Apple Mac Pro [2013]

[Baja 001]

Apple Mac Pro

Apple’s new Mac Pro 2013 was arguably the star hardware of WWDC 2013. Yes, the new Haswell-powered MacBook Air is available today, rather than some nebulous promised time later in the year, and 12 hours of battery life – if it can indeed deliver on that – is impressive, but the ultraportable paled in comparison to the compact powerhouse Apple revealed.

Even before Phil Schiller had finished breathlessly announcing the new high-end model, though, long-standing Pro users were voicing their doubts. The Mac Pro has always been Apple’s zero-compromise machine; yes, it’s been aesthetically not-ugly, but the primary goal has been funneling the greatest amount of power into its footprint.

So, there’s been room for four internal hard drives and two optical drives, up to eight memory slots (four per processor), three spare PCIe 2.0 slots – full-length, naturally – and everything easily accessed in a sliding, modular design. Form most definitely followed function in the old Mac Pro; that it was handsome, in a brutalist architecture way, was a designer’s afterthought around an engineer’s forward-thinking.

The cynic might say that Apple hates post-purchase upgrades. Most of its Macs of recent years have edged away from user-accessible update potential, whether they’re destined for your lap or your desktop. The MacBook Air is so packed full of proprietary components that it’s prohibitively expensive if you want to swap out the flash storage for a bigger drive; the fact that the processor and memory are soldered in place means switching them is a non-starter.

The MacBook Pro used to have an active underground of owners tweaking their systems, whether that be pushing in more RAM or ditching the optical drive in favor of a second drive bay. With the advent of the Retina Display version, however, upgrade possibilities pretty much sank to Air-levels.

Over on the desktop, the situation hasn’t been much better. The Mac Mini gives access to its memory, at least, with a panel on the base, but the storage is buried away and demands near-total dismemberment to get to it. The 21.5-inch iMac doesn’t even give you that; you need to splash out on the 27-inch version if you want the privilege of putting in your own memory. Both trade standardized storage for slimline form-factors.

For Mac Pro addicts, then, the idea of a new model was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the old Pro had languished for too long with increasingly passé specifications – it was being regularly outperformed by high-end PCs, for instance, and Apple gave no impression it intended to address that. On the other, if Apple was true to form, any new Mac Pro might sacrifice the flexibility owners had come to love in the name of style and the new company creed that the only upgrades that really matter are those that get added as cost-options at the point of purchase.

Both came true. Full specifications of the Mac Pro 2013 haven’t been confirmed – Apple is no doubt still tweaking them – but it’s already promising to be monstrous in its capabilities. The combination of new Xeon processors and workstation-class dual-GPUs, not to mention faster solid-state storage, is already adding up to a machine that Apple claims is several times faster than its predecessor.

More on the new Mac Pro 2013 in our eyes-on report from WWDC 2013

It also achieves that at a fraction of the size, and therein lies the big problem. The new Mac Pro is, if anything, the greatest example of Apple’s baroque custom packaging we’ve seen to-date: a never-before-seen cooling system, built around a common aluminum core; proprietary PCI Express storage; what are shaping up to be custom ATI graphics.

There are no spare drive bays – in fact, there’s no SATA connectivity whatsoever, for older types of drives. The RAM is accessible, in fanning slots that flare out from either side of the logic board, but storage is shaping up to be as limiting a factor (in no small part around what you can afford) as in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Even notorious Mac upgrade merchant OWC has only committed to a memory upgrade option, promising 32GB per slot for a system maximum of 128GB.

There’s a flip-side, of course. The exact upgrade possibilities of the old Mac Pro were always somewhat questionable, in practice. Yes, it used standard-sized components, but only certain graphics cards were supported, and they could be considerably more expensive than their Windows counterparts. Failed power supply? Don’t assume you can slot in a generic ATX replacement, since Apple’s desktop wasn’t designed to work with them.

In short, upgrading a Mac has always been more trouble than, say, a Windows PC. Apple’s argument with the Mac Pro 2013, it appears, is that if connectivity standards – like Thunderbolt 2 – are going to deliver such high performance, then why design a form-factor that sets aside internal space for an update that might well never happen?

The drawback of course is cost and availability. Thunderbolt has been around since early 2011, when Apple debuted it on the MacBook Pro, but more than two years later and accessories that use the connector are still in short supply. Those that are on the market are expensive, often wildly so, and it’s tough to see the Mac Pro’s push for Thunderbolt 2 doing anything to address that.

via Slashgear

Sve u svemu svakako neobičan i mooćan stroj, posebno mi se sviđa forsiranje thunderbolta jer je odličan (valjda neće ka FW otić), cijenovno sigurno kao prethodnici (ako ne i više). Zanimljivo sređeno hlađenje, baš me zanima kako će se nosit pod full opterećenjem . Svakako su opet napravili boom.

[Pupo]

Odlično izgleda, dizajn vrhunski, hlađenje mi se sviđa što kažeš.

Za thunderbolt, vidjet ćemo, asmedia već najavljuje USB3.5 standard koji brzinom parira tunderboltu, kasnije 4.0 koji je 10x brži, i što je najvažnije, unazad je kompatibilan.

[jucca]

3x4K displays

[Shamanix]

Fensi kanta za smece s pepeljarom na vrhu..

