xeon processors, getting 300 kw of power so they never get throttled, with a special air cooled system.

It has 12 RAM slots capable of 1.5 Terrabytes of RAM (I can’t wait to laugh at the price of that from Apple).

And it has 8  PCI SLOTS! Well, 7 really, but DAMN! 4 double wide slots for graphics cards (both with an additional new PCI connector for the MPX modules) with 1 x16 and 2 x8 gen 3 for video cards. And the top slot is a half wife slot for Apple’s I/O card (which means it can be upgraded or changed out).

And the MPX Modules are special PCI graphics cards in containers. There is a half heigh one fro the AMD Radeon Pro 580x which comes standard. And then full size modules that fill 2 double wide PCI slots, for either the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II with 32 GB of Memory, or the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo which is 2 cards in one with super fast connection between the cards (and you can install 2 of these! Wow that will cost a ton). And these all have extra thunderbolt ports (as there are 2 on top and 2 on the I/O card). And these can get 300 wats of power

The system has an unbelievable 1.4 kilowatts of power supply!

And my favorite addition, the Afterburner ProRES and ProRES RAW Accelerator PCI Card which can play 3 streams of 8K ProRes RAW or 12 streams of 4K ProRes Raw without touching the CPU or GPU! WOW! They said you can do realitime color correction and effects on DaVinci in 8K in realtime! My question is will it be supported via thunderbolt 3 for the iMacPro maybe along with a video card like the BlackMagic kit they support? And it would be even better if it also supported BlackMagic RAW!

And up to a 4GB SSD.

And there is also a rack mounted version!

WOW! This is a powerhouse, and the 6K monitor would make an amazing, though expensive addition!

My only complaints are AMD only, no NVIDIA. And sure NVIDIA wouldn’t let them do these MPX modules with Thunderbolt, nor support those new fangled PCI slots that allow them, but 4 NVIDIA cards in here would be screaming! And the 4GB SSD. I know people don’t like spinning platters anymore, but man I have so much stuff on drives now, 4GB which will be insanely expensive is just not enough storage! Hell I could only afford 2GB in my iMac Pro! I was hoping for some sort of built in raid when you could put in your own hard drives, but that was alas just a ridiculous dream.

Is the apple Afterburner ProRes Video Accelerator card for MacPro going to be available via expansion chassis for iMacPro?

OK so I just got an iMac Pro as my MacPro 4,1 finally fried. And I needed a machine, and just didn’t want to move to windows, so I went iMac Pro.

And I figured I could always add an external video card via thunderbolt if I need to make the system faster, but that new MacPro gave me an idea.

After all it has a PCI card that speeds up ProRES video rendering. Sure it might not be as fast via Thunderbolt 3, but an expansion chasis with a second video card and that ProRES card would be F•••ing AMAZING!!

Come on Apple! Think about it!

And Apple’s 6K Retina Display, the ProDisplay XDR, with a cheesegrater back! Wow!

The new 6K Apple Retina Display is insane looking, and having the cheesegrater on the back in a nice touch. HOLY SHIT!

1000 nits of brightness and 1,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio! XDR, ProDisplay XDR!

And Rotation for Portrait mode! WOW!

Again, going to cost a mint!

Yup $4999, a fucking mint, and $5999 for the higher end one!

OK the new Apple MacPro is insane!!! And it looks like a Cheesegrater!

OK, so HOLY SHIT!

The new MacPro looks like a Cheesegrater, and while it doesn’t support NVIDIA, it looks powerful as shit. Room for 4 32 GB Video Cards, and a Video Processor card! And up to 1.5 Terrabytes  RAM! And over a gigahert of power! FUCK ME!

And realtime 8K color correction with FX in DaVinci! WOW!!!!

And it looks like a cheesegrater! And a rack mounted version!

This thing looks amazing, though is literally going to cost a mint!

OK Starting at $5999 is not a bad actually!

And I just got an iMacPro as my old MacPro finally died, so won’t be getting one any time soon, but OMG!

Stackable 2019 MacPro Rumors makes sense

So a YouTube Channel called Tailosive Tech has released a video on an inside source from apple on the new 2019 macpro.

