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The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Stuart Affleck
For those who may have missed it, in an uncharacteristically frank manner, three of Apple's senior bods have told a select gathering of reporters that there will be a brand new Mac Pro, and matching display, next year, after the flaws in the current model became all too apparent (though they were pretty obvious to many at the time, and the lack of updates tells it anyway). In the meantime, the configurations of the current model gets a minor bump. Still crazy prices for old hardware. But positive things to look forward to…
http://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/04/apple-pushes-the-reset-button-on-the-mac-pro/

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Tony Still
Good news indeed, though I shudder to think what they'll cost. Hints about high-spec iMacs too and even a possible lifeline for the Mini.

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Stuart Affleck
And more good news today. Nvidia announced its new Titan Xp (a snip at £1159)....yes, you can use (and its little brothers) it in a Mac Pro. Well, you could have done anyway, as long as you were running Windows or Linux, no macOS drivers…

Until next week. :)

A while back, someone on MacRumors' forums posted emails between himself and Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, asking for Mac drivers for Pascal (GeForce 1000 series) cards. Huang told him they needed Apple to help them out. As Apple uses nothing from Nvidia at the moment, and the last Mac with a PCIe slot was built in 2012, you can't blame him.

But, next week, the beta Mac drivers for GeForce cards will be updated with Pascal support. As now, they'll be a work in progress and a bit fiddly (you have to update them after every single macOS update as they get broken- that's all the incremental ones, and the right one for each build...) but great news. Hopefully Apple will finally start playing nice with Nvidia again. With drivers in the OS you'd have full support apart from boot screens for ANY Nvidia card. And MacVidCards already have Mac EFI (for boot screen support) done for the Pascal cards.

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Following the philosophy of the apocryphal Rolls Royce salesman who told the customer that if he needed to ask about the price then he couldn't afford it, I assume that if I have to ask for an explanation of any of Euan's post then I don't need to know?

The fact that I haven't got, and am not intending to buy, a Mac Pro is perhaps a more direct route to the same conclusion :)

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Stuart Affleck
Well, you can buy a Mac Pro today- if you don't mind spending £3k on four year old hardware that's barely upgradeable! A lot of people- including myself- are sticking with the older towers and they can still outperform the 2013 model in many respects.

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Mick Burrell
Trevor - whilst it may have sounded like Euan, it was actually Stuart! ;-)

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Derek Wright
Actually you can get a refurbed silver tower mac pro with quite good performance (ie faster than the entry level trash can) that is really interesting.

My own version is hardwarewise as up to date as the last Silver tower, has PCI based SSD and a regular SSD, multiple USB 3 sockets.

It can have a 12 core or 6 core processor and up to 128GB of memory.

The only thing it does not have is Thunderbolt capability, however USB 3 can give you fast external storage capability.


It works a treat.

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Thanks Mick. Now I have a real dilemma:- do you think I should apologise to Euan or to Stuart? 😗

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Eric Jervis
I know I can't afford it Derek, but tell us the price anyway!

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Stuart Affleck
Eric, I have a similar spec to Derek (early 2009 MP 4,1 with firmware flashed to 2012 5,1 spec so faster RAM and CPUs supported, 3.33Ghz six core Xeon, 32GB, PCIe SSD, USB 3 card). £1000-1500 will now buy something of the same spec or better on eBay or refurb stockists. The 6,1 tube/trash can starts at £3k, now with six core but still only 16GB RAM & 256GB SSD as standard, and the AMD graphics options are several years old with no hope of replacement ever.

Re: The Mac Pro lives on (not just limps on)!

Avatar Derek Wright
Eric
I bought from Create Pro see

https://create.pro/

they have a configuration web page so you can specify your dream machine and decide what really excellent options you can do without.

Mine was about £1600 when I bought it last year. I bought it without any drives apart from the SSD on the PCI card.

I transferred my original drives over (1 SSD and 3 spinning rust drives) so I did not have to do any data transferring.
I think I had to reload the Adobe suite (after unloading it from the previous machine) to transfer the password.

Enjoy the configuration process even if you do not buy.
 
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