Ne svidja mi se sto vise nemozes sam nadogradit a ni popravit njihove masine, sto je pametno iz perspektive kompanije, jer ce sad kupit hrpu love na nadogradnjama i na servisu, dok ce korisnik biti na gubitku placanjem precjenjenog hardwarea...

Forsiranje thunderbolta je idiotizam jer ljudi koriste stare PCIe kartice koje sada mogu bacit i kupovat sve novo...

Uglavnom, fail..

[Baja 001]

Autor Pupo

Odlično izgleda, dizajn vrhunski, hlađenje mi se sviđa što kažeš.

Za thunderbolt, vidjet ćemo, asmedia već najavljuje USB3.5 standard koji brzinom parira tunderboltu, kasnije 4.0 koji je 10x brži, i što je najvažnije, unazad je kompatibilan.

Da ali na thundera možeš spojit 6 uređaja, bez obzira je li monitor ili HDD

Autor jucca

3x4K displays

Retina 27ice

Autor Shamanix

Fensi kanta za smece s pepeljarom na vrhu..

Ne svidja mi se sto vise nemozes sam nadogradit a ni popravit njihove masine, sto je pametno iz perspektive kompanije, jer ce sad kupit hrpu love na nadogradnjama i na servisu, dok ce korisnik biti na gubitku placanjem precjenjenog hardwarea...

Forsiranje thunderbolta je idiotizam jer ljudi koriste stare PCIe kartice koje sada mogu bacit i kupovat sve novo...

Uglavnom, fail..

Imaš dodatno jamstvo 3 godine, imaš u početku konfigurator, i nakon 3 godine si uzeo 2. ako ti triba, plus oni ionako ne ciljaju na kućne korisnike (po cijeni) nego studije i sl koji ga mogu otplatit

[Shamanix]

Da ali razlika u cijeni je prevelika izmedju apple configratora i cijene rama i diskova u trgovinama.. isto tako se odnosi na servisiranje, za maticnu plocu za macbook ti traze 1000 eura, a za te pare kupis novi ladno haha..

Bez obzira sto ne ciljaju na kucne korisnike, njihovi uredjaji u "kucnom" segmentu takodjer prate tu sugavu politiku.. A ovaj mac pro je dobar jedino za rad s videom, jer za audio nema smisla imat 2 grafe..

[Baja 001]

Autor Shamanix

Da ali razlika u cijeni je prevelika izmedju apple configratora i cijene rama i diskova u trgovinama.. isto tako se odnosi na servisiranje, za maticnu plocu za macbook ti traze 1000 eura, a za te pare kupis novi ladno haha..

Bez obzira sto ne ciljaju na kucne korisnike, njihovi uredjaji u "kucnom" segmentu takodjer prate tu sugavu politiku.. A ovaj mac pro je dobar jedino za rad s videom, jer za audio nema smisla imat 2 grafe..

Da i uvik je tako bilo, i da nisu propali nego su jedna od najjačih firmi na svitu. Očito imaju politiku masno naplati i imaju klijente...

[vision19]

Ja sam mislio da je kanta veća

6.6 inča promjera i 9.9 inča visine full prihvatljivi gabariti.

Dizajn minimalistički što pohvaljujem, cijena će biti paprena ali to je Apple tko voli nek izvoli.

Zanima me samo kako će ovakav koncept hlađenja raditi u praksi. Pohvale za inovativnost svakako

[Baja 001]

Slično su imali (dizajnerski i konceptualno) u G4, a sigurno su napravili neku bateriju testova na prototipovima...

[syss]

Autor vision19

Zanima me samo kako će ovakav koncept hlađenja raditi u praksi. Pohvale za inovativnost svakako

to se koristi već godinama u pojačalima i risiverima više klase kao i brendanim kompovima samo bez falusnog oblika

primjer: http://www.hometheater.com/content/c...wer-amplifiers

[IcyTexx]

Ideš miki koje cijene!
http://www.istyle.eu/hr/mac/mac-pro.html

Al kad sam vidio ovo zaljubio sam se:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+P...Teardown/20778

Al kad pogledas da u Njemackoj kosta "samo" 2k kn vise, nekako imam osjecaj da su se kod nas spustile cijene.
Svejedno su puno prevelike razlike izmedju europskih i americkih cijena. $1 = 1€. Nenormalno.

[Baja 001]

Autor IcyTexx

Ideš miki koje cijene!
http://www.istyle.eu/hr/mac/mac-pro.html

Al kad sam vidio ovo zaljubio sam se:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+P...Teardown/20778

Al kad pogledas da u Njemackoj kosta "samo" 2k kn vise, nekako imam osjecaj da su se kod nas spustile cijene.
Svejedno su puno prevelike razlike izmedju europskih i americkih cijena. $1 = 1€. Nenormalno.

A ima razlike u shippingu, porezima, politikom....

Ja da uziman nekako bi potega do USA uzeo bolju konfu za razliku u parama.


Perverzija je slozen izgleda puno vece dok ne vidis RAM koliki je

[lutherus]

Mac se kao i ostalu high end elektroniku isplati kupovati vani. Uzel macook pro retina preko frenda kad je bil u `merici pa 13" sa nadogradnjama platil 9100 kn ( i7, 16gb ram, 512 ssd )

[Lewis]

Autor IcyTexx

Ideš miki koje cijene!
http://www.istyle.eu/hr/mac/mac-pro.html

Jezz, kolko onda kosta 12c/24t ako je 6c/12t 33k ?

[fre@k]

najskuplji model mislim da je 9600$