And AppleInsider has also covered it (easier to read, especially since the edit is very trimmed, but not very covered and hurts my brain a bit as an editor).

Not only does this cover the new rumored 6K 31 inch monitor, but the new macpro, claiming the modular mac works like stackable legos, with a brain module with a soldered in cpu, and 8 slots of upgradeable RAM. Then you can add GPU modules, and storage modules, possibly modules with the unanounced thunderbolt 4, and eventually possibly third party modules eventually. Each module with it’s own power supply and cooling. And possibly not available until 2020.

This would seem to cover “modular” and why it has taken so long. Giving people an upgraded cheesgrater would not have taken this long, but Apple wouldn’t have made money off every upgrade in that scenario, while with this stackable design they would, including third party modules from licensing their propriety connector. And upgrades likely won’t be cheap. Instead of just a gpu, you are also getting a case, the custom connector a power supply and cooling system (and likely a reason for dropping NVIDIA support, as NVIDIA doesn’t like customized boxes and shapes, but AMD is all in with that).

And depending on the modules, this could be a very cool machine, though also very very expensive. Lets hope they have sone SATA modules as large ammounts of SSD storage are still prohibitively expensive. And let’s hope third party support comes quickly as a blackmagicdesign module for video i/o would be essential. And a sledless 4 drive sata raid module wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

I know this is all rumor, but it makes total sense. This lets Apple give expandability, but lets them control it completely and make money off of every bit of it. And Apple will have delivered what they said, and can charge what they want for it. It will not make everyone happy, especially since it will not be easily user upgradeable, and will be significantly more expensive than a machine that is user upgradeable, but it will ge a true pro machine.

I just hope they show it off at WWDC on June 3rd, but if they aren’t releasing until at least December 31st 2019, that may be way too early.

Appleinsider on managing expectations for the new MacPro

AppleInsider has a great article on managing expectations for the new MacPro. It is basically saying what I have been thinking that the Modular MacPro is just going to use Thunderbolt 3 to expand and not be a new cheesegrater with PCI slots.

And it really begs the question if it is time to move to Windows. I really hate windows compared to Mac OS, but I want choice, I want an NVIDIA card and from the whole Mojave fiasco it looks like that is not happening.

Rogue Amoeba blog on the sad state of Mac Hardware

Quentin Carnicelli recently posed a great article on the sad state of upgrades across the whole line of the Macintosh Computers. Basically it comes down to the fact that other than the iMac Pro which came out in December (half a year ago) there isn’t a single mac that has been updated in a year.

This is really a sad state. And the Mac Mini has been almost 4 years without an update or a price drop for old as hell hardware. Macs used to at least get processor upgrades once in a while with the form staying the same, but it seems we are not even getting that anymore.

Apple really has become a phone company that occasionally releases some new computer hardware.

And this makes me worry even more for the supposed new MacPro which we will learn about in 2019! Honestly no computer should take 3 years to design and ship. Especially when what Pros really want is the old cheese-grater with updated hardware. All the hints at a modular design really scares me. I don’t want modular, I want upgradeable with off the shelf PC components. Not some proprietary monstrosity that is upgradeable with over-expensive modules that only follow Apple’s upgrade schedule, which is slow at best. And most of us want some choice, mostly the choice to use NVIDIA graphics cards and not have to run it externally via thunderbolt which is not and never will be as fast as a 16x PCI bus.

Apple hosts WWDC 2018 and no new Hardware and nothing on MacPro

You can go to Apple and and see the new features announced for iOS, MacOS, AppleTV OS and Apple Watch OS. And things do look good, but there was no new hardware announcements at all. And especially no mention of the new MacPro. This is Apple flipping the bird at Pro users. As was all the talk of egpu support (which doesn’t support NVIDIA which most pros want).

Does this mean the MacPro won’t even be shown off until 2019? And if so WTF! And no mention if the next os will still support the MacPro 5,1! This is so insulting. Will pros be kicked off their machines with no sign of what the new pro machine will be?

I mean I like some of what was announced. The new OS sounds good, but can I run it?

Or should I have moved to Windows ages ago?

So the next Apple Mac Pro is a 2019 product, you have to be kidding me?

So Matthew Panzarino from TechCrunch has had another meeting with Apple about Pro Machines, a year after their last roundtable when they announced the iMac Pro. It seems this is meant to assuage fears of the pro community and show that Apple is now focusing it’s attention on Pros and building a modular Mac Pro to work for them, that won’t appear until 2019 (Likely end of December just like the iMac Pro which means almost another 3 years wait from the initial announcement and almost 2 years from now).

OK it is good that Apple has hired pros to come in and work with them on projects and help shape the future of all Mac Pro products, and they claim to be working with 3rd party developers and not just apple products, though it sounds like Panzarino only saw Apple Logic and Apple Final Cut Pro X edit bays. And what really scares me is the modularity seems to be things like the external eGPU’s for Laptops, and using multiple iPad Pros with an iMac Pro as control surfaces. None of these are bad things, but they are not PCI slot rich MacPro’s that can use off the shelf PC Cards to expand and enhance the mac, and Thunderbolt is not ever going to be as fast as the fastest PCI slots.

And honestly if Apple is so into working with 3rd parties to make their products work, how about working with NVIDIA to include their Web Drivers in their system updates? Many of us struggling Mac Pro users are using the most powerful modern video cards in our old Cheese Grater Mac Pro’s and that means using NVIDIA cards. And while with some system updates have not required me to swap back to my old Apple flashed video card, most of them do. So I now dread system updates. Not because they are undoable, but because they take me so long to have to swap out my video card and run the update and then upgrade NVIDIA’s drivers, before I swap back to my old video card. And it never goes perfectly, and always takes hours. If you want to care about Pro users, help us NVIDIA users out!

Also Final Cut Pro X was my final straw in trusting Apple Pro software. I bought it and it just didn’t work for me at all. It forced an entirely new way of editing and seemed to only work with that one workflow. While with AVID and Premiere Pro every editor has their own methodology that they use, and that is how Editors like it, not being forced to work one way and one way only with a completely uncontrollable timeline. And Apple has killed so much great pro software. Final Cut Pro 7. Shake. Color. Aperature. I just don’t trust them anymore. And I almost wish they would get out of Pro Software completely and just work with AVID and ADOBE to make their software work better. Now they claim to be working with them in this article, but it doesn’t sound like they have AVID and Premiere Pro edit bays at Apple for their pros they have hired. And who are these pros? I would love to know. And I would love to hear them talk a bit, not just some tech writers.

I have said it before and I will say it again. I want the Cheese Grater Mac Pro upgraded with modern technology! Yes it should include Thunderbolt so it can be modular and use eGPU’s if I want to, but I want to use off the shelf PCI cards to upgrade it. And I want internal storage! And not just one hard drive, multiple hard drives. And hell an attachable RAID that takes drives directly without a sled would not be horrible, but I can always get an external. All this modular talk scares me.

The more I hear the more scared I get that I will end up replacing my aging MacPro with a Windows Box. And I know Windows has gotten better (I have a Surface Pro 3), but I still don’t like using it like I use a Mac. I am just worried that all this modularity talk sounds more and more like something like the Trashcan macpro that just isn’t what people want, as making a new cheesegrater should not take 2 years! It sounds like they are trying too hard. And when Apple tries too hard we get things like the Trashcan or the Mac Book Pro with weird ass touch strip instead of the touch screen that everyone actually wants.

Who is Apple talking too? Who have they hired? The high end people working big movies like those mentioned, are not working on their own gear. They have rental gear, or working at a company. What about us Editors who work on our own gear? Or small companies with a few Mac Pros? Are they in the mix and talking to Apple?

Or even worse maybe the Apple making it’s own Chips rumors is true, and they are waiting for that. Which would be a disaster. Making it harder to maintain Mac and Windows versions.

And what happens if my Mac Pro finally kicks the bucket before then? I have already replaced a -power supply. I am not moving to an iMac, so that will likely mean I move off the Mac completely.

Apple as a Pro users I am well and truly scared, and if you cared you would be working faster, and not taking 3 years to show a machine that might not work at all for me and might finally drive me well and completely to windows.